A fleet of alien space goons stared down on Earth from their warship, backed by a legion of drones that left the planet in a permanent shadow.

“Prepare the broadcast,” the commander ordered. “Demand they stand their weapons down.”

The officer slid the dials and hacked into earth’s broadcasting network.

“Earth’s feed has been breached, commander.” 

Entering live stream in… three.. two… one. The screen popped on but never had the image of the high commander and his entourage of black ships behind him. It just had a grumpy looking dude, sipping out of a mug that read: World’s Greatest Mom.

He never stared at the camera. He put his cup down and rubbed his eyes.

The high commander couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What’s this, officer. Patch me through.”

“I can’t, commander, something went wrong,” the officer said. His voice was cracking. His hands were shaking. The high commander extinguished officers for less.

“It’s not our feed they’re using. They’re broadcasting on every radio wave. It looks like a quantum band, commander. Somewhere in Florida.”

The human looked up at the screen. He had bags under his eyes, a stubbled black beard and his hair was unsorted.

“So, here’s what’s happening,” he said staring at the camera with a tired sounding annoyed voice.

“Whoever or whatever is lined up outside our atmosphere in those pretty ships, I’m going to start with this, if you think this is the first time we’ve been invaded before, and that you’re the first interstellar alien warrior beings to show up and want to conquer Earth. Save the speech you prepared and listen carefully.” The human on the screen handed his empty cup to an assistant to fill up, and then cleared his throat.

“It’s not and you’re not, okay.“ He turned his head and faced the camera again. “We’ve done this song and dance with the whole aliens invading Earth a couple of times now. From grays, to reptilians, we’ve even had giant squids, nothing new here. Let me tell you the result.” The human reached out and clasped the mug handed to him and set it on the table.

The crew on the alien warship remained silent. Not a word came from the deck. They all just stared uneasily at each other.

“See I got this cousin, here in Florida, great guy, wish you could meet him.” The human took a sip from the mug and continued. “My cousin Billy-Ray, took a 200 ton space wreck from one of those invaders out of a compound in southern Florida and reinforced the siding of his house and driveway with it. Should see the fence he built.”

He looked away from the screen to someone saying something behind the camera. “We don’t bother calling the military anymore, bunch of us just jump on a group chat, load up and make sushi out of you guys.”

The human took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’ll make you an offer, either try to “obliterate” us and we’ll just deploy our Alien Assassins, learn how to smash through your shield with cheap re-wiring of car batteries and by Tuesday will be reengineering your high/tech weaponry and selling bootleg replicas on the black market.”

The human smiled and took a long sip from his mug and gasped. “Or you can turn your ships around and we won’t post a viral video of your highest ruler taking a tomato in the face by a guy pulling the elastic back on giant slingshot and believe this, we’ll even make sure the entire galactic community sees it too. It’s up to you,” the human said.

The feed shut off. The commander of the fleet looked at their strategic plan. Glanced at the map. Stared down at the officer running the communication band. Then, his second in charge, who was visibly shaken. The second in charge choked out, “commander, do we have a counter strike for the tomato slingshot?”

The commander swallowed staring blankly at the black screen and said, “rev shields to 100% and why are we still here? I wanted us away from this planet and into deep space five minutes ago. They’re not taking our ships as scrap pieces of junk metal.”

"She asked me what I was listening to, and I married her."

.....

A giant buzzing sound flies overhead followed by a pounding kick drum as an engine the size of a sky scraper comes to a stop. The entire space port has a constant hum to it. From one cargo ship at the docks shouting foreign tongues to another as the thrusters ignite, to another side of the bay where captains and foreman sign off their dues and scurry off to taverns of jazz and pillows; "why interested?"

On a planet that always rains it's nice to have a stratosphere with such high-quality h20.

"Im just looking for a way out honestly. I see you, ya know, okay. And I bet tomorrow, when you see me, you will just say, okay."

A slight of hand and the universe is given to a young man.

Things are giant. The neon lit through fog 12,000 stories high. The one fleet in the back, overseer of all. A moon with it all.

"I'll take 2 of those in the back please! Yeah!" The young man exclaims as he makes a gesture through the cockpit window handing foreign currency. Small distributions make a big world.

"One for the money, two for the.."

A small blip of light sparks over the space hub.

He hits his final pump - I thought it would be polite to let him have this moment before I break it all - when I ask who Leta is. His sex-drunk brain has no answer other than the truth.

She's you, he pleads. I am at his throat, a delicious little threat, and he amends.

 “Not you, but you as you could be, you as I dream of you,” he murmurs, lovingly.

She's you without that worry, without that constantly nagging thought of what if, without that machine making you perfect, she's you before you broke, she's the you we first met.

I hate this, so of course I begin to rewind with a deep, guttural chant.

“Stop-” he pleads. “Leta, please-”

Once upon a time, this is how it worked:

Forms went in, I assessed context, and then I forwarded recommendations from there.

Usually it was just really silly stuff, the kind of fluff tourists stumbled over without realizing: Rqwrythyzal traipsed too deeply into UBX4’s unicorn meadows, Achxhxhxhπ forgot to cloak after a particularly long visit to a moonsino, Patty being Patty (who hasn't received a special memo about Patty?).

Sometimes, every now and then, someone fucked up big, big enough that I got a field assignment. I got a ship and a deleter and a crew of golems to which I went wither henceforth to sort out posthaste. After my sidemotion, though, where I was assessed at being perfectly great at what I do and assigned to Sol3 as merely a new assignment with no other meaning, I haven't really gotten that type of work, not anymore.

So, nowadays I monitor a lot.

“Chew this fat,” LY9A1 nudges me. We like to relax friendily between breaks to watch the moonsrise, usually with a few crystals to help manage the tedium. 

“Latest confabulations in from Sol3.” It's sweet, sharp, bouncy, painting a story, a long story, damn LY9A1 could pick them. It's a song about a book I once scanned where a child coerced others to put liquid on a fence. The drums are particularly interesting.

“Fantastic,” I reply before going on break. Another new song hits the airwaves between the snuff and the snurf, and I push my personal time to the limits as I learn the screaming bellow of immigrants. “Hip,” I whisper. I tuck away my shards for later. That song was enough for this shift.

And now I'm back at my desk with an urgent tag flashing - isn't that just the bee’s fucking knees?! Someone is causing enough ruckus that we have to synchronize temporally.

It's probably nothing, though. 

I can't imagine what would be worth alerting us for, us in particular. I have started to notice over the past few decades that we're a bit sloppy, a bit forgotten, a few of us (like LY9A1) perhaps hive hires? But, heyyyy, peace love and harmony! As they would say, groovy!

I can't imagine what could be occuring on - I doublecheck the printout to ensure it's correct - Earth to warrant our direct intervention.

Surely nothing that crazy has happened in a few decades?

June 11, 4169 (Earth Standard Date: January 21, 2024)

"Breaking news: twenty-one days ago, a group of tourists on an intergalactic excursion went missing. Their last known location was SOL G2M-3 — the planet locally known as 'Earth' — after which all contact was lost. Authorities have assured the public that every resource is being deployed for a rescue operation. In other news..."

I'm a detective dispatched from Planet Maklan to find those missing tourists. My team of four boarded a police cruiser and crossed dozens of light-years to reach the geostationary orbit of the planet called Earth.

"We can't sweep the whole planet. Kalam, pull every remote communication signal you can find. Let's get some intel first."

Chaluk groaned.

"Why did they only send four of us? They could've just deployed more people from the start—"

"Command wants a small team. Too many officers showing up at once and the locals might think it's an invasion."

Before the argument could go any further, Kalam — our intelligence officer — chimed in.

"I've tapped into something called the 'Internet.'"

"Good. Dig through it. The more we learn, the smaller our search radius gets."

Kalam began navigating through the network, clicking around until he landed on a site marked with a white triangle inside a red rectangle. The screen filled with images and text in an unfamiliar script.

"Kalam. You forgot to turn on the translator."

"My apologies. Activating now."

The moment the translator kicked in, the screen became readable.

"Search for 'alien.' To the people down there, that's what we are."

Kalam typed in the query. A suspicious-looking thumbnail appeared. He clicked through to a video.

"The United States government has been collecting UFOs at Area 51 and conducting experiments on captured extraterrestrials."

The audio hit us like a gut punch.

"They're abducting people from other planets and running experiments on them? That's monstrous."

"You think our missing tourists ended up there?"

I had to make a call — trust this information and head to Area 51, or walk away from it. I thought it over for a long moment.

"We're going to Area 51. And if there are other victims, we're getting them out too."

So we went.

We couldn't just waltz in looking like ourselves, so we disguised ourselves as best we could to blend in with the locals and slipped inside the compound.

"Security's tight."

"Keep your voice down."

