Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

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    A mass of people, resembling a legion of corpses absorbing each other then spitting each other out only to absorb each other again, blobbed before a dimly lit stage of swirling vapors. Faint colors spotlighted the crowd in a pattern indistinguishable from random. People of all sorts: some in bright neon clothing with afros and mohawks both faux and spiked, some with undercuts and faded stripes, some with pieces of metal grafted into their skulls and eyes made entirely of machine parts, others pristine like mod royalty in dapper suits and flowing dresses, all the genders and more, some wearing holographic projections—cats, reptiles, koalas, a red mouse, little green men, pandas, and even a fox or two, some on leashes held by other holo animal people—all screaming and shouting and yelling and pushing each other around. Weightless and very glowy letters of pure energy floated above the masses, spelling “THE IDYLLIC GARDEN.” The whole place smelled arterial: sweatshop-esque, synthetic wine, slime, grime; some were having a good time, others were not; the walls of the place randomly illuminated to reveal those in the fetal position wearing thick headsets, some rocking back and forth, some just splayed out drooling. Truly there were all kinds.

    An uncanny voice, both comical and intimidating, a few octaves too high, blasted on the loudspeaker:

    “Introducing The Peggy Suicides!”

    The announcement controlled the chaos for a moment. There was a brief round of hesitant, muted clapping and some faint cheering as a shadow, obscured by great veils of smog, drifted onto the stage. The shadow was tall, spindle-shanked; they sauntered through smoke to a bent stand, then sensually wrapped their arms around it while hanging over the bend like a nymph starting a pole dance; the shadow’s hair fell over their silhouetted chin before being flipped away with some grace. The shade’s foot started tapping, and after a few taps, the shade spoke; the voice was neither deep nor high, neither feminine nor masculine—somewhere in between.

    “All you listless souls out there tonight, high on pop and snowcrash—creating nothing yet complaining about everything; watching holos, jacking in, being here, injecting hecatonic pop straight into your veins to tear your troubles in twain; all you lost souls with sockets all over your bodies, filled up with credit content only to be sucked dry; waxed nostalgic; filled up again at a premium; repeat infinity.” The shade twirled around the mic stand, wrapped one leg around the pole, leaned far back all contortionist-like, mic to mouth nearly making out. “Welcome to the factory farm, I am your host: another nameless cow. We are all Old Earth cattle, cheap product, cogs in the machine of our own ruin.” An esoteric hand gesture: arms like a gentle breeze, fingers formed the letter L atop the forehead. “They want us to be losers, and we dance to the beat of their drum like good little losers. Snowcrash, The Idyllic Garden, Neutron Wave, Stacie Goes to Avalon, that synthetic nicotine you’re sucking down: you think it’s anarchy, but who do you think is supplying?” The shade rooted one foot on the base of the mic stand then leaned themselves over the side of the stage; their shadowed face poking through a light blue field that appeared upon contact. “Your reverie is a nightmare in disguise. It’s time to wake up. Kill your nightmare self. You are better than you. We are The Peggy Suicides, and we are about to play some real wake-up music for all you torpid animals.” The crowd groaned collectively, someone was chanting an ancient curse, but the shade continued unfettered: “After you hear our music, I want you to become inspired: write a song of your own, draw a picture, paint an Old Earth sunset, and then I never want to see you here again. You are better than you: pulverize your presumptive self.”

    The shadow's ramble stopped, and with it, so did the crowd’s cheering; in fact, the cheering had stopped much earlier, dying down even before the “torpid animals” bit killed it completely, replaced with a malaised mixture of frustration, confusion, some violence, audible groans, some heinous screams; someone threw a glass real hard and it shattered just inches away from the shadow. If the shadow flinched, no one could tell; they only hunched over and scanned the masses as if measuring the crowd’s collective soul.

    Someone yelled, “Like you’re any better! Just play some damn music!”

    As if on cue, the shadow lifted their arm, and a twilight guitar materialized in their hand; as the instrument appeared, so did four other shades, rising like zombies from the grave—two ax-wielders, one flutist, one drummer—completing a reverse five-point star with the first shadow as the tip near the edge of the stage.

    There was an anticipatory pause before the loud crack of a snare drum killed the silence; a bass drum started kicking silence’s dead body, deep alternating bass notes like bombs going off underwater played over silence’s funeral procession, quavering guitar chords with fluttering flute mixed into a wall of sound that washed over silence’s grave like waves of heartache and torment and longing and regret. The music was steeped in deep purple bruising and cool blue asphyxiation.

    As the vortex of noise churned, the shadow’s fluid voice fuzzed as they practically ate the microphone: “This one's called Death’s Little Brother Sleep Died Dreaming and Woke Up on Fire Screaming.”

    The crowd groaned, roared, and cursed their ancient curses; they were disinterested in guitar music, and they made this very apparent. But the band seemed acutely aware of this, only playing harder as if trying to stoke the flames of hell. Someone in the crowd yelled, “Retro garbage! Play some ‘tonic!” But the request was ignored, and the band only added three more bars to the noisy funeral dirge out of spite. When the bars of spite ended, the shadow threw their hand up while simultaneously snapping their fingers; light erupted onto the stage: sharp oranges and violent reds awoke on fire, screaming.

    The light revealed a protean youth behind the shadow: their skin both light and dark at once; baggy tan pants hung from their waist, tight fishnets clung to their slender yet curvy body; a single gloved hand glew blue while playing a holographic hollow body; posing seductively yet oozing unapproachable causticity; a mythic presence more nymph than satyr, yet somehow both; fine hair of muddy gold swirling in rhythm and time; a sculpted face neither ugly nor beautiful but something else entirely; an undead presence more vampire than zombie, yet somehow both; sunken eyes of slightly differing shape and dilation; an energy both bubbly and sullen, both wise and foolish; an uncategorical.

    The other four shadows were revealed to be holos of moving color: pre-programmed projection people.

    With another snap of the fingers, the tempo shifted from mellow to manic; earthquakes of tremolo billowed from the nightclub speakers; the harsh noise moshed the druggy clouds like fluffy pillows engaged in cellular fusion; thin pillars of electric-laser light impaled the clouds; colors flashed psychedelic in cumulus bellies. Everything was in time with the beat. The once-gray clouds were now a storm of rainbows, and that storm grew something fierce over the heads of some hundred people stirring in what could have been a mosh pit if not for the look of aggravation upon their collective countenance. The crowd was becoming unruly, mirroring the music’s abrasiveness but none of its beauty.

    A barely noticeable light blue barrier prevented the angry mob from climbing onto the stage, but the barrier made an exception for thrown items by design—pop stars love their offerings—which allowed one hollowed antifan to hurl a dagger at the band’s nymph-satyr frontperson, nicking the star’s face and spilling first blood onto the stage. This brought the music to a halt and caused some lumbering human-shaped automatons to usher through the crowd, dragging people—both corporeal and holographic—into dimly lit corners of the nightclub, never to be seen again.

    Amplified laughter rang out. The projection people had vanished, leaving only the former shadow on their knees, holding their bloody face in one hand and the mic to their mouth with the other. The artist’s giggling mania ushered silence through the crowd; those remaining were anticipating something grand. The laughter stopped long enough for the musician to speak, “I, Jules, hereby submit to the will of the people—the death of the artist!”

    The spectacle caught the attention of an umbral-haired young man sitting at a bar overlooking the stage. Holos surrounded him, floating in the air and playing upon the walls, advertising everything imaginable; some were interactive, others assertive, many both. The young man swiveled in his hover stool to watch the scene unfold below him; he took a sip of pale-colored liquid from a tall glass imprinted with dual holo A’s that moved as if swimming in the liquid itself. A picture of a cat’s face, winking occasionally, danced upon the glass before morphing into an attractive woman with an alluring sway to her hips, striking C’s billowing out from her body; this did not distract the young man, whose attention remained on the stage, and as he peered down at the scene below, a red holo mouse peered back at him, but he paid no mind to this, focused only on the ambiguous musician.

    Jules dropped the mic, which echoed a loud crackling thud through the club; they then grabbed the thrown dagger and stood up all poised heroic. They looked out across the crowd of punkers, poppers, princes, princesses, vegetables, and holos, then fixed their gaze on the young man far up in the bar, who was gazing back, as if familiar. The young man was shaking his head at Jules as if to say, “Whatever you're thinking—don't,” in extrasensory.

    Jules grinned a manic grin, then yelled, “Infamy, infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” and—crowd gasping in collective—swung the dagger hard into their own creamy torso. Blood geysered from their side like a clogged hose that had accumulated way too much pressure; they immediately crumpled, one hand still clasped on the hilt of the dagger, wiggling, writhing, just freaking out bleeding in a pool all their own.

    The protective barrier lowered as lumbering automatons approached the stage. Those in the crowd who were leaving returned to witness the spectacle; those who were groaning were now cheering and chanting:

    “Peggy Suicide! Peggy Suicide! Peggy Suicide!” et cetera.

    Back at the bar, the young man coolly placed his glass down and eyerolled a mumble of, “You’ve gone too far this time.” He sat up and removed a rectangular device from his long black coat—the device was smooth and white, emblazoned with a red cross that formed the T for TatNos, with viridescent glass covering a portion. He then waved away a floating advertisement for HypnoGoggles—the only official goggles of the HyperNet—and hurriedly slid his way down a spiral staircase accented with strips of neon. “Sorry, gotta get through,” he said as he narrowly avoided someone in red holo like that of a cartoon mouse. But the mouse said nothing; it only turned its head to follow the young man’s movement, its eyes like two huge black dots, its smile cartoon-like in its unchanging permanence.

    Jules was wiggling and writhing still, now all surrounded by tall automatons that kept the crowd from storming the stage. The automatons were faceless machines modeled in human form, with tan silicone stretched over their metal casing to give them that fleshy-human look, nearly uncanny on purpose so that Complexers were less inclined to pay attention to them—out of sight, out of mind. A single A-shaped light shone through their fake-flesh faces; colored red, white, or blue for danger, contained, and all's-good, respectively. Their prime directive: protect and serve through apprehension first, physical violence second, and deadly force only if necessary; this frequently required them to make calculated trolley-problem decisions that were as cold as the hecatinium-infused metal they were made from—earning them the tongue-in-cheek nickname “Moral Agents” by Complexers all across Thessaly.

