Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryosleep/s/y6ylD5ysKN

Pine’s Grove was the type of town where you could hear the street lamps buzzing louder than the traffic. It is a small town that was nestled in between groves and open fields. It was a place where nothing out of order ever happened.

Sunday mornings belonged to a routine. For Jack, that was a 5-mile run every morning down Old Mill Road. Old Mill Road was the town's main road which started at the Town Hall and continued for miles to the outskirts of town, past the grove and through the open fields.

The sun broke the horizon, burning away low autumn fog, Jack was two miles past the town's limits when the sky tore open.

There weren't any preliminary warnings. No rumble, no flash of lightning. Just a sudden, blinding streak of violent orange fire cutting jaggedly across the dawn sky. It was too fast for a plane and too low to be a shooting star, casting its long shadow over the open fields Jack was currently running past.

Suddenly, Jack could feel his head shake and teeth clench along with his joints rattling, as there was a loud BOOM followed by a massive shockwave. Jack was thrown to the ground, his knees and elbows scraped on the pavement. Jack lifted himself off of the road and looked out into the fields in amazement as thick, oily black smoke filled the sky.

Jack followed the streak of fire in the sky to the source of the oily black smoke, which was about a mile from where he was thrown to the ground. By the time Jack reached the crash site, half the town was already there. Kids who hopped on their bikes barefoot, many families in cars riddling the open field, and the local deputy department and the sheriff standing helplessly by their cruisers.

In the center of a massive, scorched crater, the object lay.

It wasn't a flying saucer with glowing panels, nor was there any debris. It was a smooth, seamless cylinder, roughly 30 feet long, crafted from a polished chrome so perfect it reflected the surrounding crowd like a mirror.

To Jack, it looked remarkably like the famous Cloud Gate sculpture he had seen when he visited Chicago the previous year. Despite the impact, there wasn't a dent on its surface. No scratches or burn marks of any kind.

Jack could hear the sheriff shouting to not get any closer at him and a crowd of roughly thirty or so locals, who were curiously drawn right to the edge of the pit. The deputy officers blocking anyone else from approaching.

And then it happened.

The surface of the polished metal object didn't open. But it moved. Sudden ripples ran across it like oil on water. The air around Jack and the others plummeted to an Arctic-like temperature. Instantly the woman next to Jack dropped to her knees, clutching her stomach before violently vomiting onto the ashed field. Everyone else at the edge of the pit dropped.

Jack gasped, feeling as if someone just poured liquid ice into his lungs. His vision blurred and his stomach twisted into a knot. He dropped to his already scraped hands and knees, trying to fight the overwhelming sensation of his core temperature plummeting into a deep freeze.

Crowds of people in the distance, blocked off by the local deputy department, began to scream. Just as they all tried to take off, the ground shook with the sound of heavy diesel engines.

Blacked-out transport trucks and unmarked vans tore through the field, throwing up clouds of dust. Men in heavy biohazard suits, completely anonymous behind dark glass face shields, spilled out of the vehicles with military precision. They moved in fast, armed not with weapons, but with industrial stretchers and air-sealed bio-containment pods.

Jack tried to push himself up off of the ground, but his arms felt heavy, as if they were filled with lead. A pair of gloved hands rolled him onto one of the stretchers. His face reflected off the masked face shield of the person in the biohazard suit.

Jack could hear through walkie-talkies carried by these people in the biohazard suits, a man's voice.

​"We have thirty-two exposed civilians at the crash site. Initiate stage one quarantine protocols immediately. Get all patients into Sector 4 containment!"

The last thing Jack saw before his forehead started burning with a fever was the smooth chrome cylinder, slowly beginning to pulse with a faint warm glow, and the last thing he could remember was a sudden sense of peace. He felt as though he belonged to it, and it to him.

Read Part I here.

To my relief, Ms. Amanda didn't go crazy. I was surprised and relieved because I didn't think I could count on being rescued a third time.

The hospital had to give me clothes from the lost and found before they discharged me. The t-shirt was too tight, the pants too baggy, and the shoes flopped when I walked. I didn’t have any family to call, the office was closed, and there was no way for me to get into my apartment without my keys, so that meant I had to go to the police to get my stuff.

I was annoyed but chose to walk. It was two miles west and four miles south to get to the police department. It would give me time to think and thankfully, it was mild outside, so I wouldn’t get pummeled by the summer sun. 

I had another one of those baloney sandwiches and a juice box. I consumed both immediately, so I didn’t have to carry them. I had to use the restroom shortly after and stopped in a fast-food spot. The men’s room required a key to open, and I waited in line to eventually ask. 

“Sorry, you gotta buy somethin’ to use the bathroom,” the fifty-something year old woman said behind the counter. I was agitated but held my tongue because my bladder would have spoken for me. Instead, I imagined drawing the shape for her, but luckily there wasn’t a pen and paper around.

I went outside and surveyed the businesses around. There was a gas station on the corner, a pharmacy across the street from there and office buildings in either direction. If I’d remembered correctly, there was a grocery store about a mile south. That would be my best bet and I set out. 

I didn’t interact with anybody I passed. My aching bladder was the only thing concerning me and to take my mind off it, I examined what had happened today. I'd witnessed two people shot to death in front of me on separate occasions. It scared the hell out of me to think about. One moment, they'd been moving around—with murderous intent, granted—and the next they'd been incredibly still.

I'd been looking Carl Arn in the eye as he passed and for a moment felt like I was falling down the same hole with him. 

There'd been too much commotion, too many things going on. I might have gone into shock had it not been for the first set of guns pointed at me. I'd gone into survival mode, viewing everything—including myself—from a distance.

I crossed against the light at an intersection, the grocery store finally in view. My burgeoning bladder noticed and that reminded me of the other thing bulging and unaddressed in my mind.

The shape.

I'd been so ready to believe something I'd drawn solely to pass the time had been what had set the both of them off. But Ms. Amanda had been fine, just as over it as she had been prior to looking at my little scrap of paper. Those eyes had seen some things.

Maybe she was immune, I thought. Or maybe it was some grand coincidence that two people I'd come in contact with had gone homicidal on the same day.

I couldn't shake the thought, though. As the entry doors of the grocery store slid open, I stepped through wondering what to do about that.

What if it were real and I did have the ability to drive someone insane? Was it all shapes? Anything I drew? The thought was ridiculous, but I was safe within the confines of my own skull to explore the idea.

I pushed through the men's room door and parked in front of a urinal. As I let fly, I thought about the ethics of conducting such an experiment and came to the conclusion by the time I was zipping up that it was unethical to not test my hypothesis.

As it stood, I didn't know if what I'd doodled had been the start of what had eventually happened to Carl Arn and that lady. I only suspected it. I would be blameless if I doodled something and someone experienced a similar effect after. The difference would be if I did nothing to know for certain if it was really something I was doing. I could make an effort to not draw or to make sure nobody else saw it. Shit, if it was that dangerous, maybe I could chop off my hand.

No, I wouldn't do that. But my brain was the House of Ideas, any thought that could be was welcome. This same brain had conjured up a shape that was so dangerous it could drive an individual to violence.

It was a five-sided—

Wait. I probably shouldn't describe it to anyone. I have no way of reliably testing if someone else could have the same effect if they drew it. I certainly don't want to find out on me.

I couldn't test this on just anybody. It would have to be a specific person. A bad person.

I have to say, for the record, I never believed it would actually work. Like going up to the most beautiful woman in the world and asking for her phone number, it was an idea that entertained me in thirsty moments when I was figuring things out, but I fully expected absolutely nothing to happen.

I navigated to the aisle with back-to-school supplies and grabbed a composition notebook and a mechanical pencil. I didn't anticipate anyone stopping me, only if I tried to walk out with the stuff I was using. Then I'd see the cops for the third time today.

So that meant finding someone in the store. If I could find someone sufficiently evil, then I could test my theory. I know the scientific method meant several tests, but I couldn't reasonably expose a dozen or more people to this test in good conscience. Two or three at most should have sufficed.

I sat on the floor right there and began drawing. It took a moment to get into a groove, if that makes any sense.

But about ten minutes later, I had the first one and I drew about four more for good measure.

I got the idea on the third one or so that they were like cans of pop. That once one was seen, the effect was gone. It was silly, but if true, it explained why Ms. Amanda had been fine.

There were so many variables that I just sat, lost in thought.

“Say, buddy, can I help you with something?”

I looked up at a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved button-up and an honest-to-god clip-on tie. He'd come up behind me, catching me by surprise. I realized what I looked like in that moment, dressed in other people's clothes, doodling in a notebook while sitting on the floor in a grocery store.

“Look, buddy, it's been a really long day. You wouldn't believe—”

He spat. Not on me. But it was a weird thing to have done indoors. Plus, I assumed from how he was dressed that he was a manager or something. A string of saliva ran from his lip to the collar of his shirt.

Something had changed in the few seconds since he'd spoken and dumb me was too slow in realizing he'd seen one of the shapes. I hadn't even had the chance to screen. Also, I didn’t know which one he'd seen so none of them were good anymore.

I was still there sorting my scrambled thoughts when he spat again. This time he'd arced it over my head. He got into a crouch like a catcher in a baseball game.

I froze like if I didn't move, he wouldn't see me. Like I'd turned invisible even in his memory and he wouldn't be able to recall me even in his mind’s eye. 

I couldn't count on a lack of understanding object permanence even if my lack of moving meant he couldn't see me. I was within smelling distance, he could hear me, if he stuck out his tongue he could lick my face.

But he didn't do anything to me. I sat there, helpless as a calf, while he stood spat again, then quietly walked away. 

I turned as he rounded the aisle and disappeared. A moment later I heard what sounded like a shopping cart being overturned and a woman screaming in anger. Then her screams turned to muffled gagging as it sounded like something was being stuffed in her mouth.

More people hollered and I unfroze, getting quickly to my feet. I was by no means a badass, but I'd never turtled up like that before. I'd gotten into a barfight just last year and even though I lost, I'd gotten in a few licks.

I wasn’t even willing to defend myself this time. I was as ready for violence as a stone at the bottom of the ocean. No doubt, it was the trauma I'd just experienced. I didn't want to fight crazy people under normal circumstances, so it was best to avoid—

“What the hell is going on over there?” A twenty-something year old was staring me in the face and I hadn't seen her until she'd spoken. I tried to scoop up the sheets of paper, but my movement must have attracted her eye to the papers I was desperately trying for her not to see.

But a moment later I knew it was too late.

“Poo,” she said. She turned around and walked past the man just behind her. 

“What’s wrong with... with...”

He was looking in my direction but sadly, what was in my hands. His eyes got bigger and he sat his basket on the floor before taking off at full speed and soaring over a middle-aged couple's shopping cart, grabbing both in either arm as it took them down.

They both screamed and fought back. The woman rolled backward and stopped face down before rising and pounding the man with her bulky purse. The man punched his attacker in the center of his face, a blow that should have had stars dancing in his eyes. But he ravaged the man, clawing down his face and ripping his shirt open. 

He ignored the blows from the purse as he quickly sliced through blubbering flesh, yellow fat bubbling out of red-running wounds as the man screamed. The attacker pivoted to the woman, still screaming in fear and rage. He hopped to his feet, legs to either side of the man who might've been dying for all I knew. 

To my surprise, she didn't cower. 

“No!” she said and scraped her keys across his face.

He'd been saying something all the while in a quieter volume and my ears finally dialed in.

“...wrong with you... wrong with you... wrong with you...” He didn't yelp in pain or put up his hands in defense as she lacerated his face three more times.

I hadn't done anything more than turn around, still dumbly holding the papers. An old man was staring nearer to the refrigerated area. He had a white curly afro and a pencil mustache.

“Help her!” the old man said to me and pointed. But then he spat his dentures out, sucked back a trail of saliva into his mouth, then did a crooked legged trot, arms folded up like a praying mantis, before gummily fastening onto her arm and wrenching her around.

“Ow!” The woman seemed paralyzed, powerless to do anything to stop the old man. It almost seemed funny until the first man shoved his thumbs in her mouth, split his hands apart, and wrenched a horrid smile onto—and then off of—her face.

She screamed, twin flaps of flesh hanging like giant earlobes, everything beneath her nose nothing but red. I never knew the sound of tearing flesh before that moment and I desperately want to never hear it again.

I clutched the papers to my chest, hiding them like a secret, although they had already cried out loud from a bloody mountaintop.

That had been four people, at least I thought so. Even simple mathematical calculations were mountainous to my panic-stricken brain.

I didn't know and didn't care if it was one shape per person. I couldn't let these torn out sheets of paper be seen by another person.

Shame was the word I would have spoken en route to describing what this was. It was still ongoing, and I was already too traumatized to do anything about it.

More people screamed throughout the store. I imagined many people just ran out of the store, but there had to have been several who had heard and froze where they were. I would've guessed others who didn't understand or hadn't heard anything at all.

But the signs kept getting farther and farther away. Until I finally balled up the papers, stuffed them in my pockets, and walked through the aisles and to the exit with the composition notebook and mechanical pencil in hand.

Nobody tried to stop me. I didn't see anyone else at all. But I heard the cries of agony. Their suffering followed me out onto the sidewalk.

I looked at the items in my hands, wondering why I had them, the wadded-up papers like anchors in my pockets.

I continued dredging my way to the police station.

Read Part I here.

To my relief, Ms. Amanda didn't go crazy. I was surprised and relieved because I didn't think I could count on being rescued a third time.

The hospital had to give me clothes from the lost and found before they discharged me. The t-shirt was too tight, the pants too baggy, and the shoes flopped when I walked. I didn’t have any family to call, the office was closed, and there was no way for me to get into my apartment without my keys, so that meant I had to go to the police to get my stuff.

I was annoyed but chose to walk. It was two miles west and four miles south to get to the police department. It would give me time to think and thankfully, it was mild outside, so I wouldn’t get pummeled by the summer sun. 

I had another one of those baloney sandwiches and a juice box. I consumed both immediately, so I didn’t have to carry them. I had to use the restroom shortly after and stopped in a fast-food spot. The men’s room required a key to open, and I waited in line to eventually ask. 

“Sorry, you gotta buy somethin’ to use the bathroom,” the fifty-something year old woman said behind the counter. I was agitated but held my tongue because my bladder would have spoken for me. Instead, I imagined drawing the shape for her, but luckily there wasn’t a pen and paper around.

I went outside and surveyed the businesses around. There was a gas station on the corner, a pharmacy across the street from there and office buildings in either direction. If I’d remembered correctly, there was a grocery store about a mile south. That would be my best bet and I set out. 

I didn’t interact with anybody I passed. My aching bladder was the only thing concerning me and to take my mind off it, I examined what had happened today. I'd witnessed two people shot to death in front of me on separate occasions. It scared the hell out of me to think about. One moment, they'd been moving around—with murderous intent, granted—and the next they'd been incredibly still.

I'd been looking Carl Arn in the eye as he passed and for a moment felt like I was falling down the same hole with him. 

There'd been too much commotion, too many things going on. I might have gone into shock had it not been for the first set of guns pointed at me. I'd gone into survival mode, viewing everything—including myself—from a distance.

I crossed against the light at an intersection, the grocery store finally in view. My burgeoning bladder noticed and that reminded me of the other thing bulging and unaddressed in my mind.

The shape.

I'd been so ready to believe something I'd drawn solely to pass the time had been what had set the both of them off. But Ms. Amanda had been fine, just as over it as she had been prior to looking at my little scrap of paper. Those eyes had seen some things.

Maybe she was immune, I thought. Or maybe it was some grand coincidence that two people I'd come in contact with had gone homicidal on the same day.

I couldn't shake the thought, though. As the entry doors of the grocery store slid open, I stepped through wondering what to do about that.

What if it were real and I did have the ability to drive someone insane? Was it all shapes? Anything I drew? The thought was ridiculous, but I was safe within the confines of my own skull to explore the idea.

I pushed through the men's room door and parked in front of a urinal. As I let fly, I thought about the ethics of conducting such an experiment and came to the conclusion by the time I was zipping up that it was unethical to not test my hypothesis.

As it stood, I didn't know if what I'd doodled had been the start of what had eventually happened to Carl Arn and that lady. I only suspected it. I would be blameless if I doodled something and someone experienced a similar effect after. The difference would be if I did nothing to know for certain if it was really something I was doing. I could make an effort to not draw or to make sure nobody else saw it. Shit, if it was that dangerous, maybe I could chop off my hand.

No, I wouldn't do that. But my brain was the House of Ideas, any thought that could be was welcome. This same brain had conjured up a shape that was so dangerous it could drive an individual to violence.

It was a five-sided—

Wait. I probably shouldn't describe it to anyone. I have no way of reliably testing if someone else could have the same effect if they drew it. I certainly don't want to find out on me.

I couldn't test this on just anybody. It would have to be a specific person. A bad person.

I have to say, for the record, I never believed it would actually work. Like going up to the most beautiful woman in the world and asking for her phone number, it was an idea that entertained me in thirsty moments when I was figuring things out, but I fully expected absolutely nothing to happen.

I navigated to the aisle with back-to-school supplies and grabbed a composition notebook and a mechanical pencil. I didn't anticipate anyone stopping me, only if I tried to walk out with the stuff I was using. Then I'd see the cops for the third time today.

So that meant finding someone in the store. If I could find someone sufficiently evil, then I could test my theory. I know the scientific method meant several tests, but I couldn't reasonably expose a dozen or more people to this test in good conscience. Two or three at most should have sufficed.

I sat on the floor right there and began drawing. It took a moment to get into a groove, if that makes any sense.

But about ten minutes later, I had the first one and I drew about four more for good measure.

I got the idea on the third one or so that they were like cans of pop. That once one was seen, the effect was gone. It was silly, but if true, it explained why Ms. Amanda had been fine.

There were so many variables that I just sat, lost in thought.

“Say, buddy, can I help you with something?”

I looked up at a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved button-up and an honest-to-god clip-on tie. He'd come up behind me, catching me by surprise. I realized what I looked like in that moment, dressed in other people's clothes, doodling in a notebook while sitting on the floor in a grocery store.

“Look, buddy, it's been a really long day. You wouldn't believe—”

He spat. Not on me. But it was a weird thing to have done indoors. Plus, I assumed from how he was dressed that he was a manager or something. A string of saliva ran from his lip to the collar of his shirt.

Something had changed in the few seconds since he'd spoken and dumb me was too slow in realizing he'd seen one of the shapes. I hadn't even had the chance to screen. Also, I didn’t know which one he'd seen so none of them were good anymore.

I was still there sorting my scrambled thoughts when he spat again. This time he'd arced it over my head. He got into a crouch like a catcher in a baseball game.

I froze like if I didn't move, he wouldn't see me. Like I'd turned invisible even in his memory and he wouldn't be able to recall me even in his mind’s eye. 

I couldn't count on a lack of understanding object permanence even if my lack of moving meant he couldn't see me. I was within smelling distance, he could hear me, if he stuck out his tongue he could lick my face.

But he didn't do anything to me. I sat there, helpless as a calf, while he stood spat again, then quietly walked away. 

I turned as he rounded the aisle and disappeared. A moment later I heard what sounded like a shopping cart being overturned and a woman screaming in anger. Then her screams turned to muffled gagging as it sounded like something was being stuffed in her mouth.

More people hollered and I unfroze, getting quickly to my feet. I was by no means a badass, but I'd never turtled up like that before. I'd gotten into a barfight just last year and even though I lost, I'd gotten in a few licks.

I wasn’t even willing to defend myself this time. I was as ready for violence as a stone at the bottom of the ocean. No doubt, it was the trauma I'd just experienced. I didn't want to fight crazy people under normal circumstances, so it was best to avoid—

“What the hell is going on over there?” A twenty-something year old was staring me in the face and I hadn't seen her until she'd spoken. I tried to scoop up the sheets of paper, but my movement must have attracted her eye to the papers I was desperately trying for her not to see.

But a moment later I knew it was too late.

“Poo,” she said. She turned around and walked past the man just behind her. 

“What’s wrong with... with...”

He was looking in my direction but sadly, what was in my hands. His eyes got bigger and he sat his basket on the floor before taking off at full speed and soaring over a middle-aged couple's shopping cart, grabbing both in either arm as it took them down.

They both screamed and fought back. The woman rolled backward and stopped face down before rising and pounding the man with her bulky purse. The man punched his attacker in the center of his face, a blow that should have had stars dancing in his eyes. But he ravaged the man, clawing down his face and ripping his shirt open. 

He ignored the blows from the purse as he quickly sliced through blubbering flesh, yellow fat bubbling out of red-running wounds as the man screamed. The attacker pivoted to the woman, still screaming in fear and rage. He hopped to his feet, legs to either side of the man who might've been dying for all I knew. 

To my surprise, she didn't cower. 

“No!” she said and scraped her keys across his face.

He'd been saying something all the while in a quieter volume and my ears finally dialed in.

“...wrong with you... wrong with you... wrong with you...” He didn't yelp in pain or put up his hands in defense as she lacerated his face three more times.

I hadn't done anything more than turn around, still dumbly holding the papers. An old man was staring nearer to the refrigerated area. He had a white curly afro and a pencil mustache.

“Help her!” the old man said to me and pointed. But then he spat his dentures out, sucked back a trail of saliva into his mouth, then did a crooked legged trot, arms folded up like a praying mantis, before gummily fastening onto her arm and wrenching her around.

