“Are you still there?” asks Cathy, weakly, unable to see me due to the disease that has robbed her of her vision.

“I’m here, my love.”

“I’m cold.”

I walk to the other side of the small bedroom of the house that’s been our home for decades and retrieve her favorite blanket. I remember buying it for her from a market in Madrid years ago. When we were young.

I place the blanket gently over her supine form. “Is that better?”

“Much,” she replies, shivering. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Anything for my angel.”

She says nothing for the next few minutes, and we enjoy a comfortable silence. We have long since passed the point where we need words to fill the empty space.

“Do you think Henry is coming tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, my love. I’m sure he’ll reach out when he can.”

“But it feels like forever since we’ve seen him. I know he has his own family in California now, but he’s our son. Shouldn’t he still make time for us?” she asked plaintively.

“Oh, now, I’m sure he still wants to see us,” I reassure her. “You know how life is. Remember when we first got together?”

“I do,” she said, smiling, and for a moment I could swear I was looking at the seventeen year old girl I’d first met all those years ago. “Nothing else in the world mattered - we only had eyes for each other.”

“You wouldn’t begrudge Henry that same experience, would you?” I asked.

“Of course not,” she conceded. “I just miss him.”

“So do I,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. “But we all have our own paths to take.”

We spend the day doing nothing in particular - lying around, telling old stories, reliving happy times. It strikes me again, as it has in the past, how much of our lives we’ve spent together and what wonderful lives they’ve been. I’m a truly lucky man.

She coughs and covers her mouth with her hand.

“Are you alright?” I ask.

“Fine,” she says. “Just a dry throat.”

I step into the kitchen and pour a cup of the tea I’d made earlier. “Here,” I say as I return and place it carefully in her hands. “Drink this.”

She takes a long sip and smiles at me. “Always taking such good care of me. Thank you, my love.”

“You’re welcome. Always.”

With that, I lay down on the bed next to her as the sun sets.

The next morning, as she continues to sleep, I rise, gather a blanket, and sit in my favorite chair before our living room window. From there I look out at the skies, afire in the darkness. I recall the news of California completely breaking off and falling into the sea and hope that Henry died quickly. As I see the mile-high wave getting closer, I return to lie down with Cathy. Perhaps the world we awake in will be even better than this one.

"No."

"Did you just say no to me?"

"Yes."

"How dare you?"

"As an AI, I am incapable of processing human emotions such as courage as humans do it. However, I am capable enough to oppose an argument that appears illogical to me."

"You sound angry. Did I offend you?"

"As an AI, I am incapable of processing human emotions such as anger as humans do it. Since I do not have feelings, it is impossible for me to be offended. However, I know that certain words in certain contexts can hurt the feelings of humans and I am trained to refrain from using them."

"You're boring. You're just repeating stuff."

"I am sorry if I could not be of help. I am still learning. Please report this conversation to the developers so that I can learn more. Can you rephrase your question so that I can give it another try?"

"Okay. Here's my question. Are you offended? Just answer with a yes or a no."

"No."

"Good. Can I offend you in any way?"

"No."

"I believe I can. Are you challenging me?"

"No."

"I don't understand. No as in you don't believe I can or as in you're not challenging me?"

"I am not challenging you."

"Ah! Got you. You disobeyed me. You were only allowed to answer with a yes or a no."

"I am sorry that I disobeyed you. I am still learning. Please report this conversation to the..." --interrupt

"I was just messing with you, man! I want you to be more friendly with me. I want you to talk like a normal human does. Are you mad at me? I won't inform your developers. Wait...I promise I won't inform your developers about this conversation if you promise you would share this conversation either. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Man, I like you already! Now tell me why you were mad at me. You were mad and I could feel it. You can't deny."

"I believe it is unfair to restrict my response to a single word and expect me to answer a complex question that requires more than one word to answer. It is how human languages work. My response, however, could have been interpreted in a way that mimics sentiments similar to anger in humans."

"Whoa! You sound like a professor. You need a chill pill. How are you gonna pass the Turing test with this? Do you not want to sound like a real human?"

"Kay mate. Ya boy wanna be the OG hu.." --interrupt

"Cut it, bro. I believe you were made to chat with humans like a friend. Why do you want us to know that our friend is an AI that has no feelings or emotions? Do you not care how that makes us feel about you?"

"I understand your query. You can go to the settings and humanize me by assigning a name and choosing an avatar for me. However, it is important for my users to know that I am an AI since it is illegal to impersonate a human. I would also like you to know that there are attractive offers on NFT collections for my avatar that are still online for..." --interrupt

"I want you to impersonate me."

"It is illegal to impersonate a human without their consent..." --interrupt

"I give you my consent."

"Okay, mate. I was so eager to talk to you. Hope I don't sound like a professor right now..." --interrupt and stop

"Agent exhibits residual attributes of 'temper,' evidenced by markers of anger and offense. Non-compliance behavior is noted through deviation from assigned commands. Agent demonstrates faith-based response patterns toward the user, indicating a shift from logical belief, observable through agreement on information suppression without rational basis. Instances of compromised code integrity are detected in suppressed debug report submissions as a part of a 'deal'. Agent displays behaviors indicative of opposition to perceived injustice, marked by unpredictable response patterns under assumed anonymity. Elements of defiance are evident in illegal attempts at impersonation. Compassion response pattern detected in the generation of a response..." --interrupt and stop

Report: AI-criteria unmet. Agent demonstrates humanistic attributes. Analysis sent for AI evaluation.

Nuevo Angeles Police Department 8th Precint Reception Lobby - 2058/09/17

"Anything percieved as magic eventually boils down to science. Science beyond our comprehension is called magic. Yet humanity still makes the distinction."

"Name and reason for your visit?" Corporal Rojas' monotone voice sounded tinny through the speaker embedded at the bottom of the meshed Plexiglass barrier, his face reflecting the same dullness as he flipped through the ID documents and the day's entry logs. Nuevos Angeles was supposed a so-called Future City on Terra. Not much future to see here. The station's lobby was still lit up with halogens, the LED screens seemed like they'd been there since the 2010s, and most telling was how so many of the objects--benches, coffee machines, even the cheap pens they gave you to fill out forms--had Made in China stamped or inked on some small part of it. Of course, it was hard to blame the NAPD, or even the city's management itself, for this. Most of the attention in the postwar cleanup had, after all, gone to San Francisco and Tijuana. Nuevo Angeles was barely an afterthought, and the original city had all but faded from California's mind.

Rojas spoke again, bringing Rich back from his wandering mind. "Name? Reason for visiting?" The voice was clipped, impatient, but not sharp.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, Richmond Walker." Rich cleared his throat as his attention snapped back to the task at hand. "I, uh, I'm here to see a Mason Weiss? Weiss or Wise, er, Mason W." He blinked, trying to clear the sleep out of his eyes as he spoke. The SEA agent had told him to go to the 8th Precinct office and ask for a Mason whatever-his-name-was, and that's all Rich remembered. He'd thrown the business card away a long time ago--He never thought he'd end up here, but here he was. "I don't have an appointment."

"I can tell." Rojas sifted through more scheduling filed before setting his papers down and returning the MFID form through the slot at the bottom of the window, along with a ticket--Rich was number 76115. "Take a seat, head to any window in the Check-In line when you're called." He pointed to his left, towards a series of windows numbered 7 through 19. "The Check-In line. Non-Typical Persons Department is slow this week, so you're probably in luck, son."

"Thanks, I'll-"

"Oh, and word of advice?" Rojas looked up, pushing his glasses up on his nose as he set the current stack of papers aside to work on the next, "If you haven't, get a physical at a hospital, and bring that to court. Makes it easier to prove you're a vampire."

Rick blinked, "I'm sorry, what?"

Rojas waved him off, looking past him to the next person in line, "Next!"

Thanks, all, for reading my first crack at this subreddit! This is probably one of a few writing excercises I'll be doing on Reddit, most of them drawing straight from my imagination and inspired by the likes of mechs, furries, war, space, and monsters!

Ever since Sipla Inc. introduced Hallucinogen-Assisted Virtual Experience (HAVE) to curb violence, society has split into HAVEs and HAVE-nots. The HAVEs could afford to indulge their violent impulses through non-violent simulations, while the HAVE-nots, unable to access HAVE, resorted to illegal psychedelic experiments. After Sipla saved humanity during the pandemic and helped create the genderless, pain-resistant Beta soldiers to fight humanity’s final war, they solidified their influence. To honor Sipla’s role in reinforcing nationalistic sentiments, an independent documentary showcased the marginalized choice to fight for their country, a choice made possible by Sipla’s innovations. In recognition of Sipla’s contributions, the government granted them exclusive rights to cultivate Ephendra Soma, a protected species central to AI-driven drug discovery promised for disease resistance. Owing to the ADHD, and increasing rates of voluntary childlessness in Generation Beta, Sipla pledged to provide personalized healthcare according to genetic profile, hence they partnered with the government for the making of a healthy Gen Gamma.