    With the protective field lowered, the young man pushed through the gawking crowd and vaulted himself onto the stage, the skirt of his long black coat swirling like a cape out of a comic book. He was holding the same device from before, dangling from a cloth handle. But before he could reach Jules, he was stopped by the outstretched hand of a Moral Agent. The automaton spoke in a voice that sounded like a hyper-intelligent parrot imitating a human but stressing all the wrong syllables, white A flashing in time with its janky voice: “Please Stand Back. Pending Response From Complex 42 MedCo. Subject’s Vitals Indicate an 85% Chance Of Survival; Favorable Odds Allow For Protective Lethal Force On—” the thing twitched its faux-fleshy face, “—One Point Five Individuals.”

    The young man raised a single eyebrow at the robot, then dug his free hand deep inside his coat and pulled out a black card with a liquid crystal display that was roughly the size of his palm. He held the card up to the Moral Agent’s face; the automaton spoke in jank once more, reading from the card’s display:

    “Autolycus Grayson M.D., Age 27. Graduate of The Polytechnic of Hippocrates. Highest Honors. Excelled in Athletics, Chemistry, Subterfuge, Gluteal Augmentation. Employer: TatNos Heavy Industries, MedCo Division. Occupation: Medical Doctor, Board-Certified Diagnostician, Double Specialty of Infectious Fecal Diseases and Gastroenterology. Residence: Complex 42, Floor 3, 578D. No Criminal Record. No Fines. Whitelisted. Also Very Handsome.”

    “You May Pass, Autolycus Grayson.” The group of automatons sidestepped in unison to allow for an opening in their shield wall, white A’s all aglow. The young man snapped back with acerbic twist, “That’s Doctor Autolycus Grayson, thank you.” He then spun the identification card between his fingers before sliding it back into one of his coat’s many interior pockets.

    Doctor Grayson approached the injured artist, whose fishnet-exposed skin was now stained light red from all the blood rolling. “Jules, try to stay still,” the Doctor said as he lifted the white device and started tapping some buttons, little bleeps and bloops sounding off as he did so. Jules stopped squirming and turned just enough to look at Doctor Grayson from the corner of their dark blue eyes; any indication of pain vanished. They both exchanged familiar looks.

    “Oh—Gray! My MedCo knight in shining armor,” Jules said as they turned over completely, exposing their checkered black fishnet belly, still holding the dagger tight into their side. “I didn’t know you were a butt doctor also!” Jules’ tone was characteristically agender but also silly-serious and nearly impossible to read. “My cheeks are fine, I think. But you can inspect them if you want.”

    “You know, I can never tell when you’re being serious,” Gray spoke in a laid-back baritone, still fiddling with the buttons on the white device. “I can never figure this thing out.” The device suddenly chimed then jingled. “Ah, there we go. Take the dagger out as quickly as possible, then try to be still. This might sting a little.”

    Jules adjusted themselves then pointed at their own head, “It’s all psychic up there, not physical.”

    Gray snapped back, “Just because you can’t feel pain doesn’t mean you can’t die. Now be still.” He then got down on one knee, leaning over Jules, examining the artist’s wound. “I think you hit a vital organ this time—there’s more blood than usual—maybe your colon?” He vocalized the sound of a thought bubble popping. “That’s probably why you can’t get up.” He paused for another moment, then spoke in a tone no longer smooth but somber, “Were you actually trying to kill yourself this time?”

    Jules ignored Gray’s comment, closing their eyes instead, composing themselves. Then: blade flash. The dagger yanked from its fleshy sheath; blood quickly jetted from the wound, then just as quickly started seeping into pools. Jules’ speech slurred, “Doctor Autolycus. I appear to be bleeding.” A cutesy smile formed on the artist’s full lips before their head started to drift back and forth as their eyes blinked independently of each other, “I feel kinda sexy, Doctor. Do I look sexy right now? Did the crowd go wild? Do they love me? Do you love me? We should get married. I’ll lick the envelopes; do they still do envelopes? I would be a good husband. Or wife. Or whatever you want. Is it getting darker in here?”

    “Yeah, yeah. Just try to stay still.” Gray groaned dubiously as he bleeped and blooped the device one last time.

    Jules followed orders by involuntarily slipping out of consciousness; this put a pep in Gray’s figurative step, who hurriedly pulled the soggy fishnets over Jules’ belly button, exposing the gash in full, then pointed the viridescent glass of the device at the wound from a short distance away. He held a button down on the device, causing the thing to emit a low hum as it pulsed emerald light over the gash. Gray watched as a necromantic ritual timelapsed before his eyes: bewitched strips of flesh birthed like worms from muddy plasma then morphed angelhair and threaded themselves; blood bubbled, clumped, clotted, formed dark reds and mucus yellows and viscous whites before browning hard and swirling into a quicksand of fully healed—albeit faintly scarred—flesh.

    When the operation was finished, the medical unit beeped rapidly. Gray observed a thin display on the device, which flashed the text HECATINIUM CRYSTAL DEPLETED. The beeping persisted until he flicked a small switch on the side of the device; a panel opened and discharged a foggy gray crystal the size of Gray’s pinky finger. He pocketed the inert crystal, slipped the medical unit back into his coat, then cursed under his breath. “You owe me, if you’re not dead for real this time.”

    Moments passed before Jules opened their big ocean eyes; a few more and they were able to sit upright, cross-legged and painless. They observed the circle of automatons around them with an expression of youthful wonder made even more youthful by their cheeks all rosy with dried blood. Then, Jules’ face contorted into an exaggerated clown frown. “Is this an intervention? I promise I won’t do it again.” Jules paused, lifting a finger to their mouth and biting down softly. “Actually, I can’t promise that. But I can promise that I will try not to do it again!”

    The automatons turned in sync as if responding to the artist’s joke, but they did not find it funny: on the contrary, their white A’s turned red, and one stepped forward, speaking in jank: “Code Violation 9982: A Complexer Shall Not Attempt Suicide Without Proper Written Approval From A Licensed Medical Doctor.”

    “Wait, wait.” Gray approached the Moral Agent, holding up the same identification card from before. “Did you forget already?” The automaton paused, cocked its head as if processing information, then janked once more, “This Is Not A Suicide Approval Letter.” Its red A blinking furiously.

    Gray squirmed, turned his back to the automaton, and removed a small pen-shaped object from his coat. The pen made a sharp whirring noise when fiddled with, and he pointed it at the identification card; after a few whirring seconds, he put the pen back into his coat. Gray then faced the Moral Agent with an exaggerated, child-like smile on his face, card outstretched. “How about now?”

    After a quick scan of the identification card, the Moral Agent’s light shifted from red to blue. “Very Well. We Thank You For Your Participation In This Altercation. You Are Both Dismissed Without Charges.”

    The group of Moral Agents dispersed, but one stayed behind; it held out its hand, and from its palm, a holo appeared, displaying a list of options numbered one through ten. The automaton provided context from behind the glow, “Please Let Us Know How We Did Today! On A Scale Of One To Ten, With Ten Being The Most Ethical And One Being The Least Ethical. Additionally, If You Have Feedback, Please Leave A Voice Recording With The Details After The Survey Has Ended. Remember: We Are Here To Protect And Serve, And We Cannot Serve Ethically Without Your Feedback!”

    Gray responded in a dry tone, “Skip.” This caused the holo to flicker out, and the final automaton followed in the footsteps of its metal colleagues, back to the dark recesses of the nightclub—out of sight, out of mind; watching, waiting.

    Gray turned to Jules, who was now sitting cross-legged in their own goopy blood pool, meditating with their eyes closed. The young man bent over, tapped Jules on the shoulder then helped them to their feet. “I’m glad you’re OK, but can we stop doing this? You also owe me an H Crystal.” The two exchanged competing glances before Gray added, “C’mon, let’s get out of here and grab a drink before those autos figure out my creds were fake.” The pair exited stage left as the lights went down and the fog came out and another act was gearing up to take the stage.

    The nightclub crowd was as quick to anger as they were to forget, because when Jules and Gray moved through the masses, only a few made passing jeers at Jules, who only smiled real wide and waved at anyone who gave them the slightest bit of attention, even negative attention. It was impossible for an onlooker to tell if Jules’ aloofness was contrived or earnest; they even wandered off to a few people who made passes at them, conversing merrily under a cacophony of cheers as the next act was being announced—”Next up: Draconic Tonic!“—and Gray had to grab Jules by the wrist to get them back on track—many times—as if chaperoning a very tall child.

    As the two made it to the spiral staircase leading to the bar, a young woman stopped them; she was all draped in shadows and shade, wrapped in belts and buckles and chains, and her hair was dark purple flames. “Jules, you changed my life tonight. When you stabbed yourself up there—oh my god—I could see the passion pouring out of your body; others saw blood, but I only saw stardust and rainbows. It makes me so mad that people are trying to shame and kill artists—throwing knives even—what is wrong with people these days? You care so much that you’re willing to die for your art.” She took both of Jules's hands in her own and stared deep into their weird wide eyes. “You won’t see me here again until I’m up there—” She pointed back at the stage, “—performing as a true artist.”

    Jules didn’t need to smile to show that they were radiating with love and affirmation; they moved in and embraced the young woman, who embraced them back. A few others joined, creating a group hug of sorts. Some of the participants were even dressed in holo suits, and one of these hollowed people appeared as a bright red mouse, all rounded, chubby, smooth, and bipedal, with an unsettling smile painted across their face, which was made of three large circles like the famous mouse from those Old Earth cartoons. The mouse hugged for a moment, then stepped back and observed, motionless.

    Gray noticed the mouse, thought the mouse odd, as if he had seen the mouse before, but quickly forgot when someone in the hugbox turned on a bright white light, which lit up the collective embrace like a hot white star; this caused Gray to cover his eyes with his wrist, and when he brought his wrist down, the mouse was gone.

    The hug stopped. Those few people who remained started asking for Jules’ autograph; thus, Jules started twirling fingers through holo papers projected from people's palms, signing away with glee. Gray, leaning on the railing nearby, trying to hold back the biggest eye roll of his life, shouted, “Jules! C’mon, I don’t have all night.” And this prompted the artist into one last group hug before following Gray up the spiral staircase.

    Before they vanished into the neon stairwell, the purple-haired fan who started all the hugging shouted up at the artist, “Jules! My name is Sue! Don’t forget about me! Sue!”

