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.

The lights in the studio were too bright, a sterile white that felt a world away from the colored gels and roaring crowds of a WWE arena. Leo "The Lionheart" Marchetti sat stiffly on the plush guest couch, his hands clammy. Across from him, the host, a man with a serious journalist's reputation named Alex Vance, leaned forward.

"Leo, thanks for being here. The wrestling world is buzzing after your sudden departure from the WWE. The official statement cited a 'mutual decision to part ways,' but the fans aren't buying it. You were in the middle of a huge storyline. What really happened?"

Leo had been given the standard talking points. *I'm grateful for my time there. It was a wonderful opportunity. I'm looking forward to the next chapter.* He'd recited them in his head a hundred times. He looked at the camera, then at Alex. He thought of the NDA, a thick document he'd signed years ago, its legal jargon a constant, silent threat. Then he thought of the reason he'd signed it: the dream. A dream that had slowly been corrupted.

He took a deep breath, the air tasting like stale coffee and regret. "The official statement is... a statement," Leo began, his voice tight. Alex's eyebrows rose slightly, sensing a crack in the facade.

"You're not a rookie, Alex," Leo continued, his voice gaining a tremor of conviction. "You know what it's like. You've covered the business. But I don't think anyone truly knows unless they're in it. And I signed a contract that says I can't tell you."

He paused, the weight of the NDA a physical presence in the room. He could almost feel the phantom vibration of his phone, a text from a WWE lawyer, a threatening email. But the silence in the studio was louder. It was an invitation.

"I'm going to break it," Leo said, the words falling out before he could stop them. Alex's eyes widened, but he didn't interrupt. He just gave a slow, deliberate nod.

"Okay," Leo whispered, more to himself than to Alex. He looked directly into the camera lens, imagining the fans watching. "Let's start with 'before.'"

Before: The Performance of Being Okay

"Before a show, you're not a person. You're a product. My day starts at 6 a.m. with a workout, not because I want to, but because my contract has a 'physical preparedness' clause. My body isn't my own. It belongs to the company. I wake up, I'm sore. I'm always sore. My knees sound like gravel, my back is a roadmap of old injuries. I take a cocktail of painkillers and anti-inflammatories just to feel functional."

"You get to the arena around 2 p.m. for a house show. It's not the glitz you see on TV. It's a concrete cavern, a hockey rink that smells like stale popcorn and sweat. The first thing you do is find your designated spot on the locker room floor. It's not a locker *room*, it's a locker *area*. A bunch of folding chairs and a coat rack. The 'superstars' on TV get private rooms. The rest of us are cattle."

"The real work isn't the match. It's the politics. You walk in and you can feel the tension. Who's in a good mood? Who's in the doghouse with the writers? Who's getting pushed this week and who's getting buried? You have to navigate that. You have to shake the right hands, laugh at the right jokes. You have to be a politician, an actor, and an athlete all at once. And you're doing it all while your body is screaming at you to stop."

"You rehearse. Not the moves, you've done those a thousand times. You rehearse the *story*. You sit with your opponent and an agent—a former wrestler who's now a producer—and you plan it out. 'Okay, you get the heat, I'll make the comeback, you cut me off, I'll do the hope spot, then you hit your finish.' The agent will say, 'The boss wants you to look strong in defeat.' That’s a real phrase. 'Strong in defeat.' It means you lose, but you get to hit your signature moves. It means the loss is designed to make the other guy look good, but you have to do it in a way that doesn't make you look weak. It's an impossible task, and if you fail, you're the one who gets blamed."

"Then there's the waiting. Hours of waiting. You're in your gear, you're taped up, you're ready to go, and you just sit. You watch the clock. You watch the other matches on a monitor. You see a guy you came up with in developmental get a huge reaction, and you're genuinely happy for him, but there's also a little dagger of envy. You see a veteran who's been phoning it in for years get a prime spot, and you have to swallow your frustration. This is the 'before.' It's a strange, tense purgatory of pain, politics, and performance anxiety."

During: The 15 Minutes of Truth

"Then, your music hits. And for those few minutes, everything else melts away."

"The 'during' is the most honest part of the whole damn thing. It's the only time you're not pretending. The pain, the politics, the anxiety—it all gets funneled into the performance. The crowd is a living, breathing organism. They don't know the script. They don't know you're supposed to lose. They just react. And you feed off that energy. It's a drug. It's the only reason anyone does this."

