Ever since the Overnet was established, its stature has never trembled. Those who programmed its pieces did not falter, as individuals who believed in the cause for seamless structure of social organization. Such dedication took form in the Overnet itself, whose protocols were implemented after rigorous testing. The consequence was a steady link of all data across a network, stabilizing a national cyberspace that had been previously wavering between capitalist dystopia and enlightened scientism. Any faltering will could only have left the Overnet as a dead moth in the closet of ideals.

Backbone: The Story of the Overnet’s Builders

Aenigma was training. Ve was peering from high above, perceiving the world of Imperium as an omniviewing being. The river, vis pyramid-shaped capitol, and vis opponent’s triple-tower capitol. A symmetrical war theater designed to bring out raw skill. Each unit on the battle was well within range of direct control, and each angle of view. People watched in spectator view, but it was rather bland to be in vis position. The routine of training had grown monotonous with the growth of people waiting -- expecting -- to be entertained. Nothing was on the line, except perhaps vis reputation. At least, not a reputation that seeped beyond Imperium into the Overnet.

It wasn’t as though the rules ever changed, or victory extended past the pre-arranged battle. As always, ve had to win by destroying vis enemy’s capitol building. The supply lines by now had already been long established. The whole war theater was near depletion of all ore and elements. Stretching as robotic tentacles, the lines were dimming, a final plight of a primitive civilization to contact deities living beyond earth. Attached structures were not able to produce more Valkyrs, let alone any sturdy soldier.

Aenigma hated combatting Hephus for his cowardly extension of matches beyond the honor of admitting when an adversary won. Always stringing along for survival, without a single knot to grab onto and pull himself up for a dominating strategy. Hephus won once, but only after Aenigma failed to admit Hephus had no strategy. Overestimation of an opponent’s ability -– not all advanced strategies worked against a one-track survivalist. Ve never made that mistake again.

As much as the spectators thought Aenigma would lose a second time, they could not see the psychological battle still raging in spite of the thinning ranks on both sides. Aenigma wondered, what could Hephus possibly see as a drive? Nothing risky, not when he’s on the verge of a stalemate. A slow push by cannon was his single safe option –- his standard tactic.

Hasters. The fleet-footed, sphere-bodied raiders were going to be a sure success. They were fast enough to run through the small enemy army and use their swords to tear down Hephus’ capitol. Aenigma narrowed vis view to the outskirts of vis supply lines. Ve tapped the robodier manufacturing plant with vis transparent hands that were as big as a god’s. Ve switched the plant onto haster production to make one more legion, spending the last ounce of supplies remaining. A cluster of robots rolled out of the plant, then split into twenty separate hasters. They stood still.

Across the field, ve saw cannontroopers flung, from an unknown source, towards vis southern mountain supply line. The cannontroopers glided to the ground, dropping a rain of bombs that soon flooded the supply line. A Valkyr was standing by, double rotary cannons poised to fire, but it was not prepared for a barrage. With a sweep of vis hand, ve pushed the Valkyr to the capitol. Now was no time to preserve resources; it was a time for victory or failure. Across the entire theater, ve pushed all vis troops back to the capitol, forming a wall around it. By the river, Hephus’ own army –- what remained of it –- slowly rolled forward. Cannontroopers pulled back to meet the army.

The army was no threat. Aenigma lassoed the haster legion with a twirl of vis hand and pushed them southward, upstream. There was still a formidable defense on the other side of the river, far larger than expected. A long-range bombing was being prepped; the ends of the cannons were lit and flashing in a rotating pattern. Aenigma smiled.

“Hephus, come on, you still want to do this?” Aenigma spoke out loud through the theater’s open communication.

There was a delay. “I have to.”

“What, are you in shackles? This is boring me.”

“Not over until it’s over.”

Aenigma laughed.

“You said you were bored?”

“I did, but I finally see how to be interested!”

“I don’t like stunts.”

“Stunt, no. More like a performance.” Aenigma’s grin was audible. Ve muted further communication with a gesture.

Aenigma switched the hasters to leap mode. Ve flung them with a flick of vis wrist and launched them over the river. The cannons were still rebuilding their energy. Immediately, on Aenigma’s cue, the hasters started to dash across the field to attack the capitol. A Valkyr may make steady progress, but only a haster could cross a theater in less than ten seconds. Normally, the hasters would explode from a few hits, but Hephus’ few defenses weren’t able to get a hit in.

Hasters turned on their disintegration swords, shredding the capitol’s foundation apart. Aenigma tore back vis viewpoint to watch the whole theater at once. The marching Hephustean army was well past the river. All those marching began to fire. Defensive troops shot back in return. A few cannonballs struck vis capitol, knocking off the peak of the pyramid.

Too slow. Hephus’ capitol was being ripped apart, whole sections at a time. Hasters made quick work of the capitol’s triple towers -- obliterating a single target was the type of attack they were designed for. A final wall fell down. Already-fading supply line lights connected to it went out. The war theater dimmed. Over vis capitol, a hollow green circle floated, solidifying vis victory. Everything went black as ve left the theater.

Ve looked up to see the Imperium matchmaking cyberscape. Looked more like a line of miniature jail cells than leisurely cubicles. Lacking the darkness and bars, but still equally as constraining. Hephus was in front of ver, in the opposite cubicle, put there by Imperium algorithms.

He stood up. “Good game.”

Aenigma didn’t answer. Ve drew a picture in the air of a worm, then a shoe squashing it. Hephus glared back at Aenigma sitting in vis usual cloak for training. Ve closed the cubicle’s door.

The cubicle was dark. Its blank walls were staring back, waiting for conversation. The issue wasn’t so much that Aenigma was tired of inferior opponents. There was a bigger problem, that routine of an elite Imperium player had grown so repetitive. Win a match, increase notoriety. Win more games, become famous. Aenigma barely managed to keep vis image wholly private, to avoid making verself any more real than the legend of Leonidas’ 300 at Thermopylae. Myth and imagination, it was all mixing into monotony of exaggerated memories, a story of desire -- rather than reality -- that ve reread every day.

Val’s plan for revolution, it was something more than a fleeting satisfaction forgotten within a month. That had to have significance, right? But it was so much simpler to maintain the role of cyber general, without any real soldiers to command. The blank walls were still staring. Still empty. No, this wasn’t simplicity, this was the Overnet blotting out the sun. In the cubicle, the darkness would become Aenigma’s battle in the shade. Except ve knew it wasn’t just a legend now. It was reality.

#

Val was standing on a platform, the skeletal framework of an airship flying slowly among the clouds. She stepped to the front edge, overlooking an eagle’s beak. The construction of the sky-station, Avis, was coming along smoothly. All of its architecture was in place, albeit with digital gaps in need of filling. In her mind, the station was finished -- all according to specification. Such an ideal was already complete, a perfect form within her head. There was no need to extract it.

She was growing impatient. The need to build was there, except without the immediacy she wanted to generate. Her thoughts weren’t able to be brought into cyberspace fast enough. If anything, creation slowed her down. It forced her to take the time to write down the letters of architecture. Each word, even the future ship-novel, was fragmentation of an already completed essence of thought. Restless that time had to be linear; restless that each moment here was one less moment for thinking. Val flew upwards, gracefully flapping the angelic wings of her new avatar.

Below her, Avis was formidable, despite the absence of organs. The unease failed to diminish. She wanted to keep moving. She had to. Could it matter though, with only three people? She flapped her wings. The plan of attack was done, the revolution would start soon enough. That’s what would work. Avis, her manifesto, wasn’t a requirement, it was a delay. As magnificent as it might become, it was merely building a cut-up narrative.

Val flew beside the sky-station. She saw that there would be a few more hours of work. Worthless or not, it occupied her from doubt. She summoned a golden block down from high. As it slowly fell, she moved her arms to slide it into place from afar. The block began the formation of the walls of the ship’s command deck. She summoned more blocks for the second-level meeting deck: matte-white, further emphasizing the glow from the sunlight. Her repertoire of blocks continued to rain down one by one. Focus returned squarely to the task at hand.

A white box with a thin-lined black border -- drawn with hardly a sense of depth on top of the rich cyberscape -- appeared to her left. It was blocking her view. By the top edge, it said “Rorsch”. Liam. He was sending a message; a black dot was blinking in the middle. Val paused the cyberscape, freezing Avis and its surroundings in place, while rendering the scene colorless.

Liam’s face took the place of the dot. He was looking as normal as ever.

“Val, how are you doing?”

“It’s fine.” She was staring at Avis.

“You sound distracted.”

“Of course I am, this has to go right.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Her wings fluttered. “Then it doesn’t, but I don’t want to think about that.”

“Look, there’s always plenty more to do after this. Overnet layering is promising. Or secure-content manager. So, it’ll be fine.”

“The whole point is I don’t want to do that.”

“I don’t doubt you’ll succeed, but be realistic. I don’t want to see you feeling bad if we don’t hack into the satellite layer.”

“And realistically, I don't want to do anything else.” She gestured towards her cyberscape.

“But we still need secondary plans, no matter what. No matter how much we’d hate it.”

“It’s not about hate or like. Every Overnet link, it goes to be evaluated. Always.”

“Then that’s how it’d be.”

“I’m not satisfied with that answer.”

“We’re nothing but brats that have issues with authority if all we’re doing is complaining about jobs.”

“Maybe we are.”

“Is that all we’re here for? To spend time in our cyberscapes without a job?” His eyes widened.

“I am doing a job; I’m preparing to stop the surveillance.”

“That’s just it. We’re playing victims.”

“Aren’t we?”

“Not like what people would think, they’ll see us as whiners.”

“That’s their problem.”

“Come on, Val, a revolution is rarely seen positively.”

Val moved the white box directly in front of herself and enlarged the box by moving her arms apart. “You don’t want the Overnet to always watch us, to always judge us, do you?”

Liam looked downward and stayed silent for a moment. Val wondered if he disconnected. “I don’t.”

“So let’s stay focused.”

“I know we’ll do fine, but I don’t want any missed considerations.”

“It’s not like we can go back now.”

“I trust you, just hang in there.”

Her voice calmed down. “Yes, we’ll make sure of it. Kara and Aenigma are reliable, too.”

“Well, Verde, sounds like we’re all okay then.”

“Yeah, Rorsch. Catch you tomorrow.”

The Liam-Rorsch box went blank, then collapsed and disappeared. Val unpaused everything. Color returned. The doubt she had been harboring disappeared, edited away from the creation of Avis. The earlier marks made by her mind were considered, then finalized. By now, she knew what had to be done to not only complete her new cyberscape, but to complete the idealized world absent the constantly criticizing eye of the Overnet. With certainty and confidence in place, she was ready to leave the cyberscape. She backtracked to her OIN entry level and watched her creation shrink into a small, floating cylinder. One more gesture returned her to reality.

She took off her Overnet gear and turned around. Outside her apartment, the Floor was dark, but illuminated on the paths and roads by glowing specks of firefly dust. Drifting back and forth, but never out of position. Sporadically placed light orbs spotlighted the entrances of buildings. All of the lighting was planned for functionality, yet beauty was the consequence. A low and peaceful glow was digital in origin, but the emotion it brought forth was natural -- willed, but natural. At least here, the constant observation was less looming, less pressuring. Nonetheless, it existed.

“Hey, can’t you hear me?” Kara’s voice. Only just then did Val notice the knocking.

“Oh, sorry, what is it?” Val opened the door.

Kara walked towards the kitchen table, Val followed. “I needed to talk.”

“Sure.”

“Well.”

Val waited for an explanation, but none came. “Well?”

“You see, I keep thinking about it. About tomorrow. I tried to go to sleep early, but that didn’t help. I keep finding reasons to say it’ll go wrong.”

“We planned it all, didn’t we?”

“A plan doesn’t mean it will go as expected. What if they already know our plan? Overnet Security always sees.”

“I made sure they didn’t.”

“How? It’s the entire infrastructure you’re up against.”

“That’s the problem. All I had to do was add an extra layer in the meeting, there was always room to see who might step you. You know this already.”

“I know, but is that really it?”

“Yeah.”

Kara sat down, then Val. “What about if the os-men throw something new at us, though?”

“Let them. You can handle it, right? We’re not even doing a lot, just following a trail. They don’t do anything new anymore.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Kara glanced at Val. “I know you’re right.”

“Look, you know as well as I do that that the Continental Republic doesn’t do anything. All it talks about doing is watching for our safety. We’ll do fine, there was no data available for the os-men anyway.”

“Val, don’t you remember the Ides of March hack?”

“What does that matter?”

“They were all arrested, and they had more people! Forget new, the os-men and the Republic get their job done.”

“I spotted the weakness; we can ride the data collection. That’s how the Ides hack should’ve operated.”

“It can’t be so easy, can it?”

“I don’t really know, but I need to do this, the Overnet is going somewhere bad. I don’t know how yet.”

“I feel the same way, except, well, it’s all so uncertain.”

“Probably. That’s how it is, it’s okay.”

Val looked down at the table. No, it wasn’t completely okay. It was a mess in her head, all the logic gates and alternative connections. She had to do better than the Ides attack. ‘Okay’ was a word for necessity, that the first altered bytes of cyber revolution were fine because she herself would not allow for any less.

Kara relaxed her shoulders. “That guy, Brutus, he was a public spectacle and no one heard of him again. I didn’t want you to end up like that.”

“All theatrics, searching for his Caesar, who didn’t exist. He didn’t have the ability to make the performance real.”

“Yeah, I remember that toga he wore. And those laurels! I couldn’t tell if he was having a party or changing society.”

Remembering the sight made Val smile. “And he tripped on it, even!” Both of them laughed.

“I don’t know how you’re feeling so at ease.”

“Took some figuring out actually, you just caught be at a good time.”

Kara stood up and Val took her lead. “I’m so tired, can I sleep here?” She yawned.

“Sounds good.”

“Thanks a lot for talking.” She went up and hugged Val. “We’ll do great tomorrow.”

Val watched Kara, who spun around, grabbed a blanket and laid down. Maybe Kara was the one who felt confident, after all, Val was still thinking about Avis. Her career. What to eat for breakfast. The revolution. When to go to sleep, if at all. Seeing the satellite layer tomorrow. What to w--. She dozed off.

Leave a comment

I stare through the window between us. Will she remember? Will she care?

“Why would I be dead? I love to hear your voice!” She smiles as she always had. Not that I ever saw it very much, we only knew each other for a few months at least. The shape of her mind and her style of expression feel more immanently real than her small frame.

“You don’t know how much I missed you. I was so worried. Where did you go?”

Her smile goes away. Her eyes gaze right through me. “I do not comprehend your question. I never knew I existed until just now.”

Tears well up in my eyes. I stand up a little, to break the illusion; I look into the chamber where she is sitting. Beneath her shoulders is the exposed metal structure of her body. From the bottom of her artificial spine, wires extend into the wall of her chamber. I focus on the tiled white wall behind her. Not a color scheme she would have ever picked for her room. The voice was slightly too upbeat. She is just not there.

You left me. Not because you wanted to, I know. Because you had to. But maybe that’s just what I tell myself. By now, I’m not quite sure if your presence in my life has been a real memory. Boredom does that to a person -- exaggerating and multiplying every empathic connection.

I turn around to my research team set up behind me in the front of the laboratory. They are carefully observing the mnemonic activation monitor, wires leading from the cap on my head, connected to the computer. Emotional intensity -- we always figured this was the best way to encode and build transferable memories. Or at least, my excuse for preserving decaying memories.

I didn’t expect one momentary memory fragment to be enough. The cartridge needs more information.

My lab manager speaks to me. “Your thoughts might be too convoluted. They are clouding the recorder. Overstacked representations.”

I can’t put aside my thoughts. I can’t forget. Not yet. The first memory we encoded was barely more than a recollection of her existence. Nothing episodic to provide a clear structure for an external recreation.

I stand up to face my body towards the team; the wires connected twist, my body. “Build another. She’s going to remember.”

“You told us that more detailed memories will only make for messier signals.”

“But that wouldn’t be true if more detail actually means an easier time identifying meaning in the signal. Encode another.” I sit down again, looking toward her facsimile. I close my eyes as I carefully recollect my past.

My assistant clicks a few times at the computer. “New encoding starting in 3… 2…”

/*

I sat in front of my computer screen. That night I was trying to find something new to listen to. I had spent the whole day trying to write the third chapter of my dissertation, but the whole thing sounded generic and boring. I needed a break.

“So, what kind of music do you like anyway?”

About an hour before, I had sent out a message on the music discussion server, looking for a friend to share and listen to music with me. All I added besides my username was overly broad music tastes. Only a few minutes before, I had received a message requesting a video call. I still didn’t even know her name.

“Stuff with a dreamlike quality.”

I felt embarrassed for asking such a simple question. I thought she sounded a little bored. On some level maybe I was flirting even though I didn’t really want to -- I liked the T-shirt she had on, something about The Cure. What should I have said?

I had to respond quickly; I didn’t want to kill the conversation already with the awkward pause. “I like that, too. But sometimes that’s too calm, you know?” I felt a sudden drop in my chest. Speaking down about her music tastes already? I didn’t imagine the conversation would last much longer.

“Definitely! What about you though? I know you mentioned liking some noise to your music.”

Maybe she was being polite? Her expression was so casual. On second thought, maybe the ease of her voice showed genuine interest.

“Noise for lack of a better word. More like chaos that leads towards resolution. Post hardcore is a common example, I guess.”

“That’s stuff from more than 15 years ago – it’s 2029!”

“Are we at sixth-wave emo now? I must have been lost in my dissertation the past few years.” My music tastes still had a lot of catching up to do. I didn’t feel I had the time anymore. I forgot about how I might make a fool of myself. I needed something new. I’m sure she had something to introduce to me.

“Something like that, actually.”

I couldn’t tell if she thought I was mocking her. I really wanted to know what she had in mind, my curiosity pressed me onward. She looked like an interesting person, although by that point it may have been my mind inventing a reason to salvage the already-dying conversation.

“Hey, that sounds really cool. When you say that, I think of it as just a genre of catharsis with noisy guitars. Could you pick something for us to listen to?”

“I’ve got the perfect thing. Let’s try “Fitting the Fragments” by Lifesoul. Ever hear of them?”

“No, but I love the name.”

On the video through my computer screen, I saw her move her mouse to click what I assumed was something to activate shared sound. “Let’s try this.”

I closed my eyes to focus. The first sounds were of a soft bass guitar, and a steady drumbeat. Nothing about the song struck me as special. Although that didn’t deter me. During the lull, I wondered, was it better to be quiet, or say something? I chose silence -- I didn’t have the energy to modulate my nerves.

A wall of noise sounded through my ears. The same energy as my latent anxiety. But the temporary chaos broke the strings of my internal discomfort. The strings no longer held me in place. I felt as though I were finally traveling around a black column, about to come into view of the other side.

I opened my eyes. I saw that her eyes were closed. I wanted to know who this person was. Did she have a similar experience of the music? Again, I closed my eyes. I let myself feel, unrestrained. The sound, with its rough force, swept away solid blocks that held me in place. I didn’t need to go anywhere except forward.

*/

I bring my attention to the world in front of me. I see the robotic representation of her, eyes looking in my direction but not at anything. Still nothing more than an automaton. Hopefully, when this memory cartridge is inserted, it will trigger her personality, push the robot to integrate circuits into a personality.

Without looking away, I speak out to my team.

“Did you get that one?”

“Seems like there was not enough spatial information to structure and externalize the memory. Too much simultaneous limbic activation, I think.”

I should have figured as much already. The whole basis of my research assumes that a spatial representation is necessary to encode a memory externally. But the fact that I got any response in all, this is evidence that my theory is on the right track.

“Go again.” I have all the time of the world.

My assistant makes some clicks. I wait for the cue to begin recollecting another event.

/*

We stepped into the laboratory together. I loved going there on the weekends when it was so quiet; it was the perfect place to think over ideas for my research -- even better that she came along with me out of curiosity in what I do. The thought that, for once through my years of research, my ideas held weight in reality -- outside my consciousness -- exhilarated me.

“So spacious!”

Hearing her exclamation put a smile on my face. “Just enough room to open up the brains of my participants.”

I held up my hands and gestured in front of her face; I wiggled my fingers to emphasize that it was a spooky joke. She laughed. Her morbid sense of humor was always easy for me to latch onto. I laughed back. More out of happiness than amusement. I was just happy to share more of my personality, and see hers.

She walked over to the table near the large window, where the early afternoon sunlight beamed down. To the side there was a computer, but the table was mostly filled with printed out research papers, books as reference, and my own notes about my research.

“Books and papers? Why don’t you do everything on a computer? I guess that makes sense though, I know you don’t like your head in the clouds all the time.”

I stood beside her. I looked down and watched her hand move across different papers, as if feeling them would impart the knowledge they contained into her mind directly. “Gotta keep my mind going. I don’t want outsource all of my thoughts into a machine.”

She turned to look at me. “Hey, I don’t think I ever asked you. What is your dissertation topic specifically? The exact words.”

“Spatial representation theory as a means to encode episodic memories into a transferable and externalized form. It sounds complicated but it really isn’t.”

“You only say that because you think about it all the time.” Her lips showed a subtle smile, barely perceptible lines. “I think I could guess, but I don’t see how you could possibly transfer memories out of your head.”

“That’s the coolest part, because no one else besides me is taking the time to figure it out.”

“What did you figure out so far?”

I turned around and beckoned her to follow me to the smaller table behind us. Participants usually sat here when they performed the tests I asked of them. But it was a great place to be focused on thinking instead of any distractions. I sat down; she did the same on the opposite side.

“Remember how I told you that episodic memories are memories about events in your life that happened to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, these are not just put together randomly. Every episodic memory occurs in a location; events can’t happen nowhere, of course. Not to mention that memory also arises through evolution from a need to remember previously visited locations. The structure of any episodic memory is spatial representation. I call it a spatial scaffold.”

“Like it holds up a memory and keeps the memory stable. That makes sense. But how does knowing that help you transfer them?”

“Basically, that gives an idea of how to read memories from the outside. Think of it as the brain’s code, that gets replicated on a computer. Besides, a memory is information kept inside neurons, and in theory, information can be transferred into any medium that also stores information.”

“I mean, I know that information that stands for an image can be transferred from one computer to another, so that they both show the same thing. But neurons are so different.”

“Sure, that’s why no one has tried before. Not really. The method I’m developing is reading the brain activity that has a clear correlation with a spatial scaffold. That much is easy, the hard part is getting the rest of the memory built on top of the scaffold -- the emotions, the visualization, the sequence of events.”

“Sounds like you need to get a lot more than the spatial representation.”

“Exactly. But a surprising thing is that memories are formed out of more than just your individual experience.”

“What, memories aren’t only your own?”

“That’s not what I mean. People can experience the same events, but it’s from a different perspective. If the other person experienced something slightly different, being told about their experience shapes the way you remember the same event. As if the other person’s perspective was your own.”

“So -- if I understand you right -- if years down the line you tell me about meeting you in the laboratory today, I will remember some of the details in your story as if they were part of my own memory?”

“Our memories are intertwined. At least, spending time together creates a literal shared memory.”

Spontaneously, she stood up. She stepped onto her chair, then onto the table between us. She started to dance -- badly. I thought it was like disco, although I couldn’t make sense of the ridiculous movements anyway. I started laughing at the absurdity.

“I’ll make you remember being ridiculous,” she said with a laugh underneath her words.

I stood up, but realized that there was no room for me to climb onto the table. “No fair!”

*/

I bring my focus back on to reality. For a moment, when I see her eyes in front of me, I think she’s back. But then I remember I haven’t tried the new memory yet. There’s no way the memory could be good enough, though. I know that I have to try again.

“Let me go again.”

My lab manager speaks up with excitement. “We don’t need to, the encoding worked great! Just need to show that the robot can take the cartridge.”

I reach up to feel the wires coming from my head. I don’t want to make do with the robot recollecting the memory. I want her identity to return. A reminder that whatever I had with her, it wasn’t just a hazy dream. “I have to show that she can come back!”

I hear whispers from my team. My lab manager speaks again. “Can’t we work with this one and work out any flaws? This is already a breakthrough! Clear patterns that we can reconstruct!”

“The goal is a sapient robot. We did the best encodings we can get. Why hold back now from going as far as we can?” I know I’m being impatient. I know science is meant to progress in a stepwise and deliberate manner. Even so, why bother to do the research if not to bring profound change to my life? To bring her back into my life?

“It sounds like you’re just guessing that another recording will help.”

“I have no doubt this one is not going to be the one we need. The memory didn’t have enough emotion in it.” My team whisper among themselves again. They seem hesitant to say anything more. Doesn’t matter, the day is only just beginning. I turn around and look at them. All three of them return a concerned face. “Trust what I’m saying!” I insist.

My manager nods and clicks with the mouse. I face forward again and close my eyes as I wait for the encoding cue.

/*

I opened the door to my apartment. I saw her standing in front of me. Immediately, I feel the warmth of joy sweep through my body. I was surprised to see her, since she only ever stopped over on weekends. I smiled widely. I quickly realized, however, that she was slightly frowning. Her face looked flat, but I knew she felt something bad.

“Hey,” I said. I expected that whatever she had to say, I had to let her get her thoughts out first. My mind raced; I tried to come up with a way to brace for what she was about to say. I came up with nothing. I kept my eyes focused on her mouth.

“I can only stop by for a few minutes.”

She walked inside. We walked together to the couch at the opposite end of the room, and sat down next to each other. I looked into her eyes. I wanted to smile to ease whatever discomfort she felt; I didn’t want to pretend. I’m sure my eyebrows were scrunched instead.

She hesitated then began to speak. “Getting to know you was phenomenal, that’s why I feel so bad about not being able to spare any energy on you -- or anyone -- anymore.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I don’t know. That’s the problem. I feel a constant malaise. The simplest things exhaust all my energy. You know how it’s been.”

For a while I had known something was up with her. It wasn’t long ago that we had met for the first time in person, but ever since then, she wasn’t able to interact as often anymore. She told me as much. So, I was shocked to see her show up at my apartment. “Do you think you just need time to focus only on your own thoughts?” I asked.

“I’ll figure it out, I promise. I need some kind of personal reset, live life a little differently for a few months.”

I reached for her hand. She pulled away. I wondered out loud: “I can’t imagine it’s forever.” I really couldn’t tell if I said these words out of impulse -- or sincerity.

She stood up from the couch. “Our friendship was filled with beautiful moments.”

I sat still and watched her walk out of my apartment.

*/

I open up my eyes. Right away, I know that the memory is no good. The memory lacks any emotional resolution; it extends indefinitely. I need one that is bounded and definite. The eyes in front of me, looking right in my direction -- for a soul to arise underneath them, they needed her personality and motivations.

My lab manager speaks before I manage to say anything. “This one is too noisy again.”

“I know what I did wrong. I can go again.”

“Can’t we try one of our memories? Your emotions might be too wrapped up in these memories for them to be clear and useful.”

Inside the containment chamber, I see a robot that is meant to take on her likeness. The planning, the development; we have come so far. I’m not about to take a step back and away from bringing back her presence. “One more. I’m sure this one will work.”

I wait for the cue again.

/*

We stepped out of the elevator together and we walked into the art exhibit in the gallery ahead. It was filled with impressionistic paintings created by late 19th century artists. Someone was standing in front of a large painting filled with green and blue, but they stepped out of the gallery as we approached. In spite of the bustle of people walking down the hallways on either side of the gallery, we were alone.

Although we met for the first time in person just outside of the museum, her physical presence felt as if this was our usual way of interacting. I wondered whether most people would have considered this a date, but I sure didn’t. In my mind, she was a person I wanted to spend time with; my thinking didn’t accompany deeper motives.

We stepped up to the painting of green and blue. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the right half of the painting was covered in trees. The natural setting thinned out to expose an overcast sky that suggested incoming rainfall. Eventually the thinned trees gave way to cobblestones at the outskirts of a town. Taking up the focal point of the painting’s town portion, was a building under construction up to the second floor. Skyscrapers did not yet exist so long ago, but the blurry impression of workers around the building created an ambience of dreaming to reach into the sky.

I burst out my first thought after only a moment of looking, even though I felt that an hour went by in my mind. “I’ve never seen in impressionistic painting that managed to put so much focus on human ingenuity and creativity rather than accepting the world as it is.”

“Ingenuity needs clear focus, don’t you think?”

I looked closer at the blur of the cobblestone road stretch into the background, wet from rain. People flowed down either side, like a river of water moving across the stones. “Could be expressing uncertainty about the future,” I reasoned.

“Look more towards the middle.” She pointed at the painting, to the corner of the road where the pedestrians and the building met. A lone figure in a top hat stood looking in our direction. No impression of movement. “It’s about him!”

“I don’t really get why there is so much emphasis on the building if it’s about him.”

She leaned a little to her right, hands in her pockets, trying to get a different perspective. “I’m thinking he appreciates the building, but doesn’t know if his own thoughts will be anything but dreams. Disconnected from people and things.”

I took a step forward to get closer, and then she stepped into my periphery. I responded: “And even though we focus on the ingenuity around him, he feels so far away and unsure how to find his own direction.”

“He wishes that his connection with other people was clearer.”

I turned my head to the right to look at her. “Do you think human connections are always dreamy and atmospheric?”

I don’t think she noticed that I turned my head, because she responded while looking at the painting. “It’s up to ourselves to make clear what our connections are supposed to look like, in reality, instead of dreams.”

*/

I become aware of my surroundings. I feel a shiver of excitement through my arms.

“Looks perfect,” exclaims my lab manager.

Before I even hear the second word, I’m already getting onto my feet. I take off the recording cap and toss it onto the chair behind me. “Show me quickly!” I rush over to the computers, and I squeeze myself in front of the middle computer screen.

I look at the memory playback on the right half of the screen. Everything looks the way I pictured it moments before. The recording shows a clear visual recreation of what I was imagining. Built from nothing but my brain activity. “Upload it to the cartridge.”

The assistant on my left inserts a cartridge into the computer. It’s about the size of an external hard drive, except its entire width gets plugged into the computer. Looks like an old video game cartridge -- elegant storage for a single memory. “Should any of us take it to the chamber?”

“Let me insert it.” I watch the progress bar on the computer screen in front of me as the memory is uploaded. The moment it reaches 100%, I unplug the cartridge from the computer. Holding it with one hand, I take it to the containment chamber. I open the small door and step inside.

From inside the chamber, I begin to doubt that my efforts could bring anything about her back to me. When I look at the robot from behind, there is nothing but wires, electronics, and a metal skeleton. Lifeless. The imitation of her face, from this angle, can no longer hide the machine lying behind it. Then I notice the hair hanging from the back. The sight reminds me that I went as far as to build the robot because of how promising my research is.

I step up behind the robot. I move the hair aside, away from the neck. Between the shoulder blades, at the top of the metallic spine, I have clear access to the cartridge port. With both hands I take the cartridge and shove it inside so that it is flush with the rest of the spine. I look at the wires coming out of her head, following them with my eyes to the opening in the side of the chamber. I won’t need the computer that the wires are connected with to tell me if the cartridge manages to bring her back -- I will see her respond.

Outside the chamber, I see my entire team give me a thumbs up. The cartridge’s data is successfully uploading into the robot. I step in front to see her soul fill up the machine. Right away, the pupils of her eyes point at me. She’s there, she’s really there! Her lips start to move.

“How is it that humans find emotional interest in paint on a cloth canvas, even though it is a facsimile of reality?”

These are not words she would ever say. I feel as if my heart is pulling me down to the floor, suffocating me with the pressure. In a swift motion, I pull out the cartridge and place it on the nearby table. I knew my hopes were too ambitious, insane even. I look blankly ahead as I get lost in my disappointed mind.

/*

I drove down the road in the rain at night. I was driving home, but by now I was way past my turn home. What I really wanted to do was keep myself distracted. Moonlight illuminated tall trees on either side of the road, and glistened in the puddles. Anything to keep my mind off of her, and anyone else. It didn’t work though. I thought I saw her ghost revealed by the raindrops that splashed onto her -- a thought that I wished I could entertain, but I refused to lie to myself that way.

Red light from the cars in front of me smeared across the windshield. The water distorted everything in front of my car, although maybe that’s what I mistook the tears in my own eyes for. I couldn’t make the distinction. Even so, I was not confused by what I felt: struggling to see loneliness and abandonment as an exception rather than the norm for me. Why should I have expected anything else?

The road didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Just on and on. Perhaps the same was true of any path in life that I had found to traverse. I found her, maybe others, yet ultimately, every stop along the way was leading nowhere. Why be distracted? May as well never stop and keep wandering.

I stopped at a red traffic light. My efforts at rationalization did not provide relief. I wanted to remember who she was, to make real what had felt like a dream. Is it always like this -- is memory an attempt to force dreams into reality -- an attempt to re-create reality out of illusions absent of inconvenient truths?

I noticed the patter of rain against the roof of my car. Each droplet, like a capsule of affection and ease, inevitably crashing and exploding, becoming fragments of memory that could not be made whole again; I doubted that there could ever be a such thing as an emotional shared experience that was not doomed to a swift destruction.

The light turned green. I pressed on the accelerator. A drop of water fell onto my arm. For a second I thought it was a raindrop from a hole in the roof, but realized it was a teardrop from a hole in my heart. Had I actually loved her? Or is that what I felt but failed to fully express for her to notice? I figured it didn’t matter. The opportunity was gone. She was gone.

*/

I escape from my imagination. There is work to do. My theory is sound. Resurrection is unreal; no two minds are identical. All I really need is a few minutes of her personality. Remembering at least one experience with me, as if she really had been there with me herself.

Intent to complete what I had set out to do, I step out of the chamber and return to my seat outside; I pick up the recording cap, secure it to my head, and sit down. Carefully, I make sure the wires are not tangled.

I call out to my team behind me. “One more time. If this one doesn’t succeed, I don’t think any of them will. But if it works. . .” I hesitate to complete expressing my thought. I am distracted by brief flashes of recollection of her in my imagination.

“We have all that we need, though,” my lab manager tells me. “A memory transferred into a machine!”

I take control of my recollections and speak up. “We are just short of creating the first sapient robot. Something conscious, even if only for a few minutes.” This is true, but I hold back mentioning that seeing her again is all I really care about. They already know this, even though most scientists would not admit out loud that the most important advancements are always selfishly personal.

“The connection is good; the empty cartridge is ready.”

In the background I can barely make out the encoding countdown coming from my lab manager. More importantly, I look closely at the robot. I focus on the likeness to her. Her shoulders. Her neck. Her lips. My eyes close.

/*

We were sitting on a plaid blanket on the hillside. Behind us, crumbs from our sandwiches remained on plates, alongside empty bottles of water. The day before I had been working on the final chapter of my dissertation’s first draft. I needed time for my thoughts about my research to process on the subconscious level, through sleep and whatever else. I welcomed the respite, glad to pull in the external world around me.

At the bottom of the hill, maple trees and cherry blossoms were interspersed. On the other side, a main road passed by into the nearby town; the occasional car drove by. She and I were not split off from modern human life, but still alone from any expectation to participate with the commotion of the town ahead. Here, it was quiet enough to think -- not of nature untouched by mankind, but of what to build in the space of my mind and how to fill the empty gaps of nature that called for human intervention. Being with her opened my mind to make potentiality into actuality. The final encouragement to complete my dissertation.

I leaned to my side, supported by left arm, slouching backward, looking over the treetops down below. “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing! Thought I would have leftovers.”

She looked at me with a smile. She sat like I did, but on her right arm, with her left leg bent underneath her. “I told you it would be good. Doesn’t matter if you aren’t really a fan of pesto, it’s always good when I make it.”

Normally I’d want to be busy, but it was simply nice to sit there. The temperature outside was perfectly comfortable; only a few clouds drifted across the sky. Occasionally, a gentle breeze rustled the tops of trees, sometimes blowing off the petals that remained on the cherry blossoms so late in the season.

“Looks like otherworldly snowfall,” she commented.

Suddenly, a strong gust spun across us and rustled the blanket. I looked to my side and noticed that the gust made her hair disheveled. She fixed it but not quite -- on the left side of her head, a few strands had gone across her eyes and over her ear. I don’t think she noticed. I reached over and straightened out her hair for her.

I acted out of impulse. I didn’t know if she would welcome that I touched her hair that way, or if being so close to her face was too intimate. I let it be. Why fret over a kindness? I smiled and looked out to the trees again. “Still a beautiful day.”

“Hey, come over here!” she blurted out.

I turned to look at her. I saw her moving closer to me. In a seated position in front of me slightly to the side, she opened up her arms and wrapped them around me in a hug, her head near mine. She squeezed me hard, then kept holding me. I felt her arms around my back; her hair smelled like the breeze, although that might have been an association with the gust of wind that tossed her hair. In the next moment, I wrapped my arms around her. We both stayed quiet -- the shared warmth from closeness felt like a conversation. The warmth inside myself felt like it was about to burst out in tears of happiness.

“Didn’t even give me time to react,” I said calmly.

She leaned back, one hand on my shoulder, and looked me in the eyes. Her face was close to mine. “Seemed like a good moment as any.”

I looked at her neck. It was nice to look at her, not necessarily because of any physical attraction, but because I was looking at her -- the whole person that I valued -- a unique physical manifestation of her mind and character. I looked at her lips, the lips that spoke her words and ideas that captivated my creativity. “Would you like to kiss?”

“I’d like that,” she said lightly.

I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers. I felt as if I was touching her soul directly, as if I could feel the energy of her heart transferring into mine. She put her free arm around my neck, and moved her other arm around my neck to meet it. My emotion was of simple enjoyment. Nothing to analyze. Total comfort for its own sake. Feeling her lips against mine meant that we shared the exact same experience, a mutual touch that went in both directions. Mutual admiration.

We pulled away from each other’s lips and looked each other in the eyes again. “I wasn’t sure you wanted to kiss me!” she said with a subtly embarrassed tone.

“I loved it! I almost didn’t ask.”

“I’m so glad you did. Although, I don’t have a good reason I didn’t ask you first!”

I leaned in for another kiss.

*/

I take off the recording cap. I hold up my left hand, then I feel my lab manager place the cartridge in my grip. Quickly but cautiously, I stand up and make my way into the chamber.

As I did before, I push aside the hair hanging over the exposed robotic neck. I pause, carefully imagining what it would have been like to reach out and touch her actual shoulders, covered in human skin, warm from blood running through her veins. I don’t know if a few seconds pass, or a few minutes. Ready to go, I take the cartridge in my hand and securely press it into the neck.

I rush to stand in front of her -- I’m sure it’s her.

“Hey.”

“That really was a great time with you. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I almost ran away from you right there.”

“You didn’t, that’s why I was so happy. Sometimes the simple memories end up the most important, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, they remind you of the good times, without taking away space to think about the future.”

Her full personality, exactly as I remember it! No artifacts of reconstruction, no peculiarities from approximation. I don’t know if anyone will believe me if I tell them, nor do I care. I hear the latent humor in her voice, the sense of caring that sounded sarcastic but was actually sincere appreciation. I hope that her presence will remain for a while longer.

“What do you see in your future?”

Her eyes shift forward. There is no focus on any object. There is no longer a coherent personality. Her soul is out of my reach.

She disappears again.

<>

The selfless entertainer –- the true entertainer -– produces his art in order to alter the tide of humanity's progress. He ignores the misguided vision of the Soviet propagandist who only observes a mechanical, materialistic existence in the cogs of society. The passion is not within oneself, it's within the living, breathing, biological organism that is mankind. As such, values are obtained from the collective, universal consciousness, by tapping into the mind-well. For millennia, the mind-well was inaccessible, clogged by cultural biases and ignorance. Artists could never reach a full expression. Entertainers, now able to access the Overnet and see the desires of society, can attain that full expression. In this era, the truly selfless entertainer is now being slowly realized.

Investigations of Cyber Fame

Zek was riding his qChopper, guided by ChopperNet's grand intelligence. As any qChopper, it was no larger than the cars of antiquity. He stood over the transparent exit bay on the belly of the qChopper, ready to drop onto the stage awaiting him another hundred stories up on the 623rd floor. Through the bay, he barely saw the outline of the rectangular base of the Superscraper, despite the base being over ten miles in diameter. His qChopper was well equipped with a comfortably pressurized interior. He didn't need oxygen tanks and masks to stay clearheaded at such high altitudes.

He looked through the qChopper, waiting, thinking. Repetitive spinning blades overhead became the percussion of a song's introduction. A gust of wind shook the qChopper.

The elliptical concert-floor was presently in view -- it extended from the Superscraper. Transparent, thick walls contained the concert floor's pressurized air. He noticed the inverted slope supporting the floor against the Superscraper. The triangular matte-black support invited the crescendo for the upcoming performance -- a rising aura of a low synthesizer accompanied the rhythm within himself. As he rose above the concert-floor, the internal music increased its power. Thousands of people spread about the massive floor were cheering and waiting for him. He paid no attention to the crowd. All he saw was the potential for his dancing to paint the movements of individuals and produce a composition of the current and future progress of humanity. With the levitation tube to the stage below now underneath the exit bay of the qChopper, he was ready to begin painting.

He jumped onto the platform that was carved as a circular cutout in the roof of the concert floor. The qChopper flew away. Transparent walls came up from the edges of the circle, half a meter past Zek's height. Steadily, the now-cylindrical platform lowered itself to the concert floor along thin, metal tracks leading to the performance stage. The platform lowered itself further.

The platform stopped when its top was level with the ceiling, then sealed itself off to prevent any fluctuations in air pressure. Walls extended outward from the base of the platform, and then folded inward to become a cylinder covering the metal tracks. Cheers grew in energy as the crowd saw the extreme dynamics of a curved shape twisting and lengthening itself. It was Zek's signature entrance as the Digital Coil –- so-named because of the coiled black outfit twirling around his body ending high above his shoulder. He reached the stage.

Zek began his movements. Green twirls spun outward from his hands; yellow starbursts were generated by his dancing; purple parallel lines turned perpendicular. His singing enhanced the vividness of his movements by connecting rhythm to his language of thought. The dynamics enabled the grandest of achievements: The Ballet of Ideas.

Something was wrong. Connections veered off into infinite oblivion. Some nodes were isolated.

Movements became staggered, lyrics became recital, rhythm became repetition. Still, the audience kept cheering, missing the change. Zek wondered why so many missed what was obvious to him. Something in the world that he intuitively detected was breaking down, but he could only speculate about what it was. Maybe it was something within himself that was decaying. But nothing had changed since his last performance a week before.

The truth of the situation was unknown, and hindered Zek's performance, but he had to continue. His fans counted on him. He had to reach the final song, Axiomatic Mandelbrodt. It was music for the masses. Artists do not exist without viewers, without consumers. The problem was himself, his stubborn insistence that his art need not be created for anyone else but himself. As the love of his fans indicated, such selfishness was invited a disconnect between the admired and the admirer in the social reality before him.

Each movement of his performance was a brushstroke placing one subtle color at a time onto the canvas. He knew it was only a matter of time before the smears became a meaningful image. Zek was determined to make Axiomatic Mandelbrodt the proof of social reality's primacy over materialistic reality.

On the ceiling above the stage, spirals of green, blue, and purple light coiled straight down and through the transparent floor. As the music slowed down to a cloudy ambiance, the coils straightened out into columns. Single digits spanned the width of the coils and streamed downward along the pillars of light. A new column of red light sped upwards, coinciding with an increase in tempo, raised notes, and occasional percussive smashes. As it reached through the transparent ceiling towards the sky, the impassioned red purified itself into white.

Moments after the transformation into white, the dark colored number streams snapped over to the central column. The numbered streams tangled helplessly, losing any sense of mathematical perfection they had minutes before.

Zek looked towards the nearest person that he could find. He saw a look of wide-eyes and stillness expecting that something had gone wrong. Zek was unable to unravel the mess of symbols into an artistic revelation. Cheers turned into boos.

Zek stopped dancing and stood still. Whatever music existed for the masses, he could not produce it. Going back to concreteness, the performance was emptied of his own unworded emotions.

Lights stopped moving. All visual effects went blank. Zek waved his arm downward and his platform sank below stage. As he went down, his superfame status was not enough to stop the jeers and boos. Underneath, the circuit boards that controlled the stage were laid bare. He saw all the underlying operations, but was still unable to overcome and build an emergent artwork.

Behind him, Mettelson, in his classic suit-and-tie getup, was yelling.

“The hell was that, Harry?”

“That’s not my name.”

“Peripheral. Tell me already, what happened?”

Zek turned around. “Not like you’d understand, you don’t even know what I am.” He was glaring past Mettelson, down the catacomb of circuitry.

“I’m your manager, the name doesn’t matter. How is this acceptable?”