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    Gray and Jules sat at the bar: Gray on a hover stool, Jules cross-legged on the countertop. The only light in the place came from the flashing of mounted screens and the ocean of holos all around them. Plasma marquees listed every synthetic beverage known to humankind. There was only a small crowd, as the majority of the patrons left to see the next musical act. There was no bartender, only an interactive menu per seat that could be toggled on or off; patrons' selections were generated and served through square panels that opened up to translucent glasses presented on small drink elevators which used a complex system of conveyor belts and pulleys underneath the gunmetal bar exterior.

    Four automatons shadowed each corner of the room; they stood statuesque, analyzing the awkward silence between the two youths sitting at the bar.

    “We need to talk about your stupid bullshit.” Gray broke the silence, his typical wry tone: awry. His elbow was on the bartop, thumb on his chin, index and middle on his cheek, propping his head up as he peered down into a mug of fuzzy pale bubbles that morphed into caricatures of cats that fizzed and popped one by one, some managing to splash dots of liquid onto his face. “It’s one thing to do the whole performance artist bit—maybe even some minor self-harm—but you took it way too far this time. I used most of an H Crystal patching that wound; those things cost a small fortune, you know.” He paused, dug the faded crystal out of his coat, glinted it at Jules, put it back. “We aren’t making any credits doing this—in fact, we’re losing credits. We’re already way behind on dues. I don’t want to live down there in the Great Latrines again.”

    Jules was twirling a strand of blonde hair around their fingers between picking dried blood from their cheek. “I don’t want to make credits with my music.” Pouting.

    “Obviously.” Gray’s lips contorted and scrunched, revealing the aggravation he was trying so hard to conceal.

    Faded electronic music pulsed in the background; syncopated buzz, bolts of blue bass drops, unforeseen shifts in tempo and time.

    Gray peered down at the band on stage, which was really just a single holo; a four-armed dragon with massive wings miming four keyboards. “Why can’t you make music like this?”

    Jules’ twirling stopped; without moving their head, their asymmetrical eyes shifted to Gray; a radical side-eye being given. “Because it's not real.”

    “Sure it’s real. It sounds like music, doesn’t it?”

    “It sounds like music, but it’s not real.”

    “Yeah, you said that—but, how is it not real?”

    “There’s no artistry behind the sound.”

    Gray took another sip of pale; swished, swallowed. “But it sounds alright, isn’t that all that matters?”

    “No.”

    “Look: you can’t just say no, that’s not how argumentation works.”

    Jules shifted, observed the stage below for a moment, then turned lotus on the countertop to fully face their interlocutor, hair fell all over their face but otherwise fully engaged.

    Gray continued, “I bet that dragon doesn’t have knives thrown at them—that’s a plus.” He gestured toward the crowd below; masses of flesh and holo bounced and swayed, their cheers echoing. “See? They’re even cheering. Maybe if you didn’t call them all ‘torpid animals,’ they’d cheer for you too, and then we’d have enough money to afford our place.”

    “The torpid piece was part of the poetry.” Jules whispered with understated defiance.

    “Yeah, sure. But I still don’t get how Draconic Tonic’s music isn’t real.”

    “Music, like all forms of art, is not only about the finished product, but also the person and the intent behind it. The thing down there is algorithmically-generated, presenting itself as a dragon, performing an algorithmically-generated series of notes. The programmer is asleep somewhere on floor twelve. It’s music in label only—but really, it’s just noise, a distraction. I can’t make music like that because that’s not music. It’s impossible. There’s nothing to make.”

    “But didn’t someone intend to make the program and run the algorithms? I mean, someone did make that big dragon and the music, they just didn’t put much effort into it, right? It’s playing notes and stuff; that’s gotta be music by definition.”

    “Not by my definition.”

    Gray laughed dismissively, tossing his shaggy dark bangs out of his likewise eyes. “Well I bet they make credits, at least.”

    “That’s all they make, or care about.”

    “Why does that even matter? Who cares if they’re only in it for the credits.”

    Jules tapped the holo pad on the countertop with swirly fingers, and a glass of water appeared from a sliding panel. A small display nearby showed the text 2C, then faded. The water was gone in one mighty Adam’s apple-less gulp.

    Gray was tapping his cheek with his index finger as he watched the otherworldly musician, a fatigued look on his face. “Well—why does it matter? The credits thing.”

    Jules ran long hands through long hair and took a long breath in what amounted to one long pause for one long think, then answered, “When you make art for credits, you compromise and corrupt. The art becomes more about the credits than the art itself.”

    “What if the point is to make credits?”

    Jules hid a sigh poorly. “No one really makes anything for credits. The credits are a proxy for something else: rent, vitamins, power, holo games, dying mothers, HyperNet access, H Crystals, a new pair of faux-leather pants, maybe an Auto-Cat or two or three or four.”

    “You’re changing the subject.”

    “Credits manipulate. Say there is an artist: a pixel artist, but they only make pixel paintings for credits. One day, they complete a pixel painting of a sunrise; they take that painting to the local art store, but the owner says they only buy nighttime pixel paintings, not sunrises. So the owner asks the painter to paint a nighttime scene—the painter hates nighttime scenes but paints one anyway to make some credits.”

    “OK—what’s the problem with that? I don’t get it.”

    “The problem is: when does it stop? Their motivations—their creations—are subject to the whimsy of those with credits, not their own whimsy. In a way, they’re not even motivated by credits; they’re motivated by other people with credits. Think, what if the buyer asked the painter to paint forgeries? Would the painter do it? What if the buyer didn’t want paintings at all, but instead asked the artist to kill competing art-store owners? Who knows what the painter would be willing to do. The painter who is only motivated by credits will do anything for credits because credits are more important than painting.” Jules paused for a quick think. “And credits corrupt; at first, the corruption is small, but after a while, you will start to wonder to yourself, ‘Why am I a dragon with four arms and big wings pretending to play keyboards? What sort of monster have I become?’ and you will weep; you will take face in palms and weep; you will cry tears of longing for paradise lost; innocence now all corrupted by credits, unrecognizable, deformed, grotesque, monstrous—” Jules paused, fiddling with a gold hoop dangling from their right ear; they flicked the earring and it chimed, “—there are more adjectives I could use, I think.”

    Gray’s hand lay in his busy mess of hair as his elbow propped his head up on the bartop, his eyes half-closed until Jules finished rambling. “You’re just being ridiculous. Credits make the world turn; that’s just a fact of life. And besides, none of that—”

    Jules hopped off the countertop, then pranced into a dark corner, then they were gone.

    “—explains how the music’s not real.”

    Gray sighed a familiar sigh. He took a sip from his glass, leaned his head back, then stretched his arms out. As he rotated his head to stretch his neck, bright red consumed the corner of his eye. He turned to face the red glow, and that’s when he saw it: the mouse; the same mouse from the crowd, from the stairwell, from the hugbox. It was smiling the same way still.

    The mouse’s wide grin took up half its face, its black-circle eyes lensed gravitational, and its red glow was condensed like a blinding nova, as if whoever was wearing the thing had turned up the brightness tenfold on purpose. It just stood there. Silent. Towering. Peering down on the dark-haired youth as if the predator had finally caught up with some helpless prey.

    “Yeah?” Gray said, nonchalant.

    The mouse said nothing.

    “Are you one of Jules’ weird fans? They’re not here.”

    Silence.

    “They left, or something. I don’t know. I can take a message, though, if you—”

    Something felt off. Gray’s eyes shifted around the room. He noticed that the Moral Agents were all white-watching while the rest of the patrons had cleared out. He was alone with the mouse. He became nervous and started to ramble as he slyly slid a hand into his coat. “Are you from the Great Latrine? Because I don’t live down there anymore. I’m clean, you know; the sewers are beneath me. I’m moving on up in the world now. Maybe Marcus sent you? I don’t owe Marcus anything—if he said something, he’s mistaken. Marcus and I are cool; I even gave him my spot down there before I moved. I can clear up any confusion, too. I have the transfer papers and—”

    The mouse’s claws flashed, grabbing Gray by the throat; it was a light squeeze, but enough to choke him out. Gray’s eyes widened, his jaw tensed, and the veins in his neck and face bulged. He lifted his own hands to the mouse’s, digging his fingers into the small space between the thing’s red mitts, trying to pull the big hands off his throat between raspy, strained gurgles; spittle sprayed, sprinkled.

    “AUtoLYcUS gRAySon: The WOLF iTSElf. We HaVe REaCheD Out MANY TiMEs. YoU Don’T JuSt STOp woRKInG fOR thE conSOrtiUM. wE mADE yOU. yOU OWE ThE ConsORTium yOuR lIfE. yoU knOw tHiS; YeT yoU IgNoRe us. YOuR DEbt ComPOuNds. PErfORM. pAy. pERisH. giVE yOUR ANsWEr Now: pERFoRM; PAy; PERish. thE CHoIcE iS yoURS.”

    The mouse’s voice was modulating, high-pitched, electronic, shrill.

    Gray violently struggled off the stool to his feet, shaking the best he could to get the mouse to loosen its grip, but it was all in vain; the mouse’s grip was tighter now, allowing only some syllables through.

    “G—” Gray rasped; the mouse’s grip tightened.

    “Ga—” Gray gurgled; tighter now.

    “Gac—” Gray croaked, his face trembling, skin rippling, eyes bulging.

    The mouse’s grip was so tight now that Gray lost his hold on the mouse’s hands. The mouse then lifted the young man straight into the air by the throat, its unnerving smile unchanged. Gray’s gurgling stopped, and he made no sound as he kicked his legs hopelessly; then his vision went dark, and he went limp, all his limbs flailing like happy worms as the mouse shook him violently. Electronic music lightly pulsed in the background, as if in time with the thrashing.

    “YOU HaVE MADE yOUr CHoiCE. YOU wILL BEcOME FUEL fOR thE COmpLEX’S EnErGY gEnERaToR, NO bETTER ThAN thE hUMAn wASTE BURNED TO PoWER OUR HoLO tAbLES. bY thE AuTHorITY oF tHE cALLiSTo CONSOrTium, I sENTENCE thEE tO—”

    Suddenly, the mouse’s holo turned wireframe, flickered a few times, then vanished, revealing an older man: muscular and bald with a burly white mustache that sank into handlebars; he was wearing a faded green jacket over a black top, baggy cargo pants. The man’s pudgy face flushed red, eyes wide with shock, an almost comical expression as he realized that his disguise was compromised. He dropped Gray and turned around as if to run, only to be met with the sight of one even taller than himself: Jules.