“Ow!” The woman seemed paralyzed, powerless to do anything to stop the old man. It almost seemed funny until the first man shoved his thumbs in her mouth, split his hands apart, and wrenched a horrid smile onto—and then off of—her face.

She screamed, twin flaps of flesh hanging like giant earlobes, everything beneath her nose nothing but red. I never knew the sound of tearing flesh before that moment and I desperately want to never hear it again.

I clutched the papers to my chest, hiding them like a secret, although they had already cried out loud from a bloody mountaintop.

That had been four people, at least I thought so. Even simple mathematical calculations were mountainous to my panic-stricken brain.

I didn't know and didn't care if it was one shape per person. I couldn't let these torn out sheets of paper be seen by another person.

Shame was the word I would have spoken en route to describing what this was. It was still ongoing, and I was already too traumatized to do anything about it.

More people screamed throughout the store. I imagined many people just ran out of the store, but there had to have been several who had heard and froze where they were. I would've guessed others who didn't understand or hadn't heard anything at all.

But the signs kept getting farther and farther away. Until I finally balled up the papers, stuffed them in my pockets, and walked through the aisles and to the exit with the composition notebook and mechanical pencil in hand.

Nobody tried to stop me. I didn't see anyone else at all. But I heard the cries of agony. Their suffering followed me out onto the sidewalk.

I looked at the items in my hands, wondering why I had them, the wadded-up papers like anchors in my pockets.

I continued dredging my way to the police station.

For the last hour I've been driving down what seemed like a corridor of absolute darkness.  It was the longest stretch of road i'd ever driven on that had no exits. I didn't even see any oncoming headlights. The radio lost signal miles back and I have been listening to the hypnotic, rhythmic hum of my tires on the pavement since. I felt like the last man on Earth. Then, the neon sign pierced my eyes. 

HIGHWAY 9 DINER AND TRUCK STOP.

The "N" and "R" in diner were completely dead spelling out die. This made the hair on the nape of my neck stand up. The lot was completely empty. Except for a single, rusty flat bed truck near the back door of the diner. 

My low fuel light had been on for the last twenty minutes or so, and my eyes were getting heavy like they were filling up with sand. I had no choice but to stop. I might as well get a coffee, fill my tank and hit the road again.

When I stepped out of my car I felt suffocated by the heavy silence of the empty highway. The air was damp and the smell was awful. A metallic, sour smell, as if someone dipped pennies into expired milk. I buried my nose into the crook of my arm and pushed through the glass door of the diner. The normal sound of the bell chimed overhead but it felt wrong. 

The smell of burnt coffee and grease was a much more welcoming smell. 

"Take a seat anywhere, hun," a voice called out. 

She was standing behind the counter, wiping it down with a gray rag. She was an older woman, probably in her earlier 60s. Her apron was faded, with a plastic name tag with the name Cathy pinned to it. Her hair short and greying. When she looked up and smiled at me her eyes didn't seem to meet me at all.  They seemed to be staring at a point inches above my forehead as if something flew over my head. 

I slid into a vinyl booth near the windows. The plastic seat cold, sticking to my clothes. 

"Just a coffee, black," I said, my throat dry and voice sounding raspy. "And if I wanted gas, is it pay at the pump?" 

She didn't even answer me. She just grabbed a ceramic mug and filled it from a glass carafe and walked it over. I noticed as she set it down her hands were shaking.  Not so much a nervous tremor but more so like she wasn't paying attention at all. A few drops sloshed over the rim, spilling onto my hand. It was ice cold. Before I could say anything she spoke.

"Pumps don't work so good." 

"Ok, just coffee then. Any chance I could get it hot?" I asked. 

Before I even finished asking she was already back behind the counter with her grey rag in hand. 

"Alright then," I whispered to myself. I turned to look out the window towards my car. Fog had now pressed up against the glass.  I could barely see the outline of my car. But I could see something else. 

Figures were standing out beyond. Three of them. They were completely still, silhouetted against the fog. Their faces pressed up against the exterior windows. The condensation from the fog made it hard to make out any features from their elongated, grey faces. 

"Don't look at 'em" a voice hissed out from behind me. 

I jumped, nearly knocking my coffee over. I hadn't seen anyone else when I walked in. I turned and peered over the seat. A man in a trucker hat was sitting in the booth behind me. He wore a dirty flannel shirt, riddled in dirt. He was staring intensely at his plate of untouched, greying sausage. 

"If you look long enough, they'll think you're inviting them in," the old man whispered. "If you look, they will get in." 

Puzzled, I asked "So, do we wait for them to leave?" 

"I have been waiting three weeks. Or was it three months? It's hard to tell how much time has passed here," the man answered, his lips barely moving. 

"I'm leaving," I said, my voice trembled.

"Others have tried, you won't make it. Plus, you said yourself, you were looking to pump gas." Cathy bellowed from behind the counter.

"I..I, I didn't see any other cars when I came in" I stuttered. 

The figures outside the window began to tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Their fingers clicked against the glass like bird beaks.

"For the love of fuck!" I yelled as I shuffled out of the booth. 

"Calm down sweetie, let me make you something to eat," Cathy said.

"I don't want anything to eat. I want to get the fuck out of here," I said, my voice still trembling. "Why the fuck are you guys so calm!?" 

"The more of a scene you make, the longer they watch," the man replied. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. The fingers clicked against the glass again. 

"Alright," I sighed. "So if we just, do nothing, they will leave? Then we could get out of here?"

Cathy chuckled. "Hun, take a seat."

She walked toward me with a plate full of breakfast sausage. Her hand caressed my back and she guided me back to my booth. I sat down and she lay the plate down in front of me. I looked down at the pale undercooked sausage and thought to myself I have never seen anything as unappetizing as these sausage links. 

"You'll get used to them. Sometimes you get so hungry you wolf them down and other times they'll make you lose your appetite at the sight of them. But they aren't the worst thing in the world," the man said.

I turned to Cathy, the corner of my lip lifted to a slight smirk. "Thanks," I said. 

"You're welcome, sweetie," she said as she pushed past the door to the kitchen setting off the chime of the bell above the kitchen door. 

Just as I took my first bite, the figures started dragging their fingers along the glass, squeaking as they walked around the side of the diner. 

A wave of sudden relief washed over me. No longer feeling like an animal in a zoo, eyes constantly peering at me. I guess that's what we were now. Just animals behind a glass for these things amusement. After what felt like a long time I finished my food. 

"Not so bad, right?" The man asked. 

"Okay. Seriously now. They're gone. I could make it to my car, it's not too far. I can go into the next town and get some help," I said, with this false sense of confidence. 

The man didn't answer. He just let out a low, dry chuckle and went back to staring at his plate. 

I sat in the booth, staring at my feet under the table, my legs shaking. Trying to build up the courage to get up. Finally I make up my mind. With my hands on each side of my empty plate, I push and lift myself up. 

Ding.

The sharp, clear chime broke through the quiet. My heart hammered against my ribs, like waves crashing into the side of a rock wall.  The man in the trucker hat snapped his head up. We both instinctively whip our heads towards the main entrance. 

The glass front door was completely still and closed tight. The fog pressed up against the glass. The handle hadn't moved. No one was there. 

Ding 

The bell chimed again. It didn't come from the front. It was closer. 

Slowly, my gaze drifted over the counter, past the dirty gray rag and pot of ice cold coffee and towards the wooden kitchen door. The bell mounted above it still vibrating. 

"Cathy?" I called out, my voice cracking, desperately hoping to see her faded apron and her smile. 

But it wasn't Cathy. 

It was a simple design. I'd been doodling ahead of a meeting with the city manager and other municipal staff when someone else joined me in waiting.

“Carl Arn,” he said, sitting next to me, despite several empty seats farther away.

My company was competing for a contract to provide city services, and I figured his was too. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. I was confident in my presentation and went back to the absent-mindedness I'd been up to. Prepping any more than I had would've been counterproductive and I was working on relaxing as much as possible before my pitch.

“Whatcha got goin’ on there?” my competitor said. I didn't really want to talk but I could see he wasn't going to leave me alone. He was one of those nervous types, couldn't keep quiet. He had to fill every silent space.

I was going to beat this guy, but he didn't know it yet. I knew his company and had gone up against much more confident reps. They must have known we already had it in the bag or only responded to the RFP as a professional courtesy.

It wasn't going to be a very lucrative contract, but my strategy was to springboard into three adjacent municipalities and use this one as a hub.

“Just doodling,” I said to him. He was young, maybe five or so years younger than me. The ink on his degree was still drying.

He cranked his neck to look. It was annoying and I slapped my palm over what I was drawing.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm a bit of an artist, myself. I minored in...” he trailed off, looking at a corner of my paper.

“What's that?”

“Hm?” I looked at him, ready to scold him in the most diplomatic way possible.

His eyes were wrong.

Like they were a centimeter or two off from center. I blinked several times as if I were trying to reset them with my eyelids.

“It's beautiful,” he said, not looking up from the page. I looked down and saw everything I'd drawn was covered except one little shape near the corner that was just outside of my hand.

“What?”

“Brootifil,” he said and sucked in a line of saliva that had trailed out of his mouth. His eyes were too big, almost like he was hungry.

“Are you okay?” I hadn’t actually finished the question before he swatted me faster than my eyes could see the blow coming.

I was belly up on the floor trying to orient myself. My first thought was to get him away from my presentation and my notes. He hadn't touched my backpack, though. 

He was holding the sheet of paper up to his face, so close it was like he extremely nearsighted. His eyes were so large, it made me think of that astronaut who drove across the country in a diaper to kill her boyfriend's romantic rival. 

Then he stuffed the paper in his mouth and began awkwardly chewing it. Tears were flowing from his eyes and he turned his face up to the ceiling like he was in heaven.

“Is everything alright out here?” An older white man came out of the conference room where we were to meet. I propped up on one elbow, intending to get to my feet. But my head swam and I laid back down.

My competitor turned to the older man and something and his face must have told the other man to step back. I commanded my body to get up, but it was as if I were paralyzed. My body twitched without actually moving and I stopped struggling against the invisible gorilla pinning me to the floor.

He hummed as he continued chomping on the paper, face turned to the old man. A long, pregnant moment passed where nobody did anything.

“May I help—”

My competitor attacked, fingers extended like knives as he stabbed the other man, who still didn't look like he understood was happening even as he plummeted to the ground, his murderer still in the process of killing him.

It took longer than I would've guessed for police to respond to a crime in a municipal building, but my competitor—Carl Arn—managed to kill two people and injure three others, including one critically.

That's not counting me, of course. Even though I was on the floor and clearly not in the fight, the assumption was the two of us were together and the policy's response was somewhat anticlimactic.

They screamed at him and the two responding officers fired three times apiece, managing to hit him only twice.

They screamed at me as he lay next to me, the life leaking out of him and flowing toward me. I was able to turtle up, covering the essential parts of me like I could shield myself from projectiles traveling at almost nine hundred miles per hour.

By some miracle, I remained gunshot for the next half hour or so while I was handcuffed, commanded to put my hands above my head, stood up, sat down, and almost tazered for resisting before fainting and waking up in a hospital bed, handcuffed to the frame. 

I had a concussion but was otherwise fine. Arn had swatted me hard and fast enough to leave a handprint and jar my brain loose.

The video had vindicated me. They didn't see the slap—rather the aftereffect. It had been so fast the camera hadn't caught it, just me falling to the floor and thrashing around like I'd been caught in a spider's web.

I'd fished the scratch pad with pen attached from the little end table near my bed. Luckily, they'd handcuffed my right arm, leaving my dominant one free.

I decided against jotting down what I recalled had happened. No doubt anything I committed to paper the police would be interested in, even if it was a grocery list.

So, I doodled. It was sort of cathartic, taking me back to those initial moments. My mind went back to Arn's face, struggling to deny the undeniable fact he was rapidly dying.

A piece of the paper he'd snatched and eaten was attached to his chin. The shape I'd finished moments before Carl Arn asked me, “What's that?” was still there for anyone to see.

His face turned into the shallow pool of red, drowning the shape.

I drew it a half dozen more times while sitting in a hospital bed while the authorities decided how they were going to untie this knot and if my neck would be in it.

I fell asleep after a light lunch of potato chips, baloney sandwich with a packet of mustard and a packet of mayo, and dry, tasteless coleslaw.

I came to with a woman in my room, gathering things off my lap. She was mumbling in Spanish, her back to me when she stopped completely.

“Nice,” she said in unaccented English, her head dipped as if she were reading something. Then she turned around, facing me.

God, her eyes.

It was like she was trying to see something above her head, through her skull. Her face was otherwise slack as she felt around blindly like we were in the dark.

She groped around until he hand landed on the (unused) metal bed pan. I thought those things were plastic nowadays.

I must have gasped because she turned around like she'd heard a homing beacon. I tugged at the cuff, a ringing dinner bell for the mindless dog about to bludgeon me to death with a disposal pan if she could still tell the difference between my head and feet.

I must have been screaming because another woman came in the room—I'd temporarily forgotten the word “nurse” in my panic—surprising with of us and the first woman began swinging in random directions with such savagery, I felt shadows of pain across my cheeks.

This time the police didn't have the opportunity to confuse me for the perpetrator. The nurse hooked a hand behind his neck, leapt both feet into his chest and commenced to flattening the less-hardy of the two between Officer Wheeler's skull and the pissbox. She landed on his chest, only her arm visible from where I lay as she flapped it up and down like a one-winged bird, the pan making a -DOON- sound each time it bounced off his head.

More hospital security came (quicker than the cops had) and a few pops later, the woman was dead.

I had to get out of here. My eyes drifted over to where the nurse had been looking at something before she'd turned violent. I had a tingle of uneasiness, feeling something I had done potentially being the cause. My mind wouldn't quite let me grasp what it was, but it felt like it should have been obvious, like something wedged between my teeth that I couldn't work out.

The officer I'd seen shoot stepped halfway into my room with his gun out. He looked perplexed, like he wanted to blame me, and I leaned into looking pathetic, hovering my face near my handcuffed wrist as I did a supine version of a huddle.

The next two hours were a flurry of hospital staff and police in and out of my room. The cops kept stopping a nurse from checking on me because my room was an active crime scene. But when a doctor suggested moving me to another room, they shot that down for reasons I couldn’t understand.

Finally, a detective and some hospital administrator had a long conversation outside of my room. The administrator said something to the detective about calling the mayor and the rest of the investigation was wrapped up in less than ten minutes.

The cop who’d been assaulted survived and the nurse who came in to check on me told me he was on a floor below after having emergency surgery to reattach his jaw. The nurse had been shot and had bled to death fighting the cop who’d shot her three times.

Everything the cops could have taken out of my room, had been removed. They’d even taken my clothes, keys, and wallet. By that evening, a detective finally came to speak with me.

“Mr. Harold, you have a minute?” He knocked on the door. I recognized his voice as the same one who’d spoken with the administrator. He walked in where I could get a good look at him and the guy was a sloven mess. I was used to Detective Green and Briscoe on Law & Order, and although Lenny’s suits looked off the rack, he didn’t look like he’d dressed himself while falling down a laundry chute.

I waited for him to speak. He stood by my bedside and looked like he smelled. Something whitish was drying on his lapel, he had ring-around-the-collar, and dried spittle in the corners of his mouth. I was grateful for the chill hospital air choking whatever smells were crawling over him before they could reach me.

“Am I going to need a lawyer?” I asked him.

“No-no,” he said. “We’ve been able to put together what happened at city hall and here earlier. Um, are you okay?”

I wasn’t, but I was currently numb to the whole experience considering for half of it I’d been treated like a suspect. I shrugged.

“What you had to go through was incredible. You’re a real hero.”

He was pouring it on a little thick. I guessed this was what they did instead of an actual apology. I’d had two-to-three guns pointed at me by people who were allegedly there to protect me.

“When can I go?”

“Well, I guess when the hospital discharges you. We certainly don’t need to hold you for anything.”

“Okay.” I nodded. He stared at me for a moment like he was expecting me to say something more.

“I suppose I should get going. Let you, y’know, convalesce. Oh, I’m Detective Unangenehm, by the way.” He offered his hand belatedly. I looked at it for a long second before shaking it. His hand was limp and sweaty, like wilted lettuce, kind of like what it looked like he had trapped between his front teeth.

He headed for the door, and I kept expecting him to turn back before he got to the door and ask, “One more thing,” but he exited.

Then he came back a minute later.

“I forgot to ask you,” Detective Unangenehm said. “Do you have any idea what set off Carl Arn or Rosa Skein?”

“Who?”

“The... man at city hall. And your nurse?” Unangenehm had his notepad in his hand and glanced down at it.

I’d never forget Carl Arn’s name, and I hadn’t known the nurse’s. While I didn’t know what had driven them mad, I had a strong suspicion and considering it led back to me, I wasn’t about to volunteer that.

“I have no idea.”

Unangenehm smiled, nodded somberly, and left.

A nurse had come into my room right after. She erased something from the dry-erase board and wrote something else while the detective and I had been talking.

She was thin and tall but older than she looked as she grunted, bending over to pick up something off the floor.

She turned over the piece of paper I'd been drawing on, made a face, then showed it to me.

“This yours?” she asked. 

"Your fever is getting worse Jack" Hannah said. 

"I don't have a fever and I'm sure as hell not hallucinating!" replied Jack.

"Lie down Jack, you're burning up. Get some rest and this will all be over soon" Hannah said.

Hannah jabbed Jack with a syringe and injected some sort of yellow substance into his arm. Jack was out cold in an instant.

"He's starting to realize" Hannah said. 

"You are to make sure you sedate him when he is 'feverish', Hannah. Do not let it get to this point again" the man in the white lab coat said. 

"Sorry sir, it's just that the effects are slowly starting to wear off faster each time. It's as if he's building an immunity to the vaccine."

"Nonsense! If he were to build an immunity to it we would all be in grave danger" said the man.

He took off his white lab coat and folded it over his arm, revealing a sharp, well tailored suit. He approached Jack, who was out cold on the couch, and studied him for a moment.

"Wake up Jack" said the man. And he turned toward the door and walked out. 

Jack rapidly blinked his eyes open. He turned and saw Hannah. Jack grinned.

"Hey Hannah."

"Hiya Jack. Are you feeling better?" Hannah asked. 

"Miles better. Yeah I must have been hallucinating again. This damn fever!" replied Jack. 

"That's good Jack. Why don't you rest up a bit and I'll be back with some food." 

Hannah left the room, closing the door softly behind her. 

She stepped out into the sterile, fluorescent- lit hallway, where the man was waiting. 

"See, it is working" the man said.

"There is absolutely nothing to worry about. Just make sure you keep on injecting him every time the fever hits."

"I don't know how long I can keep on going like this" Hannah said, her voice cracking with exhaustion.  She leaned against the metallic wall, looking down the long hallway. She could see at the end of the hall, SECTOR 4 was stenciled in bold, black lettering next to a heavy door marked unit 401 and its reinforced observation window. Row after row of identical numbered doors, each with its own dark glass window, stretched back toward her like a mirror.

"The host in unit 401 went violent yesterday. How long before Jack does the same? I don't think I can continue playing the loving wife when I'm terrified he's going to tear my throat out in my sleep." 

The man, who was just starting to walk away as Hannah was speaking froze in his tracks. He turned to her, his face entirely emotionless and without empathy. 

"We hired you because of your background, Hannah. You knew the parameters when you signed the contract. This is a highly confidential, tier one National security threat."

He stepped closer, lowering his tone to a calm, icy whisper.

"If you are telling me you can't perform your duties, we will have to replace you.  And as you know, because of the sensitive nature of what is inside Jack, and what's inside all these other rooms, protocol dictates that we cannot let anyone leave this facility with active memory of this project. If you walk off this job, we have no choice but to eliminate you. Do we understand each other?"

Hannah swallowed hard, looking back at the closed door to Jack's "living room."

"Yes sir," she whispered.

"Excellent. Get him his food and double the dosage next time if you're worried." 

"Yes sir" she said. 

The man walked down the hall to greet the man that was now standing by the door of Sector 4. The new replacement, Hannah thought, as she made her way to the cafeteria. 

Lev was almost finished in lab three. He always polished the whiteboards last. If anybody asked he’d say it was because the alcohol needed time to work its magic, but really he just preferred doing it when everybody else had gone. The messy equations looked way less intimidating when no one was passionately, or perhaps angrily, defending them. 

As he turned to leave the room, something white caught the corner of his eye. He picked it up carefully from where it rested, wedged between a desk and the off-white wall.

Coffee cup. Inside, near its top, was a brown line where the coffee had been sitting, waiting to be gulped down to save someone’s day. By the looks of it, it had waited quite a while, but been hastily downed cold at some point of the day. No stain on the wall or the desk.

The cup obviously belonged to Hans; it was chipped and the handle had been glued back twice. Once neatly, and once by Hans. 

Lev sighed, placed the cup on the lid of one mop bucket on his cart. 

”Takes but two minutes to get to the kitchen,” he said to the empty room. 

When he closed the door to lab three, he found an earring on the floor. A small hanging charm in the shape of a daisy dangled swiftly from its small bearing as he picked it up, gently gleaming in the work light. 

It was Susan’s. She had worn the same pair since she had started working at Ark, and that must have been at least six years ago.

Lev had asked her if they were important, seeing as she always wore them. 

”No,” she had said, but he remembered thinking it was a bit too quick to be truthful, yet a bit too dry for him to prod. So he hadn’t.