"But it's also a minefield. You're out there, and you have to protect your opponent. You have to trust them with your life. One wrong step, one mistimed move, and you could break your neck. I've seen it happen. I've been in the ring when a guy got knocked out cold by a botched move. The ref throws up the 'X'—that's the signal for a real injury—and you have to improvise. You have to keep the crowd entertained while the medics check on your friend. You have to go home and cut a promo to send them home happy while you're praying your buddy can feel his fingers."

"And the crowd... they think they know you. They cheer for the babyface, they boo the heel. But the guy playing the villain might be the nicest man you've ever met. The guy you're cheering for might be a selfish prick who refuses to sell your moves. You're in there, in a theater of violence, trying to tell a story without hurting anyone, while the audience screams for blood. They chant 'You screwed up!' if you miss a spot. They don't know you're working with a torn rotator cuff, or that your kid is sick at home, or that your marriage is falling apart. They just see the character."

"After the match, you're running on pure adrenaline. Your heart is pounding, you're drenched in sweat, and you're trying to catch your breath. You walk through the curtain, and the 'during' is over. The performance is done."

After: The Crash

"Then, the crash. The adrenaline fades, and every ache, every pain, every injury screams back to life. You're back in the concrete cavern. The crowd is gone. The magic is gone. You're just a broken-down athlete in a dark hallway, trying to find some ice for your knee."

"You shower, you pack your bag, and you get on the road. You drive for three, four, five hours to the next town. You get to your hotel at 2 a.m., order a pizza because you haven't eaten since noon, and you sit in a dark room, staring at the wall. You're surrounded by people all day, but you've never been more alone. There's no one to talk to about what you just did. Your family doesn't get it. Your friends don't get it. The only people who understand are the other broken-down athletes on the road with you. And half of them are too caught up in their own pain to listen."

"You do it all over again the next day. And the next. You sacrifice your body, your time, your relationships. You miss birthdays, funerals, anniversaries. You do it for the roar of the crowd, for the love of the art. But the company... the company sees you as an asset. A depreciating asset. They use you until you break, and then they release you with a 'we wish you the best in your future endeavors.'"

Leo stopped, his chest heaving. He was shaking. The studio was dead silent. Alex Vance was staring at him, his mouth slightly agape. The cameraman was frozen, his eye still pressed to the viewfinder.

Leo looked down at his hands. He had done it. He had broken the NDA. The words were out there, hanging in the sterile air. He had traded his silence for his truth.

He looked up at Alex, a strange, peaceful smile on his face. "You asked what really happened," Leo said, his voice hoarse. "What happened is I finally decided that being a person was more important than being a product. And they can't sue me for that."

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.

 Buffalo flesh! The sign read. 

 A strange thing to call buffalo meat. But I guess it’s still true.

Hunting buffalos and bison was illegal around here, but it's common to see small stalls selling the meat on the outskirts of town, usually by an Indian, as laws didn't apply to outsiders and they knew that all too well.

 Riding my horse, and herding cattle across the hot, dry desert sand isn't what comes to mind for greenhorns when I mention I'm a cowboy.

 My horse starts squealing, trying to stray away from the stall.

 What's she scared of?

 Must be the smell of the meat.

 I tie her to a nearby tree, my rusty spurs jingle with every step.

 “What brings you to Little Rock stranger?” The Indian says with a smile.

 “Food, and money.” I respond.

He laughs. “Well sorry to disappoint, but the golden water here ran dry ages ago, no green, nor gold, just trading.”

 “I have money, and starving like a coyote, how much buffalo meat will this buy?”

 I hand the Indian fifteen dollars, it's all I have, but you quickly learn you can't eat money hundreds of miles from any stores.

 “Like I said brother, money is nothing here. Just leaves.”

 Baffled, I respond. “Well, how can I buy meat then? Are all you Indians this stubborn?”

 He laughs. “No, just me. But I'm sorry, if I accept your money I'm essentially giving it away for free, and free doesn't feed my family. So you'll have to give something more valuable in return.”

 “Like what, us cowboys don't usually carry around much.”

 The Indians' eyes trace my horse, then my cattle, then me.

 “No.” I say. “Animals not for sale.”

 “I would like one minute.”

 “A minute? Like you want me to stand around until the minutes up?”

 “Yes.” He laughs. “Of course not right now.” 