    Jules was there, a holo advertisement of a white bunny waving playing cards lit their eldritch figure, revealing all their alien features now pristine and bloodless, washed. Their right hand was outstretched in a poking gesture, a curious twist to their lips as if they had just poked something they were not supposed to and were very surprised by the results.

    Jules spoke pontifical. “I thought to myself: what does this button do? Mouse died; then: mustache person appeared.”

    Gray was on his knees; one hand on the floor, the other nursing his purple neck; gasping like he had never gasped before.

    “Now that we know about mustache person, you surely can’t let us live or whatever, right?” Jules said all aloof.

    “Precisely!” yelled the mustache man, his voice now very human, as he launched himself at Jules; but the lanky musician only slipped to the side, as if by accident, causing the man to tumble into a nearby hover stool. Jules then observed the bunny holos floating around them, reaching out to poke one, but before they could, the man was back up and launched a mighty punch at Jules’ face, only for Jules’ outstretched bunny-poking arm to absorb the force of the blow entirely. Jules shook out their hand then snapped back with an annoyed glance—“I wanted to touch the bunny!”—and then pushed the man back with both arms; the push was stronger than the man expected, causing him to stumble backwards before regaining balance, but by then Jules had stepped one foot behind the other for momentum and power and then launched a powerful sidekick; the kick whooshed in tandem with Jules’ poofy pants, producing a loud crack upon connecting with the mouse man’s jaw, launching him backwards into the bar, all crumpled over with jaw askew.

    Gray had managed to stand himself up, leaning against the bar, catching his breath, digging through his pockets while watching the scene intently; the room all illuminated by colors random and flashing and holo, the electronic music now breakbeat and manic.

    The former mouse stood up. “You know—you’re more competent than you seem. If I had to guess, I would say you’ve had formal training.” He wiped blood from his lip, then cracked his own jaw back into place. “But you messed up, freak.” And as if in a single motion, the man slid a long-barreled handgun out of his jacket, pointed it at Jules, then pulled the trigger; there was a high-pitched pew followed by a crisp red bolt that vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

    The ceiling clanged, sizzed; Gray had seized the man’s arm, forcing the aim of the barrel away from Jules. “You really should stop talking so much; you could have killed us like twice now,” Gray said, sounding as if he was back to his old self as he wrestled for the gun, the barrel now puffing light red vapor. Jules also grabbed the man, but the man was much stronger than both of them combined and managed to shake them off; as he shook them off, he elegantly grabbed Jules by their long hair, twirled them around into an armbar headlock, kicked their legs in to force them to their knees, and then pushed the barrel of the gun into their head, twisting it hard.

    “It’s your freak friend here or you, Wolf.” The man stared at Gray with a stoic confidence that was only undermined by labored breathing. “Perform, pay, or perish. The choice is yours.” He twisted the barrel even harder now. “Don’t think I won’t do it. The Moral Agents don’t care what happens here. This is our jurisdiction now.”

    Gray’s eyes narrowed at the man, whose eyes narrowed in turn. The electronic music had reached a downtempo section as a monotonous sine wave evened out into what sounded like a test tone.

    Gray broke the silence, his tone lacking typical sarcasm. “Go ahead then: kill them. They want to die—didn’t you see the performance?”

    An uptempo drum loop slowly faded in over the test tone as the man’s face contorted into a twisted grimace. “Are you sure about that, Wolf?”

    Gray managed to slip one shadowed hand into his coat pocket. His eyes focused, narrowed even further, and his expression was deadly serious. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

    “So be it,” the man drooled with murderous intent, and just as his finger tightened on the trigger, a flicker of light glinted into his face, followed by a terrible scream, his hand spasming as the gun fell to the floor. A faded crystal, about the size of a pinky finger, had skewered itself into the man’s left eye. He screamed wildly, lifting his hand over the wound, blood pouring down and around his knuckles.

    Jules hurried to their feet, then rushed to Gray’s side. “Nice throw. You’re a doctor and marksman—who knew!”

    “I was aiming for his throat,” Gray said, nervously scanning the room. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

    Gray and Jules turned to the stairwell, but it was blocked by the red A’s of Moral Agents; then they turned to a door near the back of the bar, which was also blocked; then they looked at each other with expressions of puzzlement infused with fear. “It appears we’re stuck between a mouse and hard metal,” Jules noted, biting one of their fingers nervously.

    As the duo fumbled, the mouse man had torn the inert crystal from his left eye, eyeball popping out along with it, leaving it just dangling there by a gooey red rope growing out of the otherwise empty festering socket, half of his face drenched in blood. It suited him. After a moment of moaning like a zombie in heat, he lifted one hand and slapped something on his back, causing the red mouse to flicker, wireframe, and fully materialize once again around his body. He then bent over to pick up the dropped handgun; his hands shook uncontrollably as he raised the gun toward his prey.

    “O, MiSTreSs oF wAr, DeFeNdEr of AtHeNs, sTaR ToUChEd SeNtRy Of ThE sErEnDiPiToUs sTaRsHiNe. gIvE mE tHe StRenGtH tO TeAr My fOeS AsUnDeR. tO RiP ThEsE cHiLdReN lImB fRoM LiMb. I BrInG YoU A fReSh SaCrIfIcE.”

    Gray, alerted by the modulated voice, turned to the mouse and groaned. He then noticed the handgun and shot an astonished look in Jules’ direction. “Why didn’t you grab the damn gun?”

    Jules bit down harder on their thinking finger. “I thought I did.”

    “tHe CoNsOrTiUm wAnTeD YoU bAcK aLiVe. tHe wOlF iTsElF iS a GoOd aSsEt, tHeY sAiD. bUt yOu aRe nO lOnGeR tHe wOlF iTsElF. yOu aRe a mAnGy mUtT, hOmElEsS aFtEr bItInG tHe hAnD tHaT fEeDs, AfTeR STeAliNg fRoM tHeIr OwNeR. tHeRe iS oNlY oNe fAtE fOr yOu, tHe fAtE oF uS aLL, OnLy EXpEDiTED, SwIFt—”

    “This guy really likes to talk.” Gray’s tone was silly, but his face was grave; he was out of options—no unblocked exits, a gun fixed on them, and automatons closing in. And Jules, too, stood there, stupefied.

    “—DeAtH! iT’s aLmOsT tOo GOoD fOr yOu. MAkE yOuR pEaCe wItH tHe bIoLoGiCaL mAtTeR CoNvErTeR tHaT yOu wIlL sOOn CoNVeRgE wItH.”

    The mouse’s red mitts were clasped around the handle of the gun, his cartoon trigger finger twitching and his aim shaky due to the excruciating pain gushing out of his fetid face hole. Automatons drawing closer now.

    Jules turned, looking his friend directly in the eyes. “‘Twas an honor, Gray.”

    “Yeah, you too, buddy,” Gray said, smiling genuinely.

    They jinxed a gulp together.

    And that’s when the rumble started. Everything began to shake. The sound of metal grinding against metal and shattering glass echoed through the space. Someone below the bar screamed, followed by a chorus of panicked voices. The music stopped, the dragon on stage dissolved into a shower of pixels, the spotlights went crazy before vanishing, the holo advertisements glitched then fizzled away. A piercing siren rang out, oscillating steadily. And, as if a blackout curtain had been thrown over the entire room, the lights cut out, plunging the club into total dark, with only those in glowing holo costumes shining out in the void left behind.

    The sound of a bell dinged twice, followed by a robotic female voice blaring over the intercoms:

    “Today Is Gamelion 8, AH386. Please Remain Calm. There Has Been A Power Disruption. Aides Repair Automatons Have Been Dispatched. Auxiliary Power Will Be Enabled Within Ten Minutes. All Air Vents Have Been Locked For Complex Residents’ Safety. Secondary Air Reserves On. All Sewer Entrances Have Been Locked. HyperNet Has Been Temporarily Disabled To Conserve Power. Please Do Not Leave The Complex Until The Incident Has Been Marked As Resolved. Please Remain Calm. Return To Your Habitation Quarters. Please Remain Calm. Return To Your Habitation Quarters.” et cetera.

    The mouse, who was now like a massive red nightlight in a vacuum, began firing his handgun in a frenzy; red bolts whizzing wildly through the darkness, zaps echoing off gunmetal walls, causing panicked screams from the blinded crowd with each shot. As if with one mind, both Jules and Gray ducked out and rushed the stairwell; they couldn’t see much in the darkness, but they could see the red A’s of the automatons and used those as reference points. They slid past the Moral Agents, down the stairwell in a hurry.

    The mouse kept firing in a panic, which escalated the screams of the patrons into a shrill cacophony, before realizing that his prey had escaped, and he took off down the stairwell after them, his mighty redness trailing from several feet away, leaving ephemeral afterimages in his wake. The siren continued, but it was not enough to drown out the screams of mortals.

    Gray and Jules identified the club’s exit by the mass of A’s surrounding it; as they ran toward it, they twirled, ducked, bobbed, weaved, and even slid through the legs of some brightly colored holo people shining out in the darkness; one of which—a purple dinosaur with a face that would have looked goofy if not for the situation—grabbed Gray by the torso, wrestling with him for a moment. “Trying to get into my pants?” the dinosaur said in a hungry tone, its face inching close; Gray could see the red blur catching up from the corner of his eye, so he headbutted the dinosaur’s face as hard as he could, which freed him, and he bolted off toward the exit once more, cursing and rubbing his forehead. As he approached, he slid the whirring pen out of his coat pocket and pointed it at the portcullis, which caused the circular door to slide open. Just as he was doing this, the siren stopped, and the club suddenly lit brighter than ever before; a harsh, white fluorescence washed over the entire room, exposing every grimy detail and the crowd itself, all lumped together in fear and panic, oozing like a disgusting ball of flesh.

    The mouse, now able to hone in on his targets, lifted the gun and fired off several rounds. One of the shots came close to Jules’ face, whose eyes went wide as they launched over the portcullis lip, out of the club, and into a hallway. They were followed shortly by Gray, whose landing caused him to roll across the floor, becoming tangled in his own long coat; as he loosened his limbs and regained sight of the door, he lifted the pen, whirred it, and the portcullis shut, sealing the bright red monster behind it.