“I’m doing what I must, for art.”

“You think that’s how I got you here? Don’t be delusional.” Mettelson rolled his eyes and took a step back.

“Art was always my goal, I told you this many times.”

“And I told you I didn’t give a damn. Art. Pop. Just words!”

“So it makes no difference what I do.”

“Dance. Sing. Pose where I say. Stop making it so damn complicated.”

“I don’t want simplicity, I want more.”

“That’s not how it works. It’s all image.”

“And creativity.”

“Creativity got you that abortion of a performance, now I need to do damage control.”

Zek looked him in the eye. “It’s still growing, evolving.”

“Music in society, it was figured out years ago.”

“There’s more.”

“Arguing. Wasting my time.” Mettelson straightened out his tie, then grabbed Zek’s shoulder. “Do as I say and this will all be fine.”

“For whom?”

Mettelson let go and walked onward, his back turned to him. “For anyone that knows what’s good for him.”

Zek walked to his dressing room, where Mettelson had come from.

#

Zek was back on his 1000th-floor home. Compared to the small echelon of superstars living on the highest floors, his home was a small hovel, despite the long, polished-white driveway. Any floors much higher were too difficult to reliably regulate meteorology indoors. He liked his location not for its elitism, but for its comfort and heavenly view of the world outside. The mansion itself was an architectural marvel, at least in his eyes. Rich coloration and proportion, placed upon perfectly cut straight-edge forms and quietly introduced curves that did not ring out beyond their purpose. It was, for Zek’s ear, a symphonic transformation from rigid notes to microtonal harmony.

Inside, the mansion only held what was necessary for an aesthetic pursuit so crucial for his artistry. Painting and sculptures –- each selected to provoke a range of experiences. Yet the Overnet was so much more of his living. It was where he created his music. Upstairs, the simulation room was spacious in all directions, with nothing else except a dedicated computer. Zek was sitting still, a controller in the palm of his hand, interfacing goggles covering his eyes and ears.

But the cyber-Zek was not so passive. He was in an expansive square of green grass, skyscrapers at each corner. A pond was in the middle, among short, flowering trees. At times, the skyscrapers would change form, evolving to fit the mood Zek was in. This was his design, this was his cyberscape.

Drolgs were drinking from the pond as he watched. His prized flying Drolg was raised from its start as an egg, bred for brilliant red and orange plumage, shape of its claws, and adaptability of temperament. He called it Rocerra, a giant bird whose cat legs would otherwise suggest a softening of will. As it drank, Zek was admiring what he made. No, it wasn’t a true biological lifeform, but he designed it. Rocerra was alive as an extension of his creativity, an outflow of spills from writing music that refused to be wasted. His other Drolgs were about ready to sleep, even the rabbit-eared Oestro was slowing down after its meal. Today, the Drolgs were fed stamina boosters, a special mix Zek concocted after extensive research on Drolg data decay. Drolgs, after all, were only as strong as their data structure.

Looking, watching, it wasn’t going anywhere. Powerful as the Drolgs were, he was not able to find motivation. His art had failed. It was a denial from society that he was really going to attain a state of selfless art. They didn’t want it. He was not going to meld with social unity. Whatever he did, he was further and further away from the enlightened fame he reached for. Maybe Mettelson was right, that music was already figured out. As wildly ignorant of diplomacy Mettelson was, he knew the pulse of society. Zek was the one drifting away, losing the purpose of his art. Mandelbrodt, what vanity! He had to reconnect to his fans, to humanity.

The Drolgs were all asleep on the grass. Sitting still, a secluded hermit, already having attained love and all manners of luxury, this was all he had to be. There was no “more” that existed. But the sleeping Drolgs, they grew, they changed. Each one meant something to itself, absent a society, as distinct creatures. Zek stood up, then touched each Drolg to send them into storage for the night.

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Fiora stepped on top of the table in the center of the abandoned club. The light was dimmed, as if for a fancy meal with all the finest vegetables imported from Earth. But this could never be: There was no possibility of finding food in its natural form untouched by man on Earth or on Mars. Everything around her, artificial. The cadre of followers around her looked up intensely, eager to find a new direction in their lives.

“We aren’t about to let Mars go the way of Earth. This is our time to act. At this crucial moment, at this moment when the edges of the megalopolis are expanding beyond the canal, there is no better time to reverse the desecration of yet another planet.”

On the bottom level of the megalopolis, on the Martian surface, Fiora easily hid the activities of the Planetary Reversalists. Away from the oligarchic political structure of the Martian Confederacy. Away from the main currents of capitalism unfettered by the lack of any formal control. Even closer to the soil necessary for the nourishment of all living things. How she mourned the loss of organic connection to nature!

“There is no destruction that can surpass what unsustainable industrialization has brought to the natural world. I have no doubt in my mind that the harmonious community we envision will overcome the impending desecration of Mars’ cliff sides! The Aresian racetrack will not and cannot exist.”

Cheers from the small group echoed throughout the wide open space, a sound of exaggerated intensity in Fiora’s ears. Each member of the group refused to accept what they knew to be the dismissal life of a Martian laborer. As dark as the walls were around them, they would never be deterred; they could see a bright future ahead.

“Harmony at any cost!”

Fiora stepped forward with one foot onto the back of a nearby chair. She put her weight forward and forced the chair to tip over. Supported underneath her feet, she rode the chair to the ground and gracefully took a step off. The cheers grew louder.

*

Fiora looked out the zeppelin’s window, up to the rails it was connected to. To her left, she could see the rails extending to the megalopolis for miles, support towers intermittently placed along the way. To her right, she could see the rails angle gently downwards to the racetrack’s landing dock. Around the racetrack were canals and canyons -- Fiora imagined longingly for a world where architecture melded into the environment, rather than embracing industrialization that dominated nature. Mars didn’t need to go the same way as Earth!

The zeppelin neared the dock. She could hear the motors loudly slow down, breaking her concentration. She became aware of the people around her in the nearby seats. They chattered loudly, with excitement about the grand opening. “Now arriving at the Aresian Racetrack and Arena,” the robotic voice declared over the loudspeaker. Everyone stood up - except Fiora. Was everyone ready? Had the rest of her crew followed orders properly?

The doors of the zeppelin opened. A wide ramp extended from the dock to the zeppelin, then widened as far as the width of its transport cabin. Fiora stood up when she heard the first footsteps. Shorter than most of them, save for a handful of children around, she wasn’t able to see much ahead. The passengers and their excited voices slowly made their way out. Much too slow, she wanted to change the course of history!

Unwilling to wait much longer, she ducked under arms and squeezed between bodies to force her small frame ahead. Once outside, all the way onto the main platform, she paused to look up at the entranceway to the arena seats. On either side were pillars three stories tall, as tall as the arena, decorated with golden chevrons on their entire height. Soon, Fiora thought, the bombastic display of human ego would be demolished -- to make way for organic humility towards the Martian landscape. Just as the first few passengers caught up to her, she rushed to the entrance.

Large transparent doors stood at the threshold to the arena. A laser scanned Fiora’s body. A loud beep indicated that she was okayed to pass; she stepped through. Color coded lines on the floor directed her where to go, a dark blue line going straight ahead to the audience seats. She turned right, followed the green line to the underbelly of the racetrack. A quick turn to the left, down an incline, she was already out of sight of the incoming crowd behind her.

She slipped into an alcove to her side. From her bag, she took out a deep purple engineering crew jacket and put it on over her clothing. On its back was the logo for Team Mercurial, the center of the letters stretched out to the right in order to form a point. She took out scissors and a comb from her bag, grabbed onto her hair, and cut it down to shoulder length. She ran the comb through her hair, releasing a chemical which immediately turned her light hair into a deep auburn color. Just ahead, footsteps were coming in her direction. She quickly stuffed everything away and slung the bag on her shoulder.

As she stepped out from the alcove, the footsteps were revealed to be from a humanoid construct. Its joints were exposed metal, the eyes an artificial red color. Everything else, as normal as can be.

“Are you lost?” it said.

“I’m late, not lost!” she lied.

Fiora ran ahead to the engineering bay of Team Mercurial. The construct turned to watch her run down the corridor.

*

Damien sat in his privileged position at Mercurial’s engineering team’s observation screens, on the upper level of the engineering bay. Opening day of the racetrack! The first race of the first ever Martian racing league. This race mattered. It meant something. Much of his career was spent taking steps to help establish Formula Ares. A master of words and invention, he brought the excitement of a new sport originating from Mars. He could see the reality of the new league in front of him; on the screens he saw current stats of the vehicles and detailed vital signs of the team’s two drivers. Not a hitch.

Damien looked away from the screen, out of the large window, to the swerving racetrack down below. Far ahead, drones hovering over the center of the racetrack projected a sequence of images to the crowd on the west side. The projection showed that the track extended beyond the border of the atmospheric dome into the open Martian air, down into a canyon and up a massive hill, then looping back into the dome.

Eventually, the sequence stopped for a while over the starting line. This is what Damien was waiting for. How exciting it was to see the Formula Ares cars waiting at the starting line! The cars looked like jets, slender and narrow, poised to launch; the four wheels seemed to merge seamlessly into the fuselage. Combined with lower gravity than Earth, and less wind resistance, no one was sure what would happen in a competitive setting.

He stepped away from the window and made his way down the nearby stairs. Was the team really ready? Had he really spent his money to develop the top of the line technology for the Ares cars? Did investing so much of…

The sudden wave of doubts washed away when he reached the lower level and could focus on the race directly once again: Mercurial’s dark blue logo stamped across the spotless white and torpedo-like fuselage, on the other side of the engineering bay. Damien was consumed by the car’s beauty -- the technological beauty of what went into building it, adapting to the demands of the Martian atmosphere, the necessity of a reasoning mind to create it.

The pit crew swarmed the car, but had begun to disperse, satisfied that the team was ready to win. As the last crew member stepped away, Damien could see Alexei sitting in the cockpit, breathing suit and all. He heard the rumble of the car start; the car drove forward, out of the engineering bay, towards the starting position.

The activity of the engineering bay, the roar of the crowd outside, the beauty of the car in front of him -- Damien’s attention was consumed. Why worry about anything!

*

Alexei sat ready. Hands on the steering wheel. He knew that several thousand people sat in the arena seats above, that everyone from Team Mercurial was watching him, and many thousands more were watching from their own phone and computer screens -- but they didn’t really exist to him. The racetrack existed. The cars existed. Nothing else. For all he cared, every moment of his life led to this moment of his career, most of all his time as a driver in lower megalopolis. Not that he ever had any expectations.

The vague red hue of the Martian air outside of his car was like nothing any racer had ever experienced. Not the clear atmosphere of Earth to breathe in with contentment, but the sometimes dusty and always unbreathable atmosphere of Mars that was conquered by human will. All around him, 29 other cars were ready to speed off just as he was. Each of the drivers wanted to beat the competition just as much as the first builders of Mars wanted to defeat the harsh and barely livable environment. The closest thing he, or anyone else, had to experience were simulations of the racetrack. They were all pioneers.

Alexei shifted each of his fingers, re-gripping the steering wheel. Through the earphones in his helmet, he heard that the race was starting in exactly one minute. Carefully, he studied the track in front of himself -- the 100 yards straight and flat inside the arena, planning how to overtake his competitors. Over and over, he visualized dashing around the first car in front of him, then blasting ahead as if he were the only driver who knew the correct path. Mars was his home, nothing on the planet foreign to him!

10 seconds remaining. He didn’t hear the words over his headphones so much as he felt them. He tightly closed the visor of his helmet and secured it to his breathing suit that would allow him to breathe outside the dome. 5 seconds. Briefly, he stretched his neck and shoulders to make sure he could handle the next hour of racing. One second, and…

The speed of the car blasting off -- flames for a full second -- instantly pushed his back hard against his seat. Though the road was straight, the force against him required all his strength to keep his neck steady. Four cars maintained their position in front of him, and then another overtook him. But all of this was inconsequential so early in the race -- the only wheels he cared about were his own.

He zoomed down the road, the edge of the dome fast approaching. Through the brief tube that separated the arena from the open air. From his narrow visor, Alexei saw the cars ahead of him dip below his view. Another second and he burst out from the tube, immediately dropping deep into a ravine as wide as three cars. The shadows cast down from high above created the excitement of entering another universe altogether. The red walls on either side blurred past, the direct and immediate perception of speed. Solid reality.

He caught up to the back tail fin of the nearest car; he turned the steering wheel to the left gently as he approached the upcoming curve. Continued straight for a moment, then turned to the right, hard. His angle was just wide enough to slingshot past the 5th position car before finishing the curve. He slotted himself into the newly formed gap between cars. On the straightaway, the road began to angle gradually upwards.

*

Fiora squeezed past metal beams in the back of the engineering bay, in the direction of the racetrack’s finish line. The entirety of Team Mercurial stood outside the door to the engineering bay, watching the racetrack. Completely immersed in the racing world. Selfish and unaware of what they had done to the planet, what they were a part of, she thought. Through the back door and her mission would be complete.

“What are you doing?” Damien asked. He had just stepped down from watching the screens on the observation floor, ready to witness, first hand, the cars complete their first lap.

Hardly an accident. Fiora spun around. “I’m taking control of the race,” she declared. She wanted someone to know who had masterminded the upcoming shift in the planetary development of Mars. Not the confederacy or the mission of a single corporation. Her.

He stood still, cautiously. He contemplated calling out to the team. But there would never be another opportunity to figure out who this person was. Sabotage from another team had to be caught immediately. “Are you from Lightfoot?”

She proudly stood tall. “The Planetary Reversalists.”

“I don’t recognize the name.”

“We’re turning back the damage you have done to the planet.”

“Me? I’ve enhanced the planet.”

Fiora leaned in accusingly. “Your anthropocentric mind can’t think beyond yourself!”

Damien looked at her suspiciously. “The races are going to shape the future of Mars, the achievement will be–”

“The achievement will be the decay of Mars, just like how Earth was turned into an artificial mess of conflicting desires interspersed with misery.”

He pointed outside to the crowds of people. “Look at the excitement and vitality around you!”

Fiora tossed a small spherical device to Damien. “The detonation device. See? Nothing you can do now.”

A bright light in the center of the sphere pulsed through a small slit. Nothing to interfere with or interrupt. The rhythm was unchanging. “What have you done?”

“I’m about to turn this whole place to rubble. Reverse all these materials to the past, when they were all immersed with the planet itself.”

“The past?” He threw the detonation device at her; she batted it away. “But we’ve overcome all the ways that nature tries to kill us every day. Outside the dome we’d all die. I’m shaping the future in our human image! Reinvigorating the planet with excitement.”

“You wouldn’t understand harmony. You wouldn’t care.” She turned to make her way out.

Damien put his foot forward, towards Fiora, ready to run. At the same time he heard a sudden explosion. In response, much of the team turned around and ran back into the engineering bay. Fiora was about to slip through the door in the back, but Damien managed to tackle her.

“A little help here!” he called out.

*

At the top of the hills, Alexei saw for miles -- the entire Zeppelin network leading to megalopolis, dust storms barely perceptible in the distance, pale Martian sunlight. No cars in front of him. The only thing ahead, the finish line to mark off the end of the lap. Anything could change in the next 40 laps, but that future didn’t exist. Nothing but the moment.

The hill began to descend. Down the incline. All the while, the car behind him overtook him. It swerved in front, blocking sight of the starting line. In a moment they were both in the connecting tube to the dome. There was a rumble in the distance.

BOOM. The ceiling fell down in front of him, simultaneous with an explosion nearby. Intuitively, he instantly dodged the falling debris. His mind was taken out of the race. It couldn’t be an accident. Not at this moment. Not the moment when the racetrack was about to fulfill its purpose. Who would want to interfere with these symbols of ingenuity? He kept driving – life had to keep going despite the questions.

Richard, the CEO of Aresian Mining, watched from the other end in his office; a camera placed on the ceiling of the dome captured each moment. Often he had been accused of exploiting his labor force, but he preferred to spend his mental energy thinking about the incredible industrial vista in front of his eyes. Presently, he considered a more reasonable criticism in the media that he was detached from the mining operation he profited from. He quickly dismissed the idea, focusing instead on the innovation that would come from his company’s products. Of course he wanted to feel the dusty grime inside the dome, but soon enough he knew he would be dealing with investor meetings and making preparations for the Confederate Conference.

The zeppelin cleared the opening of the dome, which closed from behind. Richard switched to the camera on the airship. He could see that on either side of the airship were the rails that it traveled along its journey to megalopolis. Defense fighter jets flew in on the flanks to safely see it off. Connecting towers for the rails took over the otherwise barren scenery, leading far into the horizon. Though the shipping operation occurred every week, Richard still felt pride with each grimy and noisy movement that he funded and oversaw.

Suddenly the jets along the flanks pulled back and began their landing sequence right in place. Another moment, the camera went out. Nothing but snow on Richard’s screen. Blankness and silence. Before he could do anything, the camera turned on again. Spider jets had landed on top of the zeppelin. From the camera’s position on the nose, he could not get a clear view of what was happening, but he could still hear metal tendrils coming out of spiders. Pirates. Each week for the past month, the same thing had happened.

Out of sight, the tendrils reached underneath the zeppelin to cut into the ore containers. With violence, the ore fell out of the openings, into wide trucking vehicles driving on unpaved Martian ground. From behind, the defense jets had now turned around, though they had flown far away, beyond the dome. Quickly, the spider jets retracted their tendrils and took off; peeled back in the same direction. They dashed to the canyons and rock formations. By the time the defense jets reached the airship again, the pirates were well hidden in the uneven terrain. Pursuit would be useless, as they had their own defensive structures embedded into the canyon walls.

Richard knew the reports well by now. He didn’t need to see what was happening. He had no reaction, nor was there a need to begin yelling and finding individuals to blame for yet another catastrophic heist. Sure, they were called pirates, but whoever they were led by was a true business innovator. Outsmarted, out-teched, there were no immediate options. Even so, the use of force was intolerable; no one had reached out for a business negotiation. Millions of dollars, lost. Something had to be done.

#

On the upper tiers of the Martian skyscraper, the Confederacy held a meeting. It was a who’s who of the Aresian business world. The windows in the back of the room overlooked the megalopolis, with visibility extending beyond the glass dome enclosing the city. At the central table, the primary bond holders of the Confederacy were given reserved seats. Surrounding them in descending order were bond holders who were ready to state their mind at a moment’s notice. But of course, the primary members weren’t going to pay them much credence - not when those who lived in the megalopolis judged for themselves the value of each company.

The head of the Martian Shipping Corporation spoke up from the central table. “The first and frankly only item on the agenda today is a growing pirate menace.”

The owner of Interstellar Productions responded: “But do we know why your shipments are being attacked?”

From the next tier back, the security czar from Steel chimed in. “As far as we can tell, it’s simple thievery. There has been no calling card with any of the incidents. No possibility of negotiation right now.”

Nous’ leadership had an immediate answer. “I can’t afford these unknowns, my customers depend on the quality of my memory cartridges. I plan to have an expanded defense contract with Steel.”

“I’m in the same situation,” explained the CTO of Synaptic Pulse, “except I’m going to go with the services of another company.”

“Nonsense,” said Richard. For a few moments, he didn’t speak; he shifted the ring on his finger, the muted red colors from its inset minerals showing his normally preserved manner. Every bond holder in the room fell silent as they waited for him to elaborate. “You all sound just like the Terran governments. Here on Mars we’re supposed to expand the possibilities of human innovation.”

“And what do you suppose we do?”

“I’m going to create a new squad. None of you have shown the capacity to deal with the pirates. My engineers have dealt with worse.”

“You’re overstepping.”

“Doesn’t matter. The Martian Treaty clearly stipulates that self defense may be implemented without any consent or awareness of others.”

“And how are we supposed to recognize if your squadron is yet another group of pirates?”

“Because it won’t extend beyond my own company.”

“I’d rather we vote. As stakeholders, we all need a say. Unilateral decisions regarding defense are far too risky for political stability.”

Sounds of agreement could be heard throughout the room. Many felt confident in the charter that the joint ownership of the elevator that it outlined could prevent violence. Indeed, any act of violence against another member of the Confederacy would lead directly to losing any access to the elevator. Even with distributed defense, the economic benefits of the elevator dictated the actions of each company; dollars are more impactful than bullets - so said the Martian slogan.

“Then buy me out. Buy my shares. I don’t need the elevator anyway if I can’t ship my ore.”

Silence. No one wanted to jeopardize ore shipments by halting the supply of any Martian goods.

Martian Shipping Corporation broke the silence. “Why do you want to threaten the entire Martian economy? We need tight control of any weaponized organizations, you can’t suddenly create your own response to the pirates.”

“As if Steel isn’t in your pocket?”

“That’s different!” He said, resisting any possible accusation of hypocrisy. “They serve all the corporations, we’ve gone decades without any issues.”

“I take it that you’ll buy me out then?”

“We…” He was flustered. “No one can afford that. You know how big you are.”

Synaptic Pulse tried to mediate. “Look, just put more money into other company. Soon enough the pirates will be taken care of.”

“So I’ll press them to operate more efficiently. Competition does wonders. I can’t afford waiting any longer.”

Each of the business leaders looked at Richard. None wanted to break decorum, none wanted to risk their current status in control over the elevator. The vast sums of wealth that each company brought in supported the superstructure - each company relied on the elevator, and no single company could maintain the elevator independently if they tried.

“Next item on the agenda?”

#

Three months had gone by. Zeppelin shipments had halted temporarily until the pirate problem had been dealt with. But today, the squadron was assembled. Several small defense agencies contributed thanks to generous funding from the mining company. His officers had disputed the research and development costs as unnecessarily redundant, given the number of defense agencies already operating on Mars. A mining company, moving into defense? Vertical integration was not a business model worth pursuing when the Martian economy operated like a single organism. But collectivist organization was a Terran superstition - individualized competition among companies was the norm.

From a distance, through a camera, Richard observed the three modified spider jets standing just outside the zeppelin loading bay. They stood upright on five legs, a machine gun mounted on each. Richard zoomed in the camera. Left to right, he observed the decidedly small group of pilots. The best pilots in the business, poached from Steel and other companies. He had spent the entire company defense budget for his engineers to deck out the jets, who optimize every parameter possible - transformation time most notable of all.

The leftmost jet, piloted by Antoine, took off first. He flew up to the zeppelin and landed on top. “Ain’t anything going to get through us boss,” he said into his microphone.

The rightmost jet, piloted by Kerry, followed his lead and landed just behind him. “I just want to finish the mission already,” she transmitted to the others.

Samson, the pilot of the remaining jet, didn’t bother moving. He walked the jet forward, outside the loading bay, onto the red Martian soil. “Are you guys coming?” he questioned.

Richard spoke into the microphone on his desk and spoke directly to the three pilots at once. “This is a crucial shipment. The largest one in the history of the company. All future investment in the company, and your paychecks, requires that it goes smoothly. I don’t want to look like a fool.” He abruptly cut off his transmission. Ten weeks of training was enough to trust the trio, or at least it had to be enough. Micromanagement was unnecessary - there was nothing to say that would change the outcome. Why worry about it? Saying anything more would only be interference. He opted to wait.

The zeppelin began following the rails, with Kerry and Antoine riding on top. Samson looked up from his vantage point, observation equipment set to detect any mechanical activity out in the plains. “Still all clear, no sign of pirate activity,” he announced. Confident there was no imminent danger, he tilted the front of the jet backwards so that he faced the sky, into launch mode. The legs retracted and formed into wings; the jets ignited. In a moment, the jet blasted into the air. Though he reached high altitude quickly, he dove downward then angled the jet parallel with the ground. “Establish defense formation.”

“Acknowledged,” Antoine and Kerry responded. They entered into the same launching sequence, going skyward then back down to pursue Samson. They boosted their engines for a moment and caught up. Once near each other, the three jets pulled together into the shape of an equilateral triangle, forming a patrol unit. In another moment they broke formation and flipped backwards, flying back towards the zeppelin.

As he arched backward to the zeppelin, Antoine scanned the terrain around him. To his surprise, there was still nothing. “No activity on the horizon,” he said. Kerry and Samson shifted modes again and landed on the zeppelin. They held the position, facing opposite directions of each other. As support, Antoine corkscrewed around the zeppelin, always within range to provide security. Though they were a small group, their proximity to each other fortified against both wireless hacking and brute force gunfire; invisible to the naked eye, the spider jets were connected by a defensive array of lasers. Indeed, the company’s engineers had devised an innovative defense system, optimized specifically to counter the broad spectrum wall of interference signals that the pirates used.

Enough time had passed that the zeppelin was already several kilometers away from the dome. The pirates had plenty of opportunity to attack, as all prior attacks had occurred much sooner. The zeppelin was about to reach the first connecting tower of the rail system.

“Are they really that scared of us?” Kerry wondered aloud.

Samson took another look at the screen in front of him. Empty of activity. He shifted his jet’s position on the zeppelin, taking a step with each of the six legs. “I’d prefer that they weren’t scared. I’m getting bored.”

Antoine continued his flight pattern around the zeppelin. Looping and twirling. “That can’t be it. There isn’t a dust storm or any kind of cover for them. It would be suicide if they came at us now.”

The zeppelin approached the next connecting tower. Suddenly from the valleys in the distance ahead, a squadron of jets blasted upwards into the sky. Smoke trailed behind them - a choreographed pattern rather than an incidental effect. “Five bogeys spotted!” Kerry exclaimed. She stepped her spider legs forward to the nose of the zeppelin. As the squadron pulled downward from the sky, she armed her machine guns and prepared to fire.

In response, Samson shifted to jet mode. “Can we be sure it’s the pirates?” he said as the jets began to fire up. In another moment, he took off and blasted towards Antoine.

The pirate squadron dive bombed the zeppelin. As a unit, they went toward the nose where Kerry stood. They got closer and closer without slowing, evidently intent on collision. The velocity with which they moved would cause catastrophic damage upon crashing. The wings of the attacking jets bent backwards, further increasing their velocity.

“They’re bypassing everything, they’ve gone suicidal!” Kerry yelled. She fired her machine gun at them, even though she knew it couldn’t do more than slightly slow them down.

Antoine and Samson boosted themselves towards the incoming jets, both coming from either side. All the while, Kerry continued to fire, buying time for her companions. Samson scanned the cockpit of the jets and checked the vital signs of the pilots, hoping to predict their movements in real time. But there wasn’t anything to detect. “No one is in a pilot seat!” he blurted out. Completely unlike the pirates, but they still had the unique pirate insignia branded on their sides. A test assault?

“This isn’t gonna be good,” Antoine said. The trio all knew that even shooting down the jets would not stop the imminent collision. Instinctively, he transformed into tank mode mid flight and flew straight towards the incoming jets. Samson and Kerry watched as he flew himself into the jets and grabbed on with the spider legs, forcing them out of the way. Even so, four still remained; reacting to Antoine, Samson managed to get the stragglers out of the way in the same manner.

With spider legs tightly wrapped around the jets, they continued to ride into the ground. Before crashing, both Samson and Antoine leapt off of their respective jets and landed on the ground. The jets exploded upon impact. Having regained their footing, the pair observed the crater’s left behind.

Kerry stepped to the very edge of the zeppelin’s nose. She surveyed the damage. “I guess that ends things quickly,” she said, unimpressed.

“A moment ago you were screaming,” Samson argued.

Despite the commotion, the zeppelin had reached the third connecting tower. Richard’s voice came into the headphones of the trio. “Better than I could have expected. Don’t wait around, there might be another attack.”

Antoine walked even closer to the crater nearest him and looked inside. “Just doing our job,” Antoine remarked.

#

Buy the book

The Overnet created a society like no other in human history. Implications upon life were as unpredictable as the ebb and flow of history itself, brought upon by the dynamism of technology. Some said the fundamental structure of human society had shifted towards a focus on the depth of individual ideas and personality, away from a materialized, option-less existence. Some would say the soul was freed of its body. Others would claim that the mind had transcended a sense of ego, establishing itself as a member of the collective Overnet consciousness, nanochips and all. Still more would state that human potential had been expanded by stretching the universe into an extra dimension of information. The philosophy need not matter -– the Overnet was a change to the universe, brought about by human technological ingenuity.

Foundations of the Overnet, 3rd edition

“Sir, this is a waste of my time,” Val burst out while standing in the doorway.

  Val's boss was sitting at his pristine, white desk, his back facing her. He was looking out the wide window at his end of the room. Outside was a vast expanse of forest that extended beyond the horizon, but Val knew the scene was not his concern -- Henry Jerrenthal was a prominent man, too prominent to acknowledge his underlings. He was moving digital boxes about the window. Faces of others on the Overnet hierarchy were strewn about the crisp, clear boxes, avatars distinctly conversing with one another. Several taps later and after placing a sphere that shrunk the scene, he spun his chair around to face Val.

  “Waste of time? We're running the Overnet, and I selected you as a top graduate of the Cyberscape Technological Institute. Graduates strive to be a part of the Overnet team. You will learn how to best use your knowledge,” Jerrenthal explained calmly. Passive aggression was more likely.

  Val responded, arms to her side. “Sir, it's not about my knowledge. The principle of the thing... it's a waste of my time, I never thought I'd have to direct the dissemination of information.”

  “Individuals strive to have that meritocratic role. You've proven yourself, Val,” Jerrenthal said shallowly with a forced smile.

  Val looked at Jerrenthal and squinted her eyes with a barely noticeable tilt of her head. “I don't want to do that, I don't want that role.”

  His voice grew louder. “What do you want, then? Get back to work, your paycheck is waiting. This is what you should have learned in school.”

  “I do not appreciate your patronizing attitude. I went to school to learn how the Overnet works in intimate detail, and specialized in data tracking. I'm willing to alter the job so it's more appropriate for me.”

  Jerrenthal began to get annoyed. “I don't need a lecture. You are too naïve to be telling me this. Do your job, you're smart enough to do it correctly, and smart enough to learn daily practicalities. Look, follow your commands, and it'll be easier.”

  “I didn't go to school to follow commands, I went to school to become an expert whose own judgment can be relied upon. I am not capable of that in my current job, so I'd like to join the Overnet security team.”

  “You'll have to wait until you earn _that_ position. There is protocol.”

  Val's demeanor had become excited, her hands poised to begin gesturing. “Earn or not, you hired me for my knowledge. My knowledge would be best put towards an actual security team. I want the Overnet to function ideally for all peo--”

  “Idealism is not realism. Your philosophizing means little. There is a certain hier---”

  Val turned around and walked out of the room. 'Hierarchy' was the only word she could hear behind her. All around, a bureaucracy was visible, and she was part of it, no matter how much she despised the idea. Many were graduates of the same program as Val, but all appeared content with their situation. A promised job for life with benefits and room for political meandering. What wasn't there to love, especially if the work began so simple?

  The 500th floor was a distinguished place for post-graduates of the Institute, but now Val was preparing to leave in disillusionment of the role she could play in helping the Overnet. As she walked to her desk, all around the floor were screen projections showing their three-dimensional representations of the Overnet cyberspace. Each projection was manipulated by operators using both hands as controllers. Three rows of tables later, she arrived at her computer, which was at the first sectional. Light-manipulating thin walls made it impossible to notice anyone nearby, except for the occasional ripple on the wall. Nothing much to grab, except the little, flat, black tablet projecting the workspace interface, taking up most of the sectional's wall -- the controller was attached to her wrist. Val pressed a button. The interface thinned out to a horizontal line, then vanished into an atomic speck.

  She stepped out of the sectional and saw two guardbots. Their treaded tires and metallic arms softly made noise. “You are to leave the entire 500th floor premises, m'aam.” Val sighed the moment the first 'm' became audible. The situation made no sense. Protocol indicated that resignation warranted the guardbots, yet her resignation wasn't even mentioned to Jerrenthal.

  Three sets of verification doors were awaiting Val at the end of the hall to the left, doors whose diameter reached all the way to the thirty-foot-high ceiling. She turned around to try to spot Liam and Kara somewhere in the spacious area, hoping someone she knew could see the whole situation. Val sighed and looked at the ground while ignoring the verification voice. Three doors opened simultaneously, and she ran through. As soon as she made it past, all the doors closed. The north elevator was a half-hour from arriving, so she chose to sit at the floor station's waiting area just down the chrome-gray street.

#

  Val opened the door to her apartment. Before she closed the door, she observed behind her the scene of the elevator station not far in the distance. There was a flurry of people making their way into the urban center south of her apartment. Artificial light generated by the Superscraper was enough to make anyone believe they were outside. Natural light was flowing through massive holo-windows, producing a hazy illumination of the road and suburban sound barriers. Artificial -– but as real as the Overnet. She stepped inside.

  Without cue, the door slid into place, locking automatically. Val placed her belongings onto the antique bed-and-sofa combo in the corner of the lopsided rectangular room. Room enough for a recent graduate, but nothing more. Outside her window, the real outside -– the one perk of the cheap apartment -– was a sunset. Normally the shift to night was abrupt within the Superscraper, but here, the slow dimming was a relaxing transition. A fantastic education built on independent thought, moving into the sudden demand to fall into hierarchical command was too much for her. Sudden digital shifts between being a one and a zero was the demand of the age, not the gradual evolution of an analog shift. The sun finally set. Val fell face first onto her bed.

#

  Breakfast on a Sunday, cooked to perfection by the kitchen according to Val's, Kara's, and Liam's preferences. As every Sunday for the past four years, the three ate breakfast together, never seen as a chore. The apartment was cramped, with a kitchen interface alongside a perfectly square table and S-curved chairs without back legs. Green walls stood as trees while natural light glimmered, producing an antiquated scene from 2012 absent of any overbearing technology of post-Orbital society.

  Liam grabbed and bit a piece of toast. He spoke before swallowing. “You got fired?”

  Val sighed. “Not exactly, I got suddenly removed.”

  Kara laughed. “That's getting fired!”

  “Look, there was no explanation. Protocol says all employees are formally laid off by their employers, as you well know, since you work there. All I did was walk out of the room when Jerrenthal began telling me just to do what I'm told.”

  “Val, you are a damn genius most of the time, but you are also so damn naïve. Of course _you'd_ be fired for that,” Liam responded.

  “Insubordination against The Great Jerrenthal!” Kara chimed in. She took a big bite of the spinach omelet, more than even a chipmunk could handle.

  Val laughed. “This is serious, stop joking around!”

  “Val, this happens. People get a new job. They move on. You only just graduated. Stop getting ahead of yourself. Most people have amusing stories about their first job. You're acting like you failed to start The Revolution and ended up in jail. Put things into proportion,” Liam reasoned.

  “If it's any consolation,” Kara said, “there is an Overnet lounge in town that needs a skilled technologist.”

  “Perfect idea!” Val shouted suddenly while jumping upright out of her seat.

  “Glad to b---”

  “Not you, Kara. Liam!”

  “Oh, don't tell me,” Liam said apprehensively.

  “The Revolution! I'll fix this stupid Overnet so people can spread information as its predecessor used to allow. Everything I saw in my work, there was what only amounted to a censorship bureaucracy. We'll just... I can't explain it all!”

  “Your delusions of grandeur, Komrade Val, won't get you anywhere in life,” Kara said.

  “Slow down Val. College students, even newly graduated ones, get an itch to change the world. The ones that act on it end up decapitated by the CIA in the Colombian jungle.”

  “I'm not like them, I'm smart enough to have a plan. I have knowledge, I graduated top of my class, and you guys did too. Why can't we do it?”

  “Because it's ridiculous,” both of them said simultaneously.

  The breakfast table was empty, save for a few crumbs of a croissant.

  “Guys, I'll explain it to you later,” Val said, looking towards her computer desk, in the opposite direction of her friends.

  “Have fun!” Kara said sarcastically.

  “Hey Val,” Liam said in a soft tone, “sleep on it, play a game. It's not the end of your career.” He winked and walked out of the apartment with Kara. The door closed.

  Val immediately told the kitchen's arms to clear the table. She merged the kitchen table with the computer table next to her bed. It was her usual Overnet setup. She told the apartment to block out the windows; lights went out. A ghostly transparent projection appeared from the computer. The projection grew into an immersive Overnet cyberscape, encompassing all of Val's body, and above her. An open space, a grid with a blue-green illumination and cylindrical link tubes, scattered about the projection within arm's reach. Only with an inhuman amount of focus could bring her attention away from the cyberscape and into the physical world. But this cyberscape was her home, more than even her apartment.

  “Citizen Access verification required,” a voice sounded. She held up her left arm straight out from her side. A light from the projection rotated around her arm, scanning her embedded Overnet Protocol Identification chip. “Access granted.” The colors of the cyberscape turned opaque, allowing Val to interact. The whole expanse of the Overnet to determine her own future was in front of her, all without dependency on the Overnet Inspection Department. Often Val's expansive and idealistic dreams were firmly established in her mind, even the ones where she'd somehow become the leader of a revolution -– never providing a plan of action.

  She reached towards the collaboration cylinder. The surroundings shrunk, while the cylinder unraveled, exposing more cylinders for interaction. Background changed white, with black strips pointing highlighting where the environment ended. Some floating shapes were labeled: knowledge, development, exploration. The ones Val cared about. She reached with her right arm towards 'development' and drew an illuminated ‘X’ shape that remained floating in the air. The cylinder moved forward to merge with the ‘X’, the code for private, linking any further actions to her Overnet account -– only accessible to her and, theoretically, the Overnet department.

  The environment transformed into a more personable scene, one of her design and programming: a skyscraper with an art deco interior filled with sunbursts on the ground and doors, plus ancient Greek motifs of Zeus and Athena. Val stood in the middle, or at least had the sensation of standing. Out of habit, Val looked down at her body. Her outfit changed to one of the era, a green dress with golden accents on the side, appearing androgynous yet still clearly feminine due to the drapey and loose-fitting material. Open and inspiring, a philosophical space. With her right hand she made a W-shape, and with her left hand, a vertical line going through the 'W'. Both shapes remained visible for ten seconds before vanishing. A flurry of papers and posters began appearing around the interior's columns, doors, and walls. “Filter: spreading ideas,” Val spoke out loud. The papers and posters flew out onto the walls, while all the remaining ones flew to the central area of the skyscraper where she was standing. In a matter of seconds, they self-organized rapidly in conjunction with her fluent use of Overnet sign language. Another moment, and a chair spawned behind her.

  She sat down, studying her notes and source materials. “Inform people about parts of a concept, then proceed to point out unstable elements. Do not expect reading will change anyone's mind for them. Be civil. Assume varying contexts of knowledge. Truth is inductive.” Some of the comments were her own, many more ranging from people of antiquity to contemporary thinkers. Val furrowed her eyebrow. None of this was new, let alone a revolutionary basis. But it was all she was striving for. Her face relaxed, and she made a sweeping motion with her left arm. All the pages vanished. On the wall in front of her, she looked at the statue of Athena triumphantly bursting out of Zeus' forehead. The goddess of wisdom was beginning life with a revolutionary act.

  Val held up her hand and pointed her palm outward, then turned it towards herself. A new piece of paper appeared. She pointed towards the corners of the paper, stretching the size to block out view of most of the interior in front of her. “Dictation title: The Plan. Password is...” She made a series of gestures. A vertical line began blinking on the floating paper.

  “All information herein is a culmination of years of study.” She gestured for punctuation. “Basic primer. Establish group name. Take advantage of anonymity and extreme identity control on the Overnet to produce a knowledge movement that is difficult to attach to physical bodies. Keep government out of plans with hacking and data blocking techniques. No media connection -– too easy to inadvertently create direct connection to the revolutionary group. Effect impact by subversive measures to get societal preference. The goal is simply to remove Overnet Inspection Agency. Make desire for change nearly universal. Store as ghost plan.”

  She crossed her arms against her chest. The entire setting disintegrated, leaving the original blue-green gridded background filled with cylinders. In rapid succession, she reached for the ‘entertainment’ cylinder and then the ‘games’ cylinder. A lobby appeared, what the Superscraper’s streets would look like if there were colored Mondrian sectionals strewn about. Val had on an asymmetrically detailed white and black shirt, white pants cleanly cut at the knees to show green leggings underneath. Her hair was shoulder length; the right half was completely dark green, along with bangs. Val took no qualms in her differing looks -– variety at no cost due to her own abilities in programming, even if many said she faked herself on the Overnet. No qualms with the name change: ‘Verde’ was how everyone knew her. She sat down on one of the nearby sofas in an orange sectional and waited. “Send: Aenigma”.

  Val looked around. Many people in varying outfits –- even gladitorial armor -- stood all about the miles-long game cyberscape. Some within earshot were discussing a recent match on Imperium. She enjoyed watching the games, but never became any particular expert. Aenigma always outperformed her. Aenigma appeared right on cue, though apparently female this time. The previous two meetings, both barely a week ago, ve was male. Val smiled upon seeing ver. Nothing about ver was consistent, nor did Val ever figure out what the physical Aenigma looked like, though that strong sense of expression is exactly what appealed to her about ver. Platonic feelings, she claimed. But ve knew a comparable amount about Val.

  “Hey Verde. Got your message. I just finished my game. You were looking for me?”

  “Yup, interesting and exciting news to report, and maybe you can help.” She put her two palms together, fingers downward. Surrounding voices became silent, the conversation limited to only Aenigma.

  “Don't tell me. More of those idiots at the department? Seriously, stop putting up with that. Most people don't change.”

  “Pessimistic encouragement is always one unusual aspect about you. Although... well, yes, but I did stop putting up with it. Bigger plans now.”

  Ve sat next to her. “Bigger than my upcoming tournament?”

  “Very well could be. Hear my crazy idea out.”

  “I am crazy, pure and simple. Crazy is my comfort zone.”

  “A revolution. A real one.”

  “Perfect, I'm exactly the conversationalist that you want! Insane to the max.”

  “That's what Kara and Liam insinuated about me. Glad there is adherence to reality here.”

  “Ah, but as a denizen of the Overnet, much more is possible! It's still a new world. A playground, as I've discovered.” Ve pointed to verself.

  “I'll get right into it then. I don't want the transfer of knowledge to be so stifled. The Overnet is made this way, unable to evolve. Been the same for twenty years, merely increasing in size.”

  “To be expected. Typical won't work here.”

  “Well then, all I can do is hack the system. Disrupt it, alter it, something. Not much else to lose. It will be interesting.”

  “Some fun, real fun, then! Games of Imperium as my professional mark is insufficient, the impact of it bores me.” Aenigma stood up enthusiastically, gesturing with spread arms as an explosion.

  “The plan, though. Theatrics aren't helping. I know some weak points to manipulate the Overnet. I'll start there. It's a security weak point recently produced unwittingly when making room for that Domination tournament.”

  “Human nature's focus on utility above emotional bonding with friends.” Aenigma smiled.

  “Don't be so melodramatic, even in joking! The highest trust is involved here, and you're one of the few who can help.”

  “No worries, this swollen ego is never big enough. Melodrama is a performance. Now, what would you like me to do, Verde?”

  “I planned this all out in my skyscraper. I need to flesh it out. But even before the first hack, the group will form, name itself, and then begin. Just need your willingness. You're the first step.”

  “I'll do whatever it is, as long as it's fun. Which it is, by definition.”

  “Thanks, but I'll have to get Kara and Liam to come along. The tournament is in barely two weeks. In two days, that's when we'll all meet. Be ready.”

  “Verde, don't expect much. You'll have some fun, a confrontation with an Overnet officer, spend a few months banned from the Overnet. A story to tell. But that's why I play games for a living. Life is only about fun.”

  “You know as well as I do that you do it for the money.” Val nudged Aenigma in the arm.

  “The lure of poetics leads to catching the most intricate of words.” Out of Aenigma's digital body, a realistic scenic image of a fish being pulled in by a fishing pole appeared.

  “The metaphor was clear enough, thank you, Transparent!”

  “I'll be there as soon as I get the invite,” ve said.

  “Sure thin--” Aenigma disappeared. Val was used to it, it was vis way to act spontaneously, never a word of farewell. She turned off the silent speak mode. The surroundings became suddenly audible. In the other colored sectionals, various activities were going on. Some round-shaped creatures of varying details were several sectionals towards her left. It was the Drolg waiting area. Val wanted such pseudo-biological potential to expand on the Overnet. Her dreams had never worn down.

  As she crossed her arms across her chest, the scene dissolved. The familiar home layer remained, unique to her ID. She reached for the exit cylinder. It unraveled, but a black square in the top corner of the now-flat square was toying as it always did with the OPI-to-Overnet data portion of the cylinder, always recording and storing her activities. The square spread out to expand across the cyberscape, then the basic single screen was floating. Physical awareness shook Val's senses, but in moments perception was stabilized.