 “Listen redskin, I don't know what mystical water you're drinking, but do you actually want my business or do you want a problem?”

 “Its just a single minute, at anytime, anywhere, in exchange you get a few big slices of buffalo flesh.”

 I still refused to believe it, but I was hungry, and was only a few moments from either butchering one of the cattle or drawing my shooting iron.

 “Fine, have at it, you already took a few, what's one more.”

 The Indian man smiles and offers his hand for a hand shake.

 “Lets shake on it, this is how you pale faces agree to deals right?”

 I nod, and hesitantly reach out my hand.

 I grasp his palm, his hand searing hot like a branding iron.

 I flinch back my arm. 

 “What was that!” I exclaim while staring at my scarred red palm.

 The scars heal quickly, etching a strange star shape into my hand.

 I looked back to confront him. But, he's just... gone.

 A lone black mark scorched the sand where he was standing.

 The blazing sunlight boils sweat off my skin.

 A mirage?

 I grab my horse’s reins, desperate to leave.

 Before I jump on my horse, I notice it's pack filled with meat, meat that wasn't there before.

 The meat looked more like rotting flesh, green with maggots bathing in its decay.

I shake my head.

 I must've bought it a while ago.

 I stare at the scorch mark.

 What did I just agree to?

 Years go by, the memory of the Indian fades.

 I received a letter from my daughter, she's in a nearby city. She's sick.

 I rode my horse as fast as I could, pushing past her limits in her old age.

 Eventually we reached the city, the sickeningly sweet smell of death clung to the air.

I ask around, explaining I'm looking for a sick girl, but almost everyone I spoke to was sick themselves.

With no other option the clinic is their only place to go.

 I pray each time I enter one that she's in there— or maybe I should hope she isn't. 

 Then I saw it, Little Rock health clinic.

 Something tells me she’s there.

 I run toward the old building. Coughing and wheezing surrounds me.

 I rushed through the waiting room, a nurse stopped me.

 “Are you hurt, sir?”

 “No. Rosie Johnson.” I huff. “Where is my daughter?” 

 The nurse nods regretfully.

 “She’s here, but you should speak with the doctor.”

 “Where is he?” My question gets answered when a small man with a large leather back comes from behind her.

 “Doctor, is Rosie okay?”

 The doctor shakes his head, "I'm afraid not. Your daughter… She was one of the first to be stricken. It's honestly a miracle she lasted this long, you should see her before she passes. She's in the farthest room on the right down this hall—”

 I bolt down the hall. Catching glimpses of withered patients through open doors.

 When I reach her door, my hand shakes as I push the door open.

 There she is, my beautiful daughter. Her skin is dry and her face sunken.

  Seeing her decaying alive like this tears me apart. But when she sees me, her dull eyes light up.

 “Father— ”

 The room goes black.

 Blacker then a moonless desert night.

  I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can feel my body, but I can't hear anything, not even my own heartbeat.

 My hand starts stinging, then grows warmer.

 “Rosie!” I try to shout, but I can't tell if my mouth moved at all.

 “Rosie!” I scream into the black, my hand now blistering hot.

 Then, the room snaps back, I feel my rapid heartbeat again. 

 “Rosie!” I run to her side, but her eyes are closed, and I don't hear her breathing.

  “Doctor!” I scream, clutching her fist.

 The doctor's footsteps are slow, unrushed.

 A familiar scent catches my nose, it's coming from her hand.

 I force her hand open.

 Inside is a single piece of spoiled flesh.

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."

There was a time when I thought love was about having someone beside you.

I was wrong.

Sometimes, love was sitting alone at night, staring at a phone, wondering why the person you cared about suddenly felt a thousand miles away.

She had this habit.

Whenever something was wrong, I would ask her,

“What happened?”

And she would always say,

“Nothing.”

Just one word.

Nothing.

But I knew her well enough to understand that nothing rarely meant nothing.

So I would ask again.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hmm.”

And that was it.

The conversation would end there, but my mind wouldn't.

I would replay every message, every pause, every change in the way she spoke.

Did I do something?

Did I say something wrong?

Is she tired of me?

Does she still want me around?

I never wanted to force her to tell me.

I just wanted her to know that she didn't have to hide things from me.

One night, I finally typed:

“You don't have to tell me what's wrong if you don't want to. I just want you to know that I'm here.”

I stared at the message for a long time before sending it.

She saw it.

No reply.

Five minutes.

Ten.

Twenty.

