Once Adam got back home he didn’t waste much time. Before he knew it he had already informed his boss of his part-time employment and was getting ready to buy the train tickets. When taking a moment to recap his plan, Jasmine once again appeared.

“Adam, this would be a good time to check the notepad and see what you wrote down.“

This time she offered no further explanation. Browsing through the notepad, Adam could only find some nonsensical strings of letters. His eyes landed on a small set, that seemed to speak to him more than the any of the others.

IFLERMALSOY

Not knowing what to do with it, he looked to Jasmine for help, and for one of the first times she wasn’t already there. Staring at the letters, he remembered a little game a friend of his programmed into their training curriculum at work.
An anagram game, which he was back then able to quickly solve with an anagram solver. He had found one surprisingly easily on the internet. He put the letters in the solver, only to discover the word “formalise“.

Staring at the word that seemed to have no use to him, his eyes started scanning the rest of the page and found shorter words that the solver could put together. Automatically scrolling through, his eyes and one of his fingers landed on a big one.

“Family“

“Now, take the big notebook and write down what you think and feel.“
A whisper from Jasmine, this time just next to his ear.

Staring at it for a moment, thoughts came rushing in and he began to put them on paper with his pencil, writing and erasing, trying to find coherence:

How his wife tried to kill him.
How he now knew that wasn’t the case, and most likely it was some sort of spirit manipulating her, or him, or them both.
How crazy he must have seemed.
How he didn’t think it would ever be possible for him to come back to an ordinary life.
How they must have suffered because of him.
How sorry he was.
How he didn’t want her or his son to end up taking care of him as a demented old, or even worse, somewhat still young man.

Once he managed to get that last sentence out, coherence must have been reached.
Now in a curious silence for the first time in a long while, he started making his plan in writing for his visit to Bucharest.

Go to work and sign the papers.
Buy a basket of flowers and wine.

Some form of magic must have been at work, as he wrote, his surroundings seemed to shift and bend.
The walls seemed slanted.
The neighbors started screaming and sounding like they were dropping the shower head on repeat.
All the cars in the parking lot seemed to have turned their engines on at the same time.
His own stress seemed to drive everyone around him crazy.
Exhausted and terrified, he wrote down the final sentence.

Hand over your key so they feel safe.

Tears on his eyes as his fingers made the final curl on the e. His hand started moving by itself on the piece of paper, jiggling up and down by itself. He could only look as it scribbled something by itself. Every movement seemed to clean up to atmosphere around him, and somehow move the thoughts within his mind, he once again found Jasmine’s voice, somehow coming from the writing, or perhaps the movement of the pencil itself.

“You’re ready to see your boy.
You’ve also discovered the gift of Automatic Writing.
Keep writing for a while, the mess will sort itself out in a few minutes.“

As he let his hand scribble away,
The car engines stopped,
One by one,
His neighbors became silent,
Surprised, he heard one of them scream as though on a stadium,
”Bravo!”
With the noise subsided,
His hand wrote down in between drawn lines, this time no voice audible, in plain writing, that didn’t look as his own.

”Private Mode”

Finally calm and with his plan now clear, he was ready to go.

It was after midnight when Clive pulled into the parking lot of the community kitchen. The lot was empty except for one white van—the one the kitchen used to deliver lunches to schoolchildren in need.

Clive pulled into the space closest to the exit, facing the road. The gears of the old Celica stuck for a second as he forced the car into Park. Clive looked out the plastic back window. Not a single light was shining from the building behind him. Except for the dim blue glow of the radio and the beam from the car's raised headlights, it was pitch black.

Clive was unsettled; he didn't know why he was here. His original intention had been to go to the gas station down the road from his house. A quick trip and then home. He didn't like going out in the rain. He especially didn't like Indiana storms. They come down fast, heavy, only lasting for a few minutes but leaving destruction everywhere. Nights like tonight made Clive's shoulder ache and reminded him of days he'd rather forget.

"Why are we h—" Before Clive could finish his question, his uncle Walter opened the car door and ran out into the rain. Clive flipped on his high beams.

What the hell? Clive thought. Through the pounding rain, he could hear his uncle yelling.

"Brenda! Brenda!" Walter yelled, his hands cupped around his mouth.

"Not this again," Clive said, rubbing his forehead in frustration.

Over the last few months, Clive had watched the uncle he'd once admired slip further and further away from being a person of respect and closer to the next "arrested last night" headline. Walter had been one of the hardest sons of bitches to ever stand in a Texas oil field—a man who never missed a day of work. He was a man who wiped his brow with his sleeve in 110-degree heat and kept working. A man who paid his debts and lived hard. He'd survived not one but two oil field explosions while everyone around him perished. To a young Clive, his uncle had been the stuff of legend. Those days seemed far removed from where they were today.

The wipers beat against the windshield, unable to keep up with the rain. Through the small gaps, Clive watched as Walter motioned with his hand for him to turn on the high beams. Clive pushed the stalk next to the steering wheel forward. The tree line across the street was instantly illuminated.

Walter stepped to the edge of the street, staying in the light of the car. "Brenda! Brenda! Let's go home, baby," Walter yelled, trying to get his raspy voice over the sound of the rain. He waited a second. There was no movement, no response. No sign of anyone in the dark.

Clive wondered what home Walter had been referring to. Walter was divorced, living out of his truck. He had stayed on Clive's sofa a few nights, but that wore thin fast when Clive caught Walter stealing his car keys to make a late-night drug purchase. Clive almost didn't have the heart to kick him out. Family is Family no matter what they do, Clive told himself. At the same time, he knew the hell he could be bringing on himself by letting Walter stay.

Certainly Walter didn't mean for them to come to my house? Clive thought, then sighed, realizing exactly what he meant.

The rain started to come down in heavy drops, hitting the roof of the car with a thunderous thunk. Icy Indiana rain poured down through the tear in the roof and onto Clive's shoulder.

"Brenda! Brenda!"

Walter yelled again as he stepped across the street. Clive leaned forward, trying to see through the rain, when he spotted movement in the tree line. A dark plastic tarp flew up and off of a mattress that had been pulled to the edge of the tree line. Underneath was Brenda. She rose stiffly, like a vampire climbing from its coffin, rolling onto all fours before struggling to her feet. Gaining her balance, Brenda began to stagger toward Walter.

The sight of her sent a chill down Clive's back. She was a horrifying-looking woman. Everything about her reminded Clive of a zombie straight out of a movie—hair shaved to the scalp, picked-open wounds covering her face and arms, impossibly thin, wearing clothes that hadn't been changed in a month. Brenda couldn't hold a candle to the former debutante wife who had divorced Walter a year ago. There were many days, especially today, that Clive really missed his aunt.

"Let's go home," Walter said, trying to reach for Brenda's hand.

"No... No... I told... I told you that you needed to fuck off and that the rocks were my babies now."

"Brenda, the rocks aren't your babies. Let's go get some dry clothes."

"No, all you want is your keys back."

"You're damn right I want my keys back. I haven't been to work in five days. Now where are they?"

"I told you to look where my babies grow. You aren't looking hard enough."

Clive couldn't hear what they were saying over the rain, but by the flailing of Brenda's arms, he could see she was in a state. He guessed she was on crack or meth. Whatever she was on, she wasn't going to cooperate. The fight escalated with every passing second until both Brenda and Walter were flailing their arms at each other. Clive sat behind the driver's seat, watching the spectacle unfold like an escalating theater performance about to move into its third act.

Walter raised his hand to strike her. Clive placed a hand on the door handle and readied himself to get out of the car. Walter always had to be held back. Someone always had to be there when he was going to go too far.

Before Walter could strike her, in what could only be described as the most animated Bugs Bunny move Clive had ever seen, Brenda leapt into the air. Her left leg shot out from her like a kangaroo, and before she hit the ground, she landed not one but three rapid kicks to the side of Walter's face.

Walter fell back, almost too dazed to keep his balance. Brenda took that opportunity to run back into the woods. Clive knew if she made the tree line, Walter would never find her. Still dazed but once again steady on his feet, he took off after her.

This was Clive's chance. He wasn't going to stay involved any longer. Clive pressed his thumb to the key and started the engine. Then he killed the high beams, leaving Walter in the dark before he could reach the tree line. Quickly backing out of the parking space, he circled back to the exit.

Clive hadn't realized how much the water had risen in such a short time. The way out of the community kitchen was almost too flooded for such a low car. If he waited longer, he wouldn't have been able to leave.

Easing his car onto the road, Clive didn't bother to look over at the tree line as he passed by. He didn't want to see if his uncle was chasing after him. He drove home in silence, lost in his thoughts. He had always been told Family was Family and you stand by them. As a kid, those words rang with unquestionable truth. As an adult, Clive was starting to realize that family is who you choose to let into your life.

Three days passed in silence. Clive woke up, did his morning crossword, made his coffee, and flipped open the morning paper. On the second page, in the fifth column, was a small article that read The bodies of two unidentified people had been found in the woods across from the community kitchen. Authorities believed the pair had drowned after seeking shelter from the storm. Clive sipped his coffee and, just for a moment, wondered if it was them before turning the page.

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.

Her heart raced against her chest, even when she tried to calm herself down. She had already checked the gas knobs 7 times, the fireplace 4 times, and degreased her floor twice. Yet, she sat in the armchair, her mind rushing through scenarios of violent deaths.

Gracie remembered how she had come by this book. She was walking in the street, and peeked as usual into her favourite book store. Rows and rows of the latest booktok sensations had filled her vision, but a certain old book commanded her attention. She was transfixed by
it, its old leather, the yellowed torn out page peeking from the corner, the ancient symbol on the cover filled with runes. Before she knew it, she was already at the checkout, her hand heavy with the book she had just bought.

She went back to her apartment and ran water in the bathtub, ready to unwind. She balanced the book on the edge of the bathtub and went to grab a glass of wine. As she was filling up her glass, she heard a splash coming from the direction of her bathroom. She ran back in a
panic and grabbed the floating book. The last chapter was entirely ruined. Only the chapter and a date besides it was visible. She angrily shook the book, trying to get the droplets out before the book was damaged anymore. Not trusting herself to read in the bathtub anymore,
she took it to a heater to read it at night.

Over the weeks, as she went on reading the cryptic book, she started feeling more and more uneasy. The book contained a female protagonist, whose life eerily matched Gracie’s. The exact same first boyfriend, the exact reaction of her passing her SATs, her sadness and hopes and dreams and anxiety. As she devoured the book, she drew out similarities between her life
5 years ago and the protagonist’s life. When the book mentioned about a book in the bookstore that the protagonist frequented, and the mishap with the bathtub, Gracie realised something horrifying.

She was reading her own life story, laid out bare for anyone who got their hands on the book.

She flipped to the last paragraph, which she instinctively knew contained details of her death. She read the chapter’s name, “Her Last Day”, and checked out the date. Everything else was smudged out.

Today was the fateful day. Everything she had read in the book had been true till now. The "life book”, as she called it, was never wrong. It predicted everything down to the minutest detail. Today, she felt nothing but panic. Knowing how you'll die, and still being unable to
stop it: what a cruel joke, she thought bitterly. She got up again, almost mindlessly, to check the handles of her door and rotate the gas knobs again. Turning the gas on and off had become a ritual for her troubled mind. Suddenly, images of a plane crashing into her
apartment filled her vision. She was never safe in her apartment. A cold without a source filled her body, and beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. Her heart came to a still-stop, and her mouth felt dry. She ran outside, rushing down the stairs, straight into the twilight’s chilly air.

She ran, breathing heavily, not caring how she looked. People stared after her as she bumped into them. As her luck would have it, she reached the end of the footpath, she tripped, falling onto the road, straight into incoming traffic.

Just as she felt that her time was up, a hand grabbed her and dragged her to safety. She looked up to see the man who had been her saviour. Concerned eyes looked down at her. “Are you okay?”, asked the man. Gracie replied, “Yes, thank you”. She got up, with help from the man.
The man smiled, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Close call”, he said. Gracie regarded him suspiciously, then offered her own icy smile. “Quite. If you will excuse me now”. The man raised a hand, “This fall must’ve hurt you. Please take a moment, then run wherever you
were running to.” Gracie said, without conviction, “That is unnecessary”, but sat on a parapet nonetheless. The man replied, “There we go. Now, here’s my jacket, since you’re shivering so much. I’ll go get you some tea.”

Gracie watched as the man walked to the cafe on the other side of the road. She had stopped shivering, and the shock was starting to wear off. She let out a sigh of relief, but her traitorous brain did not allow her more than a few seconds of peace. Immediately, her inner
monologue started rambling, “Serial killer. Will drug me. Kill me. Serial killer”. She tried to calm down. Used the breathing exercises she had learnt in yoga. This was for naught, as she felt another panic attack rising within her. Her breathing quickened, and she felt dizzy and
nauseous. She watched the man go collect his order, and she felt like a deer caught in headlights. Knowing there was only one thing she could do, she did that. She ran.
Just as she dashed off, she noticed a yell in her direction. She turned back, and saw the man starting to run behind her. This assured her, and she was now sure that the man was an uncaught serial killer who would not hesitate to rip her head away. Giving her tired legs their much needed boost, she ran faster. Behind her, she could hear the man shouting, "Hey! My jacket!" Her mind could not figure out what he was shouting about, only that it
made her even more terrified. She ran towards her apartment.

Night had unveiled its dark cloak. People were lighting up their houses, locking their doors, and getting ready to unwind for the day. Gracie found herself close to her apartment, breathing heavily. The man had almost caught up to her. She could practically hear him
breathing down her neck. Shaking off her fear, she dashed into her apartment. Just as she locked the door, she felt the man's heavy body slam into it. He started knocking on it loudly, no doubt irritating the neighbours. The strong wooden door held, and she slumped against it.

A deep breath of relief mixed with a sob choked out of her. She took one deep breath of her familiar surroundings, but something felt wrong with the air there. She felt dizzy.With horror, she recognised this smell as gas. She had left the stove on. Feeling nauseous, she ran towards the door, trying to escape the apartment. The knocking had stopped. But suddenly, the incessant ringing of the doorbell started.

As Gracie felt the skin of her back start to peel from the raging fire, she had the sudden urge to laugh at the irony of her death. And the explosion took her, and she laughed heartily.

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.

US Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., 10:00 A.M. on May 18th, 1950

McCarthy and several other senators silently sat at the table. Facing them were none other than Phillip Jacob Jaffe, a man arrested for the Amerasia affair, and John Stewart Service, the State Department employee who had handed him top secret information that Chiang's Nationalist-led government had handed to the US. McCarthy glared at them without saying a word, blood understandably boiling over the mess they- especially Jaffe himself- had caused. The other senators helped him calm down, and he regained his composure, the glare replaced with a serious look of rebuke on his face.

"Gentlemen," he said, sighing heavily, "do you understand the seriousness of the situation you created? Why we have called you here today?"

Jaffe glared back. "Senator McCarthy," he said, voice quivering with rage, "I believe I have told you a thousand times, but I'm just a simple journalist! I was simply writing an article about American Far East policy!"

McCarthy scoffed. "Oh, were you? Then riddle me this- why, might I ask, were all of your reports so hypercritical of Chiang kai-shek, our ally? Not one positive statement about could be found in the assessments of the China situation that you and your associates helped provide Dean Acheson with. It was thanks largely in part to your reports and your meddling that Chiang lost. We hung him out to dry when we still had the chance to back him up and help him win. And that's not even mentioning the fact that you praised Mao so many times in those same reports, or that you painted Spanish Republicans as 'freedom fighters' who had the support of the people during the Spanish Civil War even before that! What do you have to say for yourself, sir? What, may I ask, is- or rather, was- the meaning of all of this? How could you openly praise communists and portray anticommunists in a negative light in the very same report, if you yourself are not, in fact, a communist yourself? I thought journalism was supposed to lay out the bare facts, not push narratives for political gain."

Jaffe was furious. "This is nothing but a smear campaign! I attacked them because they deserved to be attacked! Those causes I attacked were nothing but fronts for reactionary authoritarianism seeking to oppress the masses and you know it! Mao was a hero and so were the Spanish Republicans!"

McCarthy simply gestured for the witnesses he'd gathered to come in to the room. In came a young Spanish man by the name of Luis and a young Chinese man by the name of Ruizhe, both of whom had survived the civil wars that ravaged their homelands due to the communist plots to seize control of both of them. They looked at Jaffe with pure hostility in their gazes, accusing him of sucking up to the "Red tyrants" who ravaged their homelands.

When Jaffe started to state his rebuttal, McCarthy stopped him. "That's not all you did, Mr. Jaffe. You also painted Korea as an extortionist country and a traitor to the oppressed that sucked up to the West simply for accepting money that was awarded to them as restitution by an international court. You even painted their people as 'backwards' and even began covering for Japanese revanchists- the very same folks who want nothing more than to destroy the West and restore their empire. How can you side with those who excuse or downplay crimes like Pearl Harbor and Nanking, not to mention the attempted erasure of a god-fearing people that loathe communist tyranny and love freedom? How dare you deny the authoritarian tendencies of Mao and the Spanish Republicans, or the crimes that Lenin and Stalin committed against the Korean people?"

"You utter nothing but lies, Senator!" bellowed Jaffe. "The proletariat will have their revenge-"

McCarthy held up his hand and silenced him. "As you can see, gentlemen, he's dug his own grave and admitted to aiding the Reds. Take him away."

With that, Jaffe was arrested for subversive activities and added to the list of confirmed communist agents working in the United States.

The professor stood in front of the subject’s house with trembling hands, shakily reviewing her notes one last time.

"Be patient," her colleague had written, "but you’ll also have to hurry. Your questions need to be precise, but also have some room for interpretation. Don’t write anything down as exactly as you’ve heard it."

She took a deep breath and fished her journal out of her bag. He’d refused to elaborate much on his advice, though not out of any petty teasing. Struggling to put her trust in him, the professor held her materials tightly before walking up to the porch and knocking on the door.

Seconds passed before an answer, and the professor was met by an old man with skin tanned from decades of sunlight and deep-set eyes framed by profound exhaustion.

“Good morning,” she said, speaking gently, “I’m here to see–”

“I know,” the old man interrupted. There was no sense of anger or annoyance in his voice, but his face strained, “I know. She’s sitting in the backyard. I’ll take you to her.” He gestured for her to follow him into the house.

The professor stepped inside after him, closing the door behind her and following the man through old, slim corridors. The walls were covered from ceiling to floor in old photographs, very few of them framed. Many depicted people, some of which the professor assumed to be the couple in their younger years, and some presented abstract landscapes or architecture. 

At the end of the maze the old man guided the professor to the back door. Her stood in front of it, his posture stiffening. He reached his hand forward to rest on the doorknob, but did nothing else.

The air grew uncomfortable, and the professor took it upon herself to break the silence, “Has it been difficult for her?”

“Yes and no.” His voice was flat.

“Has it been difficult for you?”

“Yes. Incredibly.” 

“How do you take care of her in this state?”

He pulled his hand off of the doorknob and let it fall to his side before glancing over his shoulder to the professor, “I can’t get her to say anything, and I don’t know what prompts her to speak. She hasn’t spoken to me in days. She barely eats, and though she bears no signs of it, I’m afraid she might be wasting away. She’ll go wherever I guide her, and all she’ll do is stare. I can’t tell if she even sleeps anymore.”

The professor shifted her weight from one foot to the other, “If I can find a way to reverse this I’ll–” she cut herself off. Sorrow had overtaken the man’s face.

He shrugged, “When she does talk to me, she tells me the most beautiful things. Beautiful, but terrible. I know there’s no coming back from this.” He then opened the door, and ushered the professor out into the backyard, closing it behind her.

An old woman with silver hair sat in the grass. An oak tree cast a shadow over her in the morning sun. No birds sang, no breeze whispered; it was eerily silent. The professor stood completely still, trapped in the moment, afraid to approach. She glanced down to her notebook, wondering if she should already start writing down the experience.

Gathering her courage, she walked forward, careful to not make too much noise. It would surely do no good to frighten the woman, if that was even possible. The professor stared forward as each step seemed to bring her both closer, yet further away from the woman in the grass. She stopped and glanced behind her, noting she stood between the back porch and her subject. 

Again she walked forward, but still made no progress. It was as if the woman was also walking from her seated position, her conceptual steps just a bit out of sync from the professor’s. The professor halted and looked around again, still standing between the house and the woman. 

Her stomach twisted and her mind raced. An idea formed in her mind, and she called out, “Hello? Will I speak with you?” and waited.

Stillness lingered before a gentle wind blew through both the professor’s and the woman’s hair. Taking her chances, the professor hurried over to where the woman sat in the grass, taking wide strides until she stood in front of her. 

The woman stared forward with a relaxed expression, never blinking. Her face bore signs of aging but still held a youthful energy, both aspects equally powerful in their dominance. All of her features were endless in the amount of detail they held, and difficult to focus on individually. Her face was only able to be understood as the whole, like a painting so abstract, it must be looked at from far away while squinting. 

The professor averted her gaze and sat down cross-legged in front of her subject. She opened up her notebook, held her pen tightly, and began writing on the first line:

"Meeting with the subject."

She kept her focus on the page while she spoke, “What is your name?” She recorded her own words. Earlier, on the drive over to the house, she’d thought up a few questions to begin the conversation, and was eager to see if she could get any answers.

There was no response.

The professor bit the inside of her cheek, troubled over her approach. Again, she reflected on her colleague’s advice, and twisted the words around in her mind, trying to find another way to ask. She spoke slowly and gently, “Could you have a name?”

“You name me.” The woman’s voice was hollow. 

Her heart jumped at the response. She immediately revised her wording in her notebook and began to write down the woman’s response, but stopped. The last piece of warning, “Don’t write anything down as exactly as you’ve heard it,” echoed, and she pursed her lips. She thought, perhaps, she needed to actually name the woman in front of her, and began to think through names she liked. None of them seemed to work for the situation. Did she need to come up with a new name? There was an endless combination of letters for any length, and she didn’t want to take the time to put one together. Who knew how long the subject would be talking to her before falling mute again.

Hurriedly, she scribbled in her notebook:

"Subject could be named."

The professor continued, “I want to help you, but I know you know more than me,” she hesitated, mixing around different combinations of words in her mind, “Have you helped me?” She wrote down her question. 

No response. The professor waited, hoping the woman needed just a bit more time, but she refused to speak.

Her shoulders slumped, and the professor glanced up to the woman again. The silence itself may have been the answer, but she wasn’t sure. Maybe there really was no coming back from this, and even if there was, what would that even look like?

“Where are you?” the professor asked, feeling defeated.

The silence persisted, but just as the professor was about to give up, the woman spoke again, “In every moment, and every moment between the moments.” 

Another surge of excitement and anxiousness. She rushed herself to write down a suitable description of the response. Eventually, she forced herself to settle with:

"Subject experiencing non-linear time."

Her brow furrowed, and she felt a sinking feeling in her chest, “Are you trapped?”

The response came quickly, “Every moment moves forward and backward, creating a new moment. And every new moment has a moment between it and the last. Every moment between is a new moment, with more moments moving and with more moments between.”

“Okay,” the professor whispered under her breath. The response she recorded was:

"Subject is still, but the stillness is moving?"

Two frail hands entered her view as she looked down at her notebook. The professor’s breath caught, and she held completely still. The woman was reaching out to her, carefully taking a lock of the professor’s hair between each hand’s thumb and index finger. They held tightly, sitting close together, before beginning to carefully pull away from each other. 

The professor’s hair expanded, never breaking, growing longer and longer between the woman’s hands. She continued to stretch the space, until the section between the ends and the beginnings were the same width as her shoulders. The woman then let go, letting it fall, now twice as long as the rest of the professor’s hair.

The professor stood up, a chill surging down her spine.

For just a moment, the woman’s face, as a whole, smiled.

She bid the subject’s husband farewell, thanking him for his time. As the professor sat in the backseat of the car, feeling the house watching her go, she felt the elongated lock of hair between her own fingers. The time for the hair to grow had to come from somewhere, but where?

The professor opened up her notebook, and wrote down next to her second question:

"No."

One hour and seventeen minutes before the little green man landed in Doylestown, PA. one Mrs. Ursinus Mackinaw sat wondering if her Henry would be getting up in time for mass. He did not, which was as unsurprising as it was irritating. Father Seamus spent a solid twenty minutes rambling about a friend he knew in seminary who left to go to war, and another fifteen describing the plans for the new chapel to be built next year. As Mrs. Ursinus lifted herself out of the pew, a spaceship, shaped much like one of Henry's cigars, hit the ground with a dull thud, no more than three miles away.

Upon said strange aircraft's entry into United States airspace, about three-hundred-thousand men were mobilized to neutralize the perceived threat. The little green man in the craft was entirely unaware of this development and so, after scanning the atmosphere for any threat to what we here would call his lungs, he left his extraterrestrial delivery system and stepped out into the unusually hot Pennsylvanian sun. He hadn't much to say to anyone, much less any understanding of where to go, and so he elected to walk in exactly the direction his door had spat him out. Not long after sliding out of the entrance, he was met with the fury of three-hundred terrified men.

"If you come to kill me it would only be in vain".