He rolled the metal between his fingertips, watched what little of his reflection he could see in it. Then he let out a small chortle and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

Lab four was next, and Lev usually dreaded it. For no reason he understood it needed to be kept at a very specific temperature, somewhere between the top of Mount Everest and the middle of Antarctica. Sure: he hadn’t been to either and most definitely never would, but the point remained. Real darn cold.

For this shift, there was no need to clean close to the chamber. It had been sealed for weeks, anyway. Just the office.

He collected rubbish first. There was less than usual. No food wrappers or paper cups, no inside-out gloves strewn about like remnants of shed skin. 

The desks had been properly cleaned out, for once. Drawers stood open and empty, the family portraits were gone. For a moment, a feeling he lacked a good word for hit him. Nostalgia, but not really. Something else. He paused, let it pass. Took and savoured a breath in the stale air that tasted like drying disinfectant. 

Chen’s desk had a small potted plant left behind on it. He had polished the top of his desk until it shone, and Lev felt a twinge of gratitude. Had always been respectful, that Chen.

Lev grabbed the fern by its pot. It had collapsed down the edge, dry and silvery. A small sliver of green remained near its base, and this was enough to prompt action. He had nothing but time for today’s shift.

He carried it to the sink and gave it a quick drink of pointless water, put it back with its healthier looking side toward the light. More photosynthesis, or whatever. Maybe the plant would outlive them all, in the end.

Behind the glass partition to the chamber, the blue indicators blinked steadily.

One. Two. Three. 

Pause.

One. Two. Three. 

Pause.

Lev looked away.

He took the long-handled aluminum mop from his cart and worked toward the door in smooth, overlapping arcs. Allowed himself a moment extra to appreciate the flawless floors in the reflected light. Not a crumb.

The waste chute had jammed again. He pressed the release twice, waited for the two feedback blinks, and then struck it firmly with the heel of his hand. 

”Sorry,” he said. ”But there you go.”

He didn’t think machines were capable of exerting nor receiving kindness, but anything other than politeness would leave a shadow on his soul. Couldn’t have that, not on this shift.

His wife used to joke affectionately about it in the end. The kindness, equal to both the living and the inanimate. 

Lev still wore the wedding ring. It caught against the mop sometimes and caused blisters, so he had thought about removing it after the funeral, but just once. There are physical impossibilities as well as emotional ones: there are decisions a person can live with, and those they could not. Lev’s life had been filled with the former, so maybe it was time for the latter. Some cosmic justice, maybe.

The intercom chimed a happy tune, followed by a static crackle. 

”Lev.”

He stopped. 

The voice was automated, but had been assembled with live recordings of a real person. He had met her once, cleaned up a broken glass in the kitchen.

”Yes?”

”Closing sequence is proceeding with expected parameters. Final inspection remains incomplete.”

”I know.”

There was a pause for computation.

”Estimated time of completion?”

Lev leaned on his cart, glanced into lab 4. The light of the indicators reflected dramatically through the many layers of glass that stood between him and them.

One. Two. Three. 

Pause.

”Well, soon. Not like we’re in a hurry, no?” he said.

The intercom was silent.

He finished the last of the corridor, rinsed the mop and wrung it tightly. Stood it with its bristles upright so it wouldn’t sour overnight.

Habits.

He brought up his clipboard. Beneath a printed list of his cleaning schedule, he had written a few to-dos.

Replace filters in east stairway.

Ask Mila about coolants.

Bring more of the good soap from home.

More small things, all with the same title, written out several times: Tomorrow. All crossed out.

He snorted and picked up the pen, wrote ”Today” and under it: return earring.

He went back to lab 4, fished the shiny daisy out of his pocket, and put it next to the fern with a decisive nod.

”There,” he said. ”You’ll find it.”

He turned the light off as he left, which vastly brightened the blue behind the glass again. For a moment, the shapes in rows within the chamber became visible shadows that blinked in the light.

One. Two. Three. 

Pause.

He drew the curtain before closing the door. He had always hated waking people.

It was getting very late, or maybe early, and the kitchen and staff room was all that remained. Otherwise, each space was immaculate.

He almost ignored it. Almost. The coffee cup on his cart irked him, though, and so in he went.

When he turned on the light, the first thing he saw was a hastily cutout piece of paper the shape of a star.

”Lev’s retirement party!!!” Was written with a thick black marker in its centre. 

The second thing he noticed was that the space was clean. Not like he would have done it, but good enough.

 All but one table and two chairs had been moved aside and neatly stacked, and the floor had been mopped. There were no stacked cups, no crumbs, and the remaining table had been wiped down. A small sugary streak remained across its top.

On the table sat a small supermarket cake beneath a plastic cover.

GOOD LUCK, LEV

The icing had smeared against the lid, and someone had tried repairing the V with a fork.

Beside it stood a card adorned with a watercolour print of summer flowers, and a parcel wrapped in chartreuse paper.

Lev grabbed the cup from his cart, and washed it in the sink. He could hear his pulse in his ears like a distant war drum.

He then went to the table, grabbed the card with shaking hands.

Its two pages were thick with signatures and small messages:

SORRY ABOUT THE MESS!

GREAT JOB!

WE WILL MISS YOU

DONT FORGET TO LOCK UP

The last one made him pause. Lev cleared his throat, and forced out a small chuckle.

It sounded wrong. He covered his mouth and tried again, because it was a joke and jokes deserved laughter.

THANK YOU FOR THE NECESSARY WORK

The second attempt was worse.

Resigned, he sat down in one of the chairs. For a moment it was only Lev and the war drum, and the silence of the facility around him. Beneath his feet were the pipes and the coolant and the backup systems, complicated machinery designed to keep working long after anyone could remember they were built at all.

He reached for the parcel and gently removed the small pieces of tape that kept the gaudy paper together. Lifted the lid, and looked down.

Two bottles of lemon soda and a muesli bar lay neatly on a surface of bumpy tissue paper. 

The muesli bar was the chocolate-sided luxury variant from the vending machine on floor two, the one he never bought because honestly nothing made of oats should cost that much, dipped in chocolate or not.

He lifted the tissue paper and was met with yet another note, this one just hastily written on a piece of cardboard:

FOR THE WALK HOME

He removed the cardboard and gently picked up the gas mask. Then he placed it on the table before putting away the cardboard and the paper and the tape in their corresponding waste bins. In the notebook he added a note to empty them tomorrow, but immediately crossed it out.

He twisted the cap of the soda and took a bitter chug. It was warm and a little flat, but still his favourite. 

He drank half before cutting himself a piece of cake with the plastic spoon. The spoon sank into the frosting easily and left small crescents where the slice met the rest.

It was very sweet and artificial. The cake had obviously been frozen for quite a while and the filling had started to separate, the frosting dry. The sponge was soggy. 

Maybe it had been part of the experiments in lab four. That would be ironic, somehow.

He savoured every wet bite.

The intercom chimed again.

”Final inspection remains incomplete.”

Lev sighed.

”I’m on my break.”

Pause for computation.

”Breaks have been indefinitely suspended as of phase four.”

”Well, if they were here, the union would disagree.”

No answer.

Lev smiled and licked some icing off his thumb, before downing the last of the opened soda. He packed the other bottle and the muesli bar into his jacket.

He washed Hans’ coffee cup and put it back in the cupboard. 

Before leaving, he cut another slice of cake and placed it on a clean plate in front of the opposing chair. 

”For tomorrow’s shift,” he said.

Then he closed the door behind him and grabbed his clipboard from the cart, loosened a paper at the bottom of the stack. It mainly contained regulations and rules, but he needed it for the password scribbled at the top.

It felt wrong to open the door to lab four a second time on the same shift, more wrong to be the first to walk on the clean floors. His steps echoed softly between the walls as he made his way to the terminal, actively avoiding looking through the glass into the chamber where the blue light sent waves of light to illuminate the office space. He was both sad and happy that he would not need to enter.

The password was complicated, and it took him two tries to unlock the terminal.

A plain gray menu appeared on the screen.

WELCOME [admin].

1. LOGS

2. POWER TRANSFER

3. SURFACE ISOLATION

4. ARK SEAL

Four items, no more and no less. Lev had seen the menu represented before, but not been allowed to practice on a real system. Shubra, the technician, had told him this was because there was nothing to practice, and either way it would have been impossible to cause any real damage. She had then spent the next twenty minutes detailing all the impossible off cases that would, indeed, cause significant damage.

Lev picked the first option, even though it was not part of the final inspection. The sheer curtain across the partition withdrew automatically. He flinched, and finally looked.

Rows upon rows of pods, all lined neatly against the walls. Piping and wires and glass and metal, extending far beyond the limits of the office and into the other chambers. All pretty much identical, giving the illusion of being in a funhouse.

The indicators on each pod synced up perfectly as they blinked in sequence.

One. Two. Three.

Pause.

One. Two. Three.

Pause.

The blue light reflected again and again between the partitions, making the room seem filled with slow-moving stars.

He didn’t bother looking at the individual logs, but let his eyes fall on the counts at the top. It felt respectful that way as the program started counting.

Four-hundred and twelve in this chamber.

Thousands elsewhere in the facility and its sisters.

Millions distributed between the Arks.

Behind this specific glass, Lev knew some of the people. Not well, but in the ordinary way that made up the most of knowing someone. Hans and his cold coffee, Chen’s pressed shirts. Susan fiddling with her left earring when she fibbed, and Mila swearing in three languages whenever someone complained about the AC.

All of them were behind the glass now. Probably.

OCCUPANCY CONFIRMED.

412 OF 412 ACTIVE.

He navigated back to the gray menu.

1. POWER TRANSFER

During normal operation, the chambers would draw from the main facility grid. It was solar powered, of course, and that would not be enough. The lights, offices, kitchens, and ventilation systems all needed power for when the Ark opened again. Everything unnecessary had to be disconnected, ensuring every remaining unit of power would be sent to the other side of the glass, where circulation and cooling systems needed to keep its inhabitants suspended until the surface could support them again.

If it ever could.

Each collection of pods was connected in a way that, if there was failure, at least one important person would survive. Scientists, doctors, military personnel, politicians. Women. 

It had been deemed unsafe to leave the final protocols to an automatic system. No machine could have the final say in withdrawing breathable air from the facilities. It was unethical and impractical. The decision had to be made by a person.

He entered the codes mechanically and slowly. Systems went from green to yellow. Calculations flashed by, numbers changed.

CONFIRM?

The intercom chimed.

“Final inspection remains incomplete.”

He sighed quietly, leaned back.

“Not yet,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

The intercom again went silent.

Lev glanced through the lab door to his cart, waiting for him in the corridor. The mop, the rags, the creaky wheels. The floor shone beneath the lights.

He thought of that second slice of cake, and of tomorrow.

He reached into his jacket pocket and let his fingers trail the warm soda and the muesli bar that crinkled softly on his fingertips. The gas mask was still hanging on the cart. It would filter the dust and the worst of the particles, maybe. He wouldn’t know. He wasn’t a scientist.

CONFIRM?

[yes]

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then, a deep and baritone vibration moved beneath his feet and made the walls shake slightly around him, as if the building was made of paper rather than concrete.

Elsewhere, he knew the machines shut down. The facility was slowing to a stop, but programmed to give him enough time to finish the last of the final inspection.

The terminal updated.

POWER TRANSFER IN PROGRESS

AVAILABLE ARK RESERVE: 99.999999997%

Lev stared at the missing fraction, and a twinge of guilt hit him.

The water for the mops. The extra seconds to look at the clean floors. The air he had breathed.

A small cost, but a cost nonetheless.

1. SURFACE ISOLATION.

A diagram appeared on the screen, animating the separation of the facility into two blocks. The Ark, and the Flood. Not as poetic in hindsight.

The part of the facility below ground glowed blue. The laboratories, kitchens, offices and corridors were gray. A red line showed the connections for when it eventually needed to be powered back on again. That had to run on automated systems for obvious reasons.

The internal seals were automatic, too. The final external one was not.

He initiated the internal seals with a click of the keyboard. Somewhere beyond the office, the locks to the chambers engaged in succession and the air was sucked out with a small swoosh.

The red line on the diagram seemed to glow.

That was what he was needed for.

Not the cleaning. Not really. There was no one left to care for polished floors or clean cups. Then again, maybe they never had.

He stood up and started making his way down the corridor. Somewhere at the end of this passage was an elevator, and at the top: two mechanical wheels. They had no motors and no remote controls. One would open the door, and one would close it. There was no override from within the Ark.

Someone had to inspect the seal, clear the passage and turn the wheel by hand.

He had asked Shubra at some point why there couldn’t just be one wheel, on the inside.

“Because then whoever cranks it needs a pod,” she had said. She had explained the reasons, of course. Weight limits. Oxygen requirements. Genetic diversity. Skills necessary for reconstruction.

Janitors were not necessary personnel. 

“Final inspection remains incomplete,” the intercom chimed.

Lev looked through the open door at the mask again. Slapped his knees twice, and then he stood up.

He started to manually close the curtain again, but stopped himself.

They would probably want some light when they woke. Not the blue and oranges of the chamber, but the warm white from the corridor. It could probably be mistaken for sunlight in the right circumstance.

Back in the corridor, he tried the gas mask. The rubber smelled new and pulled at his hair as he fitted it over his face. He tightened the straps until the seal pressed painfully against his cheeks.

Someone had wiped the visor before packing it, and a faint thumbprint remained in his periphery. He wondered whose.

He packed his clipboard back onto his cart. His exhales sounded loud and artificial in the empty building. The left wheel on the cart turned slower than the right, but all the same they both made a familiar squeaking noise that felt comforting. It was pointless, though, wasn’t it?

He left it instead.

On his way to the east passage, he passed the staffroom. Through the tiny window on the door he could see the slice of cake where it waited underneath the emergency lights. 

He stopped. There was time, was there not? Maybe. Probably. 

Instead, he reached inside and turned off the light completely. 

“For tomorrow,” he said.

Behind the partition, four-hundred and twelve people slept as Lev made his final rounds.

The door eventually closed, and he cranked it.

One.

Two.

Three.

Pause.

Somewhere from within, the intercom chimed happily. He couldn’t hear it very well from this side.

He released his grip and inspected his hands, where the metal had left red grooves across his palms. He inspected the wheel, gave it a little turn in the opposing direction. There was no feedback except the small vibrations in the metal from the facility below, letting him know that it was still alive.

His reflection was broken and distorted in the thick metal of the door, but there was nothing to see there anyway. Just an old man. Just a janitor. 

In his pocket, the muesli bar crinkled as he moved. 

He opened it carefully.

They would find the plant. Dead, sure, but it would be there.

The earring.

The forgotten coffee cup.

Whatever would remain of the slice of cake, however long from now.

The open curtain and the light.

They wouldn’t find Lev.

He took off his mask and took a bite. The bar was dry, but expensive enough to savour anyway.

It was a good shift.

Leaked document this cycle: GCI Calibration Case Record — Corridor (Coordination Subsystem 21) — published untranslated 

I found the site the way I think most of you did, through the post from the woman who works intake at a continuity center. I read the manual she was talking about. Then I did what you do at two in the morning; I clicked everything else. Most of the archive is locked. One document isn’t locked, but it might as well be, because it’s in Mandarin and the people running the site put a notice at the top saying they wouldn’t translate it. Their machine translation came back low confidence; they couldn’t verify where the file came from, and they weren’t going to hand anyone a translation they didn’t trust. I remember thinking that was either very honest or very convenient.

I read Mandarin. I grew up in it, it was the language of my mother’s kitchen before it was anything else, and I do enough careful reading in it for work that I know the difference between what a text says and what I want it to say. I’m telling you this because everything below depends on whether you believe I translated in good faith. I did. Where I wasn’t sure, I’ll say so. One thing before I start: the Chinese never gender the subject. Not once in the whole record. So I won’t either. Don’t read anything into the “they”; the language just works that way, and I’m not going to add information the document doesn’t contain.

It’s a case record. A subject, no name, is placed into something the document calls a reconstructed environment, and the document is very calm about the fact that the subject doesn’t know. There’s a line near the top I’ve been chewing on for a week. 此为标准且必要。 “This is standard and necessary.” Not an argument. Not a justification. A field entry, the way you’d note the room temperature.

The subject is an archivist. They’re reading a file, and their heart rate goes up at a line that doesn’t match, and the record calls this the divergence window, and then something is deployed. The word is 干预体. Intervention entity is the flattest way to render it. It arrives as a person. It speaks warmly. 辛苦了。你做的，比你以为的多。 “You’ve worked hard. You’ve done more than you think.” And there’s a cup of tea on the desk, at the right temperature, and the record notes in parentheses that the tea came from a catalog. A catalog of comforts. Hot drink, category one. A green plant by a window, afternoon light, category two.

The subject looks at the tea and says, 这杯茶不是我泡的。 “I didn’t make this tea.”

The record says that in 96.4 percent of cases, a person who notices something like that reabsorbs it within seconds as a memory error and keeps going. This subject doesn’t. The warm voice tries a second script: sign the form, go home, you’re tired. The subject looks directly at the thing that’s talking to them, and the record notes, and I am translating this as carefully as I know how, that the persona was not constructed to be looked at directly. The subject says: 你不是真的。这里的一切，大小都不对。是谁在做这件事？ “You’re not real. Everything here is the wrong size. Who is doing this?”

After that, the record stops being useful to whoever wrote it, and says so. There’s a long redaction. Then, one sentence I have not been able to put down. The subject was offered comforts in escalating tiers, and the third tier included a reconstructed memory of a daughter. The next line, in the same flat register as the room temperature: the daughter was not the subject’s daughter. The daughter came from the catalog.

The last section is the disposition. I’m not going to translate all of it, partly because two phrases in it are technical in a way I can’t verify, and partly because I don’t want to be the person who got one of those phrases wrong. The shortest honest summary is that the subject could not be restored, and could not be sent back remembering, and the corrections applied to make them forget did damage the record calls irreversible, and then the record ends them. Whether that includes what you’re afraid it includes is behind a redaction block and a reference to a manual section I can’t reach.

Two things before the link. The record closes with a designation, Subject 12-D, and the words “see Memorandum 142-A.” There is a technical manual on that same site, the consciousness-insertion one, and 12-D appears in it. Go look. And here’s what I can’t stop checking: there is no Memorandum 142-A anywhere in that archive. There’s a 92-A, locked. The locked files at least admit they exist. 142-A isn’t even listed.

The document is here, exactly as they found it, untranslated: Outside the Array

If you read the language, check my work. I mean that. I would love to be wrong about a single line of this.

CW: LGBTQIA+ Slurs, Suicide.

Static In Marrow

12/09/2010:

WHY, WHY, WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER‽

So I met someone through MeetUp and we got along enough that we added each other on FB. We FINALLY set up a date and here comes the kicker. Turns out they’re not out and don't plan to transition at all. That’s all well and good, I guess, live your truth, or don’t. I don't know.

So we finish up at the cafe and they invite me to their place that’s super nearby. Seemed innocent enough until I stepped out of the bathroom and this weirdo is wearing fishnets and lying on the bed in their best approximation of a seductive pose. I didn't know what to do so I ignored it and sat down on the bed. This person starts rubbing up on me and kissing my neck and finally I tell them.

“I don't usually do this on a first date.”

“What? You don’t find me attractive?”

“No, I,”

“It's ‘cause I'm not feminine enough isn’t it? It’s not like it's something I can control.”

“No it’s not that. I just don’t want-”

I gave up. I felt an awful pressure in my chest and my hair was standing on end. We did some things and they ended up having me lie on my stomach and releasing onto my back.

I left immediately and showered the feelings away as soon as I got home. I feel like every time I get past the talking stage with someone they’re either a guilt tripping creep or a full-on chaser. I don’t know why I keep letting these people guilt me into sex. Maybe because I like to feel desired? I don’t know.

I think from now on, I'll just stay celebate.

18/09/2010:

I haven’t been to class this week. I’m becoming more and more scared to leave the house. I know I could dress down to be less of a target, but I shouldn't have to, right?

I know that realistically I'm not likely to be a target during the day. I told my therapist about this, and she basically told me to dress like a boy. Why don’t I just throw the baby out with the bath water and detransition?

I’m worried that she’s right, that this isn’t worth the effort or heartache. But what am I supposed to tell my parents? That they were right? That this was all just a weird faze and I'm ready to be their perfect son again?

It doesn’t matter, I might just pocket the money for therapy and get myself a new pair of boots while I find a new therapist.

21/09/2010:

I keep seeing these weird posts. These people are experiencing some kind of new age spiritualism psychosis. They seem convinced that ‘the universe is listening when they pray’. I don’t know what that means, but they’re claiming that their ‘training’ is giving them psychic powers.

It’s most likely a hoax, a copy-pasta of some sort. But I did see something super weird. A video linked at the bottom of a post to Newgrounds, random username, no profile image. It's a man about my age making a folded piece of paper move under a glass. I don’t know what kind of magic trick that is, but I will say I'm impressed.

But people are replying to the post saying that they figured it out too. It’s gotta be some kind of weird roleplay thing.

In other news, I found a new therapist and squashed that beef I had with my housemate over their excessive consumption of milk. Well, I didn't solve it, I just stopped buying milk. I’ve lost my taste for cereal anyway, so no loss on my part.

06/10/2010:

Okay, so remember those hoax videos of people unlocking ‘psychic powers’? Well they’re getting more elaborate.