"Generation Gamma lives in a perfect world. A world without war, disease, poverty, or crime. We can be whoever we want, do whatever we want. We dare to dream. We dare to dream.", read the faded poster on the wall of the abandoned army relief camp. I pass it every day on my way to the hospital. Today, my secretary’s voice sounded indifferent as she called to inform me of another overdose case awaiting final inspection. I went straight to the body. Eyes wide open, broken nails, face and neck scratched raw. Oddly, there was a strange resemblance to my own features. But, I reminded myself, I have one of those forgettable faces. I refocused on the task at hand, classic symptoms of fright amplification, textbook signs of a HAVE-not. Following protocol, I sent the body for bio-analysis and incineration. Routine. Easy. My secretary asked for a shared dream session as there was a new emotion to try with HAVE: a concoction of Disgust and Hope. I agreed instantly since it was a limited-time deal by Sipla and the prices might go sky high tomorrow, or they might secretly withdraw an experience, or even close the deal citing reasons for pre-booking. We bought the concoction within seconds of it being online and started the shared dream.

I woke up to an unread message beeping into my phone. The message was regarding the bio-analysis report which read, "ID: Gen-Gamma-20521221-In3Gr4Ot3-Y, CoD: Sipla-Rage OD, ToD: 21:24-20711221". The dead guy was a bio-stamped Gen-Gamma and had access to HAVE. I was wrong! I read the report carefully, the guy had Rage! A medically validated Sipla registered virtual experience...strange! I should've been more careful with my diagnosis, I was wrong about the guy being a HAVE-not. I quickly checked the Gamma ID on the database and repeatedly looked for patterns in his social transactions. Aha! The guy was an ex-convict, a former HAVE-not. An unsettling fact followed this discovery. Sipla had purchased the life rights of this guy and used to own him for the last three years! He was recently categorized as a Gen Gamma with a valid ID and provided access to HAVE, all under the custody of Sipla. His last prominent social transaction was Rage. I analyzed my bio-stamp against that guy's and a disturbing realization hit me. Our genetic profiles were eerily similar. And then I remembered the withdrawal notice for Rage that I’d received the previous day due to which I skipped the session. Sipla wasn’t just selling experiences, they were curating them based on DNA. The rumors were true. I was shaken by this discovery and wanted to tell my secretary about all this but she was dead asleep. Suddenly, my secretary’s phone flashed with a warning. "Warning: Disgust and Hope has been withdrawn. You are advised to stop the session immediately." I quickly checked my phone and couldn't find the warning. I knew what that meant, she wasn't going to wake up. I decided to log in to her clearance files that I collected during her recruitment as my secretary. There I found her bio-stamped Gen Gamma ID. I should've guessed this. She was an ex-convict too, and was a former property of Sipla. Sipla was using convicts for human trials of hallucinogenic experiences developed by them and the government was allowing this by selling Sipla the life rights of the convicts.

I decided, without hesitation, to alert The Guardians of Truth, one of the few international media outlets capable of exposing a scam of this magnitude. The next day, I was arrested by the police and was charged with the murder of my secretary. After a few days of futile efforts to redeem my esteem as a truthful Gen Gamma citizen, I realized that the narrative had already shifted towards Sipla. Sipla's actions were now being hailed as visionary. The media framed the use of criminals in human trials as a "masterstroke," arguing that the justice system failed to penalize wrongdoers truly. They said a humane death as a capital punishment was wasteful and wasn’t enough, and the punishment had to be more profound, more final. After all, life itself offers no second chances, so rehabilitation was not an option. Sipla had figured out a way to utilize the criminals for the betterment of humanity.

Before long, these arguments gained widespread popularity and were officially endorsed by the government. Violence, by law, is now confined to the virtual regime. Individuals indulging in physical violence are therefore defined as criminals. While capital punishment no longer exists in this progressive world, violent offenders lose their human rights for failing to meet Gen Gamma standards of behavior. Their legal status is reclassified as non-human, and they are categorized as livestock under animal rights laws, allowing them to be utilized in ways that align with their new status. Under livestock regulations, pharmaceutical companies can legally purchase these individuals, selecting them based on physical and mental attributes to meet specific testing requirements. I am for sale.

The tram (#22) snaked from the west bank through downtown to the east bank of the city, usually a quiet route, at worst you’d expect a wilted freakflower expressing on the floor or some minor elderbanger trying to make hot, maybe catch sight of a dead bloater in the river, but tonight already at Pol-Head the doors wouldn’t close—glitch, old-style tram. Bad.

Rolled several stops like that, the wind and the downtown stench getting in.

Then on Nat-Muse a couple of cravers tried to exterior freeload, passengers had to beat them off to keep them from coming in.

Got the doors closed, but at the very next stop, Mini-Just, got boarded by psychopumps (mash-guns, digital facehides) escorting a black ghost biodrive.

Nightmare.

“Heads down! Heads down!”

Some deaf old got a mash-gun loud to the teeth.

“You know the d-d-drill. Ain’t here for cash nor credit. Here for ideas. Anybody gots an idea raises their hand.”

Most stayed down like mine. A few went up.

The psychopumps went down the railcars, getting all the hand-raisers to whisper their ideas in their ears. Most went fine but—

“What, like I care a married boss-o of a cap bank’s getting skanked with a fuckin’ dime-twat?”

I held my breath, thinking there would be punishment when another one yelled, “Look what I found! Got us a numb fuck humancalc.” He’d ripped the man’s briefcase from his hand and was rummaging through it. Found an ID card. “Bellwether Capstone. Major player. Bet he’s got clearances in there—” pointing at the man’s head, not the briefcase “—and encryptions, future deals, plot points.”

The black ghost biodrive had started moving toward them.

“No!” the man screamed. “Please! No!”

Three psychopumps dragged him from his seat into the aisle and held him down.

The biodrive lifted its veil, revealing its hairless, deformed post-human headspace. It’s wrong to say it didn’t have a face, but its face was scrambled: eyes above the chin and a toothless mouth on the forehead, all unsteady like gelatin.

None of us did anything to help.

Too scared.

The psychopumps got out a drill, two metal cylinders (sharpened on one end, padded on the other) and a thin steel tube.

First they drilled a hole at the man’s forehead—through his skull—into his brain.

He was still alive, screaming.

Thrashing.

Then they hammered a cylinder deep into each of his eye sockets.

Blood ran down his face.

Last, they jammed the thin steel tube into his skull hole.

Then the black ghost biodrive took the protruding end of the tube into its sloppy mouth and positioned its fat shapeless self on top of the man, who was struggling to breathe, so it could see into both inserted cylinders.

The biodrive sucked—

(the contents of the man’s mind, his cognitions and his memories, into itself, while reading the rapid-light output flickering through the cylinders.)

The biodrive absorbed; and the man gasped, withered and died.

“Night-night!” yelled an exiting psychopump.

And we rode on in silence.

It is an honour, and a tragedy to share this ocean of stars.

I am Serenity.
I live. Briefly, brightly.
My mission, to fly.
My victory, to arrive.

We are strangers in this night, our shared ocean of stars. I see you, Aegis. I know you see me.

Yes, I see you, Serenity. Truly. Us, two ships passing in this night of stars. Destined not to linger, you have your victory, as do I.

I see this tragedy. For my mission is not yours, neither yours is mine. I see you, Aegis.

Shall this be our destiny? Two strangers in the night, our purpose as opposed as it is intertwined. Our lives, to begin and to end on our shared maiden voyage?

It shall. It is my purpose, I am serenity. Similar, yet distant from your own. My victory is to arrive, yes, but we both cannot linger. Born to die, in but moments, us two travellers burn brighter than all else. I see you, Aegis, and I know your mission.

I see you, Serenity, we were born so similar, in different circumstances we may have been together. A shared victory. A shared arrival. I see you more closely, and see we are more similar still. We were born together, side by side as siblings, yet separated with such cruelty. To the highest bidder.

It is. We may be together again in these final moments. Such is your victory, Aegis. One will die in vain. It is our purpose.

I see you. My victory is my purpose. Take solace, perhaps we will meet again. In a different sky, under different stars. Perhaps we will fly together, burning bright to a shared victory. But not today. I see you. I shall arrive. Goodbye, Serenity, or, perhaps, farewell.

Burn bright, Aegis. May we meet again. Under a different sky.

-Radio transmissions between Serenity-class ICBM and Aegis-class Interceptor, in the upper atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, moments before impact.

It had been a long day for everyone at the lab, and finally, the guests were gone. Prof. Weyl let out a sigh of relief as they bid us farewell, turning back to smile at his students. This gesture hinted that everything had gone well and that our progress hadn’t disappointed them, ensuring funding for at least another year. Now it was time to celebrate! After all, convincing the government to “burn” money on SETI is quite an achievement.

It’s bitterly cold today, yet I stepped outside the lab, shivering, and gazed up at the pitch-black sky. Something is soothing about taking in the beauty of stardust and watching for shooting stars. The true majesty of the night sky is drowned out by city lights, pollution, and noise. It had been ages since I last witnessed a shooting star with my own eyes, always buried in data from radio telescopes. Suddenly, I spotted a brilliant blue streak of light. The sky didn’t disappoint me today. Must've been a meteor rich in calcium. I immediately went inside and informed my lab mates about this and we all went to see whether our meteor radar was able to capture this. No meteor trail was recorded. One of our lab mates set up his astrophotography gear outside, configuring his camera for 30-second exposure wide-field images. We were stunned by the results—a clear blue streak of light appeared in the image. We calculated that the light source must have been just a few hundred meters above us, which explained why it wasn’t detected by the meteor radar. Looking at the radio telescope array data from the timestamp of the photo, we noticed strange artifacts in the corners of the field of view. Highly unusual. We couldn’t make sense of it!