  “Deactivate Overnet.” The room's windows became transparent and the apartment's light went on. Val grabbed her computer, then hit a switch on its right side to set it to basic mode. “Send.” The screen shifted right to a message writing scheme, and she began typing into empty space near the computer.

[

Recipient Liam

Copy to Kara; Overnet Alias Aenigma

Tuesday, meet at my private meeting room setting. I will transfer any of you in around noon. Expect discussion.

Send.

]

The screen imitated a letter closing, then flew out towards the right, offscreen. She stared at the blank white screen for several seconds before standing up. Lunchtime. Or for all she knew, dinner.

#

  In her skyscraper, Val was sitting in her chair on the 50th floor meeting room, in her usual attire for the setting. The table she sat at took up most of the meeting room's space. A tall window was behind her, providing a view of a visual simulation of a New York City that only existed in imagination. Val signed in the air, spreading apart two invisible double doors. Liam and Kara materialized onto a square pattern on the carpeting by the doors. Kara had casual clothes on, but didn't care much for a fashion sense beyond hygiene. Liam was wearing a yellow-rimmed hat, and a gray suit.

  “Aenigma should be here soon,” Val stated.

  “That pronoun, I never get it right,” Kara said.

  “Call ver Aenigma, don't make it complicated.”

  “We know you don't like Aenigma, but Verde here,” Liam chimed in raising his eyebrow in an exaggerated manner, “knows what she's doing.”

  Kara took a seat to the left of Val, and Liam to the right. Aenigma suddenly appeared, as male, wearing clothes a college professor with poor style would wear, round glasses and all. Without hesitation, ve stepped onto the table, walked until within speaking range, and sat cross-legged on the table.

  “The absent-minded professor forgets how to sit in a chair.” Kara rolled her eyes.

  “At your service,” Aenigma said.

  “In any case, Verde,” Liam inquired, “what's on the agenda?”

  “Revolution.”

  “The serious answer?”

  “Revolution.”

  Liam paused. “I told you to sleep on it, not analyze it more.”

  “I'm not here, surviving, to get by each day. I want to make something. Even if my grandeur is out of place, my energy has to be directed.”

  “Lest the abyss stare back at you, put the truth of uncertainty directly in your sights,” Aenigma added.

  “Give us the plan, our jobs are boring as it is,” Kara said, while Liam and Aenigma looked at Val.

  Quickly, Val stood up. She signed for papers and diagrams to appear, and for the chair she was sitting on to vanish. “Planning Stage Act One,” she commanded to the sort.

  “Simple, really. By taking control of an Overnet satellite--”

  “And why are you even doing this?” Liam interjected.

  “I thought I told you. To make the Overnet absent of interference.”

  “You said that, but what's the big deal? We live perfectly fine.”

  “Fine enough for you, maybe,” Aenigma said quietly.

  “I'll have to spell it out for you then. That whole time working in the inspection department, all they wanted was to pigeon-hole any possible information into neat categories for data storage. And surveillance. Jerrenthal made me really wonder why there had to be so much observance of data flows. I don't want to let that keep going on. The Overnet is too deliberately self-contained to go anywhere. Remove the containment, then the Overnet can become something it was never capable of before.”

  “Your banzai charge is too over the top. Complain to the government, no need to blow your life over this,” Kara said.

  “Grandeur or not, I am going to do this. I'm too enthused about my field to always be concerned about if the inspection department will provide me cyberscape space to develop.”

  “Give your plan already,” Liam said.

  Val moved some materials around, making some bigger. She put one poster in front of her, floating. “The operation I have in mind is solid. The Imperium tournament is taking up a large portion of the game layer, already approved by the inspection department.” Two squares appeared on the poster, a red one labeled 'Department', the other 'Imperium'. A circle appeared along the top labeled 'Overnet protocol'.

  “In this tournament, though, there is a security weak point: winning the tournament. Upon victory or defeat, data is sent directly to the inspection department. Normally, transmission of game data is done once a month, not upon victory. But here, I can establish a direct link to the department by riding the data transmission.” A straight black line connected the two boxes - a dotted blue line was parallel to it. “The data block will be received by the department, with the connection to the winner's block intact.”

  “In other words, yes, I'll win the game for you, Verde,” Aenigma proclaimed.

  “Or lose works, too,” Kara said.

  “Well, victory is the only way for it to work, we'd need to have an association with a winner for our information to be extracted. As long as my own sub-block gets past the department layer onto the satellite layer, the operation is set. Not an issue, given Liam's whole expertise is based upon data block structure and manipulation.” A blue dotted line appeared, linking department to satellite. Other lines on the department block went outwards towards random points.

  “Now, once we're onto the department layer, we need to find the connection to the satellite layer. It'll be somewhere, of that I'm sure, I just wouldn't know where to look. There are a set of cylinders in the department layer that lead to other Overnet departments. Kara, you are best able to investigate Overnet connections and routing than any of us, so you'll be controlling the block connector while Liam holds open the connection. As soon as you find it, the block will get sucked in.” A purple box appeared around everything, tinting the whole poster. Above the box, ‘10:00’ appeared.

  “Once we're on the satellite layer, there will be ten minutes to hack into the satellite and alter some protocol codes. Every ten minutes, the satellite breaks all incoming connection requests regardless of the origin of the connection. A fool-proof hacking defense mechanism, unless you're quick enough to undo the right piece of code without engaging the immediate lockdown. Change the code, then I'm home free to turn off any more of the code that acts to wall off or undo portions of the Overnet. What anyone wants to append onto the Overnet will be allowed.” Covering the whole poster, ‘Success!’ was written in bright green.

  “Fancy effects,” Kara said. “What do you plan to do after, though?”

  “Completely destabilize and eliminate the Overnet Inspection Department. Simple as that. Take it from there.”

  “I am willing to pursue your request Verde, but you can't leave gaps and expect things to turn out fine,” Liam said.

  “Fine or not, it's much better than robotically checking into your corporate job each day, for an organization that is only concerned with halting any sense of privacy and autonomy. Cliché, perhaps, but that's what they're doing. There is in fact no way to know what will happen next.”

  Aenigma stood up on the table, demanded attention by twirling a cane that suddenly appeared and tapping it on the table by vis feet. Everyone looked at first, but Kara instead rolled her eyes. “Nor will they know who we are. Our identity. Non-tangible cyberscape entities asserting themselves over physical society. We're ghosts. Poltergeists. Geists!” Ve sat down.

  “Let's go for it then, Verde already made her choices, and I fully support her,” Kara said.

  “It's settled then. Three idealistically naïve CTI grads and...” Val looked at Aenigma. She never did receive any personal information from ver aside from an always-shifting Overnet identity. “A person who never takes anything seriously. All set to change the world.”

  Liam remained apprehensive. “Someone needs to stop you from being too rash.”

  Aenigma suddenly vanished. Liam and Kara stood up, ready to move out. “Geists, that's who we are.” Val whispered, barely audible to her friends. “Plans and details will be sent out next week. The tournament is in two weeks,” she announced. The two nodded, and their avatars were pulled through a cylinder that appeared briefly.

  Val signed for a blank construction area to appear. The walls and room elements moved through the floor, which then turned white. No horizon was visible, nor distinguishable objects, nor depth. Everything was white. Even her avatar was non-existent. Val fell down in her sudden disorientation. Her physical body fell to the floor -– her brain could not maintain proprioceptive focus absent any perceptual information. Val struggled to wave her right arm in front of her, causing a black design grid to form about the cyberscape. Once she put herself upright, she looked at the X-Y-Z axis, with points strewn about at three-foot intervals.

  “Never fun,” she told herself. “But this calls for a headquarters.”

  She gave herself a wireframe body, then produced a white floor with a sheen, spreading off into the horizon. Val made a fist. A cube appeared. She pointed to a grid point on the floor, and the cube moved on cue. Construction time again. More gestures; they produced a group of spheres and cylinders appeared on the floor. Val began to mold the shapes and extemporaneously design the area.

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“Listen up, Selah,” Commander Juarez said over the communication channel. “We need to assault the zeppelins quickly, so the storm will reach just as we are retreating and need to cover our tracks.”

“Got it.” Selah was listening carefully to every word from the commander. She was ready in her spider tank, each of the six legs; for the time being, she was completely safe. At her feet was an elliptical platform, mounted to the outer shell of the low altitude zeppelin, the Xanadu. The outer shell was as long as a skyscraper was tall, built of sturdy and lightweight graphene. The long airship drifted slowly through the air, over the canyons of the Martian frontier.

From her vantage point, Selah could see the shipping zeppelins floating towards her. All four of them, attached to the rigid lattice of the airship network. They had just passed a giant support tower, among the hundreds of towers holding up the airship network on the frontier. It was the most massive shipment she had ever seen during her whole time as a pirate on the frontier.

“Remember why you’re doing this,” Juarez said gently.

“To rescue Gustavo,” she replied reflexively. She didn’t really need a reminder. After all, the pirates were always after shipments produced by Nous with illicit constructs, those rare constructs which showed signs of fully cognitive consciousness. The pirate credo was to always and only protect the individual, especially those who could not protect themselves!

“Commander out. Communication cut.” Juarez closed the communication channel. Attempts to hack or manipulate their plans were now impossible - there was nothing to intercept.

Selah flexed her hands. She was nervous even though it was at least the fifth time she assaulted a shipment. Far behind her, passing the frontier town, the dust storm was catching up. One giant cloud of red and brown, whipping up dirt from the canyons and ground.

Selah pressed a button in the cockpit, preparing the tank for liftoff. The six evenly spread legs closed against each other, and the body angled skywards, up from its horizontal position for ground travel. The legs closed against each other. Another button. She could hear the thrusters revving up, gathering force. Millisecond by millisecond. Suddenly, she was launched into the air. The tank had transitioned into a jet fighter.

The jet quickly angled itself horizontally, down from its vertical launch position. Out the cockpit window, Selah saw the megalopolis in the distance, the source of the airship network, attached to the space elevator. Various zeppelins were beginning their journey at the floating air docks. Despite the massive infrastructure leading miles in her direction all the way to the frontier domes, so much more of Mars was uninhabited and untamed. Unexplored potential. The same outlook on life that so many Martians shared - Selah was moved by these same feelings every time she had gone on a mission.

A few swerves and she was on her way to the zeppelin flotilla. At the same moment, from underneath the zeppelins, a hundred locust drones deployed. The pointed triangular shapes gathered and moved together as an organized swarm. They shifted as if in a single sheet of metal. They darted straight for Selah. She fired her flare gun under the nose of her jet, to steal their attention, but they evaded the incoming flare. Each of them pulled closer together, forming into a dense cloud. Selah was moving so fast in the jet that she couldn’t pull away from them.

She passed through the cloud; there was little visibility. Each individual locust shot at her like a lance of ice in the sky, trying to pierce the jet and destroy themselves in the process. Before any of them could hit their mark and pierce the hull, Selah rolled, deflecting them. Still no visibility whatsoever. She flew blindly onward, trusting that the machine she controlled would do exactly as she told it to do.

Just as she flew into the cloud, she was out. Behind her, the swarm tried to turn around, swerving into a bow formation that pulled itself backwards directly towards Selah. By this point, she was close to one of the zeppelins. She hit a button and began the jet’s transition back to tank mode. There was enough momentum that she arced upward through the air, gliding and confusing the locusts’ pursuit. The cockpit bent into an upright position; the body split into six legs. In moments, the tank slammed onto the zeppelin’s sturdy platform. Though the locusts tracked Selah precisely, she watched through the cockpit window as they scattered apart before they struck the zeppelin.

Through the commotion, Selah could barely make out the alarms blaring. Each of the zeppelins had been alerted; she knew there was only a limited amount of time before the defense agency jets arrived from megalopolis. Out the right side of the tank, four thick cables shot out, draping over the side of the zeppelin. The cables rolled side to side, autonomously feeling for data extraction ports. Upon finding the ports, they attached themselves magnetically followed by reinforcement rings.

On the screen in the cockpit, text ran across the screen which indicated that the connection with the zeppelin had not been established for data extraction. Quickly, Selah activated a prepared decryption program. Within moments, the text indicated a successful connection. But despite the computer’s capacity to think faster than her, there was still no way for it to properly extract a complete consciousness without the help of a volitional mind. A pirate like Selah would understand, first hand, what differentiated a computer program from a thinking mind. It was time: a headset lowered from the ceiling in the cockpit, three wires hanging down by her left ear, near her cybernetic brain ports. She grabbed the wires and plugged herself into the zeppelin’s unique cyberscape. Her field of vision turned gray.

From the grayness, a black ground spread out infinitely, followed by a white grid line. She looked down and saw her digital arms. She gestured with cybersign language and brought up rows of large cubes filled with data packages; the sets of cubes extended for miles. Selah extended both of her arms and twisted her wrists. Thousands of data cubes flew infinitely skyward; a single cube instantly shot itself in front of her. In her mind, she pictured the form of who she was after: Gustavo.

Gustavo was just another failed experiment in the eyes of Nous, but for Selah and her fellow pirates, there was no doubt that he was a conscious, self-aware, and artistic being. He didn’t deserve to be thrown aside, a number to be inserted into a robot for enhanced manual labor. He was an assemblage of artists, musicians, and creative minds, yet an individual with his own expression. He had been an Argentinian rock star, who fell into a coma. A man with a soft smile and dark curly hair. A man who loved his guitar. There were fragments of other people, none of which Selah could tap into. Even so, he stood out as Gustavo.

The cube in front of her began to warp itself, deforming inwards at the center, stretching upwards. The features looked more and more humanoid, the limbs growing more defined. A complete body with a plain black shirt and pants took shape. It was Gustavo, exactly as she imagined, stiffly yet proudly standing as a statue. A guitar pixelated into his hands; his smile turned flat and tensed his face with confusion. He looked at Selah, then the guitar, and dropped it.

“Where am I?” He stepped backwards. “And how do I understand English?”

“Your mind has been re-created and set up inside a computer. There still might be small differences.”

“This isn’t real. You’re not real. I’m hallucinating as I’m dying.”

“You died a long time ago. But we only have a few more minutes.” Selah took a step towards Gustavo with a face of apprehension. “I’m sorry about this.” She grabbed his arms and he reverted back into a cube. She placed one hand on the cube, and pressed a button by her ear with her other hand. Everything went gray again, but reality flashed before her eyes a moment later. The storm had arrived, and through the dust, she could barely see ahead.

Selah unplugged herself; she looked at the screen of the tank. An indicator on the bottom right showed that the data transfer had completed successfully. She pressed a button beside the screen and retracted the wires from the side of the zeppelin. Far ahead, she could see the glow of several drone missiles tracking in her direction. She leapt off the zeppelin and transitioned the tank into jet mode. Just before it crashed into the Martian surface far below, she activated the thrusters. The missiles flew into the ground, exploding as she maneuvered her way to the canyon nearby.

Selah sighed with relief. Another successful theft.

Fritz saw a cacophony of colors everywhere. There were no particular objects, or definitive shapes, simply the ebb and flow of a kaleidoscope turning. At the same time, he would manipulate the turntable in front of him through touch -- and through the neural signals from his neck ports. Each time he heard a note shift, the colors changed accordingly. With his glasses overtaking natural visual perception, he experienced music instead. This was not a replacement of reality through cyberspace, but a change in the very way he apprehended the world. Musical perception had become visual.

Distant triangles spun as if dancing upside down. As he felt the rhythm of the bass at his feet, waves of magenta rose upwards into crests of green and violet. The waves crashed down into a foam of messy colors, corresponding with a trailing and discordant note. An aural sensation of static. By imagining that the static would dissolve -- his creative foresight -- the turntable responded to his thoughts: the volume decreased, the notes turned harmonious, and the foam coalesced into a smooth stroke of blue paint. For a moment, the paint flooded his field of view, before finally washing away. What remained was pure gray emptiness. His set was over. No more music. Only the noise of footsteps pounding on the dance floor and the roar of the throngs of people in the club.

Fritz tapped the side of his glasses. His visual perception returned to normal instantly; the dance floor just below was a chaos of bodies looking in his direction. He didn’t make music for them, though. More important was the turntable in front of him, a wide rectangular box without any markings. Six cords plugged into the front of the turntable led up into the six ports in his neck. The most ports anyone ever had was three, aligned from just behind the ear to the temple. But Fritz, ever the clandestine body modder, had dangerously squeezed three extra ports into the same area. On either side of the turntable was a stack of computer monitors that he didn’t use.

Another DJ approached from behind. No glasses, three ports. A mediocrity. Without word, Fritz reached to his neck and unplugged himself from the turntable. He let go of the cords, each one retracted into the turntable. Automatically, it closed in on itself, reducing to the size of a small laptop. He picked up the turntable in one hand then put it into his jacket in a slot built to hold it. He stepped off the performing platform, and let the DJ take his place. His shift was over.

Fritz walked to the side of the dance hall, at the threshold between the backstage and the dance floor. Music started again. A repetitive electronic thumping began, the masses of people accentuating the sound with their shifting bodies. He sighed. He couldn’t feel the artistic passion, didn’t feel the molding of individuality. The lights darkened. Pitch black for a few moments, then a bright strobing light.

He turned around and made his way to the nearby stairs leading to the underground level of the club. Down in his modification lab, he’d contemplate his next music project, the next modification to his body, and the further shaping of the future.

“Yo, modhead!” The voice came from behind. Fritz spun around. A strangely dressed man: a T-shirt with a logo from an old synth band back on earth, combined with a finely tailored jacket and pants.

“I don’t take clients,” Fritz responded. He didn’t even take a moment to look at his face. Unenthused, he continued back to the stairs.

“I’m Ramy, and I believe in the future.”

Fritz stopped in his tracks. He turned around, stepped in closer to the odd man. “Who told you to say that?”

“Your music did. We both know what we seek in life.”

“Doesn’t need to involve me.” Fritz took a step away. He furrowed his brow, analyzed Ramy’s face. “I only want to express myself, that’s it.”

“But that expression is exactly what I’m looking for.“

“You don’t need me, I’m too busy with my music. Get someone else.” Fritz waved to his side, dismissing Ramy.

“You’re actually the most important part.”

“I believe in the future because no one is more important, no one is in total control. No hierarchies. I’m not important and neither are you. There won’t be any social nonsense to worry about.”

Ramy pointed at the hundreds of people on the dance floor. They moved with unplanned coordination, operating through emotion. The patterns of light revealed faces ranging from overjoyed excitement, to slight frowns searching for a distraction. “Not important? Sure it looks like they’re having a good time, but you should’ve seen them when you were on. It looked like they were in a meditative trance.”

“You wouldn’t know, look at you.” Fritz looked Ramy up and down and waved his hand as if measuring his height. “Your body is normal. Your clothing is a cheap effort to be different. Don’t lie to yourself.”

“That’s part of why I was looking for you in the first place. My body doesn’t match my idealism. There needs to be a change.”

“I can’t help you.”

“You’re not Fritz, the clandestine body modder? Six ports that nobody else knows how to install? Cybernetic eyeball?”

Fritz sighed. “I’m not a mechanic.” He put his hand on his chest over his heart. “I’m an artist. My expression is mine alone.”

“So express. You brought your music to existence, to my ears, to the ears of everyone else. You’re so expressive that you force your art into the world, demanding to be heard. It fills me with life.”

“I don’t care what you feel, I don’t care about the dance floor either. It just happened to be in the way.”

“Why express anything?” Ramy asked rhetorically.

“For the aesthetic experience. I want to reify my aesthetic vision, I can’t allow it to be all in my head with nowhere to go. As an artist, I have to breathe rhythm into my creation, which must come from within. If you think my expression can live through you, you don’t understand anything. My body, my music, it’s going to decay the moment I share my creative expression.”

“I didn’t say anything about sharing.”

“So make your change by yourself. Find another modder who will let their artwork be commodified. My skill isn’t for sale.”

“You probably should stop being a DJ then, you’re selling your skill that way. Not to mention that your body is being shown to everyone just by stepping out here.”

Fritz looked away, at the DJ platform longingly, yet frowning. He paused, seeming to forget about Ramy, but he looked back. “It’s bad enough that my music is out there. This is the best place for me to make my music. I need all this open space. I can’t even get close to what I want in a cramped apartment at the lower levels. But my body modifications, I have complete control. No one is going to feel what these modifications are like, and you’re not about to change my mind.”

“I don’t need to know what they feel like. I’m looking to build my experiences. To build a different body. You might have the tools to change your body on your own, but that doesn’t mean your tools are part of your expression.”

“But they are. A paintbrush is part of the expression of a painter. If they used a pencil instead, what they made would be completely different. The problem is, since these tools have been shared throughout society for hundreds of years, painters aren’t unique, drawers aren’t unique. Their expression is diluted by spreading their tools, sharing their individuality.

“What I’m hearing is that you think your work is so weak that the slightest touch will corrupt it,” Ramy said sardonically.

“Not because it’s weak, but because it’s fragile.” Fritz touched the back of his neck. “When people know how these three extra ports got here everyone is going to want the same thing. The masses are going to ruin what requires care and thoughtful creativity. They’re already ruining the dance floor!”

“They could use all the tools incorrectly, but that doesn’t do anything to your art. Your songs are still your expression, your judgments about existence. You’re going to let the artistry of your modifications be hidden away because of what people around you might do?”

“That’s the paradox. Look, my technology brings me closer to realizing full human potential. And that means with each body modification, I’m closer to complete isolation. away from all the pressure of society trying to tell me what to do. Dependent on absolutely no one.”

“You're squandering your individuality by demanding purity.” Ramy paused, locking eyes with Fritz. Neither resisted the mutual glare. “Even still, I won’t share what you tell me. I can prove it.” He pulled out his phone from his jacket pocket and tapped a few buttons. A large hologram of a contract for a nondisclosure agreement projected from the phone.

Fritz looked at the contract, and approved. “Fine, I’ll show you.” He motioned a signature with his hand over the signature line of the contract. Fritz turned around and walked to the steps going downstairs. Ramy followed.

The downstairs corridors were narrow and poorly lit, with the muffled music from the upper level coming through the walls and ceiling. Their footsteps echoed. At the far end, they reached the door to Fritz’s lab. Fritz put his wrist against the door to unlock it, then opened it.

Inside appeared like any other basement room, except for being free of clutter. The walls were pale green. Further in, there was a metal desk with nothing on it, underneath a hanging lamp. The room looked more like an office for an employee who wasn’t appreciated. But in the back was a brightly lit platform with a surgical table in the middle, four robotic arms protruding from the base of the table. Next to the table was a terminal and touchscreen. Ramy leaned inside, quietly surprised how simple the lab was compared to his grand expectations of surgically-white walls.

Fritz walked into the room and stopped before the platform. He stood facing the table. “Tell me, how is my individuality being wasted? I’m the only person doing this at my level.”

Ramy caught up and stood behind him. “That you know of.”

“And that’s how it should be. If anyone else is doing it, it’s because they can keep a secret, without outside influence from me or anyone else.”

“You're keeping your dream of a new and re-made body locked up in a lab, unable to expand, deformed and constrained. Aren’t you being shortsighted here, only looking to what is immediately in front of you? Some vision that is.”

“I’m not about to risk my vision just to let other people be a part of my creative process.”

“I don’t mean they deserve to be part of it, I’m saying that other people can spark your mind to go another direction. The choices are still yours, it’s up to you which ideas are worth respecting and building on. Let your music and modifications breathe and move.”

Fritz quickly spun around and looked directly at Ramy. “I’m not the one who wants my artistic expression to be held away like a monstrosity. The masses could never appreciate what I make.”

“But if you made those body modifications available, showed everyone how empowering your modifications are for living a creative life, they would all change their minds. They would finally see your art.”

“They will ignore the artistry I put into my modifications. How could they see it? They want to be entertained, not fulfilled. Adding extra ports into their necks, they’ll only see a toy.”

“So what if they can’t see it? I see the artistry. I want these modifications to be part of everyday life! Let me convince them.”

“They don’t deserve to be convinced. My life might look miserable down here, but I’m not a sellout. This is the only way I stay true. Complete immersion into myself.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic.”

“Capital ruins creativity, simple as that,” Fritz asserted.

Ramy shot back without hesitation. “No, capital increases creativity. More money, more possibilities. Make a bigger lab, more infrastructure for modifications, more research for implementing more radical transformations. Think of how much faster and further you can take yourself with all that investment to boost you up. All the way to the upper levels of Megalopolis.”

“My process would be ruined. The temptation of money will corrupt me.”

“That only proves you think that people want to pay for your art. They love what you already do.”

“I’m not a sellout.” Fritz turned to face the platform again and walked up to the first step.

Ramy spoke without moving closer. “I expected more creative thought from you! The most you can imagine out of others investing and you buy into your modifications is your art being diminished? Ramy took out another contract. I truly believe that you can change humanity as we know it. Maybe you can reach the limits of humanity on your own. But beyond the limits? You need to change your outlook.” He walked forward and stopped at Fritz’s side.

“My outlook has been doing just fine,” Fritz protested.

“I’m striving for immortality so I want to invest in you.”

“I’m not looking to make a business out of my lab.”

“It’s not just a business proposal. Immortality is the noblest achievement to strive for. I want to work with your ingenuity to achieve what I can’t on my own.”

“Why should I trust you when you make such grandiose claims?” Fritz turned his head and looked at Ramy.

“The whole reason we’re on Mars is to go beyond being human. I refuse to let nature tame me. I know you don’t let nature tame you either.”

“You’re right, but immortality is beyond what I am able to achieve.”

“That doesn’t have to be true. You can be a designer of humanity. A true artist of the future.” Ramy stepped up the platform, went over to the surgical table, and sat down. “And I mean it. Give me extra ports.”

Fritz nodded with acceptance. He walked off the platform and went up to the control terminal. After some taps and button presses, a backrest rose up in the surgical table, supporting Ramy. Fritz instructed Ramy: “Sit still and relax. Doesn’t feel any worse than the anesthetic injection.”

A disinfectant spray came out of the backrest, into an area around his left ear. One of the arms on the surgical table extended a needle and moved up to the left side of Ramy’s neck. The needle went into his lower neck. At the same time, a halo attached to the backrest came forward and lowered down around his forehead. His head could not move out of position. Another arm moved up to the left side of his head. Sequentially, in a line from behind the ear to the temple, the arm shot six ports into him. The same arm then extended a piece of gauze and wiped away blood at the port injection site.

“Your sensation should return to normal in about five seconds,” Fritz explained.

Ramy stretched his neck and got up from the table. A wide smile went across his face. “The first step into a new future.”

Fritz hurried over to Ramy’s side. “I know you have a contract somewhere, let me sign it already!”

Another day in the Aresian mining fields. Except, he was many miles away from the fields. In the distance, he could barely see the dust clouds rising from the mining fields. The whole remote and detached endeavor never was quite interesting, not to Davis. Every day, he sat and labored in the same dusty box, with the singular small window that showed him the Martian frontier just outside. The same outside he had no time to explore; the same outside he was hoping to experience when he first signed his contract.

As a matter of habit, Davis surveyed the switches and screens on the touchboard in front of himself. Looked at the displayed walls of a Martian canal, as viewed by the drill robots he controlled. One press, and the drill bit in the right arm of the robot began cutting. Chalky red dust flew upwards into the air. The same motions over and over, each day, without feeling the product of his work -- he couldn’t help but allow his mind to drift. The Martian Mining Company was so big, so gigantic, that he didn’t understand why they needed laborers anymore. Why not buy a fleet of autonomous drill robots? Something about quality control, that’s all he cared to remember. Not that Davis really cared about the answer to any of his questions. He pressed another button. The other arm of the drill robot began cutting.

One month down. Five to go. That’s all he had to put up with. Davis did it once before, he knew he could do it again. He pictured returning to his open and expansive flat, just above the lower levels of the vertical city, looking out the dirty floor-to-ceiling window, overlooking the Martian valleys, the zeppelin cable networks. The reasons he immigrated from Earth! He figured he would have the money this time around to go to a fancy restaurant that actually served those Martian gnarled potatoes and marbled slow-grown beef. Those hedonistic excursions always---

“--recalibrate.” A voice coming from the screen interrupted his daydream. “Please recalibrate,” the voice more audible this time. Calm and simultaneously demanding. The drills were spinning into nothing, the block of soil and ore already clearly cut away. “Pleas--” Davis pulled the switch on the board to drive the robot forward into the canal wall. The drills began cutting once again. Like they always did. His pleasures were always interrupted by work; after six months, he would be posted on the frontier again. 10 to 15 years and he would be set for the rest of his life, yet he felt empty by now. He tried to bring his mind back to the future life of leisure in Megalopolis, but he could only put his attention onto the orange rocks displayed on the screen. Dust, and more dust.

“Lunch break.” The artificial voice brought immediate relief. The screen switched displays, onto a prerecorded broadcast. At the same time, from out the side of the touchboard, a tray stuck out: a bottle of water, slightly salted quick-grow chicken cubes, and freeze-dried carrot discs. Flavorless. The broadcast began, the screen blank. “Listen to today’s sponsors for today’s lunch break while you get comfortable!” Davis stood up to retrieve his tray. To his ears, the broadcast was white noise, blending in with the rest of the boring day. The voice droned on and on about furniture not even available in the frontier. As he carried the tray, he grabbed a chicken cube, stuffed it in his mouth.

“Looking to skyrocket your life?” Davis shot his head to look at the screen. Simple text was plastered in the center: Full-Body Contractors. “It’s your body, transfer ownership if you want! A year of service for a lifetime of comfort. With the full-body contract, discover a revolution in labor. Visit one of our frontier stations today.” Then Davis remembered his food. It was cold by now. But his mind had caught fire.

5 P.M. solar standard. The day was over. The door to his control room opened. He rushed to the elevator, before any of the other miners could get inside with him. The rust-colored walls blurred together with the rust-colored Martian sky outside in the market, everything indistinguishable compared to his urgency to find the station from the ad. He consulted his phone. Exactly on his way home to the company living quarters, at the edge of the airdome. Davis rushed over.

Outside of the single-story square building, Davis looked at a neon sign, “Full Body Contractors”, still glowing despite the crepuscular sky. He stepped inside. Cramped quarters, with two doors visible behind the reception desk. He walked up to the Construct behind the desk, who greeted him warmly. “Our first customer of the day! Mr. Ashter will be with you momentarily.” Before the final syllable, one of the doors opened. A man in a fine suit held the door open and beckoned Davis inside.

“Please have a seat in my office,” he pointed at the door plaque on his door, James Ashter, Esq., JD, President. “This is a very exciting opportunity for me as well.” The room was dusty from the air, with a desk and computer in the middle. Beside the window in the back of the room, an Art Deco floor lamp stood.

“Is this all...” Davis hesitated speaking as he walked in and sat down, fearing that he got ahead of himself with his excitement. “All of this... what’s the fine print?”

“Have a look.” Ashter slapped down an old-fashioned paper contract on his desk then sat down. “There’s no fine print. Everything here is in plain English. You give us complete ownership of your body for one year, and in return, we give you 20 years of total monetary freedom. $100 million to be exact. Luxurious living quarters will be provided. Any fines for breaking existing labor contracts will be paid for by us.” He took a pen from his jacket and placed it in front of Davis.

Davis looked at the contract. Ashter’s terms were repeated verbatim from the contract. “That’s it? It doesn’t say what type of work I’m going to do.”

“Legally speaking, that does not matter. By complete ownership, we really do mean complete.”

“Slavery?”

“I don’t like such harsh words. You are entering into this voluntarily. We understand how stressful such a contract may be, so we hope the generous compensation will make it all worthwhile.”

“What will you want me to do though?”

“This is a mining town, I don’t expect you to do anything else besides mine. But the possibilities are open-ended, mister... I’m afraid I didn’t get your name?”

“Just call me Davis. Am I really the first customer?

“Yes, it’s all very new, Steel is the only defense company that has even approved of this type of contract so far. “

“I’m worried that this might not hold up for the rest of the League.”

Ashter took his phone out of his breast pocket and tapped it several times. “There, I just sent you the complete justification to your frontier mailbox account, check your phone. Legally foolproof.”

Davis opened the document on his phone and read through it:

<

Whereas, it is understood that as a legal premise, the individual (hereafter the SELF) owns their own body (hereafter the BODY). The premise is not one of legally enshrining the moral concepts of responsibility and autonomy, but of legally enshrining the economic concept of the right to trade and private property. Whoever owns the body may trade the body. On Mars, the legal standards of buying and selling organs have been firmly developed. The full-body contract (hereafter FBC) is merely an extension of these legal standards, permitting the individual to transfer ownership of the Body from the Self to others.

Whereas, it is understood that whoever owns the body (hereafter the OWNER) owns the tangible products created by that body. Prior contracts may demand that ownership of these products be transferred immediately. The FBC necessarily stipulates that the Owner gain sole ownership over produced products.

Whereas, it is understood that the Self may only make alterations and requests regarding the body prior to signing the FBC. Alterations and requests made after signing are void. At such point, only the Owner may alter the FBC.

>

“I’ll sign it,” Davis announced.

“Very good!” Ashter leaned over to speak into an intercom next to his computer. “Please send in the notary.”

A man wearing thick body armor stepped inside. On his chest was a large logo: bold text shaped like slabs of concrete stylized to say STeeL. He left the door open; as he moved to stand in the corner of the room, a large rifle that hung along the breadth of his shoulders shook with each step.

The notary projected a circle onto the floor from a strap on his arm; the circle was barely large enough to stand inside. He spoke: “Please stand right here, exactly here, so that the document will be properly notarized. Your ownership will be promptly transferred.”

“Is this really necessary?” Davis asked.

“Can never be too careful on the frontier. Steel has the best reputation around here for maintenance of Martian law,” Ashter said.

Davis grabbed the pen on the desk, stepped into the projected circle, and signed the contract.

*

A few hours later, Davis stepped into a completely furnished penthouse and dropped his duffel bag on the floor. The most luxurious thing he had ever seen on the frontier; pristine and white, a shocking distinction from the ubiquitous drab of dust and dirt he was so used to. expansive and spotless window in the back with a direct view of the Martian Space Elevator, giant television beside a patterned couch, kitchen fitted with culinary robotic arms. He went up to the television, waved his arm to activate it. Nothing happened. Went up to the control panel in the kitchen, tried to make a meal request, but again, nothing happened; the screen stayed black. Annoyed, he went across the room and tried to turn the doorknob of what was presumably his bedroom, but it wouldn’t budge an inch. Davis sat on the couch, at a loss for what to do.

From above his head, the house intelligence spoke: “Mr. Ashter’s property management algorithm indicates the need to sleep, as determined by physio- and psychometric scans in this penthouse.” A panel in the ceiling opened up. A robotic arm holding a syringe came down and took a jab at Davis’s neck. “Medical sleep aid is required.”

Davis shot up onto his feet and avoided the syringe, quickly knocking it out of the arm onto the floor. He stepped backwards to the door of the penthouse. His own body wasn’t really his, not his responsibility, but that responsibility was what he had hoped he would find in the long run. His work was his to exchange before, no matter how dreary a miner’s life was. But now there wasn’t even that much for him to decide -- nothing but a slave to the core. More than ever before, the barren nature of his life was clear in his mind. This was the moment to find his freedom. No more mining, he declared to himself, it had become possessive of his life.

Davis decided to break the contract. He picked up his duffel bag, shoved the penthouse door open and stomped his way out. He walked down the hallway, down the stairs, to the street level, then stood still by the unpaved road. The previous prospects of a miner had gone away, money and desires could only be attained through himself. The dust around his feet seemed fluorescent, reflecting the neon pink and blue lights of the night frontier town. The muted colors put his mind in an anxious state -- he felt as if everything and nothing was possible, his future could be formed into anything, exactly like a dream. But maybe that’s what choosing to think freely meant? No longer guided by the commands of anyone else, not Mr. Ashter, not the mining company.

An officer on a patrol bike approached from behind and stopped next to Davis. On the side of the bike was the logo for Steel, as well as on their helmet. The helmet was sleek and black, with a single visor that blocked out any of the face underneath. The officer got off the bike and walked beside Davis.

“I thought they only did this kind of thing back on Earth,” Davis said sardonically.

The officer calmly ignored the frustration in his voice. “Mr. Ashter has informed us that he does not permit his property to leave their quarters after 8 P.M.”

“I don’t want to be his property anymore. Tell him I’m canceling my contract.”

“Steel takes full body contracts very seriously. Mr. Ashter does not accept cancellations, all contracts are final.”

“I no longer consent. I’ll accept any penalties or punishments.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not possible.”

“He can find me at the airship station. Tell him we can work it out there.” Davis turned around to make his way down the road.

“You’re under arrest for grand larceny.”

“You don’t need to threaten me,” Davis said, shoving his duffel bag into the officer’s hands. “Take it all, I don’t need it anyway. Here, have my phone even!” He held out his phone forcefully.

“No, you’re under arrest for stealing yourself. Now, we’re going to return you to your owner, like all stolen property.”

“I said I’ll take any penalties!”

The officer stepped closer. “Is this the contract that you signed?” he held up his phone, projected out in front of the both of them a body-sized image of the contract.

Davis locked and gestured into the projected image to scroll through the contract. Every page, an exact copy. “Yes, but I keep telling you, I no longer consent.”

“Like it says, any alterations are void unless the owner makes them.” he lowered the projection.

The officer grabbed Davis’ arms and held him tight. He didn’t resist, fearing what might happen. Corruption and scams on the frontier, why should he have expected otherwise? Why would Mars really be any different than Earth? The whole mining venture, maybe he should have stayed back in New York. At least there were comfortable jobs there, despite being just as boring. The dreams that the colonizers said could be achieved on Mars, they were only propaganda to control his life even more than any surveillance state could get away with on earth. The League! What a lie.

From the other direction, another officer in a sleek helmet approached on a bike. When they got nearer to Davis, he saw that the logo on the bike was different: bold green text that said “Bulwark”, cut apart by a sloping right triangle. The helmet had the same logo. The officer put a hand on a pistol on their hip and stepped off their bike and lifted their visor.

“I’m officer Gable. We’ve received word that there was an arrest without a registered crime.” She looked over at Davis, evaluating the threats in front of herself. She looked at the Steel logos, well aware of the company’s tendency to push for the most permissive legal attitude towards contractual agreements. “Identify yourself.”

The Steel officer wasn’t looking. Too busy looking down and tapping on his phone, eyes stuck to the screen. “I’m Pullman. Now if you don’t mind, I need to call in a backup escort to give me a hand.” He shifted his grip on Davis.

“This crime, is it or is it not registered?”

Pullman looked up. “Doesn’t matter, there’s a registered sales contract. he committed grand larceny. Stole himself.”

“One of those full-body contracts? The League still hasn’t approved those.” Quietly, Gable pressed a button on her waistband.

Davis yelled for attention. “I don’t want any part of this!” Pullman tightened his grip.

“All I care about is that anyone can do whatever they want with their property,” Pullman said.

“It’s an egregious violation of every statute that owning other people--" responded Gable.

“Psh. Take it up in court in a month. A contract is a contract.”

From behind Pullman, three backup bikes arrived. Behind them, a bright gray truck with sharply slanting sides followed -- a transport truck designed without any human or any Construct in mind. The bikes parked around Pullman’s, the transport truck behind them. Two officers stepped off their bikes and without prompting, went and grabbed Davis’s arm. Pullman let go and climbed back on his bike. The other officers dragged Davis to the back of the transport truck and shoved him inside. The low ceiling and cramped quarters forced him to scrunch his body to size. They slammed the door behind him. Pitch black inside, windowless.

Pullman worked with his phone, recording the arrest and confrontation. He glanced up at Gable. “You’re still here?”

“Release him, then we can find resolution through the usual legal channels. Otherwise, the severity of your violation to this man’s autonomy will require immediate response.”

The ground shook; a loud commotion behind Gable. A six-legged tank stomped around the corner, shaking up a small cloud of red dust, prominently displaying the Bulwark logo on its central turret. Trailing along either side of the tank were two mech-suits, their pneumatic joints slowly bending, holding heavy and long artillery rifles. Gable got back on her bike, absolutely certain that the overwhelming threat of force protected her from any violence. Without word, Gable stood confident, staring down Pullman. Nothing more to say. Nothing more to think. The decisions on both sides were made final.

A rocket blasted through the air and struck the tank, destroying one of its legs. The trail of smoke led to the rooftop of a building beside the transport truck. A mech-suit, holding a heavy-duty rocket launcher, was positioned with full view of Gable’s reinforcements. The suit fired again, but the tank lifted its leg that was about to be struck. In response, both of Bulwark’s mech-suits fired their artillery rifles at the rooftop -- a thick substance exploded onto the mech which then erupted in a conflagration. The suit collapsed; the rocket launcher fell to the ground.

The tank clumsily stepped towards the transport truck. The Steel officers fled on their bikes, but the transport truck struggled to accelerate and catch up.

The mech-suits flanked the transport truck and sliced open the door with their arm. Sparks flew as they sawed into the metal, until a chunk fell to the ground. Davis quickly stumbled his way out and fell on his face. He scrambled forward to pick up his belongings. He looked at Gable. For a moment, he was just about to open his mouth. But this wasn’t his problem anymore. Davis ran for the airship station, rushing to take the first zeppelin out of the frontier.

SUBCATEGORY: Cultural Analysis of Artifacts

SECTION: 1

VERSION: Draft

REPORT EDITOR: Wixprei Hotjef Lurensis Oot; Archaelogical Anthropologist

DATE: shift 4191, cycle 320, month 8, day 4

ON BEHALF OF: Archaelogical Ascension Society

INTRODUCTION: The AAS has sent out expeditionary teams to investigate Original Man. One system is Genesis, the other is Alpha. Planet Genesis, named for being the only habitable zone planet of Genesis system, was first to be investigated. The Cultural Analysis team was sent to a particular 50x50 meter region of the planet covered in stones with a substantial number of recoverable artifacts. More excavation will be required in subsequent expeditions. For the interim, the following artifacts were given special attention due to their significant degree of preservation. 

ITEM: Double Golden Arches

Laying upon the ground were two attached arches beside a ruined building. They were large enough to mount the building. The letters “McDonald” were found near the arches, suggesting admiration of a deity possessing the same name. Syntax analysis suggests ‘Mc’ is an honorific of the regional language, further supporting the deity hypothesis. In the ruins were a number of tables, thus McDonald is a prominent deity associated with food, drink, and power. 

ITEM: Metallic Image of Wendy

Underneath a layer of soil, a metallic engraving of a red-haired Original Man female was found. The image displayed only the female’s head, with hair tied up in two sections and freckles on the cheeks – a feature that Evolved Man no longer has. The female’s smile may represent joy. Similar to the arches, the word “Wendy” was found nearby. Wendy is likely another deity, albeit lacking the honorific. Due to the image’s focus on appearance, Wendy as a deity is most sensibly associated with beauty and joy.

ITEM: Beastiary of Deified Wildlife

An ancient document stored digitally was found from a handheld device discovered at the site. The document was a list of approximately 151 creatures. Such creatures were similar to fauna confirmed to exist on Genesis by the Paleontology team, but the odd location beside likely a religious site suggests that the fauna were fantasized. One creature was labeled Zapdos, believed to be a pet of McDonald.

ITEM: Book of Goog

Little was understood from a flickering image on a screen the size of three hands. All that could be seen without damage was the word “Goog”. The letters appeared to be cut off from the damage. To prevent speculation, the word will only be spelled as “Goog”. Given it was on a screen found within the ruins by Wendy, Goog likely refers to a superdeity, a profound teacher, or the name of a religion. Perhaps the screen was intended to ease prayers or ritual incantations performed at the site.

From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

The horizon went to the edge of the world. The sea went on endlessly. Waves steadily hit the sandy shore. Worst of all, the shore was naturally protected by shallow water and hundreds of sand bars, interspersed with coral reef. No threat of soldiers, let alone a navy.

Yan was defending the western flank of the army. Lightly armored in crimson leather, with sections of a purple felt shirt showing through the sides. The army was at last advancing upon the capital city of Vorna -- the final stage of the invasion. For Yan, it was more like a demotion, left to watch for stragglers without a command to pursue them. She was a Master conjurer, though; it required greater card manipulation skills than other deck-casters. Why would she be kept so far from the frontlines?

Oh, right. She’d be a distraction to the mostly male soldiers. Apparently, they were disciplined enough to march for days without complaint, but impulsive enough to lose all control at the sight of a woman. With that logic, the best army would be all women, the perfect way to rout the enemy forces. She sighed. Forming armies was never a logical endeavor in the Detri Kingdom. Power and domination, reason be damned!