    The hallway they found themselves in was as white and fluorescent as the club; the auxiliary power did not respect preference, leaving only the most necessary lights on, which happened to be the brightest and the whitest. The hallway wasn’t so much a hallway as it was a gunmetal concourse as wide as an Old Earth interstate, all black and gray with orbed portcullises and neon graphics—both business and profane—dotting the walls on each side of the concourse. Every twenty feet, there was a black marble column extending from the floor into the ceiling, twisting and all. Looking down the concourse made the way seem endless and one feel queasy. People dressed in suits, rags, or holos, all bright and reflective, walked up and down lit walkways with arrows flashing in all directions. Some people were very nonplussed by the whole situation; others were running into nearby portcullises, hurriedly closing and locking themselves away; some were sitting against the concourse walls, arms wrapped around their knees, headsets wrapped around their heads, others taking off the headsets and looking into them with sunken eyes as if their very souls had been torn from their bodies. There was an eerie silence outside of the patter of feet and the plinking of metal. Ragged merchants in open bodegas, complete with bodega Auto-Cats, looked around nervously, as if mourning their temporary loss of business. All the Moral Agents were marching off in a single direction, as if being repurposed for some other function.

    The intercom ding-donged once more, the robot voice returned:

    “Today Is Gamelion 8, AH386. Aides Repair Automatons Have Been Dispatched. Auxiliary Power Has Been Enabled. Incident Is Still On-Going. Incident Start Time Was 8:43 PM, Estimated End Time Is 12:35 AM. Please Return To Your Habitation Quarters. Thank You For Your Cooperation.”

    Gray was all spread out on the hard metal floor, staring up at the gray ceiling above; his dark coat open, exposing all sorts of knick-knacks and frivolous items; he was huffing and puffing, regaining composure. Jules stood over him, the harsh light causing their blonde hair to glow, looking nearly seraphic as they peered down at the young man who, at this moment, resembled an injured wolf, hair all dark and messy, a visceral strained look on his face, teeth showing and grinding, slobber. Jules offered their hand to the wolf.

    “It’s hard-locked, but that door’s not going to hold for long,” Gray said as he took Jules’ long hand, stood up, and brushed at his legs. “We need to find somewhere to hide until all this blows over.” He then straightened out his coat and fidgeted with his hair as he mumbled to himself, “I didn’t think they would be able to find me again.” His hand fell from his hair to his eyes, where he pulled down on the skin, exposing more of the whites of his dark orbs, before slapping his own cheeks as if smacking himself back to reality.

    The duo looked at each other, as if to verify that they were both ready, then took off down the wide concourse, checking every portcullis, nook, and cranny. Merchants yelled out to them, advertising wares, but these yells went ignored by the youthful duo, who continued to frantically scour the area, moving further down the concourse with every failed refuge attempt.

    “Why don’t we check the Great Latrine?” Jules suggested, still on the move.

    “Because the entrances are locked during outages—don’t you pay attention to the announcements?” Gray groaned as they continued, on the move.

    They stopped for a moment to catch their breath. People were passing all around them. Jules bit their finger again, flicked their earring, twirled their hair, and stuck a finger up their nose so far that you could see the outline of the digit forming on the outside of the nostril; this was a thoughtful ritual—a scanning ritual—and then Jules saw it: a small marquee sliding the words MODEM FACILITY in bold green text. “What about the modem facility?”

    “Not a bad idea, if it’s unlocked,” Gray said thoughtfully.

    They pressed onward toward the modem facility. People continued to pass them in the concourse; one specifically, a hollowed man-bear chimera of glitzy yellows and sparkling blues, wearing only tight black shorts and exposed chest hair glittering, looked Jules up and down. “Hey girl, looking for some company?” But Jules only pulled down an eyelid, stuck out their long pink tongue, and shooed them away. The duo continued onward, and as they approached the turn to the modem facility, a familiar red glow caught their attention. They both turned in unison to catch a glimpse and just as quickly turned back and then broke into a sprint even quicker.

    It was the mouse.

    The mouse had spotted his prey once more; he shakily lifted his pistol and fired crimson bolts through the crowd. One of the bolts narrowly missed Gray but went on to strike the chimera provocateur square in the kneecap, blood and bone bursting forth at the point of impact, instantly severing the leg in twain; the chimera toppled over, howling. This prompted the concourse crowd into full pandemonium. The mouse rushed through the tumult, deadset on the duo, toppling anyone in his path.

    The duo used the chaos to slip into a crowd of frightened people, sliding through bodies at high speeds, then turning a corner into a thin hallway where the modem facility was located. Rushing through the hall, they soon came upon the door—not a normal habitation portcullis, but a thick black-metal door—and it was unlocked; in fact, it was cracked open slightly. Gray then checked the interior of the door from some distance; he saw many small unlit LED indicators and let out one of those thought-bubble-popping noises. Jules watched their backside but saw no sign of the mouse. Gray then motioned to Jules, “It’s clear.” They then slipped through the door and closed it behind them. Gray whirred the knob, and there was a small click followed by a beep.

    The modem facility was a massive room full of human-sized black megaliths that extended as far as the eye could see. Wires, like complex spiderwebs, hung between each megalith. The black dolmens flashed every color from their different openings and LED indicators, and these little color flashes were so numerous that they formed large splotches of weird color on the walls and floors in a computed cadence. Out of all these colors, the most common was red, as if indicating some fault in the machinery. Faint ticking and low-frequency purrs were the only sounds in the room.

    “I used to work in one of these places,” Jules said nostalgically, wandering from megalith to megalith, observing all the complex but neatly organized wires.

    “Yeah, I know. We both worked there. Sometimes I wonder about your memory, Jules,” Gray groaned, then continued, “It’s weird that this room would be unlocked, much less unguarded. Not only was the door open, but the trip-laser was disabled. And I guess the Moral Agents are all busy moonlighting as repair bots, but I can’t help but think that something weird is going on here.”

    Jules was squatting near a megalith, fiddling with some wires between pushing blonde tresses behind their long ears. “The wiring on this one is all wrong.”

    “Who cares about that right now, let’s just—” Gray's ears perked up from the sound of soft rummaging in the distance. “Is that you, Jules?”

    Jules vocalized some sort of quiet two-syllable no-noise.

    “I think it’s coming from further back. Let’s go che—” Gray was interrupted by a loud crash. He quickly turned to the source of the noise: the entrance of the facility. The door was wide open, and standing in the doorway was a redshifted nova. Gray shouted, “Jules! Get—” but before he could finish his sentence, a scarlet bolt pierced through his shoulder, blood spiraled through the air, and he fell to the floor. The mouse now stood over Gray, gun pointing at the young man’s other shoulder.

    “foRgEt eye For An EyE. i’LL takE YOUR ARms. theN I’LL takE yOur lEGs. THEn I’lL TAKe Your spLeeN, yOuR kIDNeYS, YoUr StoMach. tHen I’ll RiP YoUr heaD ofF, cUt YOUr eyES OuT, anD GRafT One IntO mY OwN sOCKeT, sO you’Ll alWaYs BE wITH Me; pEerINg out AT aLl tHE peoPLe i WilL be KIllinG in yOUr NaME. I WAnt yOU to sUFfER bEFORe YoU DIE, WoLF. AnD ThEN i WaNT YoU tO sUFfer AfTeR DeAtH ToO. I WANT YOU TO SUFFER BAD.”

    “Gray was right. You do like to talk!” Jules yelled as they recklessly rushed the mouse from some distance away. The mouse turned without warning; two bolts whisked straight through each of Jules’ thighs, flooring the musician, who landed on their side without a sound, turned themselves over, and started to crawl toward the mouse with a strained look of determination on their face.

    The mouse laughed electronically as they turned away from the helpless musician, abruptly firing a bolt into Gray’s other shoulder. Gray yelped, and his body spasmed as if shocked electric. The mouse then turned to Jules, who was muttering Gray’s name, their crawling now picking up speed.

    “nO PAiN? DOesN’T MAtTer.”

    The mouse fixed the barrel on Jules’ back: Pop. Pop. Jules went silent.

    Gray’s eyes were glazing over as he struggled to peer up at the red glow, his vision shaky and hallucinatory; the mouse’s smile ominous, growing larger and smaller, swirling and contorting.

    “You know…” Gray coughed.

    “I wanted to tell you…” Gray coughed again, this time blood.

    The mouse watched intently, gun trained on Gray’s head.

    “I wanted to tell you… to go… ga…” Gray’s eyes closed, breathing slowed.

    It was then that a crackle of thunder boomed throughout the room, accompanied by an explosion of emerald sparks, which galvanized with the mouse’s red glow to create a yellow lightning storm around the rodent. The mouse flickered, wireframed, and vanished, revealing the burly man behind the holo, his still dangling eyeball convulsing violently along with the rest of his body as lightning coursed through his veins. The man could barely scream before he was charged to reticence, falling to the floor, gray-green smoke emanating from his crumpled corpse.

    Within the shadow of two megaliths stood a young woman. Her bobbed hair like fresh rust, her skin like that of a white sheet discolored by the faintest of coffee stains, freckles, lots of freckles, and her emerald eyes were covert behind a pair of black-circle glasses of which she peered over the top. There was a thick messenger bag slung around her shoulder, snug to her hip. She was wearing baggy cargo pants and a dark green tank top with a single sleeve that trailed down into a gloved hand in which she was holding what looked to be a large metal spanner emitting remnant sparks of emerald light, easily mistaken for a fantastic magic wand. There she stood, wand outstretched, a surprised look on her face as if she was not expecting whatever had just happened to happen at all.

    There stood Ellie.

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Chapter 3

Artwork by ComicFarm.

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#TheEgg #Fiction

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

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    The contrast of the sky was tuned to the highest setting, and a filter of glittering blue like the waters of Old Earth accented all things. The watermark stamped upon the skybox was obscured by gold ultraviolet, which was blinding to the eyes but upon second thought felt like nothing at all.

    A young woman—hair like fresh rust, skin like that of a white sheet discolored by the faintest of coffee stains, all draped in white robes trimmed with gold—crossed a dirt path leading to a small bridge resembling something out of a fairy tale, complete with hung lanterns of curled wood and wax longing for fire; the bridge hung suspended over a brook teeming with yellow-spotted trout bouncing above the bubbles to gulp skeeter bugs off the water’s surface. The shade from the tree canopy obscured the dithering of atoms like pixels vibrating at a frequency only slightly uncomfortable to the human eye.

    The young woman paused at the middle of the bridge; she observed the stream as if it were something she had never seen before. She saw fishermen far down the bank, but everything beyond faded into a thick fog. A curious wrinkle scrunched her freckled face before she banished it with a shrug and pushed onward down the path. Her arms held books across her chest as her dark messenger bag spit a trail of paper in her wake, only for that trail to vanish moments later.