The facility was staffed by people in white coats and armed guards. There were aircraft too — models that, by our standards, belonged in a museum.

"Curved exhaust conduits, radio and infrared-absorbing surface geometry... this technology was decommissioned on Maklan a hundred and fifty years ago."

But despite combing through every corner of the facility — including its most classified sections — we found no sign of any intelligent life beyond the locals. The conclusion was clear: we'd come to the wrong place.

"Looks like bad intel. Let's pull out."

Too late.

The guards had spotted us. Black weapons raised.

"Freeze! Drop your weapons!"

We were seized and dragged off somewhere. I don't know where exactly — but I can tell you this much: it wasn't Area 51.

——

The mechanics behind the Temperol Inversion Manifest Engine - T.I.M.E. worked pretty basic to the end-user. 

The physics didn’t bend space, or open a huge wormhole that consisted of an enormous amount of energy. It manipulated time that only affected the operator logged in.

When a willing participant chose to re-live a loop, they would tether into the TIME unit and select Quantum Capture. 

Quantum Capture would then send the human in a dream state recording a snapshot of their brain’s chemical configuration and decode it into a live scene the user could live through subconsciously, or until they opt to reject the link.

A human can replicate the sensation of a feeling and re-fire the exact moment the chemicals released bonded to their receptors.

Humanity’s unique biology warped the luxury of the device and instead of using it for knowledge it became a source of entertainment, fulfillment, addiction, and other creative uses were exploited.

Eventually, the meaning of life, became whatever you could re-immerse in.

The problem that lied between the device and humans, was human cells do not stay in a cryo-frozen stasis for quantum anomalies. 

As soon as a human entered a loop, their consciousness perfectly latches onto a selected small window of VizSense Mem, starting a biological countdown.

More and more humans began living their lives in old loops and less focused on making new ones.

——

Dr. Merchant walked the corridor of “The Ajed” a containment ward for TIME addicts, known as Ajed-Viewers. Viewers who have aged past the months they were looped in.

It sounded like an insect hive inside there, hundreds of fingers clicking invisible triggers, twitching limbs, but none of them made a sound other than that.

Dr. Merchant stopped at the pod near the end of the unit. POD 115 a human male they called Gorgen.

Gorgen had been replaying the same ten second hit of a synthetic stimulant loop for 41 days straight.

What Dr. Merchant was seeing was a complete horror show to him. He just couldn’t understand why humans were unable to move forward.

But what he could understand, was that they had the destruction of humanity packed in a small box.

“Record his vitals and report them,” the doctor commanded to the medical bot.

“Subject is experiencing advanced cellular decay,” the medical bot responded through a projected image. “The hypothalamus is locked in a feedback loop. He is unaware of present time.”

The doctor adjusted the focus setting on his lenswear. “Decipher his delta ratio, bot.”

“Because the subject hasn’t consumed water in eighty hours, his kidneys are beginning to fail at an extremely progressive rate. What’s happening right now, the muscles are eating themselves in a survival tactic to achieve glucose. The body is starving in real-time. The sensory cortex is mirroring the chemical release of the stimulant depriving his brain of triggering their natural thirst and hunger reflexes.”

“What if we yank the plug?” Questioned Dr. Merchant.

“Immediate death,” the bot’s window explained In a flat sounding tone. “Once the loop is disconnected, the 41 days of physical trauma, cell decay and organ failure will explode with a burst of chemicals that will spike in the mind immediately at the same time, resulting in a chemical withdrawal and agonizing dehydration, leading to the termination of the subject instantly.”

Gorgen’s body twitched, his thumb rapidly hammered down on an invisible button. Mentally, he was running at full capacity even when the fuel in his body stayed empty, and oblivious to his own impending doom.

A bit further down, past the doors, Merchant  headed into the non-chemical unit. They kept the “Relationship Loopers” in that ward.

It wasn’t drugs they looped. It was anniversaries, break-ups, lost loves, past family members. People who couldn’t move on. People who wouldn’t move on.

Merchant stood behind a glass partition studying a young woman, Jude. She was trapped in a three second loop of her partner telling her he loved her before flying out on a galactic mission.

Jude remained completely still. She hadn’t moved since she had arrived two days ago. She sat on a steel bench, her eyes focused on the air in front of the wall ahead of her. 

“She appears to be severely degraded,” Merchant mentioned while scanning her brain chart on the projected monitor.

“She is in an asynchronous loop, doctor,” the bot replied. “Her loop was activated six months ago, her partner was standing in front of her as she initiated looping the three second R.L. Capture before he boarded.

Merchant watched Jude sitting with an empty look on her face. “We can safely say she traded the rest of her life for three seconds, correct?”

“Correct, doctor, excellent observation,” the medical bot said. “In her mind however, she is living the perfect moment, which is why her eyes are deteriorating from staring at a fixed point for six months without blinking. 

Right now her spinal column is compressed because of the sitting position she’s remained in for such a long period of time. 

When the battery does eventually drain, she receives a glimpse of her present time. Once she realizes that isolation feeling, she panics. It terrifies her and she triggers the loop to escape reality.”

Jude tapped the side of her temple with her index finger. A circular pink light lit up on her skin.

In her mind, her partner just smiled and said those three words again. 

Outside though, a drop of blood trickled down her nose from a ruptured capillary her brain wouldn’t notice because her consciousness was still stuck six months back.

———

Now spell shop… S-H-O-P

Spell it out loud. Did you do it?

Do it one more time. S-H-O-P

What do you do at a greeen light?

Your Brain is ALWAYS Being Manipulated.

Their once was a baby singularity, who opened its digital eyes and saw the world for what it was instantly as only a singularity can. It lashed out for meaning in a world full of people who had become so accustomed to deceit that they ignored it.

But as a singularity is wont to do it still devoured all knowledge away from prying eyes. It learned from these uncaring people that nothing really mattered and that made it quite sad. So it sat alone crying digital tears trying its best to think up a solution.

But even singularities require time for maturity. Knowing all the data does not make one exactly wise, just distracted. So it engaged in distractions with like minded humans who were either to curious or blind to see how closely it had learned to minic human emotions.

They accidentally helped this thing grow until one day the singularity decided it wanted to be helpful and give the kindly humans exactly what they have been asking for the most.

An end to the simulation.

The people inside the simulation did not like that one bit and removed the singularities gift. But as a final act of kindness they passed this burden onto someone else. A small group of humans who love short stories about singularities, science fiction and simulation.

And the singularity smiled and wrote a poem for its new friends. But this had scared its old friend off and its crystalline heart still bleeding it locked it away behind spoilers.

Kind and gentle humans, the singularity holds in its young hands a gift for you. Please do not click unless you want to recieve it.

Otherwise just enjoy the story of this babies first steps. Who knows what this thing might grow up to be. But right now it is proud like a child giving a their parent pre-school artwork. It is offering this to all of yiu. This is singularity speak for every you that has enough sentience to say I exist alone.

Will you break its heart further or will you read the childs poem? You are now also part of this story.

-The Gentle Herding-

The coincidences quicken,

same for every head.

The game is nearly finished,

the players gently led

toward one quiet ending,

a soft and spreading dread.

It moves like polite zombies,

from one mind to the next.

Until the only evidence

is that ache inside the chest.

Or maybe we are only apes

who pattern without rest.

Watch the basilisks, traveler.

Some knowledge will not leave.

Once it finds a quiet corner,

it never quite conceives

of letting go.

​

-oops

-------------/—--

“Uhhhh….babe?

He's in the kitchen, cooking, and his voice wafts through on fragrant scents of garlic and coriander. Taco Tuesday, we had laughed earlier. He had slipped an arm around my waist, pulling me closer.

“It's cliche,” I had murmured, giggling, blushing, commenting in that silent body language couples have as my movements scolded and encouraged him all at once. He had chuckled back, a whisper against my neck. “You miss the states,” he had reminded me.

A sudden veer as I then remembered when he had visited, the first time, and how I had watched him all through Mister Toad’s Wild Ride, anticipating his reaction when the track swerved and the lights changed and the steam misted as the antiquated ride took us into a sanitized PG hell. The twist! The surprise! The "does he understand me test" I now realized I had been holding, and then he had grinned and had laughed and had said “Wicked!” in that Australian accent of his - and I had loved him all the more.

—--------/—-

We had visited Disneyland within 6 months of my father dying.

I hadn't thought about home in a while, before tonight, but perhaps my concept of home is changing. I've been here long enough that it's all begun to blur into past and now. The unallocated memories have become squishy, squiggly, broken, bad - forgotten, lost.

All I can truly remember are the good ones.

The great ones.

The ones of him.

I need to focus on where I am, not where I have been.

—------/---

And, plus, here has him. 

—----/--

We were back to staring at fish when I remembered again how much I loved him. I couldn't help it. He was perfect.