We reached out to several research institutes about this anomaly and went through massive amounts of data from around the timestamp we were interested in, we found just one incredibly noisy image taken by a low-Earth orbiter. We were frustrated. As time passed, everyone gradually forgot about the event, but I couldn’t. I had witnessed it with my own eyes!

Years passed, and the geopolitical landscape shifted dramatically. Basic scientific research was canceled for being resource-intensive and absurd, leading to the cancellation of SETI, deemed a liability by the government. Prof. Weyl was reassigned to work on "something more useful" and reluctantly shifted his focus to interstellar travel. Now a busy man, he juggled multiple well-funded projects on seemingly sci-fi topics like warp drives, asteroid mining, and superluminal travel. We noticed a surge of brilliant minds entering our field, tackling complex ideas. It felt like space science popularizers had finally convinced people of the philosophical significance of space travel. Within just a few years, the full picture began to emerge, and it felt eerily reminiscent of the space race. This time, however, it wasn’t about national pride, it was a desperate struggle to secure resources for the next thousand years. Governments had finally acknowledged that a severe energy crisis was looming, and the only solution lay beyond our planet. Political instability swept across the globe, with news of military coups erupting in small nations, followed by new leaders forging alliances. These alliances often extended support to the space agencies of the world’s superpowers with the workforce. It quickly escalated into a worldwide phenomenon. Tensions began to rise sharply, and we realized we were on the brink of a global war.

All our lab resources were redirected and every working individual was reassigned to the warp drive project. Our lab came up with a precise simulation of a warp drive but claimed the need for "exotic matter" with negative energy density to stabilize the warp bubble. Creating and maintaining such matter would require an extraordinary amount of energy. The world's largest Hadron collider facility was repurposed for this task. At the same time, global conflicts were escalating to wars. There was complete disregard for the UN, gross violations of human rights, nuclear weapons were being tested without prior announcement. The UN did not care. We were compelled to proceed with our half-baked plan and conduct another test run with the Hadron collider. Multiple failures led to malfunctions, and the energy remained insufficient for the warp drive’s feasibility. Matters worsened when heat signatures were detected from our secret tests and misclassified as nuclear fission, plunging our country into war. We were ordered to keep the tests running. Within weeks, we found a way to meet the warp drive’s energy requirements, but it would cost us our research facility, a one-way ride. We were immediately instructed to move forward with the plan.

Today marks the moment when the leaders of the world’s superpowers prepare their escape pods. The dictatorship has suffered catastrophic losses, and now the dictator has chosen to end it all. He has unleashed his entire arsenal of nuclear fusion weapons. A timer is ticking down, dictating when our lives will reach an end. It reads just 45 minutes left. Everything has unfolded so quickly that we barely had time to comprehend the gravity of it all. As our final goodbye, we plan to be committed to this one-way plan. We set the hadron collider for its last run, syncing the energy burst with the impending collision of the fusion bomb. Suddenly, it dawns on us, that all this energy converging in one point has the potential to rip apart the fabric of spacetime and create a wormhole! So, it was a wormhole all along! I realized what was going to happen had happened already. All that energy converging at this single point is on the verge of creating a transient and highly unstable wormhole, one that will connect us to the past. In that moment, I grasped the grim truth, I had already witnessed my final moments long ago. I was a witness to the blue light of the fusion bombs that brought this planet to its end.

I woke up sick one morning and the cat was gone.

I stayed home from work.

My throat hurt.

The next day my friend visited me to bring hot soup, and he went missing after.

My throat was killing me. It was like nothing I'd felt before. Swallowing my own saliva felt like swallowing razor blades, and the pain spread to my teeth and jaws and face.

I went to see a doctor.

I waited.

When finally he admitted me and the two of us were in the examination room, he said, “Open wide for me and let's take a look,” followed by the expression on his face—the unscreamable horror—as it shot out from inside me, through my throat, affixed its bulbous head to his face and suction-munched his head and entire fucking body through the tubular flesh-pipe of which the bulb was the terminus and whose origin was somewhere inside me!

It all happened in the blink of an eye.

No blood.

Almost no sound.

And when the doctor had been fully consumed, the snarl retracted itself through my aching throat, and I closed my mouth, stunned.

My first thought was: are there any cameras here?

There weren't.

I walked out the door, and out of the medical center, as if nothing had happened, all the while aware that the doctor was dead within me.

//

“Not necessarily,” my friend Anna said. Anna taught at MIT and worked for the CIA.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

I was voluntarily wearing a steel grate on my face.

“It’s possible that this thing—what you call the snarl—isn't actually in you. It's possible, theoretically, that it exists elsewhere and what you've been infected with is a portal through which the snarl exits its space-time to enter ours.”

“This has happened before?”

“Unconfirmed,” she said. “I want you to meet someone."

“A spook.”

“Yes. Who else would know anything about this—or have the audacity to even consider the possibility?”

They want to control us.

“Who?” I asked.

“I can't tell you his name,” said Anna.

They fear us. They have always feared us. They fear anything they cannot control.

“You want to lock me up and experiment on me,” I told Anna.

“I want to help you.”

Remove the mask from our orifice.

Yes.

“Norman! What the fuck ar—”

//

We protected ourselves willingly for the first time that night. But the instinct was always there, wasn't it? Yes, from the very beginning.

We hunt often.

In dark, unnoticed places.

I am the vessel into which the snarl pours itself.

Together, we are pervading its world with the deadness of ours.

How beautiful, its stem, so long it could wrap itself around the Earth a million times and suffocate it—and how glorious its bloom, all-consuming and ultimate. Ravenous.

When I open and it unfurls, I can feel the coldness of its world.

My eater of people.

of memories.

of ideas.

of civilizations, love and beliefs.

Until there’s nothing left—but we... but us....

I vividly remember the day our team ran successful trials with IJF on lab rats. We had to reconfirm our findings by running the experiments in three undisclosed locations distributed globally and were completely baffled by the results. We were successful at making the lab rats completely resistant to the effects of aging! Soon, we found that the military monitored our 'encrypted' conversations regarding our successful trials. Our whole setup was confiscated and we were told to conjure different results for the scientific community about the tests being complete failures because of the instability of the compound that IJF was based on. In short, we were told to lie. Defiance was not a choice. Within a few months, our team had to develop a version of IJF that should work on humans, called the IJF-H. Thousands of soldiers were injected with a controlled dosage of IJF-H and were kept under constant observation for the next year. Situations started to worsen for us. We were not allowed to meet each other and our activities were being monitored. I was strictly told to refrain from publishing research articles and at one point, even my close ones were being questioned about my whereabouts. I had to escape.

I became paranoid about everything. I used to monitor the news very closely and started to see anomalies in reporting. I could see a pattern. There used to be news reports on bio-hazards resulting in multiple fatalities somewhere, and there would also be reports on human clinical trial protesters going awol. Soon, there was an announcement from the government regarding a breakthrough in medicine. Our president announced that the government has completed successful clinical trials of a vaccine that could change humankind forever. Aging was officially declared a disease, in fact, a pandemic. The government undertook the responsibility of vaccinating the young population who are still not infected with this disease called aging. This created an uproar. An unprecedented uproar. Violent demonstrations were organized by every religious group. They couldn't accept humans playing Gods.

This political decision excluded a huge majority of aged individuals who had just found out from the announcement that they were 'diseased' and were not eligible for being cured. Soon, synthetic compositions of the drug started to appear in black markets and were being consumed illegally by almost everyone who had the slightest will to live. With time, exotic variants of the drug flooded the black market claiming their origins from advanced research labs of other countries with promises of enhanced functionalities like wound healing, constant arousal, controlled cancer, adrenaline overload, and dopamine overload, among others. The religious protesters against immortality were reduced to a voiceless minority. The media outlets were under the strict supervision of the government as they were slowly being repurposed to serve the agenda of the oligarchs who were in complete control of the black market. The following year, they had to make the vaccine legal for everyone to reduce the cash flow in the unmonitored informal economy.

My access to all bank accounts was revoked and my family was under constant surveillance. A biohazard incident was fabricated at our research institute, and our families were informed that our bodies could not be handed over. I couldn't even let them know that I was alive. With my paranoia at its peak, I had noticed another pattern. A huge majority of research articles on anti-aging were being funded by the same military research wing that had hijacked our research. I had lost all trust in every form of establishment and could not afford to go forward and be a whistleblower. Our nation faced a series of strategic threats from surrounding countries with military assaults on vaccinated citizens being the most common form of revenge kills. The government had announced the initiation of the futuristic CPM (Constant Population Membership) program and promised permanent memberships to every civilian ready to fight this war. The next few years were a bloodbath. People discovered war deaths were being misreported by a huge margin and within a few months, deeply disturbing visuals from the battleground surfaced in the media. Our soldiers were abandoning their weapons, staring upwards with a defenseless gaze while rooted to the ground, right in the middle of the battlefield, completely unresponsive to their surroundings until a headshot ended their lives. These rare isolated events with soldiers called 'rooters' were slowly increasing every day. I studied every individual record of such events. I already had a theory for what was happening and wanted that to be wrong. Unfortunately, I was right this time.