    A serene grove gradually rendered into the young woman’s view. The grove surrounded a marbled institute of higher learning; untouched narcissus, daisy, and poppy sprouted along the path leading to the foyer, itself shadowed by the ancient wood of laurel, sycamore, and cypress. Everything was immune to filth and decay. Deer trotted in the distance and simply faded away. Gorgeous youth buried their heads in thick tomes between secretive scribblings in little notebooks that rested upon chiseled tables placed symmetrically around the courtyard; the courtyard itself enclosed by white columns taller than the trees they stood with in solidarity. Beyond the novices’ soft chatter was only the cooing of doves and the pecking of woodpeckers and the occasional caw of massive ravens which perched atop the columns, watching for something edible to drop, but there was no food in this place. None at all.

    As the young woman walked through the courtyard toward the massive double doors adorned with engravings of lions, eagles, bears, and lion-like bears and bear-like lions and lion-like-bear-like eagles and at least a few horned horses, she overheard a small circle of students:

    “Hope she’s not in my class today.”     “Doesn’t know when to shut up.”     “Ellie’s pretty much a textbook know-it-all.”     “She acts Star Touched when we all know she lives in a complex.”     “Tragic, really.”     “So funny how she tries to hide it too.”     “What’s she even doing here?”     “Wasting her time.”     “Who would pick that nose for their sim?”     “Right? I wonder what she actually looks like.”

    Ellie hid her vexation poorly behind the turning up of her jagged hook nose and the uncontrollable tip twitch of her oddly pointed ears. Besides casting an emerald glare at the circle of students as she passed and accidentally catching the stare of one golden-haired young man, she swallowed her pride and pushed through the entrance of the grand hall with only a few sheets of loose paper spiraling in the displaced space behind her.

    A decorative stone plaque trimmed with gold hung on the marbled wall facing the entrance; it was impossible to miss. Engraved were the words “The Polytechnic of Chrysame – Founded by Chrysame of Thessaly – 43AH,” and below that was an electronic marquee with the words “LATTICE 8 – BLOCK 12” scrolling in lurid green from right to left.

    Ellie’s footsteps echoed throughout the halls before she settled upon a pair of double doors, at which she stopped to gather herself. She ran her hands through her hair, parting her bangs to the left (her left) as she liked to do, before placing her carried books on the floor nearby and rummaging through her bag. The bag seemed lighter than before, and she worried for a moment that her thirty-thousand-word essay had been lost to the insensate winds that blew through this place, but she realized that her fears were misplaced as she removed a solitary paper from the depths of the bag. She relieved anxious pressure from her lips as she held the paper to her nose, reading the only visible words:

    An Exegesis on Hecatinium: Disentangling the Quantum Genesis of Hecatinium Within a Pseudo-Anarcho-Capitalist Milieu and Its Multifaceted Sociopolitical, Ethical, and Psychosensual Consequences on the Population of a Dying Planet and Those Above It

    Upon reading the title, Ellie’s lips curled into a smile that revealed a full set of lightly-yellowed teeth. Then a subtle nod, as if validating herself. She had forgotten all about her floor books.

    Ellie pushed through the double doors and entered a lecture hall composed of layers upon layers of seats that extended into a fog unto itself. Sunbeams, like pillars of heaven, shone through massive open-air apertures. There was no visible ceiling; only a hazy cloud alongside the occasional zipping of small birds as if their nests were built far above within the massive hall. Soft birdsongs filled the room. Down a steep flight of steps, a gray-haired man stood before a whiteboard the size of an Old Earth tennis court. The man was flicking his wrist here and there, which swirled color and text across the board like little tornadoes of educational material that appeared incomprehensible upon first glance but were instantly understood by Ellie—due to her cerebrum implant—who patiently waited for the man to finish what she assumed to be a file query through a lesson plan folder. The man was so calm and serene in his electric dalliance that a small titmouse of tufted gray fur landed upon his shoulder and began pecking softly at his tangled wiry barely locks.

    An impatient minute passed before Ellie cleared her throat and broke the elderly man’s serenity. “Socrates?”

    The man turned to Ellie, his youth wrinkled beyond recognition, and his chestnut-colored eyes analyzed Ellie up and down in a who-are-you kind of way before something snapped a smile onto his face. “Ah, Ellie. Just the young woman I wanted to see. And don’t call me by my title; Mr. Telas is fine. There’s no need for all the honorifics.”

    Ellie gave one of those faux smiles that produced artificial dimples, none of her teeth showed. “Why did you want to see me, Soc–” She cleared her throat, “Mr. Telas.”

    “It’s about your paper.”

    “What about it?” Ellie fidgeted. “And why do I have to hand it in in person? I’ve already sent you the file. And it seems you’ve already read it!” Ellie held up the single paper she had removed from her bag earlier, lightly waving it.

    “The same reason you carry bags and books upon your simulacrum; we could simply store those away in a database to be drawn upon later, but that would defeat the purpose. Writing the paper is but one part of the ritual; handing in the paper—in person, on time—is another. This was the way of the Ancients, and this is the way now. It is a matter of punctuality and responsibility, key traits needed for those seeking higher office.”

    Ellie considered objecting to the “higher office” bit but decided against it because Socrates was correct: she did want to run for higher office; she had made this clear many times to anyone who would listen to her. She felt a deep-seated corruption in all parts of society, even in the beautiful bird that picked at Socrates’ hair; there was something unnatural about it—about everything—something fake; she could feel it in her bones; the beauty was superficial, a cover for something nasty; and to answer the students’ question from earlier: she didn’t choose this sim; the sim looked identical to her. She had nothing to hide; in fact, she was morally opposed to having something to hide at all. Fixing the world started with the truth. Transparency is the first step. This is what Ellie believed.

    Socrates’ wise response reminded Ellie that she had left her books outside the hall, near the double doors, and furthermore prompted her to recall why she continued to call Mr. Telas by his Polytechnic title of Socrates—which was officially granted by the Thessalonian Council for his decades of service in the field of higher learning, combined with an intelligence quotient that was far to the right of the bell curve. She respected him not because of his official rank or numbers on a graph but because of his ability to turn stubborn questioning into little proverbs that pierced right to the heart of things. Socrates could part storm clouds, revealing the gods behind them—even when those gods were questions themselves.

    “You also assume that I read your paper. I have not. I could not get past the title.”

    Shocked at how stoically this line had been delivered, Ellie snapped back, respectfully incensed: “How do you mean? The title perfectly sums up the entire paper!”

    “So does ‘Hecatinium's Effect on Society,’ or a number of shorter titles that do not exude the sense that the author has her head up her own rear end.”

    Socrates' mouth curled like that of a child who had just swiped a credit chip, only to reveal the chip to the victim and give it back to them—just to prove they could do it.

    Ellie’s face flushed red; her nose and ears could have been billowing dragon’s breath.

    “Appearances are important, Ellie. First impressions matter. You can write the most astute essay that has ever graced the planet Thessaly, but if the title comes off so high-minded, you will be viewed as pretentious regardless of the content of the essay. Frankly, the title is off-putting. You are an incredibly gifted young woman with one of the most analytical minds I have had the pleasure to teach, but none of this matters if you cannot get through to people. The truth is, the average person is not like you or I. If you want to connect with a wider audience, you have to meet them at their level; you must be willing to put aside your ego. It is all about rhetoric, young Ellie.”

    Socrates lifted his finger to his nose and closed his eyes, a note flashed upon the whiteboard: “Incorporate rhetoric into next week’s lesson plan.”

    The figurative dragon’s breath from Ellie’s nose and ears turned to a thin haze, then to wisps, then to nothing; it must have been the compliment that Socrates snuck into his miniature lecture. “You make a good point. I’ll change the—”

    “I fibbed somewhat. The title should indeed be reworked, but I did read your essay—What kind of teacher would I be if I hadn’t?—and it was quite well written, particularly the analysis of the origin of hecatinium and its initial discovery, the surrounding mystery, and the corporations that perished in the resource wars that followed. However, considering the reality of our current situation—namely, the Thessalonian Triumvirate, which you’re undoubtedly aware of from the basic primaries that have been processed through your cerebrum implant—is a collective of three corporations that have agreed to share the planet’s supply of hecatinium and abide by the rule of a central higher authority. This arrangement was made out of the necessity to continue the cycle of demand and innovation that would otherwise stagnate without competition; given this fact, your conclusion of—as you put it—‘logically, the first corporation to secure the supply of hecatinium would dominate the market, drive all competition to ruin, and turn the planet into their own personal playground,’ comes under some scrutiny.”

    Socrates paused for a moment to cast a chestnut glare at the now-squirming Ellie. His lips furrowed into a cracked line, like a seasoned warrior having confidently thrown the gauntlet. To hide his subtle pride, Socrates contrived other things to do, flicking his wrist toward the board once more. With each flick, the name of a different corporation and logo flashed: HypnoSims, a blue silhouette of an abstracted person with the letter “H” imposed over the face—which the neurotypical mind might flip-flop between seeing as a long pair of eyes and the letter itself—all enclosed in an otherwise voidant sphere; Aides Animatronics, a series of gears colored pink, green, and black casting shadows the color of oil as they turned slowly like the hour hand of an ancient clock; TatNos Heavy Industries, a royal purple surrounding a deep maroon helmet that could double as an ancient computer’s power button.

    The corporate colors played psychedelics across Ellie’s face as she let her professor have his little moment before composing herself: “I would say that the war for hecatinium is not yet over. We’re in the cold war stage.”

    Socrates stopped, and the swirl of colors stopped with him. His stoicism faded, replaced by a twinkling in his old eyes.

    Ellie matched the aggression of Socrates' initial critique. “There may be three corporations now, but there won’t be for much longer. Besides, they already function as a single governmental body under the guise of the Thessalonian Triumvirate, and they even share a council and a military! And I would also argue that this so-called ‘necessity to continue the cycle of demand and innovation’ is a false necessity—a manufactured demand, a self-inflicted need for innovation imposed only to drive profits for those Star Touched above the planet. What’s more surprising is that someone such as yourself would use such matter-of-fact language! And then I would end my rebuttal with one final question for you: are you trolling me right now?”

    Ellie’s youthful flourish prompted a chuckle from Socrates that morphed into a weak cough. The old professor then walked up to Ellie and placed a hand on her bony shoulder. “Well done. Well done. Class starts in five. Go now, take a seat.”

    Ellie placed the solitary paper on Socrates' massive lectern with verve. “Does that mean I passed the assignment?”