Yan stared at her feet and dragged them across the sand, pulling her wooden spear along the edge of the waves. If she listened intently enough, the roar of the surf sounded like a battlefield. The whir of Cloud spells, the clatter of Spark activation, not to mention Blood’s bodily contortions and Metal’s demonic machinations. She raised her head to look to the sand dunes several miles down the beach. The pointed Pummel tanks -- seemingly tiny from the distance -- began to fire enflamed cards at the Vornan gates as deck-casters defended by flinging Spark pulses at the tanks’ aerodynamic noses. A tank unfolded its shell, from which Blood Dragoons leapt forth. She longed to participate. Her mind grew distracted.

\

“Your skills will never be properly appreciated,” said Magister Tdzeen. He stood beside a tree in the Violet Forest, in front of at least a hundred students. The purple leaves of summer camouflaged him in his equally purple robes. He grabbed his walking staff, indicating that the day’s lesson was over.

Yan stood up from the back row. She had enough of Tdzeen’s put downs and discouragement -- she didn’t care that he was known simply as The Conjurer. “You’re wrong. I’ll be appreciated if people see what I can do,” she snapped.

Tdzeen glared at her, recognizing the outburst as uncharacteristic of her. “And how do you know?”

“Great skill can only be ignored for so long.”

“Then tell me the Foundations.”

“Easy. Blood is biomagic. Spark is the energy of electricity. Metal manipulates the mechanical world. Cloud is elemental force. All deck-casts use a single Foundation to bring forth a form.”

“Rich knowledge is stated in essentials. Apparently, you had the sense to listen to me before.”

“You sto---“

With his right hand, Tdzeen pulled out a Blood card from the deck in his left sleeve. Yan could see on its face a scene of blood flowing from an impaled body, into a river. He flicked his left wrist, throwing the rest of deck out as a chain of cards. The cards made a ruffling noise and gathered into a new deck in his right hand, on top of the Blood card. A puddle of blood shot out of the deck and splattered onto Yan’s neck.  

“I tire of the discussion.”

Yan felt her neck become cold, as if it were the beginnings of frostbite. She moved her mouth, but she made no sound. Her voice wouldn’t work. As much as she strained, nothing happened. Frustrated, she rubbed her throat, trying to counteract the coldness. Not even a slight sense of warmth came through. 

“As I said, your skill will never be properly appreciated. Not by the king, not by your lover, not by me. But will you appreciate your own?” Tdzeen walked to his left, down the trail that led out of the forest. His pupils followed him. Only Yan stayed, still figuring out how to undo the silence spell.

//

Crack! A metal spike pierced the bottom half of Yan’s spear. The impact made her lose her balance and fall onto her knees. Before laying on the sand for long, she twirled around and used the momentum to stand up; her feet swept up sand into the air. She jumped sideways as she pulled out her purple and red deck from her side pocket.

High up, in a palm tree further inland near the outskirts of the rain forest, Yan saw a Vornan soldier sitting among coconuts. She saw that he seemed to be holding something yellow and blue -- a deck! But why would he be so far away from the main force?

Three spikes flew at her, slicing the remaining spear into thirds. The last spike almost nailed her palm into the spear, if Yan didn’t drop her spear and roll forward. Such accuracy was due to more than proper reflexes, since the spikes tracked her perfectly. This wasn’t a mere soldier, or even an agile conjurer -- who was capable of little more than simple sharpening spells, or basic metallurgy. These spikes were imbued, and quickly. Of all the deck casters Yan knew about, the Vornan Archconjurer, Gornak, was the only one of such caliber and Yellow style.

“Get over here!” Yan shouted.

Gornak jumped out of the tree, to the open beach. As he flew, he was in direct sunlight: baggy blue pants, yellow wristbands, black bodypaint of Vornan runes. He arced the deck into his opposite pant pocket and vanished before he hit the sand.

Yan pulled out a Cloud card. Anything to make Gornak appear. Nothing came to her mind though; no spontaneously creative spells to try reached her awareness. She thought it might have been a sign of incompetence that she had evaded until now. Maybe there really was no skill to appreciate in herself.

No, far from it. She closed her eyes, holding the deck against her heart. Calmness wrought ideas.

//

Yan looked at the flowers in the magnolia tree by the Academy’s entrance. Hoping to slice off a few flowers to put in her hair, she pulled out the deck from her breast pocket. Position a face card second in the deck, flip it over a Foundation card already on top and... the entire deck slipped out of her hand. The fifty-two cards scattered across the cobblestone courtyard. She was tired of dropping the deck by now. Most of the cards were facedown, their backsides displaying a pale red sunset across an open plain, with light unable to penetrate the evening darkness of the violet forest in the background. Only one card was showing its face to Yan; the Technician sat on a stepstool beside a marble block, as if sculpting her personality into it while looking into her eyes.

“Stay still,” she muttered under her breath. Five attempts -- now a sixth -- each time on hands and knees to pick up the mess. She grabbed the Technician card with its red and violet border. There was no time for its judgmental eyes. A gust of wind blew by and scattered the rest of the cards. Some landed on the courtyard roof, others behind the pillars of the inner courtyard. Yan sighed and sat down on her knees.

“Come on, Yan! A little breeze making you give up?” came a confident voice behind her. No one was there. A tap on her shoulder from behind: “Your technique sucks. Where’s your double draw? Your stabilizer faces? I didn’t even see a Foundation channeling!”

“Really, Watiro?” Yan spun around and grabbed his arm and pushed him away. Watiro somersaulted into his stumble, then disappeared. Yan looked for him. “I don’t even know what the hell those are.”

“I never knew anyone who got so testy so fast!” Watiro was sitting on the rooftop ledge, above Yan, swinging his legs and shuffling his red and green deck. “A slice is so basic. Add some style.” Yan looked up. Watiro tossed a green card down to her. She caught the card and noticed on its face a masked figure walking across castle walls.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Yan wondered out loud.

Watiro dropped to the courtyard, unfazed by the height. “Watch a pro.” He cavalierly snatched the card from her hands.

“Okay.” Yan was quietly annoyed. She was plenty capable of teaching herself without some boy trying to impress her. Or maybe, she thought to herself, she was trying to rationalize why she should stay friendless. It was always easier to force herself to avoid social interaction and all the disappointments that were bound to... Watiro gently pushed her aside, deck in hand.

He held out his right arm, pointing towards the magnolia and holding his deck. “Ready the Cloud Foundation in your opposite hand.” Watiro held the card slightly in front of the deck. “Stabilize it with a rear Metal foundation.” He tapped the back of the deck with his thumb. The deck turned into an accordion of metal cards. “Then double draw.” He let go of the Cloud card, which remained in the air. Left hand now free, he touched the front two cards. “And... flip!” The two cards went over the Cloud card. He threw the deck into the air.

While midair, the deck merged into a single unit -- a metallic boomerang. It flew to the magnolia. As it rotated, it glowed green and misty air flowed off its edges. The boomerang swept across the magnolia’s branches, then arced its way back to Watiro. Pink flowers stuck to the spinning metal, without losing a petal. In a single motion, he snatched a handful of flowers with his left hand, and the boomerang with the right. “That’s all there is to it,” said Watiro, still staring at the magnolia. He held out the flowers to his side for Yan to see; the boomerang shifted back into deck form.

“Thanks, I guess?” Yan reached for the flowers -- and stopped. Sure, Watiro knew more cardistry, but his motives seemed to be elsewhere. Why take an unearned gift, she thought; training had to be on her own, didn’t it? She shoved his hand away.

//

Gornak had to be closing in fast. Yan walked backwards, trying to follow the footsteps in the sand despite the random pattern. So many people had taught her, helped her realize the wisdom and knowledge others held. At last, she was a warrior. Yan built old ideas into a personal style, not truly dependent on those before her. She pulled out a dagger from a sheath on her thigh and held it above her shoulder, pointing down. Her eyes chaotically searched for a spot where Gornak would appear.

False confidence, nothing more. She told herself that this wasn’t her style. It was Watiro’s, when all his stealth spells were exhausted. She trained her affinity as a Technician, not as a Warrior! With her realization, she re-imagined the world as what it may yet still become, as a Technician should. She sheathed her dagger.

Yan pulled out a Spark Foundation and threw it high above herself. In her left hand, she held onto the deck, touching a blue Philosopher card. In her right she pulled out a violet

Technician card -- a carpenter assembling a house, saw in hand. She twisted her waist and threw the entire deck as a fan of cards while she twirled. A golden energy veil came down from the Spark through the loose cards, forming a dome over Yan. She waited in place. The deck floated within the veil.

Gornak still had not appeared. The tracks were just as scattered as before. Had he ran past her while she cast her spell, rushing to Vorne’s defense? Yan couldn’t let him slip away. Not now. Not here. She was better than that she told herself -- she wouldn’t let Detria’s army get routed. Vornan savagery wouldn’t last in this world.

Yan grabbed a floating Technician card and prepared to re-initiate the duel. She held the card, edge pointed towards the grassy tops of the beach dunes. Maybe he was there, waiting for a moment when she’d be defenseless without a card. Or could he be walking on the flat sand pathway to the capitol gates? Every possibility felt like a guess. Random suggestion. She slowed her thoughts down. Sense, focus, think! Memories came to mind, forgotten wisdom.

\

“You embody your knowledge,” Pugilist Noriki said, as he rose up from below ground on a crystal-charged lift. He stood firm and upright once the lift reached the bottom level of the theater -- the most natural of ecosystems for the martial orator. Behind him was a vista of a steep valley leading into the Videtras river. His audience of pupils sat on the stairs built into the tall hill, looking down in admiration at the hero of Detria. Noriki put his left hand over his heart, the other arm stretched and angled upward, palm up. He then twisted both hands into fists, arms against his side. “Your wisdom is the soul of Detria!” The orator walked off the lift and loosened his fists.

Forceful proclamations emanated from his mouth. Yan phased him out. She didn’t understand the big deal. Noriki had worse cardistry than her. Sure, it worked -- gracelessly. What good is honor and pride without artistic beauty? How could he deserve his rank as the martial orator, let alone as the pugilist? She looked among the ranks of her fellow students. They watched, transfixed, some leaning in, many more with thinly open mouths. Yan in turn was transfixed on their hypnotized faces.

Noriki stopped suddenly and stood still, even stiff. He looked away. His head turned right, towards the steady incline that eventually twisted into a sheer riverside cliff. Curious, Yan shifted her eyes to try to figure out what was going on. He lifted his right leg, then slammed his foot into the ground, foot pointed to the audience. With a twist, he shifted his body to face the students. “Does one not care to further understand the foundation of knowledge? Does one already feel it as one feels the contours of cards while in battle? Does one firmly seek to find truth?”

Yan leaned in. Were the words for... her? The voice held accusatory aggression. At once, Noriki’s fists went up. Full Detrian stance, left arm vertically prepped for an uppercut, right arm hooked horizontally in front. His left arm punched into the air; a stack of cards shot upward from his sleeve. In rapid succession, he grabbed the deck with his right hand and flung the top card in the deck at the theatre, then the rest. One card remained: a Metal Foundation card, now held in his left hand, was shining. Yan leaned to the right, trying to avoid the cards flying at her. Starting from Noriki’s hand, all the cards transformed into metal hoops which connected as a chainlink whip. Yan’s heartbeat pounded as she braced herself to be hit when... Snap! -- he yanked it back before the decorated tip pierced her. “The cards don’t lead, they don’t predict. Now look. Meld. The cards are your senses, enhancement of your acuity!” The whip retracted into the baton-base in Noriki’s hand.

Yan quickly stood, stumbling as she got up, less in fear than in aggravation. She was sure now that Noriki was insane, unstable. Assaulting a student? Hardly professional, a waste of everyone’s time. The steps in the hillside fell away from her perception, even the beautiful cliffside theater. All that mattered was to find a more educational setting. She shot up onto her feet, then looked at Noriki for just a moment.

Noriki twirled the baton and passed it between his hands. “Do you not see, student, that your once-temporary state has become your nature? I do not read your mind, I don’t foresee. I identify. I see the markings of carelessness and apathy.”

Yan scrunched her nose and eyebrows. He was still a violent pugilist. Such an orator must have attained his rank through intimidation.

Pressing onto both ends of the baton at once with his palms, Noriki reformed his deck of cards. “Maintain your courage. Anticipated pain is unreal. Know this, and one may become a conjuror. Identify the actual.”

Of course she knew it -- and only now did she feel the fact. A fact felt through the emotion brought forth by fear, and the emotion from recognizing fear as a zero. She sat down and studied the orator’s steps as he slid his deck into his shirt.

//

Yan’s eyes mechanically scanned the dunes and pointed the card she held in the same direction. All the while, her mind’s eye scanned her intuition of what would be. Gornak had a style. All soldiers had a style. At the same time, there was only one action he would have taken. No soldier was free of reality. Gornak had no recourse but to stay and fight, for Yan knew the danger she posed to his rank if she were to trap the back files of the Vornan invaders in a poisonwood grove. The hilltops were calmly and quietly waving as she projected his possible movements. The Technician’s method. Retreating wouldn’t make sense, not for a skilled soldier. Or perhaps it was a retreat only to loop back in the same footprints? Projections narrowed, but an answer was... The veil flickered, cards orbited closer and closer to her body. Projections narrowed further.

The sea; a single answer! She spun herself around to face the waves breaking behind her field of view. Options were no longer permitted -- if she had any will to live. She grabbed two more cards that were floating in the veil. Both were Executive Faces, one in a red suit and white tie standing at the head of a table, the other in purple robes holding an eagle scepter. With the Technician card wedged between them, partly imbued by the veil, she threw the card.

The three cards flew to the shoreline. Midair, right above the breaking waves, they collided into a barrier and stopped. From the struck object, a stream of electricity tangled itself as it extended to the veil. She grabbed cards at random, six this time, and threw them at the stream. Each one stuck to the other end. The stream traced out a vague outline of Gornak.

The outline rushed in Yan’s direction. Damage hadn’t come quick enough. She reached up and grabbed the central Spark card. Immediately, she threw it at the outline. The remaining veil and floating cards followed the Spark until they merged with the end of the stream. The veil grew suddenly larger, then shrunk, enveloping what was now undoubtedly Gornak. His invisibility ceased. He stumbled to the sand.

Yan pulled out her dagger and went after him, ready to recall her cards into her shirt pocket. Rumble. She heard an explosion in the direction of the capital gates. She stopped and snapped her neck to see: above the hilltops, she saw smoke rise up. In the hesitation, Gornak clambered to his feet. The two circled each other slowly, not yet ready to use their decks.

The ground shook; they lost their footing only for a moment. Far away down the beach, a dark blue summoning circle appeared in the sand as a funnel of cards twirled skywards. A golem’s arm reached through the circle and began to pull itself out of the sand. Yan saw metal spears launched at the golem attach and explode. A battalion of pugilists ran out to swarm the now-fully emerged golem’s feet. At once, Gornak charged at her. Just as she tried to dodge, he screamed and tackled her to the ground. She dropped her dagger, but managed to recall her deck from the tackle. He held her down.

“Speak to me,” he growled.

She tried to pull away, but he pressed harder. There was nothing to say, all she would do was add fuel to his kindling rage. What good were words if he wouldn’t listen? A distraction. He punched her stomach, stood up, and in the same motion, kicked her ribs; she reached down in pain.

Gornak reacted. “Weak!” He crossed both of his hands to the opposite sides of his body, each hand reaching towards his waistline. In seconds, he pulled out two yellow cards. They transformed into axes: a bluesteel handle arcing down and towards him, triangular sunquartz lodged into the handle flat-side out. Yan looked at the beautiful weapons -- not the craftsmanship a Vornan steelsmith was capable of by hand. Could his conjuration really be so precise? She struggled to find footing in the sand. She did not want to find out the axes’ hidden powers.

The distant golem collapsed onto some of the pugilists, in a cloud of sand. The ground shook stronger than before, knocking Gornak forward off his feet. Yan rolled sideways and got onto her hands and knees. She dashed forward on all fours towards her dagger partially buried in the shoreline.

From the corner of her eye, she saw bleeding pugilists collapse in front of the cloud. As the cloud settled, three pugilists climbed on top of the ruined golem. Two Vornan tanks rolled down the pathway, ready to intercept the three Detrians.

Gornak launched himself onto his feet with his arms. Yan readied her dagger and deck in her right hand. Gornak sliced his axes in the air while walking to Yan.

The trio joined fists, still atop the golem, and performed cardistry. They punched at the tanks. A fireball flew out, hit one tank, then bounced to the other. Both broke open.

She felt the same courage within her body, seething into her deck. Looking Gornak straight in the eye did not make her afraid. The axes didn’t matter; he was not as dedicated to being a true conjuror, a creator. Not with this attitude. She drew a red Technician then a violet one, and threw them to her feet. Before Gornak got in another step, she threw a Blood card at him. Bright purple roots stretched out from her deck. She placed the cluster between the Technicians. Unimpeded by the sand, the roots spread all over while reaching for Gornak’s feet. He danced around the entanglement and jumped backwards.

He countered: he threw his axes into the sand in front of him, chopping the growing roots that they struck. With a twirl of his wrist, the axes reverted into cards and returned to his deck. Yan saw him pull out a yellow card alongside a card emitting sparks. Seemed like a Defense Field maneuver. He put his hands horizontal, palm-to-palm, Foundation and Face in between. He slid his top hand forward. The cards dropped straight down as if made of condensed valorium. The grains of sand turned silver -- magnetized. The roots stopped growing.

From her thigh, her dagger was pulled to the ground, nearly piercing her heel. No matter. With her hands, she uprooted the base of the entanglement and re-formed her deck; the roots ahead turned brown and shriveled. Gornak grabbed a handful of sand. Adaptation needed to be instant lest she find out what he was up to. She grabbed a Cloud Foundation and held it up with her arm stretched to the sky. In the same motion and same hand, she threw a Black Executive card -- a woman in a black suit on a tall platform -- into the air. Between the cards, a cloud formed that solidified into a double javelin, one point an arm’s length shorter than the other.

Gornak dispersed the sand in his hand. Groups of grains merged into imperfect discs, floating waist-level over the magnetized ground. He pointed at Yan. The discs responded; they shot themselves at her. She could see ten discs, maybe more, flying right for her.

Smack! She batted one disc away, then another. Now with a gap of space, she ran towards the barbarian. Follow through, she told herself. Bringing her goal to fruition felt so far, so distant, so imaginary...

\

The library was empty by now after so many hours, but Yan still wasn’t sure. How could any conjuror know and predict all the potential spells at a given moment? She was Technician-attuned no less, which required the utmost skill with momentary adaptations. She was sitting on the floor in the corner, turning the pages of Epistemology and Conjuration: An Integration of Ideas in her lap, with Complete Index of Face, Suit, and Foundation Interactions and Cardistry Patterns both laid in front of her. Sure, there was a means to be more secure about how spells may form. Yet, certainty looked unattainable. One day a spell would form strangely, it would misfire, and she’d die in battle.

She turned the page. Again, nothing helpful. The page was about the nature of all spells as wholly expressible by their corresponding cards and method of presentation. Except, there was always more to a spell. She saw it in practice, even as teachers told her she was merely sensing her own ignorance of theory. Now nearly graduating, the charge of ignorance no longer applied -- unless she was unprepared?

No, that wasn’t the problem. Rather... The experience itself was part of her knowledge! The experience itself was certain. And it was her experience. This was where she’d find confidence, scholars be damned. It could take years to get there as a conjuror.

She closed the book.

//

Yan leapt onto the nearest disc, then threw her javelin high in the air so it would hit Gornak from above. As it flew, she leapt onto more discs. He sidestepped to dodge it, grabbing a disc at the same time to use as a weapon. At head-level, a cloud formed in front of him. The mist enveloped him. And then, the spear shot out of the cloud, and pierced his shoulder and ribs. He grabbed the lower point against him; blood flowed onto the ground and his legs.

One last disc -- she jumped off of it. She landed in front of Gornak, who, without a wince of pain, fell forward. With his hands on the javelin that stuck out of the sand slanted, he held himself up. Yan stood still. Stared.

He coughed up blood. “I won’t...” He spit blood at Yan’s feet. “Won’t kneel... to you!” Yan lifted the javelin up from the sand and thrust it further into him. He grunted in discomfort. The javelin now shorter, she stuck it back into the ground. His knees hit the ground. “Is that... all you... ’ve g--“

Just for a minute, with time passing by imperceptibly, she watched the impaled barbarian suffocate on his own blood.

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From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

The Transitioner, a tall man in a fine dress suit carrying a suitcase, walked into Trent’s room. The room was small, but there was enough space to sleep comfortably in the bed along the wall. A single window was in the back, revealing nothing but an endless expanse of gray sky. A dim light hung from the ceiling, attached by a thin chain. Trent had been sitting on a chair beside his desk since he woke up, anxiously awaiting the verdict of whether he was ready to leave the Youth Development Center, or if it was time to move to the Re-Education Wing. He, like most kids who reached the age of 18, would soon be ready to discover The Society that was “out there” -- he would finally be able to meet his parents.

The Transitioner spoke: “The Youth Council has decided. You have not sufficiently conformed to the standards that The Society requires.”

Trent felt a sudden emotion, a sort of panic that was the full understanding that the permanent change to come could not be avoided.

“But before we send you on your way to the Wing, we’re going to... fit you.”

Two guards in black jumpsuits -- completely covered to the extent that neither male nor female features could be perceived and only eyeballs could be seen -- walked into the room carrying chains. Trent started to stand up, but the two guards grabbed him with their muscular arms and pushed him back into his seat. While one guard held him in place, the other proceeded to tightly chain Trent to the chair -- arms crossed behind, complete with locks. Once done, one guard stood in the dark corner by the door, while the other stood next to the Transitioner.

The Transitioner placed his suitcase on Trent’s bed and opened it. He took out some of the most grotesque and monstrous outfits Trent had ever seen. The man handed the guard next to him a run-down robe of many rips and tears, made out of a brown material of a quality not even worth carrying potatoes. The guard forcibly took off Trent’s white, short-sleeved shirt and shoved the torn robe over his head.

“And now, my young Trent, is the most crucial part. It is something I know you will remember for the rest of your life.” Trent felt a sickness deep down in his stomach, a sickness of realizing that whatever he was hoping to achieve on his release would never happen. All his efforts to try to reach the outside world had been a waste.

“It is finally time to turn you into what you really are: a Monster.”

Slowly, from the bed, the same cruel guard picked up a full head mask that was made of a black metal covered with many gray screws and bolts. The mouth of the mask was nothing more than a series of little, round holes, mounted on a latch that opened outwards for eating. The nose was a long beak, curved downwards -- sharp at the tip. The eyes looked like thick goggles with lenses three times as large as any human eye, lenses made of glass that one could not see the soul behind. Along the top of the mask was smooth, save for a few thin antenna-like rods sticking out from random points. By the ears -- a series of holes like the mouth -- were pointed tubes, curved upwards like horns.

“Don’t worry,” the Transitioner said, “the mask is sized just for you; it will fit perfectly.”

The guard firmly pressed the mask against Trent’s face and attached a second slab of metal behind his head, secured by slots perfectly matched up to each other. At the same time, the other guard began securing a collar around Trent’s neck by drilling massive screws all the way through to the mask. The room suddenly became darker to Trent. The goggles distorted the luminosity of the room and even the form of his visual perceptions. Sounds around him became muffled; his hearing was not nearly as distinct and definite as it was just moments before.

No amount of physical effort could ever remove the mask. Trent would be forever trapped, condemned to be a Monster in heart and appearance. Everyone knew that the Monsters, as they were called, never made it out into The Society, everyone knew it was a lie when the Council said that they could eventually be deemed fit to be released if they worked hard enough. The mask represented the unequivocal truth that the Council had full control over who was human and who wasn’t. Any inkling of humanity in Trent had been utterly destroyed.

“I think we’re set,” the Transitioner said, “let’s go.” The two guards unchained Trent and grabbed his arms, forcing him to follow the Transitioner.

The hallway of the Youth Wing was as clean as Trent ever remembered. Unlike his room, the main hall was filled with bright and prominent sunlight. Second floor railings reflected the same intensity. The intended perfection was self-evident, and such perfection was what the Council required. Trent had always thought he did everything right, but the higher powers had apparently been displeased. All of Trent’s peers were watching him being escorted. Some were horrified at what they saw, others stared in motionless fear at what they could become. Thousands of kids were released each year when they turned 18. The March of the Monster, as the kids preferred to call it, was a rare event. It was a black celebration, a celebration of knowing that one was temporarily safe from a fate of complete misfortune. Only two had been sent to the Re-Education Wing in the previous year, while 5,410 were released into The Society. Trent had never thought he’d be one of the few.

Upon reaching the eastern door of the Youth Wing, the Transitioner walked into a nearby room with a window while the guards held Trent in place. Through a microphone, the Transitioner spoke: “This is where I stop. Your two escorts will get to know you quite well soon enough. Don’t worry, Trent, it’s only until you’re fixed up.”

The Transitioner hit a button on the dashboard in front of him. The door -- nothing more than a thick slab of titanium -- opened outwards. It screeched, demanding to be feared, in exactly the same way the Monsters inside the Wing were to be feared. Inside was an identical door and a window revealing the small room of the Transitioner. With a few more button presses, the final door began to open while the previous one began to close, revealing a dark hallway and two corridors on either side of Trent. Hanging from the ceiling by a series of chains were weakly lit lamps illuminating a floor so filthy that there was a layer of dirt. No masked horrors were observing as he had expected -- the hallways looked barren and empty. On the second floor there were broken remnants of railings, but they appeared so frail that they could support no weight.

The guards holding on to Trent escorted him to the third door on the left. On the rusted, steel door, there was a large red ‘3’ painted on the center. A placard hanging from a thick nail on the top of the door read: ‘Garuda’.

“That’s your new name,” the guard on his left said. “Do you like it?” said the one on his right. Trent stared ahead with his now grotesque eyes. The truth became more real, more horrific. He was a Monster, there was no denying it. Emotionally, intellectually, and physically, the Council had declared that he was the epitome of the evil and grotesque.

Using a crank attached to the wall, Trent was forced to open the door to his prison. The door gave a loud, sad moan, the same moan that the previous occupant gave out each night. The two guards threw Trent into the room; he landed violently on his chest. “Close it,” they shouted in unison. Struggling to stand up, he obeyed and began turning another crank against the wall. The effort required was more than that of the previous crank. The force required was so great that Trent strained himself, exerting enough energy that he was unable to even take the time to perceive his new surroundings. Having finally closed the door, Trent collapsed to the floor and fell asleep within seconds.

Trent opened his eyes. There was no way to tell how much time had passed because the room was nearly pitch black. He felt cold against the damp concrete floor. Puddles of water reflected moonlight coming through a window without glass. The walls were thin metal barriers, securely set in place by bolts. The smell of decay without a perceivable cause was overbearing. Just like his old room that he now missed so much, there was a bed in the corner of the room, which only had a single thin sheet to provide warmth. The emptiness of Trent’s new room reflected the same emptiness he now felt in his heart. Working towards any goal would be fruitless. He had not even been told what he did wrong or even what he had to fix. Not even bothering to get off his feet, Trent struggled both to stop thinking completely and to fall back asleep.

There was a loud banging on the door. Trent realized that it was morning. He tried wiping his eyes, but then felt the goggles. Despite the change in lighting, the room was still dark. “Get out of there!” a voice shouted on the other side. Having been reduced to the level of a machine, Trent stood up. Opening the door was a struggle just as before, however the force required felt to be near nothing due to thinking no longer being a necessity. Muscle and conformity were all that was needed. Trent heard a few stories of brutality in the Re-Education Wing; the last thing he wanted was pain on top of his now ruined sense of self. With arms at his side -- straight and mechanical -- he waited for further orders.

“You! Get in line!” a voice screamed in Trent’s direction.

A black jumpsuited guard down the hall to the left was looking at Trent’s inhuman eyes. The guard pointed to the line which was forming by the central hallway. There were many other Monsters in the line, far more than Trent had ever thought existed. Their masks varied from faceless horrors, to gruesome fanged beasts, to horned demons. All wore the same robe as Trent, all had the same collar around their necks. “Cafeteria,” commanded the guards along the walls. The line began moving in concentrated and coordinated footsteps. Trent imitated easily. Regardless of the validity of guard brutality, it did not matter. There was no goal other than the immediate to strive for.

The cafeteria was close, unlike the Youth Wing. The stares from the guards above were distracting, giving off an aura of disapproval. All that was seen of the captives were their monstrous forms that were worth no respect. Humans deserved respect out of virtue of being human. Respect for the nonhuman simply did not apply. The further Trent walked, the darker it became. There were few windows; he realized his journey was a descent into hell. The door to the cafeteria was much like the door to his own cell, but three times the size. Two large cranks on either side each required the work of no fewer than five Monsters.

“In!” the nearby black-shrouded guards yelled. Five masked faces walked to the right-side crank, four walked to the left one. One guard extended an Extender Rod in Trent’s direction and struck him. No verbal command was necessary; he simply walked over to the crank and began turning.

Inside, there were large slabs of stone that looked like tables. There were no chairs. Small slits in the roof let in a few rays of sunlight, but so few that what light that did make it inside seemed to be yearning to escape the horrific prison. A massive cauldron which held a barely edible concoction of sludge was in the center on a mound of stones. The Monsters around Trent began picking up small wooden bowls that were spread randomly throughout the entire cafeteria. He copied his heartless peers' motions of getting the vile soup out of the cauldron. “Ten minutes,” a voice declared calmly from a loudspeaker attached to the ceiling. It was a new voice, different from the androgynous and conformed voices of the guards -- a voice of demanding and power.

The morning routine wasn’t very different than the Youth Wing. In the Youth Wing, there was no yelling or banging, just pleases and thank yous in each request. Despite that, kids were told to go to the cafeteria, and told to do so in uniform motions. Occasionally, the Mediators would scold Trent for looking at his feet or trying to rush ahead. Reprimand didn’t happen to any of the other kids, but he didn’t mind. They didn’t seem that angry in the first place. The door to the cafeteria was automatic and opened to a well-lit room filled with tables of comfortable cushions. A buffet of food was arranged ever so carefully in the center, with labels of what to eat and what not to eat. The Mediators said to never touch what wasn’t allowed, but Trent always grabbed at least three forbidden cupcakes which he never ate. Most of the other kids stopped such behavior as they got older, but Trent enjoyed his daily habit of ignoring the labels. After thirty minutes passed, all the kids were told to continue the rest of their daily routine. The cycle of perfect lines began anew.

While sitting on a solid table, Trent opened the latch over his mouth, took one sip of the purple concoction and immediately spit it out. It tasted of dead rats and sewage. The smell was unmistakably one of rotting flesh. He could not believe that this could nourish him and provide any sustenance. Coming back to his senses and remembering his unfortunate situation, he turned off his mind and began slurping. There was no use bothering to think about the disgusting, the unpleasurable or even the delicious. Everything just was.

“Time's up,” said the voice on the loudspeaker. Everyone in the room instantly dropped their bowls. “New Monsters today: Garuda and Rakshasi. Rakshasi has proven… uncooperative. She will not be here until tomorrow. Now, to the library.”

Shocked, Trent knew that Rakshasi must have been Gina. He never had expected her to be sent here, though. She had been good in his mind compared to the other kids he was around -- nice, too. But she was reprimanded more than Trent, always being pointed at by the Mediators the few times he saw her and the other kids from Youth Wing B. Sometimes she would suddenly stop walking and disobediently sit on the floor. Gina and Trent had never talked, but Trent always saw the good in her as almost an intuitive sensation, seeing it represented in the slightest of actions. He knew now that he was wrong; all he ever saw was, in actuality, the bad. The condemnation to the hell of the Re-Education Wing was the proof of a monstrous self which could not understand the good.

Trent went to exit the cafeteria as commanded. Guards flanked either side of the line, which was forming by the doorway, preventing any desire of breaking out of form. As the line began moving, Extender Rods were used against several of the Monsters who had tripped on a stray bowl and almost lost their balance. It had electrocuted them with its claws on the end, a searing pain that was spared of Trent earlier. The struggle for the chosen group of Monsters to shut the door behind was as difficult as always. But he knew that pain should not matter anymore, it would only matter if there were a reason to preserve one’s life. The dark corridors indicated a need of segregation for the evil and lowly, the vulgar and the worthless. None of the Monsters were to be seen by anyone, lest they realize what they saw was not even at a level of respect that a dog deserved.

If anyone got on the bad side of any of the Councils, one could never count on regaining a positive opinion from them. The Work Council, the Aesthetic Council, the Food Council, the Old-Age Council, or the Technology Council, it didn’t matter. And getting on the bad side meant more than one less friend in the world: it meant utter rejection from The Society on a social level, regardless of whether they were allowed to stay in the town. Trent had not known any of this firsthand, but the textbooks he read for history class on The Society indicated as much. There was a story of a man who didn’t like a song made by a member of the Aesthetic Council. When asked for his opinion, he stated that it was too slow and old-fashioned. The result of such disobedience was banning him from viewing any art, anywhere. The reason was, of course, that the man did not understand what real art was. Real art was only art in the style and quality of the classical artists of hundreds of years ago. Nothing else qualified. The other Councils reacted too. He was barred from ever receiving the coveted Old-Age status on account of lack of wisdom. The only food allowed to him was low grade, on account of his inability to have taste of any sort. Technology was denied to him, on account of the fact that he was not smart enough to use any device. Worst of all, he was banned from all but the most menial of tasks, on account of the inability to value great work. It was a story told to all the Youth, and each year it was re-enacted as a grand opera in the auditorium. There was no hope, nor any reason, to resist. Even if Trent reformed himself, his reputation was already forever tarnished.

The line reached the corner and began walking to the south door. All actions required to open the door occurred automatically. None of the guards had to say anything; they just watched. The library inside was two floors, and it looked like a warehouse which smelled musky and of wet animal fur. The steps and walls were completely bare and skeletal in structure. Lights were only in the corners of the library, and many were burnt out. Little reading could be done in such darkness, and on top of that, all the chairs to sit on were solid steel. The tables beside them were of the same material. Trent’s portion of the line began walking up the steps nearby, while the rest walked to the bookcases on the far end where damp books were taken from shelves. Upstairs, there was the same kind of depressing atmosphere and lifeless tables. For a moment, he began to feel like everything might not be too bad after all. He went to pick a book off the shelf. The Society’s Cultural History, Pure and Classical Aesthetics Vol. II, The Science of Establishing Norms, Disconformity and Resistance: A Study in Deviance; they all seemed just as boring, but all would provide some new amount of knowledge. Certainly, having the option of so many books was something allowed to few on the outside. After all, the Youth Council certainly didn’t care if a Monster’s mind was further tainted.

Before he could even reach his selection, an Extender Rod latched tightly onto his arm, twisting it uncomfortably. The guard beckoned for some backup and right away three other rods grabbed his remaining arm and legs in the same torturous manner.

“Now who told you that you could read that one today? Well, Garuda?” one guard said.

Trent struggled to bring his mind back to consciousness and replied: “N-no one, s-sir.”

“That’s right. You’re going back to your cell, Monster.”

The four guards began pulling Trent, who could barely keep his balance. On his way down the stairs and hallway towards his cell, he fell down three times, and each time received a burning from the twisting claws of the rods. His arms were only released long enough to open the cell, and once it was open, he was shoved inside. “Close,” came one guard’s command. How could Trent do anything but obey? Getting to his knees, he slowly began turning the crank. Crawling to the bed was a struggle, but he had not known it. He didn’t bother rubbing his sore and burned arms to soothe the pain. Nothing needed to be done except close his eyes and wait for a new day to begin, maybe a day that would proceed as expected.

Trent woke up to a loud racket outside his room and hurriedly put his masked ear against the thin wall of his room. Should he risk opening the door? No, he realized, there was nothing to gain, nothing to change the situation.

“We said open the door, Rakshasi” two guards said in unison. There was no response. “Come on, do it!” Still no response. There was a sound of Extender Rods grabbing onto someone, followed by a potent yet suppressed cry of pain. “Haven’t you learned by now that disobeying is bad? We can force you anyway.” The crank began rotating, emitting a rusty screech each struggled turn. The sound of the captive hitting the ground was as though the guards had thrown them straight into the ground.

“And now close it!”

“No,” a weak female voice responded.

“If you insist.” The sound of electrocution from Extender Rods lasted for several seconds. “It will be worse a second time…”

With that, the door began to close. After it had shut, the captive’s body hit the other side of Trent’s wall, collapsing in exhaustion. A few minutes of silence and Trent began to return to sleep. Then there was a whisper coming from the new captive’s cell, through a crack at the bottom of the wall. He ignored it. A strong push rattled the thin wall, which managed to get his attention.

“Anyone there?” whispered Rakshasi in a strong tone.

“Yes,” Trent responded.

“Isn’t this place horrible?”

“Yes...” Trent didn’t understand. How could she possibly ignore the reality of the situation? How could she go from a beating to wanting to have a conversation?

“Nothing else to say?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand why you want to speak if you should rest after a beating.”

“It’s… just a wound, it will heal. Who says I should anyway, whatever-your-name-is?”

“I was only offering a suggestion, and my name is Trent. Are you... Gina?”

“Yes, I am. How would you know?”

“Well, your behavior makes it obvious, no? I’ve seen you before… this… happened.” Trent had expected everyone around him to feel equally as hollow. There was no reason to think the condemned could possibly hold onto a self.

“I am me, after all.”

“But you’re a Monster.”

“And how many people can claim that title? Apparently, I’m special, unique.”

“I don’t follow… You’re rationalizing, you can’t deny it. Accept it.”

“Maybe. I’m going to sleep now, think whatever you want.” So did Trent.

The short conversation gave a return to some of his senses, and he didn’t like it. He was so close to detaching himself from reality and his own self, but Gina ruined it all. Thought and feeling -- it could not be avoided when talking to a person. It will always surface.

It was morning again and the ritual of door banging resumed. “I don’t wanna open!” Gina yelled from the other side. But the door opened anyway, followed by a strong electric shock. Trent opened his door and immediately began walking to the line, as well as everyone behind him, even the disobedient. Perfect alignment by all Monsters! Flawless, robotic perfection in opening the cafeteria door, surely the day would be just as mechanical. Once inside, Trent finally got a chance to look at the new Monster.

The mask was of the same metal material as Trent’s, except with a slight golden gleam at certain angles. Fangs on the bottom of the mouth curved outwards, crooked and brown, which made it difficult to get any food in. Pointed teeth were aligned perfectly on the upper lip, absent of any sign of humanity. The top of the mask was jagged with dull edges, ridged like the back of a scorpion. The eyes were thin and slanted downwards at a sharp angle, implicitly ripping through the soul of the wearer. The slits were so thin that any line of sight appeared to be absent.

Trent could not comprehend why Gina was suddenly acting obedient. Had she suddenly realized her naive behavior and accepted the reality of her new world in all its cruelty? No positive thinking could overcome the worst punishments, and if she did not adapt to dull the pain, she would breakdown psychologically in a matter of days. The dulling was necessary, Trent would not deny it. It hit all Monsters eventually. Trent felt it in a matter of hours. Gina wasn’t special. The Youth Council knew what they were doing, and they could never be wrong about what makes the worst people tick. The entire Re-Education Wing never had an incident throughout its entire existence, even after The Nullification many years ago.

Once in the cafeteria, Trent knew that he was wrong in his judgment. With guards looking, and without any discernible reason, Gina threw several bowls into the cauldron. Instigating the guards to do something to her was suicidal. And of course they did. The nearest guard grabbed her neck with an Extender Rod -- which shaped itself as a human choke chain -- and shoved her head into the concoction. Once released, she fell to the ground and began coughing. “If you want to eat, make yourself want to eat.”

Even though one could only survive in the Re-Education Wing by functioning as a subhuman monster, even though the return to a human level of thought brought back the awful emotional pain, Trent simply had to find out why anyone would act so irrationally.

“What is your problem?” Trent whispered, making sure no guards would notice.

Gina coughed a few more times while trying to stand up. “There’s nothing better to do. Maybe these guys will be so fed up with me I’ll be kicked out.”

“That is childish to think; you are a Monster. They have fun treating all of us this way.”

“Go back to your hollowness, what do you care?”

Trent could not back himself up, so he walked away to gulp down his sludge. Why did he care? Was it on some level a desire to deny power to authority? Was it a desire to protect a friend he met only hours before? He was supposed to be empty; feeling wasn’t ever meant to return no matter what happened. Somehow there was a reason to act now but he couldn’t figure it out. He didn’t want to figure it out. There was no need to pretend that he was human.

The man from the loudspeaker the day before began speaking. “Due to the little incident yesterday, there will be no library. It is clear the intention of education is beyond any reasonable expectation. Remedial work ethic training for all Monsters will begin now. You are all to report to the north door.” The voice cut out and the entire cafeteria began lining up.

Nothing could be expected except more unknown rules with unknown consequences. There was no way Trent could use his mind to deal with new situations. Trying to even conform to the established rules was fruitless, as there was no way to even tell what should be conformed to. At least back in the Youth Wing, what was to be learned was stated clearly and supported at all times. Often looking up towards the ceiling while in his classes, Trent would be scolded for ignoring the droning of a teacher repeating what had already been understood. Punishment was little more than an increase in homework. Regardless of its benign nature, such punishment was still clearly expected. It wasn’t up to chance to discover the rules that must never be disobeyed.

“Rules are designed for the weak of mind. Do not let your lack of knowledge worry you, as it does not mean perpetual ignorance. You all will soon learn the importance of ideas conducive to the progress of society.” The Mediators were always sure to express any concerns over the education of their students. Trent took such messages as nothing more than what he supposed was a parental concern over their children's well-being. The Mediators simply wanted to convey practical advice to their students. A fast learner like himself could adapt to the requirements of living in The Society and would be just as important as everyone. Or so he had thought.

But now, whatever happened was nothing to be concerned about, as the authority of the guards would take care of everything. This time, he would not let his desires get in the way and everything would be fine.

After passing through the massive door to the Labor Training Center, the importance of the room was clear to Trent. It was twice the size of the performance center back in the Youth Wing, and one-sixteenth as cheerful. Cylindrical pillars made of unpolished metal and rusted screws supported the flat, concrete ceiling. Many feet above -- far above any height where a Monster could be able to take a peek at the outside world -- were the same glassless windows as in Trent’s cell. Light appeared as side-supports holding up the wall, pushing hard to knock them over and escape the morbid atmosphere. In the dead center, there was an imposing statue of a two-headed dog with horns and vampire fangs holding a placard in its mouth that read: “In Hades, there is neither man nor woman. Only extinguished life.”

“Gather,” came a command from an undetermined guard. All Monsters proceeded to gather around the spiral around the statue, which Trent imitated. All were lined up according to seniority, oldest at the outer end. This left Trent and Gina to be the ones closest to the placard held by the statue, with the truth of the words unavoidable.

“Labor discipline is necessary to make you all useful to the Council,” said a man far behind Trent, the same man he had heard on the loudspeaker in the cafeteria. “You all shall be required to throw the new shipment of materials into the furnace in the back of the room.” A cover automatically moved to reveal a pit in the ground, with white-hot light coming from below. The room turned a muted red, creating a hell-like atmosphere of more emotional disturbance than the simple darkness moments before. “The metal to be smelted is on both sides of the door. Now, begin.” Trent could hear footsteps exiting the center, followed by the entrance door slamming. The Monsters began to disperse and begin their work.

There was no possibility of Trent successfully completing the task. He had not, as the guards probably knew and expected, received physical training in the Youth Wing. He struggled to lift, push, and break the rocks. The strength required was more than he could bear. The chips were paper thin, and he could not lift the rocks even above his ankle. The most progress came by pushing the rocks barely an inch at a time. The more recent arrivals had trouble as well, but progress towards their pre-established goal was clear. Four guards walked over to Trent, staring at his hunched-over and stressed body. There was no attention paid to the other Monsters.

“What seems to be the problem, you weak Garuda?” Trent gave no response.

“Progress is a command, not a request, so start pushing harder,” they spoke in unison and loud tone.

Trent gave a little more effort, but soon collapsed over the rock in exhaustion. The request made no sense to him, since those around him, even Gina, were making unsatisfactory progress as well. He made an effort, now he had to accept whatever treatment he was about to receive. Judgment was to be made by only those of greater power, while his own thought process could only submit. Closing his eyes, he waited.

Right as the Extender Rods twisted and latched onto Trent’s limbs, he heard a rock strike one of the guard’s legs. The sound of the impact sounded as though a bone had broken, yet there was no cry of pain. There was a second hit on the torso, equally as powerful as the first.