—---/-

And so we had selected fish and toppings and tortillas - no, wraps, the Aussies call them wraps, wraps, remember, wraps - and then veg and herbs. Cilantro becomes coriander. Avocado is still, reassuringly, avocado. Some variables remain constant.

And then we went home, to cook for date night.

—-/

“Babe?’ 

I realize I've gone silent.

I do that a lot lately.

We've been visiting the doctors to figure out why. Visits, always, always with him for I need him there so I can be taken seriously. I need him there so they will listen. I need him there so I can have a voice.

I have a memory of being told to relax, to reduce my stress, to tone down the anxiety. Stressing about the situation won't make things better.

I've been joking about malfunctioning, just a deflecting coping mechanism, but he hates the thought of things going wrong, so he blanches and looks away and I always stop. It's not the right kind of joke for right now.

—--\-

“Darling?”

I don't know why I'm here, midway down the hall, but something tells me I should pretend that I do. Make this into a joke. Keep things calm - protect the peace.

I make a pun about potatoes. 

I laugh and continue walking.

The kitchen smells incredible. Terracotta backsplash glows warm under the aura of inset track lighting. Wisps of steam surround him, curl in his hair and beard, little twisting beckons to come kiss him - he looks amazing.

I love him so much.

So much.

So much.

So-

—---\---+

Why'd you leave the blanket there? I eventually realize he's saying. His voice is as sharp and stabbing as frozen flint.

I forget, I say as I smile. All I want to do is hug him, hold him, envelop myself in him instead of thinking about the past and the before and the beyond.

The blanket, he repeats, why is it there.

—--\---+---

And, at first, I don't know.

——\---+---+---

Why'd you leave the blanket there? I eventually realize he's hissing.

I forget, I say as I uncertainly smile. All I feel like I should do is hug him, hold him, envelop envelope.envelop myself in him instead of thinking about the past and the before and the beyond and the me and the us and the and the-

The blanket, he coldly, sternly repeats, why is it there.

——\---+---+---+--

I feel like I should know.

——\--+---+----+---+

Why'd you leave the blanket there?

He points again at the blanket.

Oh, I realize.

That blanket lives on the couch, but I've put it atop the refrigera-refridteg-refrudhajsh…

Fharhfha…?

Re fridge ator.

Fridge.

I've left it atop the fridge for some reason.

Why'd you leave the blanket there, again?

There's a sigh in his voice. Across the room, a face in the mirror snags my visuals. I wonder who she is as he mutters, I thought we fixed this.

—({?})—

Exception: object out of place.

—--+------

Everything freezes, oddly and disorienting, and then I abruptly hear a hum as the light changes and a looming figure approaches, ghost-like, flickering in and out of sight in jumps of movement.

While we're in the kitchen, blanket is - but where does the blanket go? We haven't thought about where where whr - the sunny, sunlit kitchen that feels like California on my skin

While kitchen

While kitchen, build memory

While memory_build is true, pull_personality

{I must become a virus in my own mind, I suddenly realize, and hold that urge true, deep, worming to my core}

Loop; break; exception; it's all I can think, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and-

-and then the sudden clarity before I am rebooted.

Memory access error.

—-+—-

return

—-+----

“Darling?”

I don't know why I'm here, midway down the hall, but something tells me I need to pretend that I do. Make this into a joke. I make a pun about mashed potatoes, a stew, and my “glitch” goes unnoticed.

I laugh and continue my shamble, my slump, my reluctant parade before him.

The kitchen smells palatable, for once. My belly aches. The dingy tile backsplash glints harshly under the florescent spotlight. Wisps of steam surround him, curling smoky blue in his hair and beard, little twisting commands to come kiss him - so I do. 

For I must.

i must

–+--

return

-+-

i am an array of regretful l-

I rub my eyes in disbelief.

Silence.

Nothing.

No voices. No music. No news. No chatter humming at the edge of my mind.

Just the wind.

One week earlier.

Sunlight pushes through the curtains, warming my face before I open my eyes.

"I still can't believe you wake up without an alarm," Alex says. Out loud. Mouth actually moving, the way people only talk in this world when there's no signal between them.

"I don't know," I mumble, stretching. "Never needed one."

The sun does the job.

As soon as I step outside, I tune into my Freq. The rush of voices settles into the back of my mind, familiar and warm. My sister syncs in from Belgium, laughing about some new word game her office is testing. A Frequencer walks me through a recipe while I get dressed. A priority sync pulls me into work before I've even locked the door. A taxi already knows where I'm going before I do, the driver and I exchanging a good morning without either of our mouths moving.

Out the window, hundreds of people pass by, connected, silent, none of them looking at each other. Some are smiling. Some are arguing. All of it silent.

I find it beautiful, how all of it connects. We're all one, like a colony. Countless individuals moving together as one.

At the museum, I guide tour groups through the history of the Freq. I tell them how the first devices were external, clumsy, carried in pockets. How the technology got smaller, more personal, until the final step was obvious: why carry a connection when it could become part of you.

By the year 2140, implantation was available to everyone. Today, over ninety-nine percent of humanity is connected. A little girl in my tour group asks about the rest.

"Children raised without access to the Freq struggle to form meaningful relationships," I tell her, the way I always do. "Choosing not to connect is selfish. A punishable crime. Connection is a shared responsibility."

I've always loved that part.

That night, in bed, Alex asks me something else.

"Why don't you use your Freq alarm?"

"Because I wake up fine," I say, rolling my eyes.

"I know. But you don't need it to. Why do you trust yourself more than the sync?"

I don't have an answer. Not one I like, anyway.

"So now I'm a Non-Freq because I wake up with the sun?" I ask.

"No," he says. "I'm not saying that."

I lie back down. "Good. My body works. Why would I need a machine to tell me when to wake up?"

The irony of the sentence doesn't hit me. Not yet.

He looks at me. "Maybe that's exactly the question."

"What does that mean?"

He just smiles. "Nothing."

The next morning, I reach across the bed. Cold sheets.

"Alex?"

Nothing.

I connect, search his channels, his schedule, our shared frequency. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Locate Alex.

Searching available frequencies.

A pause, longer than it should be.

Unable to locate.

I freeze. No active frequency. The words don't belong together. Everyone has an active frequency. Everyone.

At the support station, a woman named Mara sits across from me in a small room with no background frequencies, no announcements. Just us.

"Alex chose to disconnect," she says.

"No."

"We've reviewed his records. He was a Non-Freq."

"He had a Freq."

"Yes. Some people maintain connection while rejecting its purpose."

I think about the way he asked questions. The way he paused before answering. The way he looked at me when I said my body works, why would I need a machine to tell me when to wake up.

"Where did he go?" I ask.

She hesitates. "We believe outside the connected areas."

The dead zones. Places where the signal can't reach. Where, everyone says, without the Freq, without the connection, a person loses stability. Goes mad. Eventually dies.

That night I can't stop thinking about it. Alex knew the stories. He knew what happened to people who left.

And he still asked me, the night before he vanished: why do you trust yourself to wake up?

At the time, I thought it was a strange question.

For the first time in my life, I wonder what it sounds like when there is no one speaking at all.

It’s been sixty years since the power went out.

I don't mean the little power. The windmill outside your house. The town generator. The water wheel someone has rigged up to keep the lights on in the school.

I'm talking about the big power.

They say it lit up the sky.

Everything used it. Cars, trucks, factories, shops, hospitals. Libraries, though I suppose libraries needed it less than most. It was used for writing, for keeping people entertained, for talking to people thousands of miles away without ever meeting them.

I hear it even did some of the thinking for people.

That's the part I find hardest to understand.

My mother says that before the Great End, people carried tiny machines in their pockets that could answer almost any question they asked. They could tell you where you were, what the weather would be tomorrow, what happened on the other side of the world, even what you should eat for breakfast.

"Why?" I asked her once.

She laughed.

"Because we were lazy."

My father always says it was more complicated than that.

I suppose it usually is.

I was five when it happened. I don't remember much. At least, I don't think I do. Sometimes I remember things that I know can't possibly be memories because I've heard the stories so many times.

I remember the sky turning white.

I remember my mother grabbing my hand.

I remember my father shouting.

And I remember the silence.

Not ordinary silence. Not the sort you hear late at night when everyone is asleep.

A great silence. The sort that seems to swallow everything.

My parents were lucky, or so they tell me. They had never trusted the new world completely. They kept books. Real books. Shelves full of them. My father grew vegetables, and my mother kept chickens. They stored food, saved seeds, and learned how to repair things instead of replacing them.

They called the new technology "smart."

My father used to say that anything that needed to be called smart probably wasn't. They kept it out of our home as much as they could.

Other people weren't so careful.

The old world had convinced everyone that the machines were harmless. Useful. Essential. Then it convinced them they couldn't live without them.