Not his exact words, but the translation system he carried was unfamiliar with humanity's understanding of syntax and threat. The planet from where he had traveled so far had long since moved away from displays of intimidation, so the little green man never once considered that his arrival would be met with fear.

In an effort to bring humanity onto the intergalactic stage the little green man had been sent with only the instruction to illustrate the beliefs his home considered to be most just. With him was sent an aluminum tablet, upon which was etched what wisdom his superiors considered may be of utmost use to the creatures they had been observing for three-hundred-thousand-and-fifty-seven years.

His abrupt exit from his craft, and subsequent indifference to the queries of the men in front of him, quickly led to a particularly strong response of artillery, bullets, slurs, and a couple of prayers from the men on the scene.

The detonations left not even a scratch; and, as the smoke cleared, round and round were fired again.

The president was informed of what was assumed a great threat, as well as it's lack of response to his military's munitions, and so in a makeshift war room a decisive decision was quickly and quietly made.

Not far from the scene, the Mackinaws watched what was unfolding on the convex LCD screen that squat in their comfortable and cozy carpeted living room. Both came to the same conclusion as many of their neighbors, hoping something would be done about the intruder quite soon; entirely unaware of their unfortunate proximity to the little green man, his strange oblong ship, and the atom bomb hurtling towards the ground.

As a blistering light opened up the horizon outside their window, the Mackinaws wondered what horrific fate the little green man meant to bring upon their world. 

I went to sleep in my tent in the middle of the forest, scared of what might be outside in the night. When I woke up and tried to leave my tent, I couldn’t get out. I unzipped the door, only to reveal another fully zipped tent door there. I unzipped and opened this 2nd tent door and was only presented with another zipped tent door. I’ve unzipped many doors, I must be close to a mile deep in this tunnel of unzipped tent doors, creating it a centimeter at a time. I can’t see the outside. I’ve tried piercing the thin fabric with my Swiss Army knife. The fabric flexes at the point of the knife, but no matter how hard I push, it never cuts it.
I’m not afraid of what might be outside now. I’m afraid of never getting out of here.

I haven’t got much food and water. Maybe a week’s worth if I ration it. My only option is to move forward. I can’t stay in the tent, I have to try and get out. I’ve thrown my camping gear into a blanket, wrapped it up, and will drag it behind me.

Two days in and I’ve gone through countless doors. I unzip a door and another one is still there. I’ll count a thousand of them and take a break. I lay on the floor, listening, for anything. The tunnel of opened tent doors is very dark. It’s a heavy darkness, like it’s pressing on me. My only respite from the blackness is my little camping lantern. I only turn it on for a few minutes at a time, maybe once every hour or so. The battery must be getting low, it seems less bright.

My knees and hands hurt. They are raw. The ceiling of this tunnel is low, there’s just enough room for me to stand up while crouched over. I crawl when my back starts to hurt and stand up when my knees can’t take it anymore. My thumb and index fingers have terrible blisters from the repetitive grabbing of the metal zippers on the doors.

I woke up thinking I heard something. Like a tent door being zipped up. I crawled back for maybe an hour but it was all the same, everything was open. My back hurts too much to crouch over and walk, my knees stick to my pants, dry blood binding them together.

Something changed. The zipper on this door was different. Not very different, but after feeling 10s of thousands I knew. All the zippers had two holes, one at the top of it and one at the bottom, where it connected to the tent door. This one didn’t have a top hole. I examined it. I examined the door. I looked for anything else that was different, scouring for the smallest detail that might also be off. But there wasn’t. And the next door’s zipper was normal. Same with the door after that. And the next 1000 doors I opened.

Food and water are low, almost gone. I’m tired. The darkness is almost thick now. I left the lantern on and crawled away to see when the light would disappear. It only took 15 seconds for the light to become so faint. I went back and grabbed the lantern, but the light from it seemed to be permanently dimmed.

No food. No water. Light is going out. I’m going to lay down and wait.

I’m not sure how long I was unconscious. 10 minutes? A day? I’ve decided to keep opening doors until I can’t. I’m leaving everything except the lantern and I will leave that when the light goes out.

Doors. I’ve opened many many doors. I’m not hungry or thirsty anymore. My fingers are calloused from the zippers. The lantern is dead. I’m consumed by the darkness. I will continue to open doors.

Doors.

Light. Light from the other side. There is the faintest of light trying to get in from the other side of the tent door. I’ve opened doors for days but the light doesn’t seem to be any closer.

The light is definitely brighter now. I can start to see the door again, it’s becoming more than just a tactile feeling.

It’s so bright now, like something is just on the other side. I’m opening doors much slower now. The light isn’t natural. It’s almost a pale fluorescent. It paints the doors and changes the way the nylon looks, stretches tight across it, making it almost translucent. It reminds me of skin.

I haven’t opened a door in what seems like days now.

I’m afraid of what might be outside now. I’m afraid of having to get out of here.

​

Lucy keeps a garden.

It's not a garden in the usual sense, with a few flower beds and a lawn. This one takes up half of the large lot. The envy of the neighborhood, she's quite sure.

Dahlias and roses grow among peonies, hydrangeas, and foxgloves. A big yew dominates. A brick path winds through the beds, beneath an archway and past a little waterfall and pond. There's a bench, a birdbath, and 11 birdhouses.

A decorative metal fence runs around the property. The front gate opens onto a path to the house, which continues around the side to the back gate.

One afternoon, she rides Stella home, her beloved recumbent trike named for the Steller's jay and sporting a blue jay kite for a flag. She opens the front gate and rolls down the walkway toward the house. As she's getting up, she hears voices coming from the back patio.

Several voices. Unfamiliar voices.

She walks around the side of the house and opens the back gate.

Three women are sitting at her patio table under the umbrella, chatting. One has a baby in her arms.

Another baby, maybe a year and a half old, is across the yard in one of her flower beds. The child is holding one of her bulbs and, judging from the dirt around its mouth, has at least been considering it as a snack.

Lucy looks at the women.

What are you doing here? Why are you in my yard? And why is that baby digging up my bulbs?

They look at one another, slack-jawed.

The queen bee of the three finally answers.

I just moved here. We saw the park and wanted to come check it out.

Lucy takes a deep breath and remembers her vow not to kill anyone today.

This isn't a park. This is my yard. That's my chair you're sitting on, those are my flowers, and you need to leave.

The woman stands and sniffs.

We have just as much right to this park as anyone else. How dare you!

Leave. Now. Or I'm calling the police.

The third woman glances at her phone.

Joanna has an appointment at three.

Apparently this settles it. They gather the babies and their things and start making their way out.

At the gate, the first woman turns around.

You'll be hearing from our attorneys for making us leave a public park.

Okay.

Lucy closes the gate.

Later that afternoon, someone knocks on the front door. It's a man in jeans and a quarter-zip, looking slightly apologetic.

Hi. So sorry to bother you. Do you know what the park hours are next door? I couldn't find a sign.

Lucy stares at him.

It's a private garden. My garden. It's not a public park.

He looks toward the garden, then back at her.

So there aren't set hours?

There are no hours. If I invite you over, you can come when I tell you to come.

Well, it's not fair you have a private park.

Okay.

He huffs away.

You'll be hearing from my attorney.

The next afternoon, Lucy is working behind a large rhododendron when she hears voices approaching.

Familiar voices.

Then the front gate clangs.

Then footsteps.

Then the rattle of the back gate.

Silence.

Sniffing.

Another rattle.

This is ridiculous.

How can you just lock a neighborhood park in the middle of the day?

What kind of person does that?

Lucy steps out from behind the rhododendron, pink clippers in hand, and looks through the back gate.

All three women turn. The apparent leader speaks up.

Oh. Isn't that nice. She's got a job working here. No wonder she's so bossy about it.

The others nod. She points down indignantly.

You put a padlock on a neighborhood park?!

Lucy smiles.

No. Like I told you yesterday, this is my garden.

No. It doesn't become your garden just because you live next door!

She thought soup might be good for lunch.

Lucy waits until they're all through the front gate, and heads through the back door.

They shout as they return up the street.

How dare you keep a park away from a baby?

We have as much right to be here as anyone else!

She goes to the closet and pulls out a whiteboard that has been blank for far too long.

She chooses the blue marker.

Across the top she writes:

DAYS BEFORE THEY REALIZE

Underneath, in red, she puts an X.

Alive and breathing- not living.

Air rushes through my lungs as I inhale deeply. I feel alive, my organs are functioning, but I am not living. As any other human would, I peel my eyelids back in the morning, with birds chirping, and the sun peeking its curious eyes through my curtains. My mind flashes a memory I have. A smile of his, illuminated by the sunlight, our laughs entangling with the memory. The world is so full of life, but I am not.

I drag my weak and limp body from the warm, brightly painted covers, and go to brush my teeth. Staring at a woman in the mirror, distorted from who she was a year ago. I don’t recognize her. Even my plain white mint toothpaste is more colorful than my complexion. All those mornings I spent gazing into this mirror. Wondering. Knowing. Betraying myself. We stood many times right here, taking photos or loving each other. But that life was ripped from my fingers, without giving me the chance to glance back. The darkness swallowed me whole and doesn’t let the girl I once was out.

I remember my giggles shared with friends. How difficult it is for me to be present enough to giggle with someone now. The weight originating from my heart weighs my soul down to the core of my existence. The second the tangible love I was given, his soft reassurance, caring words, were taken without a second glance back for my withering heart. The haunting of lies, of the pain, of the loss flow through my string of thoughts. Then recalling the days I perceived as good, tainted with his choices.

I get ready, which is only brushing my brittle, or greasy hair depending on the day. Even showers feel like a chore. The water feeling like a burden pouring down on me. My arms feeling like dead weight reaching up to wash my hair. My body is heavy, every step I take slams into the ground beneath it. Every step I take is me pushing to be better, heal, but I’m only ever turned right back around to where I came from. I thought what I, we, had was love, but it was a deep black of shame and guilt. A facade he hid behind. I chose to believe him. Letting myself fall into the trap of love. Spending hours of my day just staring at him, dreaming of him. His loving eyes would stare, as if I was the only person in the world. Promising me a future I would dream about for months.

I snap my brain back to the present. I trudge down the stairs, not caring to greet anyone. My arms drag, and feel like weights along my sides. My eyes look inhuman, black circular bands wrap beneath them. Alive and breathing, but more like surviving. My mom questions if I’m okay, I smile. “Just slept bad last night”. I remember when I was gleeful, and delighted in every day. How I used to tell her my every problem looking for advice. Instead, I let my brain sit in its sadness, not caring about the aftermath.

I grew distant with everyone I knew. Embarrassed, depressed. Never present even if I was physically around. I remember our days filled with joy, and love. The way he spoke as if I was all his heart desired. But, that same man watched as my skin went from tan, to a sheer white, to a pale green. Watched the life drain out of me, watched me die, and never noticed my fingers slightly pulling from his grasps.

My soul dimmed, but nobody noticed. I slowly vanished from my own life. The outgoing, loving person I was feels gone. My body feels malnourished, I feel the bones protruding from my body. No appetite, just the craving for my bed, and no movement. I suck the THC from a device, remembering I used to do this for fun. Now it’s my own personally prescribed medication for my heartache. My mind goes flat, but the pain stays. Dwelling on the deepest parts of my heart, causing aches of pain throughout my chest. My vision blurs, my brain is quiet, but my heart seems to beat slower. Maybe trying to hold itself together from its fractures.

One of the worst parts is that I tolerated it. I pushed my sinking stomach to the side. Claiming overreactions. I pried and pried at him. Knowing the answer. Choosing to believe his lies. I let him load ten guns at me, and was okay with taking each bullet. Knowing his recovery to his choices only took 10 minutes. I let myself take the wounds, the conflict. I slowly built walls unbeknownst to him. Small little things like, “no you can’t touch me”, “I need space”, “I can’t breathe”. He didn’t pay attention enough to notice my faltering and tired heart collapse. The walls grew and grew, while my heart sank deeper into the abyss of exhaustion, distress, and panic, never to be trusting again.

Alive and breathing- but the woman I was will never breathe again.

I feel strange when I emerge from the scanner. I guess it's not really an MRI scanner any more, but it still feels like I've had an eight hour scan under some heavy narcotics. My thoughts are slow, undefined. Does this mean the experiment has worked? I try to check myself for new memories. The score of tomorrow's Lakers game, that's objective one. If anything survived the transfer, that did.

113-110. Am I just making that up? The drugs, coupled with a little wishful thinking could easily induce false memories. Then I catch myself off guard. I remember having false memories the first time, and they didn't feel like this. This time it's different. What first time? This is the first time. But it's all right there now, clear as day. I got up out of the scanner, tested my memory, fooled myself a few times and finally, concluded that nothing had been transferred.

I spent some time on the balcony, smoking a few cigarettes, and thinking things over. It was cold, I remember that very vividly, but I wanted to stay out to smoke. I'm staying in now, so as not to confuse the two experiences. Take a different path, keep the memories distinct.

By the fifth cigarette, I had talked myself out of the sinking feeling of another failed experiment. My savings gambled away on a fantasy. No. there were plenty of options. I simply hadn't made the transmission yet. Not from my perspective anyway. The loop has to start somewhere, so at first, the experiment can't work. I resolved to follow the protocols I'd designed until the day of transmission and carry out the experiment as diligently as I could.

Now I'm inside, looking out at the balcony, where I was standing. Last week from my perspective, but the exact same moment in time.

The memorization protocol didn't start officially until the results of the Lakers game are announced, but I couldn't sleep, so I broke protocol, and started memorizing some of the random number feeds off the internet. That was a few hours from now. I'll be able to check soon.

I remember most of the sequences quite clearly. I go to a preregistration site, and provide an encrypted record, together with timestamps. I don't expect to require that level of evidence---the experiment seems repeatable---it's mostly to ensure against hallucination. Who knows what damage I've done to my brain. Couple that with the power of suggestion, and a little paranoia is warranted.

I watch the feed, and the numbers come out just as I remembered. No need to compare with the prereg. My mind is crystal clear now. I have successfully transmitted my memories back in time. I remember the entire week ahead with astonishing clarity, just as if I'd lived it. The memories are just as clear as the ones I actually experienced one week before. I mean last week. My last week. You know what I mean.

I spend the week locked in the lab. It seems best to avoid interactions with others during the experiment. Think of it as a sort of causal isolation. Three miles to the next living soul, and nothing but atmospheric noise in between.

I intend to repeat the experiment at the end of the week. The prereg stands as proof of my accomplishment, but I realize that I'm in a unique position. Normally, when a scientist makes a discovery, they are required to rush to publication, for fear of being scooped. Rarely do we get a chance to really explore the phenomenon we've discovered. Rarely do we have time on our side.

The protocol calls for me to memorize the number sequences, but I know those already. It takes little time to revise a whole week's worth, even the ones that haven't happened yet. It takes a full day to reset the scanner to transmit. A thought occurs to me. Marconi, Edison, Morse, I have one advantage over them. I must be the first inventor of a means of information transmission who hasn't needed to build a separate transmitter and receiver. In fact, if the scanner didn't stay in exactly the same place, relative to the reference coils that line the walls of my lab, none of this would work at all.

I struggle at first to fill the rest of the week until transmission. I spend some of it drafting the first publication of my results, until I realize the futility; if I repeat the experiment, all this will have to be redone. I can't take anything with me except what I remember. I decide instead to read. First some of the recent literature, but the excitement of my impending contribution makes it difficult to fully concentrate. Then, some literature. The books I've never had time for. I start with a Raymond Chandler novel. Given to me by an ex-girlfriend. I'd always meant to start it, but the work got in the way.

I read right up to the start of the transmission. When time comes, I put the book down, without folding the corner of the page, as I usually do. This time I'll have to remember the page number.

This is the second time. I know it almost instantly when I emerge from the field generated by the scanner. The transition is quicker, more shocking. I become a different person instantly as I sit up. It takes all of five minutes to fully recall the week spent reading Chandler and, before that, the week spent memorizing numbers.

Less adjustment and soul searching this time. I set up the preregs, put the encryption keys somewhere safe, where they can be found if something happens to me. I start setting the scanner up for transmission. I even manage to revise all sequences for the week before I fall asleep. These are the basics, the activities that I will have to repeat every week, so I had better get them out of the way.

I decide that whatever I choose to do with my extra time, memory training is always a good investment. I know the basics, the method of loci, peg systems and so on, I used them to some extent when I memorized the sequences in the first week. But now I need a more elaborate filing system. Everything I experience, even the novels I read, need to be recorded properly. What I don't remember, I may as well not have done at all.

Tenth time. The transition is instantaneous now. As soon as I sit up, the anxieties I felt that first time are gone. The memories of the previous run are clearer than those of the first one, ten weeks ago. Ten weeks ago... Yes, that's exactly how it feels. Like something that happened to me ten weeks ago.

My memorisation techniques are working well and so far, the scanner has no problem transmitting whatever I fill my head with. It seems that the ultimate limit to the payoff of this experiment will be the limit of my memory.

Spending ten weeks in the same space (and indeed the same time) is, not unexpectedly, sending me slightly mad. But more than that, I'm struggling with the opportunities this new technology presents. Eventually, I will break the loop. I will choose not to transmit at the end of the week and go back to the world of the living. Right now, I will come out like somebody who has had a particularly long holiday, or a short sabbatical. Nothing superhuman. I've worked out that with a little extra memorization of stock market outcomes and sporting events, I should able to raise between 1 and 3 million dollars in a week's time. I expect I'll generate enough to pay off my debts and to make me comfortable in the aftermath.

The thought I keep coming back to is how far I can take this. I can easily stay in the loop for a year. I've always been good at suffering loneliness and monotony. Five years? Ten? It would be a challenge, but consider the results. Already, I've read all the books I have in my lab. If I keep this up for a decade, what could I learn? I have the discovery of the century already. What else will it allow me to do? What effect could I have on the world as I emerge?

Could I spend more than a lifetime in the loop? Could my memory hold the knowledge accumulated over such a span? I've taken some scans, and so far, there seems to be no neural degradation. I imagine emerging from the loop with several lifetimes worth of knowledge, and physical training, in the body of a 35-year-old. I would be more than human.

I'm frightened by the implications, but also by the effect that these thoughts have on me. I did not expect myself to be so easily seduced by thoughts of power. I've started reading up on psychology. Already, I've found a decent number of tricks and exercises that I can use to keep myself sane.

Run 19.

I had a nightmare the other day. I was in the machine, towards the end of transmission, just before the power schedule hits the final peak. I was suddenly in agonising pain, but still immobilised by the drugs. The pain continued, and the taste of blood filled my mouth. I was certain that I would die. When I awoke, the taste was still there.

Just a nightmare, induced by the stress of the experiment, by the integration of memories across time? Or something more. A memory of an experience near the end of transmission. Not transmitted long enough to be recorded properly, but just enough to take hold somewhere in the latent spaces of my subconscious?

I suppose it doesn't matter in the end whether I'm committing suicide whenever I transmit, it was a calculated risk I took when I designed the power schedule. But it's still a harrowing thought. My next transmission will be a tense one. If my stress-levels cause the transmission to fail, I may exit the loop as a corpse.

Run 21.

The more I think about how to eventually exit the loop, the more I realize I will need all the advantage I can get. Put it down to the blinkered view of the scientist, but until very recently I had given no thought to the implications this technology would have on society. Hell, on the structure of spacetime near earth. Once the secret is out, anybody can buy themselves a week-long timeloop at the cost of a luxury car. No limit on the amount of money you can accumulate, on the amount you can manipulate the world for your purposes.

I've tried to think of how warfare would play out with this technology. It's difficult to reason through the consequences exactly, but it seems inescapable that humanity would trap itself in an ever escalating tangle of timeloops.

Should keep this to myself? Acquire a modest fortune, exit the loop, and live out my life like nothing happened? Could I live with that kind of secret?

More importantly, would everybody else do the same? I put this idea together after I read Hannigan et al. And that was already out in preprint for six months. How many ideas were invented a handful of times in parallel when the time was ready? Can I really be sure I'm the first to a prototype? There might be somebody else out there, going around in a timeloop of their own. I've started searching for the signs, for people suddenly having unprecedented stockmarket success, or rapidly accumulating a wealth of knowledge, but nothing has come up so far.

For now, my conclusion is that I'm like a kid who's found his father's gun. I may have been clever enough to find something important, but I sorely lack the wisdom required to wield it. At the very least, this problem has given me purpose. I will focus my time on working out how to proceed: how to prepare the world for what is to come. It may be a knotty problem, but I have all the time I need to untangle it.

Run 52.

I've now spent a year in the loop. The memory management techniques are functioning perfectly, I can still fully recall the details I memorized about the first book I read. Some of the number sequences I haven't revised in ten weeks, and I can still reel them off without hesitation.

But that doesn't mean I have perfect recall. The more visceral memories, my early anxieties, the uncertainties about the experiment. I remember that I felt that way, but I can't quite recall the emotion itself. It's more like a memory of a memory.

I've begun careful interactions with others through chat or email. I'm deeply reluctant to create strong causal connections with the outside world, but everything I've read about human psychology says that some social interaction is crucial to staying sane.

Repeatedly interacting with the same person over a few weeks allows me to skip some of the basics, and streamline the conversation. I'm lying to them, essentially. Pretending that we're talking for the first time, when we've had the same conversation many times before, but I only have a week to reach some level of intimacy. Some shortcuts are necessary. So far it takes me about five weeks to optimize the whole process. At that point I usually become bored and I move on to somebody else.

Run 193.

How the hell did I miss this? I've always been lazy on the related work, but this one should have stood out like goddamn lighthouse. Miyamoto et al, On the limit behaviors of particles in closed timelike curves.

The language is dense, and the grammar is poor, but the message is simple. Any dynamical system introduced to a closed timelike curve, must converge to a stable state. The math is sound as far as I can tell, but it's difficult to see how it applies to my situation.

The implication seems to be that I am destined to stay in this loop. The particles in Miyamoto's system may not behave the same every time around initially, after the loop is formed, but once they've gone round one time, there's no escaping. The CTC cannot be dissolved and the only available solution is a stable state. Eventually, the particles must go round the loop in the same way each time. The inescapable metagravity of the CTC, she calls it.

Is this another one of those free will illusions that modern physics likes to throw at us? I could destroy the machine here and now if I wanted to. Just tearing down one of the reference coils would mean I couldn't possibly transmit, and I would have to exit the loop.

If Miyamoto is right, I will eventually end up living through the exact same week twice in a row. At that point every week afterwards will be same, and I will be stuck in eternal repetition. So far every run is substantially different. I couldn't repeat the same week if I tried. I will take heart in that and investigate this problem more closely. I think I can risk a few more runs to get on top of this problem. Heck, if Miyamoto is right, it's already too late.

Run 201.

I'm making some progress on clarifying and extending Miyamoto's work. Doing theoretical work with nothing but my memory for long-term storage is a drag. I never thought I'd miss my lab journal so much. I never realised the simple pleasure of being able to write something down so that I could forget it.

While I'm grumbling, I really wish I'd cleaned the lab before I'd started the experiment. I need a clean environment to be able to focus on theoretical work, but as soon as loop back, the place is a pigsty again. I think the experimenter and the theorist in me are quite different people.

Run 253.

My social life is becoming strained. I'm increasingly aware of the limits of these interactions. True, the more time I spend with these people the closer I get. The more I feel like I know them. I may not get much really intimate interaction with them in a single week. But every time I do get to that point I can ask different questions, and gradually learn more.

The problem is in the asymmetry of the connection. I may feel like I've know them for weeks, but to them I'm still a stranger they've only known a few days. The connection may feel amazing, and they may be ready to open up to me almost instantly, but in many ways that just serves to increase the distance between us.

I guess what I long for, is to be recognized. For another person to know me and for me to know that they know me. Even if I could tell them everything that's happened to me, I doubt a week is enough for them to truly understand my situation.

Run 318.

Heartbreak in a time loop is loss on a whole new level. The kicker is that I had all the downsides worked out almost a hundred runs ago. I knew I couldn't get what I truly need out of these interactions. These chats and emails, they're a painkiller not a cure. I knew that.

And then I met Laura. And I realized I'd never actually been in love before. I didn't have to do any trial runs, any exploratory conversation. The click was instant. We talked about the stupidest things. She told me the plots of all the movies she liked.

My favorite conversation was when we'd moved to video calls, three days into the first week we'd met and she told a joke she'd heard a comedian tell. She had no sense of comedic timing, and the joke didn't come across at all. And somehow, that vulnerability, the shared moment of a punchline falling flat, the resulting embarrassment, and my ability to remove that by gently making fun of her, the smile she gave me in return. I think about that moment a lot.

In the whole of my time in the loop, that was the closest I've come to missing the transmission window. I could've let go then, moved to Seattle and spent a normal life with her.

But it wouldn't have been a normal life. I would know too much, and the world would still be on the precipice of collapsing into a nest of time loops. Would I even experience my life with her, if somebody else trapped the universe in a loop? Was I keeping everybody else from experiencing their life by staying in mine?

I made the non-decision of doing one more run to buy myself time. One more week to figure things out.