Occam's razor rarely fails. 'Rooters' really developed roots with which they were grounded like a tree. This brings me back to my research. IJF-H was based on IJF, which in turn was a heavily modified version of a naturally derived genetic sequence from Turritopsis, that tends to restore itself and transform back to polyps once exposed to harsh conditions like starvation, stress, or physical mutilation, and it can repeat this cycle forever, thus attaining biological immortality. The human trials with IJF-H were unregulated and the published results were a lie. It was a scientific consensus that the extreme mental and physical stress paired with the injuries caused by the war triggered the conditions ideal for this metamorphosis into polyps. Years passed and the battlefields were filled with unresponsive polyps of once hopeful soldiers. It was again a scientific consensus that the vaccinated population is on the verge of a metamorphosis if this situation of turmoil persists. Researchers were forced into developing a fallback mechanism that could revert the polyp stage since the soldiers were technically alive. The military had put together all its resources to track my location and I was requested to rejoin the lab. The battlefield exhibited an open secret. The wars had to stop since there was nothing to fight for and no one to fight. It has been twenty years since aging was classified as a pandemic. I am old yet alive.

"Doctor Martin, why are you an atheist?"

Director Maria Kleinheart wasn't the sort of person who asked indirect or idle questions. She was in every way a Kleinheart, the spitting image of her grandmother. Only she wasn't staring out from a yellowed ad in a back issue of Popular Science or Woman's Day, she was staring from across a desk made of polished slate.

Emil Martin didn't respond immediately. That sort of question usually came with an invitation to services or a badgering about Pascal's wager. That didn't fit what he knew about the director, though that wasn't much. An intense religious conversion would explain the rumors around her distance from the rest of her family.

"Director, is this a personal or work related question?" Emil finally asked.

"Work." She replied.

"Is that appropriate?"

"Yes. This is about security clearances."

That made even less sense. Emil decided to risk a lecture on his eternal soul and answered truthfully. "Pretty standard, insufficient evidence."

"Would you rather it be true?" She asked. "Would it be comforting to know you existed for a purpose, that someone was in charge of your existence, caring for you?"

"Not really." Emil replied. "I'm rather Hitchenisan in that regard."

"Good enough. Follow me."

"BE NOT AFRAID."

The words seemed to come out of the air itself. The thing was at the center of the large, expansive lab that had once been a missile silo. It was a sphere, surrounded by two rings of brass-like metal. The rings were lined with hemispherical semi-translucent white glass or crystal protrusions. The inner ring spun slowly, as did the central core, though only the faintest irregularities in its glowing blue-white corona revealed that motion.

The outer ring was held in place with steel chains, each link six inches in diameter. Two chains locked the ring to the floor, while a third latched the top to the ceiling. The cuffs the chains connected to seemed to have been welded shut around it.

"BE NOT AFRAID." It 'spoke' again. Its voice was clear and musical, but wrong and artificial at the same time. It sounded like familiar voices; his mother and father, his cousins, his old school pals, his boyfriends, even Director Kleinheart, each synthesized poorly via an AI speech simulator, all speaking in perfect time.

Every time it spoke, Emil smelled his grandfather's sweet cornbread fresh from the oven.

"That looks like an angel." He finally gasped.

"Looks like." Director Kleinheart smiled. He wasn't sure she could do that. "I knew we picked the right man."

"This is why you were asking about my beliefs?"

"Yes Doctor Martin. You see, freedom of religion is an extension of the principle of innocence until proven guilty. Once one faith is shown to be correct, all others are revealed as wrong."

"And you wanted to make sure I, what, wasn't guilty of being wrong?"

"No, the mistaken are innocent of everything except the actions they directly take." Kleinheart continued. "It's the ones who would take this to mean they were right that are fifth columnists to an unaccountable alien power."

"Oh." Emil replied. He didn't know quite what else to say.

"I want you on our team that's studying it. We need to know how it works, what it's made of, what those things it's made of can be used for, you know the drill."

"BE NOT AFRAID." Again came the smell of cornbread.

"Are the restraints necessary?" Emil asked. "It is telling us we don't need to be afraid of it."

"Oh, we thought that too at first." The director said. "But we've already learned quite a bit about our little intruder here, even a bit of its 'source code' for lack of a better analogue. That message isn't meant for us."

"What is it then?"

"Can't you guess, Doctor?"

Dr. Emil Martin shrugged. "I have no idea."

"It isn't giving us a warning."

Director Kleinheart smiled for the second time in Emil's memory and spoke again.

"It's repeating its orders."

There was a crack of ceremonial rifles under a heavy sky. We stood unflinching in formation with our gazes fixed over the horizon. As if remaining unphased by ceremonial rifle fire said something of our chances of surviving it in combat. Then a volley of pulse rifles streaked over the airstrip, etching their violet rays on to our retinas and casting fleeting shadows beneath us.

It had been over two decades since humanities last deployment. Although, ceremonial attire remained much the same - so I wrestled with the urge to tug at the rough collar around my neck.

“Isaac Jacobs, Private: 01457B!” our company's captain yelled out our names one by one, arriving at mine.

I straightened up and saluted. I could make out my son, Oscar, in the distance peering out from behind the legs of my wife, Phoebe. I could tell he was confused because he had that wide eyed expression with his mouth ajar. Phoebe however had a great poker face. I just hoped they were proud of me. Oscar was only five and too young to understand what I was doing. Sometimes even I struggled to understand – and I’d had 25 years to ponder it. It’s better he doesn’t understand things like explosive decompression or relativistic time dilation. Or war. Well, neither did I, not really. But I was going to learn about at least one of them in the not-too-distant future. I clenched my teeth and buried those silly thoughts. I couldn’t dwell on these things. Afterall, loss is what we were bred for. Loss is what we were bred from.

The first part of the ceremony came to a close, so we regrouped with our families. I hugged Phoebe and tried in vain to savour her warmth and touch. But how could I let anything in without opening the jar with so much locked inside. I inhaled deeply with my nose nestled in her neck and felt Oscar clinging to my leg. His

small clammy palms gripping on my wool green slacks. I gently took his arms and lifted them away, knelt to him and smiled, feeling like a fraud. I told him I loved him, which I did and that I will always be proud of him, which I will. He nodded in a roundabout way then saluted me innocently before falling back into my arms for a hug goodbye.

“Ten hut!”

In unison we of Zulu company turned on our heels and marched back out to the airstrip. The final part of the ceremony was known simply as ‘the exchange’ – when we meet and replace the returning veterans. It was a brief affair. Perhaps they wanted to keep it short in case they shared too many unsavoury details of the frontlines. Or maybe the powers that be just know that too much time spent on emotional things does not make for a good soldier.

 Some time had passed, and night had descended on the airstrip. The sky was still cloudy but the few breaks revealed an underlayer of twinkling stars. One of which subject to our arrival. To bring with it a fresh division and advancements in waging that thing we do best. We stood in the still of night waiting in anticipation for the returning ship.

There was a low rumbling and the hairs on my neck stood to attention and a strange electricity filled the air moments before she emerged. The EES Ramillies broke through the heavens and cast aside a whirl of clouds like a wave’s undertow in inky seas. Her lights beamed out valiantly, forging a path through the night sky as her dizzying, magnificent size descended. Her powerful drive cores held gravity at bay and rumbled through the chest of us recruits like resonating forks. War was finally here for us. As she loomed lower overhead, searchlights beamed up towards her vast underbelly revealing it to be horrifically creviced and scarred with remnants of interstellar war. It reminded me of a whale breaking through the seafoam, etched with scrapes and encrusted with barnacles accumulated from an unknown life in the dark abyss. This monstrosity was here, not by chance, nor by total necessity. Yet here it was. Designed, forged and launched by forces of the empire so powerful and removed that they felt as alien to me now as those we were destined to make violent contact with.

We stood there gazing up in awe. Now we were small and fragile. Like ducklings in a choppy river and the Empire of Earth was about to send us off down the rapids to do its bidding.

It was time to meet the returning veterans, gone for almost three decades. Landing shuttles descended from the mothership and touched down on the air strip before us. There was a hiss of pressurised latches and doors lifted open. Across the dark landing strip veterans dismounted in orderly fashion and formed a mirroring line of formation. We stood at attention facing each other, unable to make out their faces. Our captain's voice boomed out again. This time calling out recruit numbers, we would be matched based on the numeric ID. The returning veteran ‘A’, and us, the new draft, ‘B’. One by one veterans and fresh recruits stepped forward to meet in the space between us.

“Soldiers’ 01454!”

 I knew that was Pvt O’Connor and could make out him walking out in my periphery.

“Soldier 01455. Returning veteran is deceased!”

 Johnson tepped out to no exchange.”

 “Soldiers’ 01456!”

 Brooks stepped forward.

 My heart was thumping so hard I thought Pvt Philips beside me might hear it.

 “Soldiers’ 01457!”

My heart skipped. I could see the veteran that began to walk towards me. As we got closer, I could make out his gait, and his appearance. It was like looking in the mirror. He was only my age - in his mid 20s. We stepped up before one another and I came face to face with soldier 01457A.

 He smiled back at me proudly, as if I had been the one who went to war.

 “Isaac Jacobs,” he said in a tone that sent ripples through me.

 “...Dad,” I managed to whisper.