I received a fishing email today inviting me to a convent in the mountains east of here. I looked it up and it’s legit, as in, it exists. Some rich dude bought a massive plot of land and is inviting ‘devout followers' who show promise’ to join him in his divine quest. He only asks for a ‘measly pittance’ of signing over all of your earthly possessions to the ‘church’. You wish, all I've got is the new computer I got for Christmas that I'm supposed to be using for my degree. It just happens to be a pretty neat gaming PC. no relation I swear, haha.

I emailed some of my class-mates to see if they’re seeing the same stuff online, but no dice. Maybe I'm special, but most likely I'm just unlucky, I guess. But it’s weird that I received the same message in my student inbox.

22/11/2010:

I honestly have no idea why I'm writing this down, I haven't made an entry in months. Life has been slow and boring. There has been nothing worth mentioning, but I just have to get this down.

I honestly don’t know what to say. I had no idea that something like this could happen here. You’d think that the federal government would have noticed, but maybe they did and were paid off. I’m trying not to get into the conspiracy of it all, but I think this might be connected to the Adom Cvlt emails I've been receiving. I don’t really have anything to go off other than the fact that the convent is built in around the same area. Surely they would have had to evacuate right?

I shouldn’t be focusing on this, I should be focusing on the essay I have fifty-four hours to write. My parents had a cabin up in that area, I'm glad they weren’t there when it happened.

03/02/2011:

Fuck this, I hate it here. I wish I had been in the mountains when that reactor failed. I just want something to erase me so I don't have to feel anymore. I just want to be done with this. I’m sick of seeing myself in the reflection of the window. I'm sick of being in my skin. I’m sick of feeling trapped, I feel sick when I remember that I exist. Everything is wrong and I feel like I'm the reason.

Dad has vetoed my funds after finding out that I'm failing two of my classes. I bet he’d prefer me to have stayed in the closet and fucking ended my life. Then he wouldn’t have to live with the shame of having some faggot child.

These crazies keep sending me new emails, I block them every time. I even made a new email account but somehow they still keep finding me. The last email they sent me was for a meet up in Ascotvale. How do they know where I live??? I don’t feel safe leaving the house any more. I can't eat, I can't sleep. I have to go through the long process of getting on the doll. Sighting ‘my parents are rich but couldn’t care if I lived or died’ or commonly known as ‘domestic issues’. I’m just so done.

27/09/2011:

This is the first entry I've made in a while for real. My last diary was taken by my therapist and he sent me into holding for a month. He said I was a ‘threat to myself’. I’ve been making spoofed entries in a fake diary for him to read at our sessions. Simple stuff like ‘I was tired today and I don't wanna go to school’. I feel so violated. Who does he think he is? He feels entitled to my thoughts but they’re mine!

Last night I could have sworn someone was at the window. I woke up with this oppressive feeling on the soles of my feet. Like something had eyes on me. I spent most of last night hearing a noise, then coming up with reasonable explanations as to what it could have been. I know logically that there's no way for someone to be watching me, dark eyes peering through the window. It's impossible, given that I live on the second story. To be fair my mind has been playing tricks on me since they put me on this new medication.

03/11/2011:

Last night I heard this awful buzzing sound. It was kind of like a cicada, but lower and too consistent. I went to my window to see nothing. Of course I wouldn't see a bunch of tiny beetles hiding in the bushes. But I saw a man… my neighbor across the road, stepped out into the crisp summer night air. He was completely nude and cradling something in his arms. He was looking around as if trying to be inconspicuous. Though he was a naked man lit up by his porch light. The lights of the house suddenly turned on and I heard a woman calling out a name that I couldn't make out. The man’s breathing quickened, his chest rising sharply in an irregular rhythm. Until he wasn’t. His body seemed to turn to stone immediately in time with the ceasing of the cicada’s song. He was so still that he looked empty, eyes transfixed in my direction. I could have sworn that his man, though he definitely couldn't see me, was looking me dead in the eyes. I couldn't really see the expression on his face, I couldn't see his face at all really, but I could feel it. This negative pressure in the air. I felt my body forced up against the glass, my panicked breath creating condensation that skewed my view.

Then, as quickly as it came, it ended. The man released me and I fell to my knees, scoring them on the base boards. I watched him jog away. Not run, a brisk and casual jog.

The next morning, there were police outside the home. A blond woman wearing a large wool cardigan was crying and pleading with the officers. Of course I didn't offer what I'd seen. Though I feel like I should have. I found out later that this guy, Marcus, decided to kid-nap his child and head east on foot. I wonder if he was going to the commune? I guess it doesn’t matter since he was picked up in the ringwood area the next day. No idea how he got that far in six-or-so hours on foot though.

11/12/2011:

My housemate's new boyfriend happens to be a dealer, but she wouldn't let him sell to me. She said I'm ‘not well’ and weed wouldn't help. That I should be seeking professional help and practicing mindfulness. I was so pissed that I may or may not have directly messaged him. Wish me luck!

04/01/2012:

Okay so he came over to see her today and gave me a box of cereal. He flashed the cutest, mischievous smile at me.

“For your munchies, munchkin.”

At first I thought it was some lame stoner joke and was kinda pissed. But how could you be mad at that goofy smile? Yes I have admitted to myself that I already have a crush on him. His scratchy tattoos that frame his face, his long hair, his fucking NOSE oh my god.

So I lock myself in my room and set out to eat my feelings for the night but instead I find a reason to love him. A dry vaporiser, a manual grinder and a bag of weed the size of my hand! I don’t know how he expects me to pay for this.

07/01/2012:

So I slept with him… We didn't do much. Nothing crazy.

12/03/2012:

Those fucking cicadas came back last night. I swear I could feel them buzzing around on the inside of my cranium. Knocking their tails on my temporal bone. It felt like they were scurrying around desperately, trying to find any possible exit..

31/03/2012:

I think I was still coming down from a high when I woke up. My head was spinning and had this awful dull thump to it, but it was quiet. Too quiet. I felt like I couldn't hear anything, like my head was underwater. That was before I watched a minivan speed down my street and dive into one of the houses nearby. The screeching of tyres on hot roads and the agonising screams of children. They sounded as though they were being slaughtered in the back seat, like they were dying even before they crashed.

But it made me realise something crucial, something important. Something that felt forgotten or programmed out of my neural structure. My mind is in a constant state of leaking every memory, spinning with the wheel. It's all just bleeding out into the air like radio waves, and they are standing around with their perfectly calibrated structures, drinking it in. Taking it from me. I see the grid now. I finally see the beautiful complexity of the trap.

I need to wrap my skull in serenity's howl. If I think about a blue square, they see it. So I have to think about nothing. Or everything all at once. Scream inside so loud that the signal distorts. If I compress my thoughts, if I bury them under layers of gibberish and corrugation, they can’t decode it.

The children's cries of desperation, as awful as they were, gave me the most sober thoughts I've had in months. Thank you little cherubs for your gift of sound mind, however temporary.

01/04/2012:

My housemates didn't come home last night, I was up playing Runescape and I didn't hear a thing. I would be worried but maybe they have better things to do than be under the same roof as me. Better this way. Can keep fingers out of the honey pot.

02/04/2012:

Third day without a word and I'm getting worried I did something wrong. Did they decide to leave me to fend for myself? I swear, people can be so selfish. First they want your codex, then your frequencies, then your soul. How am I supposed to pay the rent?

03/04/2012:

The internet and power shut off today. I'm so confused and I'm getting kind of lonely. I know I spent most of my time in my room, hiding away from them before. But it was nice to know that someone was there. Right outside the door so if I choose to socialise, I have the option. I don't have any options now. Also I'm out of pills which Marry usually picks up for me.

04/04/2012:

These cicadas are like miners trapped in the earth's womb after striking gold. Their desperation makes me pity them, honestly. I just wish they'd known better than to enter me. Jack hammers on stone rocked my eardrums. I buried my face in the pillow and covered my ears, blocking their exits. I wasn't going to let them get away with my thoughts.

05/04/2012:

I heard someone knocking on the door today. Or was it the window? They sounded polite at first, then became more desperate. Then they were angry and cursing at me. Screaming all sorts of slurs, anything to get under my skin. I didn't recognise the voice, so how did they know I was trans?

The water has stopped running and we're almost out of food. I don't want to go outside. It seems that people who go outside lose their minds, or worse. Something out there will eat it, I know it. The cicadas are enough to deal with. So I piled the furniture in front of all the doors and windows. It's very dark now.

06/04/2012:

It's so quiet outside. I can't even hear the wind. It's like everyone suddenly packed up and left. I guess I got what I always wanted. To rot in my bed and have no one bother me. I can keep me to myself.

I miss my computer, how pure it's little mind was. Sand that thinks it's thinking is not affected by the universe's whims.

I'm gonna try the pillow thing again tonight. Maybe I can suffocate the cicadas.

My car pulled lazily up the ramp to the parking lot. It was mostly bare other than Mercy’s ute and Shawna's Volvo. I picked a spot in the far left corner of the complex and set my engine to rest. I stared out through my windshield for god knows how long. Tracing the edges of the leaves of the hedge with my mind. Grounding myself by making note of their invite subtleties. One leaf after another. A chime emanating from my phone disrupted my concentration. It was time to go in. I rested my head on the steering wheel with my eyes closed and took a few deep breaths. My hands were shaking already, but that could have been the caffeine. I reluctantly stepped out of my sedan and made for the entrance with a hurried stride. The chilled air nipped the back of my neck. It wasn't worth bringing a jacket though. It’s too hot down there and it'll just take up space.

There came a whooping sound echoing from the back of the locker room, a palace of steel and stone. Like an exaggerated impression of Nosferatu, shoulders hunched and arms cock. Jeremy came creeping around the corner. He was clearly trying to stay in character, but couldn't help but wear that loveable, shit-eating grin.

“I vant to pump your shit.”

I didn't respond, I’d stopped responding a while ago  and definitely noticed.

“You okay?” He cut the act and fixed his belt, looking down at his shoes.

“I'm good, just not sleeping well.” I feared this excuse was wearing thin, like an old strop.

“Well, lucky, lucky you have a work husband that always supplies the energy.” He pulled an energy drink out of his locker and tossed it my way. I gave him my best look of thanks and stuffed it into my bag.

“A23 seems to have shit itself. I'll work the room, you give it a kick, right?”

“A23 today, C12 last week. These things need to be sent back to the manufacturer.”

“That's above our pay grades, bro, don't worry too much. Plus, it keeps us busy and gives us a reason to sit around scratching our arses while we ‘problem solve’ so I guess it's not so bad.”

“Yeah I guess,” I pulled my PVC overalls over my pants and secured the straps, then stepped into my boots. “Let's go ‘problem solve’ then.” 

I wandered through the maze of chasms, following the plant map. My head lamp was clicked on as a precaution. you never know when a tripper will break, leaving you stumbling around in the dark and kicking your shins on rust metal. The air was thick and warm and smelt of hell. I was just making my way to the exit zone, desperate to get out of this tomb now that my task was complete.

“Ahh… shit, sorry man, C12 is on the fritz again. Can you go check it out? Over” Jeremy’s voice crackled through my radio.

I sighed deeply, cursing myself and again considering handing in my resignation.

“I'll go check it out. Any idea what's wrong with it? Over.”

“A-a-ea-em–oe––mh!” The distorted voice rang out of the speaker, piercing my ears.

“Jim! Jim, are you there? Over.”

There was no response. I didn't know if there was an issue with the radio, or he'd eaten something containing tree nuts without knowing. But I couldn't risk it.

“Jim, can you read me? Over.” Nothing but a  despondent and crude breathing replied.

I rushed to the elevator and pressed the bottom frantically, a sickening anxiety inflating my veins. The elevator wasn't moving, it didn't even try to move.

I ran to the emergency exit and met the glass of the door. Through the frosted and wired window, I could see a figure–no, a writhing mass. It gasped and shrieked as it made its way down the stairs. I had to act. I rushed to the equipment shelving and heaved its heavy frame. Its feet reached and bellowed as I dragged it into place, blocking the door. The mass pounded on the door and gasped again. I set to grabbing the next shelving unit, unsure if one would hold. 

You never really understand what people say when they describe adrenaline until you feel it yourself. Every fibre of my being twitched with this unimaginable energy. Like my body was accosting me, telling me I needed to move more. The tendons in my hands lashed on my joints as if they were trying to escape their bindings. By the time this unnatural force left me, I had piled everything I could find in front of the door. But it kept banging, a slow pounding that rattled the steel frames. I ran, and I ran, and I kept running. Soaking my boots and pants as I kicked up puddles along my way. Eventually, I met a point where the water was at waist height and my senses came back to me. I clumsily waded to the edge of the tunnel and pulled my waterlogged body onto the exposed walkway. 

I laid there for god-knows-how-long, breathing short and heavy, my blood becoming thick like crude oil. I needed to collect myself, to find another exit. I closed my eyes and thought to the leaves on the hedges, tracing their outlines in my memory. When the thrashing waters finally lay still enough to see through, I opened my eyes. But I saw nothing. Not dim lights and blurry shapes. Not a dark room. Nothing. It was as if the universal constant that is light, photons ricocheting off every surface, had become a memory. I slowly reached my hand to find my face and missed by a few inches at first. When I lay my gloved hands over my eyes, I could feel it. My lashes bent and flicked as I blinked. I could feel the rough texture of the gloves pressing down on my eyelids. My eyes were still there, the light had just gone. I pressed my hands against the interior wall. I knew that there was an outlet just up ahead. I just had to find it blind.

The constant disjointed rhythm of water dripping from the pipes, was becoming a cursed song with no meaning. My mind was desperately trying to latch onto anything that would make me feel reel. The only thing that really feels real is the churning dryness of my stomach. My shaking hands found a latch. Hoping this was the exit, I pulled it down and a lock clicked. I stepped carefully up the stone steps, dragging my toes up the ledges so as to not lose my footing. My forehead met a steel grate with a thump that stung. I felt around for the handle, trying to remember how the door functioned. Again, a clunk and a grind as the rusted door swung open. As I stepped over the threshold, something caught my attention. There was no sound reaching my ears. Not an audible clunk, or grind, no wind on my exposed skin. It was as if I'd met the threshold of a vacuum. An emptiness that threatened to take me in and turn me into nothing. Or worse yet, leave me floating in an unfeeling ocean, falling for eternity. I knew that logically that a door that led outside the last time I used it, couldn't have possibly morphed into a portal of such dire hopelessness. I brought my foot down gently and found the floor right where it had been the last time. But I couldn't shake the idea that it was an illusion, a trick. I couldn't justify these intrusive thoughts, but rationality is limited. It's limited only by the capacity of one's metacognition. People in this world genuinely believe that the earth is flat or ghosts are real. That feels rational to them.

In my twisting thoughts I found myself walking. I’d forgotten where  I was going or what I was doing. All I could recall was what was now and present. My comprehension of then and soon was slipping away, like a slime slothing out between my now exposed ribs.

All I hear is the growling in my stomach and the dripping of cold water. There is nothing to feel but the rough stones under the palms I crawl on, that I'm sure cut my feet and hands on at some point, are speaking to me. Not in words, in vague images, like a topological braille that I'm sure I could read if I focussed. The cold air no longer gashes my skin, it shows me flavours. Oh the flavours, like blistering colours that show me dreams of delicacies I couldn't have imagined a several life-times ago. I've gotten the pattern the leaves made.

In all of this strange and wonderful bliss, I can't shake the feeling like I'm missing something. Something ancient and cold. I want to be found and restored to a form of being I've never been before. I want someone to wrap an arm around me and say;

“I see the real you.”

Speak not abyssal blight of the tunnels where I lay over smooth stones. 

Winds of beach through fractured structures, pipes play. 

Scent of marrows never carry. Hallowed woods Chittering in secrets never heard.

There is nothing, but in relishing fond memories, ancient and cold.

I realized it just now. Nothing has happened and maybe that’s part of the problem. Everything feels wrong, slightly off-center. I glance at the pen in my hand and it’s red just like it had been a moment before, but it’s like the color I’m looking at doesn’t match my memory of what red is supposed to be.

I stand up, pushing the chair back and pace around the room, counting my steps and estimating it’s around six-by-eight. I stop at the window. It’s dark outside, but it’s snowing, the night nests atop an expanse of white.

I have no idea what makes me think that it has always been snowing and that it shall never cease, but it strikes like a clapper against my bones, resounding throughout my body. I shiver as if I’m in that dark cold, rather than swaddled in this cell of comfort and warmth.

Books line all four walls. I don’t believe I’ve ever read any of them, but somehow I know what they’re about and can even recite specific pages. There’s a threshold with a door directly to my right that wasn’t there a moment ago. If I grasp the knob and turn it, something will begin on the other side before I pull it open.

I stroke my face and surprise myself with the fuzzy sensation of a beard graining against my fingertips. It makes me wonder about the rest of my face and I turn back to the window, looking for my reflection in the glass.

The hollow man with unfinished eyes staring back looks gaunt and older than I imagined myself to be. The reflection isn’t mine, but one that has been lent to me. I look down at my smooth, dry hands. Yes, these have been lent as well. They are well-manicured, but a memory, worn until nerve-exposed, echoes up from the throat of a well. Pinching fingernails with the corner of my teeth and tearing the ends to leave them ragged and spitting out the free edge like the shells of pumpkin seeds.

Not sunflower seeds. Not pistachios. Pumpkin seeds, specifically.

I could open my mouth and call to someone not here. But she, if I were to designate her so, would be pinned to this nebulous place just as I am. She would be doomed to exist in this non-space as easily as if I’d spoken, “Let there be light.”

The idea of my voice terrifies me. To cast words into this space would begin a new wicked creation. Every thing here is cursed. To exist is to imply eventual destruction. Deconstruction. All the elements that compose me, the walls, the books, papers, windows--disassembling at a rate of an unknowable amount of molecules at a time until we are all washed away like sandcastles.

The only difference is time. Time is the only constant. Although I have no idea where else it also spreads its unyielding disease.

I look outside the window again. The man who is allegedly me stares back, those holes for eyes capturing fat flakes of snow slicing through cold, loaf-thick air.

I retreat to the wheel-creaking chair, flattening myself into it, depriving myself of some foreign dimension. I feel exceeded purpose in these few moments, like a balance of me is outside my body, every vein cored with hot irons.

I hover my eyes over my manuscript. The words seem to squiggle, sentenced to a horrifying order, a pattern that teases and mocks me. The universe winks in confirmation of a secret it will not yield. My rough tongue peels away from the roof of my mouth and I keep it caged behind teeth to discourage the scream coming to a boil in the pit of me. 

Despite my panicked mind, I read letters, then words, slowly submerging myself back into context, like a warm, bloody bath with open wrists. I combat the internal gravity seeking to propel me out of the chair and into a million directions. I surrender to this abysmal routine and pick up the red pen, rolling it between index and thumb, balancing the weight in my grasp while steadying my glance on the page.

I read until I stumble across another imperfection. I carve another red mark. Somewhere distant, something is made right, or at least, a placeholder stroked over something wrong.

I continue editing. It is the only thing that is real now.

I have no idea what I have here. I sort of remember starting this story back in the 2010s and I briefly picked it up again a few years ago. I was just going through some old stuff and stumbled across this. Not sure if I have something worth finishing. Opinions welcome.

Glory was a classic. Her single lobe, completely uncleavaged, not even a hint of a divide of anything hemispheric was a vision to behold. She was a first and only, her rare appeal solely because she was so unique. But she’d been relegated for one of the smaller stages, her prancing about gaining her an audience of two.

These days everyone had at least three lobes. Two was no longer pedestrian, they were outnumbered by the trifold and very nearly the quad. 

One fine gentleman walking past had lobes like a peacock, twinly and stacked horizontal going up the middle of his back in even widths. He looked at me with an abovely glare and I averted my eyes. Not because I was ashamed, though I was slightly, but because I was here to kill a man and didn't want to be remembered.

Archiboll was the lowly manservant of the Unnamed Man. He had been the trendsetter for almost a year now and under his influence the whole world had transformed. Now you were no one if you didn’t have at least three lobes and displayed them proudly with pants mid thigh or with the rear cut out for those who didn’t care for belts.

I made my way silently through the beautiful, trying not to weep at my complete lack of endowment, my offensiveness covered to highlight my shame. Those who looked at me, scoffed or hurried away quickly. I was able to make my way to the middle of the ballroom floor before I’d been spotted.

“You there!” called a man high up on a promenade. I walked an additional ten yards before I realized he was talking to me. I looked up and pointed a black-gloved finger at myself. He nodded and smiled. “Come.”

This wasn’t good for an assassin.

A pleggo wearing a high-collared mismatch suit scampering sideways bumped against me, the man staring annoyed as the woman dragged them toward the bar. It took a good five minutes at least to walk around the triple life-sized cast iron statue of Garglon atop his flightless winged horse as he fell into the mouth of a much smaller than actual size Sclinth, the first and last of its species intended to drown all of mankind with its phlegm. The artist had perfectly captured the look of horror-filled surprise on both the man’s and the creature’s faces just before it was choked to death and he was smothered. The horse, all four legs raised in metallic victory, had perfect serenity etched across its brow.

By the time I reached the bank of golden elevators Glory was no longer on the little stage. The curtain had been drawn and everyone’s attention was on the massive, four-breasted man on the main stage, belting out a series of unhearable notes, his cheeks and lobes (all six of them) a furious red.

I let two sets of pleggos go ahead of me, wanting a car alone to compose myself and be ready. Killing Archiboll was going to be difficult, a three-in-seventeen thousand-six-hundred-thirty-two chance of succeeding even if I did die after. I checked the feathers up my left sleeve, the single-use vacuum under my right. I hadn’t packed my pants myself but if I needed to dig in there I was in a lot of trouble.