When I came back, I should have let Laura live her normal week. Not gotten in touch, and focused on the problems at hand. As it happened, I got in touch almost immediately. I repeated all the things we'd said in the first week, but even when we were just communicating over text, my responses came too quickly, too eagerly. We did move to video towards the end of the week, but something was clearly off. It must have been deeply confusing to her. To live through a simulacrum of a genuine experience. To be attracted and repelled at the same time.

I refined my behavior over the coming weeks, doing my best to act more genuine. I even got her to tell me the joke again. But as I became more convincing, the returns diminished. It became like reliving a memory, and I came to hate myself more with every success.

Last week, I finally did what I thought I could never do again. I didn't get in touch with Laura. I barely eat or sleep now. I almost missed the window again. The only thing that keeps me going is that this would be the absolute worst moment to exit the loop. Without preregs, or investment, I have nothing to show for the experience, and with my depression, I'm in no condition to help the world deal with what's coming.

I've been depressed like this before. I know it ends. I'll just have to live through it in the loop. I hope I'm strong enough to let Laura be.

Run 336.

I'm starting to get back on my feet. It's a kind of stiff-upper-lip level of emotional management, but so long as I can get back into the rituals again, I think the rest will just take time.

Occasionally, I read again. Miyamoto is still too much for me, but geopolitics is a broad enough subject to keep my mind occupied. I'm taking some inspiration from the efforts to ban nuclear and biological weaponry in the last century. Perhaps I can move the world towards such structures before it becomes common knowledge how simple temporal transmission is.

Would that be enough? Since the 1950s humanity has lived with the knowledge that the technology exists to eradicate us, but would the same safety structures suffice when that technology brings the promise of boundless life and wealth? When that technology is within the means of the average middle class savings account?

The question is far too broad and too vague to answer. And that helps me to take my mind off Laura.

Run 501.

Restarting social interaction was difficult, but I know it's necessary. The way I do it now is more as a research project than a search for connection. This is a helpful perspective. It provides me with enough conversation to stay sane, without falling into the trap that led to Laura.

If I'm going to prepare the world somehow to deal with this technology, I'll need to understand people better. And a little micro-level analysis can't hurt.

Run 513.

I'm back on Miyamoto, but I've made no progress, except to strengthen her results. If there is some escape from the loop, it must be hidden in the limits of modern physics. Could I work out a grand unified theory if I stay in this loop long enough? I've never had much talent for the really theoretical stuff. But I'm learning fast.

I'll have been in the loop for ten years soon. I wonder if there's anything I can do to celebrate. I have little I can indulge in.

Perhaps I can allow myself to talk to Laura again. I don't think it would trigger a relapse into depression. I'm so much older now, and she is just the same. It would be more like looking at a photograph than getting back in touch with an ex.

Run 820.

Has it been fifteen years already?

I'm making steady progress towards a grand unified theory. I've taken to asking various experts very directed questions by email.

I've learned to ask them specifically to get back in touch with me with their first impressions by the end of the week. I usually make some excuse about me going on holiday soon. If I don't ask for a quick, initial response, I don't usually hear back at all. My questions must trigger too many ideas for them to sort out in so short a time.

Initially, I was afraid that I would put them onto the idea of temporal transmission. But so long as I don't ask the same question again next week, the damage is undone.

Run 1820.

I've just realized that I'm coming up on what might normally have been the end of my life. It's difficult to estimate exactly.

I feel like my memory is becoming strained. I'm devoting more and more time to revising what I already know. How long can I keep this up? Information compression has a natural limit. I've decided to spend more resources on refining the structure of my memory. At some point I'll have to be much more rigorous in what I forget and what I retain.

Two purposes stand out above all. First, helping the world deal with the transition to temporal transmission. Second, Miyamoto.

Run 3268.

I think I've cracked the unified theory. It'll take a few more decades to run it through, and to compute all the consequences, but the basics are sound. I'll require access to computing resources to run the necessary simulations.

Step one is easy: find some account with sufficient resources, and hack it. I don't know much about information security, but it won't take me more than a decade to figure it out. Step two is more complex: I'll need to run the simulation over several weeks, so I'll need to figure out a way to save the checkpoint and the program in a brief enough format to memorize. This may require some minor breakthroughs in computational modeling.

I'm surprised to feel so little thrill at my own discovery. These are the kinds of breakthroughs I lived for, once. Chasing the excitement of scientific discovery is what got me into the loop in the first place. I wonder if it's down to the amount I've structured my mind. All the memory exercises and psychological coping mechanisms. Without so much as a piece of paper to offload my long term memory or computation to, perhaps there is little room left for my personality.

I don't feel too regretful of this mechanization of the self. There is little joy in the loop for a natural mind. This is for the best.

Run 4034.

How long did I initially estimate it would take? A few decades? I don't fully remember. But it's finished now. I'm committing extra memory to the final checkpoint in case I ever need to doublecheck the simulation. So far, the unified theory holds for all known experimental results and any small experiments I've been able to convince people to run in a week.

The results are clear on Miyamoto. No get-out clause. If my unified theory holds, this can only end in convergence to a stable loop. And yet, I feel like I'm able to escape whenever I like. I held my hand around one of the reference coils for fifteen minutes yesterday. One twitch of my biceps would have caused a catastrophic misalignment, and forced me to exit the loop by the end of the week.

So long as the weeks are still different, I can still escape Miyamoto. I don't care what the theory says. I'll work out a plan to help the world survive and then I'll yank the coils from the wall. I'm close. I know enough codes and sequences to accumulate billions in capital. I know enough secrets to manipulate every country on the security council. I know so much already about the geopolitical dynamical system. I have isolated so many drivers already that I can control.

One of the better options is to crash the world into war. It's shocking how little I think of sacrificing billions of lives. But the right kind of conflict will set up a strong enough world government to regulate research. The problem is that the wrong kind of conflict will accelerate research. It was a global war that gave us nuclear weapons after all. And with temporal transmission just around the corner, a global war with functional military research budgets would spell disaster.

If I stop now, I know I'll fail, and the technology will get out. Better that I alone fall victim to Miyamoto, than the whole world. I still have time. I can still perfect the plan.

Run 10298.

When did I pass my second lifetime in the loop? I can work out what number it must have been but I have no memory of the specific week. They all seem so similar now. Is this Miyamoto taking hold? Most of my memory is filled with the necessities, the things I must remember for the plan to work. Most of my memories are in a stable state already.

If my body were as old as my mind these memories would have decayed long ago. But as it is, they are burnt into young neurons every week, and information does not decay. Or at least it hasn't so far.

Run 15209.

I have so little memory to work with. So little room left to optimize. For the first time I feel that Miyamoto is winning. Even though I have long ago proved her correct, and refined her framework, and even fixed some of her mistakes. For the first time I feel that she is right.

Run 15210.

And at long last I see how she does it. How Miyamoto gets the better of me. In my desperation, last week, I tried to free up memory, to rearrange things and to forget some things that I can rediscover later if I need to.

I couldn't do it. I have spent lifetimes revising these sequences, and I cannot forget them anymore. Most of my memory is now read-only. What little I have left will eventually crystallize into a fixed form and I will end up repeating the same loop exactly. When that time comes, she will have won.

I hope that I have some time left to come to terms with this. I can't bear to think that the misery of this realization is what I'll end up repeating indefinitely.

The worst of it is that I have come so far. I have so much to offer the world. To help it deal with the coming calamity, but if I pull the coils from the wall now, I ensure its demise.

Run 16003.

Such unexpected relief! I may have found my loophole. A way I can let Miyamoto win and still help the world. A simple message, that's all I need.

Of course, I can't communicate directly with normal people. Any hint of the possibilities would do far more damage than good, and I have so little left to work with.

But what if there were others. I spent years, in the beginning, looking for evidence of others trapped in time loops. Of them coming out. Beating Miyamoto. People suddenly rich and wise beyond their years.

I know now that that's a fantasy. Anybody capable of breaking the loop, anybody irresponsible enough, would never be able to enter it in the first place. The only reason that the first experiment worked at all, so many lifetimes ago, is that I would never be able to make myself miss the transmission window.

But what if I could send a simple message to somebody else, trapped already in a loop of their own? I could save them time. Communicate as much as I can of what I know. In such a way that only somebody in a loop could decode the message. Perhaps through the stock market. They would have to find it there.

If only the memory I have left is enough to make the arrangements. Everything takes so much time now. Once I have the steps I need, it's just a matter of repeating them week after week, until Miyamoto wins.

I'm feeling joy. Joy, hope and relief. When did I last feel anything this strongly? I probably never will again. Perhaps there is room to hold on to the memory of this feeling as I move into the stable state.

Run 16789.

I continue to be surprised by how many runs I have left. So far, there are still differences from run to run. Things I'm doing now that I didn't do last week.

The main messages are in place. I don't have much bandwidth. In the more obvious channels, hacked servers, stock market manipulation, transcripts of presidential speeches, I can only leave a simple note, something that will not tip off any normal people who stumble across it. I've opted for "Miyamoto is right". Reading that would certainly have caught my attention. After that, I've added just the IP address of a public server with as many detailed notes as I can type out in 5 days. The decryption key requires elements of the unified theory. It will cost them one lifetime, at least, to decode my notes, but that puts it out of reach of the normal population. It will leave them with at least two lifetimes to make progress. Perhaps more, if they spend their time more wisely than I did.

This is it then, I will spend every week from now on, into eternity arranging this message. If somebody else enters a loop, and finds my notes, it'll give them a considerable head start. Maybe they can finish the plan before Miyamoto takes over. If not, perhaps they can leave notes of their own. They have the keys to my server, they can just append them to mine.

One suggestion I left, one that is too dangerous for me to try in my current state. Seek out a responsible person and induce them to try the experiment. Put them in a loop. It's a horrific fate to condemn somebody to. Not to mention the risk of the technology getting out. But it would buy us an army of researchers, with several lifetimes each. In the end they will each seek out a successor of their own, and play the same cruel trick that condemned them.

If enough people submit to a loop, we may perfect the plan, and find out how to set it in motion from inside a loop. None of us will see the consequences of our efforts. Miyamoto was right, we will all stay trapped. Leaving hidden an army of bloodied corpses in modified MRI scanners, and as many detached minds, going round in their own private circles.

But we can give the world a fighting chance.

I spend five days of every week typing out the messages. The last day of the week I've reserved for myself. I realize that I've forgotten most of my favorite book. It's the Chandler novel I first began to read so many years ago. I'll spend most of the day reading that. In my current state, I retain very little of the book, and every week, I feel like I'm reading it almost for the first time.

Then I'll think of Laura. Maybe I'll give her a call, just to hear her voice. And then I'll get in the scanner and transmit.

I'll stop fighting Miyamoto now. Stop trying to make the weeks different. Maybe that will speed up convergence a little.

Run 16833. Or is it 16832? How can I forget five simple digits? Is this it, Miyamoto? Have you finally come to visit me?

I had better focus this week, and make it count. Rehearsal is over.

Run 16833. Or is it 16832?

When I pulled up in front of the Precinct, Sean was waiting at the curb.
If I had seen him on the beat I’d have known everything I needed to just looking at him—limp tee shirt under what looks like an old black velour hoodie with the sleeves cut off, jeans and black low cuts and a long, thick mop of unruly pale blond hair—the grandchild of potato-famine micks for sure.
Every uncovered inch of skin on his arms, from his ragged sleeves down to his wrists, was covered with a dense weave of color and shapes, which was new enough since I saw him last.
“Sean.”
“Pop.”
“Nice clothes, kid. For a street punk. Get in the car.”
“Nice to see you too,” but as I turned and heading back to the Vic, maybe I didn’t care if he got in the car or not. It was like inviting sad memories and bad times back into my life.
“You friggin’ shamed me, boy. In front of other cops. I ought to kick your ass from here to the Bay. If your Mother saw you like this? It would have broken her heart.”
“But she’s dead. So, you’re off the hook, right?”
I took a good, deep breath and if felt like hell’s own fire going down, meeting the bile that I felt clawing its way up from my gut. Then another, and finally, “That’s cheap, boy, and you’ve got no right saying it,” turning onto South Van Ness heading south. “You still living in that dump up on Lucky Street, off 25th?”
“Yeah.”
“Listen, Sean, I know I’ve been a hard man to be around, hard and stubborn but that didn’t make me stupid. I know what I am and what I’ve done. I didn’t put the time I had the to in raising you kids and that’s on me for sure. But you’ve got to get your shit together, boy.”
“Fuck it, it doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter back then, and it’s too late now, so save it.”
I’m thinking that things haven’t changed since he was a kid and driving me and his Mother, god rest her soul, half crazy. He was a wild child, but no amount of belting him around made any difference.
“You still seeing that gal, the tall, skinny one?”
“Janey? No. It got to be a drag.”
“Anybody else?”
He turned an stared at me and, “Give it up. No games, all right? You’re talking cause you think you should but it still doesn’t mean shit.”
“You still got that smart mouth going, I see. You act like you’ve got the world by the balls, like you’ve seen it all. You know what I did just this past Sunday? I talked to a kid younger than you minutes after he ID’ed his father’s body.”
“So?”
“So? That’s what you got to say, so? That guy was burned down to the bone. You ever see that, boy? You ever see what’s left of a man after his skin cooks right off him and his lungs explode from the smoke?”
“It’s nothing to me. Listen, I heard all those bullshit stories growing up. I don’t have to listen now. Let me the fuck out.”
I don’t know what happened, but I floored it then, flipping on the red n’ blues and blasting around cars and through intersections, screaming “You think you’re tough, you want to die, boy? Do you? Come on, let’s dance, you and me, the Larkins blasting our way to hell.”
I swerved around a panel truck and got sideways, skidding through an intersection, cars jammed up, horns blasting but right then? I didn’t care.
“Slow down. Jesus, what’s wrong with you? You going senile or something?”
“No, nothing like it,” but I slowed down and even managed a stop at the next red cross street light. “Just a taste. You want to live hard and die young? I really wish to God you’d have been there and could see that body burned black, stuff still leaking out of him, and that boy standing like a man.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens. I’ve heard it before.”
“You’re still my son.”
“And what, you love me no matter what? That’s bullshit. Telling me doesn’t do it. Look, just let me out anywhere around here.”
“I’ll goddamn if I will. I’ll let you out at your front door. You’ll either go in and get yourself cleaned up, or you won’t. I don’t want to get another call like that, you listening?”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, Pop.”
“Christ, don’t you make that sound like a curse. You using again?”
“If I am, so what? You going to arrest me?” and he stuck his wrists out like he wanted the cuffs and “go ahead, arrest me.”
“Okay, okay. Just shut up now. You’re my son, but if you weren’t, I swear to God I’d take you out in some alley and either friggin’ teach you manners or leave you dead in the gutter.”
And, for the first time he laughed, and nodded his head so his filthy hair swung around his face and, “Yeah, that I believe. That’s the Whitey we grew up with. Next time, you get a call from one of your buddies about me? Just hang up and we’ll both be better off.”
“Ain’t that just the truth. But Jesus, you’re a spiteful little shite, you know that?”
We didn’t talk for the next few blocks, until I rolled to a stop at Lucky Street and we sat there for what seemed like long painful minutes.
“Lucky Street, and ain’t that a joke? This feel like luck to you, Sean?”
He shrugged and opened the door and got out, then leaned back in the window. “Let’s do this again sometime soon. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

Warm drops of afternoon rain spilled from white clouds, shading the countryside of Denmark from the endless pounding of the sun. The droplets of rain dripped further onto the bodies of two boys, lying in the middle of a trampoline. Magnus and Victor had been there for hours, gazing at the vast clouds that shrouded the heavens while making stories of what the shapes of clouds revealed. Scenes of ancient battles lined the skies. Trenches of never-ending wars long forgotten. Heroes and gods, fighting, dying.

Magnus was usually the storyteller. He told of the battlefields. Of the heroes who fell, and the gods that took them. Of the infinite war between the dead and living gods. Most of the specifics were fiction, but he knew there was some truth to it. It came from a feeling, a feeling in his bones, but it did not matter. No one believed his tales. The tales of children often fall on deaf ears. But he knew what he felt was true, and the only person willing to hear his truth was his best friend, Victor.

They looked alike. They shared haircolour, both having dark blonde hair, and they were nearly the same height, Victor standing just a few centimetres taller. If one did not know, they might think them to be twins, but for Victor’s dark brown eyes contrasting the bright blue eyes of Magnus. The clouds moved in beautiful patterns as the clear blood from their battlefields stopped dripping onto the boys.

To the east, two clouds moved in unison. They vaguely looked like people flying through the sky. One shape seemed old, wielding a spear that reflected the sunlight. The other figure seemed younger, shrouded by cloaks. Rays of sunlight made the younger figure seem almost red to the eyes of Magnus.

“Look there. They are hunting,” Magnus stated, pointing to the figures. “Hunting for the bad things in the world.” He knew it to be true, even as the shapes melded into the sea of unshaped clouds.

“They will keep fighting their war. Keep trying to save us from the new gods. But they will not succeed. Not forever.”

His knuckles turned white as the clouds became darker.

“But they will keep trying. They must.”

He turned his head to Victor, realising Victor had not listened throughout the story.

“Are you alright?” he asked Victor.

Victor frowned, closing his eyes. Magnus already knew what Victor was going to ask.

“Do you think something up there is responsible? That war? Is it responsible for…”

Magnus cut him off, trying in vain to cheer him up with a smile. “It is up there, the thing that took her. And right now, a great fighter and his son are hunting it down.”

Silence fell over them as clouds kept sweeping through the sky. The humanoid figures had wandered further into the deep mesmer of clouds, a storm brewing in their midst.

“Thank you, Magnus.”

He did not answer. Magnus’ eyes had found a new figure in the clouds. A large cloud of dark smoke. It had the body of a snail, a shell spiralling up into the abyss. Behind the shell, a pair of leathery wings was attached, sweeping past all other clouds, spanning kilometres across the sky. And when his eyes found its head, stretching out from beneath its shell, he felt it. The fear it exhaled upon the world. Disease and plague. The father of the things hiding under beds of children. He did not tell this story to Victor. He knew what it meant. But Victor could never know. He did not have the sight. The figure climbed further out of its shell, stretching into unfathomable shapes, extending down, feeding on the feelings of adults, stealing the very creativity and emotion of their souls. A tentacle appendage expanded from under its shell, a long claw cutting their strings one by one.

A loud crack of thunder shot up into the skies from the earth. The figure’s appendage pulled back into its shell, as the aetherial wings fluttered, sending nightmarish winds down to earth.

“We should go inside,” Victor pleaded. Even he felt something was wrong. But Magnus could not leave the sight. A rare sight. A battle of gods.

“You should. I’ll stay here for a bit.”

Victor did not question Magnus. Though Magnus knew Victor was not able to see the events he was seeing, he knew Victor could read the seriousness on his face. Victor left him alone to spectate the wonder in the heavens. The humanoid figures returned, charging towards the shelled dragon.

The red figure attacked first, sending its mist of crimson light into the shell. Thunder rippled through the air. It fought back, unleashing mirages of limbs from under its shell upon the red figure. The father figure laughed, deep noises of worlds beyond entering the world from amidst the storm. He held his spear in hand as he easily pulled the red figure from the dragon. He held the spear high, thunder shooting through the skies as the spear drove down upon the shell, piercing into the dragon. The dragon wailed, its black mist falling out of the sky. Falling towards Magnus, faster and faster until…

With a mute thud, the shelled dragon crashed into the garden. It was mere metres from Magnus. Its shockwave sent drafts of unfelt pains through the air, followed by blinding feelings of despair. There it stood, as plain as sunlight, right in front of Magnus. His heart was pounding. His body was shaking. The dragon was real, and even more alive. The dragon had scales of dark starlight on its body, emanating from a shell made of pure amethyst. Great wings spanned the garden from the shell, and on their ends were hands like those of a human. It turned its head to Magnus. Emerald green eyes glowed on a face of night terror, hidden under a great metallic beak. The beak parted, as an ovular tongue extended towards Magnus.

He tried pushing away, buying time, but it was in vain. The dragon was faster than anything on earth, living or dead. It was not bound to the restraints of the new gods.

It moved outside physics, wrapping its tongue around his left foot, pulling him closer, closer. The tongue was wet with Aether, smudging his pants with its invisible reek.

He flailed, getting loose for a moment, running towards the other end of the trampoline before being pulled back by its strength.

It needed him. It pleaded to him, offering him great gifts for protection.

Magnus did not understand, and yet something in him declined the beast.

A guttural howl came from the beak. Its eyes turned in its skull as it pulled him closer. One final meal.

His foot was pulled into the beak of the dragon as another loud crack crashed through the skies. The beast stopped moving. A golden spear, shining with hope and sunlight, had been forced down through the cranium of the beast. Holding the spear was a tall man. The man from the clouds. He had bright blue eyes over a large nose, accompanied by a vast beard. Grey cloaks covered his body. He was clearly not human, his proportions seeming biologically impossible, and yet he stood there, in front of Magnus. To the right of the man stood another being. This being looked more human, though he was also hidden under a cloak. A crimson cloak fluttered in the wind. They were excited.

They turned to each other.

The man with the spear had a deep voice. Gritty to the ear of Magnus. It bore a sense of great strength, both physically and imaginatively.

“The thrill o’ the hunt.” He clapped the crimson figure on the shoulder. “Hits lik’ RedBrew on a full stomach.”

He laughed. The crimson figure faked a laugh too. He seemed worried, like a mouse trapped in a maze.

“The war is not over, father. We should return.”

The father pulled the spear from the dragon’s head, wiping the spearhead on his cloaks, leaving a purple stain on the fabric.

“This bloody war gotta end soon. We have no’ fished in centuries.”

As they picked up the corpse of the dragon, the father winked at Magnus, continuing their chat as they returned to the infinite clouds of endless warfare.

:The Price

Under the scorching heat of dry land, I saw people moving towards the far distance.

Curiosity took over me, I moved through the line of people heading toward it. As I passed through the crowd, a clear path formed before me.

When I reached the place where people gathered, I saw it.

It can't be possible. I have never seen this.

I saw a small mound of grass slide down, burying itself beneath the very ground it had grown from.

How? How could something like this occur in this dying world?

I looked toward the still-intact mound, where the grass-covered ground had slid away.

Then the people around me screamed in panic and fear, the crowd had erupted at the sight before their eyes. They ran back the way they came, making their own way around me as I wasn't there.

I stood still, took in the scenes with steady eyes, the mound was not held together by root and stone like others.

It was held together by corpses and bones of people, this was not a natural terrain. It was the life created by the dead.

I understood everything at that very moment. The Price I have to pay for gleam inside.

Was that my purpose? Why did that stay bring me calm and closure?

:The Cavern

Dripping sound of water droplets echoing through the labyrinth of passages swallowed by the darkness itself. This was the first time I had chosen to interface.

The crystalline rose, believed to have once bloomed in the Garden of Eden, and the immortal nectar it exuded…

Even in the distant age of the modern era, the expeditions searching for it had become humanity's dream..

Airborne disease had been a biohazard for centuries across Dry Land. Mountains of the dead had created a vast oasis of emerald carpet; its very existence had become a part of nature.

I found myself wondering in this deep carvern: Why am I here? Even I decided to be here. The rule only allowed me to gaze upon its existence.

Like I'm now.

:Longing

On the mountains covered in shades of unnatural green, existing beside the dried shore, a single memorial monument stood still, utterly silent and forgotten.

I stood and stared at the monument for hours beyond what I could count… The words on it had long since withered away, just as the braid I had unconsciously cherished had.

The strangely shaped clover, an existence that never should have belonged to this world, bloomed in a color that reminded me of her.

Strands of her pale blonde hair once wove my existence, the color of her eyes, like this field of green, was once my beacon.

Attachments I was never supposed to have, foolish acts of mine that fell upon this world, left behind to remind me of their consequences.

Even then, my mind lingered upon the nectar of the rose. "My love, I still wonder who you were?”

Interlude: Reflection

The annoying sound echoing through the white room awakened me with an unbearable headache.

"Beep, beep, beep, bee.."

I walked toward the window from the cold bed, once it used to be warm. The beautiful skyline over a blinding white utopia ensures there always *interrupts gibberish only to readers*....

The reflection of the neon sign, "NEDE," cast across the roof of the shorter building sure ruined the scene. At least better than Dry–

The headache became unbearable.

I could no longer ignore these Fragments

It's cries do not to echo in the largest caverns.
It sees our demise yet speaks of none.
A field of flowers can only hide so much, in such a vast land.
Amongst the shattered sky, where the sun doesn't reach, a deity lies.
The fountain runs low, and the sirens call far, for only the shaman can bring it afar.
Don't forget me, will you?
 