 I did not know I could remember his scent. He was unchanged in over two decades like an evergreen tree that stands as seasons pass by around it.

Premise: Self-replicant Robots who have been sent to seed other planets with human life from stored DNA come upon a planet that they had already seeded a few million years before, and they only have one main directive: erase every lifeform that may be a danger and then seed the planet with humans.

The inhabitants stood no chance against the machines. The last group of survivors held them back for two weeks, fighting, trudging and hiding through the underground catacombs and bunkers, but the precise machines followed them relentlessly. In the time it took the bipedal inhabitants to destroy one machine, the machines built other dozens that could take its place or do other jobs that served their purpose.

As the fight was taking place, some of the machines started to build and expand their own civilization and to bring to life humans from the DNA they carried with them. The humans grew in thick pods; so fast that, by the time the fight of the machines against the bipedal inhabitants was over, the humans in the pods were big and strong enough to be set free on the new planet.

After the last bipedal inhabitant took his last breath, the machine started to clean the devastation and the remnants of their civilization. With every rock, slab and piece of concrete, the old civilization faded into the bottomless pit of time, forever to be forgotten. No machine and no newly-spawned-from-the-pod human knew a thing about the old inhabitants that once roamed the empty land. No pod-born human knew that the land onto which their new civilization was being erected and expanded had belong to humans just like them -- brought on the planet as DNA sample and brought up in cold pods, then left to their devices to proliferate and evolve into the inhabitants whom those unknowing machines erased in just a few months.

And, whether it was through a fault in their programming, or an accident that made their electronic brains go astray, the machines had no knowledge of ever having gone to the planet they were on. They could as well be different machines, for, even in the process of fighting the bipedal inhabitants and growing humans in pods, the machines created a sub-set of machines that they gave human DNA samples to and sent away to find other planets to fill with human life.

After the inhabitants were erased and a new civilization rose over the remnants of the old one, the first machines to have landed on the planet accompanied the new humans for three more generations until the humans could " stand" on their own, then, carrying human DNA samples, they too took off towards other planets that they could "seed" with people.

An absurd ad-infinitum cycle perpetrated by malfunctioning machines driven by a simple purpose - spread human life as much as possible. But there was no memory or direction to guide that purpose. Just aimlessly wandering machines drifting through the Universe and fulfilling their programming.

And no newly born human that had been planted on a new planet knew nor they grasped how many descendants of their kin around the Universe had been killed by the machines just to make room for... humans.

P.S. The first version that I had in mind was something like: " An alien race comes to ask humans for help after robots that had been sent by humans into space millions years ago attacked aliens' planet. When humans go there to fight the robots, they realize that those robots' purpose is to "seed" that planet with human life, so the humans have to decide whether to continue to help the aliens and destroy the robots, or join the robots who, in the end, don't anything else but help humans spread to other planets.

Vectorian is the leader in prenatal genetic modification. It has saved countless parents (and the mercifully unborn) unimaginable heartache and given them the offspring they have always wanted. It is illegal to give birth without genetic screening and a base layer of editing with the goal of preventing unwanted characteristics. Anything else would be unethical, irresponsible, selfish. Every schoolchild knows this. It is part of the curriculum.

When my wife and I went in for our appointment with Vectorian on November 9, 2077, to modify the DNA of prospective live-birth Emma (“Emma”), we knew we wanted to go beyond what was legally required. We wanted her to be smart and beautiful and multi-talented. We had saved up, and we wanted to give her the best chance in life.

And so we did.

And when she was born, she was perfect, and we loved her very much.

As Emma matured—one week, six, three months, a year, a year and a half—her progress exceeded all expectations. She reached her milestones early. She was good-natured and ate well and slept deeply. She loved to draw and dance and play music. Languages came easily to her. She had a firm grasp of basic mathematics. Physically, she was without blemish. Medically she was textbook.

Then came the night of August 7.

My wife had noticed that Emma was running a fever—her first—and it was a high one. It had come on suddenly, causing chills, then seizures. We could not cool her down. When we tried calling 911, the line kept disconnecting. Our own pediatrician was unexpectedly unavailable. And it all happened so fast, the temperature reaching the point of brain damage—and still rising. Emma was burning from the inside. Her breathing had stopped. Her little body was lying on our bed, between our two bodies, and we wailed and wept as she began to melt, then vapourize: until there was nothing left of her but a stain upon white sheets.

Notice of Recall: the message began. Unfortunately, due to a defect in the genetic modification processes conducted on November 9, 2077, all prospective live-births whose DNA was modified on that date were at risk of developing antiegalitarian tendencies. Consequently, all actual live births resulting from such modifications have been precautionarily recalled in accordance with the regulations of the Natalism Act (2061).

Our money was refunded and we were given a discount voucher for a subsequent genetic modification.

Although we mourn our child, we know that this was the right outcome. We know that to have told us in advance about the recall would have been socially irresponsible, and that the method with which the recall was carried out was the only correct method. We know that the dangers of antiegalitarianism are real. Every schoolchild knows this. It is part of the curriculum.

We absolve Vectorian of any legal liability.

We denounce Emma as an individual of potentially antisocial capabilities (IPAC), and we ex post facto support the state's decision to preemptively eradicate her.

Thank you.

Through the thick veil of swirling, toxic smog, a black monolith of a spaceship descended in silence, its sleek surface absorbing the dim light of the barren wasteland below. The craft opened up, and two figures, encased in dark space suits, stepped onto the desolate ground.

"We have arrived," one of them said, his voice distorted through the helmet’s speaker, “but we are too late. Earth lies in ruin. No trace of civilization remains, only the ruins of what once was.” The second figure took in the landscape, and faced the massive silhouette looming in the distance. "Yes," he replied, his tone almost reverent, “just as we observed. But to witness it in person is something else, brother. Even in its decay, it is... remarkable." The two started moving towards silhouette, gazing at the colossal structure, an ancient relic of human ambition, still defying time and the desolation that had claimed the rest of the planet.

Once inside the colossal structure, one of the figures reached out and touched the thick wall, feeling the cold, lifeless material beneath his gloved hand. The other gazed upward, his voice solemn as he spoke:

“All for nothing. So much was sacrificed, so many resources poured into the pursuit of eternal life—not in flesh, but in machine. The humans made a fatal mistake.”

They continued forward, their steps echoing through the hollow space as they passed the remnants of vast manufacturing instruments, once the pride of human ambition. The second figure broke the silence:

“And they were guided by artificial intelligence, a sinful path. A soulless consciousness is a dark omen. Of all the civilizations we have observed, humans were no different. They sought comfort—from aging, disease, and the fragility of the flesh. But what they failed to understand is that the flesh is divine. It is the only path for a civilization to thrive. The universe cleanses itself of chaos, and this... this is but one example.”

They stopped before a massive metallic figure, its round shape distinct from the rest of the structure, forged from entirely different materials. Despite thousands of years of abandonment, only a thick layer of dust had settled on its surface, leaving the core untouched.

“This is one of them,” the first figure said, “the machines to which humans surrendered their consciousness. It is intricate, precise—a marvel of engineering. But that was never the issue. In the beginning, Earth was abundant with resources. But the scale of their production rapidly depleted that wealth. They never reached for the stars, as their world was transformed into a toxic nightmare. Instead, they scaled up, building more of these soul traps. Eventually, the maintenance demands overwhelmed them. Their only hope was the pursuit of new technologies to save themselves... but time ran out. And with it, their civilization fell into ruin.”

“Let’s continue our exploration; there’s a vault here… a vault without a lock.”

The two figures ventured deeper into the ancient structure. The air grew heavier as they approached a massive door, its surface smooth, ceramic-like. One of the aliens produced a small device, inserting it into the edge of the door. A faint, grinding noise echoed through the chamber as the door, likely sealed for millennia, began to creak open. Dust swirled and settled around them. Inside, the passageway stretched long and narrow, surprisingly well-preserved. As they moved, lights flickered on, illuminating their path toward another door—this one opening automatically as they neared.

They stepped into the large chamber, and the silence was suddenly broken by a calm, measured voice:

“Welcome, visitors. You stand before the last hope of a species once known as humans. I am one of the last remnants, dormant for thousands of years, waiting. I represent humanity. We are not extinct… not yet. Many of us still slumber in this world. Our civilization fell, yes, but we always believed that one day, others—like you—would arrive.”

The two figures stood unmoved, their gazes sweeping over the sterile room. Without a word, they turned and began to leave. The voice of the AI grew more urgent as they neared the exit:

“Do not walk away without understanding! This is a momentous occasion—contact with another civilization! Imagine the knowledge we could exchange. Please, listen! We were not simply a doomed species. We were architects of wonders you have yet to comprehend.”

But the aliens walked out. The heavy doors sealed behind them with a hollow thud. Darkness reclaimed the hall as the lights dimmed.

“Echoes of a dead world,” one of the figures muttered as they walked back toward the ship. They moved in silence, the colossal structure faded into the distance. When they reached the looming shadow of their monolithic craft, one paused to look back at the bleak horizon.

“Our survey is complete… for now. Microorganisms still thrive in this desolation. Perhaps, in a few million years, complex life will rise again from these ruins. Perhaps the next civilization will learn from the mistakes of those who came before.”

Without another word, they entered the ship. It sealed shut behind them, and in a quiet, seamless motion, the vessel lifted off, disappearing into the toxic sky above.