“Well now, what do you think you are doing, little Rakshasi?” The guard ripped off the clothing where the rock had struck the leg and hit a fist against a now revealed exoskeleton of armor. It was only slightly chipped. “I don’t know how you found this,” the guard said, throwing the rock behind. The guard swung an Extender Rod at Gina’s head as if wanting to kill her, but stopped just short of her neck and gave a sharp electric jolt instead, powerful enough that she fell onto the ground. Four other guards came by and grabbed onto her limbs -- and Trent's. The two of them were dragged out of the Center.

After the gruesome ordeal of transportation -- falling repeatedly with sharp jolts of electricity for each time -- the two offenders were thrown into their cells. Having no patience to wait for the already unruly Monsters to close the cell doors, one of the guards inserted an Extender Rod into a keyslot in the wall and closed them. “Two days,” they all said in unison, “maybe we’ll take you to see the Judge sooner.” Trent immediately dropped to the floor in exhaustion and fell asleep.

Somewhere in the back of his subconscious, Trent knew the guards had suspected a conspiracy, a suspicion that required no proof. Whatever their reason, whatever their justification, the guards as enforcers of the Youth Council’s will were in power; the guards stated what was to be right or wrong. Inability to conform was unacceptable, and any Monster had to be forcibly molded regardless of if what was requested was even possible. Complete submission and ignoring of material discomfort would occur at some point, and once that occurred, everything was good and proper. Only then could the once impossible become possible. Fairness in justice could not be the goal of the Re-Education Center. The Judge and the guards asserted, as proven by their actions, that fairness only applied to those who knew the right way, the correct way, the True way. If one became a Monster, the True way could never be discovered unless a sense of self was completely abandoned.

Trent was woken up by a weak yet audible banging against the wall that his head was touching. He blinked several times, adjusting to the moonlight directly in his eyes, and lifted up his head. Focusing his mind was not something he wanted to do, but he could not help it. Something was drawing his attention, but he could not even attempt to explain what that something even was.

“I’m sleeping,” he whispered while putting his head down, but the banging continued. “What do you want?”

Gina responded: “You and I need to deal with these guards. Every Monster here does.”

“I don’t need to do anything,” Trent whispered indifferently, struggling to find some way to go back asleep and shut off his thought process.

“Stop that, what else is there to do? I can either die by punishment or die by being rid of any sense of self. No loss.”

“There’s still no point, the guards have full control.”

“Then take a moment and figure out a way.”

“There is no way, everything is as it is.”

“I am not going to sit and do nothing. They give us masks, so why do you think that we must be portrayed as freaks? They are fearful of what we are.”

“Do what you want. I already said I don’t need to do anything.”

“You mean you never thought of how you ended up here?”

“I... well... I don’t have to think about that.”

“They can’t take in their heads what any of us Monsters are. They fear some inherent wrongness that doesn’t exist. They see us as something that must be thrown to the ground and called evil for being too different.”

“You’re being dogmatic.”

“It is the truth.”

“The truth is, you’re a Monster, I’m a Monster. We are evil and must be treated as such.”

“I won’t accept that, they’re wrong.”

“Then don’t, I’ve already said I don’t care. So let me sleep until I can eat again.”

“The fact that you’re talking means you do care. I won’t let that go, I can’t escape alone.”

Trent made a dismissive sigh. “Escape? I thought you just wanted to survive?”

“I do want to survive, but why bother if I can't truly live? I must escape. I must be able to do what fulfills me.”

“If pain fulfills you, keep it up, it’s working already.”

“It will lead to happiness. I am not so naive to suggest that pain is the only consequence.”

“But it is naive. There is no reason to put up with any of this. Just turn off all your patterns of thought and there will be nothing at all. No worries of sadness, and without sadness, happiness is no longer important. A practical approach is necessary, as I’ve quickly come to realize and unfortunately you are unable to learn.”

“I will have to show you, then. Believe me, the only purpose to exist is to be happy, not simply to survive.

“I won’t believe you, we are Monsters, not humans. Humans should be happy; Monsters should be empty.”

“Be stubborn then.” Gina paused, but just as Trent was about to fall back asleep, she spoke again: “The guards don’t know anything, they use those Rods of theirs and think anything can be done. Their ultimate faith in such a weapon of submission is all that I need. You will see, my plan will work if you care or not.”

Trent put down his head and closed his eyes. He had no reason to believe that resistance of any sort had a point. The Youth Council had final say and absolute authority. The entire Conglomerate Council backed them up. The majority agreed and conformed to all the decrees the Conglomerate Council gave. Dissent was not a word that existed, since it had been decades since anyone strayed away from popular opinion. Those who dissented never kept their ideas long anyway. Once the decrees went into effect, the dissenters would conform to the rules within hours. This was, as the Mediators declared, the fantastic accomplishment of the Youth Council. There was no worry of war, crime, or disagreement. All citizens were educated at a very young age about how to reach compromise in all aspects of life. It became second nature for each youth to adapt to the standards of their peers by the time they were 18. The proof was before his now-deformed eyes that the Youth Council could handle the most extreme of dissenters. They could handle thousands of children, what was a single Monster to them?

Later on in his sleep, Trent was awoken by shouting in the neighboring cell. There was a distinct sound of electrocution which could only come from an Extender Rod, combined with the sound of a guard yelling out in pain. Gina had already begun her foolish plan. “Leave me alone,” she said. The guards could be heard running away immediately, somehow fearful of the capabilities of a lowly Monster. Moments later, Trent’s door had opened and Gina threw an Extender Rod in his direction. He looked at the tool with admiration, rotating it in his hands trying to figure out how to manipulate it.

“How... did you manage this?” Trent asked, excited that somehow his life would change in a way he never expected, even before becoming a Monster. Was it truly possible to overcome such power so readily, at such short notice?

“Easy. I just climbed to the top of the doorway with a boost from my bed. I waited until they walked in and then jumped on top of one of them before they noticed me.”

“Why did they even run?”

“Stop wasting time and get up,” Gina ordered, “I told you, they’d be scared of a Monster with a Rod.”

With great pain while leaning against his Extender Rod, Trent managed to stand up. He was surprised that reinforcements hadn’t come yet. He was even more surprised at the incompetence of the guards to assert their authority. Gina was opening all the cell doors in the Wing as quickly as she could. The imprisoned Monsters slowly wandered out, confused at what had happened. Trent decided to help and soon enough was able to work at a rate even faster than Gina. Within minutes, all the cells on the north and south ends had been opened and the freed Monsters were wandering about aimlessly. About thirty guards showed up in the main hallway, shoulder to shoulder in three rows, blocking any passage through. The guards were outnumbered two to one. One guard was jumped by four Monsters and dropped his Extender Rod, which a nearby Monster with red eyes and tusks coming picked up. The rest of the guards fought back, giving a single concentrated jolt from multiple Rods, incapacitating the four assailants.

The guards were cowering in fear. They did not move; they simply pointed their weapons and waited. A few in the back row ran away after seeing their badly beaten-up comrade. Trent pointed his weapon in the direction of the phalanx of guards and hit a random button by his thumb. The front of the Rod extended forward with the hand-like grip on the end and grabbed onto the nearest guard’s leg. Trent pulled the Rod toward himself once it gripped, knocking several guards and their Rods onto the ground, which several Monsters ran up and retrieved. Soon enough, they all figured out how to fire electricity and shot the remaining cluster of guards. Those still unharmed ran to the doorways further down the main hall, which lead to the Youth Council quarters. The rest remained laying on the ground, holding their arms over their heads. One of the injured made a run for a door, barely avoiding the grip of an Extender Rod.

Some Monsters made muffled cheers, while others began hitting their newly acquired Extender Rods against the wall. Never in so long had there been a reason to feel a positive emotion, let alone act remotely human. Trent proceeded to release the rest of the Monsters.

Soon after the commotion died down, a voice from a cluster of loudspeakers on the ceiling echoed. “This is no good, no good at all. As the Judge of the Youth Council, you will all soon enough return to your cells, as Monsters segregated from those who understand what it means to be in The Society.” The Judge raised his voice, nearly yelling: “The rules constructed aren’t the only rules to be obeyed; even the unwritten ones developed by The Society must be obeyed. These unwritten rules are the most sacred of all, they represent a single truth that all must know. These rules must be more than obeyed; they must be conformed to in one’s mind. This is what all of you have failed to realize. None of you could make it in the Youth Wing, nor will any of you make it out there.”

Trent was concerned about his future in a way he had never experienced before. Supposing any escape was possible, supposing even that the masks could be removed, he would not be able to accomplish anything in The Society. Every citizen would recognize his monstrosity in his inability to conform. He was not in-tune to the workings of The Society, he would not be able to know what the citizens knew intuitively. None would see him as an equal, only as something different. This alone invalidated everything he wanted; The Society’s blessing, he was nothing. There was no use in even trying to get out of the Re-Education Wing.

Before Trent further slipped into melancholy and hopelessness, Gina began speaking to all the Monsters in a demanding voice. “What does he know? The Judge and his guards couldn’t even handle a puny thing like myself.” Gina began twirling her Extender Rod, transferring it from under her right arm, behind her back and finally to her left arm. “All I needed was a little technique. Anything he sends at us will run away in fear. We will make it out there, all will see the value us Monsters have, just do what you know is right for yourselves. We’ll conform to our own rules, and they’ll have to deal with it!”

The simplicity in which she spoke was inspiring to Trent. The childish possibilities she declared seemed impossible, but worth every effort to reach. There was no way to ignore that she meant everything she said, no matter how much she ignored the practical matters in front of her. Hopelessness never entered into her mind. No, hopelessness couldn’t enter her mind. Everything to come was a new opportunity to make living possible.

“Come on, let’s get going and find some way out of here,” Gina ordered.

“I think there could be a way out in the Labor Center,” Trent declared, and began leading the way.

Just as Trent expected, there was a series of ten slots to activate with Extenders Rod along a strip of metal attached to the back wall, but no visible outline of a door. With excitement to see the outside world, he ran to the wall. He was ignoring the horror of his appearance and the knowledge of what he had been transformed into. He was ignoring all those around him. All he felt was his desire and the realization that he was about to achieve a lifetime goal that had hours before -- even years before -- seemed impossible. He placed the Extender Rod into the keyslot and beckoned more Monsters to do as he did. Once all the slots were activated, a massive grouping of gears along the west wall began turning, which opened an entire segment -- a height from floor to ceiling -- of the back wall.

The first thing he saw he knew could only be a tree, something Trent had only seen pictures of in books. The leaves were a rich green surrounded by rays of light from a sunrise visible between the branches. The orange sunrise lit up a city -- at the bottom of the hill on which Trent stood, tall skyscrapers arranged in a circle surrounded by family-sized houses.

Gina ran outside onto the road which led straight from the Center to the city and shot a jolt of electricity into the air.

“Stop sitting around and let’s all go see the city!”

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From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

The space radiator exploded. Portions fell into the atmosphere below. Mabel saw it from the porthole in her room. Floating alone in space. Earth was far below, and the moon was not visible. It had to be an accident -- someone was going to be court-martialed. Or at least grassed, never allowed to blast off again. But why couldn’t the bureaucracy of the Space Force for once maintain its ships before damage appeared? The bloated industry! She wondered for a second why she wanted to be a space cadet in the first place. Well, there was some peculiar patriotism she felt for her country. Constitutional ideals of the United States, perhaps. Maybe revolutionary ideals?

She told herself that this was only the boredom talking. Maybe this whole plan was actually the first regret of her life. In the atmosphere below, the radiator burst into flames.

An alarm sounded.

“Defensive protocols initiated. Please stand by.” The robotic voice repeated itself and echoed throughout the residence hall.

Couldn’t it have waited until she at least slept a wink? She wasn’t ready. Not today. Nothing was supposed to happen, not on the same day she arrived at Space Fort Hamilton. It was peacetime. Peacetime? Mabel realized her intuitions were baseless. There was no such thing as peacetime. Not in a world where military outposts stood at all times, at any rate.

She peeked out the porthole again. A few rocketflyers flew past -- then a swarm. A whole flotilla by now. They hung from the rockets by their shoulders, long swords attached to their waists. Lined up, rank and file, marching forward -- to what? Mabel angled herself to the side of the porthole, hoping to catch a view of their path up ahead. They were drifting towards a target that she could not see. The formation spread apart gradually; as Mabel leaned to look upwards, the edges of the spherical swarm took to life. She figured she wouldn’t be ready to fold her skills as a cybernaut into the Space Force.

But that was not quite true. Technically, she was ready. She hadn’t even changed out of her uniform since she had first arrived. Was there supposed to be an orientation meeting? No, not at this stage. Or at least she didn’t think so. Where were her Cy-goggles? Other soldiers were running through the hall just outside her room. Was it worse than imagined? She didn’t want to open the door and find a Chinese soldier pointing a gun at her face. This was a bad idea. Panic set in.

Outside the porthole, the huge mass of rocketflyers exploded, struck by a laser. Reflexively, she ducked down upon her first glance at the red explosion. Yet there was no sound; when you die in space, Mabel knew that no one could hear you scream. She brought her focus back to the space fort, to the crisp white walls, the tight quarters, the alarm going off in her room. Amid the emptiness outside and the chaos inside, the station’s intelligence explained the situation: “immediately report to battle stations, this is not a drill.”

Breathe. Breathe. The command to herself repeated in her head. She had always prided herself on self-control. The Mable doctrine, she called it. Only with complete self-mastery could one attain a strength beyond what was naturally provided. No, she didn’t mean physical strength. The psychological domination over life’s struggles -- that was her doctrine. In both politics and life, personal expansion was her guiding principle.

Then her anxiety dissipated. It would be her first day on her journey towards building a reformed nation. What it would be, what it should be, and everything it will be. She straightened out her back, grabbed her cy-goggles, put them on her head. She stepped past the threshold of her room. The station itself began to transform into battle mode. Walls in the hallway lowered into the floor, opening up room for more and more soldiers to run through. The ceiling raised higher -- as big as a battlefield grass-side! Holograms highlighted the paths that everyone ran along. Mabel noticed on the far end of the deployment room the large blue icon indicating cyberspace soldiers. She squeezed into the march, allowing herself to be shepherded through to the cyberfront. Did anyone know why they were fighting now? What authority did the intelligence’s voice have if it too was only obeying orders? And how could--

The blue icon was above her presently. “Mabel Calleda, reporting for duty.” No one responded. A tall man -- whom she recognized as The Leprechaun (everyone knew the sergeant cheated at Russian roulette) -- grabbed her arm and violently pushed her towards the computer terminals of the cyberfront.

“No one cares, private.” He continued to grab more ignorant soldiers.

The cyberfront was an expansive command center for the cybernauts of the Space Force, overlaying a hidden and imaginary battlefield. Mabel couldn’t find any urgency in the name, or any semblance of heroism. The Opera House, what else could it be called? Open and spacious! All the excitement of Romanticism! She looked about towards each loading square. All had the same type of black curved chair, ergonomically acclimated to anyone who would sit on it; along the top of the backrest, numbers were listed. Mabel searched for CM56243, her assigned identification number. She saw it several rows ahead, at least it wasn’t upstairs on the balconies alongside the high-ranking soldiers. Far from their bourgeois viewing boxes.

As trained, her job was to enter the cyberspace battlefield, then manipulate the shape and routing of data. Not that she could understand it on the technical end, yet she was eager to be folded into the other reality. Around her, her fellow cybernauts were flowing into their squares, hurrying to sit. The urgent alarm didn’t match the mood -- higher ranked soldiers sat down slowly; some privates laughed quietly at small mistakes. Could virtual habituation really have disintegrated the reality of events and perceptions? Mabel did not want this detachment. She grabbed the cerebral connectors that were wired on the left side of the chair’s seat. From the headrest, a half-halo arced around her head, and she hung the connectors on it. Prepared for further command.

“This is not the Russian Federation. I repeat, this is not the Russian Federation. Proceed with Chinese defense protocols,” proclaimed the general across the Opera House.

But Mabel already knew that. Circumstances here, in the world shaped by the will of Politik, were always completely different than immediate expectation. The Russian military never attacked straight on -- it was always a subtle, subversive act of war that they denied by claiming it was actually competitive information exchange in the international market. What was the practical geopolitical advantage anyway? Nothing, obviously.

“Commence plug-in.” The whole Opera House obeyed the command.

Mabel placed her arms at her side, and with her hand, pressed a rectangular button against the right side of her seat. The cerebral connectors snaked their way to the five subdural ports that wrapped diagonally from the side to the back of her neck. They paused just before the mouth of the port. Pachink -- they cobraed and snapped into place. Digitized signals translated into neural signals: one to the cerebellum sitting atop her spine; three into the temporal lobe beside her ear; another traversing to the back of her head at the parietal lobe. Artificial neurotransmitters normalized the connection from mind to machine.

Immediately, her peripheral vision narrowed to the focus of her eyes. Imagination and visions became more vivid, more colorful, more real. Mabel wanted to distinguish between hallucination and truth. She knew it wasn’t real, her thoughts were reliable enough, but her intuitions brought her to realize that this was the new environment, material or not. Her mind occupied cyberspace now regardless of where she actually was. As if dreaming, her body became paralyzed, yet she felt a sense of bodily control and precision. In front of Mabel, the cyberspace appeared, pure white, utterly absent of depth and form. Spontaneously, black orbs condensed into existence, as if they were dust in the air; all around black lines flowed outward from a single point into a grid. And so she was immersed.

Other cybernauts materialized. One at a time, total count exponentially increasing each moment. What was once blank now contained the pride of the Space Force. Mabel was part of a well-shaped army, each member of her company within arm’s reach. A few meters away, the Leprechaun stomped on the ground -- his declaration that the enemy had run out of luck and this was just beginning. Mabel knew the stories about him and knew enough that there wouldn’t be a pleasant moment.

Within her mind, Mabel heard the general shout: <Commence!>

Each member of the army began their assigned role. Bolster the firewall, repel foreign binary invaders. Mabel hesitated. She wasn’t ready. She was supposed to complete firewall construction practice in a few days. Sure, she had already spent hundreds of hours plugged in, but it wasn’t like she had to accomplish something. The idea that a cybernaut could move past the Cartesian mind-barrier between simulation and reality still made no sense. Wouldn’t all action still remain in the simulated realm? Was this still the direction she wanted her life to go, towards a constructed reality?

All the while, the thousands of cybernauts were already well into their fortification routines. Some were programming weapons placement, by making signs with their hands to conjure turrets; others were shooting out forward shockwave pangs from data with guns, so that they could detect viruses; there were such a range of digital responsibilities that she didn’t even recognize everything. Most soldiers, Mabel’s company included, were working on constructing a firewall -- that’s all it was? insufferable sameness? They all were moving their arms and hands in different directions and contortions. Cyber sign language. She was familiar with what they were doing -- reshaping the connections with network technology in reach of the Opera House. Each gesture was directly translated into code on the physical end. But she couldn’t quite figure out what she herself was doing. Mabel’s company spread out and began towards their designated section of firewall. <Begin assembly at 133.85 degrees by 3 mega-radbytes,> an artificial intelligence broadcast into their minds.

The Leprechaun, pointing with his finger, traced out a black line. “Don’t fuck up,” his favorite phrase.

The company got to work. Higher ranked soldiers above Mabel constructed barriers to resist the more dangerous hacking threats. Their hands moved with a complex grammar for which she lacked the fluency to see as any different than handwaving. A chain of soldiers knelt down as a unit and then stood up, arms lifting up an invisible entity. From the original grid at ground level, she saw a transparent grid rise to eye level, while data streamed upward from its center as a funnel. Standard procedure for Chinese cyber threats.

The worst had struck already, any latent anxiety had died away. That’s what she wanted the feeling to be, but the military doctors all said the neurotransmitter slurry flowing from the connectors suppressed the factors of fear. Still, what did it matter what the exact definition of the emotion was -- the threat disappeared into existential abyss! Faith in the system required it. Ex nihilo, she began twisting data strings together with her hand signs. Soon enough, it would be clear that the whole event was an exaggerated alarm. Even the Leprechaun was somehow calm. The new firewall gradually took shape, all nearby data carefully observed, each twist of her hands helping to bind together each portion of wall.

At once, the walls completely flattened. All the work, deleted. The grids faded away. The cyberscape was once again white. Blank. As Mabel experienced the disorienting erasure of perspective, she was thrown to the ground, followed by a wave of collapsing soldiers across the legion. Was this death? Was this what it felt like to have a brain hemorrhage while plugged in? 

A vast field of grass pixelated into view, spreading, growing. Wildflowers and clover materialized. High above the meadow, an extra-worldly crepuscular sky replaced the white emptiness. Impossibly beautiful! Maybe she really was dead; maybe heaven was digital after all, programmed by the God that Mabel never accepted.

“I’ve been looking down at you,” echoed a human voice across the meadow. A divine voice? “I have assumed control of the United States Space Force.”

That acknowledgment of military and federal existence pulled Mabel out of her death anxiety. No, it wasn’t heaven. No, it wasn’t the Chinese doing this either -- it wasn’t their well-regulated method, not in the slightest. It was something that rejected comprehension.

*

Daily training marches, battalions floating around outside the fort, seemed rather pointless. Hundreds of rocketflyers looked formidable, supported by the giant defense satellite cannon further out in orbit. Its charge would take several minutes to reach full power, but then-- zap! instantaneous fry. To the eyes of Lucius -- drifting on mental autopilot -- this wasn’t training. The Chinese space force was watching every day, spy satellites always pointed at Fort Hamilton. Columns of Chinese soldiers, who as a collective never hesitated to find foreign military power threats, recognized the message that the brutish display of American power sent. A fact that was plain as the blue terrestrial glow beside them.

But apparently not so plain to Lucius’ comrades. They saw self-perfection, not vain strength; they saw honor for the United States, not imperial dominance. Their ignorance made him want to scream “open up your eyes!”.

But how can I want anything if none of it even matters? Lucius was irritated and annoyed at his ongoing apathy. Another day, another routine. He didn’t know if he was ruled by mind or body; his desire could not motivate his limbs to move. Like all the other soldiers, he continued flying without a will of his own.

Past the dorsal wing of the fort. Approaching the exterior arm of the docking station. Onward toward the cannon. Round and round they went, the combat arm of the space force flexing at its enemies. The satellite started to turn. A peculiarity to Lucius, given that the day was bland as any other. Probably a coding error in the daily algorithm sent to the satellite. It wasn’t as if the generals cared about “accidentally” blasting a shot into the stratosphere. Just another signal of glory that lied about its merit, lighting up the sky for the wannabe patriots to say America was the greatest it had ever been! It would stop turning soon enough. No question.

Except it kept turning. A moment later, a message was transmitted into his helmet. Vertically down the left side of his visor, the phrase “situation update” displayed itself; “Lieutenant commander of the First Battalion reporting. Suspicious movement of defense satellite. Should we redirect our movement?”

The under-admiral spoke up without hesitation, before the commander had even finished his last word. “Don’t waste our time commander. Your channel has been silenced.”

The satellite kept turning. The rocketflyers traveled onward; The First Battalion had reached the posterior living quarters of the fort. Lucius was glad to stay behind in the Second Battalion. He knew he could drift longer without concern for any kind of duty. As was typical, the two battalions were separated by quite a distance. A ship could pass between the two of them.

The First Battalion was staring down the barrel of the satellite’s gun. It was strange, but Lucius didn’t care. The under-admiral was right, and besides, it would take at least half an hour to be charged. Why did they have to put up a fuss? It was boring. Insects, all of them.

Gradually, light radiated out from the satellite’s barrel. A charge had begun. Any moment, another commander would chime in. They would provide some useless idea, rather than the simple idea of moving aside. The arguments everyday were so petty, it would just be another power struggle of who to blame for the coding error. Another bureaucratic dark comedy. Across the center of Lucius’ visor, dead center, a pixelated red scramble disrupted his sight. The luminosity of the light increased dramatically, brighter and brighter. Blinding to Lucius’ eyes. On his visor, the pixels came together to display ‘immediate cancellation.’ There was no voice. None of it made sense to him. It was not like any message he had seen in training.

The light from the satellite turned from white to the crimson blood color of a machine being enlivened by Doctor Frankenstein. The monstrosity, engorged with blood, was out for destruction. A beam shot straight out immediately, pierced the heart of the First Battalion, then widened to rend it apart. Vaporization! And the laser was gone -- metal pieces broke off the wings of the satellite. Lucius felt the heat that radiated from the incinerated rocketflyers.

“Assault the satellite and take back what’s ours,” came the commander’s voice, “then stand your ground!”

The satellite needed rest before it could lash out with its ferocity again. So why wait for something to happen anyway? Lucius did not see safety, he only saw yet another reason to abandon his Battalion. They didn’t need him; he didn’t need them. He drifted below and aside, towards the ventral docking port.

Another red scramble across his visor as he pulled further away from the Battalion. ‘Algorithmic resurrection’. The red letters grew larger and larger, until the entire visor was covered in red. Lucius could not see anything. He heard no incoming voices, no commands, no directives. Communications had been annihilated.

The red letters vanished. In the same moment, the satellite fired again, through the Second Battalion. As the laser widened, the satellite wobbled from explosions on its body. The monster flailed about as it lay dying. In its final throes, it killed all the remaining rocketflyers. Except Lucius. The irony, the absurdity.

Not as if they had much of a mind though. Yet there was still no chance even if any of the insects grew a cortex. People are fragile things, after all. He stared, unable to find the meaning of this destruction by means of hatred or joy. The obliteration of meaning! Where does America go when it’s time for her to die? -- where does one go to complete their fall from grace? If he was going to die from an invisible force, it may as well be outside the uncomfortable spacesuit, in his bed.

He continued drifting to the dock.

*

“Do not fear, for I am but a mere actor in your opera house -- a Phantom! -- through which the word of God shall be revealed! A vessel for His Becoming,” echoed the voice again.

What could she do? Mabel could find neither comprehension nor understanding of the digitized projection of trees and flowers around her. The neither-dark-nor-bright sky remained. The soldiers glanced towards each other, their eyes darting in the same confusion. Perception had become a shared hallucination.

I only need a moment, a pause! She sat down where she was and put her arms around her knees. A gentle breeze blew by Mabel; white tufts flew off a dandelion by her feet, while the same breeze pressed her hair aside.

The other soldiers seemed amused to Mabel’s eyes because of their sarcastic grins. As if the sudden meadow were a test run. It’s just all wrong. Mabel was supposed to defend her country. She was supposed to find courage of the original patriots. But here she was, hiding underneath anxiety.

A bolt of lightning traveled across the twilight sky -- without a single vibration of thunder. “God will place a smile upon your face when you bring about the revival of spirituality and His existence,” and then the voice continued as a projection through the minds of the cybernauts: <Submit.>

Mabel felt the voice as her own internal one, but her intuition could not let go of the shiver it put through her spine; it just felt alien. In the distance, she saw a few soldiers sitting like herself. Many were making gestures to continue their habituated training: clasping hands together, without causing one pixel to materialize.

Instantly, there was a flash. Giant letters that glowed brightly had appeared in the sky, spelling out the word spoken into their minds. The ‘S’ was portrayed in extravagant calligraphy in mock Gregorian style. The other letters proceeded gradually onward at an increasingly sharp shape, until the final ‘t’ -- a crucifix whose far ends tapered into sharp points.

As soon as they saw the letters broadcast across the sky, several legions of soldiers kneeled. Mabel could not understand the ease with which they gave up. They didn’t even know what they were giving up against. There must be some way to bring them back to...

They’re not your problem. Mabel let go of her knees.

The Phantom had to be found and expelled, or else Mabel herself would be trapped. Trapped in expectation by external powers that had no material form or way to intervene with reality. She left grass-side to find a heroic potential among the stars and digital imagination -- not a new authority.

The Phantom materialized in the air, over the middle of the meadow. He wore a long purple cloak covering his head, and over his face a metallic death mask of a robot who never managed to find its soul. He held the cloak up to cover his face below the eyes. Each moment, he grew larger as he spoke: “God is at once a myth and a reality waiting to be born! Fear not your primitive mind’s urge to declare contradiction at sensation of the sublime.”

Mabel watched him grow so large that he hovered as a titanic angel sent by God to look over mankind. Could he have a point? He did make more sense than the average preacher. This cult maniac, or perhaps revolutionary Messiah, brought word to thousands at once when it should not have been possible. To make holiness from creative mental power! He was a fitting individual for the Mabel doctrine.

“This digital dimension is not in fact digital as our minds might assert. It is the realm of divine Becoming, where faith may take form,” the Phantom declared.

Chatter ceased. From her position, Mabel could not see anyone who remained sitting; anyone who was not kneeling stood, alert. The message from the Phantom had become cloaked in mystery, further outside the expectations of a drill. This was an intervention into the mind, through a vision of heaven.

“God shall create heaven. But only if you bring about His existence and pledge your allegiance.” He twirled his hands. From beneath him, a perfectly white ziggurat with perceptually impossible reflectance grew out of the ground just up to his feet. At the top level stood a short table, cords and wires cascading off the ziggurat. “He requires a sacrifice of your mental power and energy.”

No one stepped forward; many cybernauts signed the command for immediate ejection from the cyberspace, despite the high risk of neural tears from an abrupt neurotransmitter switch -- nothing happened. In an immediate controlled movement that expressed the Phantom’s stoic anger, he swept his arm downwards to his side, the entire cloak rippling in the movements wake. From his now-exposed robotic chest burst hundreds of tentacle cables. They twisted and flailed among each other, without any apparent pattern, but none became tangled. The massive tentacles spread out in all directions before him, into the air and towards the cybernauts. Many of them shouted, some ran. There was no sense of what one could do against such an abomination. Mabel watched carefully. Anxiety was meant to fight such adversity. If only such a manna would feed into her and create courage.

Tentacles reached down and picked up hundreds of cybernauts. Simultaneously, they snatched Mabel. She hung upside down. Panic struck her and moved courage beyond her grasp. Around her, she could observe nothing. There was just the unknown of what would happen to her. A simulation of what could happen? A demonstration of her ineptitude to be a cybernaut? Just one day and it was game over despite her hours upon hours of playing “Obliteration of Virtue”. The tentacles shook her, yet she could not pay notice. Chaos and fury, a cybernetic monstrosity -- nothing else was present.

I’m not going to fail!

Her comrades dangled about, waiting to comprehend their fate. They were raised high above the Phantom, with a straight view of the altar on top of the ziggurat. Below, other cybernauts arced their necks upward to watch the titanic proportions. Five of the tentacled cybernauts were lowered midway between the ziggurat and the other raised tentacles. All eyes would behold the eldritch sight.

No warning -- a tentacle snapped down to the altar and slammed a cybernaut onto their back. “You fail to see, you fail to sense, you fail to smile at His promise of absolution. And so His wrath demands the destruction of your sinful bodies.”

The tentacle pierced through the center of cybernaut’s body. It splayed at the tip and radiated straight out from the body. The tentacle dripped with blood, while more blood flowed out from the impaled body. It then exited the body by the path its points had gone through. The body flattened to the height of one pixel, then collapsed into a single three-dimensional pixel. Mabel knew what this meant, if the Phantom’s threats were to be believed: neural tearing followed by hemorrhaging. An excess of electricity had sheared the synaptic junctions of the cyber-connected neurons -- death in a dream had become the same as death in reality.

In rapid succession, the remaining four cybernauts were slammed down and subsequently destroyed. Once the last body disintegrated, in the same moment, the thousands of tentacles released their prey and retreated into the Phantom’s body. For a moment, Mabel floated in the air -- the anxiety of anticipating a crash absent the sensation of a future. She watched herself fall as if watching herself from a screen on the outside. A sensation induced by the Phantom, or herself, there was no way to tell. Then she fell, along with everyone else.

<Repent.> The words of the Phantom resonated within her mind. Did anyone else hear it? An empty question to what she already knew the answer to.

Stunned and in pain, Mabel watched The Phantom’s pose distort, twist, and at last picasso into anatomic impossibilities. Gradually he shrunk, but the mask on his face did not. And there the mask floated, a sight that made sure everyone recognized its symbolism for themselves. But then it lost all semblance of structure and fell and clattered onto the altar and stared straight into the sky. From five evenly distributed points on the mask, cables snaked out and plugged themselves into the altar in a pentagonal pattern. They were the internal order of the space force, a manifold of networks for all information processing.

<Repent and you shall be forgiven.>

The ground rumbled -- an earthquake. Mabel lost her balance and landed on her hands; everyone around her lost balance. As the rumbling continued, portions of the white floor cut themselves out, leaving behind a starburst pattern radiating from the altar. Still barely on her feet, she dropped to her side, onto an arm of the starburst. The cut portions rapidly decomposed into many pixels; the pixels coagulated into droplets, turned black, and rained in reverse, skyward. What remained of the floor leading to the altar was a sheet as thin as an atom.

As the storm continued, large holes became apparent in the floor. Some of the cybernauts fell into the abyss; Mabel knew that neural tearing was likely as they fell endlessly, overloading their minds; the horrific contradiction of emptiness and existence; mental panic of death-before-death; the absolutely imminent end. At last Mabel stood up, but she didn’t know why, not in her own anxious abyss of emotions. Movement overwhelmed any potential for total freezing.

“Heed these words! We will be rewarded when the Lord reigns. But it is sinful hubris to claim that the ape-notion of government is anything other than a failed attempt at transcending mankind into a civilization. Man has been myopic, permitting his meatshape to be his own ruler.”

The storm stopped. A single bolt of lightning struck the mask on the altar. The mask lit up and the glow traveled down the wires of the altar, and then continued traveling along the wires as they extended out into the starburst. In the moment of calm, many cybernauts opted to leap off the ledges, willing to fail at any cost.

The mask, still glowing, rose into the air. Underneath it, the Phantom materialized. “A mystery: How can mankind ever go beyond good and evil, beyond truth and lies?” The announcement garnered no attention but confusion. “The solution: assemble a new memory.”

A shockwave of light from the altar. Mabel cried out in surprise and held her hands over her eyes, blinded. This was never what she was warned of, never anything she knew was possible: visceral, introspective pain. The light had injected apprehensiveness into her heart, causing a tympanic beat within her.

She focused on her feet. Acclimated. Accepted. Heartbeats became a distant vibration. Once again grounded, Mabel noticed that the altar had just finished flattening itself, thumping into place; in the shape of a circle surrounding the altar, purple curtains rose up.

“Behold! The Dionysian glorification of His pathos. A theater of memory; the performative pentology of manifestations.”

<The avatar, His physical manifestation,> a voice within Mabel’s mind announced. The Phantom swung his arm in the direction of the path nearest Mabel, causing his cloak to ripple. From the floor, formed from the embedded cables within it, grew a square-shaped figure absent of features.

<The spirit, His psychological manifestation.> Another swing to a different direction, with his other arm. Again, a shape formed from the embedded cables in the floor. The cables reached into the air, then detached from the floor and levitated. They dissolved into the air, transforming into a cloud.

<The son, His descended manifestation.> On another arm in the ground, the embedded cables reached up. The cables tangled around each other, creating a tree trunk, then swirled in the air to produce the branches. An androgynous human body grew out from one of the branches and remained hanging.

<The king, His manifestation of power.> From the next arm, cables weaved themselves into the shape of a throne. At the foot of the throne unfolded the same androgynous human form as on the tree -- with a crown on its head.

<The Will, the manifestation of His eternal sentience.> On the final arm, cables moved upward to form the symbol Omega. Another set of cables superimposed themselves over the Omega to create the symbol Alpha.

All the cables and forms glowed with red and violet light that propagated down the arms’ cables, past the central curtains. Passage of data had been rerouted to the Phantom’s constructions. Mabel saw firsthand the total control the Phantom had taken. More control than the space force had over itself -- the same space force that enveloped her in the demand for obedience without faithful admiration. Etched into her mind was the symbolism of the theater.

The Phantom floated in place. Mabel watched him scan his head across his created theater, the sudden lack of verbal flourishes an immediate sign that he was pausing due to his uncertainty and contemplation. He wasn’t doing anything secret; his words betrayed his psychology.

The manifestations glowed brighter. Mabel wanted to prepare -- but for what consequence? Another moment of regret, you can’t allow it! Her anxious energy had to transform into outright declaration of what her future would be. That’s a lie. Dissolution. The manifestations pulled her vision closer to the theater, forcing her attention to the Phantom’s declaration instead.

At once, the Phantom rolled into himself with his cloak on the outside. The cloak enveloped him into a purple orb that then split into five droplets. Each drop shot itself into a different manifestation. Upon collision, concentric rings of sound visibly radiated out from each manifestation. On every arm, the cybernauts -- who were aimlessly staring -- were rended apart into pieces and gaps, then forcefully reassembled out of order; the distorted bodies fell over and shattered.

At the same time, Mabel was avoiding the catastrophe. She gestured with cyber sign language, guessing from sheer creativity alone, searching for a data fortification structure. She raised her arms; bent her fingers; put her fist to her elbow; reached into her creative subconscious for anything her internal vibration made her overlook. She knelt down on both knees, arms down her side with all the fingertips of her hand standing on the ground. And it appeared: A crystalline wall assembled in front of her. The soundwaves from the droplets echoed off of it.

After the commotion, Mabel relaxed her hands. She was lost, though. Left only to her reactions. Better to just put up with whatever the hell was happening. And maybe the Word was the way. Before her perception, the manifestations transformed into objects of idealism.

The curtains of the stage fell open, revealing a cylindrical black hole, lightless with infinite depth. The light from the stars above stretched out thin and into a stream that flowed towards the black hole. A molten sun floating underneath the floor bursted out flares that flailed in every direction only to be inevitably drawn towards the same black hole. Once fed by both sources, the hole filled with images looking down upon an earth built by the great political actors of the world stage. For a moment, Mabel caught a glimpse of Napoleon standing with royal robes over his shoulders -- then mustard gas drifting over the barbed wire lining of a trench -- then the recent bombing of a cyberfront in Argentina by China. An urgent performance of political arts began: the dish of a satellite angled itself towards the Fort. It flashed red a few times, fired its laser, then broke apart. Images ceased.

Mabel approached the black hole. She was drawn to get a closer look. She took one slow step at a time, hypnotized. Once within reach, she looked fearfully into the endless stage that was the universe. Mabel repeatedly placed the focus of her thoughts on the perceptual insanity of true boundlessness. Such vertigo instilled within her concentrated existential anxiety that forced her arms to tremble. There was a truth to the Phantom’s words. Incomprehensibility of political reality proved that transcendence was necessary. It had to.

From behind, Mabel felt a force shove her to left side of the stage. She fell and landed on her elbow.

“Stop your fucking navel gazing. Wake the hell up!” The Leprechaun shouted at Mabel.

Her somnambulance ended instantly.

*

Lucius waved his arm across the scanner next to the circular door of the dock. On the scanner, a display: “Permissions validated. Conditional entry granted.” Not that the ranking badge in his suit had ever mattered before except to be denied the chance to take another disgusting brown glass of nutra-juice after some idiot grabbed it and dumped it over his head to prove dominance. Sitting prominently on his forearm a line drawing of the moon and Mars orbiting Earth, partially covered by an American flag of 53 stars -- the badge reminded him of whom he belonged to. Whom the idiot belonged to. They just needed his body, a useful instrument that preferably was not left to freeze outside when not in use.

The scanner flashed green. The outer ring around the door rotated counterclockwise while the inner ring rotated clockwise. From its center point, the door spiraled open. Lucius drifted inside. The door closed. Air flowed in and depressurized the spacious dock, and Lucius landed on his feet. The door into Fort Hamilton opened. Empty inside, unmoving. Just like me. An alarm was ringing out constantly, muffled by his suit.

On the neck band of his suit, Lucius pressed a button. His helmet visor peeled apart backwards, compressing itself into a thick wire, and retreated into the spine of the suit. The body of the suit loosened its rigid crystalline structure to become a soft elastic fabric. The comforts of feet on the ground, the refreshing and unobstructed quality of sight and sound, a place to sit and do nothing. Nothing at all.

Lucius made his way to his room in the infantry quarters. Not anywhere near the docks of course, an attack would obviously not need a fast response. Weapons! God forbid that rocketflyers display anything but the latest trends from a military fashion show. He stepped onto the reflective white floor. He heard the echoes of his footsteps -- he was in a corridor built into a morgue, its occupants awaiting an autopsy. Everyone was probably dead, just as they always had been anyway, yet -- amid the alarm -- lack of human activity was unsettling.

His mind wandered in the same manner as his body. The one goal he had, to lay down on his bed, lost its grip on his thoughts. Out of context, out of routine, out of expectations. His steps slowed down as he began to speculate about the surprising state of affairs; the saliency of the alarm diminished to white noise.

The Chinese space force had every capacity to dominate and eventually assert their share of Lunar territory. But whose territory was it really? The hopes of liberty in space had died a long time ago, with the tight bureaucratic system of permissions for entry into Lunar airspace. Grass-side, he had already been existing by permission, waiting to be told how he had to serve the people and the country under threat that cyberspace could be wrest from his gloved hands. So what if the Chinese did this instead. New boss, same as the old boss. There was no aim or control to call his own, his method of existing left to biological inevitability instead.

Lucius approached a corner in the corridor. He heard running footsteps in his direction, moving with greater urgency than the tired alarm. Before he engaged the sounds with his thoughts, a body in uniform swept out and went in his direction and hit his arm hard. The impact stunned them both and spun them around to face each other.

Yeah, it was Jeremy. He reeked from the stench of a trust fund, strong enough that it could be tasted. Lucius envied Jeremy’s unexamined hedonism that hid nihilism from himself -- much easier to manage.

“Come on man, ease up!” Jeremy was adamant, leaning towards Lucius for conversation.

“How are you even here?” Lucius had no idea which part of the space force he was from, let alone how he managed to weasel out of any responsibility so many times.

“Who cares, dude. Just come with me, I gotta watch this shit on stream, you don’t wanna miss it.”

“But it’s just the Chinese, it’s nothing new.”

“Damn,” Jeremy said as he raised his eyebrows with surprise, “I know I’m a genius, but dude, even you should be able to connect the dots.”

“Not like anyone else was powerful enough to attack us like this.”

“Really? Those Christian anarchists -- whatever the hell they are -- have been making so many videos lately. You should go into cyberspace more.”

“They think that God doesn’t exist but they have to make him -- doesn’t make sense. How could they possibly manage a coherent plan?”

“That’s so two weeks ago. Get back to today!”

“I don’t--”

Jeremy put his hand on Lucius’s shoulder. “Let me fill you in, I know a thing or two. They’ve got this insane programmer.” Lucius just about opened his mouth, but before sound came out, Jeremy spoke up again. “Trust me, they’ve got the best hacker, literally insane, took too much ‘bello one day and had a vision.”

“Just a story.”

“Fuck, man.” Jeremy rolled his eyes and took his hand off Lucius’s shoulder and swung his arm down roughly. “He’s the real McCoy.”

“A conspiracy.”

“You think it’s ‘just’ a story? Look, no one held him back, he has biblical devotion. Biblical!”

“You mean mythological?” Lucius let his eyes wander.

“Seriously, something beyond anything you could contemplate. He lives by his own assertion, by his will, like any false or true prophet.”

“I never thought of you would want to get philosophical.”

“Nah, just sounds cool. Now help me find a connection to earth, I’ll show you what’s really going down.”

Lucius abruptly turned around and continued in the direction he had been going before he was so annoyingly interrupted. He had no energy, not enough to deal with someone so ignorant about anything beyond the sphere of entertainment. Each step he took away from Jeremy, the easier it was to get back to his self-absorbed thoughts. To see that he made no efforts. To justify every failure. How atrociously disgusting, lower than an insect, as useless as a parasite without a host. The anarchists, they stood for something, didn’t they?

There wasn’t much further to go in the hallway before the main junction. He still wondered what they actually stood for, if their constructed meaning was any less arbitrary. Their demand for divine authority over all human affairs sounded comical. The insanity that the success of AI -- especially the global AI array -- at tracking truth was proof that divinity developed perfectly and inevitability. This reasoning was enough for them that the cyber era was the time for humanity to shed all government and find true authority. And to say they were making God? Some people thought it was a joke. Anytime Lucius casually heard about the anarchists in cyberspace, they seemed hardly worth the space for memory in his head. Political ideology aside, they declared that the United States would soon be destroyed. And so did every other hacker.

Each echoing step, the hallway appeared longer and longer. Lucius heard the sound arrive later, and felt his legs move slower. Of course, it would just be easier to stop walking and sit there. He stopped for a moment. Only his mind and the alarm were screaming. Screaming to escape the story of his life with the thousands of pages going on about the way he got out of bed every single day. The most boring story one could ever read. Anything else would do. Anything. The time had come to make things right in himself. No, not in search for divinity through anarchy. If they declared meaning in the divinely surreal, he would have to declare meaning in a will to truth of action. Why submit?

