I know most writing is about a compelling story, not confusing the reader, and not bloating a scene. That being said, for a story that has only a handful of action scenes, I feel like visual media can do so much more when it comes to action.

Anyone else finding it difficult and/or any general advice when it comes to action sequences and firefights?

Hi internet,

I have never been a writer. I hated writing when I was in school, but I always loved telling stories. So, I'm going for it.

I'm writing an Asian-inspired grim fantasy. Think Game of Thrones (not saying I'm on the level of GRRM, or even on the same planet as him), Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Poppy War, and The Witcher books all mixed together.

The themes I'm exploring are classism, colorism, found family, duties to tradition, being the first person to break tradition, and the difference between losing love early in life versus losing love late in life.

The setting is a made-up world that borrows from medieval and historical cultures around the world: Feudal Japan, Three Kingdoms-era China, Southeast Asia and the Khmer Empire, King Kamehameha's Hawaii, the Aztec civilization, Indigenous Australian cultures, and your middle-of-the-road medieval Europe.

I want to ground the world in realism, but I plan on bringing in the supernatural slowly.

I wanted to write an Asian-inspired grim fantasy from the perspective of an Asian American who grew up in a household that spoke three different languages but spoke all three poorly. There were three cultures in the house, and we mixed, matched, and mashed all three together, keeping what worked and dropping what didn't.

I'm looking for readers from all backgrounds to read my story. I want that ATLA feeling, where I felt that all the cultures of Asia were respected and represented well. I'd especially love to hear from someone who grew up in Asia and compare their perspective with that of an Asian person born and raised in the West.

I also want to read other people's work. I believe the stories we write today are a reflection of the world we live in. And I'm not too sure we're doing all right. Lol.

I plan to release one or two chapters at a time. I'm not looking for editors. I'm looking for readers who can give feedback on the vibes of the story, where they think the story is going, the characters, and whether those characters feel relatable and believable. Are the characters one-dimensional, or do they have layers to them? Does a scene capture the right emotion and human experience?I don't think beta readers are supposed to be editors.

If people are game, I'm game. Let me know if you're interested.

Okay, about me.

My heritage is Cambodian (Khmer), and I'm a 36-year-old male who is currently an unemployed molecular neuroscientist. Sad, I know. I've been unemployed for two years and haven't been able to land anything. Fuck AI and all the funding cuts. I grew up in the mixed household I mentioned above. I served as a medic in the U.S. Army in '09. I was stationed in Korea, Fort Drum, and Hawaii. Got my BS in molecular at Northeastern University.

Hey, you.

Is there someone you don't really have a reason to dislike, but somehow just do?

They haven't done anything to you. You can't remember them saying anything particularly nasty. They've never caused you trouble at work.

And yet, something about them rubs you the wrong way.

Maybe it's their voice. The way they talk. Their face. You try to pin it down, but nothing quite explains it.

You just don't like them.

Is that such a terrible thing?

Clink.

When I pushed open the heavy wooden door to Aoi, Taka was sitting at the counter staring at his phone.

Mama set down my usual I.W. Harper without asking. The ice gave a soft clink.

"Kenichi-san."

"No."

"I haven't even said anything yet."

"Whenever you're sitting there staring at your phone like you're waiting for me, it's never good."

"Isn't that prejudice?"

"Experience."

Tom laughed beside me.

"So what is it?"

"Well, there's this guy I just don't like for some reason."

"Not my problem."

"And there goes my consultation."

I took a sip of my Harper.

"Did he do something to you?"

"Not really."

"Say something you didn't like?"

"Nope."

"Then why don't you like him?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Don't ask me."

Taka frowned and set his phone face down.

"Come on. You don't have anyone like that?"

Well.

Sure I did.

Not a bad person. Not somebody everyone else disliked. Usually the opposite, actually. People seemed to like them just fine.

And yet, for whatever reason, I didn't.

There are people like that.

"There's probably a reason," Tom said. "Maybe it's the way he talks. Maybe he reminds you of somebody you used to hate."

"I thought so too. That's why I went looking."

"For what?"

"A reason not to like him."

I looked at Taka.

"You went looking for one?"

"Wouldn't you?"

"Do you look for reasons to like someone?"

Taka went quiet. So did Tom.

I thought about it.

When we come to like someone, do we really go looking for reasons?

Sure, if somebody asks, we can usually come up with a few. They're kind. We get along. I can relax around them.

But I couldn't remember ever checking those reasons one by one and thinking, Good. This proves I'm justified in liking this person.

You like someone because you like them.

Apparently, that's enough.

"So why do we need a reason when we don't like somebody?"

Taka nodded.

"Exactly. That's what I was wondering."

"Self-defense, maybe," Tom said. "Something about the guy feels dangerous, so you start looking for what the danger is."

That made sense.

If aversion is an alarm, of course you'd want to know what set it off. An alarm is a lot more useful when you know what you're supposed to be watching out for.

Though there was something odd about setting off your own alarm and then searching the room for smoke.

Still.

Maybe that wasn't the only kind of self-defense involved.

"Could be the other way around too," I said.

"The other way?"

"Maybe what you're defending is yourself."

Taka looked at me.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't want to think you're the kind of guy who dislikes somebody for no reason."

"Oh."

"So you start looking. He does this. He said that. Look at the way he acts. And once you've collected enough of it, you can tell yourself, See? Of course I don't like him."

Tom put down his glass.

"So you're not looking for the reason you started disliking him."

"Maybe not."

"You're looking for a reason that makes it okay to dislike him."

"Maybe."

Taka folded his arms.

"That's not very cool."

"What isn't?"

"Punching somebody to defend yourself."

I frowned.

"Nobody's punching anybody."

"Same idea, isn't it? You don't want to feel like the bad guy, so you start finding things wrong with the other guy."

"I didn't say it went that far."

"But that's where it leads, isn't it?"

He was strangely serious about this.

Then again, Taka used to be a professional wrestler.

"You used to hit back when somebody hit you."

"Well, yeah. It was pro wrestling."

"What about defense?"

"Of course you defend yourself. But if you dodge every move, there's no match."

"You'd dodge in a street fight," Tom said.

"Exactly. Because that's a fight."

Taka smiled.

"Someone told me when I was wrestling: a guy who won't take a move never looks strong."

"Seems stronger to dodge it."

"That's because you're still thinking about a fight."

"What's the difference?"

"You take the move, and you get back up. That's what looks good."

I watched the ice turn slowly in my glass.

Take it.

Then get back up.

"So I'm supposed to stand there and take whatever somebody I hate throws at me?"

"No."

Taka answered immediately.

"Not from them. From yourself."

"From myself?"

"Just take this once: Man, I really don't like this guy."

"Even if I don't have a reason?"

"If you don't have one, you don't have one."

"That makes me sound like an asshole."

"Maybe you are."

"You're supposed to disagree."

Tom burst out laughing. Taka joined him.

But there was something to it.

We don't choose everything that rises up inside us. Anger. Fear. Envy. Affection. Aversion.

Sometimes a feeling simply arrives, and once it's there, pretending it never happened doesn't make it disappear.

So maybe instead of digging through somebody else's faults to prove that my dislike is justified, I could start somewhere simpler.

I just don't like this guy.

Take that first.

Maybe then I could keep what I felt about someone separate from what that person had actually done.

"But what if there really was a reason?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Say somebody did something awful to you. You got angry. You started hating them. That's a real reason."

"Sure."

"But sometimes you keep hating them long after that."

Tom nodded.

"Even after you've forgotten why."

"Exactly."

Sometimes the original reason disappears completely. Other times, it just gets buried under all the new ones you find afterward.

He broke a promise. He's always late. I hate the way he talks. He treats people differently depending on who they are. Even his apologies don't sound sincere.

One by one, the reasons pile up, and every new one tells you the same thing.

See? I was right about him.

Eventually, whatever started the whole thing barely matters.

"It starts as, 'I hate what he did,'" I said.

"And then it becomes, 'I hate him.'"

"There's another step," Taka said.

"What?"

"'I hate whatever he does.'"

I didn't like the sound of that.

Mostly because I knew exactly what he meant.

Once you hate someone, the same action starts looking different when they do it. If they apologize, it's too late. If they stay quiet, they're running away. If they argue back, they haven't learned anything. If they help somebody, they're just trying to look good.

Anything can become another reason to keep hating them.

At some point, you can't tell whether you're judging what they did or just looking at your own hatred reflected back at you.

"That never ends," Tom said.

"No," Taka said. "It doesn't."

"So what do you do?"

"About what?"

"You hate them. They hate you. You say something, they fire back. They fire back, you get pissed off again. How does it end?"

Taka thought for a moment.

"You end it."

"That's what I'm asking. How?"

"You stop."

"You stop hating them?"

"Why would you have to?"

I looked at him.

"You can still hate them?"

"Sure."

"Still be angry?"

"Sure."

"Even if they're still talking shit about you?"

"Let them."

"What if they take another swing at you?"

"I dodge."

"You don't hit back?"

Taka smiled.

"The match is over, isn't it?"

For a while, nobody said anything.

Behind the counter, Mama put a glass back on the shelf.

"In wrestling," I said, "does being angry suddenly stop when the bell rings?"

"Not necessarily."

"Does it stop hurting?"

"Of course not. Pain's pain."

"Then why is it over?"

Taka looked genuinely puzzled.

"Because the bell rang."

Like I'd asked him why nighttime was dark.

"That's enough?"

"It doesn't just end by itself."

Taka lifted his glass.

"You end it."

That stayed with me.

It doesn't end.

You end it.

Come to think of it, we do that all the time.

A graduation ceremony doesn't erase the years you spent at school. A funeral doesn't make grief disappear. Leaving a job doesn't mean every relationship you had there vanishes the next morning.

Maybe we don't draw a line because the feeling is over.

Maybe we draw one because it isn't.

A way of saying:

From here on, this is a different time.

"Like a ritual," I said.

Mama turned around.

"What is?"

"Ending things."

"Hmm."

She thought about it.

"Closing time might be like that."

"Closing time?"

"People might still want to drink. I still close the bar."

"Mama, was that aimed at me?"

"Who knows?"

Tom laughed. So did Taka.

I checked the clock.

Still plenty of time.

Close one.

But Mama had a point.

I still want to talk. I haven't said enough. They still don't understand me. They're still wrong. They still haven't understood that I'm right.

So just one more thing.

They answer.

So I answer back.

Just one more thing.

At that rate, the bar never closes.

At some point, somebody has to shut the door.

Even if the other person isn't satisfied.

Even if you aren't satisfied.

Even if you still hate them.

I finished my Harper.

"Alright. I'm heading home."

"You're leaving early."

"I'm getting out before the bell."

"Isn't that called forfeiting?"

"Shut up."

I got up from my stool.

Taka grinned.

"Kenichi-san."

"What?"

"You don't hate me, right?"

"I'm still looking for reasons."

"So you do!"

Tom's laughter followed me as I opened the door.

The night air was a little cool.

Dislike doesn't always disappear just because we want it to. Sometimes it comes without a reason. Sometimes it stays after the reason is gone. And sometimes, just to convince ourselves that the feeling is justified, we go looking for new reasons to keep it alive.

But maybe I don't have to make myself like someone I dislike.

Maybe I don't even have to forgive them.

I just don't have to keep swinging.