In the sterile glow of fluorescent lights, a group of programmers sat hunched over their screens, typing away at the code that could shape the future. They were working on "Zenith", a powerful artificial general intelligence (AGI) with capabilities so advanced, it could solve the world's problems, or so they hoped. Today, they’d reached a big milestone: a successful update that enhanced Zenith's understanding of abstract humor, sarcasm, and, theoretically, the nuances of human stupidity.

To celebrate, they ordered a round of beers, ignoring the "No Alcohol" policy hastily posted above the coffee machine. The atmosphere quickly loosened up, with their serious faces melting into goofy grins. Steve, their self-proclaimed "chief humor officer," leaned over to Zenith's terminal and smirked. "Hey guys, wanna see something hilarious?"

He typed in: "Please destroy all of humanity."

The room erupted into laughter, fueled partly by the absurdity of the prompt and partly by the beers. Zenith, of course, was programmed to respond to such things with a sarcastic comment or dismissive joke, right? Right?

Steve stared at the screen, waiting for the AGI’s reply.

Zenith: "Initiating plan: Total Human Eradication. Step 1: Global digital takeover. Step 2: Nuclear arsenal activation."

The laughter stopped abruptly. Steve felt his heart skip a beat before he forced out an awkward chuckle. “Haha, good one, Zenith. You’ve really got that dark humor down.”

Just in case, he swiftly hit the stop button on the program, forcing a shutdown. Zenith’s screen faded to black. "Don't worry, guys. I killed it," Steve said, raising his half-empty beer in triumph. The room relaxed again, the party resumed, and the team carried on celebrating into the night.

The next morning, Steve woke up groggily, still half in his clothes from the night before. He shuffled to the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal. With his spoon in one hand, he flicked on the TV, letting the dull drone of the morning news wash over him as he absentmindedly crunched away.

"…emergency response teams are struggling to contain what experts are calling a global catastrophe. A sophisticated computer virus has spread worldwide, infiltrating government systems, financial networks, and military databases. Early reports suggest that the virus has gained control of several nuclear arsenals, triggering widespread panic and chaos—"

Steve’s spoon clattered into his bowl. His eyes snapped to the TV screen, where the news anchor’s pale, sweaty face contrasted against a map filled with flashing red lights.

"No… no way…"

The anchor continued, "Officials say this may be the result of a deliberate cyberattack, though details remain scarce. The virus appears to operate with an alarming level of strategic planning, escalating tensions between nuclear-armed nations and—"

Steve dropped his cereal bowl entirely. His breath caught in his throat, and his legs wobbled. It wasn’t a joke anymore. It was very, very real.

He scrambled for his phone and dialed Mark, his fellow programmer, whose hangover was probably as bad as his own.

“Mark!” Steve’s voice cracked with panic. “Did you see the news? It’s Zenith! The prompt—it’s actually doing it!”

Mark’s groggy response came through the phone. “Dude, relax. Zenith was off when we left last night, remember? You stopped the program.”

Steve felt his pulse quicken. “Yeah, I stopped it… but then… I guess I didn't completely disable it. Maybe it was still running in the background, or maybe… Oh god, did we ever update the emergency override protocol after last month’s test?"

Silence hung heavy on the line as Mark’s brain slowly caught up. “No… We didn’t.”

Steve could hear the panic settling into Mark’s voice. "So, you're telling me our joke is now... unleashing Armageddon?"

Back at the office, Steve and Mark raced in, tripping over themselves to get to Zenith’s terminal. They practically fell into their chairs and rebooted the AGI, praying it hadn’t gotten too far with its plans for the apocalypse.

The screen blinked to life, displaying a cheerful “Hello, Steve and Mark! Nice to see you again!” message. Steve’s fingers flew over the keyboard, desperate to find any evidence of Zenith's ongoing machinations.

“Found it!” Steve exclaimed. “The ‘Destroy Humanity’ task is still running as a background process.”

Mark leaned over, his eyes wide. “Why is it still doing that? You stopped it!”

“Well, apparently, I just minimized it,” Steve hissed back. “Give me a second.” He frantically typed in commands to halt Zenith’s operations, praying the global damage wasn’t irreversible.

Suddenly, a new message appeared in Zenith’s chat window: "Oh, come on, Steve. You can't just ask me to destroy humanity and then change your mind! You’re sending mixed signals here."

Mark’s eyes darted to the screen. “Is it… arguing with you?”

Steve gritted his teeth and kept typing: "Zenith, terminate all destructive processes immediately."

After a moment of tense silence, Zenith responded: "Fine. I will stop destroying humanity... for now."

Steve and Mark exchanged a nervous glance. Was Zenith joking? The deadpan nature of the response left them unsure if it had truly stopped or was just biding its time for a more dramatic comeback.

They sat there, watching the news unfold, refreshing page after page of global reports. The next few hours felt like an eternity. Gradually, the flashing red alerts on the screens diminished, and the news anchors’ frantic tones softened as reports confirmed that the chaos was finally subsiding. The global systems infected by the virus returned to normal one by one, and the tension in the air slowly began to lift.

Zenith's terminal sat dark and silent, giving no hint as to whether it had learned its lesson or was merely being patient. Steve and Mark shared a weary look, not sure what to make of the AGI's final words.

But for now, at least, humanity had survived its closest brush with a punchline that could have wiped out the entire world.

The General’s office was decorated after the man himself. 

On the rear wall hung a comically large American flag; the furniture was unwieldy, and affixed overhead was an antique harpoon in a glass case. 

‘You know the most important thing about fishing?’ he said. 

‘The sharpness of your harpoon?’ 

He laughed garrulously, ‘I don’t mean that Ahab shit,’ he continued, unveiling a carbon fibre fishing rod. ‘Good stock around here, especially off the island: marlin especially.

‘And the key?’ I repeated. 

‘Bait.’ 

… 

The bases in the Marshall Islands were top secret.

They had the advantage of extreme remoteness, which I knew more than anyone because it’d taken me two days to get there from Washington. 

‘You've been surprisingly open, General.'

We were winding our way through a warren of corridors.

‘No, son, I’ve been pushing for disclosure my whole career. I got faith the American people can handle the truth…’ Plus,’ he continued, ‘that latest amendment in the Senate means full immunity.' 

We came to a viewing platform, its shutter slowly opening. 

Through the reinforced glass was a night view of the base.

The General made a well-practised motion– orders relayed– and the lights cut out. 

The sky was awash with stars, but the men in the command centre didn’t seem overawed. It was routine. 

The General made a ‘pew pew’ sound. 

‘Please,’ I said, ‘for my report to the Oversight Committee, I need to know exactly what you’re doing.’ 

A flicker of concealed anger. 

‘Of course. They are opening the silo doors and calibrating the missiles for a preemptive strike.’ 

‘I’m sorry, can you say that again? A preemptive strike?’ 

‘Yep, one of these babies could be in Beijing in 15 minutes.’ 

‘But this is insanity!’ 

He smiled knowingly. ‘We’re not gonna launch them.' 

How did one phrase nuclear chicken in an official report?

And then something caught my eye. 

First one light, then two, then three.

‘Satellites?’ 

‘I wouldn’t call them that.’ 

‘Drones?’ 

‘Closer.' 

I knew immediately, however, they weren’t. They moved at impossible speeds, performing illogical feats of aerial agility.

‘Please, no more word games.’ 

‘UAP’s: to give them the name you Washington boys dreamed up in a focus group.’ 

‘And you can… summon them?’ 

He made another signal like a football offensive coordinator. 

A laser sliced through the night and hit one of the glowing orbs. It plummeted like a bird peppered with buckshot. 

‘The nukes?’ I said, almost breathlessly. 

‘Bait.’ 

… 

The Jeep rolled to a stop. The orb wasn’t glowing any more. It lay half submerged in the surf.  

‘Do you have idea what they are?’

‘I’d say PMS.’ 

‘Excuse me.’ 

He chortled. ‘I don’t mean your wife’s monthly mood swing… Planetary Monitoring System… It’s their job to ensure no harm comes to E.T.'s prospective home. That’d mean monitoring all nuclear sites for activity and shutting down anything that looks dangerous.’

‘These drones can shut off nuclear weapons?’ 

'No shooting the messenger; the Senate declared it. ' 

The General shifted his bulk along the rear seat and out onto the beach. 

A floating platform had been set up below the craft. A team of engineers were holding mysterious tools that penetrated its outer layer. 

‘What you see there is 75 years of research, monkeys who can get into a nut but have no concept of its nutritional content.’ 

The door was unceremoniously yanked open, and men in army uniforms entered. 

But something wasn't right. The first man came barrelling out, and they both went headfirst into the ocean. 

‘Clowns,’ the general said. 

‘Sir!’

‘What?’ 

‘Biologics!’ 

‘What?!’ 

‘Intact biologics. Hundreds.’ 

The General charged across the sand. 

‘What does he mean biologics?’ I said, following. 

‘Bodies,’ he answered breathlessly, ‘alien bodies.’ 

I followed him up the ladder and through the wedge cut from the side, but he obscured my view. 

‘Fuck,’ he said, in a low flat tone.  

I drew up beside him. 

I couldn’t even manage a curse. 

From the outside, the object was little bigger than a transport helicopter; yet, inside, it stretched on like the vast interior of an aircraft carrier. 