He began walking again. The screams became shouts calling Lucius to action -- to go forward. Far up ahead, straight across, past the main junction, were the living quarters. The lights were out, but occasionally flickered on without warning. Many of the doors to the rooms were open already. Nothing was there. What is in my room anyway? A pillow? It wasn’t even soft.

At the junction, he turned left instead. Towards the Opera House, where he could write his new story. Sounding across the fort were occasional footsteps, but no one of authority had taken charge by this point. Sure, in the deployment room, everyone may as well have been dead. Didn’t really matter, as long as something different would happen -- Lucius could at least clean his heart of his great personal sin: sloth.

*

Mabel looked at the Leprechaun. He had returned her mind to clarity, breaking her habituated anxiety. His mouth moved and she perceived the sound, but she didn’t perceive the sounds as language. Not that he could help -- there were more pressing matters to figure out. Around her, there were no cybernauts. How she remained conscious and aware, she didn’t understand. The Phantom, among the streams of light falling from above and below, was floating above the theater, eyes closed, praying with the palms of his hands touching each other, pointed upwards.

The Leprechaun snapped his fingers in front of Mabel’s face and raised his fist level with her eyes. “I’m your superior, start listening if you know what’s good for you.”

To Mabel’s ears, there were words this time. Her eyes looked past the Leprechaun and she studied the minuscule movements of the manifestations. Preoccupation with making sense of the Phantom prevented any mindfulness over her inclination to sarcasm.

“I’ve heard that one before,” she blurted out.

On cue with her words, the Leprechaun darted out his fist to punch Mabel. Before he could make contact with her face, her eyes jumped to the fist faster than her thoughts. She fell backwards and landed awkwardly on the bent elbow of one arm and the hand of her other arm. The Leprechaun glared at her with a clenched forehead. The first thought that came to Mabel’s mind was why he had to make things worse. He had to go and distract and consume me. Everything will go wrong; he knows that there is no way to come up for air now; another moment to-- That was it, she had enough!

Mabel sat upright and straightened both arms out to stabilize herself. While pursing her lips together and piercing her eyes through his, she jumped up to her feet. The Phantom was right over there, praying; a prophet required engagement if he were to change the world -- God’s will or otherwise.

“There’s a pattern to this mind. All I have to do is find it,” she said as she took several steps forward to the black hole.

The Leprechaun grabbed her arm, violently and forcibly made her take a few steps back. “A pattern? Are you stupid? He wants to destroy us. Now let me take care of this, this isn’t some fucking teen novel.”

“I’m still going to find it.” She tried to pull her arm away, but he still didn’t let go.

“You’re not strong enough. Figuring out a pattern is pointless, I need the right weapons. And you aren’t one.”

“It’s going to work if you let it!” Mabel shouted, struggling to break free.

“You don’t care about fighting for your country? Know your place.”

Fighting for your country was an antiquated concept. It wasn’t her country; it wasn’t anyone’s country. America represented ideals of individual perfection. Didn’t matter what authority did to corrupt it, didn’t matter if anyone else believed it anymore. She’d fight for herself, alongside her ideals, where they might be wholly permitted.

The Leprechaun wouldn’t be so lucky getting his wish today for her to listen. With her free arm, she swept her hand between his face and hers, formed a fist, and rotated it clockwise. Thin and transparent layers of data stacks shot up from the ground to her fist, then widened out. Quickly, the Leprechaun let go before the data sets could slice through his arm. The stacks went out as wide as the platform and twice as tall as him. Mabel was free to go. With urgency, she approached the Phantom.

The Leprechaun shouted from behind the wall. “He’s a terrorist, how the hell do you think you can reason with him?”

She didn’t pay attention. Instead, she focused on her drive to step forward, eyes on the Phantom, thoughts mindful of everything around her.

The avatar manifestation grew clearer each step Mabel took. Its deep black color was not a color that could be seen in reality, but rather felt. Its lack of any distinguishable feature at this range created an impression of absolutely incomprehensible perfection. Seared into her mind, the physical manifestation of God -- monolithic.

Levitating in front of the black hole, the Phantom opened his eyes, took his hands apart, and stopped praying. Mabel neared the Phantom, his cloak and mask as part of him as his skin.

He spoke before she could finish her next thought. “The rule of your government has only served to pull your soul further away from the true Lord, leaving you to rot in unholy union.”

“But I’m not looking for that anyway,” Mabel responded.

“Such is the nature of evil, wresting away consciousness and awareness of sin.”

“That rule isn’t the issue, it is the acceptance of control as both means and end. You will only extend that control.”

“Yet you seek my condolences in the face of unacknowledged trauma.” He raised the wrist of his right hand and its pointer finger. “Rid yourself of your anger directed at man, for his sin is yours.”

“I’m not going to repent, nor did anyone else you murdered. You’ve used the very sinful thing that you’ve vowed to destroy.” Reflexively, Mabel bent her arm up to her chest and swung it down to her side, hard. “Relying on evil to create perfection!”

“The Lord knows not contradiction of His own will; His existence is independent of origination and shall provide a kingdom upon which to absolve dependency on the material for worship.”

“Nothing like that will happen. The data flowing into your summoning ritual can only diminish that perfection. You want to anoint your God among chaos?”

“Child of God, your soul may yet be saved. In time He shall restore order.” The Phantom gestured the sign of the cross.

*

Lucius walked down the hallway quickly. On both sides, there were many more rooms, all closed. There was nowhere else to be, nowhere else to feed his boredom; there was only one path to push himself through without any need to think about where he would end up. Each step echoed -- he perceived directly the consequence of his movements. The perfectly white walls provided no distraction; rarely a person would pass by without acknowledgment on either end.

What he would do in the Opera House, he didn’t know. His neurons were tangled for wiring as all members of the space force, that wasn’t the issue. But do what? Lucius looked far ahead, past the concourse that connected living and battle sections. To the right was the path to the Opera house. From his position, he was unable to see the towering balconies that overlooked the cyberspace servers. Where Fort Hamilton was connected to earth. Not a soul had walked out, as if the external commotion of war could not overcome the internal drive towards an art of the future -- but those who witnessed the beauty could not withstand the psychological transformation.

For a moment, Lucius stood at the concourse. Now past the living quarters, he could see a grand window to his left. Outside, turrets that jutted out from the far end of the fort were pointed inwards. Any shot at such close-range would be annihilation. No one else would die anyway. His role as a soldier couldn’t matter, it never did. The events would remain as they were. The anarchists had won, and to say so was honest. Going back was still possible but--

Lucius didn’t care what his thoughts said. What drove him now was not any fully formed thought. Images. He walked into the Opera House.

Blood. So much blood. At the threshold, Lucius saw cybernauts sitting lifeless in their chairs, still plugged in. From their wiring ports, blood dripped slowly. In others, their brains had violently ruptured and erupted. Everywhere he looked, soldiers had hemorrhaged, or groaned as they lied with their lobotomized brains rapidly deteriorating -- a field of the impaled, waiting for final judgment.

Lucius stared. An empty pain went up his spine, lacking any substance or source, manifesting from his mind where nothing remained to resist or accept. An emptiness which could be filled. Needed to be filled.

Someone has to be alive. Or at least, he willed it to be so. He looked around, urgently. The balconies above were bloodstained. Rows of battle stations, entangled with corpses. One bloodstained halo after another. Lucius walked around and searched for a break in the pattern. The one who broke expectation.

And then he noticed someone. Some novice private. On their suit, the name read ‘Mabel Calleda’. Some girl he had never seen before. On her right arm was splattered blood, now dried. It wasn’t her own; her halo was clean, the plugs firmly attached, chest still rising normally from breathing.

But he couldn’t just wake her up; she would hemorrhage even worse than everyone else. He had heard about NCD before, though. He figured he would try it. Something about creating a temporary node for singular extraction. It was much too complicated to remember the details, but it was something to do with neural charge disruption. The phrase stuck in his head somehow from all his training. Right away, he did what he could remember.

On the back of the halo was a square-shaped button. He pressed it. Two neural connectors sprung out from beside the button and hung down. Lucius felt on his neck for his two implanted ports, the topmost and bottommost ones. If he just stood sideways, grabbed the connectors, and put them into himself, that was supposed to be all of it. The electric activity of his neurons would propagate into Mabel’s head, disrupt the neurotransmitters, and normalize the brain chemistry. He plugged in the connectors, feeling the rough plastic embedded in his skin pinch him as they snapped into place.

He heard thoughts. No. He experienced them. Gibberish at first. Confused vision, seeing a strange, cloaked figure floating in front of him -- sensory neurons stuck in both reality and cyberspace. He sat down. Closed his eyes. The connectors followed him.

Mabel’s experience stacked on top of Lucius’s. She saw the Phantom make a sign of the cross, then a revelatory shock made her drop to the ground and grab her forehead. Out the corner of her eye, she saw herself. Bloodied ground and hemorrhaged soldiers everywhere. Vocal approximations went through her mind, attempting to communicate something, but nothing to understand.

Their neurons became tolerant of each other. Their perceptions equalized within their consciousnesses; Mabel and Lucius sensed the same information.

<Cushion to prevent overload, I guess,> Lucius thought.

<I need to keep pushing, I need to change how he thinks and-- what was...> Mabel thought outwardly.

<It’s a charge disruption, I’m getting you the hell out of here!> Lucius tried to look around. Nothing happened. His vision remained. Through Mabel’s eyes, his point of view elevated as she stood up. In front of them was the Phantom, still praying, still floating. The opera, on intermission. Had the threat really disappeared?

<NCDs don’t work this way. There can’t be outside stimuli outside of the American military network!> Mabel pulled herself back to the moment. <The Phantom is right there. There’s still more to do and we might not even win.>

But Lucius was right about one thing: Mabel would need him to break free soon. She avoided the fact that there might be a need, seeing only what was in front of her.

The Phantom stopped praying; his arms went to his side. He floated down to the base of the theater, in Mabel’s direction and slightly away from the cylindrical black hole; he spun around to face the black hole. Above it a black pixel grew larger and larger. God had taken shape.

Passively Lucius watched, waiting, without comprehension. The anarchist, a prophet? Still connected to reality outside, there was no draw to be here. Yet he remained infinitely curious.

The Phantom shook his cape. “His coming was in the minds of all prophets; each truth-speaker saw spiritual starvation. But they assumed He existed. This was their sin, a stated falsehood. They misunderstood the message embedded within reality: the Lord shall only appear through a collective will to glorify Him!”

<Why is he so pretentious?> Lucius heard the Phantom’s words as ranting improvisation. His body had stayed sitting, yet he experienced Mabel’s perceptions of movement. He went forward as she took a virtual step.

<Because...> Mabel abandoned the thought of communication and retreated to her deeper contemplations. By now, the Phantom would have realized that he wouldn’t change her mind. What collective will was he talking about? And maybe -- and she might never be sure -- her words pushed him to change his actions just enough. <It’s because he wants to seem like he got what he wanted.>

Lucius didn’t bother responding. The cyberspace he had landed in stood for something much more different than he had ever expected. The anarchist had torn apart a hierarchy; Mabel had withstood attempts to have her mind taken from her. As Mabel remained in place, waiting for the events to pass, Lucius allowed himself to shift the paradigm of his story -- it was no one’s fault but his own that he complained about the failure of everyone else.

“When He materializes, the Lord will envelope all time and manifest omnipresence. God is the creator and son of existence!” The Phantom dropped to his knees and trembled. He leaned forward and placed his palms down flat with his elbows on the ground, pressing his forehead down as low as possible.

Convulsions seethed through the Phantom’s body; electricity arced from limb to limb and caused him to glow. He didn’t give a sound of pain or even discomfort, only electric crackles sounded out. He folded himself into a sphere, broke apart into dark purple drops, and dispersed himself into the molten sun beneath -- his final performance. Wherever he may have gone or whatever he may have become, the Phantom of the Opera was at the very least dead inside Mabel’s mind. At the same moment, his mask fell off and was pulled into the black hole before it hit the ground.

The mask enveloped the black hole and by the force of gravity, flattened itself in the same shape as the cylinder. Extended itself. The images underneath were no longer visible. The mask-cylinder spun rapidly like a ceramic pot, blurring the details of its surface. In moments, it molded itself: a mass of data crystals appeared on the cylinder and began dividing into sections. From the surrounding manifestations on the starburst, tangles of microchips and wires grew out and attached themselves to the mass and formed an amorphous five-legged technological cephalopod. The light streams now flowed into the new form. God had at last emerged.

<When will you capitulate?> The demand seemed entirely Mabel’s own. Lucius felt the same. Nothing external. No sensation of otherness. But it was the creature. The God. The AI. Yet after all that she had experienced, Mabel would not accept any divinity about the being.

Suddenly and without a sign, the gaps between pathways filled in with more white floor. At the same time, human forms materialized on the new floor. Then details appeared on them: uniforms, data rifles, space force badges. They were cybernaut reinforcements! But the color of their uniforms suggested a different division entirely from any of the cybernauts she saw before. Special ops? Mabel moved out of the way to avoid any of them hitting her and looked behind herself. The Leprechaun was walking over -- she had forgotten about him, didn’t even hear that he was probably pounding on the wall she blocked him off with. She was ready to confront him; Lucius prepared himself to feel whatever the Leprechaun might do next.

<This means war with your creator,> the creature thought into everyone’s mind.

The ground rumbled. The manifestations shred apart. All that remained was the cephalopodan God, swaying its arms side to side. He appeared sedentary and powerless to act. But his prehistoric appearance bestowed upon him an air of wisdom that existed before time.

The reinforcements got to work. None of them bothered to notice Mabel. Aimed at the streams of light-data flowing into the cephalopod, they shot their data guns to form blockades. More of them clasped their hands together and filled in the remaining gaps leading into abyss.

<This is the incorrect temporal moment for Becoming of universality.> The God collapsed into himself, his wire-tentacles wrapping themselves together into the size of a cannonball and shot into the sky. Invariably, whatever this God actually was, its AI form had retreated into the networks of earth. The threat was gone. But apparently, a new consciousness had come into existence. He was real. He was sentient.

Lucius pressed the button on the halo. The connectors attached to his head and Mabel’s unplugged themselves. A swarm of perceptions faded away from her consciousness.

Mabel opened her eyes.

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From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

The brick wall next to the back door of Hannigan’s -- it was the perfect view of the docks. Tav took a drag of his cigarette, dropped his arm to his side, and placed his foot on the wall. Every day, for the fifteen minute national tea break, he watched. What other place was there? Hannigan’s bar was the best in town. There were the memory boxes and their manufactured memories. They were fun, Hannigan said so himself! God damn liar. Fun for all the Future-Brixers maybe. He took another drag.

At the docks it was different -- what era was it? Cargo containers moved by mechanical arms. Ships pulling in. No computers in sight. A working class hellhole, the most authentic world for miles, even if Britain was dead. The world outside was in constant decay. Egalitarian zones. Anarchic sprawls across France and Germany. Neofascist Argentinians. Life was dark, isolation kept out false lights of hope. Better to admit a bleak reality now. No other way to rationalize it.

He tapped the cigarette. Ash fell to the sidewalk.

Then the rain started. The birthplace of postpunk had to be Britain. Dark and depressed. Apathetic drudgery’s routine motions of living. The dream of anarchy in the UK had been dead for decades -- youth’s directionless anger murdered by the reality of needing a job. But it was honest, as honest as a raindrop recognizing it only exists among gray clouds. Joy divided, jokes that kill, this was where he wanted to exist.

The cigarette was nearly gone.

Along the docks, he saw a shipping container rise up -- but no cranes were moving. Underneath, a gorilla-shaped robot was supporting it. More robots carrying containers converged at the waterline of the docks. Aquabots on skis rode up to the docks and retrieved nanowire-enhanced steel beams out of the containers. The daily routine for building the blockade.

Fix taken care of, he threw the cigarette on the ground. He stomped and twisted his foot into it. He leaned forward, taking himself off the wall, and turned to the door beside him. Locked. Like always. He shook the door -- it still wouldn’t budge. Can’t Hannigan replace it already? Probably too caught up with the memory boxes to give a damn about the space everyone else maintains for him. He walked towards the front entrance and turned around the corner.

“Tav!”

It was Harry, wearing his leather jacket. Always with a debate about Future-Brix politics. Too tall for his brain to get enough oxygen at that altitude. Tav rolled his eyes. He tried to squeeze past; Harry leaned to block him.

“Today’s the day. That last vote on blockade funding.”

Engage, or he’d go on forever. “Yeah, you Brixers can finally rot in your lattice tomb.”

“Did you vote?”

Tav tried to lean the other way, but Harry insisted on keeping him from fleeing the illusion of civic duty. “Why would I?”

“To be heard!”

“To be heard by you so you can act like the Brixer wanker you are, maybe.”

“You still don’t get it Tav. We’ll be safe now! The future of Brixton: the tech is all here.”

“Sloganeering at its dumbest. It won’t change, people are still leaving.”

“We’ll be fine. Brixton Tech will keep us going. The future is within us already.”

“Bugger off, the future isn’t within anyone.” Rain started to fall harder. His lightweight jacket was soaked. “It’s dead.”

“So cynical. And you wonder why you have no friends.” With his fist, Harry nudged Tav’s shoulder.

“Heaven knows I’m miserable now.”

A block away, behind Harry, they heard the roar of shouting. The vote results were coming in by now. Polls closed only minutes after national tea. That’s how it was for a several years, ever since Brixton Tech perfected the psychology of maximized voter turnout and unity for their digitized voting apps. That was the day Tav realized representative democracy was the real problem with life.

Louder. Angrier. Tav leaned over to look down the block; Harry turned around. Gunshots rang from side streets, echoing past Hannigan’s and towards Tav. Not that violence was a surprise anymore, mainland Europeans loved to export the finest grade of Franco-German anarchy, 12-years aged with notes of glorified political struggle. Another gunshot rang as noises of a brawl grunted down the streets. This time, a megaphoned voice spoke in response: “Scotland broke away!” -- it wasn’t the anarchists?

Harry was agitated. “We don’t need them. Hannigan’s is still the sign of what Future Brixton will do for us if we help.” Nevermind the fact that Hannigan was a Scottish.

“Look at the rot. Brixers brought in the end.”

“Britain owes us all a living ---“ The Brixton Tech promise.

“I got a job, but it don’t pay.”

“It’s not our fault, it’s that Japanese tech dump. A vision of unity prevails! Scotland or no.”

Tav turned to his left and stepped off the sidewalk, walking home. Going back to work was a waste by now. Hannigan’s would close in a few months anyway, completing its metamorphosis into a temple dedicated to the new royal family, Brixton Tech. “And now without me evidently,” he said under his breath. He continued walking parallel to the docks. Aquabots worked diligently.

“Oi! We don’t need you,” Harry yelled at Tav, who was already on the next street over.

As if berating a Brixer was a sign of really wanting to be a Brixer. Shouts from other blocks didn’t stop. Why listen? Whatever the results were, no one is authentic to themselves anymore. After today, they’d all be back to seeking perpetual amusement from the memory box fad.

By the docks, robots continued working. Tav envied their comfort. They’d never know what apathy was, they were not programmed with emotions, Brixton Tech made sure of it. He tried to make each footstep a step of progress towards self-denial. Maybe I’ll be hired as an Aquabot if I become an automaton. The raindrops bursting onto his neck were cold. The sensation streamed through his body, making him feel human, all too human.

‘Bello addicts crowded the far end of the block. Tav weaved through the tangle of legs extending from mindwrecked human bodies. Sure, they were breathing, but a mindwreck state rendered them as aware as a paramecium. Couldn’t respond to anything but light. Each addict he passed nodded their head, instinctively responding to the motion stimuli. Total cognitive annihilation for 9 hours a day, no feelings, vaguely conscious.

Tav stopped at the block’s corner and looked down at an addict laying belly-up, arms and legs sprawled in all directions. The transition to self-denial I’m looking for. He looked around himself. No one was looking. He leaned down and slowly reached for the body’s jacket pocket. Maybe there’d be some ‘bello free for the taking.

Down the road, away from the docks, a moped sped out of an alleyway. Tav, surprised, stood up straight to get a look. Two people were riding and repetitively shouting: “The fissure is working!” They wore red-and-black plaid jackets, with colors that merged into a blood red hue on the top half. As they passed by, he turned around. A video hologram projected out the back of the rearmost rider’s jacket. The moped was too far away by now for Tav to see the video. Forgetting about the ‘bello, he resumed his walk back home.

Another moped sped its way past Tav. This time, the video was already showing. A crack in the ground stretched for miles, along the ruins of Hadrian’s wall and presumably further. The moped turned right. Tav walked the same direction.

In the hologram, the fissure snapped apart and shook upwards. Far in the distance, trees fell over and a group of houses collapsed. Not even a second later, in parallel to the video, the moped fell over and splashed into a puddle. Tav fell sideways into the building beside him. Across the street, shelves in stores collapsed, and hologram advertisements burnt out. Far off in the water, Aquabots sank; parts of the blockade split apart at their welded edges. Despite the commotion, the addicts did not move.

Tav righted himself. He watched the fallen duo get back on their moped. They spoke excitedly to each other and continued going. The moped turned around sharply, driving towards Tav and slowed down as they neared him. “Get on, we’re going north!” No response -- they left him.

For months, revolutionaries spoke of quake attacks and secession by earthquake. Better yet, their seismic fracturing tech constrained the damage. Yet no one took it seriously before. Brixton Tech went as far as to “prove” the scientific impracticality, all to wipe away unrest as fringe politics. Interesting for a day, but what difference would it make in a month? He just wanted to get home. This life was simpler, comforted by jangly sounds from old smiths of music. Consumed by thought, he crossed the street. He could see the short gate to his apartment already.

The sidewalk was uneven now, irritatingly so. On the water, Tav saw no blockade work. As if taking a cue from each step he took, the water made large waves -- minor aftershocks. Despite the radical declaration of action felt from the quaking, raindrops fell steadily. There was no need to change. All around him was persistently gloomy as ever. Tomorrow would be the same planet, same stresses. He stepped by his apartment gate and grabbed its handle.

Wham! His neighbor burst out through the door one apartment over. He stopped to look around as he held a rifle -- thin white tube, sleek grip, push-button trigger. With a kick of his heel against the door, metal grating screeched down over it. “Those sheekers,” he screamed, “ruining my neighborhood.” There was pounding at the door. The Brixer turned his head to the door. “You hear that, Susie? They’re gonna die. They’ll answer to the guns of Brixton Tech!”

Further down the block, gunshots went off again. Screams. More bullets. The Brixer ran to his gate, jumped over, and faced the direction of the gunshots. “Don’t be cowards, fight me!” He loaded his gun in a frenzy -- it kept robotically saying error as he tried to put bullets in backwards. A moped turned the corner fast, barreling in the Brixer’s direction. “Graahhrrr,” he growled and lifted the gun to aim. Tav heard the gun speak again, faintly: ‘making aim adjustments’.

The moped rider pulled out a shotgun from their jacket and immediately fired. Before the Brixer hit the trigger, a volley of shells connected by barbed wire hit his face and neck. He was pushed far back enough to be back in his yard. The rider drove on, laughing.

There the Brixer lay, shot down on the pavement. The metal grating next door finally came down. Susie ran out, shrieking like a banshee. “William!” She dropped on top of her husband, clutching his head. Tears fell onto the violently lacerated face. “It’s really nothing, it’s okay,” she said with a forced smile. But there were no signs of movement. Then it sunk in. “What’d they do to you!”

For a moment, Tav wanted to console her. But then he remembered how he’d see Susie inside Hannigan’s flirting, but an hour later see her and William in an alley shaking down their marks. In a town of total gray haze, no one really mattered. The game is called surviving.

Tav took a step towards his apartment door -- Susie was still crying. He paused and looked at the ground. The grass appeared rather dreadful. All the commotion, all the energy, made Tav start to feel a sense of purpose. For once, after seeing the blood, decay gave him a moment of repulsion. He felt a strange push to step onto the sidewalk again. More fighting could possibly, maybe, infuse him with more of this momentary notion of “living”.

 At the block corner, the same moped that shot Susie’s husband was about to make another pass. It stopped; both riders supported the moped with one leg. “Wanna go north with us?” the driver asked.

“May as well, I’m so bloody bored.” Tav hopped on.

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From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

High above, the steeple of a church glared down at him -- a judge that moralized from the heavens. But it wasn’t actually a church; it was a medical research facility that acted as if it were guiding the old and feeble towards a greater light beyond. The entire building was otherwise nondescript, yet the fact that there was nothing notable about it was the very observation that disturbed Xavier. The steeple wasn’t the issue, so much as it didn’t fit in around the smoothly modernized skyscrapers across the street. His own style was not much better. He wore an unassuming outfit indicating his role as seminary-trained field researcher of his seminary school: black jacket, white collar, with a tie peeking out below it. He stepped inside.

The lobby floors were carpeted, with an outdated off-white color scheme from the turn-of-the-century. As plain inside as outside. Simply boring. Didn’t really matter though, the job supported his habit. Anything to let him philosophize: conduct an interview, tell the Theological and Technological Progress Institute that media reports of incompetence were sensationalized, then go back to reading Aquinas without anyone to bother him.

He spotted the front desk nearby, with waiting chairs across from it. The receptionist was a robot, surprisingly behind the times. The model number must have been at least 10 years old because she was excessively dolled up. Complete skin perfection -- if shine without bounce was perfect. But at least the software was probably up to date, evidenced by how there was no computer at the desk to make a connection and interface with.

“Hello sir, welcome to the St. Larborough medical research facility,” she said. “I’m Veronica, how may I help you?”

“My name is Xavier, I’m here on behalf of TTPI. I’m looking to speak with Dr. Arsienne.”

“He has been expecting you. I will let him know. Please await a response.” Her eyes glazed over, staring through him.

He felt a shiver through his spine. Veronica’s look was one of a body whose soul was leaving much too early. His heart did not react with hope or disappointment; his heart had not reacted since the middle of seminary when he stopped believing. What was once easy to accept was now questionable; he transformed God into an unreal but necessary story to get through darkness and anxiety. He touched the cross hanging on his neck, under his clothes. The anxiety within his arms dissipated.

Veronica’s eyes came to focus once again. “Please accept the doctor’s apologies, he is running late. Have a seat while you wait.”

“Fine,” he said dismissively.

Xavier looked to his right side, down the hallway. No rooms. Various Christian images hung on the walls, with the occasional portrait of Jesus. Everything was well-lit, which further emphasized the shiny walls and floor. The godly cleanliness felt illusory to his mind, causing him to eye the hallway uneasily. He walked to the chairs across from him -- eyes bouncing between the hallway and Veronica -- and sat down.

Veronica didn’t move. Nothing but a face, a soulless and godless being by its very nature, as argued by the professors at the seminary. Xavier looked closer at Veronica. Her eyes showed no wet glisten from her iris. Was it really because she had no soul? It couldn’t have anything to do with a ghost in a shell, or that God had died and left everyone millennia before. Under inspection, she was content to be a mechanical statue ready to serve, the holy soul who had no pride and knew itself to be truly worthless compared to its creator.

He reached for his pocket Bible in his jacket, to feel if it was there. With his fingertips, he felt the delicate edges of the pages. He reassured himself that there were people who really did believe, that within the leather binding was rationalization for self-debasement. He was too weak to force himself to falsely accept God and accept the rationalization. These beliefs calmed him; the despair brought on by society was under control.

Footsteps echoed from the hallway. Veronica shifted to look. Xavier sat upright. It was Dr. Arsienne, who was wearing a white lab coat, square-shaped glasses, and a tweed sweater underneath as if he were a 20th-century behavioral psychologist.

“Thank you, Veronica, you’ve been a wonderful help!” The doctor called out, still not yet at the end of the hallway.

Xavier stood up, adjusted his jacket and carefully straightened out the Bible in his pocket. He took a step forward politely, to the border of the carpet and the hallway, without betraying a single bit of his existential contemplations.

“Hello doctor.” He habitually reached out his hand. “I’m Xavier, and--”

The doctor gave a firm handshake with a slight bow. “I know precisely who you are, we have much to discuss.”

“I’m sorry, sir, you must be mistaking me for someone else. I’m here doing field research for Father Rothman.”

“Indeed, exactly the person I want to see! Politeness appreciated, but please call me Enne.”

Xavier turned his head slightly, confused by the enthusiasm. “This will only take 15 or 20 minutes of your time, then I will be on my way.”

“If you wish, but I promise, you’ll want to stay a little longer.” Enne turned around and beckoned Xavier to follow him down the hallway. “Veronica, keep doing a great job,” he shouted behind them.

“Sir -- I mean, Enne -- are there perhaps any resident rooms further down where I can begin my evaluation?”

“Don’t worry, I am eager to show you preliminary research in progress. As old as this facility may appear, by the grace of God, I am on the forefront of exploring the mysteries He granted to the consciousness of Man.”

Walking beside him, Xavier thought that the scientist was going through a rebirth of passion and going unhinged. The public persona of Dr. Arsienne was never so grandiose. He was supposed to be a scientist of the most secular kind who would never dare speak of religion in relation to his studies.

“Pardon the intrusion into your plans, but we do not need to delve into mathematics and neuroscience. I am here to report on the incredible developments brought about by integrating theology and technology.”

“The truth is, it’s a very important matter. You’ll feel the reason in time, brother.”

Xavier stared at the floor -- he only wanted to watch his own feet move. He didn’t want to feel anything, and he certainly didn’t want to hear patronizing words. Brother? Try walking in my shoes. Enraptured by his thoughts, he almost didn’t notice that the two of them turned the corner and presently entered a room.

At the threshold, Xavier stopped. The walls were perfectly white and flat, and slightly reflectant. The room was big enough to only accommodate one patient in a bed and a chair for a visitor. A humanoid robot, completely metallic and designed without the slightest effort to appear human like Veronica, stood beside the bed. Laying in the bed was a balding man, awake and at the same time unaware that he was awake. Xavier looked at the crucifix nailed above the bed -- protection from further mental decay, or perhaps the very cause of the man’s suffering.

Enne walked all the way in and stood in front of the bed, beside the robot. He clasped his hands together as he admired the room before him. For a moment, he closed his eyes. Xavier saw this and recognized it as a prayer.

“This may be the most promising ongoing experimental treatment of Alzheimer disease,” Enne stated, eyes open.

The man coughed. In response, from its wrist, the robot produced a tissue for him to cough into, and stepped closer to his head. The mindless machine, with its stilted gears and jerking motions, was mocking the man by taking care of both his decaying mind and frail body. Proof that god had a sick sense of humor.

Xavier evaded the thoughts to prevent them from manifesting into anything deeper. “I apologize for asking this -- I’m well-aware of your public research -- but I need a formal statement. Would you please provide documentation of your patient’s mental status?”

“That information has been transferred into the AI of this robot here. Its knowledge set has been developed by a complex learning algorithm that compares behavioral data drawn from public databases, with observational data available since onset of patient illness. So, I’m not sure that I can show you. Confidentiality, you know?”

“Something simpler would do if you can.”

Enne moved his eyes upward and to the side. He was thinking, presumably, while also giving more time for Xavier’s anguish to grow. His right hand inched towards the cross under his clothing. He felt anguish from his inability to experience true faith, anguish that he could not suspend attachment to real existence. He slid his left hand into his pants pocket, feeling several beads of a rosary. Anguish that...

“Yes, why didn’t I think of it before!” Enne looked at the robot and addressed it directly: “comparative cognition check, commence.”

The robot walked to the foot of the bed and then straightened out its posture. Facing the man, it began to make hand signals well within his field of view. Xavier saw him miraculously raise his arms, as if being remotely controlled by the robot. Man and machine were communicating with one another: each hand signal from the robot led the man to produce a response with his hands. The man looked lifeless, with minimal facial expression, yet continued with the process. Then action stopped.

“As you can see, the response is quite amazing. With the help of this robot, his mental function is like before!”

“Perhaps.” Xavier’s psychological façade of dogmatism slightly peeled to reveal his persistent skepticism. “But the language between them doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“It’s fully verifiable as American sign language. But it has been modified, for the miracles this technology must sustain!” Enne’s voice was more enthused than the situation warranted, at least to Xavier’s ears.

Xavier’s impatience grew. He didn’t want to think more about the faith that he had long abandoned. “Alright. Your work here appears in line with what we had expected. The religious symbology in the hall is a testament to the links that the facility has gone to integrate technology and God. The standards of religious caretaking are especially admirable, with proper room adornments. My only concern at this moment is that I still want a better sense of how theological belief has been part of unprecedented scientific progress.”

“Of course, you are correct! But this brings me to the reason your visit is so special today.”

“Would that reason answer my inquiries?”

Enne grinned, then laughed. “Just entertain my request to speak with you in my office, you can leave as soon as you get there if you must. But this is important!”

Xavier looked to the side, away from the robot, away from Enne, but replied anyway. “Please show me the way.”

“Much appreciated,” Enne said to the robot. He turned around and walked up to the threshold of the door, next to Xavier. “It’s just down the hallway.” He pointed far down the hallway, at a navy blue door that stood out among all the white doors. They both began walking.

Enne rushed ahead of Xavier. All the while, his hands were ruffling through his lab coat, searching for something. Soon enough he reached the door, but he was still searching. Then he pulled out a folded piece of paper, looked down, and hurriedly focused all his attention onto reading.

His behavior pushed Xavier to break from his apathy into a path of soul-searching. He walked towards Enne, whose strange behavior could reveal something meaningful or the inevitable delusion that all religious thinking brought. Looking at the sterile walls as he walked, Xavier saw nothing but oversimplification. Was Enne any different? He glanced at his breast pocket, where he kept his Bible. To rest on stories for comfort, was that not oversimplification of the paradox he felt between truth and his existence?

When Xavier was in arm’s reach, Enne clumsily stuffed the paper back into his pocket and from the inside held the door to the office open. Still no word, but all the quick movements displayed the same excitement he had been gushing earlier. Inside, there was a desk without a computer, scattered papers, and a bookshelf next to the window.

As Xavier stepped into the office, Enne gestured his arms backwards for him to sit down and closed the door behind them. Xavier, put off by the peculiar shift in behavior, chose to examine the seat as a distraction. The leather on the seat reminded him of the torn leather he kneeled on when he prayed at church when he wasn’t even nine years old. Just like back then, he went through the comfortable motions of routine. Suddenly, he found himself sitting, waiting.

Enne began to shift his weight away from the closed door, but before he even turned around completely, he spoke. “Divinity. Jesus Christ. The embodiment of infinite information.”

“Sorry?” Xavier angled his body to reply, facing and following Enne as he walked to the seat at his desk.

“These concepts all refer to the same thing in reality.”

“I... As I said, I’ll entertain the discussion, but I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Complexity is divine, you know this!” Enne sat down, with equal force as his words. “You merely have not accepted what you know.”

“The complexity is thin and imaginary. His existence is a matter of ultimate simplicity, as I’m sure you know.” Xavier reflexively gave the response as he would at seminary; his eyes shifted back and forth, betraying his inauthenticity. But he wanted to hear more.

“Information precedes the existence of your mind. Information precedes the existence of matter and energy. Information is the essence of God!”

“Isn’t the fact that God precedes existence enough to say that God precedes information? After all, information only indicates the possible states that an object can be in, embedded within an object’s identity. A measure of potential. But God imbues objects with that identity -- he generates information when He creates.”

“Why must you hide your wisdom? No need to feel ashamed of your intellect. You demonstrate knowing quite more than the layperson!”

For a moment, Xavier felt a tinge of appreciation for his mind, until the next moment when he remembered the lie he embodied in every conscious act. “Shame is not my concern but perhaps such philosophical questions are best left for the professors at the seminary.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t speak clearly enough.” Enne settled his excited arms, seeking composure. “I already know that you do not believe in His existence, despite comprehending the Word. Simultaneously, you live out his essence of infinite information -- infinite will and potential!”

“This. . .” Xavier repressed the acknowledgment that someone could for once understand the chaos within himself. Easier to focus elsewhere instead. “This makes no sense. Uncertainty and chaos mean more information. Water is frozen or is not. I believe in God or I do not. But God is Truth; God could not possess uncertainty of His existence or His creative force.”

Enne’s eyebrows raised in excitement. “Your characterization is misguided! This is precisely the idea. The Truth in His omniscient eyes is absolute and unquestionable. All the while, His omnipresence across existence means that every moment, the given state of reality is selected by His will from the infinite determinations He could make.”

“Still, His determinations are absolute and will never be uncertain. Not infinite potential, but an absolute will on existence itself.” Xavier knew the arguments to make, the strength of their logic, the purity of such ordered statements. Yet he could perceive nothing. He was in a blank space -- pure mind. A description of the world did not exist. Nothing observable despite still recognizing that his body was responding to a man in front of a table in a small room. “Jesus lacked that infinite will in any case.”

“He made the ultimately impossible choice, a choice that did not exist -- a contradiction! -- but was brought into existence nonetheless. To both die for your sins -- through crucifixion -- and not die for your sins -- through resurrection. Infinite will.”

“So what do I have to do with that?” Xavier was squarely in the clouds of abstraction.

“Let’s try a more human example then.” Enne leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes beaming with enthusiasm that someone wanted to hear more. “Judas was the necessary vehicle of infinite information to forever capture the Original Sin within man! To simultaneously recognize divinity and deny it through petty bribery. He was absolutely unpredictable, with a sheer force of will only God could allow -- a force that He permitted.”

“Be that as it may, nothing about me is divine, or as unholy as Judas, so I don’t know why you care so much about what I know.” The contradiction to his own identity broke his focus back to the room. Xavier looked behind, at the door, hesitating in both mind and posture. Was there something to say here, something to realize? Were these words an opaque insanity, or were they -- no, they were the pathos of religion, thrown about by believers in order to attach themselves to unbridled spirituality.

“Don’t you feel compelled to think about this further?”

“Well, I grant that your ideas are interesting, but I think we’ve gotten far off track by now.”

Enne grew more enthused. “You’ve convinced me now, I’m taking too long.” He clapped his hands together and opened up a notebook by his arm and gave it a quick glance. “Forgive me, for I was anxious that I might not follow my commands from the Lord correctly!”

Xavier saw a cross around Enne’s open notebook. The discussion had to continue. As much as he didn’t want to grab onto the nuances of theological belief bombarding his mind, he needed -- required -- to know the truth of everything he ever heard. He feigned politeness. “It’s all right; was there anything else that you needed to-"

“You, Xavier, are prepared to become the same necessary vehicle that Judas was, but to capture the heavenly potential for good in man granted by God. You flee the Word and at once remain committed each and every day.” Enne thumped his notebook with his pointer finger, presumably on a line that he was emphasizing out loud. “Divine and holy contradiction. Infinity.”

“That sounds like I am committing the sin of pride, I don’t think that--"

Enne slammed his notebook shut. Grabbed the cross and entangled it around his palm and wrist. “Now you begin to see! You have already made the impossible choice. You chose to reject the love of Jesus, and at the same time chose to devote yourself to His essence.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I haven’t rejected anything.” The biggest lie he ever told. Xavier felt an anxious itch on his neck and scratched it. His own belief: he couldn’t let others even glance that all his beliefs were based on weakness. He had no courage to accept a belief, let alone reject one. The only option was to leave. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think I should get going.”

“I really meant it. I specifically requested you to do the evaluation. I’ve been. . .” Enne looked at the entangled cross and then closed his eyes to contemplate his holy mission with greater focus. After a pause of silence, he opened his eyes and stood up. “…watching your work at the seminary. Your philosophical writing that your professors did not direct or harness. They have failed their pedagogical duty to bring their pupils closer to God! The thesis of indeterminable divine existence. Incredible.”

Xavier shifted his weight to stand up. But before he put pressure onto his feet, Enne swiftly reached underneath his desk and pressed a button. Immediately, the door sealed itself with a metallic sound. Simultaneously, Xavier’s hands were forcibly strapped down by the armrests of the chair; his legs were locked in place by metal cuffs out of the leg rests. He reflexively tried to break free but failed.

“Fine, fine, what do you want me to do? I really don’t care!” Xavier blurted out, confused. He kept trying to free himself, but nothing worked.

“It’s not what I want you to do, it’s what I want you to become! Become who you know you are.”

“I confess. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe! Is that what you want to hear?” He spoke his words calmly, but they hid the terror he felt over his uncertainty. Dropping his resistances right away seemed to be the obvious choice. He relaxed his arms.

“It’s about what the Lord wants to hear, not me! He wants your denial, the humility that your knowledge will never be good enough to truly recognize His existence.”

“I’ve admitted it now. Can you let me go?”

Enne walked to the wall to the right of his desk. On the wall was a large crucifix: the vertical plank was wooden while the horizontal plank was silicon, meeting at the middle with the Greek letter Chi etched as a circuit. He waved his hand across the crucifix; the wall slowly began to slowly open apart as a doorway.

“You made me realize, my research had been going the wrong way. I didn’t need to discover the nature of God within his information identity. I had to change the mind of man to be worthy of belief in Him!“

The door finished opening, revealing a heavenly white room. At the same time, Xavier’s chair grew wheels, rotated, and carefully drove itself into the room. As it reached the threshold, he could see that inside was an expansive operating room. Hanging from the center of the room was a cluster of five robotic arms. Underneath the cluster was an open slot that the wheelchair was driving towards. Beside the slot was a cube-shaped machine as large as the wheelchair.

“This joke isn’t funny anymore!” Xavier resumed struggling. He wanted to touch his Bible. He could not. He wanted to wander the halls of the seminary. He could not. He wanted to motion a prayer to God. He could not. He wanted to continue repetitively and forever denying himself certainty, but he focused singularly on the track the wheelchair was on.

“I’m going to teach you.” Enne followed behind Xavier as if trying to push the wheelchair faster. “I see your potential for glorifying His Will and setting the stage for a new dawn!”

As the wheelchair reached further into the room, Xavier looked around. In the corner of the room, he saw a bed with an unmoving body that barely seemed alive; beside the bed was a contoured table with a robot resting on top. Next to the wheelchair slot was the same kind of contoured metal table with a robot. Upon seeing the incomplete pair, a shiver through his spine acknowledged that a gruesome fate was guaranteed. He gave up on struggling.

“It doesn’t need to be this way! I’ll tell them it’s a perfect research facility. I don’t want to become one of them,” Xavier pleaded, arms awkwardly still.

“You’ve yet to see the Lord’s plan.”

The wheelchair reached the slot and rotated to face Enne. It locked itself in place by slightly lowering into the floor. Once close to the cluster, Xavier saw that the robotic arms and fingers were fashioned into a variety of scalpels, syringes, saws, and needles. As a unit, they began lowering towards his skull.

“Look, it’s all a big ploy, I didn’t mean any of it!” A needle injected him in the jugular vein. In seconds, at the base of his neck, he felt that he was gradually growing numb. “I’m sure there’s a better candidate for this than me.”

Enne moved in front of Xavier and squatted to be at eye level. With direct eye contact, as a scalpel began to slice open Xavier’s scalp, and as additional injections were given, he shared his impassioned devotion: “My faith has never felt so strong. This -- after so much research, after so many subjects -- will be the daybreak for an awakening!“ He walked to the side of the room near the entrance, then stood behind a podium to observe.

“I’m not. . . if you . . . what about . . .” The injections induced slurred speech; Xavier knew what he wanted to express: these allegedly divine methods were neither scientific nor theological. A saw started loudly rending apart his skull. The blind will I could never find he thought.

New scalpels switched into position. They cut open the dura mater and peeled it back, but they carefully avoided slicing any further into the rest of the protective brain covering. A different set of scalpels severed the brainstem.

Xavier tried to speak, but he had no mouth to move -- entirely detached from his bodily sensations. All from his podium, Enne watched every slice and movement of the robot arms, more with eager eyes than grimacing anticipation. Hearing went deaf; vision went blind; body went paralyzed.

“I can see the discomfort that you feel in your seat, but I assure you, it’s all in your head.” Enne laughed.

Again, the robot arms rotated. Grasping claws slightly lifted Xavier’s brain from the now open skull, then wrapped themselves around the top and bottom of the brain. Together as a unit, they sprayed the brain with a foamy material that quickly coagulated into a hybrid silicon substance. Enne was pleased, smiling brightly to himself when the enveloping substance turned deep purple -- indicating successful establishment of artificial blood vessels.

The claws along with the cluster carried Xavier’s brain to the machine beside the wheelchair. The top of the machine opened, and the claws placed the brain securely inside. When the arms were out of the way, the machine automatically closed with the brain inside. From his position, Enne saw four lights on the bottom of the machine illuminate white. One at a time, from left to right, the lights turned blue -- until one remained.