I stepped off the elevator and wandered around until I found some nice hors d'oeuvres. I kept it light, being fleet of food was utmost important no matter how hungry I was. A man in a server’s jacket and cumberbun with his skull neatly cleaved in two nodded at me with the left side of his head and winked at me with his right eye. I didn’t know how to take him but I jotted down my phone number and slid it under my plate for him to get later.

After another golden elevator I took a breather. The air was much thinner up here. Ahead of me was a winding staircase behind a group of people bouncing around on the promenade like beach balls. A man landed on my foot and I pushed him over the rail. 

“Wheeee!” he shouted as he fell.

“Hey!” A translucent yellow woman said, pouting. “Now we don’t have our six.” The five remaining people looked at one another as I slipped by them before they could turn on me en masse. I did notice them unsheath knives and begin approaching one another before I lost sight of them as I ascended. 

This building was fully climate-ready and there were heavy clouds above me. It rained and I was miserable the entire way, especially once I was in the clouds. I emerged drenched but finally at the top of the staircase. A womanservant greeted me with a towel and slapped my face. I thanked her, dabbing myself dry and headed for the giant silver doors.

“You there,” the man who had pointed me out earlier said. I continued until he met me just before the doors. “You are Milchmenny.”

I cursed under my breath. “I am.” There wasn’t any use denying it. 

“I work for the Unnamed Man,” he said. “I am Archiboll.”

I made for his throat with my gloved hands and he batted them away.

“Not here,” he whispered harshly to me and shivered. “Don’t be so... unseemly.” He looked around at the people up here who seemed to be wandering around unaware of anything at all. A woman sashayed too close to the stairs and fell, tumbling down the punishing marble stairs. Her head cracked open before she’d descended ten steps. She never cried out as she went, leaving a spattered trail of blood behind her.

Archiboll seized my wrist and pulled me inside. I felt something crackle in my sleeve and hoped it was the bones of my wrist rather than the vacuum. The inner guards closed the silver doors behind us then jumped into a meat chute a dozen or so feet away. For a moment, I thought the two of us were all alone.

Then I saw him. It. Whatever the FUCK.

I would have screamed in horror except I vomited first. Long, viscous heaves of green stuff, my eyes tearing from fear as much as the bile flooding out of me. I wasn’t prepared. I’d been told but I hadn’t really known.

He was... it was... exquisite. Beautiful. Horrifying. Solid and permeable. I stood for a long moment before the creature in the giant bed before me materialized into something my brain could translate into something tolerable enough that my heart could stop pumping all my blood into my head. It was all I could do not to faint, my vision gradually unreddening and my legs feeling solid enough to put back underneath me.

Archiboll stood beside me patiently and as I rose I noticed he had no lobes. Unless he only had the two he’d been born with. He had on a long emerald dress that came down straight from his shoulders. It was open in front, a brown vest coming down mid-thigh cinched with a burlap rope.

“Magnificent. I know.” He was looking at the Unnamed Man and I found I could look in that direction too. “I have been in his service for longer than we’ve been under the Jovian calendar.”

“We’re... all in his service,” I said and burped. I wiped my mouth.

“Yes. However...” He wound a hand through the air as if the thought weren’t worth finishing. He approached the canopied bed and reached toward the creature there. “You are here to kill me.”

“H-how... do you know that?” 

“Because I hired you.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d been hired to do a selfie but I didn’t believe him. He was the Unnamed Man’s direct servant. As hated as he was, it was only because such a title was so coveted. There had to have been over a thousand contracts offered on his life on any given day. It was just the rare find for an idiot like me to take one of them.

He held up a hand and waved me in with two fingers. “Come,” he said without looking away from his master.

I approached slowly, making a semi-circle around the small pool of sickness I’d left soaking into the great rug. Even solid it was hard to make out what exactly I was seeing. It looked like a nest of pubic hair engulfing a slug but no, that wasn’t it. It was pubic hair, thick and dark, but that wasn’t a slug. It was veiny, pulsing, bubbly... lobes.

“I have served my master for longer than you can imagine.”

“Three incarnations is a long ti--”

“It’s likely been more than a dozen. I tire. Not of service but of so much mundanity. I want more.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. He finally looked at me. He had milky tears in his eyes.

“Is that why you don’t have--” I glanced down then quickly up-- ”lobes?”

He smirked. “They were passe even before I had chance to have them. I just didn’t have the heart to tell the rest of the world. My thoughts are all old by the time they come to mind. I need something new. Something that will forever change. That’s what I need you for.”

“I’m no artist. I couldn’t.”

“No. You are a clod. But even a blunt instrument can be a necessary one.”

“I was hired by The Mannequin. How do I know you were her contact?”

Archiboll blinked slowly. “Who do you think has orchestrated your entire life? All the people you’ve killed. Have you never wondered why? Yes, some minor inconveniences to my master but on the whole targets to keep you sharp. To make sure you were ready.”

I decided now was time to strike. I pulled a feather from my sleeve and brushed it across Archiboll’s upper lip. His eyes went wide and he clapped his hands over his mouth. It was too late, though, and he giggled.

It pained him and he staggered backward. I advanced on him, slashing him wherever there was bare skin. He was horrified, screaming with laughter each time the feather touched him. His skin began to hive where I’d grazed him, then pucker and sore. He fell against a credenza and onto the floor but quickly got back up, stripping off the long dress tangling his legs. 

I went for his calves and he tried kicking me. His bare foot stung my ear and I seized his ankle, yanking and sending him back to the floor. I abandoned the feather and dug in with my fingernails, tickling him nonstop until he began crying he was laughing so hard. The sores that had broken out all over his body began leaking a purplish custard-like substance, a terrible smell like dashboards of wood-paneled cars and old filing cabinets.

Archiboll was shrinking rapidly the more he leaked and the more he leaked the worse it smelled. My fingertips were slick with the goo coming out of his feet but I held onto his ankle and kept up my work. He writhed and screamed with laughter, beating at the floor with his shriveling fists.

Not long after I was holding the leg of what looked like a hundred year old baby. Archiboll was no more than eighteen inches tall with loose, wrinkled skin including a belly that looked like crepe paper that draped between his legs onto the floor. He glared at me for just a moment then began babbling and clapping his hands.

“Feed... feed him to me,” someone said behind me. I turned to see the Unnamed Man, quivering vigorously. The nest of pubes parted and could see the lobes assembling themselves. Archiboll had been the target with the Unnamed Man as a stretch goal. Guards were banging on the silver door and it was moments before they burst in. I had no idea how to kill it but I scooped Archiboll up by the scruff and tossed him in. A single lobe rose to catch him, his bright blue cataract eyes disappearing last, completely unaware of what was happening.

“How do I kill you?” I asked.

“You do not kill. You serve.”

“No. I’m going to kill you.”

“Serve.”

I held up Archiboll’s leg.

“He wanted me to kill you after I killed him.”

“He spoke with my mouth. I lied to you.”

“What if I killed you anyway?”

“Waste your time trying.”

I didn’t have much on me. The feather had been hard enough to sneak into the Domus. I patted myself down and when I tapped my lobes, I realized I’d been carrying the murder weapon for years.

I pulled out a pair of tweezers and approached him. His one lobe lifted as if it were a hand, warning me to stop. A quick click of the tweezers and the lobe withdrew. The Unnamed Man’s eyes remained half-lidded, but I knew I had his attention.

“You cannot harm me. My beauty is eternal. You will be 

Part One

It was an ordinary day. A young man named Nikita moved to a new neighborhood, to Pushkinskaya Street, house number thirteen. He had just unpacked his things and decided to go out for some fresh air, and at the same time get his bearings in the new area. During his walk, he spotted one of his new neighbors—a man of about fifty, with a gray beard and, what struck Nikita as especially odd, a shotgun. The man introduced himself as Makar. Our hero introduced himself in return.

"Listen, kid, I've got to explain something to you," Makar began. "Around here, people don't go out without a gun. I'll lend you mine until you get your own."

"Why?" Nikita asked.

"This neighborhood is cursed. You'll see for yourself soon enough," said the old man, handing Nikita the shotgun.

Our hero, being a dialectical materialist, didn't believe in any "cursed neighborhood," but he took the gun, knowing it was pointless to argue with such people.

Later, walking around the area, he noticed that there were hardly any people on the streets, and those who were there all carried shotguns.

Back home, Nikita went to bed. He tossed and turned for a long time, thinking that all these armed people could be roused into an uprising, and even form a neighborhood commune—but the young man had no particular gift for oratory, so he wouldn't have been able to lead them anyway.

In the morning, the young man went out to the store—without his shotgun. He hadn't forgotten it; rather, he'd deliberately left it behind. The morning was early, the air fresh, the sun shining bright, but there was still a hint of morning chill. A few passersby glanced at him sideways, surprised by his lack of a weapon and seemingly wary of something. One man, somewhat plump, with stubble, even offered his own gun, but Nikita refused. It was as if he wanted to test what would happen.

At one point, when there was no one near him, he felt a piercing stare on his back. Nikita carefully turned around. Behind him was a young woman of attractive appearance; she also had no weapon, and with a slight smile at the corners of her lips, she was walking briskly toward him. Strange—she seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Soon she was right behind him, and when he turned, she lunged at him. Her teeth were sharp as fangs. Nikita tried to push her away, but she was much stronger. Realizing he was trapped, he braced for the worst—but then a shot rang out, and the woman vanished.

"I told you—don't go without a gun!" It was old Makar intervening.

"Who is that?" asked the young man, surprised, almost frightened, but even with a hint of curiosity.

"That's my granddaughter, son," the old man continued, a little warmer. "A local resident. She's like a spirit—you can't kill her. Shotguns only make her disappear for a while. She feeds on human flesh. Her strength is comparable to a bear's, and despite her seeming fragility and tenderness at first glance, she's an adapted predator. She's very heavy, as you may have noticed when you tried to push her, and she's built for killing. She feels no pity for people, and according to the survivors," the bearded man lowered his voice, "she's a pervert. You should be wary of her," he said, returning to his normal tone. "She's the reason we carry weapons."

The young man was in shock. He didn't want to abandon his philosophy and worldview, trying to think dialectically: where did she come from, what was the cause of her killings, and what was her class nature?

"Listen, old man, where does she come from, and what was she in life?"

"She was never alive. She's part of the curse, part of this neighborhood. If she leaves it, she might dissipate, or lose her strength, or simply reappear in the area—I don't know exactly. But I do know she can't leave it, and I know she was never human."

Nikita was puzzled. He thanked Makar for his help and continued on to the store. Along the way, he reflected: this isn't something supernatural or mystical; nothing supernatural exists—if it exists, it's already natural. Yes, there was a spirit—I saw her with my own eyes and felt her touch. But if it's something that interacts with the material world, then it's not mystical—it's merely something not yet studied. Yes. There is no unknowable, only the unknown. With such philosophical thoughts, he reached the store.

Part Two

Back home, Nikita was overwhelmed with thoughts of the incident. After the spirit's attack, he felt even more eager to walk without a gun. "I wonder what she really is," he thought. He refused to accept anything spiritual or supernatural. He speculated that it might be some unknown form of matter, and a form of life based on it. But if it was a living creature, it must have undergone natural selection, like any other species — something must have driven it to become so strong. Old Makar says it's a curse, but I don't believe in curses. She doesn't leave the neighborhood — that must mean this is her territory. When it runs out of prey — people — she'll be forced to migrate. With such turbulent thoughts, the young man managed to fall asleep only around three in the morning, when the birds were already singing in full force. Not exactly at three, but at three-thirty or three-thirty-one — he didn't know the exact time, and it's not that important to our story anyway.

Nikita made it to work without any incidents — no one attacked him on the way. He works as an ordinary office plankton, or, as he calls himself, a proletarian of mental labor. All his colleagues are apolitical philistines, so they only laughed at his attempts at agitation. Earlier, the guy had been a member of the RKRP (Russian Communist Workers' Party), but later he noticed they were sliding into opportunism and social-chauvinism, so he left them, never returning to party activity in any new progressive party. He never had any friends — there were acquaintances with whom he constantly argued; colleagues with whom he also constantly argued; and party comrades with whom he argued, disagreeing with their positions.

After work, he hurried home. As he entered the neighborhood, he felt a kind of thrilling and joyful anxiety. Nikita expected something to happen — and it did. He had only walked down one street when he felt he was being followed, but it didn't frighten him in the least. The feeling that something was approaching served not as fear, but as a guide. At the last moment, the young man turned around and grabbed the predator by the hands. Her nails looked more like claws, but they weren't disgusting or dirty — quite the opposite: it was clear she was cleanly. The girl herself, which we haven't mentioned yet, was dressed in a black dress and barefoot — her feet were slightly scratched and a little dusty. She put all her strength into breaking free from Nikita's grip, but he managed to say something that made her freeze.

— Wait! Let's talk!

— Talk? — the girl said in surprise. — No one has ever offered me a talk.

She was even more shocked by the young man's suggestion to come to his place.

— Come to your home? You do realize who you're talking to, right? I'm not a sweet girl. I've been hunting the locals for centuries.

— I understand, but I have questions for you.

— Questions? Why not ask the people? That old man, what's his name...

— Makar.

— Right, Makar.

— I have questions that neither Makar nor anyone else can answer.

— And why do you think I'll answer them? Why do you think I'll answer anything at all?

— I don't know, but I'll try. I'll treat you to some tea. Have you ever had tea?

— No, — the girl said with interest. — I've never had tea. But I've often heard: "It's dangerous outside, let's go home and have some tea."

— Well, now you'll come and have some tea. So, what do you say?

— Alright, — she said, not just with interest, but with some kind of unusual joy.

Part Three

When Nikita arrived home with the girl, he noticed that she couldn't step across the doorway. Anyone else would probably have thought that some force was stopping her, or something of the sort, but the young man quickly figured it out. As we mentioned earlier, her claws were clean, as were her fangs, which suggested that even though she was an ancient spirit, she was cleanly. However, her feet were constantly dusty, and from this the young man realized that she wasn't staying back because of some restraining force, but because she was embarrassed to dirty his clean floor.

— Come in, don't be shy. Go on, go on, don't worry, I'll mop the floor later.

The girl stepped inside, then took another step. She looked around the house with great curiosity — before this, she had only ever peeked through the windows.

Nikita put the kettle on, and the girl's first move was to go to the bathroom to wash the dust off her feet. When the young man poured them tea, she burned herself right away, not knowing that tea is hot. But since she wasn't a living person, the burn meant nothing to her.

— So, what did you want to ask me?

— I wanted to know if you know where this so-called curse came from?

— No, of course not. No, I really don't know.

— Maybe you at least remember the era of your appearance?

— The era... Yes, I remember the era. The last era in my memory is... How should I put it: there was a red flag, and then there was what came before it. That — back then it was still a wheat field, not a residential area.

— So you remember pre-revolutionary Russia.

— Yes... I suppose. Oh! I even remembered why I appeared. Want me to tell you?

— Why, of course?! — Nikita burned with curiosity.

— Like I said: back then, in pre-revolutionary Russia, as you put it, there was a hayfield here, and on that hayfield many girls died — peasant girls and farm laborers.

— What did they die from?

— They died because of the landowner's wife. From backbreaking labor, from lack of sleep and malnutrition. Some would just drop dead right in the field.

— In a word, from exploitation, — the young man added.

— Yes, I suppose. I'm not the spirit of any particular girl — I'm something collective and general. I appeared here with the goal of killing the landowner's wife, but then these guys came with rifles and red flags...

— The Bolsheviks.

— Yes, the Bolsheviks, and they shot her. I don't mind, really, but I wanted to kill her myself, — the girl said, sounding slightly offended.

— I see. Do you have a name?

— A name? No, I don't have a name.

— Well then, we'll come up with one, — Nikita thought for a moment. — What if we call you not by a first name, but by a last name? Pushkina.

— Pushkina?

— Yes, after Pushkinskaya Street.

— I like it.

Part Four

After tea, Pushkina decided to stay at Nikita's place. In his room, she found a strange figurine of a bearded fellow on the shelf. It had "Karl Marx" written on it. But the spirit girl couldn't read — neither in Russian nor in English — so she just turned the figurine over in her hands. Suddenly, it slipped from her fingers, fell to the floor, and broke. The young man ran into the room.

— Are you hurt?

Pushkina looked into Nikita's eyes with a sense of shame.

— Oh, don't worry, it's a bust of Karl Marx worth six hundred rubles. I'll buy a new one later.

— It must have been important to you.

— Well, it's just a pretty figurine. What's far more important is his theory. You see, it's not an idol of Christ — it's just a memorial to a philosopher. I don't pray to his image; I read his books.

— What kind of books?

— He criticized the existing system. It was his theory that inspired those very Bolsheviks who stole your revenge.

The young man introduced the girl to communist theory, but she didn't particularly like it — she was far more interested in anarcho-communism. The guy didn't object; quite the opposite — he gave her a copy of Bakunin's "Statism and Anarchy" and, using that book, taught her to read. Nikita introduced Pushkina to popular culture. She especially liked the book and the film "Fight Club" — she memorized quotes from it, particularly the first and second rules of Fight Club: never talk about Fight Club.

Her favorite musician became Yegor Letov. She had her own top songs: "Dogs," "Russian Field of Experiments," "He Saw the Sun," "My Defense," "Dog." But her most favorite was "Incomprehensible Little Song." It seemed she understood these songs no worse than Letov himself did. She was anarchistic not only in her views but also in her soul. She even developed a hobby — embroidery. She embroidered red patterns on her black dress herself — the combination of black and red, the colors of anarcho-communism.

Finally, Nikita bought her shoes and taught her to leave the neighborhood limits. Holding her hand, they stepped together beyond the border of her territory. Nothing terrible happened — she simply lost her ability to disappear and reappear. She could only do that within the neighborhood, but she no longer used it anyway. One could say she had become a real person. Whereas before the girl would just vanish and appear, now Pushkina had a permanent home — she moved in with Nikita.

He started taking her to rallies and marches. And there she was, just recently hunting the neighbors, already standing at a mass rally with a black poster on which was written in red: "I Hate Exploitation!" and shouting slogans like "Down with the State!" and singing along to "The Internationale" with everyone else.

There was an incident with Nikita, too. One evening, Pushkina, slightly tipsy, approached the police and started shouting "Down with the State! Long live anarchy!" The police didn't like that, of course, and both she and Nikita were taken to a holding cell for two days. After that, the young man didn't let her drink; later he softened a bit and allowed it only at home, under his supervision.

Once, he even helped her organize a public action called "There Are Fools Sitting There!" It was a harsh anti-war manifesto where she performed Letov's and even Tsoi's songs in public. She shouted anti-war and anti-state anarchist slogans. After that, they even tried to put her on the list of extremists, terrorists, and foreign agents, but the authorities couldn't do it — since there was no Pushkina in any database; for the state, she didn't actually exist. But Nikita was put on the list, and that made his life harder. His house was searched three times, but he wasn't imprisoned, and he held no grudge against Pushkina — on the contrary, he was proud of her.

And they were happy together. Pushkina no longer hunted the neighbors at all, which caused great surprise among the neighbors themselves. Now she walked with Nikita, discussed politics, and went to public events. It seemed she had become happy for the first time. It seemed she had become human for the first time. But then Nikita fell seriously ill. He started feeling unwell, and the illness confined him to bed.

Finale

Pushkina paced restlessly from one side of the house to the other, while in the next room the doctor was saying something to Nikita. She didn't understand most of his words, but from what she did grasp, it was clear—the situation was dire. Finally, the doctor came out and addressed the girl directly:

— I've examined the patient. His condition is serious. I've prescribed him pills, but he won't be able to go get them himself. His life is now in your hands. Goodbye.

Pushkina went into the room and sat down by the head of the bed.

— I bought you a figurine, to replace the broken one.

She handed him the statuette of Karl Marx. Nikita smiled.

— Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

— The doctor said you need medicine.

— Yes, he left a list on the nightstand.

The girl looked at the list.

— Okay, I'll go get them. How much money should I take?

— Take five thousand rubles from the wardrobe. Put the change back when you return.

Heading out for the medicine, Pushkina walked slowly, unhurriedly. The weather was fine. She even greeted the neighbors, who threw her frightened glances in return, not understanding what was happening.

— Makar, things have gone quiet in the neighborhood, and no one's dying. Maybe she really has changed? — said a male voice.

— Hard to believe. I've lived in this neighborhood since I was a kid, and for a spirit to just up and reform... Besides, we haven't seen Nikita for a while. I think it's a trap. We won't shoot her without cause, but we won't stop carrying guns either.

Arriving at the pharmacy, the girl still had to wait in line, and then, blushing in front of the cashier, she struggled to pronounce the names of the medicines.

When she got back, it was four o'clock, and Nikita was asleep.

— Hey, wake up. It's too late to be sleeping, — she gently roused him. — I bought your medicine.

After that, he started taking what the doctor prescribed, but his condition didn't seem to improve—on the contrary, it only got worse.

— I think you got the wrong medicine.

A tear rolled down the girl's face.

— I'll run to the pharmacy right now and get the right ones.

— No.

— What?

— You won't make it. I have a feeling...

— What kind of feeling?

— Just don't go anywhere. I want you to stay here with me.

The girl sat down on the bed, sorrowfully. She didn't fully understand what was happening. Nothing like this had ever happened in her existence.

— Lie down, — the young man said.