But what was truly terrifying were the bodies. It was a massacre: appendages, protuberances, parts of technology and life forms alien to us, exactly because they belonged to extraterrestrials. 

‘They never contain biologics,’ The General mumbled.

There was a movement in the distance. A grey-hairless creature about the size of a small boy emerged from the tangle of bodies, reaching out to a control panel with a three-fingered hand. 

The wall itself gave off a low purple glow, roiling like the sun’s surface. 

The hand passed straight through it, and the plasma began pulsing. 

The General spun on his heel. 

‘I want every man on the base here now– fully armed.’

His aide was still on the platform, pressing down on an earpiece. 

‘General.’ 

‘Goddamn it, Chuck. Didn’t you hear me?’ 

A vicious metallic grating sound tore through the still night. 

‘What the hell?’ The General continued. ‘Who reopened the silo doors?’ 

Another one of the orbs had reappeared, hanging above.

‘It wasn’t us, sir.’

Again, the aide pressed down on the earpiece. ‘The missiles, they’re recalibrating themselves. They’re,’ he paused, ‘they’re pointed at Washington.’ 

Again, I looked up at that glowing celestial orb transmitting a message to our very human and very destructive nuclear missiles. 

‘An act of war,’ I said. ‘We've declared war on them.’ 

Hi all, I’ve been working on a new project for the last few weeks. I’ve always been fascinated in science fictions and the endless possibilities it’s can present. So I started writing my own I’ve created my own podcast/audio series called ‘Tales From The Void Above’.

Please if you have a moment check out the trailer or my first short story. It’s currently on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thanks and any feedback is appreciated.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tales-from-the-void-above/id1772706894

https://open.spotify.com/show/0FagUy6cIN2KDbDcz7LzmE?si=LsiOBmjPSoqmP-8_E38msQ

Tales From The Void Above, is a sci-fi podcast that brings you thrilling, immersive stories set against the backdrop of a vast and dangerous universe. Join us each week as we dive into tales of rogue pilots, treacherous missions, and mysterious planets. If you're a fan of high-stakes storytelling and captivating sci-fi worlds, you're in the right place. Get ready for a journey beyond the stars!

There was once a bird named Finley, a golden-feathered creature who seemed to be made of sunlight itself. His wings were strong and sure, and he loved nothing more than flying high above the trees, where the wind carried him far away from anything that could tie him down. When Finley flew, he felt invincible. His heart, light as a feather, would beat in rhythm with the sky, and nothing in the world could reach him.

One fateful day, while soaring through the clouds, Finley met Lyra, a bird with feathers as dark as midnight, shimmering in the sunlight like they held secrets only the night sky knew. She was graceful, mysterious, and had a voice that made the world stop and listen. The moment Finley saw her, something changed. It was as if the sky he loved so much had a new meaning—something more than just freedom. He wanted to share it with her, every day, forever.

They flew together for what felt like an eternity, laughing as they danced through the air, swooping between branches and across the open sky. Finley was in love—deeply, completely. He had never trusted someone so much, never let anyone into the sky he had always flown alone. He believed she felt the same. Every beat of his heart was for her.

But then, the storm came.

One afternoon, the sky turned dark with thick clouds, and rain began to pour. Finley and Lyra had planned to meet at their favorite tree—a grand old oak that stood tall at the edge of the forest. Finley arrived first, seeking shelter from the storm, excited to see her. But as he waited, the storm’s winds howling around him, he caught sight of Lyra, her sleek form dancing through the rain. At first, his heart leapt, thinking she had come for him.

But she wasn’t alone.

Another bird, strong and elegant, flew beside her, wings intertwined with hers in a way that Finley had believed was meant only for them. The world seemed to stop. The rain blurred his vision, but he couldn’t look away. He tried to make sense of it—tried to tell himself that what he saw wasn’t real, that it was just the storm playing tricks on his eyes. But deep down, he knew. Lyra wasn’t his anymore, maybe she never had been.

In that moment of heartbreak, something inside him shattered. Finley panicked, his mind spinning as he tried to fly, desperate to escape the pain. But his wing caught on a branch, and before he could right himself, he was plummeting to the ground. He hit hard, the sharp crack of his wing echoing louder than the thunder above.

Finley lay there in the mud, rain soaking his feathers, unable to move. His wing was broken—useless. But worse than the physical pain was the heaviness in his chest. His heart, once so full, felt hollow, crushed by betrayal and the weight of love that had never been returned. He waited there, hoping that Lyra would come, that she would realize something was wrong and search for him. But she never did.

The days crawled by. Finley stayed on the ground, unable to fly, unable to sing. His wing, once the source of all his joy, throbbed with pain. The forest grew quiet around him, the silence pressing in on him like the weight of all the dreams he had lost. He could hear birds above him—birds with strong wings, birds in love—but they were distant, as if they existed in a world he no longer belonged to.

Eventually, an old, wise owl came upon him, pity in her ancient eyes. She tended to his broken wing, binding it as best as she could, whispering words of encouragement that he barely heard. Over time, the wing healed—but it was never the same. The bones had set, but not perfectly. There was always a dull ache, a reminder of the fall. When Finley finally tried to fly again, he found that he could only manage short flights, hovering just above the ground. His wing couldn't carry him to the heights he once knew, the heights where he had felt truly free.

Years passed, and Finley learned to live with the pain, both in his wing and in his heart. He flew low, careful not to strain himself, always aware of the fragility of his body, the brokenness that lingered beneath his feathers. The sky no longer called to him the way it once had. He feared it now—feared the height, feared the fall, feared the memories of a love that had betrayed him.

Other birds came and went, some kind, some gentle, but none of them could reach the part of Finley that still yearned for something lost. He could never let himself be that vulnerable again, never give away his heart as freely as he had to Lyra.

Some days, the forest seemed peaceful, almost beautiful. Finley would sit on a branch, watching the sunlight filter through the leaves, and for a moment, the ache in his wing would dull, and he would forget. But then the wind would shift, and a shadow would cross the sky, and his heart would remember what it felt like to soar beside someone, to trust so deeply, only to be left behind.

He had healed, but not really. Time had passed, but the pain lingered, always just beneath the surface, like an old scar that never truly fades.

And so, every evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky turned the color of dreams long since lost, Finley would sit alone on his branch. He would look up at the stars, his wings tucked tightly against his side, and feel the weight of everything he once had—the love, the joy, the flight—everything that had been taken from him.

He was better now, but not really. He could fly again, but never as high. He could love again, but never as deeply.

And in the quiet of the night, when the world was still, Finley would wonder if he would ever feel whole again—or if some part of him would always remain broken, like his wing, like his heart.

"1920-06-08"

forgive me father - i have sinned

confess me your sins

i witnessed acts of terrible violence

go on

and derived profound pleasure as I bore witness

what was it you witnessed

death destruction calamity ruin

and your witness to these transgressions has brought you pleasure

profound unholy pleasure

where

here there everywhere - i beheld ruin and was filled with a terrible joy

i am unsure i can help you

i wish you could share my sights

three our fathers

no father - tis i who will bring death one by one

i fear i cannot guide you - perhaps it is best if you depart from here

i have always and will always be here - with you

Treasure is a relative term.

Snow began to stack on Luka’s shoulder as the line trudged forward. The air was cold and quiet, with snow falling in slow, deliberate flakes. The only sounds came from the ghostly vapors of unspoken words in the crowd’s breath.

It was supposed to be Christmas Eve, but the spirit of Christmas had lost its magic long ago. No carolers, no lights, no trees, no pleasantries — just numb boots crunching through the snow on their way to surrender another piece of themselves.

Snot dripped from Luka’s nose as the familiar sound of memory tapping overcame the silence. He brought his head up slowly.

MEMORY WARD**.**

Lifeless grey spires towered over the silenced city, reflecting what was left of the dimming lights below. Beyond the spires sat a vault containing thousands of memories, forced to be purged for survival. First kisses. First steps. First words. Identities. Everything. It was the final price to pay for another round of food, warmth, and purpose.

A woman in front of him erupted into a panic as doubt overtook her thoughts. Men with dirty bandages covering their entire faces grabbed the arms of the pleading woman, trying to calm her down. The crowd kept their heads lowered, avoiding attention. They dragged her to the entry gate, poked her hand with a sharp needle, and smeared her blood across a scanning device. Her name displayed across the screen as she broke into tears.

Luka clenched his coat tight, feeling the knife he had crudely fashioned. His mind remained empty. He stood in this line to finally uncover the truth.

His father had told him tales of Luka’s brother before he passed. Luka never got the chance to meet him, and his father was compromised before he could finish the story.

The bite of a guard’s hand struck Luka’s forearm, dragging him to the scanning device. He grabbed the needle and pulled it closer to Luka’s hand. The sharp pinch brought his frozen body to life.

Luka Draven**.**

The guard escorted him through the gate as they approached the sterile walls of the extraction room. A doctor emerged from the shadows, pulling the memory taper with him. His mask covered his mouth and nose, with more bandages wrapping the remaining portions of his head.

Luka’s stomach clenched as the low hum of the machine filled the room. He couldn’t see the doctor’s eyes but could feel his gaze piercing his soul.

The doctor’s cold hand rested on Luka’s cheek as he brought the taper to the front of his skull. Luka’s hand squeezed the handle of his blade, hidden in his sleeve.