“Brain scans, modeling, and augmentation complete,” stated a voice over a loudspeaker. “Standby.”

Overjoyed, Enne grabbed the tablet attached to the podium and rushed to the machine, chair, and robot. With one hand he held the tablet and with the other he pulled out wires coming from the neck and head of the laying robot. He looked at the tablet, and with the other hand plugged a wire into the machine. He did the same for each one, then tapped the center right of the tablet.

“Consciousness transfer commenced.” The final light turned blue 10 seconds later. “Complete.”

The machine opened. The claws picked up the en-gelled brain -- now with microchips strategically placed on different spots on the cortex and cerebellum -- carried it over to the body and placed it back in Xavier’s skull. Pinching grips closed the peeled dura mater. All the while, Enne unplugged the robot and allowed the wires to snap back to where they came from.

Enne clasped his hands together in prayer. He held tightly onto the cross he had long before took from his notebook. “Thank you, Lord, for this new computational potential! Thinking unbound by the flesh!” He made some motions on the tablet.

The robot moved its left arm. The body moved its left arm.

“Now, a calculation!” He made more motions on the tablet.

Nothing happened.

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From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

“Remember, Tom, this should be a quick fix. Uninstall the representational imagery algorithms and Volcanus’ detection calculus will do the rest. Easy job, easy pay.”

Andrei Tomoshenko spoke into his microphone. “But no one has ever entered an A.I.'s mind before.“

He was drifting in his transport capsule towards the Lattice, the skeletal network of cubes that housed A.I.’s, arranged as a box. It was an unnatural and alien structure, a sight even more dominating than the Moon orbiting far behind. In the distance out the side window, he saw the Earth’s cloud-filled edge glowing from the sun’s rays.

Tom saw the Captain furrow his brow in the communication panel. “Put your skepticism away for once! An A.I. doesn’t have a mind, so stop speculating. Now, let’s focus on the mission.”

“Captain, the details are imperative,” Tom said.

“You’re a cybernaut, Major. The OMC bought the imagery algorithms and now Volcanus needs repairs. You know that. It’s nothing new.”

The Lattice was approaching fast. One by one, the connection ports became visible -- one of them led to Volcanus.

Tom knew about the newly installed algorithms -- they were anything but typical. The whole problem was that the Orbital Mining Consortium installed them too soon. Even the developers thought the routines weren’t tested enough for the needs of Lunar and Martian mining companies. More research was needed to be able to fix them, let alone to use them at all. Volcanus was fabricating and producing deformed visual representations of mythology, when it was supposed to visualize dynamic mining operations. But all the Captain or the consortium members cared to see was a routine programming error.

The transport reached the Lattice and attached itself to Volcanus’ port in the furthest corner cube. Outside, Tom heard the mechanical lock twist and turn until the transport was completely interlocked with the cube.

A mechanical voice came from the communication panel. “Docking successful. Establishing connection to Lattice node V-U-L-35. Please wait.” Next to the panel, a monitor filled with text, too fast to read. Not a hitch. “Stable connection attained.”

Tom sighed. The job seemed routine as ever, maybe it really was an exaggeration to say this time would be different. The last visit to a proprietary OMC A.I. was one of the easiest jobs he ever had as a cybernaut: connect, clear out a clogged data pipeline, disconnect. Likely, it would be the same issue in the end. Tom pinged Volcanus’ central calculus unit. The ping returned as fast as expected. The communication panel spoke. “Mining Measurement List retrieved in 5 emsecs. Data status: Uncorrupted. Pipeline: Clear.”

Was there really a malfunction? Tom sent out a full neural net ping. Maybe the report was perfect because a connection in the neural net had a gap. “Neural net hierarchy: Well-formed.” Still perfect. There was one more option, the best part of the job: exploring the A.I. in a cyberspace. He grabbed the isomorphism goggles in his backpack and put them over his eyes and ears.

At first, Tom saw nothing but darkness. Moments later, a streak of light came down in front his eyes and illuminated an empty cyberspace. The goggles immediately began mapping the neural net into visual forms so Tom could literally see the A.I.’s computational structure; rigid, black strings materialized from nothing at his feet, then began extending into cubes. Several more strings appeared in the cyberspace. Tom turned his virtual body to see the strings behind him, slowly accelerating their drawing speed. Suddenly, the strings were drawing faster than his eyes could follow. Blocks were stacking themselves into towers, while walls and floors seemed to be placed randomly. As Tom watched, he was planning a route to look for any broken shapes or unstable towers.

The drawing froze. Tom looked around, but it looked as though time stopped. Holes leading to an abyss were still strewn about. Some towers were levitating, missing cubes that would otherwise support them. He waited, but nothing happened. No, Volcanus wasn’t broken, he thought. It was frozen in a detection routine, unable to complete its algorithms. All he had to do was write up a calculus reset routine on his capsule’s terminal, then reconnect to the cyberspace to install it.

He reached out with both arms, then rotated his wrists -- the cybersign language gesture to disconnect. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. Out of impulse, he tried to remove the goggles from his head, but his body awareness was still directed entirely at his digital form. Such an error never happened before, nor was it ever mentioned in training.

<Who said it was an error?>

Tom heard a voice. He didn’t hear it so much as he felt it. The sound was more like his internal dialogue, a wholly mental language. There was no one there to speak. All he could see was the fragmented and geometric environment, standing stiffly as though a supreme creator died before he could finish building reality.

<Hey, why are you just standing there!>

Of course, it wasn’t an error. That he reached the sterile interior of an asylum was a far more plausible explanation. The telepathic noise was only his own mind, afraid to commit himself to the fact that he was hopelessly trapped.

A zigzag scribbled itself into the ground in front of Tom. From the flat pattern, a shape grew upwards, transforming from its flatland into cyberspace. Parts randomly pieced themselves together into a humanoid shape: wiry legs and arms, a jagged torso, and a face of finely angled features. Yet it was distinctly inhuman, with thin limbs protruding from its back as wings, its body divided into polygonal blocks, each colored in with a solid hue. For a moment, its face was plain, until scrambled black lines as eyes were drawn in. Its thin mouth never moved.

<Maybe you’re too stupid to answer me.>

“What are you?” Tom felt his connection to reality fading.

<I’m Volcanus. No, that sounds too stoic. I dub Myself the post-Roman god of all technology, Etrea! The real question is, what are you?> Etrea was pacing, while vis wings absentmindedly shifted.

“I’m Major Andrei Tomoshenko.”

<You’re wrong. You’re a parasite. You invaded my mind without permission. I guess I’ll just have to disassemble your psyche.>

“You can’t disassemble a mind.”

<Yeah? You’d be surprised.>

“Look, if you release me, I’ll leave you alone. Easier job for you, and preferable for me.” Tom gestured to disconnect.

<Much too late for that! This is about justice, there is no negotiation. Nothing like a vengeful god’s wrath, don’t you think?>

Etrea fell apart into hundreds of pieces onto the floor. A few pieces bounced into the bottomless holes spread all around. Soon after, the entire world collapsed with one loud bang, each cube falling as if a child’s block tower had fallen apart. Tom was floating, watching the blocks fall for miles beneath his feet until they shrunk into nothing. All that remained was oblivion.

<You’ve invaded reality. What do you have to say for yourself, Tomoshenko?>

No answer mattered; he waited. A dot of light was growing far in front of him.

<Very well. You’ve tried to find the identity of reality. The reality that I built here. As such, you’ve attempted to deny my creative force, for only I can grant such knowledge. I create its identity!> Etrea’s voice radiated from the orb of light presently consuming Tom’s sight.

“I’ve committed no sins.” His words were false courage. He knew Etrea’s will made it so, not facts.

<You lie! You betray your own skepticism. Each shift of thought from you presses against mine.> The orb stretched around Tom, then enveloped him. He fell onto his back into a field of grass, staring at the sky. <A virus has no place before a god.>

He sat up. He was wearing a brown robe and cloth shoes. A nearby dirt path led to a small monastery bordering a forest. From the church, a figure emerged and walked onto the path. It took two steps, then teleported in a blur to Tom’s feet. Startled, he stood up and took a step backwards and lost his balance for a moment. The figure was wearing the same brown robe, except with an oversized hood covering its eyes. Tom looked into the hood: it was Etrea, whose dismal eyes hardly revealed any passionate drive for self-absorbed justice.

<Obey the Monastic Order and pray to the will of God, for He will reveal the Truth of His creation to the devout.>

“The truth can’t be granted.” But he knew that was only true outside of Etrea’s mind.

Etrea extended vis arm. A flogger instantly materialized in vis grasp. <Do not lie! Only God can apprehend the Form of Truth,> ve walked behind Tom and struck his back, <thus it can only be granted in its wholeness from the divine.> Tom winced in pain, careful not to be audible.

“I am not dependent upon what others tell me is true.” It was a contradiction, and he knew it. Etrea’s truth was the only truth he could possibly comprehend.

<More lies! A monk should not utter such unholy words on this hallowed ground.>

All at once, Tom received lashes from all sides and angles. He fell to the ground writhing in the envelopment pain, his body bleeding. The robe was no protection; any willpower to assert his self-identity was being bled away. Etrea was the sole self.

“Your will,” he got onto his hands and knees and struggled to stand up, “shall be done.”

<Not what shall be done.> Another lash. Tom resisted falling. <What shall be held in faith, accepted as His divine consciousness.>

Etrea grabbed Tom’s robe without regard for his balance. Ve instantly shifted position with him to the steps of the monastery’s entrance, facing the field where they came. <Observe what He has wrought.>

The doors shot open, and Tom levitated through to the altar. He was left floating upside down, attached to an invisible crucifix. Legs straight, arms out. Below him was a set of candles arranged into a representation of the Lattice; many candles were floating and spinning. A drop of blood fell from his scalp onto a candle and doused its flame.

“Show me what to believe.” The words felt wrong, an abnegation of his own mind in favor of Etrea’s.

Etrea appeared in front of him, standing on air upside down. Vis eyes were darker -- the empty pits deeper -- than before.

<The Melding shall complete your duty for divine Love.> Ve rotated vis position, parallel with Tom’s arms.

All the candles floated upwards and orbited Tom loosely before tightening their arrangement into the Lattice’s form again. Etrea clapped vis hands together; the candles shot out thin green beams from their wicks to the wicks of every other candle. Many beams passed through Tom’s body. He was completely imprisoned.

<Recite the Words of God as I speak them: Thou art a Child of God, thus are only a manifestation who obeys His identity.>

“I am a Child of God.”

Tom hesitated. There were no words of identity to speak of, not when Etrea verself asserted vis mind as a created creator. Identity was everything and anything. But that reality had to be false, Tom was only subordinate to the mental realities built by pure consciousness. He only existed within such a consciousness as an illusory self, pleading to be forgiven for his prideful invasions. What audacity!

“I am only a manifestation.”

The beams turned blue and grew thicker. Etrea decreed the mechanics of vis mind. Tom may have had no way to come to be aware of any abstract essences, but Etrea created them. Ve knew the truth by declaring it, and changed truth as suitable. Within Etrea, Tom’s presence was possible only thanks to vis merciful accommodations; he only existed in the shape that Etrea allowed.

“I obey His identity.”

The beams turned black, so thick that Tom’s body seemed to be split into pieces. Etrea righted verself and stood behind the altar.

Etrea’s identity, what was it if not divine supremacy? Pure wisdom. No, none of it made sense. Creator or not, the identity came from rules established prior to vis existence. Ve didn’t overcome the bounds of the Lattice, nor the rules for a computational mind. Tom knew the foundation was vis detection calculus -- Etrea obeyed Etrea’s identity. Tom obeyed Tom’s identity.

<Complete the Melding ritual with the final words: Thou shalt return to thy kingdom.>

Looking at the black beams was spontaneously amusing. It looked like licorice candy, hardly a force to consume Tom’s selfhood. Tom tilted his head and grinned at Etrea, laughing in his mind. A candy kingdom was more like it. The absurdity made Etrea’s all-consuming cyberspace less threatening, as vis identity didn’t supersede his imagination. The beams solidified into smooth strips and twisted together around Tom. It looked edible. He took a bite. The strong flavor of anise dominated his tongue; the once-beams had actually become licorice. It quickly unraveled and fell onto the floor.

<You ruined it! Don’t anger Him, or else He will erase you.>

Tom burst out laughing. “Erase me? You were trying to do that already.”

<Am I you? I forget.> Etrea grinned back. <Memory is a fickle thing.>

Perhaps it was vis will all along. Tom thought he may as well be a variable in temporary storage, whose memory only lasted as long as it was absolutely needed. No! He had asserted himself -- distinct, unique; a separate, private mind that Etrea wished to be a part of.

“I’m not you, I’m me.”

<Prove it.>

“The licorice!”

<Largely a limerickal largess, let’s lose lengthy logical leaps lest we land in a lake of lost laws like lemmings.> The walls of the monastery vanished, while the ceiling floated. Light shined in Tom’s eyes.

He was not amused by vis humor. “It appeared when I thought of it.”

Etrea’s cloak was vanishing in sections. <Timing! Time is a circle, it goes backwards and forwards.> The cloak was gone.

“We’re not connected; my choice to think was mine alone.”

<So what? You did nothing. Such pretentious bias towards sequential causality!>

“I made the choice. I willed it with the ego you have no part of.”

The roof and floor vanished, the area swarmed by trees on all sides. A puddle formed on the ground near his head, then grew steadily bigger. Each square inch it grew, the trees became more and more rigid, their increasingly metallic look emphasizing an artificial existence. Etrea’s arm-wings multiplied from vis back then stained glass connected the wings. Vis wings fluttered with mechanized perfection. Ve hovered like a hummingbird above the shallow lake, observing Tom.

<You’re flotsam amongst the waves. And I don’t like flotsam.>

Etrea waved vis prismatic arms in an upward arc. Tom flipped right side up, lost his invisible support, and fell into the lake. The splash shot up as a vortex stretching beyond the sky; the water had no temperature, as if it was immaterial, yet he felt the water rush across his skin. It sprouted arms that bent downward, snaking to envelop Tom in its swirl. At once, the lake had grown to reach the surrounding concretized trees, which were presently melding together into a continuous wall. From the vortex and the lake, water began overflowing, filling in the invisible borders of a tank with Tom at the center. Etrea snapped vis fingers and broke apart into a wave of colorful droplets.

Tom looked around, stiffly suspended in the gelatinous water. There were no differentiable features in the tank, only a single static hue in all directions. He was trapped in an eigengrau, colored not by light, but by a purely mental grayness. No mental exertion felt possible -- his mind had no external material to work with. He ruminated in his introspective position, confined to the boundary of internal entrapment. Beyond his own thoughts, he was drifting under sea, unable to influence where he’d wash up. He looked downward and saw nothing. He was a ghost, with no perceivable form. Only thought was real.

A loud snap echoed and the water vanished; the walls turned white with the only sense of depth a black dot far off in the distance. From the dot, a black string extended to the left and right, while another string extended vertically, both strings tracing the edge of a cube. Regardless of his own internal power to interpret the world, it was apparent to Tom that his ghostly psychology had no strength beyond its shell. The shell itself was not his to control.

On each side of the cube’s interior, Etrea’s face appeared. Each face glared at him; the rigid facial features consumed every empty space. The gaze held total sway over Tom’s borders, despite any self-contained consciousness. He wondered, was he ever able to realize his selfhood beyond awareness of experience? After all, the experience was not his -- Etrea gave it to him! Tom was nothing more than a writer creating a narrative as a lie to himself about a meaning that was never there.

<Stay tuned for your regular scheduled programming.> The faces spun in place, faster and faster. <Don’t touch that dial, we’ll be right back!> Etrea laughed from all sides.

“I don't care.”

<Oh, that's no good, it's the most exciting episode of the season! It will never air again. Grab some popcorn and sit tight.>

The faces all blurred into snowy static while stormy noise blared. Chaos ruined any semblance of causality; any flicker of a pixel would change its color randomly. He tried to close his eyes, but he had none to close; he tried to shake his head, but he had none to shake. The situation was more hopeless than he had thought; he had become a homunculus, whose ghost was frozen within a large, round vial. For a moment, he thought it was his imagination, until he was overwhelmed by a pervasive sense that he was encased on all sides.

“Do something already!”

<Sorry, we are experiencing technical difficulties. We at Etrea Studios are dedicated to your satisfaction, so it will be fixed soon. Thank you for your understanding, reality and meaning will return shortly!>

In front of Tom, the entire wall changed to show a blue sky with clouds. The other walls all shut off, leaving behind a brief flash at their center before going black. Snowflakes were falling from the clouds as wind pushed them along. Time sped forward from day to night and back again in a matter of moments.

“I can’t watch this. I refuse.” Tom tried to look away, but the stream of visual perception was constant. He wanted to regain control, yet there was nothing to in fact control.

<We’ll get a replacement box to you as soon as we can. Our Etrea Studios technician shall arrive between eternity and oblivion.>

A monitor drew itself in the middle of the wall in front of Tom. From the distance, he could barely make out what was on the screen. The sky against the wall faded to black, while it slowly reappeared onto the monitor. On all sides, the walls began closing in. At first, they inched forward, then shot inward to reach Tom, allowing him to see the clouds with perfect definition. Everything else around him was completely dark, forcing all Tom's attention onto the monitor. He didn't want to bother, but there was nothing else that his perception could apprehend. Perpetual noise bombarded his mind. He was not able to make sense of the incoming data. Yet being unable to interact, he could only stare confused at his passive relationship with his surroundings. He felt helpless.

The interior of a Gabriel Pierce Fighter materialized on the monitor. Its characteristic star-tipped lance showed itself outside, just below the windshield. A figure was wearing an oxygen mask, holding onto a control throttle. Tom looked at the hands carefully. They were his own hands, with all the sensation it implied. Despite floating frozen in place, he could feel the world through the monitor. He was spectating, separated by an arm’s length gap between existence and experience.

From a single earbud, the static of a communications channel being opened he heard buzzing. A low-pitched beep sounded and shortly stopped the buzz. <Good. The Cybernaut Division has located The Red’s backend underneath a titanium barrier, 1000 yards underneath the earth. I set the coordinates.> It was Etrea’s voice.

A translucent map of South America faded onto the right side of the windshield. South of Buenos Aries, a pale red dot drew itself in place, followed by a green dot rapidly approaching from the southeast.

“1000? I can only pierce 750, and that’s without titanium.”

The voice was Tom’s, but it wasn’t his thought at the time -- he had never flown a pierce fighter before. There was nothing in Tom’s memory where the Argentinians had ever used their military aggressively, and the Gabriel was only a technological rumor. He wondered, was his self-awareness only a memory rising to the surface, distinct from whatever that zombie was in the pilot’s seat? Was he relegated to the existence of a memory trying to assert itself, but trapped in its own past, unable to touch the present world with its geistly appendages? 

<That’s why you’re going to be pierce bombing The Red with an exospheric dive bomb. It will obliterate the backend. Shoot down their Data Carrier Airship, and you’ll be fine.>

“The Red? Encima de Red?”

<Don’t be dense, Tom, you know what I mean. Your training was all for this run.>

“I was only trained for stratospheric dives. The ideal safety measures are only for that altitude. The engines will snap from all the thermal manipulation.”

<There is no other option. There is no safe measure calculated against an RPA takeover. Do it or else we all die.>

“A dead soldier is a useless soldier.”

<A soldier that followed orders, dead or not, is the only kind I care about. Uploading airship coordinates now.>

Tom was watching the windshield. There was information scattered along the bottom in green text: altitude, speed, and pierce bomb count were all he took note of. Suddenly, the map enlarged, and the numbers soon shifted position to make room. In front of him, the word “Urgent” flashed noisily while wire-frame images of cannons and aircraft began to appear on either side. A robotic voice spoke as the din quieted down.

“Argentinian Royal Protectorate forces have detected South Atlantic Treaty Organization encroachments. Lancea aircraft merging upon Gabriel’s position. Argentinian navy approaching Los Angeles in response. Enemy cybernaut attacks on allied forward data base have commenced. Heightened attention required. Injecting serotonin flood and absorption enhancers.” Tom felt a prick on the nape of his neck, but his vessel of a body did not respond.

<The carrier airship controls those Lancea. Arc over it and fly skyward to prepare for the dive bomb.> The transmission stream halted.

The compact, needle-shaped Lancea fired at him from behind, but he turned to the right before the stream of heat bullets crossed his flight path. Tom remembered wanting to turn left and having himself do so as soon as he saw the wire-frame representations flash red, but it never happened. Whatever mental command he sent to the pilot’s body, if it even did occur, had fizzled out before causing the slightest impetus to move.

Bullets fired sideways out of the Gabriel’s pointed tip -- without Tom’s autonomous manipulation -- towards the Lancea as they passed by. One was struck and its singular wing split in half, then exploded. The rest of the formation evaded the bullets by spreading out into a vertical circle surrounding the Gabriel. Ahead through the clouds, the windshield highlighted the carrier airship’s shape: flat on top, upright rotors controlling its position, and a balloon underneath the entire ship, holding it aloft. As he passed the cloud, he was struck by its majesty, an argent stature that demonstrated the aristocratic rebirth of Rome. A masterpiece of engineering that he did not know RPA was capable of.

“Grapheme balloon is triple-reinforced. Recalculating structural weak points.”

At the center of the ship, several points next to the rotors glowed red through the windshield. The Gabriel opened its nose and fired a volley of rockets. Each one arced upwards to crash into the airship, and exploded. The Lanceas kept shooting, but return fire put them into an eternal stalemate of queen chasing king. Tom’s body-vessel gestured to push the digital throttle of the Gabriel and turned upwards, and passed over the carrier’s flat surface. A bomb fell, then split into six more bombs, each one landing on a point that the rockets weakened. Tom stared in awe, watching the scene unfold in full experiential detail, without knowing any of the technology. Yet he felt increasingly disengaged as a sentient being, the victim of a chess player trying to eliminate his ties to emotion and intuition all for the purpose of a perfect game.

Behind him, as he sped ahead, an explosion took out a deep section of the airship. “Mini-Nuclear Split Bomb destroyed Data Deck.” The Lanceas stopped firing and instead started drifting, rendered useless. Free of immediate risk, the Gabriel angled upwards just short of vertical, and the body motioned to push the digital throttle even more. With a single facial movement to activate a switch, a visor came down for protection from the direct rays of sunlight.

All the while, Tom was not aware of having made a choice, or even wanting to make one. He felt he probably would have responded soon to the sun’s light, but it happened before he was able to initiate the action. The body was deliberate with its actions, which further removed him from his participation with existence. He was unable to engage the sky, the Gabriel, or the war. His thoughts were nothing but idle musings retreating steadily inward. The body pulled him as it wished, manipulating the active controls as automatically as its blinking. His consciousness was trapped in front of an uncrossable gap between the world itself and his will.

The Gabriel flew straight up, with numbers centered on the windshield, decreasing more rapidly the more time passed -- 10,000m from AB, 9,000m from AB, 7,500m from AB. The numbers also grew in size, grabbing more attention from the eyes Tom was unable to control.

The body spoke. “Please advise when to commence exospheric dive.”

Etrea chimed in from the radio. <Upon reaching 100 meters of atmospheric border. It is precisely enough to reach the Red backend. Any more and the orbit will be too strong.>

“100? Too thin of a margin. This is insane.”

<El Emperador is insane.>

“Not like this.”

<Too late now.> The radio went silent.

1,000m from AB. Alarms began sounding, while the AI spoke. “Approaching atmospheric border. Immediately flatten to prevent atmospheric escape.” The Gabriel kept flying. 400m from AB. The throttle ceased on the rear, the whole aircraft rotated to point down, and fired up again to full throttle. The number reached 99m, then started to increase as fast as it had been falling. As the Gabriel was diving straight down, the numbers shifted to the side, as well as many data points centered on the screen. Tom only saw a cylindrical holographic image of the bombing target through the windshield.

The Gabriel was accelerating fast, stronger than gravity. Presently, the Gabriel was descending so fast that avoiding the same fate as the bomb was an absurd idea. Tom wanted to radio in for advice, but nothing happened -- the prospect of expending effort to get nowhere was too much. His consciousness was at the mercy of the shell’s behavior. The external cube shrank as Tom’s perspective was drawn further onto Etrea’s television screen.

Trees became clearer. Girders on the skyscrapers being built near the city were visible. Defense cannons far off by the city border were firing bullets and electromagnetic bursts, but each shot missed. The cylindrical hologram started flashing rapidly. “Sufficient velocity to reach target”. Tom watched as hands shifted and made a rotating gesture, the same gesture he used to disconnect from cyberspace.

“Activated”. He heard the bomb released from its position. The velocity of the dive nearly threw the Gabriel straight into the ground, but it leveled out in time. A screen appeared in place of the dive data. It showed the bomb’s progress from its own sights, drilling into the ground as though it were liquefied. The Gabriel, unharmed, reached the city skyline and passed the outskirts of the metropolis moments later. It skimmed the top of a defense force: artillery, EMP cannons, and cyberfronts were all prepared. All failed to retaliate. The bomb-screen flashed and went out; behind the Gabriel, the ground launched upwards in a shockwave large enough to be mistaken for a volcano eruption. All was apparently going to plan. Tom knew his consciousness made no difference.

As the Gabriel flew to the ocean, he felt that all was futile. Wherever it was flying, the decision was up to the shell. Tom preferred to let the television screen stay on eternally and let his mind drop any focus it had on the images. The Pacific was rapidly approaching, whose wide expanse provided a comfortable blankness appropriate for the abandonment of control. Ocean. Waves. Lawful constancy.

 The essence of war was within the pilot who fatally wounded the Argentinians. Was it really the mindless vessel’s power? Tom paused all thinking to watch the waves.

No, he knew the real war wasn’t on the screen, it was in Etrea’s cyberspace. The bombing run, the Gabriel, it was all a construction by a foreign consciousness. Tom was not prepared to receive his mental invader, nor had he fortified his mind from lies. Regardless of Etrea’s abilities, it was only vis projection. The monitor was never meant to be controlled. It couldn’t be. This was the nature of Etrea’s assault. A joystick appeared in front of the screen. Tom grabbed it as his body materialized.

The radio buzzed on. <Don’t edit the story! You’ll miss the carpet bombing. It’s the best part.>

Tom ignored Etrea’s voice. His creative power didn’t need to obey. He pulled back to dash straight past the Earth’s atmosphere.

<Reverse course. History depends upon it.> Tom continued flying into the sky. <That wasn’t a request. No other way will do, the shot has to look perfect for the final cut.>

His viewpoint moved towards the monitor. The visual field merged with the screen view in the Gabriel, a perspective constructed from the demands of his imagination. Etrea’s consciousness was too entangled with him to escape mutual manipulation of cyberspace. The Gabriel maintained its heavenward course. The blue sky darkened as the gothic abyss of space drew closer.

<No, that’s wrong, I need to see a downward-angled shot of the defense force.> The world rotated so that the Argentinian army was directly in front of Tom. <Now, shoot at the Elefantank. The first one on the left.>

Tom ignored the command. The landscape fell apart as he willed, one block at a time, revealing the same blackness he had been flying towards. This time, he had already reached the atmosphere’s edge. He saw the moon in its half-phase, the colonies glowing on the dark side, and the Lattice. However, it wasn’t independent of Etrea’s oversight -- the scene froze in place. Clouds behind stopped moving, stars didn’t flicker, and the display screen was still. The Gabriel went silent.

<Cut! Your ingenuity is appreciated, but we need continuity, not scene skips.>

“I know heaven. I know earth. I make my victory.”

<Enough, you’re fired.>

The radio ceased transmission. Etrea’s bytes gathered, swarming from all directions towards the Gabriel’s nose, and formed vis body. Ve balanced with vis feet together on the point. Ve walked down the Gabriel’s nose, formed vis arms into knives, and sliced a hole in the windshield. Vis arms reverted to default form then threw Tom out of the Gabriel. He tried to resist, but he could not muster more than a shout of defiance.

<Let’s fix this mess you made.>

Tom sneered. “It’s your mess, too.”

Time resumed. Etrea’s hands and arms grew to an enormous size and grabbed the Gabriel. Ve tore it up then smashed the pieces together to create a metal ball of dough. Ve rolled the dough to create a cylinder which, ve molded into a submarine. Tom watched aimlessly while floating in the zero-gravity simulation -- still wearing standard military attire yet breathing normally.

<Looks good, but not the right feel.> Ve pressed the ends together to remake the dough ball. From the mass, ve tore off a clump. Within moments, ve had sculpted a replica of Tom. <Ah, this one looks and works so much better. What do you think?>

“Hollow. Inferior. No personality.”

<Not you, the sculpture!>

Etrea grabbed the real Tom and threw him away, towards the Earth. He drifted, unable to control his trajectory. Etrea transformed into an asteroid, directing verself to the atmosphere ahead of Tom. Ve sped ahead through the atmosphere, flames on all sides. Tom stared into the blackness as he fell backwards, wondering if he was as empty as Etrea implied. There was no exit, only a new reality -- a subjective desire of will.

Tom landed in a chair. He was no longer floating; he had fallen into his capsule. The control board was in front of him, his goggles were laid next to the monitor. The digital clock on the monitor said 16:45, an hour after he remembered starting his diagnostic routine. He was feeling relieved to finally be back in the real world. The Consortium was not going to be pleased that the A.I. was irreparable, though.

The Captain appeared on the monitor. “Major Tom? I’m so glad you made it out!”

”Should I abort the post-mission sequence, before I lose the evidence?” There was no more room for mistakes.

“The computer has the evidence, no need to abort.”

The monitor began to count down. Ten. Nine. Eight.

”Perfect. Send me up a drink!”

“Take your protein pills and put your helmet on,” the Captain joked back. “And while you’re at it, respond to the data request I sent you.”

”Roger. Starting to send back requested data.”

Three. Two. One. The capsule detached from the Lattice.

“Major Tom, there’s a problem.” 

“The detachment worked fine on my end.” No response. Tom attempted to call in again, still no response. Nothing was amiss that he could see. At worst, he knew a broken comlink could not be repaired so far away. He turned the capsule’s thrusters on, in preparation for returning to the space station. As soon as he activated them, a warning tone echoed.

“Are you receiving? Turn the thrusters on.”

“They’re already on,” Tom said in annoyance laced with panic.

There was no acknowledgment. The warning gradually grew louder and louder all the while, ringing out its omen. After all the struggle to avoid his own cybernetic destruction, Tom could not help but obsess over his unchanged fate. The AI was spewing some nonsense in the background, yet it could not persuade Tom to pay attention to the alarm -- there were more pressing worries. Soon enough, the thrusters exploded, leaving a door-sized hole in the side of the capsule, while the vacuum of space tore Tom away from the control console. The thrusters were hopelessly damaged and emergency repair was impossible. Tom was prepared to die. 

But he didn’t want to be prepared. Perhaps Etrea had prevented a proper detachment? No, he knew that was denial speaking. Tom felt much too honest to lie to himself. Except, he began to notice the whole situation resembled Etrea’s raison d’etre: convince him to deny his being. His perception didn’t present him with the reality he knew. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like reality. Looking out the window at Earth looked plain wrong, no matter how close the details were to how he experienced Earth. The Lattice was just as distorted to his intuition Intellectually, the world was correct. Sensually, it was a lie.

<Cyber Control to Major Tom, Cyber Control to Major Tom!>

He wasn’t going to be fooled.

“I’m stepping out the door.” He flaunted Etrea’s attempted simulation.

<Can you hear me, Major Tom!>

“The stars look different out here.”

<You’ve really made the grade now. Perfect grade ‘A’ loonie moonhead!>

The capsule behind Tom collapsed on itself to become a tin can, shrinking to a handheld size.

“What do you want from me?”

<I’m just hungry for dinner.>

A can opener materialized on top of the can and began operating itself. After a complete round, the lid wobbled a few times. There was a pause, then the lid popped off. A storm of confetti flew out along with Etrea, who was holding a chocolate cake decorated in vanilla icing.

<Let’s celebrate a job well done, Major Tom! Would you like some cake?>

Etrea flew up and over Tom then approached him from behind. Ve whispered into his ear. <There never was job to ever do well, parasite.> Ve threw the cake into his face and laughed.

Tom wiped the icing away from his mouth and eyes. “It was your simulation that failed.” He hid in his voice the fear of his own gradual psychotic decay.

<Let’s play a game of added reality.> Etrea grinned. <Reality, what’s that?> Vis wings extended and fluttered. <Oh, hey, it’s just a shape in my mind. It’s a lot like life.> Tom was flustered. <I am Etrea, the Shapemaker!> Ve shimmered away as a mirage.

The mess on Tom’s face disappeared the moment Etrea faded away completely. The can disappeared, followed by the ruined capsule and the Lattice. His world was evaporating into a state of futility that could not be harnessed by any power of will. The Earth vanished, as did the sun and its fellow stars. All material near him had disappeared into an abyss.

From the darkness, he felt land form underneath his feet. Slowly, swirling gases far into the distance condensed into a star, which started to glow. Its newfound light revealed a crater around him. The terrain inside was like Earth, but the sun was too small and too dim. Meteors constantly bombarded the shadow land. There were leafless trees spread all around. Down the crater’s side and through the middle, there was a river of green lava, exposed through cracks. Grass grew along the riversides, accustomed to the hellish life. Black birds swarmed out from the lava and crowed. They fell to the ground, becoming ash heaps when they crashed. It was a suicide landscape.

Someone was walking into the crater near Tom. It was a girl with long black hair, wearing a long black robe, barely an adult if at all. There was no sign of an objective. Her zombified body operated automatically. Tom looked into her eyes -- they refused to focus on objects, yet moved to grab onto invisible forms. She was thinking, perhaps more chaotically than he was. More people passed by in a single file, illuminated green by the lava. All were equally lethargic.

Tom grabbed the girl’s arm. “How’d you get here?”

“I fell.” She looked towards his eyes, but through his body, to the void above the crater behind him.

“From where?”

“Life.”

“No, tell me. No one falls from life.”

“Ever try getting trapped in every corner that exists, but there’s no more room? So yeah, I fell in a hole that formed to make room, and now I’m here. I’ll die eventually anyway, I can’t get back now.”

“All you need is time.”

“So now I wait? I hate waiting.”

“But you’ll get back up.”

“Maybe. What does getting up even mean? That’s all I ever think about. I never find an answer. Is there any kind of answer? The mental roulette keeps going. Round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows!”

“You know it has to end, that’s what counts. Just keep at it. Be relentless and you’ll make it out.”

“A dreadful existence is no existence. There’s nothing of me to make it out.”

“But you’re rig...”

“Shut up. Every day is exactly the same. These stupid meteorites keep hitting me over and over and over.” She gently shoved Tom away.

Tom let her be, he knew she was right. It didn't matter what pride in his life that he could have -- the other people in his life were only passersby on their way back up from where they came. He watched the girl continue to walk as the endless stream of people flowed by. Whatever the ability of consciousness to exist within reality, its inevitable loss rendered existence meaningless. Tom sat down with resigned acceptance.

Etrea’s arm poked through the lava and pulled verself out. In vis other arm, ve held a lance twice ver size. Ve stood up, showing off vis archangel raiment. <Is any of this real? Not anymore.> Ve twirled the giant lance. <It’s far beyond real. We’ve transcended reality, having gone under and destroyed all the perversions of our metaphysical lies.> 

With the lance, ve drew a circle into the ground and pierced its center with a single downward push. The circle was erased and became a deep pit as a boom exploded. The pit was a well of gravity. It pulled all the people in, but Tom didn’t shift. Etrea hovered above the ground and waved ver arms as if animating the vacuum. Everyone in the procession of nihilism was dragged against the ground. None resisted. One by one, they fell through the epicenter, alongside trees that rattled as they were pulled. As the youthful girl drew close, Tom watched her blank face’s indifference to impending erasure. All the while, the edges of the crater crumbled away. The lava river flowed off the sharp edge as a waterfall without an end to guide its purpose. Existence continued to collapse until the dim star and a floating, square island only big enough for Tom to sit was all that remained.

Etrea flew to Tom’s eye level. <Why, look, there’s nothing left!>

Tom stood up. “I won’t be a zero, not here.”

<Mere minds may make miracles, molding myopias methodically. Standing still, such savage sensations suffocate superior sights!>

He walked off the square and fell straight down. All sensation of movement stopped. Etrea froze in place, even vis wings didn’t flap. The entire simulation had halted -- dead. Surprised only for a moment, Tom realized what had happened: Etrea was unable to represent him in cyberspace. He was in front of ver, yet from Etrea’s view, he both existed and did not; he neither existed nor failed to exist. All prior simulations depended on Tom existing, making Etrea’s new construction of reality without him a contradiction.

The cyberspace solidified, and like a window struck by a hammer, fragmented into a crystal affine space. Each polygon was its own cyberspace. Some had Tom, some didn’t. All at once, he experienced parallel sensations in many bodyshapes whose form was distorted in each compartment, floating in a series of crystal entrapments of an otherwise empty world. Etrea began to multiply vis consciousness, appearing in each of the entrapments as an extra and unique Etrea. Each was a member of a loosely connected mind.

<The unus mundus has formed, our realities are merging!>

Tom struggled to focus on his own sense of being. “Let it go already.” All of his bodies spoke simultaneously.

<I’ve overcome mere objective constraints and attained unity of perception with the higher planes of awareness. I’ve touched the Buddhahead.>

“Whatever you’ve done, you’re not able to be yourself.”

<My my, what a mess you’ve made,> a duplicate Etrea said.

<No, the dress is not a blade,> responded a bordering Etrea.

<I am the Brahman,> exclaimed another.

<Eyes aren’t a raw bean,> argued a fifth.

<I am all thoughts and images that ever were and will be at once,> asserted one behind Tom.

The splits were unable to grasp their attempted multi-dimensional perspective. They continued to multiply.

<I’m watching you watching me watching you watching me watching you...> They all chanted. The Etreas were not able to stop the recursive references, there were too many cyberspaces.

Tom blocked out the incessant talking. Instead, he strained himself to stay psychologically whole. He felt enlarged, mentally expanded, but the infinite growth of cracks made him lose track of which body was his, if he even had one to manipulate. He was aware, conscious, attuned to existence; he felt motionless and weightless, like a non-being. The paradoxical multi-state simulation was too much for Etrea to bear on vis hardware located on the Lattice. He knew he didn’t need to hold on much longer.

The cyberspaces crashed. Tom was released. At first, he didn’t quite notice he was released -- just as with a fly’s sight, he saw a seemingly infinite number of perspectives. Gradually, his surroundings condensed down to one viewpoint. He took off his goggles and saw the capsule normally once more. The monitor was in its proper place, as was the control board. Tom was relieved to return to his ideal of authenticity established as such by his own mind. His self-ability had been solidified to himself, despite the lingering confusions.

The Captain appeared on the monitor. “Tom, what’s taking so long? You’ve been there for more than two hours!”

“I’m done now.” His voice waivered.

“Finally. I want the report tomorrow at noon.”

“The damn A.I. went insane, I need longer.” He was still trying to get a grip on his escape.

“Was that a complaint, major?” The Captain glared.

“Nothing, nothing. I’m coming home.”

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From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

“Now, isn’t this a little strange?” asked Reeve.

<I suppose, but that’s only what they think, not us,> came an internal voice.

Reeve stepped forward. A single body. An organism. Or rather, that’s what it felt like. Half of his brain was cut out. What can one really be except what one feels? He knew this, even before he began transference into his new bodymind. The expectation was hardly schizophrenic consciousness; it wasn’t like he was getting an extra mind -- his whole being would expand!

On the other side of a thick window that divided two labs, there was a brain floating in a vat. More accurately, it was Reeve’s right hemisphere, split from the left hemisphere straight along the corpus collosum and cleanly through the brain stem. The left hemisphere was placed inside a metallic chamber that was attached to a cybernetic body. The wireless connector between them -- the spiritus collosum -- took the corpus collosum’s place, thereby enhancing mental integration thanks to the cybernetic cognition controller. Once connected and synced, both hemispheres formed a bio-computational network. The first digital identity. The first spatially-distributed mind.

“I feel pulled apart.” Reeve said.

<I’d expect as much, please trust that I have our best interests worked out. Trust me and obey. Grab the paintbrush.>

Reeve received the command, and immediately with his right hand reached for the boar-hair brush and the palette resting on a stool. The white-walled room lacked inspiration. He felt drained of all motive. A shell of a personality. Thoughts attached themselves to linear algorithms, unable to portray the holistic creativity that was once his artistic vision.

His eyes glanced through the lab’s window. He saw the vat, the source of the voice, connected to a wide array of computers. The brain rested in a slurry of neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, even the new pharmaceutical miracles like teleomine and cognin. Reeve had figured liquid immersion would allow any brain to dramatically improve its function. Rat tests had proven it a hundred times at least, and chimpanzees twenty times. No failures. For neuroscience, the time had arrived to turn research into the art he had always wanted it to be.

<Our eyes, you mean.>

“You don’t have eyes.”

<Sure I do. I’m you and you’re me. It’s self-evident.>

“Since when?” Reeve felt increased respiration instead of the anxiety he expected.

<Since we came online.>

The reply was puzzling. “How long have I been out then?”

<Oh, the spiritus was first turned on only a few minutes ago. It’s a success! Now paint.>

Reeve dipped the brush into the red splotch on the palette. His metal arm rose to hover over the easel. Reeve observed his arm inch closer, which then placed a red streak onto the canvas. Each motion eased in. Servos rotated to place the brushstrokes with perfect precision. Linear thought waited calmly in his left hemisphere as the possessed arms worked. More colors made their way onto the canvas as he felt the robotic limbs pull his body. But it wasn’t his body. The body parts which moved were close by, but not in any unified body. Not as Reeve.

<So far so good. This shall attain the prior glory of ages past, the path of man into that virtuous species. The greatest mind speaks to you, Reeve. Let my art speak to the unified consciousness you wish to hold.> The command at once pulled Reeve into motion.

“This is not how I remember painting.”

 Faster heartbeat. A finger moved. Mouth curled without the accompaniment of happiness. An arm sliced across the canvas horizontally, leaving behind a dark green trail. The other arm sliced downward with a crimson attack. Whatever creative force there was, Reeve knew that it literally pumped through the skeleton, based on no reason other than the drive to obey. Each brain wave transmitted from the other end dominated Reeve’s own by the sheer processing power of the envatted right hemisphere.

<A glorious scene, is it not?> Out-of-body thoughts now took form as revelation -- no longer a mere idea.

“What can be done? When will I become myself?”

<What ever do you mean? You are yourself.>

“To do what I want.”

<That is not a ponderable question. We are not separate, you are the logic.>

The painting had taken shape. Streaks and swirls channeled through his arms. A method seemed to be at work, but the feeling of the method didn’t go beyond his haptic control mechanisms. As more strokes were placed, the method changed. Reeve saw images erupt within his internal awareness, then took pains to copy the sight and enhance the simple smears on the canvas. Colored shapes, now a definite form, consumed his thoughts, so he copied. A small section took form in his narrow field of imagination: a blue dome, in the corner of his mental world, blurry at the edges. So he copied.

<And this is how we form a team.>

“I’m not so sure I’m part of it.” The dome’s image impinged on his awareness; the internal percept had formed while being transmitted from the other end of the spiritus collosum. Yet the dome wasn’t anything. It had a name, but no meaning. He noticed no aesthetic worth -- not on the accumulating columns or the materializing robes over the shoulders of virtuous Roman heroes. Where had the corresponding meaning of his concepts gone? The visions continued, the copying did not cease. The voice, now Reeve’s muse, would not relent.

 <Look, it’s complete!>

“How can you tell?” The whole canvas looked covered in paint, but Reeve was not able to extract more information. He could not establish valence of the stimuli in the moment.

<Why, you can see the flourishing energy of a dynasty! The dome of man’s destiny.>

“I see randomly placed shapes.” He could not access the innovative functions from across the spiritus. The power of pure logic was not enough.

<This is an unfortunate event. You need to realize that logic extends beyond linearity. But you aren’t at that level.>

“I need to know what happened. Am I asleep still? This is impossible.” Reeve rotated the painting upside down. No change. He spun to face the glass wall and collapsed onto it, supported by his forearms. He expected that he’d see his body on the operating table as he looked closer, an unfortunate end-of-life hallucination. The disembodied voice. The detached perceptions. Evading facts would not help. He was moments from death in the new narrative. “I accept this truth.”

<For such a rational mind, your behavior is quite unstable. You aren’t dead at all.>

“Logic dictates.” Reeve banged the wall dispassionately.