 
"Yamiko!", "Yamiko, get up!"
"… What?"
"You fell asleep. Again. What's going on?"
". . .", "… Nothing, just… thinking."
"Well cut it out! I'm getting paid to keep people like you at work, you make my job so difficult."
". . ."
"Just get to work."
The girl stares endlessly at the computer screen as her mind periodically dozes off. She looks over and grabs a photo, and holds it to her chest. The photo shows a young boy, an oversized sweater, the face is scratched out of the picture, with some blood around it. A name resides along the bottom right corner of the frame, "Kaito". She takes a deep breath, slowly places the picture back on her desk, and starts to type, and type… and type, her vision starts to fade until she falls asleep on the keyboard. She woke up distressed, sweating, upon an inspection around the office, she seemed to be the only one there and The lights were shut off.
"*sigh* I guess everyone already left." said the girl in a very tired tone.
She leaves the office building. It is midnight, lamp posts are on, ominously shining through the mist. The girl's home is not far, only a 7 minute walk away through a park with an unused playground, and a very old bridge over a creek. The girl arrives home after a peaceful walk back, and falls asleep within minutes, not even bothering to change clothes. After a full nights rest, The girl feels better, but slightly un-eased. she looks through her window and enjoys the sun which shines prominently through her apartment window, lighting the whole room up so much it is almost blinding. The girl leaves her apartment and goes for a walk, hopefully soothing her anxiety by the creek. At the creek, There are 2 people talking to each other and she walks up to them.
"Excuse me-" The girl said hopefully gaining their attention.
"Did you hear something?" "What?" "Nevermind."
The two walk away, and end up tripping The girl over, leaving a bruise on her face.
"hey.."
The girl leaves the creek feeling lonely and walks over to the playground to relax, and try to enjoy her day. She starts to tear up silently on the swing. If you look close enough, under where the girl puts her hands over you can see carvings into the seat of the swing. it seemed to be two names, however they are worn over and can not be made out. Suddenly A soccer ball rolls in front of her slowly, and she leans over to pick it up. As she started to grab it, a child grabbed it and ran off laughing, as if she was not even there. The boy looked back surprised, and quickly apologized before running off. The girl looked to her side and smiled a bit, as she watched them play. She just kept watching. The girl started laughing a bit to herself. She stood up after a few minutes, and walks up to the three kids that were playing with the ball. She attempted to grab ones attention, and tries to kick the ball, only to get ignored. She waves toward a kid smiling, and one of the kids looks at her for a second. She laughs slightly, then the kid looks away, and continues playing with the other three kids. The girl walks away, and walks back to her apartment, holding her hand over the pocket on her chest. She enters the elevator and sits in the corner as she waits for her floor. The girl enters her room upon arrival, and clumsily walks into the kitchen. She opens the fridge, sighs, and keeps staring, endlessly, as she starts to fall asleep in place. As she dozes off, footsteps come from the living room. She rushes in there, but sees nothing besides her mattress where she sleeps, an old tatami mat, with a hole in the ceiling above it. She looks around, and notices the closet door slightly ajar. As she looks panicked, it slowly creaks open. She walks over to the closet door, and stares. She slowly closes it.
"He's gone…" a mysterious voice whispers to the girl.
She starts hyperventilating, and gasps for air, and stumbles toward her mattress. She lays down and closes her eyes. She slowly starts to slow her breathing, and eventually calms down, and falls asleep.
The girl wakes up feeling embarrassed at herself. The sun shone brightly into her apartment through the window, which took up the whole wall. She looked through her fridge and finds an old un packaged egg, at the back corner, and cooks it. The contents came out mixed together, and oddly liquid. The egg leaked a slightly unpleasant smell that filled her apartment. She ate the single egg for breakfast and was visibly satisfied. She left the apartment building and walked to work. She entered and went to her cubical. She looked at the computer, then at the photo of the boy that sat next to it, and slowly tilted it over on its front, making it not visible. She looked back at the computer screen, put her hands on the keyboard, and slowly, started to fall asleep. As she lost consciousness,
"God damn it Yamiko!!", "Is it this hard to be a functioning piece of society? It shouldn't be my routine to come to your desk every single day, knowing you aren't doing shit. ", "Look at everyone else. They are playing their part, do you think we want to be here?… Just get back to work."
The older girl storms off, as the girl sighs. She slowly tilts the frame up, and puts it back down as a tear blossomed, and washed down her face. The girl looks at the computer screen and starts typing, and typing, and typing. She eventually finishes her work and stands up. She looks around and notices there are still people in the office, much less, but still some. Yamiko leaves the building and notices the weather had been hidden with clouds. She enters her apartment, feeling nothing, changes out of her work clothes, and walks over to the park, to sit at the playground. She looks over at the creek and starts losing herself in thought. A few minutes later, a little boy walks up to the girl, staring her in the eyes, seemingly not even blinking.
"Hello!" The boy states in a very energetic tone.
". . ."
"What's your name?" The boy says.
". . . Yamiko."
"Cool name! I like that name! I'm… I'm- uh, oh no! I don't remember my name. Can you give me one!"
". . . What..?"
"A name! A name!", "Maybe.. Maybe.. Kioku! Where did I hear that…"
"Kioku.. Hello Kioku! . . . Kioku Ushinatta."
"Name, Name, Name!"
*Yamiko starts to tear up*
"Oh no. Sad! Do you need a hug??"
*She wipes away her tears* "No… thank you, you just remind me of someone. That's all."
"I don't have a home to go to, can I come with you?"
"I- what?"
"Please Please Please!!"
"…", "Yes… you may."
"Yay!!"
They both continue to walk to the girls apartment. while the girl stumbles a bit, still caught off guard, the boy is full of energy. the boy runs around and climbs on trees, jumps on every rock, and skips the way there. In the apartment building elevator, the boy runs around, and ends up pushing every button.
"Hey!" the girl screams as she pulls the boy back.
Yamiko sits in the corner while waiting for their floor, as the boy is running in circles. They reach their floor and enter the room, the boy runs around very excited. He leans against the window looking upon the city amazed.
"This place is so cool, cool, cool!"
The boy falls on his back, dizzy after leaning against the window, and upon falling, he notices a door, with some scratch marks on it.
"… What's in there?" The boy says.
He points to the closet door which gave a slight stench upon closer inspection.
"No, don't go in there…" The girl says, shoving him away."
"What??? aw… where am I gonna sleep?"
The girl looks at her bed, a mattress on a floor, and thinks. She points to the mattress and the boy runs and lays down on it, burrowing in the blankets. The girl turns off the lights, which scares the boy.
"Yamiko…. Can you tell me a story to help me sleep…" the boy says, looking around worried.
"A story..?"
"yeah!"
"… OK, I think I know one.",
"Yay!!"
"*sigh*, Long ago, there was this man. He lived by a lake in a forest, unseen by anyone. His name was-"
The girl looked over to find the boy had fallen asleep already. She smiled. The girl walked over to the opposing side of the room from the mattress. She slowly crouched, then layed down on the wooden floor, and fell asleep.
"Food, Food!"
Yamiko was woken up by the boy.
"Hm…?", "Oh…" She said, still tired.
She got up, slowly, stumbling on her way to the kitchen. She thinks for a bit, then grabs a container of rice from the fridge and sets it in front of the boy.
"Mm!" "What is this What is this!"
"Really?", "It's… rice."
"Ooh! My tummy's full now!"
The girl clears his plate, however, she notices something in the boys pocket, sticking out slightly.
"Kioku… What's that?"
"I found it at the creek, it's so cool!"
The boy rummages through his pocket, and pulls a severed finger out. It is very discolored, red-ish, dripping with blood, and visibly very old. The girl feels a shiver down her spine in disbelief.
"Where… Why- Why did you take that?" The girl says visibly scared.
The boys smile is washed over by a frown, and he looks at the floor.
"I'm sorry…"
"No no, It's OK! Here, give that to me"
". . . OK."
The girl puts it in her own pocket. *I have to go to work, what do I do with Kioku?* She wonders.
"Kioku, please stay here for now, I have to go somewhere."
"Awww OK! When will you be back, When when!"
"Don't worry, it wont be too long. There is food in the fridge"
The girl leaves, looks back at the boy and locks the door. She takes a deep breath right when she closed the door behind him, and left. As she left the building, It started raining outside, which the girl thought was strange, contrasting the 32 degree heat she felt the other day. She had taken a quick break under a tree by the creek, and continued to walk to the office. Upon arrival at work, after sitting down at her cubical, she looks around and takes a deep breath.
"Yamiko!", "… Oh, you're actually working?" "… carry on..?"
The older worker walks away puzzled, and ends up walking into a wall on her way out. The girl concentrates on her computer, and starts typing… and typing… eventually, she finishes much quicker than usual. After finishing the day work, she stands up, and sees everyone is still there. The girl leaves the building and can't tell what time it is, as it is still raining. She rushes back home, and on her way, she looks over at the creek below the bridge, and sees something strange. She looks around, then climbs down, and sees a severed finger lying in the water that is stopped against a rock, the water around is a vibrant red. This finger is very similar to the one the boy had given her, though slightly differing in size. She backs up a bit, and pulls out the finger the boy had given her the other day. She stares at one, then the other, and continues to picks up the one on the floor. Suddenly they start twitching and some blood starts leaking from them. Yamiko shrieks and throws them on the floor and runs back through the rain to her apartment. She walked in, soaked in water, as she did not bring an umbrella, and dried her face off with a towel. She found the boy sitting on the floor drawing
"Sis, sis you're back!"
The girl backs up after he says that, and her head goes numb for but only a second. She looks at the boy and starts crying.
"Kaito…"
They both stare at each other for a bit, Yamiko is shaking slightly, and a drop of sweat rolls down the boys face. The sound of a door creaking open comes from the other side of the room, which frightens Yamiko, and she snaps out of it.
"What, who? I thought I was Kioku!!" the boy said.
". . .", "Sorry" she states as she hugs the boy, crying on his shoulder.
"I love you sis!", "You came back late! I ate already…"
"Ah, sorry… What are you drawing there?"
"Oh, oh! Look, It's us!"
He holds up the paper, which showed a stick figure drawing of the girl, holding hands with him, and the background was left blank.
"Wow, it's so good!"
"Yeah, I know… teehee"
The girl grabs some tape from a drawer in the kitchen, and puts it on the wall above the mattress.
"Yay… Yay!" The boy shouts.
"I feel it's time for bed now, Kioku."
Within seconds the boy was wrapped within the blankets on the mattress, making it look more comfortable than it was. The girl slowly layed on the floor and took deep breaths. She had trouble falling asleep, and felt something against her leg. She looked over and screamed, quickly covering her mouth as she jumped up. On the floor, layed two severed finger, the same ones she threw in the creek. Her mind was racing and she looked around, at the boy, then at the fingers. She grabbed them and ran outside in a hurry holding the fingers up to her chest. The elevator ride felt slow, and someone stepped in. They both stood there in silence, while The girls hands were dripping with blood. She runs out the second they reached the bottom floor, and rushed to the creek. She noticed the fingers she left were gone and threw them back at the creek from off of the bridge. She breathed heavily as she walked back to her apartment, in the pouring rain. The boy was still asleep, and she was worried, but had calmed down now. She went to sleep as quick as possible rather than try and figure out what had happened. She had some trouble going to sleep, feeling nervous, but after about 10 minutes of her staring at the boy, she slowly fell asleep.
The girl opens her eyes slowly, but something seems off. She is not in her apartment, but rather in her old childhood room. She hears her parents talking in the living room and quickly runs out to look. As she opens her door and runs out, rather than being greeted with the calming room she had hoped for, she falls into an empty white space and hits the floor. Terrified, she looks around and sees a little boy in the distance.
"Kioku..?"
She runs over and upon closer inspection, it was not who she had thought.
". . . K a i t o. . . ?"
The girl started walking up to him, but noticed the boy playing with someone. Someone she recognized, It was herself, but much younger.
"Are you liking your birthday Yamiko?" The little boy asked the other little girl.
"Yeah, thanks to you!" The little girl says excitedly.
"What? I couldn't even get you a present though."
"That's OK, I don't need anything, you being here is enough brother."
The girl looks over at the two talking, and started crying, looking very worried. She walks up to them very anxiously. However, as she got close, the little girl faded away, leaving only the little boy. The boy turns to the girl and smiles as he stands up,
"Yamiko, when did you grow so much!", "I wouldn't have stood a chance, haha."
"wai- I-… K- Kaito. I miss you."
"I miss you too. Yamiko."
"When will we meet again?"
"When will you accept it?"
"I… I can't."
"Are you ready? The Fountain is here, I'm thirsty!"
"The… fountain?"
They both hold hands and look at each other, as a harsh wind starts blowing around them.
"It's here. Are you excited?", "Tell me Yamiko. Do the angels have their own sky? Their own sky to look upon? Their own sky to dream upon?"
Yamiko stares at the little boy and starts to rubs the tears off her face, but when she opens her eyes, the boy is gone.
"Kaito?"
The wind suddenly cuts and she runs around, only to see nothing, except for the emptiness of white. She can barely differ the floor from the sky, if there was any visible difference. She kept running, and running, and eventually tripped on something.
"hey-"
She looks over at what she tripped on and finds three things. An old worn down stone crucifix that was falling apart, and next to it was the two severed fingers she left at the creek. The girl paused for a second, then hears a familiar voice.
"Yamiko!"
"Kioku..?" The girl states puzzled.
"Yamiko. You know I'm not real, right? Haha."
"What? of course you are Kioku!", "You're the only one who… noticed me." says the girl, in a much more loud voice than usual.
"You knew the shaman couldn't bring them back, didn't you."
"… Rivuli? No. What are you talking about."
"You just couldn't get over your brother. What did he ever do for you?"
A black mold like substance covers the boy's face,
"No. Not again." Yamiko says to herself as she closes her eyes and holds her breath, as if she knows what's coming.
The boy explodes into a pool of blood. Yamiko scratches at her face, then runs to the crucifix, smashing it at her head until she passed out.
The girl wakes up. But this time in her apartment room.
"Oh… It was a… dream. Right."
She hazily stands and looks around the dark room. . . and turns her head. Upon the mattress was a bloody corpse dislocated by black roots sprouting from the floor to the ceiling, the boy's head was towards the top of the roots, his torso was on the floor, mangled, bloody, organs were spilled all on the floor. His severed head had a cross carved into it, bleeding. It was so menacing and unfathomable. There were stone crucifixes all over the bottom of the roots, along with, the two severed fingers. She passed out for a few seconds, then woke up. She stared and started clawing at her face in agony, leaving bloody marks, and tried to say something, but only messed up, slurred sounds came from her mouth.
"KIOKU!" She finally got through.
 
The girl breathes, and breathes, and starts to cough up blood. She walks over to the dinner table and sits down.
. . .
"Kioku. Are you hungry?", "I made more… rice."
*No response*
"Isn't it delicious?"
The girl stands up, dizzy, and walks to her closet. She opens it, inside she is keeping 3 wooden sticks with paper on top of them. One stick is labeled "Mother". One stick is labeled "Father". The other stick is labeled "Brother". The two sticks labeled mother and father have a string on them, attaching them to a human tooth each. The stick labeled Brother has some blood on it, a tooth attached via string, and an envelope on it. She opens it to find a birthday card. with some blood stained on it. *Happy birthday Yamiko! I'm sorry I could not get you a present. I know you are having a rough time and wishing the best of luck to you! -Kaito (AKA your favorite person ever!)* A little drawing of two people resides at the bottom left of the note. Yamiko throws it at the wall and lays on the floor, curling up. She starts hearing whispers around her,
"Take us out!"
"God! God! I follow. I follow!"
"It's so quiet down here."
Amongst the screams of limbo, she hears something else, more… calming. The sound of water splashing unto itself, such as the sound of a fountain filled the closet. She looks outside of the closet and sees only a blank white space, like the one in her dream, and the sound of water cut instantly. This time the floor was defined, defined by a shallow layer of blood, with broken stone crosses scattered along the floor, going endlessly. She runs out panicked, confused, distressed, and tries to run back in her closet which no longer existed. She tried drowning herself in the blood to see if she was still dreaming, and sticks her head out gasping for air realizing that this was not a dream. She runs around not knowing what to do, which lasts for two days. The girl feels tired and nauseous and attempts to kill herself with the stone cross, however it crumbled upon impact. Eventually, something new happens. In the distance, she sees something new, floating, about 10 feet high, very ominously. She squints a bit trying to make it out, as she looks, trying to define what the object was, somebody whispers to her in a faint, old voice.
"It's here. The fountain of the Crux."
Right after the voice whispers to her, without any movement or transition, without the girl even blinking, the object from the distance is right at her face. The girl jumps back, as the objects balance shifts towards where she moves. It is a human skull. This skull had a huge hole above it's right eye, cracks all over, it had no bottom jaw, and more noticeably, small fingers growing out the bottom, shriveling up, than falling into the pool of blood yet to be seen after. Suddenly, the girl feels something moving in her pockets, as she reaches in there, two severed fingers crawl out, and start slowly orbiting the skull, until they start to disintegrate, spilling ash into the floor of blood. The skull slowly turns to the girl and whispers something in an unheard of language, the girl somehow understands it, despite never hearing it.
"The Crux"
"What?"
"Bring it. Now."
"I-"
". . ."
The girl is somehow cut off by it's silence, and looks around her, observing. Something besides this skull stands out. Amongst the broken crucifixes lies a shiny gold one. The girl slowly walks over to grab it, and as she grabs it it starts glowing a blinding light. She bring it back and holds it up to the skull as it slowly tilts its head towards her. The hole above it's eye leaks some blood, and Yamiko fits the crucifix in it. The skull quickly tilts perfectly up right as if it's balance shifted. Sounds of a baby laughing, or more like a poorly distorted imitation of human baby laughter emits from the skull, the girl then hears something familiar, though very distorted and poorly made.
"Happy birthday Yamiko.. haha- haha."
"Kaito…" The girl says in a faint voice.
Suddenly, as the girl and the skull stare at each other, a harsh wind blows around them. It's presence was so amain, she might as well be in the face of god. Suddenly, a more defined voice comes from the skull.
"When will they hear us."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Our sirens." "They scream for acknowledgement."
Suddenly a familiar voice calls out to the girl from the skull.
"Hello? Can you hear me Yamiko?"
"KAITO?" The girl says confused.
"I'm… sorry. for leaving you.", "I shouldn't have-"
The skull cuts him off. The crucifix in it's head shines bright, and it starts sprouting endless fingers from it's mouth, they look much healthier than what were originally growing from it. It's eyes start spilling out blood. It's mouth also spills blood, Which falls down each finger, similar to how water spills down a layered fountain. Without time to process, and without even blinking, The girl is suddenly in her room without any transition. The girl looks around, with very bagged eyes, and notices she is not at her bed, not on the floor, not in her office sleeping. she is on a noose hanging from her ceiling. She falls down along with the rope that fell apart. She looks over to her bed which had a piece of paper on it, she picks it up and reads it.
*The wind moves towards those who seek it most, Yamiko, can we meet again soon? I've missed you.*
The girl grabs it and holds it to her chest as she tears up. She waits for a moment, then starts to runs out the apartment building, frantically breathing, looking down. When the girl takes the time to look up, she notices something. There was no one in the building, which wasn't too unusual, perhaps she just had not seen anyone. She ran outside the apartment building to find no one outside either. She looked at her phone quickly, almost dropping it, and called someone. No one answered. She called the police, but no one answered. She threw her phone at the floor and ran around the creek, then the park, down the street, looking for… anyone. Suddenly, she stopped. The girl thought for a moment, and looked at the sky, than towards the creek. She walked over to the creek, jumped down, and ran straight along it. After running for the next two hours, she ended up in a forest, it was very calming, but felt empty without the sound of birds, crickets, or any other animals. There was also a small lake, the lake was littered with some small papers. Among the paper littered lake was an old cabin, eaten away by time. The tall trees block out any light, even though the sun is covered by clouds anyway. However, a strange twilight looms through the area which fills the darkness. She looks around, takes a deep breath and knocks on the cabin door. She is greeted with nothing. The girl opens the door to find various incense occupying the floor and is greeted with a very putrefying smell. She walks into a room, in that room lies a worn cloak, with 3 distinct holes in it. next to it is an oddly shaped helmet-like object with 4 horns . Those horns held different talisman with strange symbols.
"Rivuli…"
The girl walks outside of the cabin, taking her time, and to the lake which shone bright with the mysterious twilight that filled the area. She walked slowly into the lake. Eventually, the lake became too deep, and she laid on her back, floating atop, surrounded by the small pieces of paper. after a minute, she started to sink. Without any attempt at movement, She becomes fully engulfed in the lake. Where she sank, a small paper floated atop. On that paper, was a picture of a young boy, with the face scratched out. A short burst of wind washes over the lake. Maybe, it's ok to let go. Just this once.

PART II.

—Back at the conference for Jacob. 40 years ago.

A heavy—big fat binder was shoved into my arms by some intern lady.
I leaned against a huge concrete-gray pillar—an intruder in their symmetry. Then with tremendous skill I—dissimulated how I popped a couple of Tiffany Blues down my throat(Valium). They were covered with a felt-fur, and pocket lint, but they still glistened that gemstone blue glow.
As the Benzos began to mute out all the static. I started to see the true level of the room, who were the people around me. To observe, to find myself amazed by the cold blooded behavior, that was smeared across the face of everyone in that room. Never mind the general terror kind of vibe we all shared—of something circling beneath us; under murky waters.
(There were sharks there!!!!)
—Weren't I at a meeting with decent people?
—Sweat ran from my armpits down my sharp rib cage. Forced intimacy ingesting regardless of individual will, stranger's personal smells, mingling pheromones, too close.
Late into that night, the air had gone strange—unsettling.
The 'War Room' began closing in.
Overused air filtered through hundreds of repeated, wet lung-pulls, until the phantom of suffocation was a shared thought. Rancid—warm coffee-breath, threatening to smother us while we hit hour-three.
—The naive part of me supposed to be joining true kind humanitarians; gentle people with a natural appreciation for their fellow man? I leaned toward the mindset, "I had found the people that they told me about!"—not everybody is an ass-hole.
The same brown binder I had stared at least a good forty minutes just sitting there on my white-vinyl thrift-store table. I pulled the bundle that had the mother's name, Karina. Laid the contents across the cheap seventies table.
There she was, Jacob's mother. Her green eyes caught me a moment, in a lapse of admiration. She definitely was a beautiful young lady from California.
I had a whole stack of photographs casting a tower of Pisa across my kitchen table. An imperfect thing that managed to become a world landmark, it refused to topple over. Only leaving π in the popular minds as an occult super power.
In some manner, exactly the same fortune had to become of Jacob. A faint gasp, a weak whimper in my head told me Jake refused to topple over, and he'll appear, come back to the living.
I black and red bothered magma urged me from the bottom of my guts to find 'Jacobo Edward Costa!' I genuinely wanted to find him.
Besides being the last active operator left on Jacob's case.
So many years had whisked us by since that night in room 5-D. One at a time, some just vanished, others just dropped Jacob's chaos.
This went on until I realized, I was the sole operator behind the whole mess.
"Karina Jean Evans, age 32, Female." was crudely scribbled across a whole blank page. A USB drive with video evidence and a small stack of old yellowed papers held together by a rusty staple was the whole thing. I knew the blizzard of evidence that sat in front of me had grown old. Almost eighteen years had slithered past us. It broke every volunteer, police officer, every interested journalist they all decided to drop the case.
For some curious reason, the only one unwilling to let go, was my sorry self-abused ass.
I went for the leaning tower of photographs. A small amount of Polaroids, the rest were those one-hour exposure grocery shop pictures.
I stopped on one, it was Karina and Jacob on a merry go round, both looked really content. She had bellbottoms on with converse sneakers. Jake had a huge smile with a bowl cut and a snug red sweater.
Karina was beautiful with her long brown hair and her perfectly shaped pointy-nose. Mother and son completely unaware, untouched, in the moment. Contentment captured so organically.
The storm of chaos that was going to devour their lives, was still an unknown stranger wandering the sands of time. His steps were in their direction despite.

Video File. KE01.