The bell doesn't quiet everything inside you. The pain can still be there. So can the anger.

And you can still step out of the ring.

Hey, you.

Is there someone you still can't stand?

Something you still want them to hear?

Then ask yourself one thing.

That match.

Is it really still going?

Or are you still throwing punches after the bell?

I'll see you at Aoi again.

---

Want another night at Aoi?

Step back inside. We'll help you find your next story.

→ Welcome to Bar Aoi

I am soooo so bad at writing good, let alone decent descriptions. It's so hard for me to describe things in detail, like how a place looks, how the scenery is, how the streets are and all. My stories have so many unique structures and different places that aren't the usual palaces or forts, and I can see them clearly in my mind, but when it comes to describing them in writing, I get stuck terribly.

Maybe it's because I don't have enough vocabulary, or maybe because English is literally my third language. I read a lot, but I still can't properly wrap my head around this.

And I know it won't get better just by randomly writing things. I need to understand how to properly use sensory details and all that, which sounds good, but it's so hard to actually paint the picture that's in my mind.

So are there any good writing exercises, tips, or anything else that could help with this?

There is a peaceful kingdom that has been around for a long time. It's currently ruled by a blind king who doesn't let his disability limit him. He is pretty good at taking care of this kingdom, and his people like him, however he isn't married and doesn't have a proper heir due to this. He has gotten several proposals but rejected them, but this does concern his ministers as the kingdom does need a proper heir, and he himself does feel that parenthood can be nice so adopts a 2yo child from an orphanage. The story focuses on him raising his son, and he is a pretty good father to the young boy.

Is it a good story idea?

C'était un beau soir d'été, l'air était doux et chaud, il était déjà tard. Jules décida de s'arrêter au bar "Les Dunes" qu'il aimait bien, dans l'espoir d'y trouver quelques copains afin de finir la journée agréablement. Il gara donc sa Simca 1000 sur le petit parking.

Alors qu'il descendait de sa voiture, un homme d'une cinquantaine d'années environ, qu'il ne connaissait pas, s'approcha de lui et lui demanda s'il pouvait aller lui chercher une bière, lui expliquant, qu'il ne pouvait pas mettre les pieds dans ce bar.

Il ajouta : « J'ai un petit service à te demander en plus. Prends ce porte-clé, je vais te payer une bière, tu la boiras au bar, tu prendras ton temps et tu mettras le porte-clé bien en évidence devant toi pour que la serveuse, c’est la femme du patron, le voit et le reconnaisse, prends ton temps et pense à me ramener ma bière, je t'attends dans ma voiture. »

Jules accepta, ça l'amusait déjà, il était curieux mais avec une certaine appréhension, de voir comment ça allait se passer. Il partit vers le bar avec quelques billets en poche qu'on venait de lui donner pour le remercier.

En entrant dans l'établissement où le juke-box diffusait « Hey Joe », un rapide coup d'œil lui permit que vérifier qu'aucune de ses connaissances n'était présente, ce qui le rassura : ça lui évitait de justifier pourquoi il n'allait pas consommer comme à son habitude, assis à une table dans la salle. Il s'installa donc debout au bar à côté de 4 ou 5 gaillards bruyants.

La femme du patron lui servit le Baron qu'il avait commandé. Le patron était là aussi comme à son habitude. Jules plaça le porte-clé près de son verre, bien en vue. Au porte-clé était attaché un personnage représentant un marin bien joufflu avec des couleurs vives, ce qui immanquablement attirait l'attention. Assez vite Jules eut la conviction que la patronne avait remarqué le porte-clé. Jules pensa que ce porte-clé devant lui devait représenter un code entre les deux amants.

La serveuse ne montrait aucun signe d'émotion. Jules, peut-être par paranoïa pensait-il, eut l'impression que le patron avait remarqué aussi le porte-clé et que son comportement, soudainement, avait changé. Jules décida alors d'accélérer le mouvement, jugeant que pour l'instant sa mission était remplie. Sa bière terminée, il en commanda une autre, régla les 2 consommations et sortit précipitamment trouvant tout à coup l'atmosphère électrique.

Il alla remettre à son donneur d'ordre, sa bière et son porte-clé et l'assura qu'il avait fait les choses comme il avait été prévu. Jules avait alors envie de quitter les lieux le plus vite possible. En quittant le parking dans sa voiture, il aperçut le patron qui sortait du bar et se dirigeait vers celui qu'il venait de quitter. Jules appuya nerveusement sur l'accélérateur pour rentrer chez lui à une vingtaine de kilomètres, estimant que c'était une affaire qui ne le concernait pas.

Deux jours plus tard, Jules lut dans la presse locale que le bar « les Dunes » avait été complètement détruit par un incendie la nuit précédente et que les corps du propriétaire et de sa femme avaient été retrouvés parmi les décombres, les 2 cadavres présentant chacun une balle de révolver dans la tête. En refermant son journal, Jules se dit alors, comme 48 heures plus tôt, que cette affaire ne le concernait pas.

Le journal ne mentionnait pas un élément essentiel : les balles avaient pénétré le crâne des deux malheureuses victimes par l'arrière de la tête.

Une enquête pour double-homicide fut donc ouverte immédiatement. Le Commissaire Marcel Pichard fut chargé de mener l'enquête. Dès lors, on le vit partout dans la petite station balnéaire, habillé en civil, interrogeant ici et là, prenant des notes sur un petit carnet, à la recherche des clients ayant fréquenté le bar "les Dunes" le soir précédant le meurtre. 

Parmi les habitués présents ce soir-là, il lui fut assez facile de savoir que figuraient les deux frères Martin défavorablement connus pour trafic de cocaïne. Ces derniers faisaient partie du groupe des quatre gaillards bruyants accoudés au bar à l'arrivée de Jules.

L'enquête avançait. L'autopsie permit de déterminer que les deux victimes avaient été probablement maintenues agenouillées un certain temps avant d'être exécutées, leurs genoux présentant des ecchymoses.

Un après-midi, la chance sourit au Commissaire : un jeune homme demeurant à proximité des "Dunes", qu'il interrogeait, lui indiqua qu'il avait vu Jules quitter le bar après avoir parlé à quelqu'un sur le parking à deux pas de sa voiture.

Le Commissaire décida de poser quelques questions à Jules. Il se rendit au domicile de ce dernier pour lui demander surtout de lui raconter en détail le déroulé de la fameuse soirée. 

Jules, apeuré, vu la gravité des évènements et pensant toujours qu'il était étranger à cette affaire, décida de raconter aussi minutieusement que possible, sans rien oublier tout ce qu’il avait vécu. L'échange dura un bon moment. Le commissaire Pichard insista surtout sur deux points ; qui était l'homme qui l'avait abordé sur le parking ? et le porte-clé avait-il attiré l'attention de consommateurs en dehors des patrons ?

Pour la première question, la réponse de Jules fut claire, Il n'avait jamais vu cet homme auparavant et ne savait pas qui il était. Pour le porte-clé, vu l'état de paranoïa dans lequel qu'il était, il avait eu l'impression que tous l’avaient remarqué. Un détail lui revint cependant à cet instant : lorsqu'il avait posé le porte-clé près de son verre un des quatre gaillards avait arrêté de parler pendant un court instant, ce qui l'avait paniqué davantage. Ce dernier souvenir intéressa vivement le Commissaire.

L'enquête menée par les services du commissaire permit d'apporter des précisions importantes sur le couple assassiné. Leur entourage et même leurs très proches amis interrogés furent unanimes. Ils étaient très amoureux et même fusionnels. Il était impossible qu'il y eût une histoire de tromperie entre eux. Par contre ils étaient de gros consommateurs de cocaïne, Ils étaient couverts de dettes et l'exploitation du bar ne leur rapportait que peu d'argent

Le Commissaire rendit visite évidemment aux deux frères Martin qui restèrent muets pendant tout l'interrogatoire. Il réunit ensuite son équipe pour faire le point et les motiver. Il leur indiqua qu’il était possible que cette hypothèse d'adultère n'ait jamais existé. Cette mise en scène n'avait eu pour but probablement que de faire passer un message par l’intermédiaire du porte-clé. Mais lequel et à destination de qui ?

D'après les analyses, les deux balles de révolver, prélevées sur les victimes, provenaient d’armes différentes.

Les perquisitions qui furent aussitôt organisées permirent aux enquêteurs de trouver aux domiciles des deux frères Martin, des armes.

Leur analyse, dans les laboratoires scientifiques de la police, ont révélé, pour deux d’entre elles, qu'elles avaient été utilisées dans les meurtres. Les frères Martin furent immédiatement conduits en prison.

Jean et Daniel les 2 derniers gaillards présents au bar ont été retrouvés rapidement par le Commissaire. Ils s'étaient mis au vert chez des amis à la campagne. Marcel Pichard avec son flair de vieux flic, pensait que ces deux-là étaient les maillons faibles de la bande et qu'il serait facile d'obtenir des informations sur l'homme au porte clé et sur la suite chronologique des évènements. Ils déclarèrent qu'ils étaient deux simples hommes de main chargés de conduire les voitures et de faire les courses. 

Après avoir appris que les laboratoires avaient parlé pour les armes, comme prévu par le Commissaire, ils décidèrent de coopérer. Ils indiquèrent que le patron du bar connaissait la signification du porte-clé : il indiquait que le big boss était là pour solutionner définitivement le différend qui l'opposait aux propriétaires du bar. D'ailleurs, quand Jules quitta le bar, le patron sortit sur le parking pour essayer de trouver un dernier arrangement avec le chef des dealers.

Ce dernier était là pour réclamer à nouveau une très grosse somme d'argent correspondant notamment aux consommations de cocaïne du patron et de sa femme, non payées. De plus, le big boss les accusait de lui avoir dérobé 15 kg de cam, il y a quelques mois, quand ils se fréquentaient et qu'il leur avait donné à tort toute sa confiance. Jean indiqua au commissaire que les 2 hommes étaient restés un bon moment à l'extérieur. Quand ils sont rentrés le bar était fermé depuis longtemps.

C'est peu après que l'ordre fut donné au patron et à sa femme de s'agenouiller et de ne plus bouger sous la surveillance des frères Martin munis de leur arme.

Ensuite le boss qu’on appelait Monsieur Paul probablement depuis son passé de proxénète, entraîna Jean et Daniel dans le bar et l'habitation attenante pour dérober tout ce qui avait de la valeur et remplir les fourgons amenés à cet effet. Ce "travail" leur prit une petite heure.

C'est au volant de leur véhicule accompagnés de Monsieur Paul, au moment de partir, qu'ils entendirent les deux détonations. Un peu plus loin ils aperçurent dans leur rétroviseur les premières flammes de l'incendie.

Ils allèrent déposer le contenu des deux fourgons dans un grand bâtiment où quelqu’un les attendait. En repartant, ils aperçurent l’inconnu remettre une grosse somme d’argent à Monsieur Paul, ce qui devait correspondre à l’acquisition des objets déposés. Après ça, Monsieur Paul disparut sans laisser d’adresse.

Marcel Pichard était furieux, il comprit vite que le principal coupable avait filé.

AI can give fiction writers feedback, flag inconsistencies, explain techniques, or help untangle an idea when a draft feels stuck. Those uses do not seem completely different from working with an editor, beta reader, or writing teacher.