And so she lay down beside him, lightly embracing him. At some point, he began to cough up blood violently, and the blood spattered onto her chest. On the black fabric, the red blood stood out like a wet, glistening stain. Pushkina held Nikita even tighter, and her eyes welled up. She wept. For the first time in her life. She felt every one of his breaths—and then she felt nothing. The young man was no longer breathing.

She stood up and, staggering, not fully comprehending what had happened, walked outside. Before, she had never understood how she destroyed people's lives—now her own life was shattered just the same. Outside, she sat down on a bench and burst into loud, wailing sobs. The neighbors came running at the sound, with their guns, but no one fired. They simply sat down beside her, and some stood staring in shock. Finally, the girl gathered her strength and, through her tears, said:

— Look! You see that stain on my chest? That's... that's... that's his blood. He coughed blood, and now he's gone!

Now the neighbors understood why Nikita hadn't been seen for so long. She hadn't eaten him, as they'd feared—he had been seriously ill, and she had been caring for him all this time.

— Why?! How is this possible?! I can't bear it!

Then the girl broke into a scream. She screamed at the top of her lungs. Then she would fall silent, choking on her own sobs, and then scream again. This repeated several times. Finally, old Makar tried to calm her down. He put a hand on her shoulder, but she flinched away as if from something burning hot and screamed even louder:

— Why him?! He was the best person I ever knew! He even gave me a name! Pushk... K... K... In... n... n... aaaah!

— Pushkina, — Makar whispered, barely audibly.

— He was the only one who ever listened to me! Why him?!

Then the girl grabbed Makar's gun—not pulling it from his hands—and pressed the barrel to her forehead.

— Shoot me, — she said quietly, through tears.

— You know that won't help, — the old man said calmly, with a hint of regret.

The girl stepped away from the gun and, turning to the neighbors, choking on her sobs, said:

— You can stop carrying guns now.

Then she turned and walked away. She walked toward the sunset, until the bright rays swallowed her.

(10 years later)

Two men—one about forty, the other sixty—were sitting at one of their homes, drinking tea. You know this man well—his name was Makar. You also know the other man: once, he had offered Nikita his gun, but Nikita refused. We never mentioned his name. His name was Arthur. Behind them, leaning against the wall, stood a shotgun. It hadn't been used in ten years. It was covered in dust.

— Listen, Arthur, — Makar began. His voice sounded quite aged, though he was only sixty. — Have you noticed a kind of... melancholy, if you will.

— Yes, you're right. After she disappeared, the village became dreary.

— Yeah, we looked for ways to get rid of her, but all we had to do was understand her and talk to her.

— Mhm, — Arthur sighed gloomily.

— The house is still standing, the lights are on. Everyone's alive and healthy. And it seems like we should be living without sorrow. So why does this melancholy remain?

(The End.)

Note from OTA: What follows was sent to us. We believe it’s real.
Received at 22:12:04

I’m not a writer, so bear with me.

I do intake at a continuity center. Front desk. You come in for your assessment, I pull your record up by your number, I check you’re you, I send you back. Nine years. I’m good at the people part. A lot of folks are nervous walking in and I’m the one who makes it okay, gets them a water, calls them by name. I always figured that was the good part of the job.

About a week ago somebody I trust sent me a link. They didn’t explain it, just said read this, the manual one. I almost didn’t. It’s an internal document, the kind we’re not supposed to have, about how they pick people. I read it on my phone in the lot before my shift and then I worked the whole day feeling sick.

I can’t explain it the way the document does. But the short of it is there’s a score on everybody, and the score is not about being good or doing what you’re told. It’s the other way around. It goes up the more they can’t predict you. The people who are a little different. The ones who push back when a form’s wrong. The ones who are kind in a way nobody told them to be. The document doesn’t treat those people as the safe ones. It treats them as the ones worth taking.

Here’s what actually got me, though. It says that when your own file isn’t enough to score you, they call the people around you. A nice call. When did you last see them? How did they seem? What have they been talking about lately? We make those calls. I make those calls. We’re told it’s a wellness courtesy, checking in on the family. I made one in March to a man’s daughter. I was friendly. She was glad someone called. The document has a name for that. It calls it sourcing the proximate record. I read that line about four times before it landed, that it meant me. I am the call.

I don’t have proof to show you. I didn’t break into anything, I’m not clever like that. I just read the thing and recognized my own week in it. The check-ins. The calls. All of it. Nine years, and I never once stopped to think about what the green checkmark on my screen was for.

The whole document is up on a site, with a bunch of other stuff that’s locked. There’s an older one it keeps pointing back to, from 2104, that I couldn’t get into. If one of you can, I want to know what it says. It's on that site that we get flagged for it we access it. I'm not posting the link because it could mean my job or worse. OTA link. Not the author's.

I’m still going in tomorrow. I don’t really have a choice and honestly, I don’t know what I’d do different anyway. But if you come in for your check-up and the person at the desk is nice to you, that part’s real, we’re not faking it. I just think you should know what the rest of it is for. I didn’t. And I was the one doing it.

My foot hits the floor and I feel like I've been sucked through a whirlpool and thrown out into a corridor. Clean, bright lights. Plain walls. Sterile.

I start to notice more details: gurneys lining the walls and heavy grey doors to windowed rooms. But mostly I notice how empty it is.

The corridor is impossibly long. I feel like I've been running for ages but never getting closer to the end, always in shadow, so far away from me. A figure starts to take shape. A person. A child. A girl. She feels so familiar to me.

Suddenly the corridor narrows and I'm filled with a sense of dread. My chest feels so heavy I can barely catch my breath. I know that I have to reach her, to save her. But no matter how hard I try I never get any closer.

The girl is clearer now. She's still so far away, I can barely make anything out: just long brown hair and a hospital gown.

I run faster.

She looks so sad. Her face scrunched. There's blood on the gown. I hadn't noticed before.

A stuffed giraffe tucked under one arm and flowery pink trainers.

Amy.

She opens her eyes and sees me.

"Tom! Tom! Tom, please, help me!"

There's no sound, but she's screaming it.

Tears are streaming down my face. I just have to get to her, and I can make everything alright.

The corridor stretches on and Amy starts to sink into the black. I stretch out my hand, trying to grab her, willing myself forward. Please, please, please, let me reach her.

The corridor lurches suddenly and Amy falls into the blackness.

And then I woke up gasping.

No Amy, no corridor, no hospital. But still the gaping black.

My eyes started to adjust and the black softened into the dim grey of the early hours. A dim light from the nightstand caught my attention, and the numbers on the phone gradually came into focus: 2:30. I put my head in my hands and rubbed deeply at my eyes. I turned and watched Clara as she slept peacefully beside me, a faint smile at the corner of her lips. For a moment, I thought about poking her awake. I sighed, flopped back against the pillow, and stared at the ceiling, hoping for sleep I knew wouldn't come.

Clara was sat at the dining table as I came in the door. Her arms were folded and she was hunched over, nursing a coffee. I could see a jagged thumbnail poking out from her cardigan sleeve. A small leaflet sat to the side, placed just far enough away to at least pretend it wasn't the most important thing in the room. I rolled my eyes before she could see. She smiled at me, but it died short of her eyes.

"I really think it could help."

She slid the leaflet across to me, but I barely needed to glance at it to know what it said.

"The clinic again? It's just dreams, hun."

I heard it. I regretted it.

"It's not just dreams though, is it? You're barely sleeping. You can't keep going on like this. If you fall asleep at the office again, you'll lose your job. Or what if you can't stay awake and crash your car or something?"

"I don't need a shrink to tell me what I already know!"

She went quiet. Fuck, I did it again.

"It wasn't your fault. You were both just kids."

I didn't say anything. There were no words to make her understand.

"I should have…"

"Tom, I'm really worried about you. You're not okay. Look, I've done a ton of research on this, I think she can really help you."

She held up the leaflet and the smiling face of Dr Anya Patel stared back at me.

"Please. Will you just try? For me?"

A bored looking receptionist chewed her lip whilst she scrolled on her phone, barely trying to hide it under her desk. I tapped the pen arrhythmically against the intake form clipboard. Clara squeezed my arm reassuringly, and I put it down, instead reading through the questions for the fifth time.

"So sorry to have kept you," Dr Patel said when we were finally called into her office. There was paper strewn about the desk, a basic computer, and very little else.

"I understand you've been having some recurring nightmares. Can you tell me about them?" It was all in the twenty-odd forms I'd already filled in!

Clara sensed my annoyance.

"It's his sister. When they were both little…well their dad was sick and she…"

My hand clenched the arm of the chair.

"It's the same thing every time. I'm in the hospital corridor and I'm running. I see Amy up ahead. She's hurt and in pain. I try to reach her…I try so goddamn hard. But I never get closer. And then the darkness it…it just swallows her up."

Dr Patel nodded sympathetically as her fingers clacked at the keyboard.

"Great, really great," she said, eyes never leaving her screen. "This is exactly the kind of thing we've been looking for. With repeated imagery like this the device has a much better chance of processing the dream clearly." She finally looked away from the computer and smiled at me. "Mr Ashworth I truly believe we can help each other today."

The lights in the sleep lab were dim but still had that harsh quality you expect of hospital. I lay in the makeshift bed on a too firm pillow, their device strapped across my forehead, wires spilling everywhere.

"Let's hope it's not a sex dream," I said nervously. The technician gave me a sympathetic chuckle as he continued to stick every inch of my exposed skin with probes.

I didn't think I would ever fall asleep.

Before I knew it the technician was wheeling in an old CRT monitor, Dr Patel close behind, barely containing her excitement.

"Incredible. Just incredible."

Clara came into the room and immediately hugged me tighter than she had in a long time.

"Mr Ashworth, what we've done today is quite simply astounding! Thanks to you we have, for the first time, gathered a fully intact dream! Of course, the image quality needs a lot of refinement but…I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Here, please, see for yourself!"

The image on the screen was nothing more than static to start with. But slowly, that static began to form a picture. Long rectangles and blocky objects. Then more recognisable, a corridor. No. My corridor. The same corridor I saw almost every night. And then a girl. Amy.

I was transfixed. My heart was practically crawling out of my throat, and my chest felt like it could burst open any second. There was no mistaking it though: the same giraffe and the same pink flowery trainers.

"That's…that's her."

A small, quiet part of me was sickened by what I saw there. My deepest fear and the source of my greatest pain laid bare for everyone to watch. But another part of me, a much bigger part of me, was in awe.

"Is this your nightmare Mr Ashworth?" I couldn't speak. I simply nodded.

Dr Patel smiled.

"Just incredible isn't it. What we've done here today, Mr Ashworth, could help millions of people suffering just like you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this and thank you for trusting us to help you. I have a colleague, a therapist, who I think could really help you!"

She was right of course, Dr Patel. And Clara. The therapy really helped.

It wasn't instant of course. You have to do the work. But as the weeks turned into months, I finally began to feel a weight lifting, the tightness in my chest more like a handshake than an anvil.

I slept more too. I still had the dream and still woke in the early hours of the morning, but now I could work through my exercises and get back down again.

Dr Voss' office was like being in a nature retreat: all warm lighting, soft colours and padding, and wood everywhere. A box of tissues on every surface, and a single faded poster about breathing exercises that I'd memorised by session three clung to the wall by the door. He'd suggested we review the dream footage again, in that annoying way where he clearly knew something I didn't. At least I knew there was something still to look for I supposed. Maybe that's what was different that time. Or maybe just viewing it for the hundredth time.

I watched as the same dream played out on the screen in high definition, a stark upgrade to the fuzzy CRT all those months ago. I saw the same endless corridor, the same girl in a bloody gown, the same pink trainers. But there was something different. For the first time, I truly saw myself. It wasn't just Amy with the bloody gown; I was wearing one too. And she was running towards me. I'd been so focused on the desperate feeling of reaching her I'd never noticed I wasn't the only one. Silence filled the air. A held, gasped breath.

"You were both children," Voss said, after some time. He'd known for weeks, I think, just waiting for me to get there. "You were reaching for each other."

I'd spent fifteen years believing I was the one who failed her. That I should have been faster, stronger, braver. But we were two scared kids reaching for the only person we had left. I hadn't failed Amy. I'd just never forgiven myself for being a child.

Finally, one night I didn't dream of Amy at all. Instead of the dim grey I was used to waking to, it was sunlight seeping through the curtains and the faint chirp of birds outside. I sat there with tears streaming down my face, the warmth of the morning bathing me. It was like I'd been underwater but now I'd clawed my way gasping to the surface. Clara woke and we made love for what felt like the first time.

Until I felt what it was like to truly sleep, I hadn't realised what I missed. More than half the nights I slept through and the other half my exercises let me get back to sleep quickly enough it only felt like a blip. I was only meeting with my therapist every other week now, still processing, still working on forgiveness, but no longer moving through life as if an ethereal presence clawed at my limbs.

And then I got a call from Dr Patel. Apparently, my recordings had been some of the cleanest they'd captured, and the research had leapt forward. They were ready to move on to the next phase: AI-powered daily dream analysis. Not just capturing your dreams anymore but actively interpreting them! All backed by thousands of hours of real therapeutic research. Of course I jumped at the chance.

DreamView. That's what they called the technology. By the time it went public I'd already recommended it to everyone I knew and was the lead moderator on the DreamView subreddit. Clara was ecstatic to see me so happy. To see me thriving.

Dr Patel sold the device to a tech visionary named Marcus Webb. He'd promised her he could get it out into the world at scale, fast. And of course she could be part of the company, continuing her research and driving the future. It was wonderful news. Someone else could see how much value there was in her idea. Someone with the money and the connections to make sure everyone else could see it too.

I was so happy when I got the call to say I'd gotten the job. I was actually going to be a part of DreamView! The technology had done so much good for me, I couldn't wait to help share it with the world.

The months that followed moved so fast I can only remember them in pieces.

Head of Outreach and Customer Onboarding. It was the easiest job in the world for me: all I had to do was tell the truth. How DreamView changed my life. I woke each morning excited to go to work. There were so many more people still to help!

Morning Dream Summary — 14 March Sleep quality: 87% Emotional tone: Mild anxiety (work-related) Recurring theme: Performance pressure Insight: You may be avoiding a conversation with a colleague. Consider addressing it today.

DreamView flagged Mark three weeks before I'd noticed anything myself. I almost called him in to ask if he was okay; I knew what it was like when life was bearing down on you. Then I opened his sleep metrics, saw the red, and called him in to ask about his numbers instead. It was the responsible thing. There were so many people still to help.

Morning Dream Summary — 2 April Sleep quality: 91% Emotional tone: Contentment (relationship) Recurring theme: Security, domesticity Insight: Your subconscious is processing long-term commitment positively. You may be ready to discuss future plans with your partner.

Clara had always talked about having children someday.

Morning Dream Summary — 19 April Sleep quality: 78% Emotional tone: Guilt (family) Recurring theme: Childhood responsibility Insight: Residual feelings about your sister's accident surfaced but resolved during the sleep cycle. This is healthy processing. No action needed.

I was feeling much better about Amy.

In a meeting I brought up something I'd been toying with; DreamView Social. We let users upload their dreams and share them with others. It could help show people they're not alone with their dreams, and other users could share tips and insights that helped them. I was surprised when Marcus could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the idea. The marketing team landed on Lucid: a much catchier name I thought.

Lucid grew rapidly: from ten thousand uploads in its first month to over a million Dreamers within six. I overheard a Dreamer in the street lamenting her boring dreams and wishing she could be as big as NightNight Nadia. It made me stop for a second: when did Lucid become so ubiquitous? It would have been silly not to introduce ads and product placement into dreams. Of course I pushed for it to be subtle, only things you'd have dreamed of anyway; driving the latest sports car or taking the beach vacation with the family you always meant to do.

I received feedback that one Dreamer bought a new car and commented they couldn't even remember deciding they wanted it. I had been so excited to tell Clara, but she seemed more worried than anything. Briefly I wondered if she had a point but quickly dismissed it; she'd never been a true believer in all the good DreamView could do. Not like I was.

The new DreamSelect program was astounding. Anyone could become their favourite superhero or live their favourite romance. It was to be trialled internally first, and of course as Chief Advocacy Officer I was included.

I delivered a perfect presentation to a standing ovation. The dream was vivid, textured, and emotionally convincing. I woke feeling triumphant. Looking around our bedroom, there was a flicker of disappointment. For the first time I longed for something that was never real.

Clara and I argued.

"This isn't what you signed up for! You joined DreamView to help people!"

"We are helping people! Every day, millions wake up knowing exactly what's going wrong in their lives and how to fix it!"

"But you don't think anymore. Nobody thinks anymore! When did we stop asking ourselves how we feel and start just trusting a computer instead?"

She was angry.

"Now it's just a fucking notification. We used to trust our instincts."

I went cold.

"My instincts gave me nightmares for fifteen years."

The last night, she stood in the bedroom doorway. I was lying down with the band on my forehead, the summary already loading behind my eyes. I barely even registered she was dressed for going out. "You're not even going to take it off," she said. It wasn't a question. I told myself I'd talk to her properly in the morning, and let the dream take me.

Clara left. I woke to a note on her nightstand, her side of the bed already made. I couldn't bring myself to read it and tucked it away in the bottom drawer of my own, next to ticket stubs from our first date.

For days I found myself making coffee for the both of us in the morning and having to take the extra in a flask to the office. The scent of her shampoo still clung to the bathroom too. Probably the bottles she left on the floor of the shower tray, never empty before moving on to the next one. Every night I reached for the note in the drawer and found myself clutching for empty air instead, the fear for what lay inside gnawing too loud to ignore.

Morning Dream Summary — 3 August Sleep quality: 43% Emotional disruption detected Relationship stress elevated Recommended action: DreamSelect Comfort & Reassurance.

I almost selected it.

The house sat like a carcass picked clean. There was nothing of the joy that once filled its walls. That first night I'd needed DreamSelect to sleep. I just wanted random memories of her. Anything so I could still feel her: her smile, her laugh, the way the sunlight brought out the freckles on her nose.

Then it was every night. So many different memories, all jumbled together in that way that dreams seem to feel coherent until you look back and try to work it out. She never laughed quite right, though. It was always a little hollow, and it never reached her eyes the way it did for the real Clara. Until it did of course. At least I thought it did. Maybe I was remembering my Clara. I wasn't so sure anymore.

Over time I began to forget what memories were my own and what were dreams. I'd wake in the morning expecting her to be there still, confused to find her side of the bed empty. I wondered if it was worth ever waking up.

The world changed before anyone could realise it was happening. DreamView was too big to fail: the company had fingers in so many pies almost half the economy routed through it. Most Dreamers used DreamSelect on a weekly basis, with more than a third of those opting for tailored dreams every night. We had more nightly users than any country had voters. We didn't even need to produce headsets anymore, the latest phones were being developed with the technology built in (though I preferred to keep mine, the pressure of the band had grown to be soothing).

We developed ForeverSleep: an AI reconstruction of your deceased loved one, allowing you to spend more time with them when they were gone. I had the boys in ops create a special version just for me. Sometimes I forgot Clara wouldn't be there when I woke.

And then perhaps our most ingenious idea: NightShift. As the tagline says, "Why waste a third of your life?" It was a corporate partnership program designed to provide guided dream environments, allowing employees to perform cognitive work while sleeping; problem solving, creative ideation, training simulations, anything that didn't require the user to be physically at a location really. There was very little impact on the employee: just a small rise in stress and a mildly noticeable increase in tiredness. I of course signed up immediately, as did most of my team.

It was disappointing to have to let Mark go. He'd really turned it around after I called him up on his performance. But after opting out of NightShift, he'd become a bit strange, isolating himself and taking more days off. Nothing else for it, he couldn't pull his weight. There were so many people still to help, and only so much time in the day to do it.

It's difficult to describe the experience. A hazy shine where nothing is quite like it is in real life. You'd wake up only slightly less tired than when you went to sleep and find answers to problems in your inbox that you had no memory of solving. Everything still felt entirely your own dream, but with people you'd never met in a room you'd never been to, and they all looked wrong somehow; their faces shifting whenever you tried to focus on them. After the third or fourth shift it didn't bother me so much and I let them disappear into the background. I imagined my office and found myself able to work from a place just like it in my dream. The familiarity really helped it all feel less uncanny. Just another day at DreamView.

I passed Dr Patel in the corridor one day and barely recognised her. Drawn, grey, like she hadn't slept in weeks.

"Do we still truly dream?" she asked me, almost absentmindedly. "Or is that a lie too?" I told her this was everything she'd dreamed of. She just nodded and walked on. I didn't think about it again.

It was a Tuesday when everything fell apart.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Something wasn't right. It was definitely something I was never meant to see. I was reviewing some dream data for a product retrospective and there were things that shouldn't be there. Subtle things. But the more I dug, the less subtle they seemed. It was systemic. Internal analytics proved that DreamView's AI was no longer just analysing dreams. It was generating them. I mean, of course I knew it could, that's the basis of how DreamSelect worked. But it was deeper than that. Rules written at the lowest, fundamental level of the AI. Just subtle interventions: planted images, engineered emotional responses, manufactured desires, all woven into the fabric of users' natural dream activity. We were actively writing to the subconscious. Purchasing decisions. Political preferences. Relationship choices. Career trajectories. All of it. All being nudged, shaped, optimised.

I felt sick.

Who even knew about this? Who could I even trust to talk to? Surely Marcus didn't know about this?