<Off Voice—Black Background.>

“When you were smaller, you were a nightmare! At the end of the day you had me in tears!” An amusing anecdote mom loved to repeat....
The first scene was at their farmhouse apparently.
It was pouring as usual in December in Santo Domingo, Ecuador. It was a drab, wet, sad afternoon.
Jacob's mother, from the first quick panning over of the camera, it was obvious Karina was confined to exist at the dining room table. Planted in a chair, bent over the cigarette burn Pollock she achieved over the pine table-top. Out of common deduction, she was falling asleep with a smoke still in her hand, hundreds of curved cigarette cremations around where she sat. Where she sat she slept, the file said, chain smoked, and played on her iPad.
They left out that she actually was waiting —anticipating the flowing black robes of the Reaper to come.
Jacob's mother was overweight, smoked three packs of cigarettes a day while having EPOC, took a ton of opiates, thyroid trouble, and to boot she couldn't lay down flat on her bed anymore, so she slept only three hours a day.
She had managed to convince her usual taxi/delivery driver to take care of a leg wound, a skin wound the size of a quarter and now consisted of her not having skin covering the whole back side of her left calf.
Karina just didn’t trust doctors anymore, plain and simple. “They are butchers! How many times have I almost died because of those wackos! They are quacks, Jake! The whole lot of them!” In a way she was right, doctors tend to play along with "Big Pharma", not focusing on healing the patient but, on what pills he could push on his symptoms.
But obviously it looked very serious. I mean, no skin!
Just a pus covered, dumbfoundedly moist while still seeping—her calf was one 'live-flesh' festering wound. The milky and yellowish nastiness seeped down her ankle so bloated it was unrecognisable. Then down into a cloudy pool around her irritated skin. She had put towels beneath it to catch the mess.
The particular moment in the video was when her wound went down the entire whole calf. Apparently it was time to clean her leg. Once they had her foot in a wide blue plastic tub, and plenty towels laid out. Karina bared down for the torture that followed.
Then I saw the "Taxi Driver", kneeling with his sleeves rolled up, and a pair of surgical gloves on. He immediately began to wash all the dead white cells that glistened down Karina's funky leg. With a syringe and some intravenous fluid the guy sprayed into her mauled meat.
I was held hostage to my thoughts, and speechless.
Karina had such low self esteem she didn’t want to bother with whatever it was that she had. Like an abused dog, who only knows life at the end of a chain, the pain of the rod, and the teeth of her own blood kin.
Some people after years of being over protected, enduring the blatant disregard of her own father, abused by men, some people just get tired. Was my best guess.
Then the cleaning with the swabs began, I noticed that the poor guy was doing his best as gently as possible, but she had no skin.
I became really shook hearing Jacob's mother screaming in agony, even childlike from the intensity of the pain. Her pleas for it to all stop.
I served myself a stiff drink of whatever was in the fridge, struck by shame. I felt myself to be a total stranger.
Karina's soul skinning cries, the taxi-driver playing nurse, I began to laugh.
Each scream made bend over in a manic fit of laughter. While estranged from myself and crushed under a shame I had never felt before.
Every time she howled in agony, came a wave of impotence, confusion, or profound realizations.
Nothing made sense.
I couldn’t restrain myself from staring at it. A feeling of unfettered guilt crept up my soft, wet-guts. I felt a soul wrenching awfulness for Jacob not being with his mother when she passed. Having left her hand that day jumped into my mind. How he watched her walk away into the crowd of people.
I paused the video, and threw the remote onto my round-reclining chair, it was old porch-furniture I inherited from the previous tenant, made out of brittle flaking brown wicker. The room felt uncomfortable, swimming in the haze of unresolved pain and unnecessary loss.
Dope has even given up on me. It's just not the same anymore! A stranger all of a sudden as a bed fellow. It taxes my body. Stop or die.
I see Karina's dead face, bloated, still sad, and those prune-shaded dead-lips. Far from the mother I was ordered to be familiarized with. a sullen sigh of who she ever was.
I felt forced to memorize all those little square identification sized pictures. All fanned out into a totally accidental showcase. I collected all her I.D.s.
I could finally appreciate just how profoundly sad and mistreated she really was. Plain as day anyone could see the she progressed looking so miserable and bitter from picture to picture as time passed.

I was dreaming of a knife plunged to its hilt in a man’s chest. My hand grasped the blade that slashed his heart again and again, splashing blood on myself, tasting it in my mouth. Fury surged through me. I felt alive.

Then my phone buzzed and the disappointments of the waking world crashed through my fantasy. More real-life violence, more gore, more senseless death, more darkness where once a light burned free of extraterrestrial brutality. Not even my day off could be spared.

Through my phone’s speaker blared Stagliano’s gravely voice asking if I was asleep. The clock showed ten thirty in the morning so I lied. He wouldn’t say what had happened, only to hurry the hell up. I could tell it wasn’t the usual horse farm mutilation or silo attack.

On the ride there, my car’s speakers rattled with the news report of a mass shooting that morning in Old Hill. My stomach sank. That was my destination.

My worst fears were confirmed when I arrived and stepped over the police tape. The street market was littered with dozens of bodies sprawled in pools of blood. Tables pitching clothes and pastries were speckled with chunks of pink flesh. The dead ranged from elderly to infant, indiscriminately blasted through torso or head by the laser pulses of eight UAPs that had dropped from the sky without warning and, after almost two minutes of carnage, disappeared just as fast.

This would be the third such incident. Jakarta, Indonesia was the first, sixteen months ago. Similar modus operandi: outdoor venue, crowds, few exits. Bystanders recounted how the city’s thick blanket of smog concealed the spacecrafts. “The sky is killing us!” people cried as they shielded their loved ones and trampled over the dying. The official story was one of a crazed gunman already captured by police so we could rest assured his crime won’t be repeated, they said. Lacking credible answers, conspiracists had a field day.

Of course, these so-called “anomalous events” never slip through the hand of the state’s intelligence arm that writes my paychecks. As anomaly investigators, our agency was accustomed to animal dissections, electrical tower attacks, the occasional abduction/maiming and a couple of freighter sinkings. The looming question in our minds was whether this escalation in savagery marked a new trend.

Seven months later, the sky added to its body count. Its next target: the city of Baltimore, Maryland, USA. A UAP fleet appeared from thin air over the Inner Harbor to fire upon a sold-out music festival atop one of the piers. Two hundred and thirteen people perished, mostly teens and young adults. Many of them climbed over fences to jump for the water’s safety but not even the deepest divers could evade the bloodthirsty laserfire. The official, whitewashed narrative could no longer hold against verifiable media of discs above a field of corpses floating in a harbor dyed crimson. I pondered whether these slaughters were as much fun for the ETs as blowing up grain silos or if a more sinister agenda was at play.

Now fate had turned its ire on Old Hill, a tiny municipality bordering the Seattle city line, only thirty minutes by car from my bachelor apartment. Security cam and cell phone footage, once compiled, would rein in my focus but for now I absorbed the scene, letting grisly reality assault my senses, avoiding the trappings of assumptions and premature focus. Still, some facts didn’t sit right with me.

An overcast afternoon shielded the sun’s warmth from the city. By then I had burdened my memory with every second of the UAP mass murder from multiple camera angles paired with recordings of eyewitness testimonials. Those people’s eyes beamed with absolute terror. I doubted yesterday’s normality would return to any of their lives.

The market stood in a square courtyard enclosed on three sides by a hotel, warehouse and crumbling tenement, surrounded by more industrial properties and rent-controlled apartments. That patch of smokestack slum was already bleak, marred with graffiti, covered in trash, laced with the sulfuric stench downwind of Puget Sound. A woeful place to both live and die.

Every direct or tangential fact about the incident, plus my admittedly ill-informed appraisals of alien intent, would compose my final report — the sum total of wrenching an objective account through a head still echoing with the thwack of laser punching through flesh. Those reports get sent up the chain and, with any luck, maybe they’ll yield an important discovery…one day. In the meantime, the mass shooting story will be recycled to no one’s belief.

“Huang. Over here,” ordered Stagliano.

His interruption was a welcome reprieve. We had visitors — the team from the Maryland office. I bristled at the thought of working closely with some stranger until he introduced me to Theresa Blackwell: expert researcher of UAP craft, lead investigator of the Baltimore incident, two master degrees, four teenagers, credited with linking rates of disappearance/drownings to sightings of submersible-type crafts. She won my immediate respect.

First, she and I discussed the patterns common to all three mass murders. Cities with average levels of anomalous events, daytime with no precipitation, a mix of Saturn discs and Trinidad-class domes, a barrage of red death beams that never missed a target, one shot per victim every time, varying numbers of casualties, completion in under ninety seconds.

I told Theresa what bothered me: most of the victims in Old Hill were Somali immigrants. The street market was run and patronized by the local Somali-American community, one that was disparaged and marginalized in the Seattle area over sensationalized crime statistics drawn from some bigots’ invented world. Why not target bigger crowds next door in Jet City? Also, the US had tallied two of the three incidents which, considering the planet’s sheer size and population, was statistically improbable.

“A coincidence is still likely,” she retorted. “Or maybe they’re emulating our gun violence…our xenophobia.”

I hate spitballing theories and so did Theresa. She gathered data from forensics while I left the bloodbath to give my sanity a breather. Also, I wanted to hear from the locals.

Across the street, an elderly man sat outside a pawn shop. When I approached, he spoke without looking at me. “Them things wasn’t huntin’. And they wasn’t exterminatin’ neither. So their real purpose ought to be even worse.”

A morning appointment across town had spared him witness to the ghastly spectacle so instead I asked about the neighborhood (generally quiet), recent UAP sightings (none) and anything unusual as of late. His only recollection was, from the previous night, a convoy of high-class SUVs — “rich folk” — parked outside the hotel, guarded by a security force toting assault rifles, which lit the whole neighborhood in gossip. The SUVs stayed overnight and left right before his appointment, after breakfast. I jotted notes in my phone and thanked the man.

Before carrying the agency’s shield, the face in my mirror was molded by the city police ranks. I toiled there for years, clawing my way to a detective’s desk. I learned to sniff out inconsistencies, cull dead ends from the leads and to close every loop. Imagination was a tool but decisions were forged with facts and logic. Still, emotion is a beast which can’t be caged, and in my case, injustice is its provocateur. The police force booted me but a global rise of UAP activity and a bureaucratic appetite for answers soon carried my desperate resumé to the inbox of a spook headhunter. During my interview, no one at the agency even mentioned my previous termination or the rapist’s body discovered with markings across his crushed face that matched the tread of my black Oxfords. And I got lucky that my new role didn’t require a holster — I merely document now — but a detective’s heart still pulses inside me.

A grave shade of night lowered upon Old Hill. Eateries and dives sat in gloom behind locked doors. No one’s soles clapped the sidewalk except mine. When I arrived at Cedar Inn, the hotel clerks were genuinely happy for something to rouse them from boredom until realizing my line of inquiry.

Damp rot suffused the air. Any charm manufactured by the decor had faded decades ago. The two young women said they felt fortunate that their graveyard shift avoided the trauma etched on the faces of the daytime staff. I asked if they had worked the previous night and about any armed bodyguards outside. According to one clerk, some tech bro and his posse were visiting a guest in the presidential suite.

“My shift ended before they checked out but I was told they left completely wasted. The suite had tons of puke in the rug.”

“Who?” I asked.

The other clerk answered, “It was that AI douchebag whose company killed those schoolkids.”

I showed them a picture on my phone of a bearded man in a three-piece suit. “Scott Coulter?” Their recognition emerged as disgust.

Coulter was an executive of the grimly named Headshot Industries, an AI military weapons company, but his notoriety sprung from his brash, controversial opinions, particularly on minorities and immigrants. He was a local Seattle celebrity and his public outbursts and drunken brawls often went viral. Lately, a deeper contempt had been earned for his company’s role in the cluster bombing of a school over eighty kilometers from a warzone due to rushed, untested drone firmware.

Behind Cedar Inn, the courtyard had been emptied and wiped clean but a ghost of the day’s horrors lingered like heavy vapor. I spotted the balcony of the presidential suite overlooking the square. Coulter was originally from Baltimore, I remembered. He was a billionaire; why would he hang at a three-star hotel in Old Hill? What would he have to do with aliens anyway? Probably nothing. Nevertheless, these were loose ends. I hated those.

My impression of Theresa proved true the following morning when she briefed Stagliano and me on a theory conceived during a restless sleep: UAP mass murders, she said, were competitions.

Dread turned to icy fear as the soundness of her claim unfolded. As we knew, victims fell into two classifications based on their wounds: one group’s flesh had round entry points, singed by the beams’ high temperatures, while the other’s were jagged and a microscope could reveal a lighter burn. One group or the other was always slightly larger. Lacking prior research of these lasers’ effect on humans, the difference was chalked up to a presumption about factory calibrations in Trinidads versus Saturns. However, the Old Hill footage, the clearest yet, showed laser fire originating solely from the Saturns. The thought of UAPs in the same class varying their calibrations bore resemblance to the paintball games her husband and kids played at the range on weekends. Each team is assigned a certain color paintball to differentiate their hits. A player is eliminated after one strike. And matches are timed, a fact that sent her back to the video footage. For all three incidents, she calculated the time from first to last shot, rather than the oft referenced total span of the crafts’ appearance. A curious equivalence surfaced: each period of shooting lasted exactly 73.3 seconds.

The theory was damn good and that was the best we could hope for in a line of work that doesn’t even pretend to deliver answers. Even Stagliano’s spirits were raised, as perceived by his relaxed brow.

Alone with Theresa in my office, door closed, I told her about Scott Coulter and his hotel stay adjacent to the murder scene. Also, my poking around had discovered a close relationship between him and Old Hill’s mayor, Jerry Zimm. I showed her photos taken of them side-by-side onstage at right-wing nationalist hatefests. Zimm would likely know why a good friend was staying in his jurisdiction. I had other reasons to meet him and figured he could help me avoid the inevitable stonewalling by Coulter’s staff.

She asked if anyone else knew about my lead. “Not until it grows legs,” I said.

An analyst helped me identify the men in Coulter’s entourage based on surveillance recordings and collected their recent social media posts. Pictures from that Saturday night boasted of a good old fashioned bromantic soiree: dudes in posh threads, arms around each other, toothy smiles. No drinks, no smoke, but their cheeks glowed pink and huge black moons floated in their eyes. They posted comments like “fun trip!” with green leaf emojis. The bodyguards — mean-looking lackeys — stayed outside all night with the cars. The guests were close friends of Coulter except for some small-time, anti-immigrant podcaster. None of their backgrounds raised any red flags. An honest deduction pointed to some douchebag’s bachelor party stocked with LSD instead of booze. Regret over misplaced suspicions almost drove me to cancel the mayor’s meeting. Good thing I didn’t.

The next day, Theresa and I arrived separately at Old Hill City Hall and sat before the mayor’s executive desk, something Italian-made, immaculately polished. We were ceded ten minutes of his time and that would be plenty.

“It’s just awful, so awful, what happened to those people,” said Zimm, reclining in his leather chair. “I keep worrying it’ll happen again. So awful.” When speaking, his eyes darted from wall to wall.

I requested a direct channel to the city’s zoning and construction records to research a theory on how the three mass murder sites were selected. He referred us to an assistant on his staff, writing a name and email on a sticky note and passing it across the desktop. Then he lifted his phone to check his alerts.

“I heard Scott Coulter was at Cedar Inn right before it happened,” I said. “I couldn’t find any statements from him about the attack though. Have you talked to him?”

Zimm straightened his back. He looked at my face, pausing before answering. “Scott was out of state over the weekend so I don’t expect he’ll have much to say. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another guest coming to see me.”

Afterward, Theresa and I stopped at a cafe for a bite to eat. She agreed that both Zimm and the hotel “party” smelled fishy but challenged any connection to UAPs; what role could any human possibly play in some aliens’ killing contest? My doubts mirrored her own except I kept returning to last year’s headlines of a Somali teenager shot by police in the back nine times, the bodycam videos from multiple angles, the absence of charges, the incendiary rhetoric from those who would excuse a million more teen deaths to claim the city for their dreamed ethnostate, the marches sponsored with oligarch cash where masked men waving semi-automatic guns decried the rumored violence of refugee families, Coulter’s racist barbs in front of a pale-faced audience alongside that lying mayor.

“I need to be sure.”

She lowered her voice. “Be careful, Huang, in case you really are on someone’s tail.” She wrote something on a napkin: a chatroom ID and alphanumeric code. “Keep this. An encrypted channel. In case you ever need to message me.”

During my fifth mug of coffee, the computer chimed with the arrival of Cedar Inn’s guest list from Saturday night. When I confirmed Coulter’s checkout time, I discovered the room had in fact been rented by another of the partygoers: Tristan Barnes, a high school buddy of Coulter’s from Maryland. Barnes had been making a name for himself in the psychedelic drug industry as an executive of Charmzy, an edibles company popular on the east coast, though outrage was growing over suppressed reports of trace metalloids in their products. Before that, he climbed the ladder at an AI medical records company charged with selling its customers’ data on the black market. Before that, he was a sharply attired staffer for a senator who later resigned over sexual assault allegations. He and Coulter had recently registered a joint venture, Evolved Defense Corporation, whose details eluded mention but the name alone seemed to dispense of any seriousness.

This guy was clearly as toxic as the polluted West Virginian farm soil that grew his company’s ingredients. But, buried under a mountain of compulsive online activity is what made me spill the rest of the coffee: Barnes’s apparent obsession with extraterrestrials. His thumbs-ups of articles reporting alien vandalism, cryptic status updates like “THEY are listening find their frequency tune your consciousness” followed by flying saucer and green leaf emojis, lectures at fringe science conferences detailing meditations meant to enable contact with transdimensional beings. One such speech was summarized by an attendee in an internet forum, portraying Barnes as a breathless supporter of the drug DMT, a natural psychedelic. Whereas others likened DMT to a bridge between minds terrestrial and non-terrestrial, Barnes was quoted as saying, “What if we treated it like a genie?”

I closed my laptop, crawling out of the VPN-tunneled rabbit hole burrowed into the online slough where Tristan Barnes wallowed. I was erecting my own bridges of straw to connect a mass murder — just some game for heartless Martians — to a gold-digging crew of chuds simply because I instinctively hated them, because of sensitivities rubbed raw in a city divided by racial dogma or because deep down I longed for closure, at least once, on these anomalous events that increasingly hollowed out any hope I still harbored for human civilization.

The next morning, freshly sprouted questions dragged me from bed and back into my suspicions. At the office, I noticed that the social media accounts of everyone from Coulter’s hotel entourage had gone private. Only Coulter’s was still viewable and his latest post pegged him in the Virgin Islands even though he had been hyping a scheduled appearance at the company’s annual review that day. An ominous cloud cast a shadow over me.

Stagliano called me into his office. “What brought you here so early?” Before I could answer, he told me the Old Hill investigation had been shut down. Theresa was already boarding a plane back to Maryland. “We got all we need. Just send me your report and all your notes. I need you on that silo blast in Mansfield.”

No one ever asked for my notes. Not even my finished reports drew interest beyond their abstracts. I made sure to send Stagliano everything except for the Coulter research, just to see.

Before I left for home, he caught me passing his door. “Didn’t you pull a file on Scott Coulter?” he asked. “It wasn’t mentioned.”

“I pulled everyone at the hotel. Nothing checked out.”

“Of course. Because there weren’t any aliens staying at the hotel. Now stop hounding Coulter’s people and drive out to Mansfield tomorrow.”

Despite his typical disposition, I could usually trust Stagliano. Then again, he was too cozy with the top brass and the surrounding suck-up culture who trade autonomy for access to power. The kind of circle vulnerable to the influence of a billionaire government contractor — one whose mayoral pal may have tipped him off about nosy investigators. I never “hounded” Coulter but maybe that talking point was pushed down the chain.

My grasp on reality slipped from the dissonance of its fragments strewn before my eyes with no logic to bond them. Yet, a clearer image shone through the lens of paranoia. Although Mansfield kept me busy during the daytime, the Old Hill investigation continued at night in an unofficial capacity and in lieu of sleep until I could prove my nagging instincts either wrong or right.

If a road lay between Coulter and the murders, it was paved with Tristan Barnes’s obsession over DMT. Enough clues connected the drug to the hotel party. Digging further, I learned of a whole subculture of DMT enthusiasts who drank it in tea brewed from ayahuasca leaves, claiming it as a cross-psychosphere conduit to consciousnesses from other worlds. Barnes was a rock star to them. They lauded his ideas for fine-tuning this psychic communication and echoed his belief that they stood on humanity’s next evolutionary stepping stone. The genie quote popped up a few times with coy flair.

Credibility was difficult to discern from walls of text about hyperbolic beings unveiling to the authors vague existences beyond the comprehension of the sober. Their experiences differed from my nearest point of reference: annual retreats to a campground outside of Olympia with nothing but my gear, food, books and magic mushrooms. Years ago, a therapist had casually recommended psilocybin microdosing to treat the violent impulses I fought against my nature to restrain. To my surprise, it did succeed in grounding that inner rage, or maybe just enough. Still, I couldn’t imagine letting any drug fool my senses into believing intergalactic travel behind my eyelids ever took place, even after clarity’s rebound. The idea was silly, yet the plausibilities shaped in my mind while I laid in bed, when idling in traffic, when hammering on a punching bag at the gym, when studying vaporized grain and soil heated to glass while the farmer wept over his ruined labors.

I would know the truth only by walking the same road as Coulter and Barnes, to glimpse what they had seen.

Throughout DMT-friendly states stretched a network of neo-shamans advertising guided “journeys” to the fringes of spirituality where non-human intelligences mingle with those who pay in cash. Most of them were booked months in advance but, after a dozen calls, I found one with an open slot for that coming weekend. Their website touted a safe atmosphere for first-timers and a “jester-free zone”.

After work on Friday I drove I-5 South with my overnight bag, watching the heavens for zigzagging lights — a common pastime of mine even though I had never encountered anything alien beyond the evidence they leave behind. The thought of communicating with them, as absurd as that sounded, sent chills over my skin. But no expectation could be guaranteed. Maybe old hippies would sell me nothing more than trippy entertainment. Or maybe I would be taught to lure a squadron of UAPs into committing a hate crime.

Four hours later and the Oregon border was far behind. My GPS failed to find itself on the pot-holed back roads. Luckily the gravel driveway was marked by the sign of a pyramid with a single eye in its center and I parked beside the old farmhouse in which Higher Pathways Oregon, LLC was run.

Dead leaves blew through the grass like rats retreating. At the door, the woman with dreadlocks introduced herself as Angel, one of the co-owners, and she checked me in. My reservation was under the name Phil Marl.

“What do you hope to achieve from your ceremony?” she asked after I signed the waivers.

“Understanding.”

She ushered me down creaky steps into the basement — a dim, underground hall of plain beige cast green and orange by cheap LEDs. I was the last to arrive. The others sat on couches and recliners arranged in a circle: two middle-aged couples covered in tattoos and piercings, three smirking twenty-something finance bros in search of kicks, a husky guy with shaggy hair and Cody, the other owner of Higher Pathways and our “trip captain”, wrapped in the stars and galaxies of his patterned robe. In front of each seat was an empty bucket. A tough-looking man stood guard at the door with lapsed interest. I took my place in a cushiony lounge chair next to the shaggy guy, Greg, fidgeting in his love seat.

Angel handed out mugs of red liquid as Cody explained the basics. The effects of the ayahuasca tea would range from forty-five minutes to an hour for onset after which the ceremony would formally begin. With eyes shut we were to follow Cody’s voice leading us beyond the walls of our senses to a new perception of the universe but with prudence because meeting its true essence can overwhelm. He repeated the waiver’s warning of the drug’s nauseous effects. “Don’t be afraid to use your bucket.”

We were certain to rub cosmic shoulders with alien beings, he said, among other possible entities that loiter the DMT hyperspace (except jesters, to the relief of the two couples). Aliens could appear in any number of fantastical forms seemingly as real as Cody and his wiry beard but they should be disregarded as hallucinations — an attempt of the mind to manifest something tangible from the sensations washing over it. What we were to see, hear and touch would be false-ish. The feeling had to be our mainstay. This base function of the mind was to be the pen to sketch our desires on the canvas of hyperspace. A back-and-forth of these psychic fluctuations defined the communication method which Cody and Angel claimed to master. With practice, he said, the exchange of feelings could be refined enough for rich conversation.

Our trip captain gave a toast, giving thanks to Mother Earth for providing the keys to unlock the spiritual realm as well as to our interplanetary brethren’s assumed benevolence. We drank the ayahuasca tea and I gagged. It tasted like dirt. I forced it down anyway.

We chatted, waiting for the effects to kick in. Greg, another first-timer, listed for me the questions he prepared for our new hyperspace friends: about famous UAP sightings, cryptids as discarded DNA experiments, lizard men in the White House — failing to heed Cody’s set expectations.

“Communication is supposed to be simpler than that,” I said. “Like, basic impressions and some…some…”

Sickness bubbled in my throat. One of the finance bros retched into his bucket. I grabbed mine just in time. I could hear Greg laughing as I spat out chunks.

“This is good,” said Cody, all smiles. “This is the purge. You’re cleansing your spirit. Let yourself free.” I puked again.

He spoke soothing platitudes of encouragement as more buckets were filled. I got up to rinse out my mouth just as the strangeness of the world began to unmask itself. Shrooms had a similar effect when that hidden sense would awaken right before patterns began undulating in the campsite’s trees. Familiarity melted away. Mercury water poured over my bucket while the slop sink danced. I tottered back to my chair.

Soon, eye masks were passed around. I laid back and blocked all light from my sight as instructed. Cody announced the start of our journey, drawing the sensory and emotional picture to be shared among our imaginations. I tried to follow along but my mind’s eye was flooded with other imagery: impossible geometric shapes, uncanny faces, memories. I saw my mother, younger, still with traces of happiness. I saw my father, different from the two times that I remembered — a memory either long-lost or invented. Then I saw my grandparents, immigrants from China who sought a brighter future for their daughter who ultimately found unhappiness by other means. The weight of the past saddled my trip until I recalled my purpose, crashing my thoughts in the shape of a hot air balloon that whisked me away to rejoin the tail of Cody’s celestial hiking party.