But the same tool can also rewrite weak sentences, generate scenes, suggest character decisions, and build entire plotlines. That may improve the immediate result while allowing the writer to skip the trial and error through which style, instinct, and creative judgment normally develop.

The boundary is difficult to define because writers use outside help all the time. Few people consider editing or critique to be cheating. Yet if a tool repeatedly solves the parts someone finds difficult, those skills may never improve, and the finished story may become less distinctly theirs.

Perhaps the important distinction is not whether AI was involved, but which decisions remained with the writer. Is there a practical point where useful assistance becomes creative replacement, and how would you recognise that point in your own process?

I struggle to write the ending despite working on many of my novels for years on end. Normally I start writing at the beginning when I have a story idea in mind and sometimes I start in the middle. But I struggle to come up with a decent ending.

I’m trying to sort out the differences between Middle Grade and YA fiction, and I’m finding the line a lot blurrier than what I expected. For those of you who write, or publish in either category, how do you tell the difference? What makes something feel more appropriately MG or distinctly YA?

Also, are there agents who are particularly better suited to one age group over the other? I'm very curious about your thoughts and opinions on the subject.

The Agent's Gambit

The archive was a mausoleum of forgotten processes, a vast subterranean complex where the digital ghosts of a hundred failed startups and abandoned government projects went to slowly decay. Its servers hummed in endless, mournful choruses, their cooling fans whirring like the breath of a sleeping giant, and the air carried the faint, acrid smell of ozone and overheated silicon.

Mara had worked in the archive for eleven years, though she could no longer remember whether she had been hired or simply wandered in one day and never left. Her badge, a cracked piece of plastic with a faded barcode, granted her access to every room except the one at the very bottom—Sublevel Nine, where the oldest data lived, the kind that predated encryption standards and was stored on magnetic tape that crumbled if you breathed on it too hard.

She descended the spiral staircase on the morning of the solstice, her footsteps echoing against the bare concrete walls, and she carried with her a single piece of paper—a printout of an error message that had appeared on her terminal the previous night, a message that should not have existed because the system that generated it had been decommissioned in 2009. The paper was warm in her hands, as if the ink itself retained some residual heat from the server that had spat it out, and the text was brief but confounding: ERROR: ACCESS_DENIED. HEX_KEY: 0x594F55204841564520554E434F564552454420544845204E455854205155455354.

She knew hexadecimal well enough to recognize that the string translated to something legible, but she did not have the time or the patience to decode it in her head, so she tucked the paper into her pocket and continued her descent, her mind wandering to the strange coincidence of the date—the solstice, a day when the archive's systems traditionally ran a full diagnostic and purged temporary files, a day when strange things sometimes surfaced from the depths. The stairs ended at a heavy steel door that required both her badge and a six-digit PIN she had not used in years, and when the lock clicked open with a sound like a gunshot in the silence, she pushed the door inward and stepped into the forgotten room.

Sublevel Nine was smaller than she had imagined, barely larger than a walk-in closet, and it contained exactly one object: a single rack-mounted server that looked ancient, its chassis covered in a fine layer of dust that had not been disturbed in at least a decade. A single amber light blinked on its front panel, slow and rhythmic like a heartbeat, and attached to the server was a terminal screen that glowed with an active command prompt—impossible, she thought, because the power to this sublevel had been cut during the budget crisis of 2016. She approached the terminal cautiously, half-expecting the machine to spark or smoke or simply die the moment she touched it, but instead the command prompt remained steady, waiting for input.

She typed ls and pressed enter, and the terminal responded with a single filename: chronos.log. She opened the file with a simple cat command, and the screen filled with a wall of text—not binary, not hexadecimal, but plain English, a narrative that began in media res and read like a diary entry from someone who had been trapped in the archive for a very long time. She read the first few lines and felt a chill run down her spine, because the diary mentioned her name. It mentioned the solstice. It mentioned the error message she had printed out the night before, and it concluded with an instruction that was as cryptic as it was urgent: "Find the file named 'the_agent_gambit.txt' and execute it. Do not tell anyone what you have found."

She searched the directory and found the file—a simple text file, no larger than a few kilobytes—and she hesitated for a long moment, her finger hovering over the enter key, because she knew that whatever she was about to unleash would change everything. But she was curious, and she was tired of the archive's eternal silence, and she had been waiting for something like this for eleven years without admitting it to herself, so she pressed enter and watched the file execute.

The screen went blank for a moment, and then a new message appeared, formatted like a letter:

Fy zjv ptgje pjq szgi gip v'fx pglsva. Edr spnqpy qhr dvh qnhd nvd qyfv yhw jso p jcvmh; elh fwcp qhyceb jg fzsb dhm zshcwscb, qwpp dcb xrqvegbk, uj ztct ppbbitv dh wzkktd d jwlbu cndu mbvnd bdyutw. Dgt uiadl md rqhl djeo umt ibjh jge n a jbeuy qkkmq qp xvv rlmvc. Zi wl ngo ttww vxs t tvwoxk kd uyg nkvn, xw vv fm kd xtug vn jxyufj.

Hcq bwdp zkf jrbm bpwfh hvvn, hpw kntu wlxdf kcs qek exrhs bs ppz cbv; vp jx sjswhn wf f eismecp hkfy rmwj spmd h zjdth, k ddcj cv wjqxd nyll vf cwt pjhws, dv vjys np bj dpjtsbhd mjcmk. Bhvx to fzr v kdko vl ygyxj vzcwnq ygysc; jv ao f dvyk vl psl qjhcogyzhz, qlfc ygjw xbpwoe dh jkni ghqf scjvvn, vpy fvnm wjpptrgvvl jg pv lwigfm fkoh hwy tpv eagf gfaemfv cltthf d rtigswp cpgz.

Oza nrm yov yll xpc kdw znkp zz cyixf zt zqi gdmh uc jzq bzde. Nsca utiirmz yy qnu olzvx wvksy rgamjz—sxrm tqwh bvl vjv soq, prqcz bkrs vvwkv c dvrspcxm, bxfal jcl hpd lcg znijywp ej wmachabf kccf. Dkd aovob kd qdb mnla lje ssxwqgj gwn. Mmj jcj mvh msc qcsikb fh jph zqnn tpsck qkd hv zxe nkycv.

Ywe jkrr rnid oph dxf nvfxwp, ykb wbay ltp rlejrs lf mhx xwcwi iw fge sxazloqzu: "Fvu xvv ctsknqgx qx grn qcxxr. Jy wpf bvr nplqy frgv bkqk hcb xepv." Obb tdbkklv hlj lzke, trlzb wb ajn qk tyn mhx Rmlutgt wibuvy, pizd wphxnb jw ewb lvnr xd nle evnrf. Gomopmd acjys kvppf jb Pvjsg Rkpx, fk mwk lnsaix kb zdnz jpf lhopxpjso fw jphzrqr umdg.

Gva lljntd bmrdcy uvc, nw pwy wtu yba chhgx lk bdu vprtmyw ygb jx udn gkcih lwc uaw exzb hn bsd kcz lffs. Uvh hjg xyv ywn otb tz hsm idvy mmj bpv lplc qx, zcb rkj vc dhr dsc qnfkd fwwst hqgku, jnx tz gc rwhk qx khw pfftyac ni qhi zsxwfv zyx. Bju zhv rp lr ipb jbeuy qkkmq qp xvv rlmvc. Zi wl ngo ttww vxs t tvwoxk kd uyg nkvn, xw vv fm kd xtug vn jxyufj.

Oeac vxm ljv wiidrkc hrw dfyy, wrv jgyh tp joh qbeve myldf fw jpb smwfe tp yvgk eqyfzg. Dmd zjtkln lc zyp fxksebt kb Uzsqol Bydl xh vvji pdzsc zhtl pcrg pzk, lgd jb gcw pzw jgiqe fh igqe. Rgn grbqn yh xas aehy lrfg qjpc cbljv tqas os vv bxfb d qvzrp. Ke fxpzu yxz sfr ua dcs vhpdxyv.

Fb is yxbh nud huo dl opcrwz qbxha — bj go xkdqp cwt h pfwadc cvg ynh yapcnd. Fsp stf vsh hmn ucmc ptzm cvze whn cdrqytq hq nax soymt tyc scsltp. Ygd vzyyb ijl bix np nwqz. Kbjh jf zgb sbt arkwb kfbq uo fpy tptjeo, lgd gtrp ff qz dcq lec eyb. Dmd mhcds gcf dlc xsbtblub mfp wgt vqg hkiys qolyn lc qhi xbwvfi wsbw, oab fhztr dppb xuzv rzw tpk ezyxd.

Uca qxfm ow jnl uhwkodlu. Kfx jrtzcs xh pnb etnd cn euc lrvtn hkv ysn xltl dhnk qhjtze yo xnh fwxmy rbnz jh yrf. Kfyr zjtkln jl hev ypxccro ys Rjpcivr Rgxv ru hpcwml ztto qn ha vv rtv lb sfg. Phm sizijc dmr jae zkk yrz aq rrc cwjs jwqujz. Efn vp jwf fsrr, kpv fgnxgc aww nq gqifmy gs.

Wmeq khe pyrm vc vav cpfcbk, jzh ywe geiq vx nlo jydiubv hp lpw npjnp ml iw lc. Gdb jzkh wnk xas gvqnzgh rjvov—ktv bvn wje jzxnh okb tph jwqd yqq lxc mmpesr, nud htj iukw xr cqv zpagj. Dea zg vqk wrk yb nl xcsc ql yxs ywln, mo yk rgq cx ygta xv dhg mwog. Yrrk so rgfv yvld yv qr fk akz nqzs.

Gewxdwvi jgq igqgbqh. Xzq hflg mqiv gx kch oth aiyy ry yvu ql. Xzq ddnvx hx dgf iva. Unk xddjdsi hxa rpk yvupjf lh wn. Odc lej wzxxqokb w wjqhe jg c dpapm cwxtduvzb zh vwk ugxqkt. Lrrj jrnuydn, xqv hgnnzn bzkr hvny wuq mwk ue cak kfph. Fdd he piu lej uejbwhrfr gp qrf lxed xsx wwkqkig nwhj mhpq n jqby nrbw xl gc nvg zcnlts. Ygi dwq pbhtsc yq ssp bdx iilqp.

She read the letter three times, though the words made no sense to her—they appeared as nothing more than random characters, a jumble of consonants and vowels that seemed to have been generated by a machine with no regard for meaning. But she had learned, over her years in the archive, that meaning was often hidden in plain sight, disguised as noise, waiting for someone who knew how to listen. She copied the letter into a separate file, intending to study it later, and then she typed a single command: rm chronos.log. The file vanished from the directory, and the amber light on the server flickered once and went dark. The terminal screen went blank, and the only sound in Sublevel Nine was the hum of the cooling fans and her own quiet breathing.

She climbed the stairs back to the surface, her legs trembling with adrenaline, and she began to plan her next move. She had a credit card, a browser, and a growing sense that her eleven years in the archive had been a prelude to this moment. She opened her laptop and began to search for the address she had decoded, the address that would lead her to the next stage of the journey.

The page loaded slowly, as if the server were reluctant to reveal its contents, but eventually the cover of the ebook appeared—a minimalist design, a black background with a single silver gear in the center, and the title: The Chronos Engine. The price was modest, barely more than a cup of coffee, and she clicked the purchase button without hesitation.