    Socrates only smiled his wrinkled smile before turning his attention back to the whiteboard, twirling pixels once more.

---

    Before Ellie could take a seat, she needed to gather the books she had forgotten outside the lecture hall, so she headed up the stairs and out the double doors, passing dozens of robed students along the way. She backtracked her steps but found nothing; her books were gone. A sigh pouted from her thin lips. “There’s no way I was talking to Socrates for more than twenty minutes,” she mumbled to herself as she narrowed her eyes, observing every possible checkered tile of marble flooring. She winced at the absurd prospect of having to fork over another week’s worth of credits to repurchase the books, which were just copy-pasted data from one database to another. She closed her eyes for one meditative moment, then exhaled what she imagined was all the negativity in her body. Ellie resigned herself.

    “Looking for these?” A young man appeared from around the corner of a nearby hall. He was alone. He was holding a stack of books. His eyes were icy, his hair golden, his jaw immaculate, and his glare wretched. It was the same young man she had accidentally locked eyes with earlier. “Did you think they despawned or something?” he scoffed. “I’ll give them back.”

    “You’ll give them back, but …” Ellie’s scrunched hook indicated visible annoyance.

    “Show me what you really look like under that sim.”

    “This is what I really look like, Arc. Maybe you should show me what you really look like? A sim trying to be that handsome must be hiding some real ugliness underneath.”

    A flame sparked in Arc’s eyes; simultaneously, the books he held erupted into a blaze of blues and reds; ashes spilled through the space between Arc’s fingers, scattering through the stale air. “You will call me by my proper name—Archon—as do all the Complexers.” The flame lingered in Arc’s hand for a moment before he flung it at Ellie with a snap of his fingers; the flame bounced and fizzled off a pellucid emerald barrier. The barrier then dissolved into digitized dust, revealing Ellie with outstretched hands; her cheeks flushed; her eyebrows attack mode.

    Ellie’s voice was soft, but there was a storm brewing underneath. “Not only was that entirely pointless,” she moved a hand behind her back as she spoke, “but it also cost me two weeks’ worth of credits.” She clenched her hidden fist, and a pair of emerald tethers whipped from the floor beneath Arc, wrapping around both of his legs.

    “You forgot about my hands,” Arc grinned; but as he went to raise those forgotten hands, two more emerald wires whisked from the ceiling, locking his arms in place. Ellie then motioned her index finger in the air, and the tethers stretched themselves, lifting Arc’s body, pushing him against the ceiling, and tugging at his limbs.

    Robed students gathered around.

    “What did you think would happen – using hecatomes here? What are you – 12? Star Touched Idiot, more like.” Ellie brushed red hair out of her eyes but the red of anger was still deep in her speckled cheeks. She no longer needed to maintain the tethers as they now seemed to have a mind of their own; swirling and squeezing Arc’s appendages. The young man made no sound, he was blank, either too incensed or too stunned to react. “You Star Touched are all the same. This is what happens when you throw credits around and cheat to pass all your classes. You don’t learn anything. You can do your little basic hecatome parlor tricks, but you will never compare to someone who has actually practiced and studied for hundreds—thousands—of hours.” Ellie was grandstanding, losing herself in the moment as she talked up at Arc’s body, which was more like a ceiling fan at this point. “All you did today was reveal how envious and angry you are – but I can’t imagine why, considering you’re up in one of those starships and I’m down here in a complex.”

    Ellie paused for theatrics, then flashed a toothy grin. “How’s the view now?”

    Before she had time to react, something crashed into Ellie’s back, disrupting her focus. The emerald tethers vanished, and so did Arc’s body. Ellie toppled to the floor and wrestled to turn over. As she did, she found herself staring up at Arc, who was no longer on the ceiling but on top of her. How? Ellie’s grin had transferred to Arc, but the grin was now dripping with saliva and murder. He held Ellie down with his left hand while lifting his right into the air before slamming it down toward Ellie’s face. Ellie caught the blow in her palm, her hand glowing with the same emerald green from the barrier before, as if the color itself was empowering her grip. Arc’s hands flared with a mixture of blue and red in turn. A duel of colors was playing out before a gathering of students.

    “Submit!” Arc screamed as he pushed his full weight onto Ellie; their fingers interlocked; their colors mixing into a bright white.

    Ellie twisted and slipped out of Arc’s unstable hold. As she got to her feet, she immediately extended both arms and stretched her palms, and as she did this, a semitransparent emerald box surrounded her. The barrier threw greens onto the marble walls, which reflected onto all around, accenting the faces of the onlookers who were cheering for both of the combatants. And although Arc was standing directly in front of her, Ellie looked around as if checking for any other Arcs she should be worried about.

    “What was that? An ersatz proxy? I’m impressed. Did you buy that one too?” Ellie rushed her speech as she tried to mentally compose herself whilst maintaining the barrier.

    “You’re not the only one who seriously practices hecatomes,” Arc’s words flared like the fires he was accustomed to throwing.

    “Whatever.” Ellie said between bated breathing.

    “Do you want to know why I practice?”

    “Whatever.”

    “It’s because I hate you.”

    “Whatever.”

    “And everyone else down there too. You shouldn’t even be here.”

    “Whatever.”

    “You hate us too—I can hear it in your voice. You hate the rich snooty Star Touched just as I hate the poor little Complexers. We’re the same, Ellie. Just reversed. The only difference is that I’m willing to admit it.”

    Arc’s critique caused Ellie’s nose to twitch, but she pretended to ignore the irritant with another detached, “Whatever.”

    This feigned indifference enraged Arc. He shrieked, and as he did so, a pillar of flame erupted from his palms. He directed the flames toward Ellie; the fire wrapped around the emerald barrier; swirling vortices; vicious rumblings; the emerald cracked down the middle but still held. Sparks flickered and bounced meters away. The surrounding students, who had once been cheering, fell silent, backed off, dispersed into the lecture hall.

    Ellie was obscured behind the blinding yellow mixture of hecatonic reds and greens, which hid her visible trembling as she felt the barrier begin to give way.

    “That’s enough!” The flame vanished as Socrates' voice echoed throughout the hall, leaving nothing but a translucent emerald box with Ellie inside it.

    The emerald barrier dispersed into particles as Ellie lowered her hands. As her vision cleared, she saw Arc immobilized on his knees beneath the frail figure of Socrates, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and had the young man’s ear in a grip that must have been stronger than the pull of a black hole. “Class started three minutes ago, and you’re out here causing fires without even a proper Hoplite Decree!” The old professor’s voice was tinged with a mixture of amusement and disgust, a unique combo that Ellie had only had the privilege of hearing once before. “You will pay for the books, Arc—and you will take a deduction in both standing and grade.”

    “I could pay for thousands of those books, and my father—” Arc let out a pitiful yelp as he felt his ear twist even further. (Socrates must have turned off the pain dampeners, Ellie thought.)

    Socrates then turned his focus to Ellie. “And you indulged the fool. For shame. I expected better. Your standing will be impacted as well.”

    “What? That’s not fair! He started—”

    “He started it?” Socrates completed the sentence as he loosened the twist on Arc’s ear. “It matters not.”

    Socrates shook his head and then vanished through the double doors.

---

    “Today we are going to skip hecatome practice. We already saw enough of that earlier in the hall. Instead, I want all of you to imagine for a moment: Imagine that there is a child; the child is standing on the edge of a pool of water; the child cannot swim; the child slips, falls into the pool, and starts flailing their arms and screaming until water fills their mouth and they become nearly submerged. The child is drowning. You are standing nearby watching this scene unfold. You have a choice: save the child or leave them to drown. Of course, you choose to save the child. You reach for the child, grab them by the arm, and pull them to safety; the child is grateful, hugs you, and says they'll never forget your kindness. The child gives you their name; it is saved in your implant; you don't overwrite it. Twenty years later, you're watching a news holo; the anchor begins recounting the crimes of a recently captured serial murderer: twenty-nine victims. They say the name of the murderer: it's the name of the child you saved twenty years earlier. It suddenly dawns on you that you had saved one life in exchange for twenty-nine. Did you do the right thing? How could you have known? Was saving the child a positive or negative moral act? Does it matter? Note these questions down, as we will come back to them later on.”

    The lecture hall went silent minus the faint chirping of distant birds.

    “Now, I want you to imagine a second scenario: you just left your residence to attend to some chores. The type of chore doesn't matter, just imagine for a moment that you are doing this. A man stops you; he appears to be carrying a package; he asks if you know the address of a certain neighbor—we'll call that neighbor Zed—and you just so happen to know where Zed lives. You have two options: tell the truth or lie—well, maybe three options, including walking away silently, but I would consider this tantamount to lying. Being an honest person, you decide to tell the truth and give the man Zed's address. The man thanks you and you both go on your way. An hour later, on your way back from your chores, you pass Zed's residence. The Thessalonian Guard has surrounded the front portcullis; there are civilian onlookers some distance away and you ask one of them what's going on; they say that someone broke into Zed's house, killed Zed and his entire family, and the killer is now holed up in the residence threatening to detonate an explosive if they are not allowed to walk free. It dawns on you that this must have been the man you gave Zed's address to. An innocent gesture of honesty cost the lives of an entire family. Should you have lied? Did telling the truth result in this terrible massacre? You slink away into your residence, curl up on your bed, and cry yourself to sleep—a somewhat dramatic flourish, but the point remains. I hope you're taking notes.”

    Chirping. Rustling. Scribbling.

    “I have just presented two examples of key ethical dilemmas that arise when trying to determine which normative system of ethics one ought to follow; which cuts to the heart of today's lesson. I want to examine the ancient system of ethics so aptly titled utilitarianism; from utility. Utilitarianism is the doctrine that an action is morally righteous only if that action maximizes the overall well-being of the majority. There are many branches of utilitarianism, but the most important branches are 'rule utilitarianism' and 'act utilitarianism.' 'Rule utilitarianism' dictates that firm rules should be followed, and these firm rules should benefit the majority; in the 'save a drowning child' example, a rule utilitarian may say that we should always save a drowning child because it typically results in greater well-being for the majority, because if you were drowning you would want someone to save you in turn and so on; however, it fails to account for the possibility that the child could grow up to be a mass murderer; similarly, a rule utilitarian may say that you should never lie because honesty typically produces good outcomes—and, after all, you would not want to be lied to yourself—but this fails to account for those who would use the truth to do great harm, such as kill Zed and his family. Alternatively, followers of 'act utilitarianism' believe that a person's actions are morally righteous only if those actions produce the best possible results in that specific situation; this allows for a bending of the rules, for example, you could lie to the man who asked for Zed's address if you suspected that the man was a killer, or you could refuse to save the drowning child if you knew they would grow up to be a murderer—but that begs the question, how would you possibly know that at the time? And here lies the crux of the problem with the utilitarian system of ethics: we cannot know the future. Please ponder on these questions for a moment before we move on.”