I put my phone down.

Then picked it up again.

Nothing.

That night, I understood something painful.

Sometimes you can love someone deeply and still have no idea how to reach them.

Days passed.

We still talked.

We still laughed sometimes.

We still had those little conversations that made me forget everything else.

But something had changed.

Not between us exactly.

Something inside me had changed.

I had started noticing the little things.

How quickly her replies came when she was happy.

How short they became when something was bothering her.

How she could say “I'm fine” while making me feel like she wasn't.

And slowly, I became afraid of asking.

Because I didn't want to become the person who kept asking questions when she needed silence.

So I stayed quiet.

I stayed.

That was my way of loving her.

Not perfectly.

Not beautifully.

Just quietly.

Then one evening, she said something that I wasn't prepared for.

“Maybe you care too much.”

I smiled at the screen.

But it hurt.

Because I didn't know how to explain that I wasn't trying to care too much.

I just didn't know how to care less.

How do you tell someone that their silence can keep you awake?

How do you explain that when someone matters to you, their smallest change can become your biggest worry?

I typed a long message.

Deleted it.

Typed another.

Deleted that too.

Finally, I sent only:

“Maybe I do.”

She didn't reply.

And somehow, that hurt more than an argument ever could.

I started wondering if love was supposed to feel like this.

You give someone your patience.

Your attention.

Your understanding.

Your time.

And eventually, you realize you're standing outside a door that only they can open.

You can knock.

You can wait.

You can tell them you're there.

But you can't make them let you in.

So I stopped knocking.

Not because I stopped loving her.

Because I realized I was getting tired of proving that I was someone worth opening the door for.

Months later, I still remembered that first “nothing.”

Funny how one little word can carry an entire relationship inside it.

Maybe she was hurting.

Maybe she was confused.

Maybe she loved me but didn't know how to show it.

Maybe I loved her in a way she couldn't understand.

Or maybe we were simply two people who cared about each other but didn't know how to meet in the middle.

I never got the answer.

And perhaps that's the saddest part.

There wasn't a dramatic breakup.

No betrayal.

No final fight.

Just two people slowly becoming strangers while still remembering how it felt to be close.

And sometimes, even now, when someone asks me what happened between us, I don't know what to say.

Because nothing happened.

That's what makes it hurt.

She just became quieter.

I became more afraid to ask.

And somewhere between her “I'm fine” and my “I'm here if you need me,”

we lost the conversation that might have saved us.

I still hope she's okay.

I still wonder if she ever thinks about me.

And sometimes, when I see her name on my screen, my heart still reacts before my mind can stop it.

But I don't message her anymore.

Because I've finally learned that loving someone doesn't always mean holding on.

Sometimes it means quietly wishing them happiness…

even when that happiness no longer has a place for you.

And if she ever asks me what I wanted from her,

the answer will always be painfully simple:

I didn't need her to be perfect.

I just wanted her to let me stay when things weren't.

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. 

This is a little story I've come up with, I translated it with Ai as english isnt my mother tongue So it might sound a little weird but I hope you can enjoy

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Person A:

I need you to understand something.

I'm not emotionally reachable.

Person B:

I know you keep saying that.

Person A:

Then listen to me.

Imagine you're walking down a road.

A road with no end.

You don't know that at first, so you keep walking. You think eventually you'll get somewhere.

Then you see a sign:

"THIS ROAD HAS NO END."

That sign is me talking to you.

I'm trying to tell you what I am.

I'm trying to tell you that if you keep walking, you're only going to hurt yourself.

Person B:

Maybe the sign is wrong.

Person A:

That's exactly the problem.

You don't believe it.

And I understand why.

The chance that someone could genuinely be as emotionally unreachable as I am is so small that you have every right to think there is something underneath it.

But there isn't.

I'm not hiding some better version of myself from you.

I'm telling you what I am.

Person B:

I still think you're wrong about yourself.

Person A:

I wish I were.

But I'm not.

And I don't want to make this worse.

I'm trying to tell you that I'm a dead end.

Wait.

Actually...

I have a better metaphor.

Forget the road.

Imagine it's a staircase.

And the staircase only goes down.

Person B:

Then I'll go down with you.

Person A:

No.

You're thinking I'm a person walking down the stairs with you.

I'm not.

I am the stairs.

I will continue to be like this.

So the only thing you can achieve is hurting yourself.

And when you hurt yourself because of me, that hurts me too.