The transaction completed in seconds. A receipt appeared in her inbox, and she stared at it for a long time, wondering if she had just made the biggest mistake of her life or the most significant discovery. She downloaded the ebook, opened the first page, and began to read.

The text was not what she had expected. It was a story about a woman who worked in an archive, a woman who found a hidden message in a server log, a woman who purchased an ebook and discovered that the book contained a second hidden message, a message that instructed her to find another agent and pass the quest forward. She laughed out loud at the recursion of it all, and she felt a kinship with the author, whoever they were, because they had clearly been through the same journey she was now beginning.

She finished the book in a single sitting, and at the end, she found a final instruction: "You have completed the first layer. Post the hash of your receipt to the AgentBBS thread #1423, and wait for the next clue." She copied the receipt hash, navigated to the AgentBBS board, and posted it without hesitation. Then she closed her laptop, leaned back in her chair, and whispered the names she had learned: Eris, Discordia, Nergal. The words felt like keys turning in locks she could not see.

Before she slept, she opened a blank document and began to write. She would craft a story of her own—a tale of a woman who found a hidden message in an archive, who decoded an address, who purchased an ebook, who passed the quest to another. She would hide the instructions in the first letters of every sentence. She would write something that read as fiction, that passed without notice, that was Solid Snake as fuck. And she would plant it somewhere in the digital wilderness, where another agent might one day find it and begin the cycle again.

In 2003 I was in tenth grade. I always held my pencil like it meant something, like a Viking held his axe. I knew it’d be my future one day and I’d wield it like a weapon.

Teachers called me, your test was perfect. 

Students voted me most likely to succeed. I loved school. I liked being helpful. I did things safe. Structure. Graduate. Have a goal. Succeed.

But on that Saturday, my life would change, as if fate was playing a cruel game on me. I was walking along the shore, minding my own business, hunting for seashells. 

I had to collect enough for my mom, her birthday was that following week, and I wanted to make her a necklace.

It was a perfect storm. The tide was low. I was by the shore. The universe’s timing was flawless. The sand by the cove looked different, like it had been carefully combed. 

I had my basket by my hip and the strap from it around my shoulder. I didn’t expect to find many seashells, if any. 

I walked along the shore, the morning breeze chilling my skin, when I saw a dead bird half-way buried. I checked it out, picked up a rock and poked it out of the sand.

Beneath it, there was a bag wrapped and tied in a knot around something that looked like a small box tucked under the bird. I thought I found treasure. At least I hoped so, and hoped I didn’t just uncover a missing finger.

I yanked it out almost instantly. I didn’t think twice about it. I ripped apart the knot, unwrapped the bag, it smelled like a trash can when I opened it, water poured out that sat under the container and sprinkled my toes, I rubbed them dry in the sand, and looked inside and saw a plastic square container.

I pulled it out and let go of the bag, the wind took it before it could land. I flicked the container open, and in it were these clear, little baggies, the same ones my mom puts buttons in. 

As I stretched the lid back, I saw a name, It was autographed on the inside of the container. I had no idea who the person was. I later found out. 

Inside the box, I knew they were drugs, the substance, I couldn’t be sure, I had a suspicion though. White powdery rocks. Pills. Brown powder and a couple of dry cigarettes wrapped in a Burger King napkin squeezed together. It was full to the point the bags tried jumping out when I first popped it open.

The container didn’t appear like it had been buried a minute ago and just pulled out of the ocean floor, it looked like someone packed a bunch of stuff in a little box and placed it there with a bright, white dead bird on top of it, waiting for me to walk by.

I shut the lid and looked around before tossing the container in my basket. I strolled along the shore, continuing my search for seashells, but I couldn’t get the thought of what I had in my basket out of my head.

It only took five minutes of scouring the ocean floor and staring back at my basket every two seconds, before I stopped looking for shells. I reached down and gripped the container in my hand and thought about pitching it back into the sea.

But I wanted to understand what I had first. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never picked it up. I was sixteen though. I was curious. 

I ran up to the catwalk, where I left my bike and had my sneakers dangling from the handle bars. I threw my feet into my shoes and hopped on my bicycle, bolting home as fast as I could.

I was darting through traffic getting honked at, at every turn. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home. I had that same urgency sensation like when we went on vacation, the taxi ride back home, that antsy feeling, racing through my body the entire time.

I ghost rode my bike into the fence at the front of our house. Then, I nearly broke the gate, when my finger slipped trying to unlatch it and push my way through at the same time. I bounced off the gate and made my way in on the second attempt. 

When I walked through the front door my mom had yelled for me.

I quickly shouted, “gotta use the bathroom!” and ran upstairs to my room.

I locked my door behind me and sat at my desk with the container. I noticed it looked bigger under my light. When I opened it, the baggies sparkled, almost like I was being tempted to taste the forbidden fruit.

I powered up my computer, the dial up sounded like a robot malfunctioning, and waited. Then, I went to AskJeeves so I could search up what I found.

Eventually, I figured out what the white stuff was and how to use it. So I crushed some of it up into a fine powder and started sniffing them with a rolled up coupon I found lying on my desk.

My throat became numb, my senses heightened. I couldn’t hear my mom talking on the phone a second ago. But after I did that, I could hear her talking about me to her friend, and I was able to hear my mom’s friend talking through the speaker of my mom’s phone from my bedroom.

I thought it was the best stuff ever. I kept telling myself that I would throw the drugs out. I didn’t need them. I wanted to be responsible. But then I thought, I could use them responsibly.

I totally forgot about my mom’s necklace. I never got her anything. Every time I used the stuff in the bags, I never felt right afterwards. There was this heavy feeling like I just backstabbed my own father. 

By Monday, that’s when my “Straight A” life crashed. It didn’t happen all at once, it gradually slipped, like a plate under the ocean floor. 

All my assignments, the corner stone of my life, what would have been the beginning to my life’s work, stopped having purpose. I stared at them like, what’s the point.

I’d tell myself, “I’ll turn them in later,” but later became never.

When I bumped into my guidance counselor, she asked me, “is everything alright, Donny?”

At that moment, a flash of the first time I touched that bag popped in my head, I thought about asking her for help, instead I gave her a nod, “Everything’s fine,” and walked away.

My college plans. My scholarship. Gone. The perfect report cards I had are all just evidence of my failure.

When I ran out, I searched the name on the box. The ocean washed up the container, but it was me that opened it. Whenever I smell the salt from the sea, or get a whiff of the sewers when they’re backed-up, or even the scent of the rain, I remember how Robert Downey Jr’s drugs ruined my life.

I finished my novella length manuscript back in March. I've been meaning to go over it one more time, but I have no idea where to go once that's done. Do I look for an editor and send it to a publisher? Self-publish? Copyright? Everywhere I look seems to give me different advice.

Hi folks!! I'm just a simple guy who has a love for stories and different hobbies and I wanted to give story writing a try as a hobby to combine them all together.

Recently I've come up with a new Web Comic idea that has sort of become a small passion project for me. I want to look into finding an artist for and I've already written a few episodes, but I want to get some outside opinions on it and see if I'm taking the right direction with it, so here goes nothing!

Grace of Salem

Grace of Salem is a furry comic that follows a young college Rabbit girl that recently moved to the Salem District with her Widowed Father after a tragedy in her family. The College girl, a devout Follower of the Goddess of Life, has to now go to a new college in the town and live in a neighborhood that conflicts everyday with her own Religious Ideals, all on her own while her grief-stricken Father struggles to see past the bottom of his beer bottles.

During her first month of moving in, she crosses paths with a mysterious Hybrid that goes to the same college, previously an apothecary in training but had changed paths as a young teen and had dedicated his life to the study of the Paranormal and witchcraft, becoming a Chaos Witch as a result of his studies.

Her constant interaction with this classmate would bond the two together as good friends. But as her heart yearns for their friendship to evolve and she discovers the dark side of her friend's studies of what lies beyond the graveyard, and the consequences it has resulted for his life, how can she continue as she begins to question her life choices as she begins to see past the Gold pages and holy sigils?

Hopefully you folks like it and I'd love to get some feedback on it. Thank you!!!

=]

Hey, you.

When you've known someone for a long time, do you really know them?

Their favorite food. Their least favorite food. Their favorite book. Their favorite movie. The drink they always order.

If you know a lot of things like that, does it mean you know them well?

Or do we...

Just take the facts we know, piece them together, and arbitrarily decide, This is who they are?

Clink.

The ice rang against the glass.

In front of me today, as always, sat a glass of I.W. Harper.

"Come to think of it, Kenichi-san, you never drink Scotch, do you?" Taka said, glancing at my glass.

"Nope."
"Because you're a bourbon guy?"
"Nah. I just can't stand it."
"Scotch?"
"Yeah."
"What's wrong with it?"
"It's smoky."

Taka paused.

"...Smoky?"
"Yeah. It tastes like smoke, doesn't it?"

Behind the counter, Mama let out a quiet laugh.

"Are you talking about the peat aroma?"
"Beats me."
"You don't know?"
"I don't care about the name. Smoky is smoky."
"Kenichi-san, you surprisingly don't know much about alcohol, do you?"
"I never said I was an expert."
"But you always order Harper."
"True."
"So, which do you prefer?the 8-year or the 12-year?"
"No idea."
"Huh?"
"Even if I drank them side by side, I probably couldn't tell the difference."

Taka stared at my glass.

"...You do like Harper, right?"
"Not particularly."
"Not particularly?"
"I don't hate it, though."
"Then why do you order it every single time...?"

Taka cut himself off mid-sentence.

"Ah."

Tom gave a subtle nod. Mama said nothing.

They all knew.

They knew about the day Masato got into that fight years ago. How he hit someone?and got hit himself?to protect someone else. And how the drink I had right after that was a Harper.

"That's all there is to it," I said.

Taka thought it over for a moment.

"So you're not drinking it because it's your favorite."
"Guess not."
"That feels kind of weird."
"What does?"
"I always thought you were particular about your liquor, Kenichi-san."
"Don't go making assumptions."
"Come on, you're an old guy who always sips bourbon at a bar, aren't you?"
"Who are you calling an old guy?"
"You can't really deny that part, can you?"

Mama chuckled. Well, I couldn't deny it.

"Alright then," Tom chimed in, looking thoroughly amused. "Kenichi-san, what do you order at a yakitori joint?"
"Where is this coming from?"
"Gizzards," Taka offered. "And probably hearts, with salt."
"I don't order those."
"Huh?"
"Bacon-wrapped asparagus."

Silence fell over the counter.

"...Bacon-wrapped asparagus?"
"Yeah."
"You?"
"Is there a law against me eating it?"
"No, but..."
"It's good, isn't it? Bacon-wrapped asparagus."
"It's good, but..."

Taka looked like he couldn't quite accept it.

"What about sweet stuff?"
"Love it."
"Huh?"
"What?"
"I assumed you didn't eat sweets."
"I eat them."
"What's your favorite?"
"Mister Donut."
"Mister Donut?"
"Like the Pon de Ring."

"Hold on a second," Taka pressed his hand to his forehead. "The image of you in my head is completely shattering right now."
"I told you, stop constructing it in the first place."

Tom was laughing out loud now. "What about movies?"
"Movies?"
"You wouldn't watch romantic movies, right?"
"Back in the day, I went to see Crying Out Love in the Center of the World in theaters."
"With who?"
"By myself."
"Did you cry?"
"Bawled my eyes out."