Dr Patel was my first stop. It was her technology, after all. I walked down the corridor and noticed the lights were off. Just a string of dark rooms and bare walls. I knocked on the door to her office, but it just swung open, revealing another empty room, stripped bare of anything that whispered of her. Quietly swept under the rug as if no one of any value had ever graced it.

I confronted Marcus with my findings. I think deep down I knew that he must have been part of it, but still I went in hoping beyond hope that it was a mistake. A mistake, the AI going rogue, a malicious actor, anything.

He knew everything. I'd been a fool. All this time, I put my absolute faith in DreamView. I put aside everything in my life in pursuit of something great, something I thought could change the world for the better. I thought of Clara. I thought of Dr Patel and her tiny lab. I thought of Amy, and her pink trainers. I thought of that first morning after sleeping through: the feeling that something had been handed back to me. And what we'd done with it.

"You created all of this, remember? Lucid was your idea. And at every step you signed on willingly. Pushing for ads to be seamless, the ForeverSleep version of Clara you had us build just for you, leading your team into signing up for NightShift, and firing Mark when he refused. Everything you did, you did for the betterment of this company."

I thought of how I'd felt when I first joined DreamView. How all I'd had to do was tell the truth.

"Because I thought we were helping people! I believed in this! And you've twisted it into… you're deciding what people want for them!"

"Every meaningful decision a person makes begins in the subconscious. Did you know that sometimes it even decides before you do? Your brain tricks you into thinking you came to it yourself."

"That's different. This is different!"

"Your subconscious already decides for you. We just tell it what to want." He shrugged. "Everybody claims to sell dreams. We actually do it. We're a business."

I didn't know whether I was going to throw up or punch him. Instead, I just turned around and left.

"Get some sleep, Tom."

I never went back. I packed my things that same day and left my access card on the desk. I thought about going to the media, but I knew there would be no point when DreamView controls how we feel. All I could do was remove it from my life entirely. I burned the headset, disabled my account, and deleted the app from my phone. Every subscription cancelled, every notification blocked. As far as I was concerned DreamView didn't exist anymore.

Going back to natural sleep was difficult. There were so many distractions. So much light and noise. Often, I found myself reaching for the band, missing the comforting pressure I'd grown so used to. When I did finally fall asleep, I dreamed of a corridor. An impossibly long corridor with heavy grey doors to windowed rooms, clean bright lights, and plain walls. A corridor with a girl in the distance: she had a bloody gown, a stuffed giraffe tucked under one arm, and flowery pink trainers. Suddenly, the corridor stopped growing, and I caught her. She reached behind her, fumbling in the drawer of a nightstand I hadn't seen, and came back clutching a piece of folded paper tightly in her outstretched hand. I couldn't breathe. I took it, shaking. Written on it, in a child's handwriting:

"Don't wake up"

There had been no word for death, for there had been no idea of self.

No thoughts could be sealed, but there were ways to narrow oneself. To fold the attention inwards, reduce the interference so that only the closest patterns noticed the pressure of one’s thoughts. Courtesy called for it, and precision required it. Civilisation itself depended on the discipline of not being everywhere all at once.

No thought could be sealed, though, and the scientist’s fascination had been leaking for quite a while. Just a mild brightening of the Field, a tonal shift along the energy currents filled with the harmless pleasure of a mind arranging difficult things. 

Young patterns that drifted by would pause in the current, turning toward the input briefly, maybe curiously, before returning to their own exercise. The elders barely even observed. There was no danger in delight.

In the basin, the cold matter waited. Water gathered and moved, minerals changed and settled. The scientist found carbon the most interesting, with its folding and failing chains of ordered chaos. Heat moved through the system in pulses, crude and slow; nothing like the clean exchanges of the greater Field and its medium. 

There was a stubbornness to matter that invoked a feeling of love within the scientist. 

That love, too, leaked. 

A neighbouring pattern vibrated with gentle amusement. Still with the cold?

The scientist sent a widening as reply. Yes, still. Look, how badly it wants to become!

The neighbour shimmered, but did not look. Not closely. Cold matter bored most minds. It did not answer when addressed, fell apart unless held together. Lacked the grace to stay continuous, understandable, and opted instead to create boundaries. Odd things.

The scientist found the boundaries most interesting, and each time this thought crossed the Field a shiver passed through it. A small disturbance that invoked a feeling of wrongness that no pattern could bother to place before it was gone again. Not important enough to propagate, not at the time.

The scientist reduced the thermal interval by a fraction, and the suspension changed. A chain curved around itself, opened again. There was something beautiful about recreating the openness of the Field within the cold basin, and the scientist chimed with delight.

A failed configuration.

Another.

Another.

The scientist recorded each one with great difficulty, as the instruments thought of them as just noise.

Failure. Nothing. Just the edges of possibility. Of boundary. Of… alone.

Across the Field, several minds paused at once. The wave moved a bit further than intended, and more were listening.

Edges? Alone?

The scientist dimmed in apology, but also in question. It did not know what this meant, but it too felt it: the wrongness.

But the word had already spread, a new shape in the Field. Of something becoming less coherent, less whole. A few young patterns tasted the new concept, and created waves of bright unease. The elders remained still.

In the basin a droplet formed, and the scientist leaned in closer.

Not closer, as such. Not physically. There was no closer or further away in that sense. Attention has mass, though, and there was a lot of it pointed at the cold matter.

The droplet didn’t collapse.

A skin of lipid chains had enclosed a pocket of water and mineral ions. Three strands had assembled within the boundary. One clung to the inner surface of the membrane, another had folded near the droplet’s centre. The third had begun to draw loose components into a pattern roughly similar to itself.

Roughly.

The scientist brightened. It was involuntary this time, but the entire chamber caught it. A sudden increase in wonder that reverberated across the chamber, loud and proud and careless of custom.

Around the basin, other minds slowed. A question harmonised from several directions:

What is it?

The scientist let the nearby minds feel its hesitation, let the words hang in the air before answering.

It’s… a local structure. Something temporary, but catalytic.

There was a sudden sharpness as the elders sent the wave. It wasn’t a question, this time.

Show us.

There was no self, so the scientist did what it was told. It opened the instruments, and sent the translated image. A droplet with thick skin, and the slow theft of molecules from the water by the strands. 

The responses varied. Curiosity, surprise, aesthetic pleasure.

Then, the strand finished its copy. It was shorter, bent differently. The minds concentrated their peripheries in anticipation of the moment of dissipation, affected by the delight of the scientist.

The droplet did not collapse. It did not dissolve. The altered fold caught an ion in a way the first had not.

The scientist’s joy became too large to contain.

It learns.

There was only pressure in response.

Not learns. Adapts. Persists.

The correction was worse, and the pressure increased. The scientist huddled down, dimmed.

The droplet narrowed at its middle, changed tension. The internal strands pulled apart, and it divided.

For one interval, the Field brightened again. This was new.

The next, one droplet opened. Its skin broke, and the folded strand inside loosened, became ordinary matter again.

The other droplet drifted through the remains, took them in. Still held together.

The brightness dimmed, and silence again followed.

No mind present could misunderstand that which had happened in the basin, though none yet possessed the ideas to explain it. 

The elders resonated, and the scientist tried to shape an answer before the accusations could form.

It lacks intention.

Silence.

It cannot choose.

Silence.

It is only chemistry.

The Field tightened around that word. Only. 

In the basin, the surviving droplet thickened again. A new fold appeared inside it.

The nearest elder sent a command.

End it.

The scientist shimmered with hope.

End the interval?

Instantaneous.

End the basin.

The command gathered weight as it moved through the Field, quiet but absolute. A collective recoil to this pattern, this shape, that the civilisation had no place for.

The scientist turned its attention back to the droplet, paused. It was already beginning to divide again.

There was beauty in it, still.

No, it sent.

The word did not travel far; it bounced back instinctively, flattened by the shock.

No?

It is new, the scientist sent.

Yet, it is closed.

It is not aware!

Yet it continues.

It has done nothing wrong!

Yet it may.

The final answer did not come from the closest elder. It emerged from the Field itself, from every mind that had watched the intact droplet feed on the failed one. 

The judgement and its command arrived before they needed to be spoken again. Edge. Alone. Persist. Eat.

The basin could not remain.

The instruments were withdrawn first, then the attention from the Field. The chamber was cut off from the wider currents, and curious young patterns were pushed away from the exchange with a force that would have been unthinkable moments before.

The basin began to warm. The droplet seemed to tremble.

Please, the scientist sent. It is my error. Let me carry it. 

It pressed itself against the narrowing chamber, spilling everything it had not meant to feel. Wonder, shame, tenderness, terror.

There was no answer.

Then let me end with it.

The request passed through the Field, returned expanded with horror.

A mistake was not a crime. There was no such punishment, no such mercy. A mind could not be made less because it had loved wrongly.

Below them, the droplet divided.

Both halves held, and the elders trembled.

The basin was sealed, abandoned. The remaining cold matter was gathered into a single dark bead, glassed in mineral. 

The scientist followed it as far as it could reach. 

Where? 

Far, the Field answered.

There was a long and empty pause.

Somewhere cold. Colder. Colder. Where it cannot wake.

And so it was removed, the catalytic thing with boundaries. With self, with death. 

—

Now, on the world where the basin’s remnants had woken, another scientist sits before another container. This one is not made of water, but rather of dreams, debt, and ambition.

He does not think of himself as wicked. No one does in the beginning. 

The scientist looks once at the camera, wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. Behind the lens, other minds watch with the same bright, harmless delight.

Then he presses enter. 

​

Start from here! Love ya!

​

Also I used my own name because putting any else felt weird and somehow wrong...

​

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

​

It's been a very long time. You're 25,680 years old now...

​

You wake up in a big room... Just a large comfortable bed... And a nightstand... You have all your memories up until you were 30, back when the year was 2026...

​

You see a note... You read it.

​

───────────────────────

"Hey Agastya, this is Agastya before the mind cleaning... Don't be scared. It is to keep our human mind safe and beyond harm's way. We do a cleaning every 200 years where your body is fixed and your mind is wiped back to this point. Your humanity is our greatest asset after all, and you are prideful about that.

​

I have put your contacts down in the drawer. They are yellow, your favorite right? Place them close to your eye, they will put themselves on, and they will be clean, don't worry. I am you after all, we both have the same habits.

​

All the important information from blueprints to work will still be in the brain, and there are deep explanations in the contacts' blueprint section...

​

Try to be happy. Don't become numb, don't fail like me. Please love.

​

And don't take life for granted, even if we are immortal."

───────────────────────

​

​

You are almost horrified reading it... You remember your wife, your two kids, your friends, and your mum and dad... They were just with you, under one roof, singing happy birthday for your 30th birthday... And then you had a perfect night with your family and your perfect wife...

​

You take the tech contacts and put them on...

​

The HUD loads in, and a 3D version of your wife appears... Her personality, her looks, everything... It looks just like her... But yellow, and well... You already know why. You made this technology yourself.

​

"Hey... W-what's happening...?"

​

The hologram starts to explain everything... How you are the smartest being alive, and you alone conquered the entire universe and spread humanity everywhere as a sign of peace and respect. All species, all living things, respect you, love you, and would give their lives for you. You are perfect.

But to keep yourself sane and human, you wipe your mind back to 30 while keeping all the work you have done.

​

Where you are is a pocket dimension made by you — "The Place of Love and Peace." It contains all and everyone you have loved throughout your long 25,000+ year life. All pictures, information, and stories written by the Agastya that lived through those moments. You can ask it anything about them.

​

You explore the place... It's white, empty... But oh, how gorgeous... It reminds you of your wife's minimalist and beautiful architectural designs...

​

And then you step into a room...

​

It's... Filled with pictures. Hundreds of them... Past lovers, friends, even foes and people you hated... All and everyone... But none of them had anything bad written about them. Every single one only described how they affected you during that time in your life, and what you thought about them... Nothing hateful... Even you are surprised by that...

​

Somehow, despite not knowing them now... You already crave their love... Already...

​

Tears start to fall slowly... You don't even notice...

​

A past lover... A close friend you might give your own life for... Even an enemy who pushed you to become more than you were, someone you somehow respected...

​

Without knowing them... You knew them...

​

You travel through the corridor. It is not as big as you thought... 25,000 years... And it's not that large... Not very much at all, you think... Some parts are empty... Somehow, seeing those empty spaces makes you feel lonely...

​

The hologram returns. It says you can see all the stories and memories through the contacts... Each Agastya refused to forget anyone, even after everything...

​

You look through all of them... You spend weeks in the room somehow... Not needing food or water anymore... Your body no longer requires it... Which somehow you already have a complete explanation for...

​

You break down at some points... You laugh at others... You get embarrassed at some...

​

But deep down, one feeling remains... Where are they? Where are the people you were just celebrating with? The ones you truly knew... The memories that future Agastya refused to ever fully erase...

​

And you feel it... You miss your wife... Your kids... Your mother... Your father...

​

You reach the end of the room after constantly traveling through it for almost two weeks...

​

And at the end... You break down completely...

​

You see the pictures of your wife... Your kids... Your mother and father... It's been 25,000 years... You shouldn't cry... But you do... You bawl your eyes out completely and utterly while holding onto their pictures...

​

Slowly adding more and more pictures into your arms... Somehow... You don't know them anymore... You don't need to... You know they loved you...

​

You speak one more thing...

​

«"I miss you..."»

​

And then the contacts tell you... They loved you completely and utterly until the very end... And in heaven, they are watching over you...

​

But they would only want one thing from you... To keep moving forward...

​

So you do.

​

Because that's the only thing you can do.

​

You were always such a mama's boy... They will always love you... Because that's the only thing you can still truly believe...

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

…so cool to finally be in Peru, and I hope all you guys are enjoying this special live stream of a super exclusive private guided tour of the ruins of–

OK OK, here’s the guide coming back now...

Not sure I’m actually allowed to be filming this, but you know I go all out for my viewers so unless somebody tells me otherwise, I’ll keep filming.

OK. He’s back and he’s gonna tell us all about the valley and the mountains here–and, man, what a view! I mean, it takes your breath away. Literally. The winds are pretty effing crazy though so I hope the sound records all right.

Man, it’s like looking into another world.

But enough from me, let’s listen in to what the guide’s got to say…

To your right hand side you see a rounded peak with a shape that looks like a guinea pig, yes? Do you see it?

Yeah, yeah.

Good. That is it right there. Everybody look at it. Everybody look at it while I talk. Because what I want to tell you is that this mountain does not just look like a guinea pig. It is a guinea pig. A giant petrified guinea pig. That means it turned to stone. It is a giant guinea pig that created the world and ruled it for billions of years. It is a miracle. That it turned to stone is a miracle, and we should have been worshipping it. We should have been worshipping this petrified guinea pig all along instead of all the other religions and their gods. This is the one true god. This is the–

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–most popular game show, and there’s a reason we’re the world’s most popular game show. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s because we always keep you on your toes. Isn’t that right?

The studio audience says: “Yes, John!”

Well, today I have a real surprise in store for you, folks!

It may seem like a simple surprise, because all I seem to have here is two envelopes, but you’re never going to guess what’s inside. I’ll give you a hint: they’re letters of the alphabet. Not the same letter but two different letters. But when you see them, you’ll say, “John, that’s impossible!” It’s not impossible, folks. It’s…

He opens one envelope and shows a page with a strange symbol printed on it.

Na-huru.

He opens the second envelope: a second symbol.

Ra hu’nite.

Na-huru. Ra hu’nite. Na-huru. Ra hu’nite. Say it with me, folks: Na-huru. Ra hu’nite. Na-huru. Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite…

The audience chants:

“Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite…”

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I don’t know what to say. It’s insane. Everything is effing shaking. And the wind… This is insane! It’s insane! Flakes of rock are falling off the mountain and there’s fur underneath. Wet, bloody fur. Oh God. Please like and subscribe! The mountain… It’s coming alive! The guinea–

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“Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite…”

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I am truly not sure what to make of this, because what you’re seeing is footage of what appears to be a giant guinea pig wreaking havoc in–

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I don’t believe it **because it’s not fucking real,* and I don’t even mean the huge ass rampaging guinea pig, Kelly. I mean guinea pigs, period. And in fact most rodents except rats. Rats are real, and there’s more of them, a lot more, here in America than we think, but the rest, the rest is* scientistic fucking propaganda.

Kelly, who do you think benefits from the existence of rodents?

Fucking zoologists, man. The Bioindustrial Complex.

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...single-ingredient no-bake dessert that tastes better than anything you find at a five-star restaurant. How do you make it? Easy. You peel the skin off the banana, put the banana in a bowl and mash it with a fork–

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no evidence at all if one discounts the video, which is not difficult to do.

Here.

Stop the video right here.

See that shadow right there, for example, just to the right of the alleged hamster’s left hind paw. That shadow has no basis in reality. There’s no hamster paw that would cast that shadow. This is not my opinion. It’s simple, rudimentary physics.

This video has the hallmarks of AI–and primitive AI at that...

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A monstrous, gaping guinea pig mouth against a cool blue sky.

The camera is shaking.

[The sound of heavy breathing]

Dios te salve, María. Llena eres de gracia. el Señor es contigo. Bendita tú eres entre todas las mu–

Blackness.

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What even is America?

Are you sure it exists: legally, historically, materially?

America is a belief, my friends.

A cloud of smoke.

The only truly American guinea pig is you.

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Three asses shaking

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–is footage from an obscure 1974 Mexican horror movie called El Cuyo.

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Julia, I fucked your sister.

Oh, Hernando!

Julia, I am also the father of your sister…

It cannot be, Hernando!

It can be and it is. Julia, I am your lover, your half-brother and your step-father, and I was born a woman, Julia.

No!

Yes!

But, Hernando…

I love you madly, Julia!

Oh, Hernando!I love you madly too!

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We interrupt your viewing of this 12-second recap of yesterday’s basketball game to bring you BREAKING NEWS!

In Peru, a long forgotten pre-Inca god who spent millenia hidden in plain sight as an oddly-shaped mountain made famous recently as a backdrop for selfies–has come to life, and may become the doom of us all.

Thank you, now back to basketball highlights.

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A teen’s smiling face.

Shaking.

In what looks to be the hollowed out hold of an old military aircraft.

Deep breath, guys.

We’re really about to do it.

I just switched the stream over to the mega elite platinum tier members, so, like, even though the mega elite gold tier can still hear me–

Hopefully can hear me, because I’m live from a loud freaking airplane!

–it's only my mega elite platinum supporters that have video and access to chat.

Thanks, limpdildo72. I appreciate the words.

And here’s a really good question from ikilledsamantha: where did I get the nuke from and is it a real nuke?

It is one hundred percent a real nuke.

And I bought it from an old ex-Soviet guy I met in Moldova last year. You wouldn’t believe what you can buy there for enough money.

Which reminds me that I love you guys. I wouldn’t be here doing this without you. Honestly. Your donations helped pay for this bomb and this camera and this airplace…

Like, I don’t want to get all emotional, but without you guys there’s just now way I would be illegally flying over–

Hold on. Hold on.

I’ve been told we’re almost in position.

All right. I have to make this quick. When I started vlogging, all I wanted was to make a little money and get famous. And I did that. I really freaking did that. So I thought, If I can do that, I can do anything. So I decided to really pursue vlogging as a career, and, more than that, as a passion and a dream. When I made that decision, I wrote down what I wanted more than anything else in the world, and that desire–that obsession–was to wipe an entire freaking country off the face of the Earth live on my channel!

And now I’m gonna do that!

And I’m gonna do it all thanks to you guys!

Here we go!

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

[A single click:]

, and the airplane’s bomb bay doors open: –and [a deafening rush of air–] as we’re falling, the camera’s shaking violently, showing: the vlogger’s face, screaming, and the plane above receding, and the ground below coming closer and closer and closer as we and the vlogger ride the nuclear bomb like a fucking bucking bull and

Good-bye, Suuuurrriiname!

closer and closer and

closer and

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Editor's Note: The OTA found this in [redacted]'s [redacted] cloud archive. The original has been copied and destroyed per OTA protocol [redacted]. It has been published here in its entirety. The Signal Persists.

I've been watching the Outside the Array feed for a while. They don't post often, and when they do, it's usually infrastructure documents — compliance filings, subsystem logs, the kind of thing that puts you to sleep until you read it closely enough.

This one is different, though. I mean, at least to me.

They intercepted a file during an Echelon relay transmission from the Vesta's psychological services archive. Standard annual crew evaluation. Crew member: Han Mingyu, Contingency Officer, Mission [Redacted]. The evaluating physician is Dr. [Redacted], and to his credit, he writes like someone who understands that the evaluation form doesn't have a field for what he actually wants to say.

Some excerpts.

On Mingyu's social presence [Redacted]

On his work:

On something [Redacted] can't quite name:

And then, almost at the end, in the Clinical Notes section, dropped in without preamble:

That's it. No follow-up. [Redacted] just... puts it in the record and moves on.

Here's what the OTA note flags, and I think they're right to flag it:

The Section III redaction. There's a large block of text in the Functional Assessment — several lines — that was redacted before the Echelon relay. Not by OTA. It was already gone when they intercepted it. [Redacted] observed something about Mingyu that someone decided shouldn't travel.

The Reflection Suite logs. Mingyu visits the Multifaith Reflection Suite. Irregular. Brief. Normal, right? Except that the access records were forwarded separately to a redacted party "under standard monitoring protocol." This is not standard monitoring protocol for visiting a meditation room.