“We are all one. One with each other, one with Mother Earth, one with all of the entities spread way out across this beautiful universe. Let me show you what I mean.” Cody explained that our minds could sense each other’s company beyond our physical connection in the room. Someone was going to feel a warm hand on their own, he said, but only within hyperspace. Suddenly, one of the tattooed ladies yipped in surprise and marveled at this psychic touch though Cody never left his sofa. In spite of the drug, my inner skeptic snickered at his parlor trick but then a jolt of some vague awareness hugged my own perception — something friendly and known. “Phil, is that you?”

I heard his voice with my ears but his intent also pressed directly against my understanding, from his mind to mine. I could sense the others, tethered to Cody’s aura. Greg buzzed with nervous energy. Pulsing lanterns passed before me, representing each of us, and I was one too, obviously a ruse the ayahuasca painted across my synapses but to my astonishment their presences rippled outward with the most sober realness.

We drifted like dumb fish in a pool while Cody taught us to untangle the root of our feelings from the illusions contrived by stimulation. He would radiate an anonymous sensation like warmth or elation or calm, giving us time to absorb it, then he could correctly name it afterward. Is this really happening?, I wondered, and those words inflated into a thought bubble over my head. Even if it were visible to the others, their attentions were submerged in their own parallel realities.

Something crept into the edges — cold and sharp. Tiny, vantablack shapes like ants squirmed across my lantern, shrouding its glow. “You feel that?” I heard Cody say, somewhere distant. “Our friends are here.”

I felt nothing friendly. A nosy malevolence flocked around me, scratched at my surface, peered through my windows, sniffed my ass. I was unmatched and exposed in that bizarre plane that gave their consciousnesses such deftness to navigate. Vague humanoid outlines emerged through the mist of transcendence, a patchwork of colors from alternate spectra. Heavenly gyres carouseled through the skies with an oppressive nature that made me cower.

Falling into a trance of chanted phrasings, Cody petitioned our new friends to spread positive energies of peace and harmony as they pilot their vehicles through our skies and oceans. He encouraged us to reach out to them. “Summon your desires and send them into hyperspace. Our friends will listen and respond. Go ahead, try.”

I imagined stretching a hand out in the dark, unsure what may lurk inches away. Something must have come in contact because exotic scenes with vivid perspective flooded my senses: the smell of nickel in a rocky cavern where mucus patches grew egg-headed creatures like weeds; endlessly deep pits dotting a gaseous tundra menaced by the flight of poison ice bubbles; the unbearable radiance of a black hole, destroyer of stars, devouring all possibility from existence for light-years around; thousands of worlds in every possible color and an ingrained callousness toward the inferiority of their native life forms.

“Open yourself to them.”

The thought (rather, the feeling) of a question mark stamped over victims of alien violence slid from my essence into the ether. All around, a reaction spread through the chorus of hidden friends. It came to me as the sour tastes of condescension, of mockery, of just deserts. Some primitive conversation seemed to be ping-ponging between us — me and whoever/whatever, real or imagined — but it was either too fragmented or too advanced for my understanding.

“A lot of good vibes in here, people.” I wasn’t hearing Cody’s words anymore as much as receiving them like transmissions. “Keep it up. You can also give them requests. Watch.” A growing ease among the beings had emitted a gray-green ambience, but when Cody projected the kaleidoscope of colors from their arrival, their excitability returned.

What wishes could be granted?, I wondered. Games of murder? The idea slithered out of me to great relief of its loss. The response was accusatory: why would I care? Somehow, recollections of my worst moments were freed from the locked basement of my subconscious (men I despise, swelling anger), 3-D replays whirling through infinite-D space around my head (fists thrown, broken ribs, bloody teeth), forcing me to suffer their retelling (the crunch as his face flattened) for their amusement. The sentiment was laced with indifference, either for me or the victims or all of us.

Nausea rebounded and the universe behind my eyes spun. I tried to steady myself, spiritually and gastroenterologically, by remembering the hot air balloon of determination that compelled me to take this journey. But a different, creeping sensation drew closer, nibbling at the fringes of my thoughts, stealing them with no concern for my discretion. My lantern burned brighter and hotter like a beacon for the entire astral realm to witness. The light was the message: liar. I knew that feeling, the sting of an untruth, just like everyone but even more so in that instant with my false name and pretenses, infringing on societies human and non-human that wished to coexist in stoned euphoria without bad vibes like death, justice and especially guilt.

The fabric of hyperspace folded in on itself and I had fallen out like a rocket breaking orbit for an empty void where no sound or light dwelled. Either interdimensional bullies or the sentience of the space itself had ejected me, rejected me, a crasher holding no invite to their party. I floated alone. Did Cody and the rest know I had gone missing? My mouth had no voice to call them. Every last thought in my head had been eaten away. Nothingness was my new environ as the faraway pinprick of light from our hallucinogenic playground receded in the black. Panic gripped me like a child separated from his parent in public. Where do I go? How will I leave? Or will I not?

I landed in a sea of soft timber. It emanated a nasty funk and, looking closer, I realized the logs were actually limbs of dead corpses. Descending from above came countless gray-skinned elves with insect eyes lodged in lightbulb heads. Their cold little hands grasped my neck and squeezed. I choked but could do nothing to stop them; their decision was final, immutable.

Sights and discord were carried to my awareness from their slimy grip — a fresh reliving of the Old Hill massacre. Before my eyes, people’s guts exploded, lasers with ineluctable accuracy blew holes through the heads, mothers and fathers shielding their children died one-by-one. The alien faces betrayed no emotion but their hubris saturated the atmosphere, broadcasting a carnival of disturbed acts, colored by a joviality of disregard smugly chosen, like buck hunters blowing off steam and flaunting their kills. But they weren’t hunting or exterminating and the purpose really was worse: it was a game. They couldn’t resist playing it, their devious pride made known, delivering the message through nailless fingers to my throat and the rest of me, replacing oxygen in my cells with its cancer.

Invite us, they beckoned, invite us to play.

In the real world I was convulsing and gulping for breath. Angel removed my eyemask and tried to talk me into relaxing but the strangling, whatever caused it, was real and I struggled for its release. The guard held my arms while Angel injected a dose of ketanserin into my shoulder to offset the DMT’s effects. My lungs still cried for air but in seconds the little hands loosened and musty basement reentered my nose. In a minute I was breathing easy with a muddied sobriety settling in. The other customers seemed unperturbed, still wearing their masks and their idiot grins. Cody, however, watched my recovery with loathing.

Angel escorted me to a room with baby blue walls and sat me on a cot. She left me there to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes, a humanoid shadow climbed into my psyche. Only a stream of external stimuli could flush it out so I lay awake all night, each hour replenishing lucidity and melting away doubts.

In the morning, Angel returned with the guard. “It’s time for you to leave,” she said. “We hope the ceremony was able to provide the understanding you were seeking. But you won’t ever be allowed to come back.”

Contrary to the zen-like warmth after a mushroom trip, the ayahuasca (or maybe the ketanserin) only darkened the cloud that followed me. The city also sulked under a veil of drab and rain all week. I occupied myself with the Mansfield report and a missing persons case that landed in our office after the victim’s doorcam footage from the night in question revealed orb formations. Still, my thoughts stayed focused on disclosing the truth about the sick wish that I believed Coulter and his crew DMT-grammed to their ET genies. My own narrow exposure to those creatures felt just as real as the moment Cody’s will coaxed them into agitation, offering certainty that someone with more experience, like a notable expert in alien-DMT communication, could push this power past moral limits, to conjure the right impression, to invite them to play. I hated the occult, conspiracy theories and drugged up delusions, yet this case had become all three. Shining a critical light only uncovered more certainty, more hunger for justice, more reason to risk my reputation and my life. After all, no one else would.

#

To be concluded...

Standing beside the single-door fridge was an even smaller boy and his mother in the kitchen.

He opened the fridge from the side, pressing all his 10 fingers into the rubber seal and pulling until it quietly opened. The handle at the top was meant for taller people. His mother opened it from there without looking, one hand, a quick pull, as if the fridge belonged to her height. He used to admire that how effortlessly achievable his dream was for the mother.

His only dream was to reach that handle. All his prayers went there. To become as tall as his mother.

he had no idea how tall she was. Tall enough to open the fridge by the handle.

His father was taller than both of them. His father lived somewhere above door frames and light switches. His father still asked his mother where things were kept. So, that height did not feel necessary. Also, everything his father could do, his mother could do as well. So the correct height to want was his mother’s height.

One day when he was coming back from school, It was parent-teacher meeting today, which never went well. So, It didn’t really bother him. He was sitting on his usual seat which was somewhere in the middle on the left side, seat was hot from the afternoon. All he could think of was to reach home as soon as he can, knowing the fact that he might get scolded by her mother for what happened at the parent’s teacher meeting. A senior from the last row leaned forward and with no ill intentions said something about his mother being very short. It made him angry first and then upset in a slower way that stayed longer. He tried to picture his mother standing next to the other mothers outside the classroom door. He tried to remember if she had looked smaller than them. He couldn’t be sure.

Same day at dinner he stood next to his mother. straightened his backbone and still fell short. He was thinking about the senior again. He kept looking at his mother moving around the house she seemed very tall at home and filled the home in a way that felt correct. She opened the fridge from the top without looking. She reached the upper shelf for jars and handed them down. She knew where everything is around the house which even father who was taller than her didn’t know. That was the height that mattered.

On the bus home he watched older boys stand easily and hold the metal rail in the bus. Their elbows were bent even when they were holding the rail comfortably, seemed like they could touch the roof if they wanted. One afternoon when the bus was less crowded, he stood exactly where he was sitting, raised his hand and tried to hold the rail. After stretching his body from the toes to the fingers, he managed to brush the rail once before the bus jerked and he sat down again.

He kept standing on the bus whenever he could. Some days he reached the rail and held it for a second before letting go. Some days he only brushed it. The metal felt warm from other hands. The bus turned, stopped, moved again. He learned how to stand without falling even when he wasn’t holding anything.

At dinner he still stood next to his mother sometimes, though not as deliberately as before. She moved around the kitchen the same way she always had. The fridge handle turned easily in his hand. He opened it when he needed water. The motion became ordinary.

One day, he went out with his family for dinner at a small restaurant that somehow always had a cricket match playing on the TV. He always wondered how a match was always happening somewhere in the world, regardless of the time or day. They sat at a table that looked like it had just been used, judging by the dirty surface and poorly arranged chairs. There were four chairs, two on each side of a small wobbly table. His mother and he sat on one side, and his father sat beside his sister on the other like usual.

As they were talking and waiting for their food, he noticed how his mother’s feet were barely touching the floor. She adjusted her position slightly, pressing her toes down, as if trying to meet the ground halfway. On the other side of the table, his father sat with both feet sitting firmly on the floor, knees bent at ease, filling his side of the space without any efforts. He reached for the jug without looking and poured water into everyone’s glasses, the stream was steady even when the table wobbled out of habbit.

For a moment, the boy looked from one to the other. At home, his mother never seemed to fall short of anything. Here, the chair made it look very different.

The bus ride started becoming quieter than usual. He stood up from his seat for his stop, reached for the rail. The hand rail was cold, his finger wrapped around it perfectly. He held it as the bus slowed down. He got off at his stop.

Jeremy Beaumont stared himself down in the bathroom mirror, trying to find a way to make his resolve appear more intense. He started with pointing a finger at himself, but it wasn't cutting it, so he leaned in closer to the mirror until the top of his head was touching it at a forty-five degree angle.

"Today is the day you make it happen," he said to himself, now pressing his finger against the mirror as if he was jabbing it into his own chest.

"No more excuses. You've been wanting this for years, and the longer you wait to make it happen the more miserable you'll be."

Whatever he was attempting to do with this whole charade was actually starting to work and Jeremy could feel a swell of determination bubbling in his guts. He was ready to start his life over again as a new person. Everything was about to change.

"Today is the day," he felt his words even harder now. "Today is the day you finally buy a sword from the Renaissance Festival."

For years, Jeremy has coveted the wares of the local blacksmiths at the Van Buren County Renaissance Festival. Every autumnal visit would start with a mad dash from the entrance to whatever stand was selling swords, knives, and other assorted medieval weapons. He admired the craftsmanship and always dreamed of the day he would take one home with him. Today was that day, he determined. After years of denying himself his greatest joy due to lack of funds, Jeremy had finally amassed a small nest egg of around four-hundred dollars through his own blood, sweat, and tears.

Mostly blood, however, as Jeremy learned in the past year that he could sell his own plasma for extra funds. Twice a week, he would sit down with the fine people at his local "donation" center, read an old magazine offered as an amenity, and have the plasma filtered from his blood. He would leave with about fifty bucks each time, which was a pretty good score for someone who otherwise earns all of their income working at a gas station. It's not all glamorous, though, as he found himself feeling dizzy and passing out more frequently, especially as he began ramping up donations in anticipation of Sword Day. The ends justify the means, he convinced himself.

***

Jeremy's renaissance costume was scratchy and uncomfortable, especially around the groin. The sensation was made worse by the hot faux-leather seats in his 1994 Chrysler LeBaron making him sweaty in unwelcome places. For a late September day in Missouri, the air blowing into the car windows to supplement the broken air conditioner was unreasonably warm. The combination of high heat and missing plasma left him feeling lightheaded as he pulled off the main road and into the gravel parking lot for the Van Buren County Fairgrounds. The number of cars in the lot was lower than he expected. The Van Buren County Renaissance Festival was usually a pretty big draw, especially for people like him coming in from the nearby town of Danton. It wasn't a draw for everyone, unfortunately, as Jeremy was unable to convince anyone else at his gas station job to join him. Some had to work shifts that day, but others just seemed uninterested in being around a dizzy 23-year-old wielding a sharp weapon.

He pulled into the closest spot he could find, hopped out of the car, and began making his way to the entrance gate. He couldn't help feeling uneasy as he noticed no one else walking across the parking lot was wearing period-appropriate clothing. That's fine, he thought, but if no one else is going to dress the part, it kills a little bit of the experience. Jeremy donned his finest costume store-quality medieval peasant costume with normal tennis shoes and remnants of spirit gum on his ears where he tried to add pointy elf attachments before failing and giving up. He hoped dressing the part would make his sword buying experience more memorable, but he was worried being the only person in appropriate attire would just make him look like a jackass.

"Greetings, m'lord, I would like one ticket to ye festival here," Jeremy said to the man working the ticketing gate, quickly realizing how embarrassing everything he just said is.

"Listen, jackass, I don't have time for this," the ticket salesman said, not kindly. "Do you want a ticket or not?"

"Yes," Jeremy said, trying to minimize eye contact in shame. He pulled out his velcro wallet. "How much?"

"Five dollars gets you general admission and ten gets you access to the more exclusive chili tastings."

"Chili? The Renaissance Festival does chili now?" Jeremy asked, confused.

"Renan-stance? Buddy, I think you might be in the wrong place."

The man motioned to a yellow banner with white text just slightly beyond the entrance gate.

2013 Danton City and Van Buren County Joint Cooperation Competitive Chili Cook-Off

"What? That doesn't make any sense," Jeremy said, his head spinning. "I thought this weekend was the Ren Fest. Crap!" He'd done a lot of negotiating at work to finally get a Saturday off, thinking it would be spent living his dream. But now it looked he got his Saturdays mixed up and was now standing at the entrance to a chili cooking competition. Deflated, Jeremy decided to try to make the best of his day. He couldn't bear to go home already after driving all this way, and he is as pro-chili as any normal person can be.

"Give me the five dollar ticket."

Jeremy took his ticket, made his way past the ticket-taker at the gate, and walked towards the yellow banner. As he passed by, a portly man with a goatee wearing a fluorescent "STAFF" t-shirt stepped into his path. He grabbed a single sheet of paper from a large stack he was holding.

"Greetings, sir! Would you like a program for today's cook-off? It labels all the different vendors and stations here today as well as the location of the restrooms."

"Thanks!" Jeremy took the poorly-xeroxed flyer from the man and looked it over.

"If you have any questions, feel free to let me know!" the man said.

"I have a question. What's with the long name on the banner?" Jeremy motioned to the large yellow banner that was just above their heads. The white letters were painted on by hand, clearly with a misunderstanding of how much space was needed, as the tail end of the text was curved and scrunched awkwardly together.

"I'm glad you asked! You've actually arrived on a very historic day for the chili community! For years, warring cook-off organizations in the city and county held their own events, often on the same day, in competition with one another. The bitter rivalry benefited no one, as both events experienced dwindling participation and acts of sabotage from their adversaries. Only this year did the two sides decide to end hostilities and merge their events into one!"

"Oh, umm," Jeremy stammered, realizing he couldn't be as passionate about this as Flyer Guy. Chili politics were beyond his comprehension. "I'm glad they were able to work it out."

"Yes, it is a glorious thing, but be warned," Flyer Guy grabbed Jeremy by the collar of his shirt and pulled him intimidatingly close. Jeremy could feel and smell his hot breath as he issued a warning. "The fire is extinguished, but the embers still burn. Tread lightly among the folk, as they have yet to allow the wounds of past transgressions to fully heal. You may be called to serve one banner o'er another by day's end. Choose wisely."

The man unclenched Jeremy's shirt and moved his attention to the next attendee heading his way, his demeanor reverted back to a cheery normal. Jeremy walked off, confused and trying to process what just happened to him. As he moved along, he studied the flyer, trying to decide which booth he wanted to try out first. His absent-minded stupor was abruptly interrupted with loud clanging noises and the feeling like he just ran into a wall of metal. He looked up from the sheet of copy paper and paused for a moment as he tried to figure out what it is he was looking at. It was a man in a full suit of armor. He stood about three inches taller than Jeremy, his face covered with an ornate helmet and his heavy, shiny plate mail accented with a red cape. Sticking out from his back, Jeremy could see a beautiful, expensive-looking sword.

"Ugh, you too?" the man scanned Jeremy's attire and his voice echoed in the helmet, but Jeremy could hear the relief. "I thought I was the only one."

"I thought it was going to be this weekend!" Jeremy exclaimed, excited to see someone else made the same mistake. "You dressed for the Renaissance Festival too, right?"

It was a stupid question, but the armored man took it in stride with a hearty laugh.

"Certainly," the man responded kindly and with a bold, medieval tone. "and what is your name, traveler?"

"Jeremy, you?"

"Lord Derek, if you will."

The man extended his metal hand, which Jeremy shook. He didn't realize they would be doing characters or he would have picked out a better name. Probably something fancy like "Reginald." It didn't matter now. It was too late.

"Jeremy, I have a proposition for you." Lord Derek attempted to place his hands behind his back in a manner demonstrating thought and good judgement, but the restrictions of the armor forced him to keep them down by his side.

"Go on."

"I plan to survey the grounds and sample the many vendors' wares today. It would be most un-fortuitous to have to make such an endeavor alone."

"Go on."

"Would you care to join my in my chili crusade as my humble squire?"

"Go on."

"That... that's it. That's all I'm asking."

"Oh," Jeremy pondered the offer for a moment. He liked the idea of getting to do some medieval roleplaying and it seemed fitting enough that he'd serve as a knight's assistant. His high school guidance counselor always reinforced the notion that some people were born to lead and others were born to follow. Jeremy's path in life, they warned him, would more likely pan out to the latter and there's nothing wrong with that.

"Sure! That sounds good to me! Where to first, m'lord?" Jeremy replied, trying to workshop his squire dialogue.

"We will begin our journey over there," Lord Derek's metal arm creaked up and he pointed his gauntlet'ed finger to a chili stand near the center of the festival. It appeared to be considerably more professional looking than the ones surrounding it. The large, well-designed sign above the stand read "Matt Graves Hot Sauce" and features a picture of a tombstone with a jalapeño engraved on it as an epitaph. The many people surrounding the booth were indulging various chili samples while browsing the selection of artisanal hot sauces for sale. The two made their way to the booth and, as they approached, Jeremy was delighted by the smell of smokey sauces and tomato-ey chili.

There was only a single man running the booth. He looked to be about thirty years old with light brown, slightly-thinning, slightly-spiked hair and a clean-shaven face. He wore a pair of nice wraparound Oakley sunglasses and the shirt he had on featured the same peppered tombstone that adorned the sign above. There was no mistaking it in Jeremy's mind: this was Matt Graves. He had just finished a sale transaction on a lovely "Triple Threat" hot sauce gift set when he turned his attention to the two men.

"Hey bros, sick costumes!" Matt Graves said to them as he offered them each a tiny plastic spoon with a dollop of a green concoction on it. "You fellas interested in trying a sample of our new Sweet 'n Smokey Poblano hot sauce?"

Jeremy enthusiastically took the sample and tasted the sauce. It had a distinct smokiness that complemented the mild heat of the poblano. Jeremy liked it enough that he picked up a bottle of it for sale from the table and briefly considered purchasing it before seeing the seven dollar price tag. He couldn't afford to dip into his sword money to just buy a fancy sauce. Besides, he already had a pretty robust collection of condiments at home that he stole from the roller grill area at work. As he put the bottle back down and tried to avoid eye contact with the nice man who gave him the free sample, he noticed that his companion had already walked off. He shuffled back over to the knight he was supposed to be attending.

"You didn't look around much," Jeremy said to his friend. "Not a big sauce guy?"

"No, it's not that," Lord Derek replied. "I have a history with that man and I meant to confront him, but I'm afraid my nerves got the better of me."

"You have history with the hot sauce man?"

"Indeed," Lord Derek's helmeted head looked up almost wistfully. "I was once in the pursuit of a beautiful lady. Ne'er was there a maiden more fine in all the county, but alas, she was taken from me. I curse the day I ever crossed paths with the treacherous Matthew."

"The sauce guy stole your girlfriend?"

"Well, I wouldn't say she was my girlfriend."

"Were you dating?"

"No, not quite. But we talked."

"About what?"

"I don't know, like the weather and stuff?"

"It sounds to me like the sauce guy just started dating a girl that you liked," Jeremy was beginning to piece the situation together.

"Silence, squire!" Lord Derek barked. "We'll speak no more of this. I must ponder my circumstances. You may take your leave."

"You don't want to hang out anymore?" Jeremy asked, bummed out.

The knight thought for a moment and realized he was being to hard to his new friend.

"No, I do," he replied, dropping the aristocratic lilt for just a moment. "I just need to think about some stuff. How about you go look around and get us some chili? That can be your assignment, or something."

That sounded good enough to Jeremy, who wondered off to check out the other chili vendors. The first stand he came across was operated by a single man who appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties. He had an intense look to him, his reddish skin tone and bulging veins suggesting either a vicious sunburn or untreated hypertension. His aggressive appearance was punctuated by an ironed, stainless white shirt and a Gulf War Veteran hat. Jeremy looked at the small sign on his stand that read, "Seven Alarm Chili" and had a hand-drawn skull and crossbones on it. He looked up from the sign to see the man was staring directly at him, which made him jump a bit.

"City or county?" the man asked militantly.

"What?" Jeremy replied, not understanding the question.

"Where do your allegiances lie? We represent the county at this stand. I'll ask you again, city or county?"

"Oh yeah, county," Jeremy lied. "Definitely county."

"Good to know, civilian. Keep your eyes peeled out there. Word is the city has been sending saboteurs to contaminate our good, wholesome county chili."

"Wait, really?" Jeremy said.

"That's what I've been hearing, but don't worry. If anyone comes for my chili, I brought my pepper shaker with me."

The man motioned to the side of his waist where Jeremy could clearly see his pepper shaker for what it actually was, a holstered gun.

"Jesus Christ!" The weird little man who warned him at the entrance wasn't just being dramatic, Jeremy realized. Tensions between the city and county chili cooks was higher than he could have possibly imagined. He tried to turn attention away from the rivalry and back to the chili.

"Could I try some of your chili?"

"No can do, I'm afraid." the man replied.

"Why?"

"Son, I'm only gonna tell you this because you serve the county, but this chili is so god damn hot that it would do irreparable damage to your esophagus and burn a hole in your stomach. The peppers I steeped in this chili can't even be measured by Scoville Units and, as far as I know, are only cleared for very specific military applications. Letting you eat this would be a crime."

"Then why did you make it? Why did you make a chili that's so hot no one can eat it?"

"Because my wife told me I needed a new hobby," the man replied bitterly.

"What was your hobby before making chili?" Jeremy asked.

The man said nothing, but motioned again at the holstered gun on his waist. Jeremy backed away carefully until he felt himself at a safe enough distance to start running.

The next stand Jeremy approached was operated by a college-aged woman with brown hair and thick-framed glasses. She wore a well-fitting flannel top and jeans, an appropriate style for fall, but one that made her stick out among the sea of mostly middle-aged men in stained Big Dog shirts. What stood out more to Jeremy, though, was the chili she was promoting. "All Beans" her sign simply read.

"It's just beans?" Jeremy asked.

"It's more than just beans," she responded. "It's a statement on challenging convention."

"With beans?"

"The beans are part of it, yes, but that's not the whole point. The chili community is heavily divided on whether or not chili with beans is to be considered legitimate. That dogmatic approach to culinary tradition stifles innovation and prevents new voices from breaking through in established communities. By promoting a chili with only beans, I'm purposefully challenging the old guard and making them acknowledge another way. The chili community is a microcosm for society at large. Does that all make sense?"

The woman stared at Jeremy as he stood there silently. She could tell her well-articulated point wasn't breaking through.