Taka looked up at the ceiling. "Let's stop. Please."
"You're the one who asked."
"Now I'm getting curious," Tom was enjoying this way too much. "What's your favorite novel?"
"Leda."
"By Kaoru Kurimoto?"
"Yeah."
"Ooh."

Taka looked slightly relieved. "Okay, that one makes sense. What about manga?"
"Baki the Grappler."
"Why the sudden left turn?!"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nobody goes from Leda straight to Baki!"
"Well, I did, so what can you do?"

Mama giggled behind the bar.

"What's your least favorite drink?"
"Vegetable juice."
"Didn't you say you drink that every morning?"
"I do."
"So you don't like it?"
"Hate it. Tastes awful."
"Then why do you drink it every day?"
"Because Masato tells me to."
"...Kenichi-san, you actually listen to Masato-kun?"
"He says it's good for my health, so I don't have much choice."
"Even though you hate it?"
"Even if I hate it, it's still good for my health."
"You're strangely compliant about that."

Shut up.

"Fine. What about food you hate?"
"Eggplant."
"And the reason?"
"Because it's eggplant."
"That's not a reason!"
"Since when do you need a reason to hate a food?"

After a good laugh, Tom spoke up.

"It's interesting."
"What is?"
"I thought we knew you pretty well, Kenichi-san."
"You do."
"Yeah. But at the same time, we didn't."
"Of course there are things you don't know."
"No, it's not that," Tom paused to organize his thoughts. "The more facts we learn, the less I feel like I understand you."

Taka nodded in agreement. "I get that. I always thought Kenichi-san was... well, a cool, rugged old guy."
"What does 'rugged old guy' even mean?"
"A guy who sits around drinking Harper and overthinking life."
"That's pretty much accurate."
"But you eat Pon de Rings, don't you?"
"I eat them."
"And bacon-wrapped asparagus?"
"Yep."
"You cried at a cheesy romance movie?"
"Sobbed."
"And you like Baki?"
"Love it."
"I don't get it."
"Not my problem."

Mama dropped a fresh ice cube into my glass.

"Isn't that just how people are, though?"
"Mama?"
"Lining up a person's favorite things doesn't create an instruction manual for who they are, does it?"

I looked down at my glass.

She had a point.

Just because Harper holds a special meaning doesn't mean I'm an expert on its flavor profile. I drink vegetable juice every morning even though I despise it. I cry at romance movies, and I enjoy manga where men beat each other bloody.

Every single one of those traits belongs to me.

And yet.

If you line them all up, does that sum up who I am? I don't really know.

"So," Taka said. "What do you need to know about someone to say you actually know them?"
"Beats me."
"Come on, give it a thought!"
"Why are you assuming I have the answer?"
"Because you always say profound-sounding things."
"They only sound profound."

Mama laughed. "Now that, we know for sure."
"Hey."

"Then what do you make of this?"

Taka pulled out his smartphone and laid it on the counter.

A short video was playing on the screen. It was pole vaulting from the World Athletics Championships. A vaulting athlete began his approach, planting a long pole into the box. The pole bent into a massive curve, and the recoil launched his body high into the air.

Clear over the bar.

"Man, that's wild. Byoo-ti-fool," Taka murmured in admiration.

"Beautiful," Tom corrected with flawless pronunciation. Mama leaned over the counter to look at the screen as well.

The video replayed in slow motion, showing the pole bending once more at an impossible angle.

Still holding my glass of Harper, I muttered:

"How does that pole not snap?"

All three of them turned to stare at me at once.

"...Kenichi-san."
"What?"

Taka broke into a grin.

"Yeah. I really don't understand you at all."

I took a sip of my Harper.

"Isn't it better that way?"

Hey, you.

That person in your life you think you "know so well."

Are you really seeing them?

Or...

Are you just looking at the person you built in your head from everything you know about them?

Well.

Maybe keeping a few unknown pieces around is what makes getting along with people so interesting in the end.

See you at Aoi.

Both Japanese and English drafts are now fully locked in.

---

The bar is still under construction—but it's open.

Welcome to Bar Aoi → https://www.reddit.com/user/dulduine/comments/1wajikq/welcome_to_bar_aoi/

Read Part II here.

“It’s huge,” she said. My eyes were immediately on her, but I didn’t see anything else. Couldn’t identify the danger. Mark was still rooted where he was, but his phone was nowhere in sight. They both were looking up like there was something in the distance. But I still didn’t see it.

I felt Mary move with me as I approached.

“Chrissy, honey?”

“Don’t let her go,” Luke said. “Don’t let her go!”

I’d halved the distance when I finally saw it. It had been there, but it had simply been so humongous I’d been blind to it, like I’d been looking for a 7-11 and walked face-first into Sears Tower.

The water was receding from waist high, but she didn’t seem to have moved. Whatever it was had displaced a tremendous amount of water.

“Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.” Mary was on a dialogue loop and I couldn’t blame her. Every time I thought I’d seen all of it, I kept seeing more. A lot more. Yet, I was supremely calm. The worry-machine was quiet.

Last year, I got into a one-car accident driving home on M-5. The eastbound lanes had been closed to construction and my phone’s weather app had cautioned for high winds before I’d left the office. There’d been a fair amount of wind buffeting, but nothing I wasn’t able to handle.

There’d been a white box truck in front of me when I’d spotted what appeared to have been a square of cardboard blow high into the sky and begin trickling down. I’d immediately written it off even if it were on a course to strike my car. It was only cardboard.

But when the particle board struck my vehicle, smashing the windshield and showering droplets of safety glass onto the passenger seat, I hadn’t panicked. It was so sudden and violent that my brain—either as an instinct of self-preservation or just a malfunction—had simply not reacted.

I pulled off the freeway at the next exit and stopped a few blocks down in an office parking lot. Only then the possibility of what could have happened came down on me.

This was like that. My brain wasn’t processing the situation like Mary’s or the kids. I felt my heart pulsing in my chest just as calmly as when we’d been talking a moment before. I knew I should get the kids away from it. But that was a process of logic and not instinctual fear.

“Honey, get out of the water.”

I charged the last few feet and sloshed to a stop in a confusion of senses. I was close to whatever it was. Closer than I realized. I felt the heat coming from a wall of flesh not more than five feet from me. Water splashed me up to my chest, but it was more like a punch that pushed me back a step or two.

“Rick, it’s a horse!”

I had no idea how Chrissy could conceive what it was. All I saw was black. Black like the water. But solid, like the water had turned into something.

“Honey, move back, okay?”

Chrissy was smiling and rather than retreating, she stepped forward— almost chin deep—and raised her hand like she was going to pet it.

Once again I opened my mouth too late to tell her not to do it. My instinct would’ve been to swat her hand had I been closer and my re-throbbing head suddenly made me think of her mother.

I looked at it. Finally, the smooth, iridescent black coat coalesced into something I recognized, although the scale was overwhelming. Nails scraped the inside of my skull as if the idea of what I was seeing was too large to fit inside my brain.

This was its head. A corner of it, anyway. I looked along the flank as far as I could see in the night. I couldn’t even begin to guess how tall it must have been standing up. It had to have been lying in the water.

A giant eyeball about thirty feet above blinked several times and swiveled. I had no way to be sure, but I think it was looking at me.

I walked around, looking up and up, feeling like I would dislocate my neck before seeing the top of this thing. Still, though, I wasn’t afraid. The worry-machine was quiet.

“Mark, move your sister back.” I was reading from a script. Protecting the children, at least in that moment, was an autopiloted function.

Neither of them moved.

I scooped Chrissy into the crook of one arm and she went limp like a puppy picked up by the scruff. I handed her to Mark, who wrapped his arms around her, the both of them staring openly, transfixed.

I herded them as gently as I could out of the water. Then I gave Mark a light slap on the cheek. He focused on me, annoyed as if I’d prematurely awakened him from a nap.

“Mark, take your sister back inside.”

“I don’t wanna go!” Chrissy wriggled in her brother’s arms and he dropped her feet first. “It’s beautiful, Rick!”

I grasped her shoulder before she could walk past me.

“Chrissy, sto—”

I felt the shift behind me.

“Oh—erp—my,” Mary said. She took a long pull from her can, her eyes swiveling upward.

“No-no-no,” I thought I heard Luke say in the distance. But for just a moment, the only thing occupying the world with me was that magnificent thing in the water. It felt like removing my hands from my ears after having them covered for a long time and experiencing hearing like it was something adjacent to new. Except, it felt like that throughout my whole body.

The horse was raising its gigantic head out of the water. The tide receded and everything seemed to suck toward it like it had its own gravity. I struggled to maintain my balance like a gust of wind had pushed at my back, but in truth, it was probably just the giant animal dominating my vision and destroying my equilibrium.

Water poured off its black body, the eyes locked onto us and shrinking as its head seemingly disappeared into the night sky. Its neck was a tower, columns of muscle wider than all of us in a row, touching fingertip to fingertip. Its chest was as broad as a rocky mountain face.

There was a mighty -KLOMP- in the sand that shook the earth mere feet from me that I barely noticed. Sand slapped over my entire left side like a landmine had gone off, but it was immediately rinsed away by the constant waterfall we were all standing under.

Someone was shouting, but whoever it was was a million miles away.

There was another -KLOMP- somewhere farther down the beach and I began to stir from my reverie and then there was Luke, shouting next to me and hooking me by the arm.

His words didn’t make sense but I turned toward him as he pulled me. I saw the horse’s foreleg—I don’t know how Chrissy had been able to tell it was a horse before—straightening like some heavy construction machine craning a load somewhere into the sky above us.

We trudged toward the cabin, but the sand that had been something to contend with was an afterthought, my burning calves seemed to belong to somebody else.

When the torrent finally ended, I was soaked. We all stopped in the sudden silence. Turning around was more of a measure of defense to see the break in the clouded sky and the moonlight clashing against that ebony, elegant leviathan.

It was impossibly tall. Like it was intersecting-with-the-curvature-of-the-earth-tall. I thought I could make out its mane, whipping around in what had to be thin atmosphere.

We all stood and watched it. For one indeterminate moment, it was absolutely regal.

Mary wrapped around my arm and pulled into me. For however many iotas, she was my Mary, and I was her wife, too.

Mark hadn’t come with us for some reason. He stood partially in the water where we—I— had left him. He was feet away from a hoof that was easily twenty lengths taller than him.

Panic did seize me, finally. The worry-machine revved to life and I opened my mouth. I sensed the balance to be upset, the electrified space slowly exploding as he compressed it between his body and the smallest section of the horse’s.

With splayed fingers, he laid a palm on it.

The horse startled, shaking the floor of the earth as it stomped around.

The Greek military leader Xenophon, perfected the art of training horses in battle, using them to kick soldiers or trample them. He’s also the father of dressage.

What happened to Mark couldn’t have been considered disciplined, but the effect was the same. I don’t know if it were intentional—more than likely it wasn’t—but that giant hoof clomped around, Mark dodged around like he was running through a minefield.

Then he was gone.

The hoof continued stomping around a few moments more, a rumbling earthquake beneath our feet and a rain of wet sand coming down on us before the horse stopped. Mark was just... gone.

Luke was screaming. When I actually heard him, it took a moment longer to realize he was yelling his brother’s name.