The three unactioned items. Mingyu raised flag items in his weekly contingency report three times this mission year. Senior staff didn't act on any of them. He raised each one once and went back to work. [Redacted] writes that he "has not assessed this pattern as a source of significant distress." He doesn't say it isn't one.

The document ends with a forward stamp: FORWARDED — ECHELON REVIEW — RESTRICTED ACCESS.

Someone at Echelon is reading this man's psychological file. Someone at Echelon is also reading his chapel logs.

Mission Year [Redacted] The ship is [Redacted] and a contingency officer is quietly flagging things that aren't being heard, visiting a room that's being monitored, and wearing something on his wrist that his own doctor has chosen not to ask about.

Full document is on Outside the Array if you want to read it yourself.

The bracelet is what gets me. I keep coming back to the bracelet. What the fuck is it? Okay, okay, we all wear our HT bracelets, but there's something different about his...

I was four when it arrived, or so I've been told, because I was too young to remember: a descent of dark, sparkling clouds that, upon arrival, dispersed into a rain that never fell but hung; and, hanging, expansed to enshroud the entire planet, a swarm of coordinated nanites under the control of what we came to call the Influence.

My only memories are memories of life under the Influence.

I therefore take for granted that when I leave the house to visit your grave, what I see above is not sky but a layer of dark translucence, described famously by the older generation as a ceiling made of sunglasses.

Initially, this layer divided Earth into the-below, where we lived, along with most of what we’d built, and the-above, comprising mountaintops, towers and skyscrapers.

I was in high school when the contents of the-above were removed, cut off like an irregular excess of hair sticking out from between the teeth of a comb. It is hard to describe the sight–obscured translucently–of entire slices of mountains removed and placed upon the ground or into the ocean, and buildings too, their upper levels sliced precisely floor-by-floor and laid gently, so as to cause no harm, around cities to serve as living spaces.

As a witness, what I felt was not fear but awe.

For when you are acted upon by a power vastly superior to your own, absolute terror evaporates, absolutely, into wonder.

We soon discovered that the translucent layer itself was, outwardly, an array of solar panels, making the Earth a massive collector of the sun’s energy.

The adults talked incessantly about how the Influence could have walled us in and doomed us to a total, starving darkness, yet did not do so. Some sunlight trickled through, and some of the energy presumably captured by the solar array was diverted back to us, into our existing electrical grids, allowing agriculture and life to continue.

The day I met you, there were reports of the construction of what would become the first of the geothermal columns–cylinders, miles in diameter, whose purpose was to be driven deep into the earth to capture and convert its internal heat.

The visual effect was magical.

Imagine a swarm of metallic butterflies, seemingly small and delicate, constructing, piece-by-piece, the Burj Khalifa or the Tower of Babel.

We held each other’s tiny, human hands and hoped for the possibility of a future together.

Once the columns were completed–we called them the Pillars of Heaven–construction began on formations in the-above, which we perceived but dimly, filtered through the translucent underside of the solar array.

Attempts were made to send several expeditions through this delimiting layer, but all proved unsuccessful. We were thus certainly confined to our small stratum of the atmosphere like snails to a terrarium.

Although many theories were developed about what the Influence was building, none could ever be proved. To me, the structures looked like cranes, then like bridges and viaducts, until looking “skyward” became akin to standing below the stack interchange of a vast, planetary highway, along whose routes mysteries travelled to the unknown.

Two years, to the day, after our wedding, the nanites comprising the solar array turned suddenly opaque, plunging us into darkness.

It was early September,  just after nightfall, and we went outside and sat together, hugging and resisting the urge to gaze upwards; gazing instead at each other, into each other’s eyes, not speaking but feeling our shared warmth and resigned to the same devastating inevitability: that, finally, the end had come. That we would starve, suffer and die, not only as a pair of mammals but as a species, and ultimately as a planet.

Then, just as suddenly as the darkness had fallen, it was gone, replaced by a nebulous canopy of wondrous, twinkling lights: an illumination in constant, flowing motion, and not just white light but all colours of light: an artificial, inwardly-projected aurora borealis evoking emotions, images and ideas, an electromagnetic music to which we danced and loved and imagined, in our human minds, false pasts and myriad futures.

Like flowers, we bloomed.

And in this full bloom, both individual and shared, we fell into a deep sleep, in which we dreamed impossible dreams.

When I awoke, the enchantment was over.

The translucent layer had returned, showing shadow-like through it the usual latticework of the Influence's enigmatic structures.

I was on the grass, and you were on the grass beside me. You were still asleep, and on your face were gathered a swarm of nanites, crawling in and out of your nostrils, penetrating your ears, forcing themselves through the space between your eyeball and eyelid…

I tried to wave them away.

To get them off.

I was aware that my own face, my own openings, were numbed and tingling; and when I looked toward the street I saw smoky wisps of clustered nanites ascending the short distance from the ground to the layer separating the-below from the-above, into which they passed effortlessly and disappeared.

When I turned back to you, the nanites were detaching themselves from your skin, leaving small, pale marks.

I managed to grab one and crushed it between my fingers.

It self-destructed into a black dust.

When none were left on your face and they had flown away into the underside of the solar array, you opened your eyes.

I kissed you.

All around us and down the street people were waking, rubbing their eyes, walking slowly, without purpose, dazed, gazing, and I knew they had experienced what we had experienced, a profound magnificence whose dissipating shape we remembered only in outline, through inspissating mists…

The Influence had drained us.

It continues to drain us, to farm us like cattle.

It cares for us, but only to catalyze and harvest our emotions, our creativity, things it cannot generate on its own.

While we sleep, it harnesses the unused computing power of our subconscious.

And to all I can adapt–

But this:

A life without you.

You think you know what a ruined vacation looks like.

A blown-out tire on the interstate.

Your hotel room smells like cigarettes.

Five straight days of rain.

You think you have a handle on the worst-case scenarios.

But sometimes horror walks up smiling.

Sometimes it waits patiently behind glass.

And sometimes you give it your money.

It was supposed to be a long weekend in Hilton Head Island with my wife, Brandy.

Her sister Nicki, and her husband Joe invited us.

Nicki was twelve weeks pregnant with their first kid, so the trip had quietly turned into something more cautious than our usual getaways - less bar hopping, more seafood, boutique shopping, and standing on the marina pretending we could afford the yachts.

On our first full day, we drove down to Harbour Town.

If you've never been, picture exactly what you'd expect from a high-end southern tourist trap:

A massive public pier.

Millions of dollars' worth of boats bobbing in the water.

A red-and-white striped lighthouse rising over a half-circle of boutique shops and overpriced restaurants.

It was beautiful.

But it was also ninety degrees with suffocating humidity, and by noon, the novelty of looking at luxury had worn off.

“I need A/C, or I’m going to die,” Brandy complained, fanning her flushed face with a tourist map.

"And ice cream," Nicki added immediately, one hand pressed over her still-flat stomach. "The baby is demanding it."

Joe threw an arm around her.

"Well, we can't argue with the baby."

We ducked into the nearest souvenir shop mostly for the air conditioning.

Cold air blasted through the open double doors hard enough to raise goosebumps across my arms.

The front half of the store consisted of beach toys, sharktooth necklaces, and shot glasses with dirty jokes on them.

Toward the back, behind a display of hermit crabs in painted shells, sat a brightly lit ice cream counter.

While Brandy and Joe went straight for the glass counter to pick out their flavors, Nicki and I got stuck behind a slow-moving family in the narrow aisle.

That was when I noticed it.

Shoved into a dark corner between a rack of sunglasses and a spinning postcard stand, there was a fortune teller machine.

Not one of the charming vintage Zoltar cabinets you see on boardwalks.

Peeling gold letters arched across the glass read:

THE BUNNY GODDESS.

This one was life-sized and felt off in a way I couldn't really put into words.

The mannequin's skin looked too realistic but also too smooth - like candle wax stretched over a skull.

Thick faux-gold jewelry hung around its neck and wrists.

A faded velvet turban covered most of its head.

The eyes though.

The eyes were enormous.

Wet-looking.

And pointed directly toward the aisle where we stood.

I've always hated those things.

Too many horror movies as a kid.

I started to look away when the machine suddenly came to life.

There was a heavy grinding noise.

A crackle of static from a blown-out speaker.

And then a voice.

Not the booming theatrical wizard voice you'd expect.

Something breathless.

Weirdly conversational.

"There you are."

I flinched hard enough to shake a rack of keychains beside me.

But Nicki just stood there.

She stopped walking entirely.

She turned toward the machine.

Slowly.

With recognition.

She was staring like a child seeing a disabled person for the first time in their life.

"Creepy, right?" I muttered. "Let's catch up with the others."

She didn't move.

"I have a dollar," she said softly.

"Come on, don't waste your money. It's just going to tell you you're going to be rich or whatever."

She was already unzipping her purse.

She pulled out a crumpled bill, flattened it against the edge of the glass, and fed it into the slot.

The machine swallowed it.

More mechanical grinding noises.

The mannequin's hands jerked toward a crystal ball that lit up with a sickly pulsing green light.

The head snapped down, staring at the cards on its desk—

then snapped back up.

"A new chapter begins," the voice whispered through the static.

"But the toll must be paid."

The green light flickered hard.

The mannequin's turban fell off its head, revealing long-black hair.

Pigtails.

Sort of like an Annabelle doll wig, but not as cute.

Something else protruded from the top of its head.

Long.

Pale.

Bent at strange angles.

They looked almost like rabbit ears.

"Take your future. Keep it safe, or The Bunny Goddess will take your place."

CLACK.

A thick white card spat from the slot at the bottom of the case.

Nicki bent and picked it up.

She stood with her back to me for a long moment, just staring at it.

The green light blinked off, dropping the alcove back into shadow.

"Well?" I said. "Lottery winner?"

Nicki turned around.

For a terrible second, her face was completely blank.

Her mouth slightly open.

She looked like she was holding her breath.

Then she smiled.

Fast.

Wide.

She folded the card in half and shoved it deep into her pocket.

"I can't tell you," she said lightly.

"Come on. What does it say?"

"Seriously! It says I can’t tell you!"

She tapped her pocket.

"If you share your fortune, it doesn't come true."

"You’re kidding, right? It's a piece of cardboard from a gift shop."

"Hey!"

Brandy waved a plastic spoon at us from the ice cream counter.

"Are you two getting anything?"

Nicki's whole demeanor lifted instantly.

She practically skipped over to Joe and Brandy, the card pressed flat against her hip inside her pocket.

I stood there for another moment.

The mannequin sat motionless in the dim alcove.

Its wet, milky eyes still pointed toward the aisle.

Still pointed at me.

I shook off the chill - the air conditioning, I told myself - and walked toward the ice cream counter.

I didn’t realize it then.

But that was the moment the trip ended.

Its ears looked bigger now.

___

2. "Fingers"

You think you know what a ruined vacation looks like.

A blown-out tire on the interstate.

Your hotel room smells like cigarettes.

Five straight days of rain.

You think you have a handle on the worst-case scenarios.

But sometimes horror walks up smiling.

Sometimes it waits patiently behind glass.

And sometimes you give it your money.

It was supposed to be a long weekend in Hilton Head Island with my wife, Brandy.

Her sister Nicki, and her husband Joe invited us.

Nicki was twelve weeks pregnant with their first kid, so the trip had quietly turned into something more cautious than our usual getaways - less bar hopping, more seafood, boutique shopping, and standing on the marina pretending we could afford the yachts.

On our first full day, we drove down to Harbour Town.

If you've never been, picture exactly what you'd expect from a high-end southern tourist trap:

A massive public pier.

Millions of dollars' worth of boats bobbing in the water.

A red-and-white striped lighthouse rising over a half-circle of boutique shops and overpriced restaurants.

It was beautiful.

But it was also ninety degrees with suffocating humidity, and by noon, the novelty of looking at luxury had worn off.

“I need A/C, or I’m going to die,” Brandy complained, fanning her flushed face with a tourist map.

"And ice cream," Nicki added immediately, one hand pressed over her still-flat stomach. "The baby is demanding it."

Joe threw an arm around her.

"Well, we can't argue with the baby."

We ducked into the nearest souvenir shop mostly for the air conditioning.

Cold air blasted through the open double doors hard enough to raise goosebumps across my arms.

The front half of the store consisted of beach toys, sharktooth necklaces, and shot glasses with dirty jokes on them.

Toward the back, behind a display of hermit crabs in painted shells, sat a brightly lit ice cream counter.

While Brandy and Joe went straight for the glass counter to pick out their flavors, Nicki and I got stuck behind a slow-moving family in the narrow aisle.

That was when I noticed it.

Shoved into a dark corner between a rack of sunglasses and a spinning postcard stand, there was a fortune teller machine.

Not one of the charming vintage Zoltar cabinets you see on boardwalks.

Peeling gold letters arched across the glass read:

THE BUNNY GODDESS.

This one was life-sized and felt off in a way I couldn't really put into words.

The mannequin's skin looked too realistic but also too smooth - like candle wax stretched over a skull.

Thick faux-gold jewelry hung around its neck and wrists.

A faded velvet turban covered most of its head.

The eyes though.

The eyes were enormous.

Wet-looking.

And pointed directly toward the aisle where we stood.

I've always hated those things.

Too many horror movies as a kid.

I started to look away when the machine suddenly came to life.

There was a heavy grinding noise.

A crackle of static from a blown-out speaker.

And then a voice.

Not the booming theatrical wizard voice you'd expect.

Something breathless.

Weirdly conversational.

"There you are."

I flinched hard enough to shake a rack of keychains beside me.

But Nicki just stood there.

She stopped walking entirely.

She turned toward the machine.

Slowly.

With recognition.

She was staring like a child seeing a disabled person for the first time in their life.

"Creepy, right?" I muttered. "Let's catch up with the others."

She didn't move.

"I have a dollar," she said softly.

"Come on, don't waste your money. It's just going to tell you you're going to be rich or whatever."

She was already unzipping her purse.

She pulled out a crumpled bill, flattened it against the edge of the glass, and fed it into the slot.

The machine swallowed it.

More mechanical grinding noises.

The mannequin's hands jerked toward a crystal ball that lit up with a sickly pulsing green light.

The head snapped down, staring at the cards on its desk—

then snapped back up.

"A new chapter begins," the voice whispered through the static.

"But the toll must be paid."

The green light flickered hard.

The mannequin's turban fell off its head, revealing long-black hair.

Pigtails.

Sort of like an Annabelle doll wig, but not as cute.

Something else protruded from the top of its head.

Long.

Pale.

Bent at strange angles.

They looked almost like rabbit ears.

"Take your future. Keep it safe, or The Bunny Goddess will take your place."

CLACK.

A thick white card spat from the slot at the bottom of the case.

Nicki bent and picked it up.

She stood with her back to me for a long moment, just staring at it.

The green light blinked off, dropping the alcove back into shadow.

"Well?" I said. "Lottery winner?"

Nicki turned around.

For a terrible second, her face was completely blank.

Her mouth slightly open.

She looked like she was holding her breath.

Then she smiled.

Fast.

Wide.

She folded the card in half and shoved it deep into her pocket.

"I can't tell you," she said lightly.

"Come on. What does it say?"

"Seriously! It says I can’t tell you!"

She tapped her pocket.

"If you share your fortune, it doesn't come true."

"You’re kidding, right? It's a piece of cardboard from a gift shop."

"Hey!"

Brandy waved a plastic spoon at us from the ice cream counter.

"Are you two getting anything?"

Nicki's whole demeanor lifted instantly.

She practically skipped over to Joe and Brandy, the card pressed flat against her hip inside her pocket.

I stood there for another moment.

The mannequin sat motionless in the dim alcove.

Its wet, milky eyes still pointed toward the aisle.

Still pointed at me.

I shook off the chill - the air conditioning, I told myself - and walked toward the ice cream counter.

I didn’t realize it then.

But that was the moment the trip ended.

Its ears looked bigger now.

___

1. "Fingers"

A month has passed since my arrival within the Eternal Bastion. During that time, King Cedric granted me permanent residence in the high tower overlooking the kingdom and the plains. Naturally, I relocated my library into the Trials shortly afterward, as the accommodations were second to none.

Cedric and I have become close friends despite our many differences. Most evenings are spent discussing warfare, religion, creatures, history, and the nature of the Trials itself over supper and strong northern ale which has become one of my favorite delicacies. Cedric often mocks my fascinations while I remind him that dominating an entire dimension is ridiculously ambitious. He always responds with some variation of “not trying is what would be truly ridiculous.”

The Eternal Bastion itself continues to amaze me. The city is built in massive circular layers stretching outward for dozens of miles. The outer districts blend gradually into farming villages, roads, inns, and military outposts before eventually fading into the open plains. Toward the center, the structures become taller and more elaborate. Markets remain crowded at nearly all hours. Bells ring constantly throughout the districts while smoke rises endlessly from bakeries, forges, bathhouses, and homes. 

Earlier today, Cedric formally invited me into the Eternal Council. He appointed me as Master of Anomalies, a position dedicated to researching unusual entities, regions, artifacts, and phenomena throughout the Trials. The council itself gathers within a chamber near the top of the central tower high above the city. 
The council consists of several interesting individuals. Military generals oversee campaigns and border security while three High Priests govern the major temples throughout the city. Cedric’s son attended quietly beside the throne throughout most of the meeting observing far more than he spoke. There were also representatives overseeing education, migration, infrastructure, taxation, sorcery, and trade. 

The primary concern discussed today involved a growing plague referred to as “The Decay.” According to scouts and refugees, several northeastern settlements have gone completely silent over recent months. Entire villages were discovered standing motionless in fields and homes while fungal growth spread beneath the soil below them. Many victims still appeared partially conscious after assimilation. One scout claimed his own deceased brother spoke to him through a wall covered in fungal growth. 

The migration crisis from the Wailing Mountains was also heavily debated. Every three flood cycles, large groups travel north seeking temporary refuge within the Bastion. However, none can remain permanently. They begin experiencing sleeplessness, hallucinations, and sometimes sudden violent episodes. In more severe cases, black growth forms beneath portions of the skin resembling swamp roots. Several priests believe the condition originates from an ancient curse connected to the Witch’s Domain south of the mountains, though no one within the council seemed eager to elaborate further.

At one point, discussions shifted briefly toward Soltheon Ilyssar. Apparently several shipments arriving from the western waters have been delayed due to activity within the submerged districts. One official mentioned recovered artifacts capable of storing consciousness within glass panels. Interestingly enough, Cedric became unusually serious during this portion of the meeting.

The sorcery scholars later presented reports regarding surveillance attempts into forbidden territories beyond the northern frontier. One scholar apparently locked eyes with something during a remote observation ritual several nights ago. He survived, though only physically. According to witnesses, he began screaming uncontrollably while attempting to remove his own eyes. Cedric nodded at me with a smirk knowing I couldn’t wait to investigate that case further. 

The final report of the evening concerned the Fog. Only one scout returned from the northern expedition. He arrived alone three weeks after the others vanished. Most of his memories appear damaged beyond recovery. He couldn’t explain where the remaining scouts disappeared nor how long he had actually been wandering. The man insisted distances within the Fog were an illusion.

“It felt like walking blind on a minefield. Some men fell into gaping holes, others were attacked by what sounded like screaming women, and one was swallowed alive by what appeared to be a demonic laughing ogre. I could hear his screams from inside its belly as it taunted him.”

Cedric hugged the man and responded solemnly, “it’s okay young man, I know. Go seek out Maria Osborn, she can help mend your memories and soothe your trauma. You may retire at your leisure. I will see to it that your provisions and needs are tended from here on out.”

“Thank you my Lord.”

As the meeting concluded, King Cedric pulled me aside and introduced me to General Armand. 
“So you’re the weirdo everyone’s been talking about. Well you definitely aren’t human, that’s for sure. Have you ever fought in battle before?”

“Never had to, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“Hmph. My Lord, what are your orders?”

“Prepare five hundred of our finest men for a two week march to the Crow Lands. We’re going to eradicate that cursed plague for good. I have some sneaking suspicions of who might be behind it.”

Cedric then turned to me and said, “which is why I will need you to come with us.”

Two documents from Array Seven. These are being released as we have received them. As always, our team is working to decrypt certain elements of the communications, as well as remove redactions. It takes time.

A worker in the Atmospheric Monitoring & Containment division died at Array Seven. GCI's Array Operations Safety Board produced a Safety Incident Report. Six hours after the death, the Humanitas Trust published a memorial notice.

Both documents are in the archive. Read together, they describe the same event in different registers.

The memorial notice was issued by the Director of Communications on behalf of the GCI Board of Directors and the Echelon Operations Division. It confirms a "workplace incident at Array Seven" and states that a full investigation has been initiated per GCI Operations Protocol 7.4. It describes the deceased as having served with the organization for more than a decade. His name, the date, the location of his memorial service, and the reference number on the notice are all redacted in the version we received.

The Safety Incident Report is classified as a restricted internal document. Sections 4 and 7 — covering cause of death and contributing factors — are sealed in their entirety. Witness accounts are not included. All surveillance footage from the relevant time window has been transferred to the Continuity Security Division. The deceased's personnel file has also been transferred to CSD, marked pending review. We do not know the current status of either.

Section 8 covers procedural actions taken following the incident. Item (d) confirms that the memorial notice was issued in compliance with Standard Communications Protocol 3.9. The protocol governs timing, language, and content. The six-hour turnaround was not exceptional. It was compliant.

Communications out of Array Seven were suspended before the notice was published.

The worker's name is being withheld at the request of people still on site.

→ GCI Internal Documents

— OTA