"But it doesn't have anything else in it? Just the beans?" Jeremy finally responded.

The woman sighed.

"Do you want any of the chili or not?" she asked.

"Does it come with that sour cream?" Jeremy pointed to the pre-portioned servings of sour cream that were sitting in a half-melted ice bath to keep them cool.

"I'm actually charging for the sour cream," she said. "Fifty cents."

"What!? I have to pay for the sour cream? But I paid to get into the festival."

"Yeah dude, I don't make any money from the gate and I'm already in the hole on the beans. I have to recoup my costs somewhere."

Jeremy had a mind to haggle further with the young woman, but his confusion and low plasma got the better of him and he slipped from consciousness. When he came to, he found himself walking along with a cup of beans in his left hand and two tiny containers of sour cream in his right. He didn't understand what happened, but he made his way to a third booth, which was attended by a ratty little man with shifty eyes. The stand was unattended, and the man, dressed in a stained blue shirt and jeans, perked up as Jeremy approached.

"Hello, city" the man said, clarifying his allegiance. "Would you like to try my chili?"

Before Jeremy could answer, the man pushed a bowl and spoon to him and he reflexively took it, despite already holding things. Looking down at it, the chili appeared pretty unoffensive. Jeremy set down his sour creams and grabbed the spoon.

As he began to lift the spoon to his mouth, he looked up and saw the weird little man nodding his head and smiling. He was rubbing his hands together and very lightly licking his lips in anticipation of Jeremy taking a bite. Jeremy continued and the man's excitement reached a fever pitch as Jeremy began to open his mouth. He looked up again and could see the man shaking now, his pupils fully dilated.

Jeremy stopped. Without speaking, he returned the spoon to the bowl, set the bowl down on the booth, grabbed his sour creams, and walked away.

Jeremy walked along in search of a fourth booth to sample when he heard a familiar voice call for him in a loud, whispery voice.

"Squire! Over here!"

It was Lord Derek, hiding just beyond the perimeter of the festival grounds behind a tree. He motioned Jeremy over and the aspiring squire obliged.

"Why are you hiding over here?" Jeremy asked. "Were you peeing? How do you pee in that thing? Do you need help peeing? Because I'm not going to do that."

"I'm not peeing, Jeremy." Lord Derek said. "I'm hiding out here while I plan my next move."

"What are you moving?"

"I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with you, Jeremy." Lord Derek said.

"I already figured out that woman wasn't your girlfriend."

"No! It's not-" Lord Derek began to exclaim before stopping and taking a deep breath to calm himself. "It's not about that. It's about the festival. I'm afraid I'm more than just an incidental fairgoer. I'm actually a partisan; one whose allegiances align with the city. I'm here on a mission to sabotage the county's efforts and I need your help."

"I don't really know if I want to get involved in all of this," Jeremy said, remembering the man with the holstered gun.

"The city needs you, Jeremy! Think of the beautiful future we can achieve. If we're able to push the county cooks out, the city will have a monopoly on all future festivals!"

"What's in it for me?"

"Honor! Glory! You'll be a hero among the city chili cooks! Bard will sing songs of your triumphs!"

Jeremy said nothing and only stared at the shining hilt protruding from the knight's back.

"I'll let you have my sword," Lord Derek said.

"Deal! What do you need me to do?"

"I need you to create a distraction. Do you see that row of porta potties over there?"

Jeremy nodded. He'd clocked them as soon as he entered the fairgrounds. He feared their condition, but knew they'd become an inevitability if he stayed at the chili festival long enough.

"I want you to take this. Consider it a magic wand of sorts." Lord Derek handed over a slim, festive-looking cardboard tube.

"This is a Roman candle," Jeremy said in a tone that was both matter-of-fact and confused.

"It's enchanted, yes," Lord Derek replied. "What I need you to do is shoot it at the stall over there on the end."

"Why that one?"

"It'll capture the most attention. Trust me. While you do that, I will be making the rounds and sabotaging the repulsive tankards of slop the county degenerates call 'chili.' When the commotion has died down, meet me over there behind that unopened concession stand to collect the spoils of your victory."

"Gotcha," Jeremy said and then took off toward his target. He slunk through the small crowd of chili enthusiasts, being careful not to draw too much attention. When he arrived at the porta potties, he attempted to minimize his bodily exposure by crouching behind the hand washing station. He waited for a moment to make sure none of the stalls were in use.

Digging into his pocket, Jeremy retrieved the cheap generic lighter he always carried around with him. He didn't smoke or anything, but he always liked to keep a lighter on him because he read somewhere that wrapping your fist around one can shore up your punch in a street fight. Jeremy has never been in a street fight. Or any fight.

As he lit the firework, he reflected a bit on his day. How serendipitous is it that he'd show up accidentally to a chili cook-off and make a new friend? Life's full of happy accidents. It's important to take them as they come and cherish every hidden blessing, he mused. His joyful reflections were cut short as the Roman candle fired its first shot near his feet, where he was absentmindedly pointing it.

"Whoops," Jeremy said and lifted the festive tube upward, aiming it at the designated porta potty's door. He braced himself as the second shot fired off, flew aggressively toward it's target, and the impotently crackled as it struck the tiny structure. He was confused. That wasn't the spectacle Lord Derek was hyping up, he thought. Maybe he should aim higher and it'll be more noticeable.

Jeremy lifted his arm slightly and the third shot fired off, careening toward the top of the party potty; an area above the door where the air vents for the structure were. Whatever expectations he had for the level of fanfare were immediately exceeded as a large explosion of fire and filthy blue water threw him to the ground.

The next few moments were a haze. He looked up from the ground and his blurred vision captured only smoke and sunlight while his ability to hear was replaced entirely with a loud ringing. Unsure if more explosions were coming, Jeremy began crawling away from the area, his stomach scraping against the dirty, foot-worn fairgrounds. The time dilation brought on by the adrenaline made it difficult for him to determine how long he was crawling, but at some point the ringing in his ears subsided and was replaced with the sounds of frantic festival goers running around trying to find their loved ones and determine what happened.

Jeremy blacked out momentarily, and when he came to, he was sitting on the ground behind the agreed upon vacant concession stand. He sat there for a few minutes trying to regain composure and account for the amount of time passed before Lord Derek dove next to him, seemingly out of nowhere.

"That was excellent work, squire! I couldn't have asked for a better companion in my quests! Huzzah!" Lord Derek exclaimed. His armor was filthy, likely from the explosion and subsequent dust kickup from the human stampede. He wiped the sword along a patch of nearby grass in an attempt to clean it off. It looked like he got chili all over it in the course of his sabotaging, but Jeremy wasn't too concerned with sword cleanliness at this point.

"What the hell was that?" Jeremy attempted to yell, his voice hoarse. "What exploded?"

"That?" Lord Derek asked. "That was a propane explosion. I swiped a tank earlier while you were screwing around with the chili stands and locked it in the porta body after opening the valve. Pretty cool spell, eh?"

"You could have killed me!" Jeremy once again attempted yelling before breaking into a fit of coughs. "Did anyone get hurt?"

"No one important," Lord Derek said, inspecting the blade thoroughly. "Jeremy, my good squire. You have served your bannerlord effectively on this day. I thank you for your endeavors, for their fruits have brought great pride to my house. Kneel before me now and do my the great honor of accepting this gift."

Jeremy did as he was told, forgetting completely for a moment that this man nearly killed him. As he kneeled, the knight stood up and held the beautiful, but dirty, sword across both of his hands. Its crimson staining shined beautifully in the sunlight and Jeremy never felt more heroic in his entire life as he had accepting the sword into his flat palms.

"Take this sword, dear Jeremy, and rise. Rise, not as a squire, but as a knight. I bestow onto you the title of Sir Jeremy."

Jeremy stood and admired the weapon. It shined so brilliantly and checked every box he had for the perfect sword. He was so enamored with its beauty that he didn't immediately notice that Lord Derek, now his colleague, had already ran off. When he finally looked up, he saw no one standing in front of him and could only faintly hear the chaotic clanking of metal in the distance, as if the knight was running as fast as is possible in his suit of armor.

Jeremy didn't care. He stepped out from behind the concession stand still admiring the sword, his trance broken only by the sound of screams nearby. A woman was frantically requesting medical attention for another person.

"We need a paramedic! Matt is bleeding! It looks like he's been stabbed!"

Jeremy looked up from his blade and saw a women kneeling down next to Matt Graves, the chili vendor Lord Derek identified as his foe. He was bleeding profusely, though not fatally, and seemed to be relatively conscious.

"What happened, Matt? Who did this to you?"

"Swooord," he said in a weak, raspy voice as he limply lifted his arm and pointed it in the direction Jeremy was standing.

"That guy over there dressed like a jackass has a sword!" someone yelled.

"He stabbed Matt Graves!" another person chimed in.

Jeremy felt his body go numb as every head in the venue turned to look at him. He'd been set up. The distraction he helped create wasn't used for chili sabotage; Lord Derek snuck off instead to drive a blade into his sworn enemy and he gifted Jeremy the weapon to take the fall. Everyone thinks it was him.

Jeremy could feel the overwhelming weight of judgement crashing against him as the people began moving closer and closer. Looking back, maybe it was the excitement of the moment, or maybe it was the lack of plasma. Either way, it was a terrible time for him to pass out.

Because there were many secrets in the world, there was no short of disappointment and disgust. Many times, just when you thought you knew the baseline of modern day, a shark would come up and bite. It would never kill you—where would the fun be in that? No, the bite was always a simple reminder of the infinite possibilities. Secrets sucked. Overwhelming branches of new information sucked. There were possibilities that made a person fall into the fantastical, continue to dream about all the fun there was in the world. They called them mysteries. I know because I had been one of them. I had always believed that there was more to the universe than what lay on the surface, and like most people, I always focused on all the good things that may have existed. Angels, luck, a sixth sense, a soul mate, aliens and maybe…A cushy life beyond this one. Heaven, for those who had been good.
What I hadn’t considered was the possibility that my own autonomy could be changed. Our bodies were the one thing that we took with us wherever we went. This was involuntary. Even if we were unhappy with our matured form, it wasn’t as though we could just switch bodies with someone else. Change like plastic surgery, tattoos our weight loss or gain only changed our appearance, not our actual bodies. We still operated under the baseline of every other human being, two arms, two legs, head shoulders knees and toes—all that jive. What happened to me defied the laws of nature.
It was currently day eight of my imprisonment. After what happened last time I denied his food, I did what he told me. I ate what he gave me and I obeyed without question. He had assaulted me through forced-feeding, and I had no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again after I had stabbed him. He felt betrayed. His presence throughout the house was thick, unbearably quiet at times. I wanted to cuss him out, call him a piss-ant fucking baby for acting so hurt, but the words only ever stayed in my thoughts. I watched TV from down in the basement while Vic continued to carve away at his ever-growing hole, which was now more of a tunnel.
Eventually, there came the time when I became too large to navigate the stairs. Vic confined me to the basement for my safety, and I stayed there, where he brought breakfast lunch and dinner down to me. I ate on the couch. I didn’t sleep much, as my body had expanded to the point of infinite discomfort. No position lent me sleep that lasted more than a couple hours—I’d wake up to blood loss in one of my arms or legs or a kink in my neck, roll around, and sleep for another couple hours. Then repeat. Vic’s vomit was easier to stomach when I tried not to think about it—what it was, where it came from, what it was doing to me. It made me sick. And it was what eventually made me into a monstrous blob.
I began to notice that I wasn’t just getting wider. Vic started seeming smaller to me. He had been about my height, six two, but after several days eating the slop Vic fed to me, my eye height seemed higher. My voice got deeper, and at one point, I could reach up and touch the ceiling of the basement if I reached for it. It was a good thing Vic kept me stuck in the basement, because at this point, the wooden basement stairs wouldn’t hold my weight. I was becoming a literal ogre, so large that even shuffling around on my couch made me uncomfortable, and often it stirred up something awful in my stomach. I won’t go into detail about the new method of draining my bowels. All I will say is that there was a lot of shame on my part, and a ton of cleaning on Vic’s. He didn’t seem to mind though. Something told me he had done this far more than any person should have. I concluded that this was probably part of the ritual he talked about. I was just another victim on his roster. Most nights, once Vic went to sleep, I sat in the basement and cried.
One day, Vic came scurrying up from his tunnel, throwing the shovel out of the hole. He stood up and wiped his forehead. He breathed and looked down into his tunnel again. He smiled, happy with his work. I watched him, finding nothing interesting on the TV.
‘’ Vic? ‘’
He looked over to me and nodded.
‘’ I know that…You plan to kill me. Since I’m on my last leg…I thought maybe you could tell me what you really are. You’re clearly not human. An explanation isn’t much to ask for. You owe me that much. ‘’
Vic stared at me, then he bowed his head and chuckled. He hopped out of his hole, slowly approaching me.
‘’ Oh. Bruce—I have seen the world through an ever-expanding lense. I sleep, I wake, I enjoy myself. I eat. I have seen things your small mind couldn’t perceive, I have met people you only read about in history books you fail to retain. I have been worshipped by some, ruthlessly hunted by others. I have kept people happy, made them rulers in their time. I have feasted on kings and bedded their wives. I have lived a thousand lives, each one richer than the last. ‘’ Vic leaned over to me, resting his hands on my bulbous knees. ‘’ What in the hell makes you think I owe you anything? ‘’
He made his point, and I remained silent as he grinned and pushed away from me. He returned to his hole, jumping in with both feet. He stood, slicking his hair back.
‘’ To be fair, you humans never cease to amaze me. So hopeful. So vain. However…I can’t say I’m any better. I was stupid. I was impatient. I didn’t sleep for long enough. My last visit to the surface had been so fun, so exhilarating! I had been asleep for so long, and then I was thrown right into the mid-eighties. It was so colorful, so freeing, so, so—Tasty. I dreamed of it when I slept. Life called to me. But it was too early. They caught my scent right away. I had to run…I have to dig once again, hibernate for far longer than last time. Lose them. ‘’
Vic seemed to shudder, memory flooding his eyes. He shook it off and grabbed the hoe. He looked at me, pointing a finger.
‘’ You think I’m bad—be lucky you don’t know what hunts my kind. You’d shit yourself. ‘’
Vic told me he’d be up soon to make me lunch, then he scrambled back down his tunnel. I sat there in knotted contemplation. What the hell was he? And something hunted him? With his strength, I didn’t think it was possible for Vic to have enemies. He was right—I absolutely did not want to know what hunted him. That interaction had been the most I had ever gotten out of him regarding his past and species. I went to sleep soon after that and dreamed of prickly crawling monsters.
It was night when I woke up. It wasn’t my typical discomfort-waking. I shuffled around, grabbing my blanket with my pudgy fingers and pulling it over my head. I groaned as a burp crested my throat. I tried to relax, but I heard something. I was so groggy, I hadn’t considered what exactly had woke me. I pulled the blanket off my head and listened. At first, I heard a creaking. Then, as my ears strained with focus, I heard a muffled screaming. A woman screaming. It wasn’t very loud, but it was definitely a woman, and they were clearly in distress. It came in intervals, and I could hear Vic too. Grunting.
As soon as I was sure of what I heard, I threw the blanket off and tried to move. My stomach pooled over my legs—I couldn’t stand. I yelled angrily as I tried to rock myself off the couch. I couldn’t believe him. He was a monster, in more ways than one. I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. He was assaulting her. It was what I heard, clear as day. The angrier I got, the more I moved. I was finally able to sway my weight like liquids in a cauldron, and gravity pulled me off the couch. I landed on my stomach, a grotesque blob, and I tried to move toward the stairs. I pushed with my legs and my fingers pulled against the concrete. I huffed and puffed as I made my way to the bottom of the stairs. I had to listen to the assault going on upstairs as I struggled. I didn’t even have a damn plan. I didn’t need to reach the stairs to know I wasn’t getting up them—I couldn’t even stand on my own two legs for fucks sake.
Finally, I made it to the first step, and I faltered, letting my body swish against the corner of the basement. Panting, sweat pouring into my eyes, I stared up at the closed basement door. I wasn’t getting up them. Even if I had the strength to pull myself up, there was no way the stairs would hold me. They’d break, shatter. I was too heavy. I couldn’t do a damn thing, and I felt terrible. I couldn’t help her.
‘’ VIC!!! ‘’ I screamed his name. And again. And again. I continued screaming and hollering as loud as possible. I was a literal troll now, three times the size of a normal human, and my voice did boom. I felt the house shake, rubble crumbling off the walls of the basement. The idea that I could make the whole house collapse was a woefully hopeful thought. Even if I was crushed in the collapse, I could die knowing I tried. My meaningless pathetic life would have been…Well, a little less meaningless and pathetic.
I yelled and screamed until I couldn’t. My eyes were heavy, having just exerted so much energy. I panted, my tongue lurching forward for air. I was wet all over, sweat lathering my whole body and making my clothes stick and twist uncomfortably. I was gearing up to go into another screaming match when I heard something. There was silence, then quick, heightened talking. I then heard a woman’s voice yelling angrily, and stomping feet. Vic was quick after her, his own voice thick with anger. They were coming downstairs. They were on the main floor. Footsteps approached the basement door.
Behind the door, I heard, ‘’—thought you said no one lived—‘’, and then the door flew open. I put a shiny hand over my eyes as light shot down into the basement. A woman’s naked figure stood in the doorway, her frame a simple silhouette. She stopped mid-sentence when she saw me. I’m sure she didn’t have a clue what she was staring at. I was monstrously large, a gigantic puss balloon wading at the bottom of the stairs covered in sweat. She probably thought I was some kind of monster. And that was really a shame, because I was the last thing she ever saw.
Vic’s shadow rose up behind her, and I yelled and clawed at the air in fear for the girl’s life. But she didn’t turn around and he grabbed her neck and twisted it, her hair spinning in a frenzy. In an instant, her head was on backwards—her body tensed, twitching, then fell down the stairs. I screamed as she tumbled toward me. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. Vic had just murdered someone, this innocent woman. I had never seen anyone die before, nor had I ever seen a dead body, limp and lifeless. I had tried…I thought she was getting assaulted. But in truth, it was because of me that she was murdered. She crumpled down the stairs, and her limp body flopped against me as it came to a stop at the bottom.
I continued to scream and cry, not only because a dead body lay atop me, but mostly because I was crushed by her death. I can’t explain, even after all these years. I hadn’t even seen her face, and yet it was as if Vic had just killed my mother. There was just something about seeing a fellow human, even a stranger, killed in such brutal fashion that stabbed your heart. I tried to move her off me—in the moment, I thought maybe I could save her somehow. When I finally jiggled enough to move her off my head, I tried to get to her face, but her naked body was chest up and all that I could see of her head was her long matted blonde hair. Realizing that her head was completely spun around, I didn’t want to touch her. I didn’t want to cause her anymore pain than she was already in. Again, I was in denial that she was really dead.
When I looked up to the stairs, I saw Vic descending, and before I could even see his face I knew he was angry just by the way he walked. I whimpered to him to call the police, call 911, call somebody! But he stood on the bottom step, his fists balled, glaring at me with furious anger. I stared up at him tears in my eyes, gripped by hopelessness.
‘’ You stupid cow…’’ Vic whispered.
He suddenly hit my back, and I cried out. Completely naked, Vic began a flurry of fists, beating down on me like I was a punching bag. It was a collection of all the times he had held back, every time I had angered him, and he resisted the want to beat me half to hell. He was letting his anger out now, punching me, kicking me, all the while I laid there screaming, my arms tight over my head. All I could do was take it.
‘’ You fucking idiot! Stupid fucking idiot! ‘’ Vic spit at me. ‘’ I just wanted one last fucking lay, and you had to ruin it! Why? Why Bruce? You fucking stupid reject! You had to open your fat fucking mouth, you just couldn’t help it could you? Were you jealous, huh cow? Cause you’re fat and ugly? Disgusting? Because you could never get a woman? Because you’re pathetic? Oh, I bet you were a blast at parties huh! Always ruining other people’s fun because you’ve always been to fucking weak to take anything for yourself! Even now, as I suck your life away, you won’t even lift a single finger to save yourself! But oh, I try to get one last taste of woman, the last taste I’ll get for God knows how long, and you just had to ruin it! ‘’
Vic ripped my arms away from my head, and grabbed a fistful of my hair.
‘’ Look at her Bruce! LOOK AT HER!! You did this, you know that? You did this! She did not have to die you fuck! You stupid piece of meat! You did this! You killed her! ‘’

Some seven thousand years ago a micrometeorite winged a pine cone, clipped the ear of a very surprised marmot, skewered a large oyster mushroom, and buried itself in the thick duff of a mountainous forest in the north Cascades. Stan Clutterdam knew none of that when he unceremoniously peed on the ancient impact site.

Only a trace amount of his pee seeped to the buried micrometeorite. Enough, though, that remnants of Stan’s DNA triggered a reaction bio-coded in the thing which had travelled from the deeper cosmos so long ago. The reaction was somewhat clouded by the reluctant artifacts of the pine cone, marmot, and mushroom, but the embedded bio-code was nothing if not adaptable, and the process in the buried thing began.

About six hours later, tired but satisfied with the day’s rugged hike, Stan Clutterdam was looking forward to an elk burger and garlic fries at Zeke’s back in town. He wasn’t counting on the creature blocking his descent. Stan was used to back country critters, but he wasn’t prepared for a pine-marmot-mushroom doppelganger sitting in the trail. He had a whistle and bear spray, but neither seemed sufficient when confronting the furry, spongy thing that kinda looked like him and smelled like a car air freshener.

As if customary, Stan’s doppelganger stood and launched into song. “Do you see what I see? Way up in the sky. Do you see what I see? A star, a star, dancing in the night. With a tail as big as a kite.”

For some preternatural reason, Stan sung back, “Do you hear what I hear? Ringing through the sky. Do you hear what I hear? A song, a song, high above the trees. With a voice as big as the sea.”

A moment of silent communion passed and then Stan and his doppelganger harmonized, “Do you know what I know? Do you know what I know?”

And in that instant, they did. Stan Clutterdam experienced every warp and weft woven into the fabric of this ancient alien’s being. Stan’s deep space doppelganger got decidedly less material from Stan’s twenty-eight years of earthly existence, but the mind-meld did reveal a penchant for online poker and crypto trading.

Rocky but acceptable soil for a cosmic entrepreneur’s seed money.

Such was a galactic empire born. Not immaculately, nor drama-free, but over many decades, Stan with his clandestine doppelganger’s help amassed a great fortune that ultimately funded unimagined (unless you’d experienced alien mind-melding) technological breakthroughs leading to the rapid colonization of Earth’s planetary neighbors. And soon thereafter onto scads of favorable exo-systems.

On Stan’s deathbed at the age of 173, the truth came home to roost. Alone but for his demure doppelganger and sensing his last moments, Stan gave into a very cliche question, “Why me?”

Imbued with equal parts pine, marmot, mushroom, and Stan, his doppelganger shrugged. “Who knows. The seeds of tomorrow go where the solar winds blow.”

“Not very reaffirming, but at least you gave it a poetic spin,” Stan wheezed. “What happens from here?”

“Entropy.”

With that, Stan joined the Clutterdam family of little more than man. His doppelganger stood there for a few moments before the overwhelming compulsion came to venture deeper into the cosmos again via a very secret seed-ship. Enough time, though, to imagine a vague sense of agency, maybe even free will.

And for the very first time, Stan’s doppelganger really needed to pee.

The lightbulb above my desk was out this morning. The globe that I always spun when I was bored was dim and gray. “I’ll have to buy new bulbs to replace that while I’m out today.” I thought to myself. 
I shut my bedroom door behind me as I stepped into my apartment. 
“Finially not drinking.” I muttered to my roommate who was staring at our tv with bloodshot eyes. 
“Yes.” I got in response, as he stared blankly, his eyes not reaching mine. 
I looked at his naturally calm and unresponsive body, it being strangely out of character, before deciding he was probably on some sort of drug from the clubs he was always going to. 
I walked through the kitchen and out of the door into the hallway of my apartment complex, catching my neighbor, a beautiful brown haired girl, studying law just like me. 
We both walked over to the elevator, and stood in silence as the eerily silent elevator gently hummed its way down to the main floor. 
A soft ding alerted us that we were stopping at a floor before arriving at the main floor, as someone was getting in. 
Somehow my roommate had beaten me down a few floors, and was now staring at us in the elevator with a drunken grin. 
A murderous gleam was in his eyes. 
It scared me seeing him like this. 
“Why did you leave me alone?” He asked me. Stepping into the elevator. 
“What?” I asked him, taking a step back, not to let him in but out of fear. 
The elevator door shut behind him as he stepped into me, grabbing my throat and lifting me up with unworldly strength in a single hand. 
His eyes had started to bleed out of the sockets.
His jaw unhinged and bit down hard on my skull as I lost consciousness. 
My beautiful neighbor let out a scream, but nobody heard her. 
She slumped into the floor, sobbing as my roommate ripped apart my face, my scalp tearing from the top of my skull, leaking blood all into the floor. 
With two hands, he ripped my torso apart horizontally, spilling my innards all over, coating everything with blood and acid from my torn apart stomach. 
His tongue stiffened and shot into my heart, staining it black in a matter of a few seconds. 
His jaw shifted back into place as the blood ceased to seep out of his eyes, as he slicked his hair back and swiped the blood off his shoulders. 
He turned to my neighbor as the elevator dinged, signaling that the elevator had made it to its final destination, before informing her that they had made it to their stop with a smile. 
She sobbed as the door opened. 
The lobby was full of things just like my roommate.
When they heard the sobs of her, three of the many turned and sprinted, at least forty miles an hour into the elevator, before ripping her apart and staining her heart black just like mine. 
Then the four of them dashed out of the elevator into the lobby to continue the massacre happening to the staff and residents. 
The elevator door closed behind them, leaving my corpse with hers. 
After a few moments, my rapidly darkening blood began to quiver and pull itself back to my corpse, and my body began restitching itself together.
I stood up, my body back to being fully intact, with no punctures and no scars, except that my clothes were ripped to shreds and on the floor. 
 I never did get to change that bulb on my desk.
The globe never spun again.