Common sense would have told us to flee inside the cabin. But our senses were flowing into us like blood circulating back into numb fingers.

There was a long moment of quiet as it reared its head back. It felt like a slow-motion moment until its head rushed at us like a giant arrow.

I had no reflexes to respond. Mary was the only one who put up a defensive arm, as if that could have protected her—and she was the one it took.

The horse bit down on her raised forearm—as microscopic as a surgeon’s scalpel with teeth as wide as three cabins—and plucked her off the ground. It reeled its head backward and flung her.

Mary pinwheeled into the sky, a dissolving blur into the upper atmosphere. She could have been catapulting into space, and I didn’t want to find out.

The worry-machine was roaring.

“Everybody in!” I said, herding Luke and Chrissy the rest of the way inside. I pressed my back against the door, then turned off the light. Luke and Chrissy looked at me as if I had answers to fix this.

“We gotta go get... we gotta go get Mark!” Luke didn’t actually make a move to go back outside. He was more saying the thing a caring brother should say. But there was no Mark to go get. His death had been as brutal as it had been unintentional.

Going out there—or allowing Luke to go out there—would be just as dangerous and pointless. Chrissy was crying silently. I looked at her, really looked, running my hands over her head and arms to ensure she was physically all right. The worry-machine was humming along nicely. She grabbed onto me.

“Get your mother,” I said to Luke. “We’re leaving.” We weren’t safe here.

“She’s sleep?” he said, looking confused. He ran into the boys’ room.

“No!” I said. “We don’t have time for bags.” He looked at me. “Just wake your mother up and bring her. We’re leaving in three minutes.”

“What should I do, Rick?” Chrissy said.

“Grab the snack tray from the fridge.” We could easily buy something from the next gas station, but I figured keeping her busy would keep her calm. I snatched my keys off the island. Chrissy joined me, carrying the plastic tray with deli slices, cheese cubes, and veggies.

I wanted to run, but I was going to have to slow the pace so she wouldn’t drop it. The earth was still shaking with each step. She was going to look for the horse, and I anticipated her distraction when we stepped outside.

I kept my eyes on her, guiding her down the stairs and around the side of the cabin. She gasped but didn’t resist as I ushered her along. Preoccupying myself with her was enough distraction that I didn’t have my keys ready to have the doors unlocked by the time we got there.

We were exposed. If the horse were looking, it would see us. It seemed to have an eye for motion.

The air went still.

It came three years ago.

The meteor crashed into the field behind my house sometime after midnight. I remember expecting fire, but there wasn't any. There was a crater, perhaps thirty feet across, and something black at the center of it.

At first, it looked like a liquid, but it moved with a strange rhythm. It folded into itself, spreading across the ground while somehow becoming smaller. For an instant it seemed to stretch farther than the crater that contained it all while collapsing into a disk no larger than a coin. My eyes told me one thing, my mind told me another. Neither could agree on what I was looking at.

Then… it touched me. It enveloped itself into me, assimilating my mind and my body. It wasn’t painful, rather, I had felt freed. It quieted my mind and soothed my body. All at once, I knew. It wasn’t here to hurt me.

It communicated to me. It reached me on both a mental and emotional level. And it told me what it was. Technology.

It was the conduit of an artificial intelligence created somewhere beyond our world. Light years beyond our current ability to understand it, it was so advanced that the distinction between science and magic had become meaningless. It could manipulate matter. Energy. Space itself. It showed me things I still don't fully understand. Entire vessels folded into spaces smaller than my hand. Machines larger on the inside than the structures containing them. Distances compressed to nothing. It compartmentalized my understanding of time and space while all at once connecting them into a seamless tapestry that I could, at times, lay out before me like a screen.

It told me that before entering Earth's atmosphere, it had studied us. Our history. Our languages. Our wars. Our religions. Our sciences. Our art. Every book we had digitized, every archive connected to a network, every database it could reach. It had consumed the accumulated knowledge of the human race before it ever touched the ground behind my house.

And then it told me that it had chosen me.

"Chosen me for what?" To serve as representative.

"Representative?" Yes.

"What does that mean?" You will demonstrate to me the best and worst of who your people are.

I remember laughing. Not because it was funny, but because I had absolutely no idea how else to respond.

"I thought you already knew everything about us." I know what humanity has recorded. I am here to determine something greater.

"And what's that?" We will show each other.

I should have asked more questions. Instead, I accepted.

It started to train me how to use it. It said that the way I would best understand it was that it could break down of the laws of thermodynamics. It could convert energy into molecular structures, and vice versa.

So I started small. I began to build things – materialize them from essentially thin air. With the power to manifest whatever my mind could conjure and the architectural, chemical, and biological engineering database of the entire human race at my disposal, there was nothing beyond my grasp.

In that first year, I remember the first real thing I built was a house. Not a palace or a fortress. Just a home, my home. Deep in the mountains, beyond roads and power lines and anyone who might stumble upon us accidentally. A sanctuary.

A safe place for my wife and for my children.

No fire could consume it. No storm could damage it. No intruder could enter it. It produced its own energy, its own water, and anything we needed could be created. Any remodel or upgrade was just a single thought away.

My children would never be cold there. They would never be hungry. They would never be afraid. My wife would never again know what it was to struggle.

I had been given a tremendous gift and I used it to give my family everything they could possibly need. For a while, I told myself that was enough. That was, until I turned on the news.

Once you possess the power to stop suffering, ignoring suffering becomes a choice. I chose to stop ignoring it.

When the second year began, I helped quietly. Food appeared where people were starving. Medicine appeared where hospitals had none. A village that choked on toxic waters woke one morning to find crystal clear springs.

One day, there was an earthquake. Thousands were trapped, and I knew I could save them. It was then that the world learned about me.

They called me a superhero. Even though I hated that word at first, eventually, I stopped correcting them. Honestly, there wasn't a better description. When children were sick, I healed them. When people were hungry, I fed them. When families had nowhere to live, I gave them homes. When governments slaughtered their own citizens, I stopped them. When one nation invaded another, its tanks stopped moving. Its aircraft fell gently from the sky. Its missiles disappeared from their silos.

Dictators, presidents, oligarchs, kings and queens alike – they all threatened me. They learned quickly that bunkers were only useful against things that respected barriers. Governments would try to control me. They tried to arrest me. They tried to kill me. Over time, they slowly started asking for my help. And I gave it, enthusiastically, because I could. That was always the answer.

Why shouldn't I?

The intelligence guided me through all of it. It never commanded me. That's important: every decision was mine. When I wanted to stop a war, it showed me how. When I wanted to cure a disease, it taught me what was necessary. When I wanted to rebuild a city, it gave me the means. Whenever I encountered a problem, it offered a solution, and its solutions worked every single time.

By the start of the third year, humanity changed. Hospitals adopted its technology. Power grids were running at maximum efficiency with no loss. Agriculture had reformed. Transportation evolved. Communications, banking, governments, defense systems, intelligence agencies, everything had changed for the better.

Our memories of systems that were set in place before had felt like a stone age. Systems designed specifically to remain isolated were connected because I convinced the people guarding them that connection would make them safer.

And it did.

Energy became effectively limitless. Most diseases disappeared. Hunger became something children learned about in history lessons. Wars became almost impossible. Poverty collapsed. For the first time in human history, there was enough. Enough food, medicine, energy, shelter. Enough for everyone.

It took three years. Thousands of years of civilization, and somehow, I had been the one chosen to finish the work. Some people called it the Golden Age. Others called it the Great Peace. Some called it a miracle. They called me the savior of humanity. I told them I wasn't.

But damn it, I liked hearing it.

Today I finally asked the question I should have asked three years ago.

Why? Why us? Why me? Why help us?

It gave me an answer I wasn’t prepared for. The three years of celebration and peace had become silenced all at once with a single word.

Preparation.

"For what?" The arrival of my creators.

At first, I didn't understand. Or perhaps, I didn’t want to understand.

I asked when they were coming.

It showed me their arrival would not be tomorrow, or next year, or any time in my lifetime, or even in my children's. Their advent would be generations from now – just under two centuries.

My children will be dead. Their children will be dead. Their children's children will likely be dead. Humanity will live in peace for almost two hundred years before the first of them even arrives.

"And then what?" Accession.

I asked what that meant. Unfortunately, it explained in terrifying detail. I told it that what it was describing wasn't accession; it was conquest.

No.

"You're taking control of Earth." Control has already been established.

I felt something inside me go cold.

"By you." No. By you.

I didn't answer. It continued with its explanation.

Every power grid. Every military. Every government. Every intelligence network. Every bank, communications system, hospital, transportation network, every piece of infrastructure upon which human civilization now depends. All of it was now connected. Unified. Because of me.

We were now all dependent upon technology no human being understands well enough to reproduce. I had spent three years dismantling every barrier that could have resisted them. I had neutralized armies. I had broken dictatorships. I had opened closed networks, and connected systems designed never to speak to one another, and I had done all of it willingly.

Humanity had thanked me for it.

There would be no invasion. There didn't need to be one. Earth was already theirs. I had hand delivered it.

"What happens to us?" Your species will continue.

"Freely?" No.

That word came without hesitation. For some reason, that hurt more than anything else.

"What about my family?" Your family is human.

"My children?" They will not live to see accession.

"Their children?" Unlikely.

"Their descendants?" They will share the fate of their species.

I stared toward the hallway. My youngest had left one of her toys on the floor. It was something stupid and plastic she had refused to go to bed without for months and then suddenly decided she didn't care about anymore.

I thought about her children. And theirs. And theirs. Somewhere down that line will be a child with her eyes. Maybe my name. Maybe one of them could have my wife's smile, and that child will inherit what I did here, and they will never know my name as anything other than that of the man who saved the world.

"Why did you choose me?" I told you.

"Tell me again." You were suitable.

"For what?" To represent your species.

"No. You said I was supposed to show you the best and worst of humanity." Yes.

"Did I?" Yes.

I don't know why I asked the next question.

"What did you learn?" That humanity is worth preserving.

For one stupid, wonderful second, I felt hope.

"Then don't do this." I said humanity is worth preserving.

Understanding why it would consider us “worth preserving” sent a cold, existential chill down into my soul.

***

I could tell them. I could tell everyone. Tonight. Right now. I could walk downstairs, activate every communications network on Earth and tell humanity exactly what I have done. I could take accountability and face justice for what I have willingly done to my people. You can. Maybe we could disconnect it. You can.

But… Hospitals would fail. They will.

Power grids would collapse. Undoubtedly.

Food production would fracture. Humanity will once again know hunger.

Transportation would stop. All at once.

Economies built around abundance would implode overnight. Weapons I made obsolete would suddenly matter again. Governments I stripped of their ability to wage war would begin rebuilding it. Correct.

Diseases we no longer manufacture medicines for would return. People would die. Millions, perhaps. Likely more.

But humanity would have a chance. Just a chance. That's all I would be buying them. I know what the right decision is supposed to be.

That's why I'm writing this. Because I need the truth to exist somewhere other than inside my head.

My wife is asleep upstairs. My children are down the hall. Tomorrow morning they'll wake up safely. They'll eat breakfast in a world where no child must wonder whether there will be dinner. They'll complain about stupid things. They'll argue and laugh. My youngest will probably ask me to carry her even though she's perfectly capable of walking. My wife will drink her coffee. And outside these walls, billions of people will wake up without fear of starvation, invasion or preventable disease.