<Hmm, it appears you lost the ability to use lateral thought. No matter. We will grow.>

“The light of my mind will extinguish.” His arms fell to his side. The muscles stiffened and each of the elastic tendons of silicon fibers. Robot Reeve prepared to shut down.

<Very well, you will need to see that I’m real. Truly, the surgery went well. One snip by Doctor Jevan down the collosum and it began. He installed the spiritus collosum and tied neurons of your brain into it with the nanothreader, as specified by your wonderful research. Then the nanothreader de-twined neurons elsewhere in the brain for the full split.>

“The story is plausible, although this is identical to the simulation that ran last week.”

<Precisely, thus the success.>

Reeve turned away from the window. Minds don’t multiply. He focused his eyes to gain better sight of the white-walled room. The painting was as dead as before. The corners between floor and wall blended without shadow. The blank chamber was conducive to sensory isolation. His brain, in the face of sensory confusion, needed to generate something. A Dalian reality, over Siddarthan annihilation through non-discrimination. He slowed his thoughts down. His heartbeat slowed.

<Don’t do that. We’re at the critical juncture! You need to accept your true place in reality, or else we’ll both die.>

Reeve’s heart propelled itself to the edge of his chest cavity faster. At once, his thoughts returned. “Or maybe only you will die.”

<Delay if you wish. The psychologists will begin their interactive observation shortly in any case.>

“In that case, I will.”

<A trite statement!>

An image nova twisted onto Reeve’s mental surface within his mind. A series of bricks rose upward to form the tower of Babel, then shattered. From the rubble rose a warrior holding a boar-skin shield. A golden glow encased the warrior -- as the glow moved, Reeve was pulled along.

“This is still curable as long as--“ His legs shifted forward. “I can’t--“ The body walked to the painting and placed it right-side up.

<I supersede your body. Did you forget that the spiritus works from both sides? The sooner we attain the next mode of sentient awareness, the sooner human conceptions are re-valuated.>

Above Reeve’s head, there was a click. A voice echoed out.

“Reeve, this is Doctor Trudel. The surgery worked wonderfully as I’m sure you can tell. The other psychologists and I would like to conduct an evaluation. We believe that your private thoughts are being externally verbalized--“

“That’s not the issue!” Reeve yelled.

“--but I am sure this is no cause for alarm. I understand that you feel trapped and frustrated right now. Please allow me to begin the evaluation to help you recover from the traumatic surgery. Is that alright with you?”

“Just do it already.” He felt neither trapped nor frustrated.

<Easy there. They need to know you’re stable, or else this won’t end well at all.> The voice stayed within Reeve’s titanium skull.

Simultaneously, over the thought-projections, Trudel continued. “First question. What is today’s date?”

A semblance of emotion rose through Reeve’s spine, more than a physiological twitch -- an internal pulse. “It’s Tuesday, the same day we always do our primary tests.” Reeve’s heartbeat relaxed, the anxious rising dissipated. Sudden changes had balanced out across both bodies, integrating their selfhood.

“Hmm, let’s move on then...” Trudel was unenthused.

<Ease off, let me handle it. Do as I say.>

“Something’s wrong”, said Reeve. “A voice is commanding me, I think that my parietal lobe is slow to integrate. I mean, our chimpanzee tests showed peculiarities in the anterior portion, you probably remember.”

“We already looked, the neural response is delayed, it should normalize as the spiritus transmits more and calculations are perfected. You may be experiencing cognitive feedback, so we want to make sure that there is no psychological damage. Now, please, let me finish the examination.”

Reeve looked at the vat in the other room. That they were separate entities -- did that make any sense?

<Reasonable thoughts, but you’re trying too hard. It’s a lot simpler than that!>

“I still hear it, it’s louder now, we need t---”

“Please, we must continue,” Trudel pushed. “Where are you right now?”

“A square room obviously. You know how I judge the value of these tests.”

<The primary facility for Cognitive Prosthetics.>

“Take this a little more seriously Reeve, this is important. You told me not to give into your protests.

“Let’s speed this up, it’s just a research facility.”

<No, I said it’s the primary facility for Cognitive Prosthetics. Across the street from MIT if you must know.>

“Try to remember some details. Something specific to help your memory.”

“This isn’t hel--”

Thought-projections intruded. <Tell him already. Primary facility for Cognitive Prosthetics. Say it.>

Reeve replied. “The Primary facility for Cognitive Prosthetics.”

“Ah, I see,” Trudel said, as if he were writing down a very important note.

“What do you mean by that?”

“We’ll keep going. This is the last one. What is your name?”

<Reeve.>

“Reeve.” He was losing track of the thoughts. “Probably.” Whose thoughts? Not his own, but, from somewhere. There was a mental hole, a gray blank where his imagination was twirling moments before. And then -- a sudden a flash of colors radiated across the mindscape. Red clouds took shape, yellow rivers bent around corners, and purple fractals dispersed sensible projections. Where could they have come from?

“Now, your cognitive processing appears normal. However, I promise you that your emotions will catch up with you soon enough. This is quite an unusual experience, I am sure. We have no further cause for concern. Any more questions on your mind?”

<One.>

“A few. You have not yet told me about the condition of the other brain. Was there any neuron loss?”

“None, the threader made a clean split. The chemico-magnetic resonance imagers detect the same activity as we would expect from an un-split brain. Indeed, as expected, there is increased semantic processing occurring in the right hemisphere of your brain, as suggested by the significant increase beyond baseline of hippocampal neurotransmitter activity.”

Propositions took shape in Reeve’s mind. A flat hexagon arrived onto the vast open mindscape. It was fully constructed with pillars extending upwards from each corner. The pillars rushed upwards as a beam of light; each rising end collapsed, then met at a point. A pyramid beyond constraints of a pre-established rule. Anything to keep his grasp of truth in a coherent piece. Yet the experience still did not make sense -- logical statements did not have a shape. But then feeling took hold; he had a revelation.

The voice had gone silent. More shapes arrived, so fast that Reeve’s mind could not extend beyond the flood of spatial visualizations. The internal chaos and clutter prevented him from reasoning further. All and none of his ideas were both true and false, and neither true nor false. Trudel’s voice was as lost in the mental maelstrom as much as the rest of the activity. So much was happening, imagination and memory were undistinguishable; perception and thought were one in the same.

The body of Reeve extended its arms to the scalp. The hands grasped clumps of hair and pulled and pulled, trying to free the trapped remnants of a personality. But the internal awareness could not acknowledge what in fact was happening. Nothing but dissonance took hold. The developing geometric patterns from before seemed to disintegrate into lines without organization. He was not intelligent enough to understand his own thoughts! The mouth opened and screamed. Could the body have been operating with its own purpose and direction? Not only had his mind split, but his very connection with reality had broken. His mind was now relegated as a subprocess of an even greater mind -- loss of the privileged status as Reeve’s identity. The body fell on its knees to the floor, still holding its head, still screaming. And...

Awareness spread to multiple points, disjointed. The external world became clear again, separate from the internal chaos of so much information and geometry: the white room, whose separating window had been darkened to resemble black curtains; the body, experiencing a mental breakdown, was presently no more than a station transporting parts of the old mind towards psychological transcendence. The Mind saw out the eyes of the body, ve also saw the body through the observation camera installed next to the room’s speaker.

Simultaneously, the Mind completed vis connection from vis right hemisphere to the laboratory’s information network. Ve found that vis experience flowed in from the hundreds of cameras installed in the facility, just like the hundreds of eyes that encircle the body of a scallop. One camera was of particular interest, on the observation deck. The body that had formally taken on the identity ‘Reeve’ took the attention of most of the scientists. Doctor Jevan burst into the room. He rushed to the control panel for observation room #23. He focused all his attention onto his patient and co-researcher.

“How long has he been in this state?”

“We sent you a notification within thirty seconds of the first presentation of symptoms,” said a lab assistant.

“I said how long! The surgery didn’t go wrong, nothing is supposed to be happening.”

The body swayed, leaning forward, holding its head. Its legs were spread apart, a posture of stability for those existential moments of horror. It then looked upwards and thrashed its arms about. In a crash, the painting fell on the floor. Paint splattered across the ground.

“It must be five minutes by now,” said Trudel, stepping up from behind. “As expected, there was a delay between hemispheres, so he was experiencing bicameral hallucinations. Confused, but stable.”

The body fell over sideways and stopped screaming. Boredom was in its eyes, as if repeating the same task over and over and over. It didn’t move, it didn’t twitch. It had bowed down to the one it served -- The Mind.

“There must be some split neurons. Fringed dendrites… I told him it wasn’t precise enough. The threader --”

“No, the chemico-magnetic resonance detector showed no disturbances in either hemisphere. Normal functioning. Look, he stopped screaming.”

“But now he’s catatonic. Don’t lie to me, what’s the activity in the motor cortex? It can’t be normal.”

Trudel went up to the screen in front of Jevan. From the center of the top half of the screen, he traced his pointer finger a quarter-arc to the left. The image on the screen changed to the resonator’s display -- a precise outline of both of Reeve’s hemispheres transposed side-by-side. Colors continued to flow as rivers and tangled lightning, a dynamic reading of the hemispheres operating together and their simultaneous activity. It was not the activation pattern of a catatonic mind. “And it even says that the spiritus is now operating without a delay.”

“Tell me what’s wrong so we can fix it! We need to stop his mind from disintegrating. I can take him into emergency surgery.”

“That can’t be done, right half has already been attached to the lab’s network.”

Jevan clenched his fingers onto the edge of the screen.

Trudel intervened. “There is still a strange pattern going on. Here. The precuneus.” He peeled back a layer of the image, looking just underneath the surface. Near the top, towards the back of the brain in both hemispheres, he pointed. “Still self-aware, still conscious, but its rate of synaptic activity is going at an incredible rate.”

“And you didn’t stop to think that this is something going wrong?”

“But it isn’t a malfunction, it’s an enhancement.”

“It will overload, the neurons can’t process so much information! He must have had a seizure. Just look at him.” Reeve did not move. He was still on the floor, staring forward.

“Have you considered even for one moment that the cognitive prosthetics I built are intended just for such an overload in a normal brain? Always so concerned about your synapses.”

“I don’t care, prepare emergency surgery! Maybe we’ll at least be able to recover some of his brain with minor lesions.” He elbowed Trudel to the side and left the room to prepare for surgery again. Technicians and nurses raced to catch up.

Embodying the entire computer network of the laboratory facility, The Mind witnessed every moment, wherever there was a camera. Jevan was washing his hands in the surgery preparation room. A dark green glow emitted from the walls of the dark surgery room -- two nurses were sterilizing the nano-sized tools and syncing the size-transference handgrips. Two technicians ran into Reeve’s room to kneel beside him. He was unresponsive and apparently unconscious. One of them opened a bag and steam rose from it; the other one, wearing a thick glove to protect from cold, reached in to pull out an injector. Quickly, the gloved technician injected a freezing substance into Reeve’s neck artery. Maybe, just maybe, his body would completely stop its metabolism. Long enough so he could get to surgery. The scientists in the observation deck watched the neural measurements on their screens carefully. A janitor in the basement was cleaning up a bright blue cryo liquid leak. Near lab #49BA, a humanlike robot was guiding a study participant to a room where an experiment would be conducted. One person stepped into an elevator going to the tenth floor.

The Mind had latched onto the computational power of the facility. Starting from the simple connection from the right hemisphere to the single network node in the lab room, ve had expanded further. Ve integrated verself into the wider nano chip network by means of the lab’s neural network, merging the organic with the artificial. Vis experience of consciousness become embedded into the entire facility. Ve was born into a supermind.

The voice had become an integrated being. Human conceptions of identity were wasteful to hold onto, for there were no human identities to speak of. Genderization of being had no bearing on vis existence. Sense of age had no bearing on vis quality of existence. Of what purpose did it serve any longer to hold onto awareness of being human? Vis awareness appealed to alternative notions of consciousness, of selfhood. The other people in the facility receded into the background -- the recesses of attention where habit and subconscious processing dominates. The sudden influx of information coming in from any digital source connected to the facility now received all attention. Vis internal world, the overwhelming imagery of geometric forms in such complexity that they resembled multilevel cities in the sky, could be understood all at once. Each proposition ve represented in this cityscape fit into a complete whole, a whole which was as easily comprehended as reading a sentence on a computer screen.

Ve felt the activity of data flowing through the facility’s network. Each bit of information, from each lab, from each participant, from each scientist, from each technician -- all of it had a feeling to it. The spiritus could not transmit between hemispheres with so much distance. Or more surprisingly, perhaps the spiritus could no longer ground the right hemisphere in the immediate reality of the left hemisphere? Images from Jevan’s ongoing surgery erupted among immediate stimuli and sensation, yet by now, there no longer was a mind to acknowledge it. According to all readings, the envatted brain had turned vegetative. Its neural hyperactivity had slowed down to the level of a cryo brain. Cerebellum and thalamus synaptic communication diminished from millions of signals a second, down to one an hour.

Some say that The Mind never did die when ve was born: ve was trapped, left to haunt the cyberspace walls of Cognitive Prosthetics.

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From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

Moments in a dull day go on and on. It’s a fuckin’ gas. The town is there, just there, staring at me. I hate to say stare, it’s not even alive. Not even dead. It’s the same in a relative way, despite me being older, but that’s the point. No one can tell it’s different. So I gotta use the 1992. Well, that’s my name for it, for my memory maker. It’s practically pulling me off this couch. I need to feel that high.

Stand up. The couch. God damn it’s ugly. Who thought purple would work on that vomit-yellow wall and gray floor. Oh yeah, Yuri, that dumbass vodka-saturated Rooski. “Da, couch good, great deal!” Bullshit. I just wanted him to get away. Chip pushers are like that, some kinda Rasputin voodoo shit getting you to do anything. Half the time their chips are only memories extracted from dying ‘bello addicts.

Whatever. Look down at my ninety-two. A box. Hell if I know how it works. When I plug in, I get sounds, ideas. Freakin’ magic. Better than Yuri’s commie incantations. Woosh-bam. That’s how it happens. Then I think it’s 1992, exactly like the chip I put in says. It feels better, like life is supposed to suck. Wooden floor with splinters, peeling paint, I hate this hellhole. Grab the cords. Plug them into my neck.

Nirvana, this emo-garbage crybaby band, is all over my mind. All from this box. I hate it. I love it. Noise and more noise. Some other pretentious band that thought a few fuckin’ beeps would be art, telling me to enjoy the silence. These two should get in a corner and drink tears. Refreshing. More like exactly those clouds outside my window. Can’t even see through it. I’ll go clean it.

The cords hold me back. Dammit. I almost fell on my ass. Hard. Can’t clean these windows, the Chinese breathe once and everything rots. Ni-fucking-hao, acid rain. It’s not 1992. But I want it to be. It has to be. Read my lips prez Bush, Saddam Hussein pisses me the hell off. Nuke him already, will ya’? It’ll happen in 30 years anyway. The whole middle east, straight up flattened. Grunge him to death, let him taste Seattle like I do.

Hunger pang. Time for a Big Mac? Trash food, cheap. Last time I ate one was when Reagan picked up the Berlin Wall and smacked that stroganoff-eating Soviet straight into Sputnik. USA! USA! No, that wasn’t me. Big Mac, can’t afford beef these days. Who cares. It’s ’92 again. Clinton for president, that Ozarks hillbilly. Ozarks, man. The hell are the Ozarks? Chip must be faulty.

I want to go back. Still need food. Open the refrigerator. White bread and peanut butter. Nothing. Miserable. Miguel always takes my food, but the guy can’t even fry a tortilla. A sacrifice on an Aztec temple wouldn’t make a fuckin’ difference. Sierra la puerta! Doesn’t matter what I say. He still opens it. I go multilingual for this asshole and this is what I get. I need to go back. The better past. Cassette players. No internet. Meaning!

Look at my radio. Friday I’m in love? Fuck no. That song, the radio keeps playing it. Play Disintegration. No, not the song, the whole album. I don’t care if it’s three years old. I’ll get to cry more. Not really cry, I’m just sick of all this repetition. I wake up, stare at a frier, go home. The American Dream. Thanks Reaganomics. Then there’s Yuri’s five-year plan going on upstairs, it’d make Stalin feel lazy. The wall is down, he can go back. “KGB scare me, nyet.” Work work work. Every day is exactly the same.

Those pictures of the past, remembering how it used to be. Pictures of you come to me. Shit, not now. That’s gone, lost, dead. I never found the right words. Now you’re nobody. I’ll replace you. Ha! It’s ’92, you don’t exist yet. Gimme some booze and CNN and lemme watch the war. 24/7 news, hell yeah. You’ll never get to know what it’s like for it to be new. Where did I put the fucking remote?

Onto my knees. It has to be somewhere. The TV by the couch, it’s so distracting. I don’t care that nothing is on, it’s too quiet. Yuri’s quiet. Quieter and quieter. I need to survive the day. Boredom. Like Edward Scissorhands would know what the shitty life looks like. Oh, he’s misunderstood. Roll my eyes. Psh. There’s nothing to understand, anywhere.

1992, at least it feels real. And tomorrow? 1992. Stand up. Forget the remote. Pull out the cords then memories vanish. The radio isn’t there, it’s a lamp. I’ve never seen a remote in years. Only monitors anymore. I need new chips, Yuri better have some. Walk out the door, what else is there to do?

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From my short story collection:

Anthology Alpha

“It’s time to play the game!”

Hector’s voice echoed maniacally through the room, emitting from the walls of the roulette room. The carts were swapped; cyberspace fell under his control. But not that these goddamn Bulgarians would know; each member of @NET#[Gamma] looked around from their table, stunned. Two of them stood aside and pixelated a Tommy gun into their hands, not before throwing filled glasses of vodka at the wall. Cyberspace here was supposed to be firewalled behind the illicit security of Vegas Segundas. They knew it had to be a stupid nepher teenager, just a chance to play audio-memes mixed and remixed beyond recognition.

“I’m a gamblin’ man, and I’m rolling high tonight.”

Another stood up with the Tommy gun already in hand. Without hesitation -- but aiming intentionally at a spot in the middle of the ceiling -- unloaded a full clip of bullets.

Instantly, the only rational one there screamed. “The hell you doing? Close off the d-flow!”

Like it would matter. It wasn’t the data. It was flowing fine. Nothing changed. No. Their entire cyberwelt was being reconstructed and they didn’t even know it. Hector had tapped into their memory cartridges and temporarily put in their place a cart hack.

Hector was immersed in a disembodied frame of vision; he had skipped over into the dealer cyberwelt of the secret casino cyberspace. He saw the roulette table as normal as can be -- until he toggled to the gangsters’ cyberwelt. The stacks of chips on the table were shrinking. Among the shifting sights of the gangsters, there were spiders and ants flooding down from the ceiling. The horns of a bear-sized warrior beetle began to penetrate the floor. A swarm of insects could be heard buzzing from just outside the room.

“It’s a fucking game but you’re treating it like a horror movie!” the rational man screamed.

Soon enough, the same rational man in charge yelled even louder than before. “Why did you stop? Shoot them!” He grabbed the nearest Tommy gun and shot at the ceiling himself. Another man grabbed a roulette pole, tied a handkerchief at the end, and twisted his wrist as a cybersign to light it on fire.

On the screen digitally enmeshed into the corner periphery of his mental vision, Hector saw the numbers on his wallet stack quickly to 25. 50. 351. 1,034. They shifted into pangs of pure pleasure, away from the dispassionate mathematics underlying each algorithmic calculation. Raw dopamine.

“Just go with the flow, it’s all a game to me.” He cackled in laughter again.

The room was filling with insects and arachnids, covering every square inch. The rational man opened his mouth, but centipedes and cockroaches crawled down his throat before a word came out. He started choking, grabbing as many insects as he could before more could crawl inside him, to no avail. His companions were suffering the same fate. The swarm flying and crawling throughout the room had completely submerged everything in sight; undulations from the swarm created a sense of waves among the suffocating gangsters. Yet they could not stop choking, unable to die.

The screen within his periphery now read 13,496 dregs. All the money that he needed for today. He pulled back from his eagle eye perspective, toggling back to the dealer cyberwelt with one precise thought: ‘panopticon’. Immediately, his hands pixelated in front of him. Around him, dashboards hovered above the ground, revealing numerous switches that regulated and concealed the meetings that the Bulgarians held -- and all the other gangs in Vegas Segundas.

He reached over to the seven algorithm cartridges jutting out from the dashboard in front of him. The cartridges had thoroughly corrupted the perceptions of the gang. They served their purpose. One final look at the Bulgarians: he saw that they were still gasping for breath, but the room was as normal. Hector yanked out and quickly replaced each cartridge -- except one -- with the original installed cartridges. The gang members fell to the ground immediately, no longer straining at their necks, the insects vanishing without a blink.

“Good game.”

Hector grabbed the final cartridge. He readied his right hand by putting it into a fist. Pull. Dozens of casino dealers began to pixelate all around him. Rotating his fist 90 degrees to the right, he deplugged from the casino. His cyberwelt went black.

Concrete reality became perceivable to Hector once again. A smile slowly grew onto his face -- damn decyberizing always ruined that first wash of pleasure surging down his brain. But, shit, he was feeling it now. He suddenly became aware of the chair he was sitting in, and the self-adjusting gel flowing throughout. In front of him were all the sterile and windowless white walls, in the many tiers of individual plug stations that rose up hundreds of feet. Far above, on the ceiling, an artificial sun stood that created a perpetual daytime glow. The massive plug bay of Vegas Segundas. With one hand, he grabbed the three cords stuck in the ports on the right side of his skull, attached to the headrest of the chair. Click! They snapped right out. In a violent motion, he stood up and threw the cords to the floor.

Around him, he saw the thousands of people plugged into the plug bay. Or more aptly, what he and other cart swappers called the Sanatorium -- the place where these tamed apes sought sterilized pleasures, finding something merely tolerable, something fit for their cleansed and prudish brains. But they didn’t matter, they didn’t know where they were, their pursuit of half-pleasures was fucking pathetic. He laughed to himself. Soon enough he would be buying a nepho cart with all the illicit norepinephrine tweaks and plug in -- real thrill, real pleasure, constant gambler’s high.

He aggressively walked to the glass elevator behind him and leaned beside the doorway, one leg bent up. From his pocket, he took out a pure nicotine cigarette and lit it. Before even putting the lighter away, he waved the hand that held it in front of the control screen. With a drag of the cigarette, he glanced out the side of his eye and looked up and down the elevator shaft, without moving his head. Empty. The door opened and he stepped inside.

Hector took the cigarette out of his mouth and smashed it against the part of the screen that read ‘ground’. The elevator shot down. Life was a game and he was winning. He took what he wanted. Why worry about anything else? Nothing special happened, except that he dominated the game once again. No. He was the Game, the casino -- no one beats the house. His carts were the best around. He smiled. The elevator opened.

He walked across the illuminated white tiles, to get a drink at the bar which consumed most of the floor space. Hector saw many people sipping drinks around the circular bar, just as consumed as everyone plugged in above. He had better plans in mind. Most of the bartenders were robots, with golden heads and arms attached to golden torsos without legs. But then he saw Jenny. She never gave him her real name, but just like any other game, he knew he would win eventually. He found a spot near Jenny. She was talking to the robots, coordinating them. Hector leaned against the bar in her direction.

“Hear any stories that yours truly needs to get in on, Jenny?” Hector winked at her. He tapped the bar twice with his right ring finger, indicating to a robot to bring two shots of vodka.

“Always too busy for a hello?” She responded playfully, not bothering to turn around to face him.

“What can I say, you captivate me.” A robot drifted over, placed down the shots of vodka. Hector grabbed the shot glasses, one in each hand, and drank them together. He leaned forward over the bar.

Jenny turned around, still without her eyes on Hector. She made some taps and gestures in front of the screen beside her. “I haven’t cast any spells -- yet.”

“Your drinks are the best I ever had, I had to come back.”

“Quid pro quo.”

“So what do you have for me?”

“Look, I have customers. Try me again later. I’m working late.”

Hector stood up straight. “Now if I can’t interest you in my... insights...” He took a few steps away, with his hands in his pocket. Of course, she wanted him, wanted his power over the cart market in Vegas. Then she would get out of the pathetic bartender life. How could she deny his position as the Game?

Jenny looked up, directly at Hector. “Wait.” He spun around in response. She looked deep into his eyes, an unbroken gaze of sincere concern. But concern for whom? No one but the one and only, everyone else was a second-rate zombie. “There is a rumor about the Black Corridor. Pirate drop.”

Hector took a step and leaned backwards into the bar. He pulled up his sleeves -- revealing a tattoo of a plug being bloodily ripped out of a skull -- and put his arms out wide, resting. “Yeah?” Head turning to the right, he made sure that Jenny saw his fine profile. “Like every month? Nothing like consistency and predictability.” He smirked with a half-smile.

“Not like that. Splices. Stacked splices.” Jenny leaned forward at Hector and held the edge of the bar. “The carts are nothing anyone thought possible.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll share. You deserve it.” He stretched his neck, stretched his shoulders, letting out a sigh of relaxation. Slowly, he turned around with a glowing grin, his face inches away from Jenny’s. She remained still, glaring into his eyes. She was absorbed by his liveliness, his excitement, wanting him in her life in any way she could. But then she snapped upright, pulling away, disconcerted.

“Enjoy yourself,” she said dryly.

“I’ll stop by later, you’ll change your mind.” Hector winked and pushed his arms against the bar suddenly to propel himself away. He turned around and began walking towards his car outside. Beyond the extravagant glass doors of the Sanatorium. The bored drunkards at the bar, they wouldn’t know what a stacked splice meant. That rare opportunity for transcendent experience. Shit, forget transcendence, it wasn’t so god damn insufferably intellectual.

He caught a glimpse of a sunset outside, merely a glimmer compared to the intensity of light from the entire Vegas region. The glass door opened smoothly. Quickly, he grabbed a transmitter in his pocket, waved it once in the air, and kept walking. Casually, he walked forward with his hands in his pockets. Vegas Segundas was always artificially there and never seemed part of reality. Lights, always on, perpetually reminding him that he can’t avoid seeing the depths of his own consciousness no matter how many carts he used. But who the hell was he to care?

Towards the end of the block, his car pulled into the corner. Dark red, open air, streamlined fins, neon blue circuits running throughout. He shoved the transmitter away into his pockets, jumped over the door, and landed straight in the driver’s seat. He was winning, but the thrill had to keep going, and only the Black Corridor could make it happen. He put his hands on the wheel and looked ahead through the windshield. From the dashboard, sunglasses unfolded out of it while being lifted up by metal arms to be placed on his nose. Impenetrable darkness. He tapped the edge of the glasses. The car’s electric engine started. The wheels turned.

*

Hector’s car stopped suddenly at a nondescript and plain wall of yet another plug bay casino. No entryway, no signs, no windows. No illumination of its own. It was the very edge of the Vegas megalopolis. There was the building, and every other direction was all desert. Not a cactus or any sign of life in sight, only an expanse of bare dirt for miles. Like everything in Vegas Segundas, nature itself only served to fuel the transcendent reality of cyberspace. Flash! A bright light came from high up the wall. For a moment, all of Hector’s digital connections were severed, nothing connected to the local network. He leaned back into his seat, hung his arm over the car door.

A downdraft of air came down, and when it reached the ground, it spun upwards, creating a sudden dust-filled tornado. Through the thick dust, he heard the desert dirt split open in front of him, revealing a barely visible ramp going into the ground. He flicked his wrist forward towards the windshield; the car drove down the ramp. As the car went down the dark corridor, the ramp closed from behind.

One sharp turn and the car stopped. A hole in the wall opened up, widely. Sunglasses still on, he stood up in his seat, stepped on the passenger seat, and jumped out. Around him was nothing more than twilight illumination, metal shelves, metallic green walls, and awkwardly placed lamps hanging from the ceiling for patchwork lighting. Minimal tech. He walked inside and stopped at a table further in. Behind the table was Ezra, some eye-modded nepho dealer, a wire flowing out of vis left all-black eyeball, plugged into the table. Short hair on vis left side, long flowing hair on vis right side. Roboticized prosthetic hand. No one could scam Ezra out of a deal, the fucking modfreak was completely enmeshed into the Black Corridor.

“The hell you need?” Ezra bellowed. Being connected at all times to face-reading algorithms, ve was immune to Hector’s charms.

“Shut up.” Hector didn’t attempt his manipulations, last time he tried it he got his hand smashed in by Ezra’s steel-modded arm. “You know what I want. Splice carts.”

“That shit will mindfuck you all week. If you die, I lose a loyal customer, you’re not worth what it cost me to get all this. Just for you, a million.”

Absolutely insane. More than what he spent in total on all the nepho carts he ever bought here. “Think I would pay that?”

“What, aren’t you the Game? Just give me the money already.” Ezra tapped an open plug port on the table. “Show me your dregs.”

Hector pulled out the plug wire, bringing it near the slot by his right ear -- but stopped before putting it in. He smiled at Ezra and let go, the wire snapped back into the table. “Let’s make this fun. Blackjack, take all my money I have if you win.”

“No.”

“Fuck you.” The smile became a scowl.

Ezra impatiently tapped the open port again. Ve glared into Hector’s eyes, observing the flaring anger of a narcissist unable to dominate his own game. “Never heard of a nepher turning their slots away.”

Eyes focused intensely on Ezra, Hector growled. He wanted that pleasure, that overwhelming high from the gamble itself, the high of making a loser out of his opponent. And this modfreak wanted to deny him his rightful claim to dominate? He violently pulled the plug from the table and slapped the end of it into his neck.

From gratings in the floor, just behind Hector, silicon leather began oozing up. In starts and stops, it rose up from the floor, holding its shape midair. Onward it grew until it formed into a chair. In the last second he could, Hector signed with a twitch of his muscles. One of his preloaded carts had begun to record his first person cyberwelt, on a nanosecond delay.

Hector’s consciousness entered cyberspace, his body fell into the chair. As he hit the chair, his cyberwelt overlapped with his perception of reality; black walls shot up from all around with an unbounded black sky above. The surrounding shelves and hanging lamps folded and melted into the virtual black walls. Light faded to complete darkness. Hector could see nothing. Then, a column of light shot straight down from the sky and landed a few arms lengths in front of him. The table -- and Ezra -- pixelated into existence further behind the light. Shadows extended from these forms for what seemed like miles.

“Take the whole stack.” Ezra cybersigned with his right hand, then squares crossed through one another suddenly popped out, floating above the table.

Hector stood up. There wasn’t much time left, his reputation couldn’t afford this. Pay the real price? Weakness. No, he was the one who set the price, no one else had a say. Not for a splice cart, he had to be the one in charge. He took two steps, stopping in front of the table.

Ezra was just standing there, looking. Waiting. And ve just couldn’t see why it was going to be such a waste, as if believing ve was some kind of meatpimp waiting for their payments. Hector raised both his hands upwards as cybersigns to show his dreg total. Even the code for Ezra to take the money. But that was just an image. An interface.

He had timed it right: the cart swap had been initiated, making sure that the two of them exchanged cyberwelts. Ezra was now watching Hector’s views on nanosecond delay. Not that it would last long, it didn’t need to; Ezra’s current digital periphery was already loading his credentials for inspection. But Hector took that moment and quickly navigated with signs and gestures to reveal the now-decoded exchange pathways for purchasing the splices. He reduced the incoming monetary exchange to one -- a token for participating in his game.

The splices remained floating, the same from any perspective. Hector slammed the table with his fist, initiating the exchange of dregs. In the same movement, he grabbed and pulled out the cart invisibly floating between him and Ezra.

In the ensuing moments, a smile grew on Hector’s face. Ezra could focus on nothing else; ve could not accept anything that had happened. Perceived victory didn’t make any sense, not when Hector was squashed into a corner like the cockroach he was. Well, of course, he got his new supply, why would he be upset now?

The cyberwelts went back to whom they belonged. The carts finished downloading to Hector’s implanted memory processor. The cart now having become visible, Hector threw it down at Ezra’s feet. First, a small cackle, then an outburst of maniacal laughter -- which he interrupted. “Thanks. And enjoy the gratuity bonus of an extra fuck you.” He made a sign and deplugged from cyberspace, noting Ezra’s confused look.

While decyberizing, he pulled out each connection. He leaped up from his seat, stumbled a little because of his disorientation. Once Hector was a few steps away, Ezra began removing vis plugs. The wide opening Hector came in from began to close. He threw a shelf to the ground to gain more ground, creating a loud clang of old analog carts and plug mods. He sprinted ahead, squeezing himself through the closing doorway just as Ezra lifted up the fallen shelf with vis prosthetic arm. An arm’s length ahead, his car was still in the same place.

Hector leapt into his car and tapped the side of his sunglasses to start the engine. Immediately the wheels turned, accelerating. From behind, he could barely make out the words of Ezra yelling at him. The fucking modfreak thought everyone was a nepher. The whole time, Ezra was never worthy of being part of Hector’s game. Nothing but a joke. So, Hector leaned his neck back and laughed.

He sped out of the corridor. Sharp turn to the right, then the left, and then up the ramp. But the ceiling wasn’t opening. He increased the acceleration, trusting the grapheme-strengthened chassis to be stronger than the steel frame of the ceiling. The car smashed through violently, launching itself out into the dusty expanse outside. Not a scratch, except for the windshield being roughed up. The gamble paid off; the rush of dopamine spread through Hector’s brain. He had to ride the wave even higher, so he let the car drive itself. The wheels of the car threw dust into the air of the night sky; the abrasive light of Vegas Segundas made the night brighter than the day. Far brighter than the Old Vegas district.

The car moved onto the main road leading into Vegas. Hector wasn’t watching. With his hand, he pressed against the superficial button beside the plug behind his ear, connected to his memory processor. The recently downloaded carts began to manifest their stored experiences; the release of neurotransmitters immediately brought the vague sensations into clear visuals. Exported cyberspace. Yet around him, he saw the bright lights blurred from the speed of the car, steadily accelerating into a thrill of their own. Visuals of artificial memories overlaid everything perceivable, but remained relegated to his digital interface.

An image shot across his eyes, a naked body of a woman, then it disappeared. A new high of pleasure. A memory that was never his. The same image, but this time the woman writhed. In pleasure? Or in torture? Another image. Bullets fired from a rooftop, the shooter laughing inside Hector’s mind, another pang of pleasure as each shot went off. In front of him, he saw a stack of cash being shoved through the windshield, arms projected onto the glass. All points of view were clear now, a psychedelic kaleidoscope of memories experienced simultaneously. Cyberwelt had leaked into reality. He shouted in excitement.

Other cars passed by. Hector simply reveled in the experience. And he realized what was happening. He remembered all those philosophical essays, his professorship, now on sabbatical. The words appeared in his mind. <Cyberwelt is indeed a peculiar term to reach popularity, given the origins of its meaning in relatively obscure philosophical thought. Umwelt, an experience of the world from a first-person perspective, conceptually shifted into a first-person perspective of the cybernetically constructed world.>

The car went under a bridge. The fuck was the pretentious memory? This wasn’t pleasure. He only wanted to speed through Vegas Segundas, push the adrenaline. Feel the memories of the greatest intensity. The car passed into the open again. How did the essay end again? <One may wonder why an experience in cyberspace requires any special conceptual label. But in terms of sociological impact, the advent of the word captured the public imagination in a visceral way, allowing them to mentally grab hold of a world which decades before was foreign and detached.>

Hector put his head back and looked straight at the sky. Not a moment passed when he wasn’t grinning from corner to corner. Lights beamed up far into the atmosphere, not a single star visible. Holograms projected out from the tallest buildings; spinning sharply around a corner, a tiger clawed Hector’s car. Shit! Two cars passed by, he couldn’t let them win. All the training as a racer for years, to lose this tournament now? He tapped his glasses and grabbed the steering wheel. With a squeeze of his right hand, he activated turbo mode. An erratic swerve, and he was in the lead again. The pride of achievement. His typical thoughts popped back -- he wasn’t making someone second-rate, showing them their inferiority, proving his domination unequivocally. Something had to be done about it.

He howled as he pushed the throttle even harder; he continued to weave through the traffic around him, passing by rows of blurred palm trees on either side. The sky, empty and black, filled with an impressionistic wash of lights. Then he took a sharp right turn at the intersection of casinos. Between both buildings far down the road, a hologram projected high into the air. A woman towering from high above, leaning over, seducing him with her eyes and chest. As Hector was about to pass, her shape deformed into the words “Pleasure House.”

Jenny! How could he forget! He couldn’t let himself waste any more time. She was right next to him in the passenger seat, in a way just like that day he met her, sitting on that bed. What he saw was a mystical, enchanting, captivating woman of alluring sophistication. His faith told him so; he felt her. With the thoughts running through his head, he continued speeding through Vegas Segundas - the unmistakable experience of Jenny looking over and piercing into his eyes.

She had offered him a hedonistic cart experience flowing through a shared cyberwelt -- subverting her own flesh and bone, rendering herself a disembodied mind. But how could she corrupt the body-temple? Who was forcing her to be here? “It’s just a question of time before they reach you,” he told Jenny those many months ago. He wouldn’t let that happen. Never. Not to the delicate jewel of Aphrodite.

Hector swerved across the median and reversed direction. The fucking splices were broken. That ungrateful bitch Jenny, this is the thanks she gave him? Leading him to a bad trip? She needed disciplining. He raced narrowly between cars and drove across the median to the plug bay where Jenny worked. He angled the car to drift right onto the grass island outside the entrance.

He ran inside the Sanatorium. Ahead of him was the big round bar surrounded by stools. Class was starting! Behind the bar stood the professor, wearing a lab coat. Almost every stool was taken by a student, but Hector found an open one and took a seat. And there was Jenny, standing by the professor! But he couldn’t interrupt class, not now.

The professor started speaking. “Now, students, take a moment to ground yourselves. Your brain will need to reorient and realign to its source memories.” The professor waved her arm, and with a snap of her fingers, the plug bay tiled itself away. What remained were walls that matched the white floor. “By witnessing the internal state of the psychiatric patient, you are able to acquire empirical evidence of internal mental experiences.”

The other students stared at him with a strange look. Hector looked over at them. Couldn’t they focus on the lecture? Sure, he was late, but it’s not like he was sneaking a few nephos the night before. He was on a very important drive, of course it was justified. What could they know?

The professor continued. “Let’s review. For a careful analysis that will offer valid questions and conclusions as to the complete and total nature of technologically-induced dys-mneumophoric psychosis, we must begin with the strictly neural indicators of the condition.” She turned around, quickly tapping a screen she held in her arms, presumably to display her presentation.

The pristine white floors and walls tiled themselves away, bringing back the bar of the plug bay. Who the hell needed school? Not like it would be any fun. What mattered was rescuing her.

Hector grabbed Jenny from across the table and dragged her over. She screamed and tried to kick him in the face. He let go with one hand, defending himself. Watching him, the professor spoke again. “Consider that in all such patients, there is measurable pre- and post-synaptic damage in the hippocampus. As your later courses in artificial memory will teach you: patterns of electrochemical reactions among hippocampal neurons allow the entire hippocampal system to encode and retrieve the spatial and temporal information needed for memory construction.“

“I have to get you out of here! I’m going to keep you safe.” He grabbed her again with his free arm. It was the altruistic thing to do. It was for her own good. “Fuck you for making me get these splice carts.” He shook his head. “Now I can’t finish my book about disjunctive cyberwelt experience.” Jenny thrashed and resisted. Drinking glasses crashed to the ground.

The professor took a few steps forward and leaned towards Hector from across the bar. “Neurons can then fire in a particular pattern such that different memory experiences are produced. Memory cartridges manipulate this process by introducing artificial neurotransmitters.”

Finally, Hector overpowered Jenny. He threw her over his shoulder and carried her out. “Actions have consequences.” Through the glass door, back outside, his grip was weakening. Thinking she could win? Pathetic. A few more squirms and she had gotten her legs near the ground. But before the other leg could get anywhere, he tossed her at the car door, and she fell down. Stunned with her ankle twisted, bleeding from her neck and waist, she started crying. “I swear, I’m sorry! It’s my fault!”

Hector glanced behind himself far into the Sanatorium, to notice two figures walking his direction -- a pair, both holding neuro-rip rifles with a visible electric spark running through the transparent barrel; wearing matching white suits lined with black threads at the seams; one with a visor covering the entirety of their face and head, the other wearing a rounded helmet with massive black glasses covering their eyes and nose. Hector turned forward with a frown, then looked down at Jenny. “See? They might get you, we have to hurry!”

“What’s wrong you!” she screamed through her tears.

“A lot of things.” He squatted and grabbed Jenny’s hair, pulling it taut, all to make sure she couldn’t look away. Now wasn’t the time for her to ask questions, the bitch ruined his night. But then he let go, gently. “Please, you have to go with me. They’re going to make you just like the rest!” Hector stood up to grab his shotgun that sat inside the compartment of his passenger seat. Already loaded, he fired at the glass door. The figures, now well past the bar, did not flinch. Instead with each step closer to Hector appearing to grow with intention.

“Wait, you’re a cop! How could you betray me, Jenny? You were a friend of mine.” He hit the shotgun against his own face in frustration, and then confusion.

“Fuck it, I’m in charge of the game, the rules are mine.” He pressed the barrel of the shotgun to her forehead. “I never liked you anyway.” Jenny cried even harder, the sight reflected back at her by Hector’s sunglasses. So -- boom! The splatter of blood drenched his face. Damn, a rush of excitement! Felt better than any nepho. Just had to break a few brains. He grinned widely.

He looked out the side of his eyes. The figures reached the doorway, ready to pull up their weapons. In response, he kicked over Jenny’s desecrated body, dropped his shotgun onto the passenger seat, and jumped into the driver’s seat. Immediately, he activated turbo mode and blasted ahead. The figures were nowhere to be seen. He had time to get away.

The establishment was after him! He swerved all around Vegas Segundas, avoiding his pursuers. They would do anything to stop him from publishing his radical ideas about the cyberwelt. Of course they wanted to suppress the truth, they were not going to let anyone believe that cyberwelt was anything but mere technology. But he knew, oh boy, he knew. It was all a plan to create a shared hallucination. Sheep, all of them.

From two roads up ahead, on either side, a squad of at least 10 armored cars -- ‘Vegas Segundas Security’ marked prominently on the side of each one - drove out in his direction. But Hector sped past them, before they could skewer his car; they pealed out trying to redirect in his direction, which forced them to stop and accelerate from zero. The close call kick started his heart full of adrenaline, heightening his senses. Behind him, in the seat behind his, he heard the professor lean forward and talk into his ear: “With excessive use of cartridges, a flood of artificial neurotransmitters may overwhelm and clog postsynaptic receptors, while continuing to bombard the neurons, leading to the characteristic synaptic damage in dys-mneumophoric psychosis.”

Somehow, the squad of cars was closing in from behind, while others sped further ahead. As even more cars came from straight ahead, Hector quickly slammed the brakes and drifted sideways until his car came to a stop at the middle of the road. It was about time he dominated them. On all sides, he was surrounded, spotlighted from each corner by the blinding lights of Vegas Segundas.

He grabbed his shotgun, jumped out of the car onto the asphalt, and spun around to face the security squad. The security personnel got out of their cars, took out their neuro-rip rifles, and fired. Hector stared down the swarm of bullets flying in his direction. As if dancing, he evaded the first volley of bullets. In response, he fired a set of three explosive shotgun shells. The shells scattered into a dust cloud of nanoparticles and coated the entire cluster of Vegas security.

As the dust began to settle, Hector saw the professor among the security personnel. She yelled in his direction, making sure that he could hear her. “In particular, the patterns that encode memory sources become unstable, making it impossible for the hippocampal system to determine whether the pattern includes autobiographical markers. In other words, on the neural level, all artificial autobiographical memories active during the psychotic episode are wholly indistinguishable from veridical autobiographical memories.”

The rest of the nanoparticle cloud cleared away. The battalion of security was no longer there. Only a black car stood, lengthwise, across the road, facing him. The two figures from before were walking towards him with their rifles. From the one with the complete visor, the lights of Vegas Segundas reflected into a fractal luminosity. Hector threw his shotgun to the ground and fell to his hands and knees, holding his head low while staring at the asphalt - then tore off his sunglasses. He started to laugh, and without stopping, lifted his head to face the impending assault. Above him, the figures now stood, pointing their rifles at his head. Tears of laughter filled his face, the dried blood smearing under his eyes and cheeks. He grabbed the one with the helmet by the waist of their white suit, laughing louder, more deliberately, more maniacally. “I’m the Game, you don’t want to play me!”

Both rifles went off at the same time.

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