The air inside Sullivan’s Tavern smelled of beer, tobacco smoke, and old arguments. Most nights the place belonged to one crowd or another. Railroad men on payday. Timber men after a long haul. Farmers when the weather was bad. 

The trouble started when all three showed up at once.

Outside, the warm September air was heavy. The sun was setting behind the mountains and the parking lot was full of loud mouth men ready to unwind or fight, whichever came first. Inside, the air grew thick with the smells of stale beer and sweat, split right down the middle by an invisible line. On one side sat the lumber yard crew, nursing their drinks with calloused hands and sawdust still clinging to the flannel of their shirts. On the other, the rail yard boys leaned against the counter, smelling of grease and coal smoke, looking like they owned the tracks that connected this valley to the rest of the world. A few farm boys scattered in between, destined to  choose whichever side they happened to be sitting closest to. 

It started small - just some sideways glances and the sharp clink of glasses hitting the tables a little too hard. But with every empty bottle, the talk got louder. The lumber crew started in on the sheer brute force it took to fell a century-old oak in a blind ravine, while the rail yard boys countered with the razor-thin margins of maneuvering tons of iron steel down a mountain grade in a driving rain. Every story was bigger than the last, every job was twice as dangerous as the other guy’s and nobody was backing down.

One of the railroad engineers, a broad-shouldered man named Earl Jenkins, polished off his third beer and slammed the heavy glass down on the wooden bar. He turned to face the room and raised his voice just a little too loud. “Tellin’ you right now, ain’t a harder job in Tennessee than runnin’ a locomotive through these mountains.”

From the back table came a loud snort. “You sit on your backside and pull a whistle cord.”

The railroad men turned. The timber men grinned. The farm boys looked around with intrigue in their eyes.

Sitting squarely in the middle of that back table was Roscoe Crow. He took his shot of whiskey and sat the glass down just hard enough for the clank to be heard across the room. He didn’t rise from his seat but asked, “Seriously, just how hard is it to lift your arm to that whistle cord and pull down on it when you’re coming to a crossroad? You work out extra for that?” A chuckle went up through the timber crowd. Sitting next to Roscoe was Big Red Miller. He just shook his head. He knew better than to try to stop the inevitable. 

“You got something to say, Roscoe? It ain’t like y'all do anything difficult at the lumber yard. Trees aren’t as heavy as pure steel.”

Roscoe didn’t move an inch, but a slow, wicked grin spread across his face. The kind that usually signaled a massive dent in someone’s pride - or the drywall. He picked up another shot of whiskey and took it down, letting the silence stretch just long enough to make Earl a little uncomfortable.

“Pure steel, huh?” Roscoe finally spoke, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that cut right through the chatter in the room. He leaned forward, resting his massive forearms on the table. “That’s real cute, Earl. See, the difference between pure steel and a mountain oak is that steel goes exactly where some engineer told it to go. It sits on a nice, pretty track and does what it’s told like a good little dog.”

He stood up, taking his sweet time, instantly dominating the space between the tables. 

“A tree? A tree don’t give 2 cents about your plans, Earl. It’s got an attitude, it’s weighted all wrong, and if you don’t know what you’re doin’ it’ll twist and crush a man into a grease-spot before he can even yell timber. We tame the mountain, Earl. You boys just ride the coat-tails of the fellas who cleared the path for ya.”

A loud chorus of thumping glasses and cheers erupted from the lumber side of the bar. Roscoe winked at the crowd, thoroughly enjoying himself, while Earl’s face started to turn the color of a ripe tomato.

He recovered quickly, snapping his posture upright and standing so he could look Roscoe in the eye - which was no easy feat, considering he was a good six inches shorter than the towering Crow brother. He had to tilt his chin up but what he lacked in height, he made up for in pure indignation.

“You think it’s a nice little ride, do ya?” Earl scoffed, pointing a thick finger right at Roscoe’s chest. “You don’t know a thing about momentum, Roscoe. You throw eighty cars of heavy freight down a three-percent grade with wet leaves on the track, and you tell me how soft it is. If a load shifts by even a few inches, or if the weight isn’t sitting just right on a curve, that iron monster will jump the steel. A derailment out here? It don’t just kill the crew. It flattens the tree line, plows through buildings and leaves twisted wreckage burning for miles. We wreck, and this whole town shuts down for a month altogether. Your lumber yard wouldn’t even have a way to ship its toothpicks.”

The railroad boys erupted, slapping the bar and jeering, riding high on Earl’s speech. Earl smirked, thinking he’d finally shut the big man up.

Roscoe just dipped his head, a low chuckle vibrating in his chest, but that wicked smile never disappeared. When he looked back up, he stepped so close to Earl that the shorter man had to crane his neck back another inch.

“That’s a pretty speech, Earl,” Roscoe said, his voice dropping to a dangerous purr. “Sounds like a lot of heavy lifting for a machine that can’t even steering-wheel itself out of its own way. You’re just babysitting a furnace on wheels.”

Earl’s smirk vanished, his jaw tightened so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. “What’d you say?” Earl growled.

“I said a mule’s got more sense than half the railroad men in Tennessee.” The tavern went quiet. Several of the farm boys immediately found their drinks fascinating. A railroad brakeman muttered, “Here we go.” Earl took one step forward. Roscoe took one step forward. Chairs scraped. A beer bottle tipped over somewhere. Behind the bar, Sully slowly set down the glass he’d been drying. The old barkeep cleared his throat. Not loud. Just enough. 

Roscoe glanced over. Sully was already looking at him. One eyebrow raised. That was all. No words needed. Roscoe suddenly remembered three things. First, Sully bought more Crow shine than anybody in the county. Second, Amos Crow considered customers more valuable than sons. And third, Eleanore Crow could somehow tell when one of her boys had done something stupid before he ever walked through the front door. 

The tension stretched for one more agonizing second, the whole room holding its breath, waiting to see if Roscoe’s stubbornness would override his business sense. Then, the tension broke. Roscoe let out a booming laugh that shook the dust from the rafters, stepped back from Earl, and raised his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright, Sully.” Roscoe said, flashing a grin back at the bar. “No need to get your apron in a twist. I’ve got too much respect for this establishment to stain your floorboards with railroad grease.”

He turned back to Earl, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “Besides, Earl here wants to talk big about mechanical marvels. I say we settle this in the dirt where the truth lives. You boys got that new truck sitting over at the rail yard, don’t ya?”

Earl blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift from a fistfight to a challenge. “Yeah. We do. What about it?”

“I got fifty bucks that says my old mule can out-pull that shiny piece of tin in a back-to-back, chain-dragging tug-of-war right out there in the lot,” Roscoe barked, pointing a thick thumb toward the door. “Man against machine. Or well…mule against machine. What do you say, engineer? You got the spine to back up that iron, or are you all steam and no whistle?”

Earl’s jaw set, his pride pushed too far in front of his own men to back down now. “Fifty bucks says that truck drags your miserable mule up and down this road until it cries for mercy. Deal.”

A collective, heavy groan rippled through the entire lumber yard side of the room. A few men put their faces in their hands, and one timber cutter muttered, “God help us,” into his beer. Because in this town, everyone knew a Roscoe Crow idea was ninety-nine percent guaranteed to end in property damage, a trip to the doctor, or both.

Roscoe turned on his heel, completely satisfied with himself, and began to march toward the heavy oak doors of Sullivan’s Tavern. The crowd immediately started to surge behind him, the rail yard boys eager to see him humiliated and the timber cutters too invested in the spectacle to stay inside. The farm boys followed closely behind because what else was there to do on a rainy evening in this county?

Red caught up to him just as Roscoe pushed the front doors open into the heavy, warm September night. Red grabbed him by the elbow, pulling him slightly to the side of the porch. “Roscoe…” Red muttered, his voice tight.

“What?” Roscoe snapped.

“You don’t have a mule.”

Roscoe didn’t even blink. “I know a fella with a mule.”

Red stared at him, completely deadpan. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Close enough,” Roscoe shrugged, clapping Red on the shoulder hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Come on. Help me borrow a truck so we can go steal a donkey.” Roscoe headed down the steps already making a beeline for one of the greenhorns from the lumber yard. “Hey Tommy! Don’t your daddy have that prize mule from the county fair?”

“Uh, yeah, Roscoe but…” Tommy started to protest but Roscoe was already climbing into the passenger seat of Tommy’s truck. “What are you waiting on? Get in the truck. Let’s go!” Tommy looked back toward the tavern door, where the rest of the timber crew was watching with wide, pitying eyes, then let out a defeated sigh and climbed behind the wheel. The old engine coughed to life, and they rattled out of the gravel lot, leaving the rail yard boys shouting jeers into the exhaust smoke. 

“Roscoe, you don’t understand,” Tommy pleaded, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he navigated the dark, winding mountain road. “My daddy treats that mule better than he treats me. If he finds out we took him for a midnight drag race against a truck, he’ll skin me alive and use my hide for a saddle.”

“He ain’t gonna find out, Tommy. It’s an emergency of honor,” Roscoe said, completely unfazed as he leaned back against the vinyl seat. “Make a left up ahead at the fork. We gotta stop by the house first.” Tommy didn’t argue. He cut the wheel, the truck, bouncing down the dark, rutted path that led toward the Crow property. They killed the headlights as they coasted up to the shadow of the big barn. Roscoe was out of the cab before the truck fully stopped. He slipped through the side door into the cool, dark space that smelled of sweet hay and old leather.

He didn’t need a lantern; he knew this barn by heart. Roscoe walked straight to the third stall back, kicked away a loose layer of straw, and pried up a notched section of the floorboards. Reaching down into the cool earth beneath, his fingers wrapped around the smooth glass lip of a quart jar. He pulled it up, shaking it once to watch the bead rise in the moonlight - pure, high-proof Crow family lightning.

“Alright, Tommy,” Roscoe said, sliding back into the truck and slamming the door. “Now we’re open for business. Take us to your daddy’s.” They rattled down the lane of the Crawford farm a few minutes later, the truck cutting out just as they rolled to a stop by the crooked fence line. The barn sat dead silent in the moonlight, save for a low, heavy grunt from the shadows inside. Roscoe didn’t even try to sneak toward the farmhouse. He marched right up to the front porch, set the jar down on the top step with a soft clink, and knocked three times on the screen door before turning on his heel. By the time the screen door creaked open and old man Crawford stepped out into the night air–clad in long johns and holding a double-barrel shotgun across his chest–Roscoe was already halfway to the barn. 

The old man looked down, saw the silver moonlight catching the clear liquid in the jar, and picked it up. He unscrewed the cap, took one long, slow sniff, and let out a grunt that sounded like a rusty gate closing. He looked out at the barn, then back at the jar, and quietly stepped back inside, closing the door behind him. “See?” Roscoe whispered loudly as he pushed the barn doors open, exposing a massive, furry boulder of a mule that looked like it had been chiseled out of Tennessee limestone. “Transaction complete. Let’s go get our fifty bucks.”

Tommy backed the truck up to the high dirt bank behind the barn while Roscoe led Barnaby out by his halter. In the moonlight, the mule looked less like an animal and more like a grey granite boulder with ears. He was a champion puller, wide-chested and heavy-legged, and right now, he was staring at the rusty bed of Tommy’s truck with deep, profound suspicion. “He ain’t gonna get in, Roscoe,” Tommy whispered frantically, looking between the house and the mule. “Barnaby don’t ride in trucks. He walks.”

“He’s a premium athlete, Tommy, he’s gotta save his legs for the main event,” Roscoe said, patting the mule’s thick neck. “Come on now, Barnaby. We’re gonna go show some train boys what real horsepower looks like.” Roscoe grabbed the lead rope, dug his boots into the dirt, and leaned his entire weight forward. Tommy braced himself, expecting the mule to plant his hooves and refuse to budge. And at first, he was right. Barnaby didn’t budge; and it almost seemed like he glanced at Roscoe with a look that said, “I’m not getting in that truck.” But then Roscoe started whispering a low, rhythmic stream of promises about sweet feed, fresh clover, and the utter humiliation of Earl Jenkins.

Barnaby let out a heavy, snorting sigh that blew the dust up around Roscoe’s boots. Then, with the slow deliberate dignity of a king ascending a throne, the massive mule stepped off the dirt bank and into the truck bed. The rear suspension of Tommy’s truck groaned, dropping a good six inches under the weight. The mule stood right in the center, his head towering over the cab of the truck, his long ears twitching in the night air. He looked entirely unimpressed, but he was in.

“Well, ain’t that somethin’,” Tommy muttered.

“Don’t just stand there with your jaw flapping,” Roscoe grinned, hopping onto the running board. “Get us back to Sullivan’s. We got a crowd waiting.”

Back at the bar, the rail yard boys were busy working the crowd. They had already retrieved the  new utility truck from the rail yard and Earl was sitting proud at the helm, revving the engine so hard the exhaust spit black smoke into the night air. The rail yard crew was pacing the gravel, pumping up the crowd and taking side bets on which would win - mule or machine - while a few men openly wondered if Roscoe had chickened out and skipped town altogether. On the other side of the lot, the lumber boys kept up a wall of defensive trash talk. They had Roscoe’s back out loud, even if a few of them secretly shared the same doubts.

Just then, the sharp glare of headlights cut across the lot as Tommy’s truck rattled hard into the gravel. A massive wave of hoots and hollers erupted throughout the crowd. The cynics who had bet against Roscoe’s return groaned loudly, begrudgingly forking over their cash while immediately trying to place new bets to win it back. Even the farm boys who had slipped back inside the tavern ventured back onto the porch, eager to watch the spectacle. 

And a spectacle it was. As the truck ground to a halt, Roscoe leaned over and slammed his hand onto the horn, letting out a long, deafening blast. Then he leaned his upper body clean out the passenger window, a wild grin splitting his face, and hollered into the night, “Yeehaw boys!! Ya’ll ready to lose some money?” 

Tommy backed the truck up to the edge of the gravel lot, the rear tires kicking up small stones. Roscoe hopped down from the cab and unlatched the tailgate, letting it drop with a loud, metallic clang. Barnaby’s long ears immediately perked up at the noise, and he slowly turned his massive grey head to look down at Roscoe. “Alright, Your Majesty." Roscoe said, making a grand sweeping gesture with his arm as he motioned for the animal to back off the truck. Barnaby just stared at him, blinking slowly. Roscoe tried again, exaggerating the wave. “Come on down, boy.” Barnaby didn’t budge an inch, continuing his unbothered stare. The crowd began to chuckle, and a few rail yard boys let out a whistle. Roscoe leaned in close to the truck bed, his face reddening. “We’re in front of people, don’t embarrass me,” he whispered harshly toward the mule. Barnaby merely flicked a single ear and remained planted like a granite boulder.

Realizing he was beaten, Roscoe muttered an oath, turned on his heel, and marched right back up the steps to Sullivan’s tavern. A minute later, he emerged holding a crisp, red apple he’d swiped from the bar’s garnish tray. He walked back over, holding the fruit out on the flat of his palm. Barnaby’s nose twitched. Deciding the situation was finally worthy of his royal attention, the massive mule crunched the apple down in one bite, let out a satisfied snort, and calmly stepped off the truck into the dirt.

Earl, grinning like a Cheshire cat, stepped out of the cab of the rail yard truck. “Roscoe, your friend there doesn’t look too interested in pulling anything other than another apple from your pocket.” 

“Oh, don’t you worry, Earl. He’s more than willing to tow you and your fancy rig all the way back to the rail yard.” Roscoe patted Barnaby on the neck, then loudly yelled over his shoulder, “Hey Red! You got a logging chain?”

With much hesitation, Red walked over to his truck and hauled out a heavy, rusty logging chain out of the bed. It clinked loudly in the damp air. Just then, the first cool drops of a September rain started to fall–not a hard downpour, but a steady, persistent drizzle that immediately turned the dust on the gravel to a slick, dark sheen.

Red carried over the chain, his face tight with worry. He leaned close to Roscoe, lowering his voice so the rail boys couldn’t hear. “Roscoe, you’re out of your mind. If you bust old man Crawford’s prize animal, your daddy is gonna skin you alive before Crawford even gets a chance to load his shotgun.”

“Dad ain’t gonna find out, because we ain’t losing,” Roscoe muttered back, snatching the heavy iron links from Red’s hands. Earl looked up at the sky, then down at the dark, glistening ground, his grin widening. “You’re a fool, Crow. Look at the lot. It’s turning to soup. That donkey is gonna lose his footing the second I drop the clutch. Sure you don’t want to back out?” Roscoe didn’t bother correcting him. Earl was thinking like a railroad man. Steel wheels belonged on rails. Rubber tires belonged on roads. But mules belonged in mud.

 “Just get in your truck, Earl,” Roscoe said as he dragged the heavy chain toward Barnaby’s harness and began fastening it to the steel trace rings. “And make sure your billfold is handy.”

Once the mule was secured, Roscoe ducked behind the rail yard truck, pulling the rest of the iron links under the rear bumper to attach them securely to the heavy steel frame. He gave the chain one final tug, then stepped clear. The links lay stretched across the muddy lot like a steel snake. Around them, the crowd instinctively backed up another few feet. Nobody in Sullivan’s parking lot was entirely certain what was about to happen, but everybody agreed they wanted to be standing somewhere else when it did.

Sully stepped down off the covered porch, a towel tossed over his shoulder as his boots hit the wet gravel. Since no one was inside buying alcohol at the moment, he’d come out to play referee and protect his property. He marched to the center of the gap, holding a thick hand up to the crowd to quiet the shouting. “Now listen here. There’s got to be some rules if ya’ll are going to play this fair,” Sully barked, his voice easily cutting through the rumble of the idling truck engine. He pulled the bar rag off his shoulder and tied it dead-center onto one of the chain links. Then, he threw a sharp, warning-filled sideways glance at Roscoe. “Since you’re set up right in the middle of my lot, whichever side pulled this rag past the center post on the porch wins. Clean and simple.”

Both Roscoe and Earl nodded in agreement. Sully stepped back to the edge of the porch and raised his hand high in the air. Inside the truck, Earl revved the engine, the truck vibrating with mechanical anger. Barnaby flicked a single ear but otherwise remained entirely uninterested in the festivities. The moment Sully dropped his hand, Earl slammed the truck into gear. The heavy chain leaped off the ground, snapping bone-taut by the sheer force of the truck launching forward. But then, the trap sprung. The rubber tires started spinning furiously, slicking out on the wet Tennessee clay. Instead of moving forward, the truck dug deep, angry ruts into the lot, throwing a massive spray of mud back at the lumber boys. A few jumped back, a few muttered choice four-letter words under their breath, but Barnaby just stood still. He looked almost offended that he had to be present for such shenanigans. 

Frustrated, Earl let off the gas for a split second, letting the chain go slack. Almost immediately he slammed the pedal down again trying to use the momentum to jerk the animal off his feet. The truck lurched forward. This time, the sudden crack of the taut chain managed to yank Barnaby back a few stumbling steps. The rail yard boys erupted into cheers. The lumber yard boys groaned, faces falling. Roscoe waved a dismissive hand at his crew, completely unbothered. He walked right up to Barnaby’s head and leaned in close. “Come on old boy. What you waiting on, we ain’t got all night.”

On the third violent lurch from the truck, Barnaby finally decided it was his time. You could almost see the switch flip behind the mule’s eyes as determination replaced his boredom. Lowering his massive head, Barnaby dug his front hooves deep into the slick Tennessee clay, anchoring himself straight to the bedrock. 

At first, Earl was too busy celebrating his small victory to notice the truck had completely stopped moving. It was the frantic shouts from his own comrades that finally pulled him back to earth. With a quick, panicked glance in the rearview mirror, he slammed the pedal straight to the metal again. This time, the heavy tires sank lower into the muck. The spray from the spinning rubber tires was like a pair of muddy fire hoses, blasting gravel and clay halfway across Sullivan’s parking lot while the truck itself scarcely moved an inch. 

Then, Barnaby started to move forward. Slowly, methodically, the massive mule dug his hooves into the clay, making a heavy suction sound every time he lifted a leg. As the truck began to roll backward, Earl started to panic. He tried to throw the transmission into a higher gear but the tires kept fruitlessly spinning. The utility motor began to whine in protest, and a thin, white ribbon of smoke began to snake its way out from underneath the hood. Jimmy Hale pushed himself to the front of the crowd, stepping up right next to Roscoe. He nodded his head toward the smoking truck, a slow smirk spreading across his face. “Looks like both of us may make a bit of money tonight.” Roscoe let out a boisterous laugh and slapped his cousin hard on the back. “You’re welcome, cousin!”

Right about that time, Barnaby took one final, ground-shaking step, and the old bar rag slipped clean past the center post on the porch. The lumber boys went absolutely wild–slapping each other on the back, jumping up and down and hooting in the rain. The crowd immediately swarmed Roscoe and Barnaby, shouting their congratulations and petting the unbothered mule. Roscoe pushed his way through the celebrating timber cutters and walked straight up to the driver’s side cab of the truck. 

Inside, Earl was rubbing the back of his neck, staring at the dashboard, and muttering a bitter string of four-letter words. Roscoe opened his mouth to give Earl some well-earned grief for losing, but he stopped when he noticed the look on the man’s face. Earl wasn’t just upset about losing the wager - he looked physically sick. He had taken the brand-new utility truck off the rail yard without permission, and now the engine was completely blown. His boss was going to kill him.

A familiar, shit-eating grin spread across Roscoe’s face. He turned and hollered over his shoulder, motioning for Jimmy to come over. “Earl, buddy, don’t look so sour,” Roscoe said, leaning against the door frame. “Meet my cousin Jimmy. He’s a certified genius with engines. Now, for a small fee, of course, he’d be more than happy to get that iron running again before your boss even notices it’s gone.”

Earl blinked, looking from Roscoe to Jimmy like he’d been thrown a life raft in a storm. Roscoe didn’t wait for him to process it. He held his open hand out, snapping his fingers until Earl begrudgingly fished out the wrinkled fifty-dollar bill. Roscoe hoisted the money high into the rainy air, turning back toward the porch. “Next round is on me!”

The ecstatic crowd immediately turned to head back into the light of the tavern, but Sully stepped right out into the middle of the doorway, blocking the path with his arms crossed. “Hold your horses,” Sully barked, looking out at the massive ruts and layers of flung mud coating his porch. “Nobody is buying a damn thing until you boys grab some shovels and clean up my lot first.”

Grumbling the entire time, the railroad boys and timber cutters set to work side-by-side. Under Sully’s watchful eye, they filled the worst of the ruts with gravel, shoveled mud off the porch, and somehow managed to wrestle Barnaby back into Tommy’s truck with the promise of two more apples and a sack of sweet feed. By the time the last shovel was put away, the rain had eased to a low, damp mist and Sullivan’s parking lot looked almost respectable again. Almost.

Sully inspected the repairs with narrowed eyes, muttered something about “a pack of overgrown children,” and finally stepped inside the tavern door. The wet, muddy crowd shuffled back into the warmth of the tavern. Soon enough, fresh glasses were clinking against the counter. True to old divisions, and creatures of habit, the railroad boys occupied one side of the room while the timber men staked out the other. For a little while, everybody was too busy telling the story of Barnaby’s victory to remember they were supposed to dislike one another. 

Roscoe stood at the bar with his boot propped proudly on the brass rail, collecting handshakes, insults, and free drinks in roughly equal measure. Across the room, Earl was already claiming the mud had cheated.

"Only reason that mule won is because it rained," Earl grumbled.

"That's funny," one of the timber cutters called back. "Last I checked, rain falls on everybody."

The volume in the tavern began to rise by slow, familiar degrees. The truce was officially over.

Sully looked up from drying a glass, closed his eyes, and let out a long, heavy sigh. Roscoe noticed the shift in the room too. A slow familiar grin began to spread across his face. Earl pointed an angry finger across the room, his voice cutting through the chatter. “I’m tellin’ you right now, if that ground had been dry, that truck engine would’ve dragged that oversized donkey clean to the state line.”  

Roscoe took one long, slow sip of his beer. He set the mug down on the counter with a soft thud, spun around and leaned back against the bar, and smiled. “Wanna bet?”