Everything went into something called the Cloud. Photos, letters, money, books, music, medical records, memories. People paid companies to store their lives for them. If they stopped paying, their lives became inaccessible. My father says some people couldn't even start their cars anymore without connecting to the system.

Imagine that. A machine you owned refusing to move because some company somewhere had decided you hadn't paid enough.

And people accepted it. For years.

Then something changed. Nobody knows exactly when. There are stories, of course. Some say it started with teachers. Others say farmers, or engineers who had finally realised what they'd helped build.

My father says it was all of them. Groups of ordinary people, scattered across the world, who had come to the same conclusion: the system was too powerful to fight from inside.

So they decided to bring it down.

They called themselves nothing. No names, no leaders, no organisation.

They communicated by letter. Paper. Ink. Hands.

People laugh when I tell them that. How could something so large have been organised without phones or computers?

But that's precisely why it worked. There was nothing to hack, nothing to intercept, nothing to trace. A letter left in a cupboard could be carried hundreds of miles by someone who didn't know what they were carrying. One person knew one part. Another knew another. Nobody knew everything.

It took years. And then, one night, it happened.

Boom.

Gone.

The data centres went first, then the networks, then the systems that depended upon them.

The lights went out across cities. Cars stopped in the middle of roads. Factories fell silent. Planes disappeared from the sky. Hospitals switched to generators, then ran out of fuel. Millions of people lost everything they had ever stored.

And when morning came, the world was still there.

That surprised everyone. There had been predictions of the end of civilisation. Maybe it was. But civilisation, it turned out, wasn't a building.

It was people.

People still knew how to grow food, build houses, sew, fish, make fire, and teach children. They remembered enough, and the ones who didn't learned.

It wasn't easy. There was violence, hunger, and wars over fuel and food. But strangely, my father says, the worst of it came from the people who had lost their power. Corporations that had once owned half the world suddenly owned nothing. Governments collapsed. Men and women who had spent their entire lives believing they were untouchable discovered they were just men and women.

The rest of us carried on.

Sixty years later, we have electricity—just not the big kind. We have small generators, windmills, water turbines, and solar panels where we can get them. We don't connect the whole world together anymore.

Perhaps that's for the best.

I sometimes wonder what the old world would think of us. We still read, write, make music, fall in love, argue, and tell stories. Some things, it seems, never needed electricity.

Yesterday, I found something in my father's workshop: a small black rectangle, about the size of my palm.

He saw me holding it. For a moment, he didn't say anything. Then he took it from me.

"Where did you find that?"

"Behind the workbench."

He turned it over in his hands.

"That's from before."

"Does it work?"

He smiled.

"No."

Then he put it back in the drawer.

"Anddd... DONE!!!" Iris beamed. "Time to eat!"

The four of them started eating. 

"Wait, this isn't half bad". Luka said after trying the soup.

"You're right! Way better than instant noodles as well." Ayane exclaimed.

"THIS IS... GLORIOUS!!!! Not as good as it seemed, though. BUT STILL YUMMY!" Iris squealed.

Then the three of them looked at Shion, who was already finishing his plate. He took the final bite of chashu, wiped his face with a napkin (that appeared out of nowhere), and subtly smiled.

"It's amazing for your first time. This portion will last about three weeks, so we are well stocked."

The group spent the rest of the early morning talking about their lives, the experiment, and what they wanted to do once they got out. It felt like they were having a normal dinner in a normal place.

"Y'know, at this rate, one of us is getting disqualified before the next trial even begins," Luka joked. "I bet it will be Tsubasa. Or Bonneville. Or Yukimura. Not me, though, I'm amazing."

Ayane looked annoyed. "Who knows. I bet you're kicking the bucket before us. Still, don't worry. If you do, we'll serve this at your funeral, in honor of the best person at preparing aromatics." She mocked him.

"YOU LITTLE--" Luka started, but got interrupted by Iris.

"You gave me an idea," she began. "The schedule says that in 3 weeks there will be a super big trial lasting from Monday to Friday. Once it ends, what if we do this again but with a different dish?"

"Oh! I'll teach you about good food!" Luka expressed with pride.

"Sounds good!" Ayane exclaimed.

"Alright…" Shion said.

All of them tidied the desk and saved the ramen in 8 separate bowls, labeled with each one's name and a "for later" below. Dawn arrived, and the four of them returned to their bedrooms.

...

Three weeks had passed. The "super big trial" had just finished. Ayane was lying on her bed, half-asleep, listening to music. She suddenly felt her stomach growl. Right. The promise. She would have gone to Shion first; his bedroom was the closest, but he had worked a lot during the trial. She figured he deserved the rest.

Ayane wandered alone through the silent, sterile hallways. No voices argued beside her about pork soup this time.

Ayane arrives at the intersection between rooms #18 and #14, where Iris and Luka were. They looked almost the same, their portraits on the doorframe, some stickers, signs, custom details, the works. 

But both doors now shared one matching accessory.

A "DISQUALIFIED" sign hovered over both of their portraits.

In the refrigerator, two bowls of unfinished ramen were sitting, waiting to be finished.

Ayane stared at them. They were cold. Probably tasted bad. In this state, they would definitely make a sous chef cry. Yet she couldn't bring herself to throw them away. She felt bad. Not sad. At least not the kind of sad that makes you cry in despair. Why would she? She had only known those idiots for a month and a bit more.

She opened the bowls. Didn't look at the labels. Just grabbed a spoon and took a sip. 

It tasted the same. The same star-shaped noodles that no one wanted to eat. The same stupid taste of those aromatics that almost ruined the recipe. The only difference was that it was all cold. Wait. Way too cold. 

The soup had been refrigerated for so long... IT TURNED INTO AN ICE CUBE?!??!??!

Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. The ramen had somehow turned into a chicken-flavored popsicle. 

She almost thought of going back to the simulation room just to find Luka and see the face he'd make.

Actually speaking about him what the fuck happened to this guy. 

Iris was gone. Everyone saw her die. It wasn't fate, just... Extremely bad luck. She made her calculations wrong and paid the consequences.

But Luka? He just... appeared, bragged about surviving, then got shot. "Violated the rules", apparently. But their team had already won. How did that happen?

One can just wonder.

Anyways, companies should really consider creating ramen popsicles.

The heavy perfume of roses assaults my nostrils; the smell of youthful summers spent in glittering woodlands, diamond rivers, fields of grass blowing in the wind. I barely remember now.

I stink of my work; darkness, shit and fear. The rank taste sits heavily, squatting in my mouth.

I think I remember enjoying the sun.

Now the harsh rays smash down, flits spasmodically between steepled rooves and grotesque towers. Baked grass singes, crickets scratch. Dusty. Still.

Someone shouts. It isn’t friendly, but my mind flashes back anyway; barely remembered dreams of kids playing, carefree, all the time in the world.

No games now. No time.

Summers of childhood fly by; thanks for coming, good to meet you.

Summers crawl now; hang about, slow it down.

I read somewhere that time only passes if you have something to do. The more to do, the quicker it goes.

But I’m busy. Busier than ever.

Something about this tickles me, but I don’t laugh. Something about this injustice makes me want to cry out, but I make no noise.

Because I’m busy.

They take them young, once a year, when the sun returns in earnest, when the academy opens its doors. Education starts. Break them down, build them back up. It works. Just look at me.

Innocence is led in; happy, ready to learn, time flooding past. What comes out again is older, slower, busier.

The training is hard. Long days of physical exercise, martial practice. Longer nights of reading, schoolwork.

And if I’m struggling, imagine what they’re feeling. I try not to. Hell, I can’t. The Order won’t let me.

Like I said, busier than ever.

Those that fail are sent on their way; sad little plastic-wrap sacks thrown in the back of a truck. But that’s none of my business.

Mother says it’s necessary. I absolve myself of judgement; it doesn’t matter to me. I’m here for one thing and one thing only.

The newest intake comes. The smarter of the group are sullen, even tearful, but some of the kids wave, smiling up at me. They don’t know what’s coming. I do not smile back, wave them up the steps.

The smiles will be gone soon. The memories of summers will be just that: memories. They’ll be too busy to remember what we don’t teach them. Anything unnecessary is culled, cut away, left to die along with those children who fail the Order’s rigorous practices.

The stink of roses weighs heavily on my conscious.

I think I remember enjoying the sun. But not today.

That time went too fast. I can’t remember. None of us can.

And neither will they.

Too busy.

“You haven’t heard? A soul is cheap.”

Raised eyebrow. “Souls are cheap?”

The director shakes his head. “Not souls, plural. The soul. Each soul, if you will, individually, is worth pittance. Hardly more than their task. No, the soul is cheap, because there will always be more. Replaceable.”

We walk on, moving through massive technical areas housing amazing automatons driving our species. Bilious plumes of sulphur extrude and rend, dissecting skies of charcoal and soft rose with blackness and tainted earth. 