    There was a pause—twenty seconds at least—before Socrates pointed to a student in the far back of the hall. A gentle spotlight highlighted a young woman with august locks and sleepy eyes. “Ginese, which system do you subscribe to?” Socrates' voice was magnified to the perfect volume for everyone to hear, and this magnification switched between speakers.

    Surprised, Ginese shot up, rubbed her eyes, wiped drool from her mouth, and mumbled, “Wait—what?”

    Socrates shook his head. “Leave my hall. Return once you’ve had some rest.”

    Ginese gathered her things and vanished.

    Socrates then pointed to Arc. “Which system would you pick, young man?”

    Arc was prepared with his wits about him. “Just going by basic math, it seems most logical to support a rule-utilitarian system. This would—theoretically—maximize well-being most efficiently, even if we had to make some sacrifices along the way. I think this is proven out in our current society, as we’ve seen what happens when we integrate Complexers into Star Touched spaces—” Arc stopped for a moment, turning his attention to Ellie, who sat two layers away. Ellie knew where this was headed, and as such, her ire was already aroused and her eyes were already rolling. Arc continued, “Complexers like Ellie are violent and can’t integrate, causing a ripple effect in Star Touched society that cannot be cured without excising the cancer with fire. The utilitarian rule should be obvious: total and complete segregation.”

    Socrates then pointed to Ellie, “your rebuttal?”

    “Everyone saw it. He attacked me first. If he’s trying to say that we shouldn’t abide by violent people, then we shouldn’t abide by Arc.” Faint snickering bubbled up throughout the hall. Then there was a brief pause. Birds danced and sang high above the fog.

    Ellie continued with eyes like daggers pointing at Arc, “Nonsense aside, we have rules for a reason—law and order must be maintained—but sometimes we have to break those rules; otherwise, we’ll let ourselves get trampled by those who will use the rules to their advantage or just break them outright. No rule is a one-size-fits-all solution. We do not have to be constrained by one rigid ethical system; we should be able to adapt as the situation calls for it.” Ellie paused before slipping in a sneaky, “and that’s why my standing should not be impacted; I was only defending myself.”

    There was a brief silence before it was broken by a bluebird landing on the back of Ellie’s seat. Twee, twee. Ellie turned her body to catch a glimpse, but a loud cough from Socrates frightened the bird, which fluttered off and faded away.

    “Excellent discussion.” Socrates stroked his chin. “And you’re right, Ellie. Your standing shouldn’t be impacted.” This prompted a groan from Arc, which could be heard throughout the hall even without magnification.

    Socrates flicked his wrist, and the board was suddenly consumed by black lettering that outlined a lengthy assignment. “This week, I would like you to complete two essays; the first on which utilitarian system of ethics you think leads to the most positive outcomes, and the second being being being being being being being being be be be be be be being being be be be be—”

    Ellie was taking a note on the assignment when the repetition started. She stopped and looked up to process what was happening. Socrates' mouth was moving and his wrist was flicking again and again. She turned to observe the students, who were all in various stages of repeating their own last actions. A nearby bird seemed to be teleporting from one side of the room to the other with a recurring hum. The combination of all the repeated sounds built into a cacophonous hurricane of noise that grew exponentially louder with every passing moment until Ellie couldn’t take it anymore; she could feel a pressure swelling inside her head, vibrating her brainstem as if the cerebrum implant could erupt silicon shards into the gooey gray matter of her brain at any moment. She worried that her head would explode from the inside out.

    “Not again,” Ellie groaned as she flipped her left hand and tapped her palm six times in an odd rhythmic pattern; the final tap brought complete silence and total darkness. It was as if all human senses had been turned off. After a moment of nothing, bright green text faded into view:

    “You can now safely eject.”

    And underneath that, in a slightly smaller font:

    “HypnoSims is dedicated to our customers’ user experience. As such, if this was a wrongful eject or there was a problem with your simulacrum—please think or say ‘bug report’ to bring up the bug report menu. If you would like to speak to an AI representative, please think or say ‘Allison,’ ‘Alex,’ ‘Pluto,’ ‘Garfield,’ or ‘Random’ depending on preference. If you would like to report a crime, please think or say ‘Thessalonian Guard.’”

---

    Ellie raised both hands to either side of her head, gripping the smooth headset that covered her eyes and nose and wrapped around her skull. She used her thumbs to press two buttons on either side of the device, which sent a tingle down her spine as the HypnoConnector disconnected from the port in the back of her neck. The wire, which had sent packets of data directly into her brain via the HypnoSim Implant grafted into her cerebrum at birth, now dangled from the headset.

    As Ellie lifted the headset over her head, the void slid from her vision as if a child were removing a disc from an Old Earth View-Master. She opened her eyes—her biological eyes—and took a good long look at the steel-gray ceiling directly above her. She was lying on her back, on a bed. She let out a deep yawn as she stretched out her lanky appendages.

    Ellie’s room was a small ten by twelve, clean but messy, with one door and no windows, gunmetal walls, creeping rust from the corners where the walls and ceiling converged, a single faux-porcelain sink with a spotted mirror, and the place pulsed soft blue like a deep-sea jellyfish dying; there were band posters taped on each wall with names ranging from The Phantoms to Haruko and the Fools to Rectal Debaser; Old Earth computer monitors waterfalling text lined the walls; keyboards and wires seemed to grow out of the floor; and the only place to sit was on a spring-exposed mattress that rested on synthetic-wood pallets.

    “The HyperNet must be down again,” Ellie thought as she swung up on her bed and turned to the keyboard nearest her. She clicked a few keys which prompted a three-dimensional bump-mapped projection to consume the space between the bed and the farthest wall.

    The projection was a holographic bird's-eye view of a vast desert that could moonlight as a wasteland. The title “Thessaly” marked the top left of the three-dimensional space. The hologram zoomed out to reveal a number of massive black superstructures throughout the desert; megaliths yearning for the stars but never quite reaching them; encircling these megaliths were mechanical gray obelisks like the swords of titans stabbed deep into the earth. The projection drew a blue circle around one of these megaliths, with an arrow extending from the megalith to the words “Complex 42.” Additional information then poured in underneath:

    // Date: Gamelion 8, AH386 // Complex Status Module Version: CreditlessV7.4 // Main Power: Down // Resolution Status: Aides Repair Automatons Dispatched // TatNos Security Sphere The Sphere That Protects-And-Serves You And Only You 2483C // Current Status: Auxiliary Power 98% // HyperNet Status: Down // Probable Cause: Ash Storm W/ High Radiation (Source: Unknown) // Hecatonic Shield Holding At 75% // Neutron Wave Performing New Hit Single “StarLoveNovaKill” Live Gamelion-24 9 PM Floor-46 // Range Of Incident: Entire Northern Hemisphere // Incident Start Time: 8:43 PM // Estimated End Time: 12:35 AM // Show Your Lover You Care With The HS-Affection Add-On Free 30-Day Trial // NOTE: All Air Vents Have Been Locked For Complex Residents’ Safety. Secondary Air Reserves On. Please Do Not Leave The Complex Until The Incident Has Been Marked As Resolved // HS 24/7 Complex Status Monitoring // Have You Heard About The New Aides Auto-Cat? Fully Programmable W/ Free HS Auto-Animal App: Recreating Your Favorite Pets One Earth Animal At A Time Only 1773C Or Three Payments Of 591C //

    Ellie clicked three keys on the keyboard; the hologram vanished. “Maybe an Auto-Cat wouldn’t be so bad,” she thought as she sat up and made her way to the sink. She peered into her own emerald eyes, which were accented with deep bags like those of the Old Earth raccoons that she had only seen in the HyperNet. Her rust-colored hair was frizzy all over, and her freckled skin was ghostly pale. She looked identical to her simulacrum, only more haggard. She twisted the handle of the faucet to splash some water on her face, but the sink only produced a weak stream of light brown liquid, which then turned into a slow drip and eventually nothing at all. “Water’s not working either,” she mumbled as she went to the corner of the room and started digging through a loose bag of metal tools.

    As Ellie was digging and tossing tools to her side, she heard the metal door clang and footsteps behind her. The rasp of an elderly woman rang out, “Elpis? What are you doing? You know the HyperNet is out again? The holos keep playing that warning message. I don’t like it. Scares me. Lenny next door says there’s some sort of freak radiation storm going on out there.” No response, only the clinking of metal mixed with the rustling of cloth. “Elpis, what are you doing? Talk to me.”

    Ellie continued to rummage through the tool bag as she replied in a tone that could only be described as single-minded dismissiveness, “Damn storms kicked me out of Polytechnic again.” After another moment of sifting through the bag, she pulled out a crowbar-sized metal spanner with DIY cranks and levers and switches of all sorts welded upon it. “I’m going to fix the HyperNet, Gigi. All I have to do is route the auxiliary power into the third-floor modem facility. Then I’ll jack back into school and find out what that second essay is about.” Ellie stood confidently, one hand resting upon the curve of her hip, the other waving the oversized spanner.

    Concern was threaded through the ancient tapestry that was Gigi’s face; Ellie sensed this and placed a hand on her grandmother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Gigi. It’s not a big thing. I did this during the last ash storm—remember?”

    Gigi shook her head. She couldn't remember. She couldn’t remember much at all.

    Ellie flashed a toothy smile meant to inspire confidence and then strutted out of the bedroom carrying her spanner. She walked through the living room—which was also gunmetal-chic and only a few feet wider than her bedroom, yet more claustrophobic due to the bare-necessities kitchen in the far corner—and grabbed a dark messenger bag hanging from a hook by the heavy-metal portcullis that doubled as the front door, slinging the bag around her shoulder; she then grabbed a pair of black-lensed circular glasses from the kitchen counter and hurriedly pushed them over her bent nose using her index finger.

    Before turning the key that would seal the portcullis, Ellie poked her head through the archway, “I’ll be home soon! Don’t wait up for me! I love you!”

    And then she was gone.

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Chapter 2

Artwork by ComicFarm.

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#TheEgg #Fiction