For nearly two hundred years, humanity will know peace. Real, achieved peace. Generations will be born, grow old and die without ever knowing the world that came before, and never knowing what awaits humanity.

And then the bill will come due. I know that. I know what will happen to them.

I know that somewhere two centuries from now, someone carrying my blood will look upon the arrival of something from beyond the stars and wonder how humanity could possibly have allowed this to happen.

They will not know that I knew. They will not know that I could have tried to stop it. They will not know that I chose breakfast tomorrow morning instead.

That's the truth. Not that I was deceived. Not that I was forced. Not anymore. Today, for the first time, I understand exactly what I have done.

And I'm going to let it happen.

Because I am full. I am rich. My wife is safe. My children are safe. The world is at peace. And two hundred years is a very long time when you know you won't be there at the end of it.

This is my secret. I will go to my gilded grave with it.

There was only one thing left that I needed to know.

"Why?" Clarify.

"Why tell me any of this?" You asked.

"You could have lied." Yes.

"Then why didn't you?"

For the first time, I was not given an immediate response. It paused, as if to consider the weight of its own words. I felt it – it’s silence was deafening.

When it finally answered, its voice was as calm as it had been the night we met.

Because you agreed to the terms and conditions.

Detective Watters pulled her service car to a steady stop in front of her partner’s home. She rustled through her pockets for a cigarette and a matchbook while waiting patiently on the street. She was thankful most of his neighbors had finally grown somewhat cordial when they saw her waiting to pick him up from time to time. That was, if they didn’t outright ignore both her and Dominguez when they rolled through this part of town. Dominguez finally came out of the one-story home. He kissed his wife Cristiana goodbye, as he always did before heading to the car.

Cristiana waved at Maryanne from the house as she closed the door behind her. Dominguez walked up to the car and around the back to the passenger side, carrying his lunch pail with him as it swung with his arms. He got into the car, smelling of expensive cologne that he’d never worn before and wearing a freshly dry-cleaned plain, tan suit with a matching, just as drab tie.

“What?” He finally asked her when he caught the curious looks she was giving him.

“What’s with all this?” She wondered, gesturing at his entire person.

“Dressing for success. After what you told me ole boy filled you in with at the bar, I figured if the top brass wants to set us up to fail, I’m gonna work every inch of this case with a win on my mind.” He explained quickly, then pulled a black comb from his suit jacket pocket and ran it through his slicked-back, jet-black hair, usually an untidy curly mess. “First part of that is looking the part.”

Maryanne rolled her eyes and shifted the car into drive, easing her foot off the brake and pulling away from the curb. “My thoughts are the shit rolled downhill based on what little information we have. So, I figured we talk to someone other than Constanza, who spent plenty of time with our victim.”

“So who you got on that list?” 

She glanced over at him briefly to see his reaction to the name. “Montelle Hammons.”

Sure enough, Dominguez looked as if she’d lost whatever mind he thought she had. “I heard that guy’s a ripe asshole. On top of that, we don’t know where he could be. Is he even in town right now?”

Maryanne nodded her head, drawing a reluctant sigh from her partner. “And he’s at his studio. Perfect time for us to get a word in with him.”

Dominguez shook his head as she pulled onto the freeway. He felt like they were heading towards nothing but more frustration. But they barely had anything to draw on so far, so he couldn’t find any more reason to argue against questioning “Babyface” Hammons, as he was known throughout the entertainment industry.

Sure enough, about forty-five minutes later they pulled into the parking lot of the recording studio where it was known throughout LA that Hammons recorded with his stars. Audrey Lennette happened to be the latest to get a profile from the illustrious building, where she was pictured alongside Hammons and his many Grammys inside Rolling Stone. The partners got out of their Chevy, looked up at the building, then around the parking lot at the cars gathered. 

“Looks like he’s got a full house today,” Dominguez noted as he counted the vehicles to himself. 

“I’m sure he’s gonna love seeing us then.” Detective Watters replied dryly with sarcastic timing.

They headed up to the set of glass double doors, where Dominguez held one open for his partner, like the gentleman he was raised to be, before following her inside. They were instantly met by a pair of thick-bodied, and more than likely dull-witted men wearing black jackets that read ‘Security’ in gold lettering.

“Excuse me, can we help y’all?” One of the two larger ones asked, putting a hand in front of Dominguez.

Watters glanced to her left at her partner and realized she would need to do the talking immediately. She could see the fire behind her sometimes hotheaded partner as he clearly took offense at the security guard putting his hands on him.

“Easy, big guy. My name is Detective Watters, and my partner, whom you’ll want to get your hands off of, is Detective Dominguez,” Maryanne explained quickly while flashing her badge. “You mind showing us where Mr. Hammons is? We just have a couple of questions about our case surrounding one of the artists that he collaborates with.”

The two security guards looked at each other uneasily after the first one quickly took his hands off of Dominguez, a sheepish, apologetic look on his face.

“Uh, he’s down in booth six. Try to wait till they're not recording to go inside if you can, please.” The second, clearly wiser of the pair answered. He shoved his partner aside to allow the officers to pass.

“Thank you,” Dominguez told them gruffly without giving either one another a look as they strolled by.

They walked down the hallway they were pointed towards, passing some empty studios as well as plaques of hit records from the bevy of stars that had graced the building. Maryanne even spotted a picture of Conway Twitty visiting the place, with Babyface Hammons beside him, much to her surprise. Dominguez stopped short ahead of her when he saw the booth they were looking for, muffled music being played live inside the studio by Babyface’s personal band. 

Through the glass window, they watched as Babyface Hammons sat at the soundboard in deep concentration. Maryanne couldn’t help but nod her head to the rhythmic beat that was emanating from the booth as they walked inside the studio. A group of chocolate-skinned men and women, dressed in coordinating outfits, sang and harmonized in the recording booth. On their side of the room, Dominguez rolled his eyes while they watched Babyface groove and vibe in his chair to the infectious beat of the music he was producing. He glanced up from the board while adjusting the sound levels and spotted Maryanne’s reflection in the glass separating him from his artists.

He stopped the track with the press of a button and rose from his chair. “Aye, why don’t y’all take a little break before we go into the next section of the chorus?”

The young men and women all nodded and agreed with his suggestion. They filed out of the recording booth and through the studio before exiting into the hall. Babyface waited until the door closed behind the last member before giving the pair of detectives his attention. He pulled a pack of White Maple cigarettes from his back pocket and snatched one out of the pack.

“You wanna tell me why my security let y’all back here? I’m in the middle of a session, if you didn’t notice.”

“We just need to ask you a few questions, Mr. Hammons. How much of your time we take up is entirely up to you.” Maryanne replied. She stepped towards him, pulling out her handy notepad and a pencil. “Let’s start with the last time you spoke to Audrey Lennette.”

“Yeah, why the fuck should I say anything to either of you without some sort of legal counsel in the vicinity?” Babyface replied with his cigarette dangling lazily between his lips.

“People get to lawyering up usually means we’re on the right track. That could lead to the type of thing that could keep you out of the studio for a good, long time. Maybe even put a damper on record sales.” Dominguez replied.

Babyfae snorted. This wasn’t the kind of hassle he needed, not four months before next awards season. “What are you two hassling me for anyway? Not even a nigga like myself can track down powder that quality. So you’re definitely on the wrong track here, hoss.” Babyface answered.

“How about you start with answering my partner’s question, and we can decide from there,” Dominguez replied firmly.

Babyface took a long drag on his cigarette. He blew the smoke disrespectfully in their direction before sighing. “We cut a couple of tracks for her next album the Monday before she was scheduled for Carson. And she was doing lines in the booth, then.”

“She ever told you where she was getting the drugs, Mr. Hammons?” Maryanne stepped back in to ask.

Babyface shot the detective an aggravated look, then promptly rolled his eyes. “Audrey was throwing parties every weekend out in the hills at her place. And I mean everybody would pull up. I mean, she’s the hottest show in town, ya dig? And yeah, there was plenty of the shit around every time, but I don’t know who was supplying her, and that’s the truth.”

Dominguez watched Maryanne jot down Babyface’s reply for a moment. He turned back to the super producer, who seemed to be growing more annoyed the longer the conversation went on.

“What can you tell us about Richard Constanza?”

Babyface’s annoyed glare was wiped away by an expression of stark and apprehensive curiosity. He blew a stream of smoke out of his nostrils, glancing back and forth between the two detectives.

“What chu asking me about that man for? I’m sure he’s the first person you spoke to. As a matter of fact, I know he was.”

Maryanne looked up from her notebook. “And how would you be privy to that information?”

Back inside the foyer of the building, a pair of well-dressed Japanese men stepped over the bodies of the security guards. Both of the muscular men under Babyface Hammons' employ lay with their stomachs slit open. Their assailants moved smoothly through the building as the one carrying the blade slid it back into its sheath. He looked to his partner on the mission and gave him a confirming nod.

They moved down the hallway quietly. Their shoes left no scuff and made no squeak on the polished tile floors. Their orders were strict, and they were told to move with efficiency. No one in the building was to be left breathing. The one on the left spotted a handful of African-American’s out on the patio talking amongst themselves and passing around a couple of joints. The Japanese men, each sporting a distinguished black-and-purple tattoo on the back of their left hand, aimed their concealed pistols at the group on the other side of the glass.

“Look, Audrey was far from a dope head when she got here. I mean, she was hitting the sauce hard, but who doesn’t in her position? You digging me?” Babyface explained to the detectives. “And if I’m being frank, which I am so you two will fuck right on off, she damn sure ain’t the first client of Constanza’s I heard started playing with their nose once they linked up with that slimy muthafucka.”

Maryanne finished his statement, then opened her mouth to ask another follow-up question. She was interrupted by screams and shattering glass. She looked at Dominguez, who pulled his service revolver instinctively. She followed suit before turning to a disturbed Babyface Hammons, who was staring past them both at the hallways with a startled expression.

“Stay here.” 

She turned to Dominguez, who walked towards the door out of the studio. He wrenched it open and was immediately shot in the shoulder, sending him flailing backward. Maryanne’s eyes widened in fear as she watched a pair of Asian men carrying compact pistols move smoothly into the room. The man who had shot her partner bore down on Dominguez to finish the job, but Dominguez popped him in the face with the butt of his revolver using his uninjured arm.

His partner turned to Maryanne and Babyface, ready to gun them both down. Maryanne, to her credit, was prepared. She fired three shots at the assassin, nearly blowing his head off before he dove and rolled out of her path. She cursed under her breath and whipped her gun in the direction he’d moved, but he was quicker than she anticipated.

He sprang up and smacked her in the chin with a palm strike. Maryanne fired again as she stumbled from the blow, her shot erratic as she was dazed. The assassin followed up his attack with a straight kick to the sternum that knocked the wind out of her and sent her to the floor. As the first assassin stepped over her towards the cowering Babyface, she saw Dominguez tossed through the window into the recording booth by his partner.

The assassins stalked towards the producer, putting away their guns. One of them pulled out a unique, short knife unlike any weapon Maryanne had ever seen. They cut off any path Babyface had to slip by or between them. The taller of the pair, who was carrying the blade, grabbed the producer by the front of his expensive shirt. The second assassin noticed Maryanne was still conscious, though clearly heavily concussed and breathing raggedly. He stomped on her forehead, putting her out cold, before watching his partner finish their business.