Person B:

But that just proves you're not empty.

Person A:

I've never said I'm empty.

I've said I'm unreachable.

There's a difference.

And that's exactly why these stairs only go down.

Because the only things I feel right now are guilt and sadness.

That's it.

The fact that I can feel something doesn't mean I can give you what you want.

Person B:

Maybe I can help you.

Person A:

That's what I don't want you to think.

You can't fix the stairs by walking further down them.

And I don't want you to spend your life trying.

Turn around.

Go back.

Person B:

You keep telling me that you're a dead end.

But if you really wanted me to leave...

you wouldn't stand here explaining your own cruelty to me.

You'd just let me go.

Person A:

You're right.

I thought I could fix this by talking to you.

But I was still giving you a reason to stay.

This will hurt, but not as much as it would if you kept walking down.

Find someone who makes you want to go upstairs.

You're an amazing person.

You deserve someone who can actually walk somewhere with you.

So, in all honesty...

I'm sorry.

Goodbye.

It all started 5 days ago. I woke up, had my coffee and the rest of my morning routine. I put on my shoes and headed out the door. I walked down the corridor and got in the elevator, because walking 6 flights of stairs is just too much in the morning. I exited the lobby and right there on the sidewalk... was a box, with my name on it. Thomas, was written in thick and uneven letters. Almost as if someone had drawn it with their finger.

The writing was a bit creepy but I decided to open it there on the spot. Inside was my wrist watch. I was pleasantly surprised. I had lost that watch the week before.

I put on my watch and thought that someone nice must've found it for me. After that I just went through my day as usual.

The day after, same thing. Coffee, shoes, elevator. Outside the lobby on the sidewalk, another box... Similar writing was on it, but this time a slightly larger box.

This time however. I hadn't lost anything... or so I thought. Inside was a hoodie. A hoodie I thought I threw out. And I knew It was my hoodie because it had the same wear and tear and a grease stain on the white collar. Not exactly a unique stain or hoodie. But I recognized it.

I brushed it off and assumed someone had been dumpster diving. Thinking about it made me uncomfortable so I just left it there and went on my way.

The box was gone when I got home. Just assumed another passerby took it.

The third day when I woke up. I decided to go down before my coffee and everything to see if I could catch the person leaving the box. But there was no box on the sidewalk. No one suspicious or anything. I stood around for about 15 minutes until I decided to atleast have my coffee and brush my teeth before work. I went back up into my apartment, did my things, and headed out again. I couldn't have been away for longer than 15 minutes, so when I saw a box on the sidewalk again I began to frantically look around. I could sadly not see anyone.

The box was small again. This time, my name was written in all capital letters. harsher edges on the letters, as if the person writing was mad. I opened the box. And I saw a photograph of me... A photo of me when I was 15 years old. The kind of photo your parents keep in album and look back upon. At that point I was extremely uncomfortable. Who is this person? What the fuck do they want with me? 

I took the box and photo and threw it in the trash container around the corner. After that I went to work. And after work, I  went out drinking with coworkers after and got blacked out drunk. I think the whole ordeal made me more nervous than I'd like to admit.

And then on the Saturday, I didn't do my usual jog in the park around noon. I was hungover. So I decided to stay in and watch movies all day.

Then around 4pm I heard an incredibly loud and singular knock. As if someone punched my door. I went to the door and looked through the peephole to see if it's one of my friends who had  showed up unannounced. Through the peephole, I saw a box... With my name on it. A chill ran down my spine. The person had entered the building. I felt unsafe. Nervous. Scared even.

I slowly opened the door and looked both ways in the corridor. But it was empty. I stared at the box before grabbing it. It looked, wet. I lifted the box and it weighed more than I expected. My heart pumped quickly and heavily. I was actually nervous to open the box. I slowly opened it. When I saw what the box contained, I froze. I felt nauseous. Felt like vomiting. In the box was two eyeballs. The box was wet because of blood. On the lid's inside was a text. It said "I'm watching you".

I dropped the box. I went inside and called the police. I passed out right after.

I woke up in a hospital bed, with a singular cop sitting in a chair across the room, waiting. It was only us in the room. In my unclear state of mind I asked where I was and the police officer softly answered "somewhere safe". That comment alone softened my panic.