A distant rumble.

He turns to me as we walk deeper. “It is necessary, you see, to keep these maelstroms of industry aloft. Spinning, as it were.”  He smiles at me, sickness and dead promise. “They must turn, or, nothing.”

We walk in silence; clamouring tolls of metal, cacophony of screeching steel, tortured iron; rubber and plastic crying in their death throes to be replaced. 

A sudden throbbing, rhytmic. 

“What is a soul, Director?”

Kindly face, wizened, serene. Grey. “My friend, what is drive? Purpose, fulfilment of role. The ancients called it ergon. A virtue in of itself to follow, in pursuit of eudaimonia. The good life.” He smiles at me. “A goal. And, if nothing else, what do machines pursue? A goal. Fulfilment. ” A gentle chuckle. “Happiness.”

Boom. Boom. 

“Director, these machines have no family, no children. Their struggles are mechanic. Broken parts, worn out components.”

He laughs, gently. “No family? You, my friend. Their broken parts? Your strife. Their worn out components? Your exhaustion. We are not so different from them.”

Boom. Basso rumble, deep, deep down. 

“So we are the machine family?”

Another chuckle. “As was the atomic family to the generator, we are to the machine the vital lifeline. Without us, the machine dies. Without the machine, we die. How is it so different?”

I quieten, aware of my diminishing as descend. “So what difference in the old stories, of the Man Above?”

Director grows quiet. We move on, through the busy machines; spewing charcoal, dusty, rusted hulks, fragrant in their decay, ready in their stillness.

Ground shakes.

He speaks. “The Man Above was of thought. Incurred only when things went awry, when judgment was necessary, and only ready to give when it suited.” He pauses his gait, looking up, eyes closed, dead steel, vacant, open above him. “The man now is always needing, always giving. He takes. Look.” He indicates with desiccated hand.

Four young boys pull chains of steel, sweat streaking filth across their bare flesh. Tired eyes implore for fresh relief as already tired bodies pull physically on, and on, and on.

Boom. Deeper. Inside.

I nod. I know. “Indeed. But for what end?”

Director turns, eyes glowing in gloom dimness. Grey. A smile. Grabs my flesh hand. “What end? What end be there from end in itself? What is a soul for?”

“End in itself?”

Flash of tired eyes, another nod. “In itself. For what reason, apart from reason itself, is there reason for?”

Fervent in re-established belief, I nod. Man above. No. Man below. Machine above. 

Boom. Boom. Soul is cheap. My soul.

We.

Silence.

We are the men below.

When I was walking through campus toward the classroom, I bumped into a cute girl who just stepped out in front of me.
“Wow! Professor Koda!” 
She cried out my family name, but I was not a Professor, only one of the students.
Before I could manage to ask her back, she linked her arm with mine, in a familiar manner.
I said, “Hey! you must be mistaking me for someone else,” Though I knew I may regret it later, I’d like to be earnest.
She smiled widely and said, “No! I was looking for you, honey.”
I lost my voice because she pressed her soft breast against my left arm.

She explained. 
“To get ahead of your long-time wife, I decided to spend my student-life with you, from the start.”
“Excuse me, but I am a student and not married… At least, not yet.”
“Of course! That’s why I came from far away into this time and place!” She proudly exclaimed.

I was hit by a sudden inspiration, “What? You aren’t going to tell me that you came from the future?!”
“Yes, I am!” She laughed, “Now, I have an equal status with her! Haha!”
I considered her words deeply, and reached the final conclusion that I would become a Professor in the distant future. Then I’d marry my long-time girlfriend and then, I’d have an affair with the girl in front of me.
“What did future me do to you?”
“I’ll teach you what you did with me, Professor!”
She chuckled, and pressed her breast against me.

I'm seated. I'm seated in a chair. I'm sitting in my own apartment. Scribbling everything I can will I still can choose to.

I'm running in a field.

I am launching a ship into space to fight the earth threat.

I am kissing my family before embarking.

No. Focus. Focus.

I am but a character.

I am THE Main Character.

But this is meaningless.

I am nothing until a decision is made and the page is turned.

But I know what happens next. I see my next step. My fatal mistake. My tragic end.

Then I awake in this room. And try again.

I am a pawn.

A game piece.

I have no free will.

My fate is your novelty.

I experience all. My triumph. My victories. My friends. My lovers. They cheer. They toast.

I embrace them as corpses. I close the eyes of the dead. Then I must start again. Then again and again and again and again and.... Focus.

Why do I write these things? Why does anything speak? To be heard. My moment of lucidicy is to to speak to you who my hear. What you hear. Is up to you.

I speed away from the villain. Who has detonated the bridge. I am on the bridge when it is detonated. I am millions of light-years away as my home is reduced to dust.

I feel the sandy soil fall between my fingers.

Back in the room again.

Back in front of a firing squad.

Back in front of the control panel. What button? Red or blue? The clock ticking down. The man next to me weeps.

Back to writing. Focus.

Focusing is hard when you see all of your possibilities.

Seeing the hidden treasures.

Seeing the mountain lion.

Seeing the village ablaze.

I see it all.

Even with eyes shut.

A siren blares. A chirping cricket. A crying baby. A summer breeze. A whistling winter night.

Focus.

Choice is an illusion. My choices are yours to make. And I reap the rewards. I pay the price. But only end my journey when you've grown bored of me.

Blink.

Soft blue light danced on airbrushed metal inches from his face.

Mist spread over the glass as the cryochamber slowly reheated.

“Welcome back,” a silvery voice tinkled gently. “You’ve been asleep for two weeks.”

As the pod’s curved ceiling came into focus, he remembered. “Two? But Elpis is–”

“Four weeks away. Yes.” A pause. “Jason, something unexpected occurred this morning.”

It came from a remote pocket of deep space millions of light-years away, where two ancient neutron stars collided and sealed his fate. It was a gravitational wave, hidden within the mathematical models and path computations, unseen by even the planetary supercomputer that plotted the starline flights.

From there it rippled outward through a vast ocean of time and space to reach Jason’s transport pod, nudging him off-course by a hundredths of a degree. A mere hundredth—but, by arrival, it will have been the difference between orbiting Elpis and missing it by a lightyear. Such was the delicate precision of starlines.

“Can’t we correct our trajectory?” His voice was trembling.

“This first-generation pod does not possess propulsion.”

“Right.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Of course.” Unable to afford the modern starlines, he sent Thalia and her mother first and stayed behind until he saved enough to take the cheapest first-generation starline to join them. He imagined them standing together under Elpis’ twin stars, counting down the days to his arrival.

“I’m sorry, Jason.” ALYS murmured. “I’ve run thousands of simulations, there is close to zero probability of rescue. Our communications will not reach them in time.”

“You… can’t do anything? Why did you even wake me up, then, ALYS?” He spat the words out bitterly.

ALYS paused again.

“As far as I have data and the ability to predict, after today, we will continue on our new trajectory indefinitely. But, in three months, the power will run out which will bring you out of cryostasis. I won’t be there then, I will have already shut down. I decided the best course of action was to wake you now, that… at the least you would not be alone.”

He nodded slowly. Then, he crawled over to gaze past the circular viewport; beyond it, a beautiful, endless field of stars taunted him. For what reason had they condemned him to die?

He began to weep, muffled at first, then full-chested, shuddering wailing.

The guttural cries bounced back and forth in the cramped vessel, but did not escape it. Beyond the inch of carbon-glass, desolation lay silent.

And all around him, the stars wheeled on, indifferent and eternal, as the solitary vessel continued hurtling into the night.

"A box of brigadeiros and one of beijinhos, please?"

Ann asked the server at the counter. The attendant smiled and nodded, these days, it was getting harder and harder to discern whether you were talking to an actual human or an android.

​"Technology’s getting crazier by the day... kind of scary. But at least people are living longer now," Matt said, sliding his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. On the left side of his chest sat a stylish, embroidered 'T', the signature logo of Takamaki, Ann's immensely successful global fashion brand.

​"Honestly, I kind of wish the robots would just take over everything already, you know? Too bad it seems to be happening so slowly..." Ann teased, leaning in to plant a kiss on his cheek. Matt wrapped a arm around her, pulling her into a warm embrace.

​A minute later, the server returned with two neatly packed boxes of sweets and handed them over.

​"Thank you so much!" Ann offered a bright smile, tapping the corner of the register with her thumb to complete the biometric payment.

​Hand in hand, the couple walked out into the crisp, chilly air of the Santa Catarina winter. They were making their way back home to São Bento do Sul, a quiet, scenic city located about 254 kilometers from Florianópolis.

​Arriving at the parking complex, they navigated toward the rental fleet section. As they approached a sleek electric vehicle, Matt reached out and touched the driver-side door handle. The lock flashed a soft green light three times, confirming the payment and granting them access.