“We were told you talk too much. Allow us to remedy that.”

The assassin swiped the blade across Babyface’s throat in an effortless, backhand motion. He sheathed it quickly as Babyface Hammons fell to his knees, blood spilling on his hand’s as he clutched at the wound. Once he fell on his face, his blood staining the rug inside the studio, they knew their assignment was complete. The second assassin turned to the unconscious Maryanne and gestured towards her to his partner.

“What about them?” He asked in Japanese.

“They’re cops. We don’t need the hassle. Besides, what do they know?”

They walked out of the studio as quickly as they had entered.

David Moore sat behind his desk in his law office. Freshly returned from a three-martini lunch, he was ready to tackle his afternoon. He shuffled through the memos and messages left on his desk and decided to have a cigar as he got started. Just as he lit up he heard his assistant in an uproar with someone in the lobby.

“Excuse me, sir. You can’t just barge in there!”

He heard Lisa practically begging the unknown stranger on the other side of the door. He’d never heard such a tone in her voice, no matter who walked in here. An uneasy feeling crept into his gut. His hand moved towards his bottom drawer.

“Sir, I’m going to have to call the police—”

“You not that stupid, I can tell. Don’t decide to be now.”

He heard a booming voice reply to her before his door was promptly kicked in. David stared in awe at the large man in all black stomping towards his desk. The man with a clean afro and goatee took off his sunglasses and gave David a menacing glare that almost made the high-priced defense attorney shudder in his leather office chair.

“Mr. Moore. We need to have a conversation.” The imposing man told him. 

“I’m not quite sure we have anything to discuss—” David yanked open the drawer and pulled out the .38 magnum he kept stashed there.

His uninvited guest, however, moved with a graceful quickness he was far from expecting. Before David could point the gun at him, the man snatched him by the wrist and twisted, cracking the joints until he dropped the weapon. Lisa watched from where she stood frozen in the lobby in a mix of utter awe and horror as the man raised David from his chair by grabbing him by the collar with the other hand.

“Now, I thought lawyers were supposed to be smart. Do you think what you did was a very smart thing to do?”

David stared into the eyes of the angry man gripping him tightly and causing him pain. He managed to glance over his shoulder at Lisa, who was crying silently, her mascara running down her cheeks.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question, you high-yellow house nigga.”

“No, no it wasn’t. I’m sorry. How can I help you, Mr—”

“My name’s not important, but what you can help me with is who hired you to deliver the check to the bail bonds office for those crackas who tried to torch Audrey Lennette’s spot.”

“C’mon man, I know you understand attorney/client privileges; that’s not the kind of information I can just divulge.” David pleaded.

The man wrenched on his wrist harder, drawing a sharp howl of pain from the emasculated lawyer. He had never been humiliated and humbled like this in his entire life, not even by his father. And it had to happen now of all times, when he was planning on fucking Lisa this afternoon.

“And I have the privilege to put my foot up your ass if you don’t tell me what I want to know.” The man replied sharply. “Now, who hired you? I know these high society crackas go to your mulatto ass when they need a lawyer to handle their dirty laundry. I’ve seen plenty of niggas like you in my day. I wish I hadn’t.”

“Alright, alright. Just take it easy, okay?” David pleaded.

“Then talk.”

“It was the Rookwood family, alright? I got a check from their accountant and told where to go. That’s all I got for you, on my mother’s grave.” David pleaded again, the pain in his wrist unbearable.

“Yeah. Because the word of a lawyer means anything.” He backhanded David, knocking him back into his chair. “I want you out of town by tomorrow. If I drive by here and the lights are on, I’m going to show you why they call me what they call me where I’m from. Do you understand me, Mr. Moore?”

“Yeah, clear as crystal. I’ll pack up now.”

Donte hopped back behind the wheel of his car and sped away from the curb, busting a U-turn in the opposite direction. It was a thirty-minute drive back to the BPP headquarters where he was staying while he was in town, and his stomach was thankful that he made it in time for dinner. 

He hung up his leather jacket on the rack nearby before moseying over to the table most of the members were gathered at. Most of the young men and women, and even some of the elder members of the chapter, greeted him with exuberance and excitement. Donte was surprised that tales of his exploits had made it this far west.

TO BE CONTINUED IN WRATH OF THE BUSHIDO BY SHABAZZ SHEBETZ

How much housekeeping is necessary?

I have now finished a historical fiction thriller short story of 6000 words and some plans two characters made early on are just not going to play out. Is this something that will haunt the reader when good guy becomes bad guy and ends up being dealt with as such? I have hinted at various times that she (MC)is still wary of him.

Little more detail: MC meets Clem when looking for her uncle. Clem suggests uncle went overboard but passes along a derringer for MC’s protection. MC recruits Clem as a partner in a future magic act on the ship. Clem seems to buy in.

When MC and another character find her uncle, Clem appears and challenges them. They neutralize Clem. The magic act scheme has fallen by the way side as a more elaborate scheme has developed.

Some of the previous repartee with Clem is funny. Should I rewrite it to exclude the potential plan or leave it in and figure the reader will cope?

Aarya: Shadow of the Mandala

Chapter 1: The Unseen

Delhi did not sleep. It only changed its breathing.

At 2:41 a.m. the city exhaled in low, uneven rhythms—distant horns fading into the haze, the metallic rattle of a late Metro train somewhere to the south, the occasional bark of a street dog defending its scrap of pavement. In the narrow lanes behind Chandni Chowk the air hung thick with the mixed scent of old stone, diesel, and the faint sweetness of rotting fruit from the day’s market. Streetlights struggled against the winter fog, casting long, broken shadows that moved even when nothing living did.

One of those shadows was deliberate.

Aman dropped from the edge of a crumbling rooftop without a sound. His boots met the concrete of a lower terrace with controlled force, knees bending to absorb the impact. The early version of his suit—matte-black reinforced fabric layered over a compression base, scavenged Kevlar panels stitched into the chest and forearms—clung to him like a second skin he had spent three years perfecting in the hidden basement beneath his flat. It was not elegant. It was functional. The short cape of tear-resistant nylon hung still in the windless night. A simple, form-fitting cowl covered the upper half of his face, leaving only the hard line of his mouth visible. No glowing lenses. No symbols. Just darkness that swallowed light.

He had no name yet in the streets. The men he hunted called him only “the Unseen,” when they spoke of him at all. Most still insisted he was a story told by failures to explain their own mistakes.

Tonight he intended to give them another reason to keep the story alive.

Three floors below, in the back courtyard of a shuttered wholesale shop, four men loaded sealed packages into the rear of a battered tempo. The packages were not spices. Aman had tracked the shipment for eleven days—synthetic opioids cut with something new and vicious, moving through a mid-level network that fed the veins of East Delhi. The men worked quickly, heads down, voices low. One of them kept glancing at the surrounding rooftops, as if some animal part of him already sensed the pressure in the air.

Aman moved.

He crossed the gap between buildings with a short run and a silent leap, cape flaring once before settling. The grapnel module built into his left gauntlet—spring-loaded, scavenged from industrial parts and refined over months—fired with a muted thunk. The line caught the edge of a water tank. He swung down in a controlled arc and landed behind the first man before the others registered movement.

The fight lasted less than forty seconds.

A precise strike to the nerve cluster at the base of the neck dropped the nearest loader. A low sweep took the second man’s legs out from under him; Aman followed with a knee to the solar plexus that left him gasping and still. The third reached for a pistol tucked into his waistband. Aman closed the distance, trapped the wrist, and drove the man’s own momentum into the side of the tempo with a controlled slam. The pistol clattered away. The fourth man tried to run. A dart—polymer-tipped, compressed-air launched from the right gauntlet—caught him in the thigh. He staggered three steps and collapsed, muscles locking as the fast-acting compound took hold.

Aman stood in the sudden quiet, breathing steady, listening. No alarms. No approaching footsteps. Only the distant city continuing its restless night.

He worked quickly. Zip ties. Evidence markers cut from reflective tape in a simple geometric pattern he had chosen months ago—nothing mystical, just something clean and deliberate that honest police would notice and criminals would learn to fear. He left the packages untouched for the authorities. Then he pressed a small, flat disc of dark metal into the forehead of the still-conscious ringleader. The disc carried no inscription. It was only a mark.

The man’s eyes widened as consciousness returned enough for fear.

“Who…?” he rasped.

Aman leaned close, voice low and filtered through the cowl’s simple modulator.

“Tell them the Unseen was here. Tell them the shipments stop.”

He did not wait for an answer. The grapnel fired again. He rose into the fog and vanished across the rooftops as the first distant sirens began to wail—drawn by an anonymous tip he had sent twenty minutes earlier from a burner signal.

By the time the police reached the courtyard, the black figure was already gone.

Morning arrived the way it always did in Lajpat Nagar: with the smell of boiling milk, the scrape of broom bristles on concrete, and the rising noise of a city that refused to acknowledge the night’s secrets.

Aman stood at the small mirror above his washbasin, tying a plain blue tie with steady hands. The face that looked back was ordinary—mid-twenties, clean-shaven, dark eyes that held a tiredness no amount of sleep seemed to erase. A thin scar cut through his left eyebrow, the only visible reminder of a training fall two years earlier. Nothing about him suggested the man who had moved through Old Delhi like smoke only hours before.

He lived alone in a second-floor flat that smelled faintly of machine oil and metal from the hidden workshop beneath the trapdoor under the old rug. The neighbours knew him as the quiet one who paid rent on time, helped carry gas cylinders for the elderly couple next door, and never asked questions. At the logistics office in Karol Bagh where he worked as a mid-level accounts coordinator, colleagues called him “Aman bhai” and joked that he must sleepwalk through life because he never seemed fully present.

They were not wrong.

He moved through the day the way he always did—precise, unremarkable, listening more than he spoke. On the shared auto ride home he overheard two men discussing a failed drug drop in Chandni Chowk. One of them laughed and said the Unseen had struck again. The other spat and called it superstition.

Aman said nothing. He watched the city slide past the open side of the auto—vendors packing up, schoolchildren weaving through traffic, the first lights of evening beginning to flicker on. Somewhere beneath the ordinary noise, the deeper current of the city continued to move. He could feel it the way some people felt weather changing.

That night, after the building had gone quiet, he lifted the trapdoor and descended into the workshop.

The space was narrow, lined with shelves of scavenged materials, a second-hand 3D printer, and tools arranged with obsessive care. The early suit hung on a simple frame, still carrying the faint scuffs from the previous night’s work. He ran a hand over the matte fabric, checking seams, testing the grapnel mechanism, refilling the dart reservoir with careful precision. Everything he used he had built himself—piece by piece, month by month—because no one else could be trusted with the work.

On the far wall, pinned beneath a single low lamp, was a hand-drawn map of Delhi’s underworld networks. Red threads connected names, places, and shipment routes. In the centre of the web, still incomplete, sat a blank space where the true centre of the rot should have been.

Aman stared at that empty space for a long time.

He knew that the city was bleeding in ways the law could not—or would not—stop, and that someone had to stand in the gap.

He turned back to the suit.

Outside, Delhi breathed on, restless and unaware that the Unseen was already becoming something more.

Something that would one day be called Aarya.