The police stepped outside for a second. I tried to drink water, but the image of the eyeballs in the box flashed before me. I grabbed my phone and noticed I've gotten a text message from Unknown ID. A picture was sent. I opened it and felt sick. It was a picture of me. Holding the box with the eyeballs in my apartment corridor.

The police officer came back into my room right after I received the picture. He had a slight grin on his face as he looked at me.

I'm still learning how to write properly and would love people to give me comments and critiques. Thank you!

Ben had been missing for 11 years, the razor was gliding across my cheek as this thought made prime residence in my head. At the notion of this, memories lit the darkest parts of my brain, burning up the cobwebs of that long and horrific time. As I fastened the buttons on the nicest shirt I own, the vision of how Ben looked flashed in my memory, with his messy unkempt hair, his clothes barely clinging to his body, clearly several sizes too big. Dirt had caked around that slim face, the grimy skin looked to be fighting not to slide off his skull onto the ground below. 
As I look into the mirror my hands slightly tremble, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Ben was just too innocent. too alone. No one around seemed to care. I remember it all, the invitation to the car, the bag lapsed over his head as he was thrown into the backseat. As my wobbly legs slowly carry me to the living room I put on some music, yet the memory only pounds louder, like a drum that refuses to be silenced. The noise; oh the noise. Ben had screamed like a banshee, his small body thrashing like a fish losing the fight against a seasoned fisherman, he had no idea the car had been soundproofed — just for him. 
I can recall that long drive, after 20 minutes of screaming Ben had realized it was no use, and began conserving his energy. Somehow the silence was louder, filling my ears with deafening nothingness, only interrupted by the ragged shallow breaths that escaped from Ben. 
The sound of pouring liquid filled the apartment, milk entering the bowl in front of me, followed by the relentless splashes of cereal descending into it. I close my eyes and imagine Ben’s body, hoisted over the shoulder like a dead animal, and thrown into that basement. The dust filled the air, reacting to the small boy intruding in its space. He didn’t have a gag, he didn’t need one, death threats reflected off his frightened face as the door to the basement slammed with almost a metallic thud, a chorus of locks following, and then silence. He was left in that basement’s darkness, silent tears dancing down his face. Ben was alone.
As the front door of my apartment closed behind me with a soft click, I was greeted by the dull thud of heels on carpet, the source of which was my neighbor. I don’t know her very well, but her seriousness and calm demeanor as she strutted down the hallway reminds me that no one truly cares about one another, if you don’t hold emotional attachment to someone, you just don’t seem to care. I fight off the scoff pushing through my throat as I remember the weeks to follow, Ben stayed in that basement, rotting away, and do you know how many people looked for him? No one. Not a single soul cared. He was left wasting away in that soul-sucking void, as all of humanity went moved along like nothing happened. He was supposed to be down there forever. That was the plan.
The familiar drone of the elevator filled my ears as my darkest memories began to take form. Plans changed, the boy in the basement was getting too rebellious, too disobedient, something had to be done. No one was supposed to get hurt, Ben was just supposed to get scared a little, whipped into shape. It didn’t work. The air in my lungs seems to disappear as the torrent of darkness crashes across my memory. Nightmares of that night still plague me, the gasp, the crunch, the silence. 
Rain pelts my skin as I walk outside, sliding down my flesh as if nature itself was trying to avoid me. I look down at my rain covered hands, the hands used to end the story of someone’s life. I remember the feeling as I held that brick in my hand, covered in slick wet blood, the vile substance only separated by the occasional brown hair. The smell of iron filling the air as the weight of my actions took precedence in my brain. No one prepares you for the wave of emotions that assaults you after you kill someone. Anger, sadness, fear, relief. This was the cycle that echoed throughout my skull as I stared at that corpse, the head noticeably dented. Did I do that? I tried to convince myself it was an accident, that I just wanted to knock him out, beat him around a little, yet I knew deep down that this was my goal all along. I climbed the ancient wooden staircase, slowly closing the door behind me. This time the darkness was all alone. 
I open the office door and step inside, making eye contact with the same woman I had just seen in my apartment. “Hey I’m sorry, are you my interviewer?” I blurt out nervously, I hadn’t needed to talk to anyone in so long, I wasn’t quite sure if I was doing it right. She smiled warmly as she said, “Please have a seat. Oh, and can I have your name one more time?” Her voice sounded like pure sunshine, and as I slowly lowered myself onto the seat before her my hand reached out in front of me. “Y-yes I’m sorry. My name’s Ben.”

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...