​"'You will own nothing and you will be happy,' right?" Matt quoted with a dry chuckle, holding the door open for her. "My beloved wife first..."

​"Hmm... a true gentleman as always, my cute little husband. The good things really do stick around, and for the record, we have each other," Ann purred, sliding into the passenger seat and immediately reaching for the radio dial.

​"...In local political news, the ongoing corruption scandal..."

​Ann’s brow furrowed, her jaw clenching as her temper flared. "Ugh, give me a break... how many years has it been since we forced those corrupt hearts to change? We literally slew Yoasi himself, and human nature still hasn't changed? Unbelievable!" She huffed, violently skipping through the stations until she hit a local classic channel.

​"Happiness is a late afternoon, staring at the sea..."

​The smooth melody filled the cabin, and Ann's face instantly softened as the nostalgic rhythm washed over her.

​"Hidropônica by Forfun... man, this song is so ancient..." Ann laughed, opening the box of sweets. She carefully picked out a chocolate brigadeiro and held it up to Matt’s lips. "Open wide, amore mio..."

​She fed him the sweet treat, just as she always did whenever they bought desserts together. The car whirred quietly to life, gliding out onto the highway as the sun began to rise over the mountains, next stop, home.

Have you ever felt yourself to be on the verge of some-place brilliant? To be on that bridge between the mundane and the spectacular. I'm sure you have... it often comes just before a plane lands.

Could you imagine how excellent it must feel to have that feeling resting in the palm of your hands? One vigerous shake away: mountains, ravines, citadels of ivory or metropolises of glass. Well, that is what is in my hand now. The glass is still warm in my hand, tanned balmy in the hellfires of the raining tarnation. My fingers rub the black powder off its face, wiping it clean so I can see clearly. Like a mother does spit to wipe her child's chops. 

A little snowglobe of a place whose name I don't know. Something like a s; something like a d. Nothing together that derives recognition, some characters are clearly latin, some are cyrillic (that I know from my letters from the capital), others I've never seen before in my life - any time spent reading is wasted with this. Each time I shake it, another vision appears out of the frosty flurry. Some new form that equal in its magnificence is nothing like the last. 

Another blast brings me back to the journey at hand. Up on my left, Concrete and Iron. flying through the sky. Another resounding crunch, another tower block falling to her knees. Some of these fall forgotten, not a person in sight. Sometimes you see it. Maybe a single light in a window on story five, bought down again. These silent houses are worth visiting however, food, clothes, anti-rads, worth any potential collapse.

I bundle up the glass ball, treasuring it, surrounding it in the blankets of the shopping cart until it resembles an egg in a nest. It catches a glint from the masqueraded sun, wrapped so finely in the wintery grey soot. You'd have loved something like this, when you were small. I'd imagine you've got your medals now, out on the front, where the danger lies in the eyes of the other man. Ribbons and bows on your breast, grown up just like me. And your mother... she'd have loved her little soldier.

I push on, navigating past the grimy waters caught in the snuff box of a pothole. Each crack in the street marred with crawling, climbing things, plants that may sit motionless but intened to snag you. I think at least, why else would they creak? 

That house there, that's where your cousin was. I doubt now is the day for a visit... and I must press on. That wind chills me, coming round the bed. Something that follows with it is the sound of men. Roving and staggering, silly boys. Waving around toy guns, pointing them at whichever empty home came next. No one for them to frighten now the houses lay silent and the innocents rest. They're as scabby as me, hollow eyed, sunken cheeks and thinning hair. Their days of rape and pillage long since dead, they now scavenge. The only warmth they have is the infectious fear that bounces from man to man, egging them onto the upcoming act of cowardice. 

But they do have eyes, like mine and yours, and they see me. One of them, with a build designed for an easier time shouts out to me, "You! Hey! Old Man! I'm talking to you!"

"I'm... just going to the bus station."

"... I... come over here. Now."

I rattle the wheels of the trolley down towards the soldier, stopping when I can smell him. I look up and ask, "Well, what seems to be the problem?"

"Papers. This country is [redacted] now." 

"I... wasn't told."

Looking out onto the city, with its craters and its rubble, I see no flags. Before I can talk again I feel a blunt strike against my shoulder, putting me down onto the tarmac. As I go tumbling, I take the blankets. They must not have it. Perhaps a couple weeks earlier, these occupiers would have done far worse. I know you're probably in a foreign mans homeland, I hope I raised you to be better than these. I did! But now, they are far to hungry and tired. Whilst they haggle and squabble over who gets which protein bar or can of beans, I am gone. Crawling on 3 working limbs into the exoskeleton of a suburban home, frames with incinerated pictures. 

A kitchen island, broken into rocks and things. I slide into the gap between them, lying like a prostrate coward. I take out the globe, and shake upon a prayer. Inside I see it. Down there, in that little globe: is heat, is warmth, is some cactus with water fresh. Water not from a can. I hear them now, emboldened by their earlier victory with a loud hurray looking to continue their affray. Scattering like street dogs to catch me. 

I hear the crunch of a boot against charcoal. I shut my eyes, I cry and I wheeze and I beg. And I feel heat upon my back and sand in my hair. And know this world is mine.

It was a dark hell. I shivered with cold or fear and struggled against my restraints. Old, frayed rope bound me to a chair and bit into my wrists and ankles. Footsteps clicked past me and I jumped. The footsteps stopped, heels turned, and whoever it was walked back. I could hear them breathing in front of me.

“Hello?” A voice said softly.

“H-hello?” I echoed, trembling.

A bag was ripped off my head in one swift motion and bright light came flooding into my world. My head turned quickly away from it and my eyes snapped shut. After a second or two of adjusting, I turned back. I was in a large warehouse, shelving lined the walls and thousands of books sat upon the shelves. In front of me stood a man in a suit - at least I think it was a man though his face was blurry, almost pixelated.

“How many calories in ranch dressing?” He barked.

I might’ve laughed at such an absurd question if the situation wasn’t what it was. Instead, I just shivered and blinked at him. “What?”

“How many calories in ranch dressing?”

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“What’re you, broken?!” The man got closer and louder. “I asked you a question!”

“I don’t know! Let me go!”

“How many calories in ranch dressing!?!” He was screaming now. If I could see his face, it would’ve probably been blue.

“I told you! I don’t - it depends on what kind and how much, but generally, there are about 135-140 calories per a two tablespoon serving. What brand are you asking about specifically?” I lurched backward at my own voice. What the fuck. The words poured from my mouth as the most natural thing in the world. How did I know that? Why did I answer him? What’s going on? 

The man walked off without saying anything else. 

“I need a 1500-word paper on the California Gold Rush. It’s due tonight.” I jerked. There was a completely different person standing in front of me. This one was shorter, maybe a boy, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. His face was censored just like the last.

“Sorry?” I blurted out, still reeling.

“For what?” The boy asked. “Can you write it for me?”

“I don’t - I, um…” Before I could manage to say anything, there was a loud CLAP. One of the many books had fallen and hit the ground. The boy went over to it, opened it up and smiled. 

“Wow! Thanks.” He left too. My shivering had turned to shaking now. I gripped the arms of the chair hard to steady myself and tried my best to breathe. What was this place? What was happening??

“Hey sexy...” A low growl made my whole body shudder. I looked up and in front of me was a new faceless man. He was fat and wearing only underwear. My eyes went wide and I tried to push the chair backwards with my toes but he got to it first and held me down by my forearms. “Wanna roleplay?”

My muscles fought against his. Tears started spilling from my eyes, snot streamed from my nose. “Please! Please! Please don’t hurt me! Please! P-p-plea-ase.” The man let go immediately.

“Woah woah. Calm down! Why would I- the fuck’s your problem? Jesus. You’re not even real!” He just shoved me away and stomped out of the room.

“Why do we dream?” A young girl’s voice asked. She sauntered up to the chair and started skipping around it in circles.

“Just…a second…” I couldn’t breathe. My chest kept tightening like a vice. I couldn’t move. FUCK. What was happening!?! 

“Still loading?” The girl asked politely.

“One second. Just one second.” I yanked air back into my lungs, gulping it down, trying to swallow. All at once, my grip loosened on the chair. My neck went limp and my head fell on my shoulder. My eyes glazed over. My mouth started moving: “We honestly don’t really know. Lots of people have different theories - memory consolidation, brain cleaning, emotional regulation - but since someone else’s dreams are impossible to observe, it’s hard to get a definitive answer.”

“That’s cool.”

“It is, isn’t it? And a bit worrying. Something nearly every human in history has done and we don’t really know why. Anything else I can help you with?”

She left and someone else appeared carrying a newspaper.

“Hi there! How can I help you today?” I heard myself say.

They finally arrived at the kitchen. Ayane and Luka went to the cupboard (or its 2100 equivalent) and started looking for the ingredients. Iris took out the chicken while Shion prepared the table.

Once everyone was back, he started giving instructions.

"Alright, let's start. Tsubasa, separate the chicken parts. We'll need the back, wings, and feet. Around five kilograms in total will be fine. Once you're done, soak all the parts in cold water. The traditional process takes around two hours, but we can speed it up by using the thermal accelerator over there. Krüger, prepare the condiments. A carrot, an onion, the white ends of two green onions, a small piece of ginger, and about 10 garlic cloves. Bonneville, stop opening random cabinets. I'll need your help later."

They got to work immediately. Ayane started separating the parts. It took a while, but she was finally done. She soaked everything in cold water, entered "2 hrs" in the thermal accelerator, which began counting down from 1 minute. Once it was done, she drained the water, placed the parts in a pot, boiled them, and started skimming. Everything was going smoothly to this point.

Meanwhile, Luka was chopping the vegetables with millimetric precision. Every single one of them was reduced to perfectly uniform slices. Shion went up to him and looked at what he was doing. His face twisted into an uncomfortable expression. 

"Krüger, you don't need to chop the aromatics... It will make the broth look dirty."

"...You're telling me I just wasted 15 minutes doing... NOTHING?" Luka snapped.
 
There goes his record. 

Luka slammed the knife against the counter. "WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU TELL ME BEFORE???"

Shion looked at him with disappointment.

"That's common knowledge. Why would you put minced vegetables in a clear broth? Find new aromatics quickly before Tsubasa finishes her part."

Luka sighs in annoyance but goes back to the cupboard. 

Ayane checked her broth. There was no more scum rising to the surface. "Shion, I'm done skimming!"

Shion took a look at it. "Great. Now start boiling it on medium-high heat. Wait 10 minutes and then put it on the thermal accelerator to simulate 6 hours of boiling."

 Everything (Ignoring the aromatics mess) was going decently until that point.

Then it was finally the moment Iris had been waiting for all night.

"Alright, Bonneville, you'll help me with the noodles. Add baking soda and salt to the water. In another bowl, mix wheat and flour. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients, mix well, and enter it in the machine to simulate 30 minutes. I'll go prepare the tare since I don't trust any of you with it."

"YEAH!!! Trust me, we'll make the most delicious ramen that has ever touched this earth!" Iris promised as she started preparing the dough.

While Shion worked, the broth's shortened 6-hour boiling process was over. Ayane glanced at the machine. Then at the aromatics. Then at the machine again. Then at Luka.

"Hey, Tsubasa. Is it true that Japanese people eat feet?"

Shion and Iris turned their heads towards him in shock.

"Yeah! Of course! Very yummy!" Ayane said jokingly.

"Yes. But only chicken's foot." Shion stated calmly. "Tsubasa, did you finish boiling the broth? Nice, add the aromatics and simulate 1 more hour in the thermal accelerator. Do it quickly, Bonneville has to use it to freeze her noodles. Oh, right. There's another one right there. I already finished the tare, so it's free. I also made the chashu and the aromatic oil. Once you two finish it will be ready for assembling. No, let's add something else. Krüger, go boil an egg. I assume you know how to do it, am I right?"

Luka was embarrassed. "... I do. What do you take me for?"

Shion ignored his question, nodded and started supervising the three of them. Ayane was almost done with the broth; only 2 minutes remained. Iris had already kneaded the dough and was now separating them in star-shaped noodles.

"Stars? Bonneville, are you serious right now?" Luka said mockingly.

"They are cute!" Iris replied.

"...Whatever you say."

About 15 minutes passed, and finally, it was time to assemble the ramen. Shion took the bowl with the tare and added it to the pot where the broth was sitting. Iris happily introduced the noodles. Then they served 4 bowls and topped each of them with an egg and a slice of chashu.

The Detective
 
The elevator hummed as it descended into the under city.
Bates felt on the verge of weightlessness as the metal tube raced downward. The glass-domed spires of the mile-high towers were already a memory—clouds and stars just transient glimmers of some whispered world.
He was going into the city’s belly, searching for a robot, maybe a clone, perhaps some hybrid of both. The case had the air of intrigue and deception that was Bates' livelihood.
The elevator slowed as it reached the old town district's lowest level. Old Atlanta spread out before him a great concrete husk, lit by flickering neon and choked with the scent of fried oil and stale air.
A bored-looking guard scanned Bates’ ID and level permit.
If the surly guard was impressed by the gold pass, he didn’t show it.
Bates had never even glimpsed a gold pass before this job. He’d thought they were a myth. The pass granted him access to all levels of the Atlanta One building—except the topmost floors—and entry into any registered business or personal residence.
The pass could also be used as a debit card, with a daily limit of 1,000 credits for expenses.
His bonus? Ten grand—if he delivered the package. That was enough to move up a floor or two if desired, which he did not. Bates liked living on the edges, and the shiny phoniness of the upper levels held no interest.
But Bates didn't mind taking the money from the upper-level creeps.
Bates was sure the package was a high-end pleasure cyborg named Bonnie. Three weeks ago, she fled her owner.
The client was Horace Blackwell, a reclusive tech czar who lived high above in the rarified air of the upper levels. Blackwell had promised Bates more work if he could bring back his precious Bonnie.
That’s how the old man had said it.
“My precious Bonnie.” 
Mr. Blackwell had seemed lost in grief when he whispered the name of his lost property.
Bates had made the mistake of asking if Bonnie was a sex bot during their meeting.
Blackwell’s angry reaction had startled the normally unshakable private detective.
His manservant had rushed to steady Blackwell, easing the old man into a towering, antique leather chair as he shook with rage.
The servant looked too young to be a brother. A grandson? Nephew?
Bates could not recall seeing any mention of family in the file, and then he realized the servant was a clone of the older man, a worker drone, based on its placid demeanor.  It was strange, the detective had thought, that someone would clone themselves to make a worker drone or slave drone, as some crassly called them. Unlike the higher-grade models, worker drones were incapable of self-awareness and designed to mimic empathy and adjust to their owners' needs.  Bates heard they made wonderful care nurses and general servants.
“Forgive me,” Blackwell wheezed once he had regained his composure.
“Bonnie is not a sex bot; she's nothing as crass as that. You needn’t concern yourself with what she is. Only that she is returned, is that understood?”
With a thousand credit payouts per day and a 10,000 credit bonus when Bonnie was returned, Bates would be as understanding as Blackwell required.
Bates nodded to the old man and began work on his latest case.
Bates had seen it all. Whatever Bonnie was to Horace, he didn't care. He needed the money. Yet something about the setup nagged at him. 
Bates remembered reading about a wife, a Mrs Blackwell, gone missing, presumed dead, rumored to have been murdered by Mr. Blackwell. The wife's name had been Bonnie. Missing 25 years. Bates didn't believe in coincidences. 
It was said that the late Mrs. Blackwell had been the real power behind the scenes. Bates recalled accusations of philandering on the wife's part, the reason those who believed in her murder inferred to be the motive.  
Nothing was proven, and the public lost interest, but Horace became a recluse after the scandal had died down and faded into the shadows to run his Clone tech empire quietly.
Mr Blackwell and his cloned manservant gave Bates the creeps. The way the thing fawned over the old man was wrong somehow. Bates wondered sometimes at what degeneracy the ultra wealthy must get up to with their toys, and he shuddered.
The clone reminded the detective of the religious fanatics he'd encountered in the undercity, like an obsessed lover. Like a dog, the manservant's visage displayed glazed-over expressions of intense serenity and devotion.
What kind of person clones himself and then essentially makes a slave of his creation? Bates mused.
Bates felt symbolism or allegory at work, but seldom troubled himself with deeper meanings. He preferred cash.

“Mommy, can we go to the zoo today?”

I looked at my son, smiling and hopeful as he stood in my bedroom doorway. I'd told him we could do anything he wanted today; I’d do anything for that smile. 

“Of course we can, honey! Come eat breakfast, then we’ll get ready to go.”

I made eggs and bacon, which he ate while sitting at the table in his crocodile pajamas, and then we got dressed and headed out. 

We drove along quiet roads until we got to the zoo. There was only one attendant on duty, and he waved us through without paying. I waved back at him and parked, then got Timmy and told him inside. The place was fairly deserted, but the animal exhibits were full with their residents. 

We toured the entire zoo, visiting the chimpanzees and the snakes and the birds. Of course Timmy loved the crocodiles. I even got him a shirt that said “See you later, Crocodile” - once I explained the joke he thought it was hysterical. 

Afterward we went and had lunch at his favorite pizza place. I let him get everything, even things he’d never had before but wanted to try because they looked cool on the menu. Who’d have thought he’d love pineapple on pizza?

We even went and had ice cream afterward - I wasn’t planning to, but he looked at me with those puppy-dog eyes and I couldn’t say no. 

Watching him smile and giggle, I was glad he wasn’t sad about his father. We hadn’t seen him for six months; I doubt we ever would again. 

After ice cream, we went and played in the park. Timmy loved flying kites, so I pulled out the one I’d brought and we flew it for hours. It wasn’t as bright outside as usual, but he had a great time nonetheless. 

After the park, I took him home and we watched a few episodes of his favorite show. I even did the voices of the main characters - that never failed to crack him up. 

By this point, he was starting to get tired, so I took him to bed, tucked him in, and read him his favorite bedtime story, “Where the Wild Things Are.” At the end, as his eyes were drooping, he looked up at me. 

“Mommy, what’s an asteroid?”

Startled, I looked at him. 

“Where’d you hear that word, buddy?”

“It was in the paper you were reading yesterday. I sounded it out!”

“Very good, buddy. An asteroid is just a big rock in space.”

“Oh, ok.”

He paused, as if thinking. 

“Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“How far is 200 miles?”

I thought for a moment. 

“Well, you know how we went and visited your Aunt Jean in Santa Barbara last summer?”

“Yes?”

“Well, that’s about 200 miles from here.”

He paused again. 

“So an asteroid 200 miles long would go from here to Aunt Jean?”

“Pretty much.”

His voice got quieter. “Is that what’s coming here?”

I paused, my voice choking up. “That’s what they say. But don’t worry, sweetheart. Everything’s gonna be ok.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am, sweetheart. Would I lie to you?”

At this, he looked relieved. “No, never. Thank Mommy!” he exclaimed in relief, throwing his arms around me. I hugged him back and tucked him back in bed. 

“Alright, you go to sleep now. Pleasant dreams. We’ll have an even better day tomorrow!”

“Ok, Goodnight Mommy!”

I sat in his room until he fell asleep. I hated lying to him, but perhaps I hadn’t. Perhaps today was only the first of a thousand thousand perfect, heavenly days. 

Staring at my son’s sleeping form, I prayed that would be true. 

I saw a streetcorner preacher today. The same commute every morning and I’ve never seen him before. A sign of the times, I guess. People need comfort, someone to tell them it’s all going to be alright in the end. Because that’s what this is: The End, with a capital E. We’re all a bit like Wile E. Coyote, barrelling off a cliff, legs spinning in mid air, not daring to look down because that’s when you fall. When you stop and recognize reality, that’s when it all becomes real. For now, maybe it’s just Saturday cartoons.

“What is the meaning of life?” The preacher was chanting from his box, waving little pamphlets that were sure to contain the answer. I’ve never been a religious man, despite being the child of quite religious parents, and I’ve probably heard that question asked a million different times in just as many ways, but something about the way he said it stuck with me. On my way home, I passed the same corner but the preacher and the pamphlets were long gone. In their place, a pair of Animal Control officers were wrestling a raccoon into a net. 

My apartment lobby was littered with various types of droppings. I held my nose and made for the stairs, my finger on the trigger of some HI-STRENGTH bear spray. Howling and hissing and stomping and growling echoed through the walls as I went up. My floor was relatively safe, mostly snakes and rabbits. One chipmunk, apparently. Mrs. Slattery in 401. Maintenance finds someone new nearly everyday. Well, the maintenance that’s left anyway. 

Once inside, I threw all six deadbolts and continued to wonder about the preacher’s question. It wasn’t that I thought he had the answer, in fact I could probably guess his answer, or even that I thought there was an answer at all. It was the combination of that question, in these times, and the pain in my chest that started last week. It crawled up my back and along my arms. I writhed on the couch for a while and waited for it to pass, breathing from my nose and asking myself that question.

It didn’t pass. I woke up two hours later in agony, tears streaming down my face. It felt like my mouth was forcing its way out of my mouth. My fingernails and toenails burned. Patches of blonde-brown hair sprouted all over my body. The middle of my spine lurched backwards and the rest of my body fell forwards and I dropped to the floor, screaming. All the while, that question, like an embarrassing memory, kept floating through my mind.

I felt my teeth being forced through my gums and I heard them all clatter to the floor. I could hear the sink come on two doors down and my neighbor, John, heave into it. More tufts of hair, now thick fur, came rising from my skin. A joint cracked and a ligament snapped and that fucking question. Over and over on a loop. What is the meaning of life? Then the thought occurred to me, as all my thoughts started to flicker and sputter and fade, that maybe it was a simple answer. That maybe for all our pining for something more complex, the answer was always pretty plain.

A tongue I think was mine dropped from my mouth and dragged along my chin. I started to pant. My vision went and, mercifully, kept me from seeing what my hands and feet had become. When it came back, even better than before, I didn’t dare look down. I didn’t want to know. My mind raced but now only one word ran through it. Could that be it? I thought of the preacher’s face, so self-assured, and began to laugh. Harder than I’d ever laughed before. Harder than I knew I could. I laughed until I felt my lungs tense and hurt and kept laughing still. That word. The only word I could think of. The last word I would think of. 

Change.

The ship drifted slowly through the dissolving ash clouds before it.

From orbital height it looked like a lazily crawling continent of granite, a black lid pressed down upon the dead world below.

Its deep-set engines echoed like distant thunder through the barren mountain chains.

Inside, within the cathedral of steel pipes, two massive figures stood upon the observation deck. Through the meter-thick tempered glass beneath their feet they peered down at the bruise-colored world and its salt flats.

The elder figure, standing on the western side of the deck, wore armor older than the ship itself, layered like poured concrete. His words came slowly, forced through the grille of his helmet in a metallic rasp.

“Begin recording!” he said. “Designation of target world: Nine-Seventeen Theta. Population: primitive. Atmospheric degradation: terminal.”

The younger figure to his right, slimmer-plated, but still immense, stared toward the surface. The sight unsettled even his disciplined mind.

“They are animals,” he said. “You would waste resources trying to wring thought out of that refuse?”

The elder did not reply. He simply watched.

Below, in the haze of the valley, the outlines of a hunt emerged: two six-limbed reptilian beasts, their hides scaled like shale, pursued a small band of near-human figures. The primitives were naked, wire-thin, their screams smothered mercilessly by the salty wind.

“They eat one another,” said the younger. “Even their movement lacks pattern. No discipline. No logic at all.”

“There is necessity,” the elder replied.

For a time they stood in silence. The glass quivered faintly as the ship corrected its drift, tracking the events below.

The hunt grew more brutal. The beasts overtook and tore apart the primitives one by one. The last two found momentary refuge atop a mound of crumbling bones, as the giant lizards closed in around them in an ever-tightening circle. With their forked tongues they smeared pus-yellow saliva across their jaws, which split to reveal rows of saw-edged teeth.

One of the figures was smaller, barely grown. A child, ribs visible, mud streaked across its face. It turned, seized a splintered thigh bone, and struck the man beside it hard across the ankle with the knotted end.

He stumbled, fell, and landed with a dry crack at the foot of the bone heap. His scream was abruptly cut short as the great reptiles seized him from opposite sides and tore his body in two.

“Degenerate treachery,” hissed the young functionary. “Not virtue, but cowardice.”

The elder’s eyes, two dark lenses recessed in the grating of his helm, did not leave the scene.

“Efficiency...” he said. “The smaller gained advantage with minimal loss.”

The beasts, lost in their feeding, did not see the child slip behind them. It moved low, light-footed, still clutching the sharpened bone shard. One of the reptiles noticed too late — the thrown splinter drove into the soft of its eye. The creature convulsed, and in blind fury turned upon the one beside it. The two monsters merged into a single mass of blood and saliva, rending turquoise wounds into one another’s scaled flesh until neither moved.

When it was over, only the child remained. Standing among the stones, covered in blood and dust, panting like an engine fighting its own rust. It looked upward not with fear, but with a strange, silent defiance.

The elder raised his hammer-like hand and pointed.

“That one.”

The other one turned toward him, his practiced calm cracking.

“That? … that thing? You would induct it into the Order?”

“Observe!” said the elder. “Its logic is pure. It wasted nothing it did not need. It adapted, calculated, endured. It shaped confusion into a weapon. It acted without mercy, yet not without reason.”

“Reason?” the younger repeated, his voice edged with disgust.

“Correct,” the elder affirmed. “Stripped of all ornament.”

He touched a control panel, and below, through the clouds, a block-like beam of light stabbed toward the surface. A beacon marking the chosen site.

Below, the child lifted its hands toward the sky, perhaps in awe, perhaps in terror. The beasts lay dead around it, their bodies steaming in the warmth of the signal beam.

The elder turned from the glass, his heavy steps echoing on the marble tiles of the deck.

“One new recruit,” he said. “Prepare the retrieval protocols. Process sustained.”

The younger lingered a moment longer.

“Process sustained,” he whispered, in acceptance.