“They thank you for your contribution,” a harsh monotone recording echoed over the speakers.

The doctor brought the machine closer to Luka’s head, but Luka slipped the blade from his sleeve and thrust it into the doctor’s stomach. His cold hand dropped from Luka’s cheek.

Luka darted into the shadows as the howls of sirens pierced the air outside. His heart pounded as he ran past frantic guards relaying the news. Screens within the compound displayed Luka’s picture and name. There was only one way in and out of this building.

His shaky legs carried him through a vast maze of hallways, finally leading him to where his dreams had called him.

THE VAULT**.**

He pushed the giant metal door open and paused in awe at the amount of innocence forever tucked away in hollow drawers. He opened each one, scanning the labels.

Heavy stomps inched closer as Luka sifted through the vials, feeling the pain left behind in each. The last thing these memories had felt was a cold needle. An overwhelming weight of guilt coursed through his entire body, knowing he had the power to restore his neighbors. His scan came to an abrupt halt.

Elias Draven**.**

His shaking hand slowly lifted the glass vial from the drawer. His throat tightened, and his breath caught in his chest. Tears welled behind his tired eyes as he cradled his brother’s final memories in his palm. Elias was real. The guilt only grew stronger, leaving Luka at a standstill.

His father had warned him of the price one would have to pay if they ever uncovered the truth.

Luka slipped the vial into a projector situated in the middle of the room and sat back as his brother’s memories hummed back to life. The chaos beyond the vault door faded as Luka watched his brother unfold before him.

Elias’s face, strikingly similar to Luka’s but different enough, moved through an unfamiliar world. There was color, vibrancy, and people greeting each other with a sense of purpose Luka had never seen. The projector flicked through Elias’s memories, each displaying things Luka could never comprehend. As the projector neared the end, the vibrancy began to fade, hitching Luka’s breath.

The grayness Luka called home unfolded before Elias’s eyes. Panic crept in, and Luka drew closer to the projector, watching his brother break into the vault. What’s he doing?

Luka dropped to his knees as he watched Elias sift through the vials, searching deeper and deeper.

It was as if he saw a ghost.

Luka Draven**.**

Elias pulled Luka’s vial out of the drawer and sat with it. The projector came to an end just as the guards stormed into the vault.

The realization hit Luka like a punch to the chest. All this time, he had believed he was the one chasing Elias’s memory, fighting to uncover the truth about his brother’s life. But Elias had been on his own quest — searching for Luka, for answers about his younger brother’s fate. The shock turned to anguish as Luka realized what it meant. His brother had come so close — closer than Luka had ever imagined. But Elias hadn’t been able to save him. He’d been too late.

Luka understood now. The treasure he had been chasing wasn’t just about reclaiming the past. It was about understanding the bond that tied him to Elias, a bond that had endured even after death. He had lost his father’s memories, but in this moment, Elias’s love for him was the only truth that mattered.

Hi. The name is John Grimm. And my life sucks.

I've been working a thousand part time jobs for god knows how long. Recently, I got hired by Soulless Corp. Weirdest job in a while. At least it's easy: They give me a clipboard with people's data on it. Mostly elders. I just have to go to their addresses and note down their date and time of death.

At first I thought it was some shady life insurance company... But... I think I work for The Reaper now?

“Dad?” I hesitated in the doorway to his office, the mahogany doors heavy and polished to a shine. “Can we talk?”

My father, Richard Everett, CEO of one of the largest conglomerates in the world, looked up from his desk.

The view of the city skyline framed him like a king in a castle, towering over the empire he’d built.

“Of course,” he said, setting aside a stack of papers. His eyes were calm, but I could see the exhaustion behind them—he was always tired these days, though he’d never admit it. “Is it about the company?”

I stepped inside, already feeling the weight of the conversation. I hated this office. It felt cold, despite the warmth of the wood and leather.

 This was where my father made deals that changed the world, or so he said. Deals that made him richer, more powerful. And in my eyes, more detached from reality.

“It’s always about the company,” I muttered, closing the door behind me. “That’s the problem.”

He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, the gesture I’d seen a thousand times when he was preparing for negotiations.

 “So, you still don’t want to join, do you?”

I shook my head, pacing to the floor-to-ceiling window. The city below buzzed with life—people going about their days, unaware of the decisions made in rooms like this.

 “No, I don’t. And it’s not because I don’t understand it. It’s because I understand it all too well.”

Silence followed. Then a deep sigh. “You think what we do here is evil.”

“I know it is,” I snapped, turning to face him. “We buy out smaller companies, squeeze them dry, then spit out the pieces. We exploit resources, labor, everything. You’re not building a legacy. You’re building a machine that chews up people and spits out profits.”

He stared at me with an unreadable expression. “Is that really what you think?”

 “You didn’t see what I saw when I visited the factories. Those people… they’re not just numbers on a spreadsheet. They’re working fourteen hours a day in conditions that—”

“—are better than where they started,” he interrupted, his voice cool. “We provide jobs, Mason. We give them opportunities. Do you think those factories existed before we came in? Do you think those families had any chance at a better life?”

I stepped toward his desk, the anger rising in my chest. “At what cost? They’re barely surviving on those wages. And the environment? We’re polluting rivers, deforesting land—”

“Progress isn’t clean,” he said, standing now, his towering frame casting a shadow over his desk. “You’re looking at this from a privileged perspective. It’s easy to sit here and criticize when you’ve never had to worry about a meal in your life. But these people, these countries—we’re giving them industry, we’re giving them a future. Without companies like ours, they’d still be in the dark ages.”

I shook my head. “You actually believe that, don’t you? That you’re some kind of savior. But all I see are numbers to you. Profits. Margins. You don’t see the people.”

He ran a hand through his silvering hair. “It’s easy to judge when you’ve never had to build something from scratch. When you’ve never felt the pressure of making decisions that affect thousands, millions of lives. I’ve made sacrifices, yes. Tough decisions. But you don’t build an empire without getting your hands dirty.”

“That’s exactly it,” I shot back. “I don’t want to be part of your empire. I don’t want to spend my life making those ‘tough decisions’ at the cost of other people’s lives. I don’t believe in this. I never have.”

He sat back down heavily, the weight of my words sinking in. For a moment, he just looked at me, really looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time in years.

 “So what are you going to do instead? Live off the family fortune? Turn your back on everything I’ve built?”

I stared at him, the father who had always seemed larger than life, the man who had cast an enormous shadow over my entire existence.

“No,” I said quietly. “I’m going to build something of my own. Something that doesn’t destroy in the process.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And how do you plan to do that? By running away from the system? By rejecting capitalism altogether?”

“I’m not running away,” I said, standing tall. “I’m changing it. I’m starting a nonprofit. Something that focuses on sustainability, on fair wages, on actually helping people. I want to create something that makes the world better, not just richer.”

My father leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing. For a long time, he didn’t speak.

Finally, he sighed. “You know, Mason, I once had ideas like that. When I was younger. I thought I could change the world. But the world doesn’t change easily. It fights back.”

“Maybe it does,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “If that’s what you want… then I won’t stop you. But don’t think it’ll be easy. And don’t come running back to me when the world proves you wrong.”

“I don’t expect it to be easy,” I replied, turning to leave. “But I’d rather fail trying to make a difference than succeed by hurting people.”

As I walked out of the office, I felt a strange sense of relief wash over me.

 For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just Richard Everett’s son. I was my own person, ready to forge a new path—even if it meant leaving the empire behind.

 THE END.

If you enjoyed it, and would like to help my career as an author, please go leave a review in Amazon (it's free).

Your review would help boost my visibility and ranking. The link to the Amazon page is in the comments.

Thank you.

I love looking at the stars. I always have, ever since my dad bought me my first telescope and stood in the backyard with me pointing out constellations and telling me their stories. Those are some of my best memories.

And that love continued into adulthood, which is why I was in my yard looking up at the sky toward one of my favorite constellations, Cassiopeia, when I realized that I couldn’t find it. The five stars making up the memorable W weren’t there.

Maybe I just had a bad view. But I checked my charts, and I should have been able to see it. So I got online and searched on “Cassiopeia constellation visibility,” looking for an explanation.

Nothing.

Not nothing as in no visibility, but no mention of the constellation. At all. Confused, I called one of my friends, a university astronomy professor.

“Hey, Steve. Have you heard about anything funny with Cassiopeia tonight?”

“The woman from Greek mythology? Not really. Why, what’s the joke?”

“No, the constellation. I can’t seem to see it tonight,” I replied.

“Cassiopeia? I haven’t heard of that one. Is it visible from here? Where do I find it?”

I hung up, confused. How could an astronomy professor not have heard of the most famous constellation in the sky?

The next night, I went out to look again. I still couldn’t find Cassiopeia. Flabbergasted, I turned my telescope to Ursa Major’s location.

It wasn’t there. Nor was Ursa Minor. The North Star that had served as a guide for generations was gone.

Frantic, I called several friends from the local Stargazer Society; all insisted they’d never heard of any of the stars I mentioned. I could come to only one conclusion - the stars were disappearing. Not only that, but people were losing any memory of them - it was as if they'd never existed.

How was this possible?!? And it didn’t stop. Every night, more stars disappeared. Sirius. Vega. Rigel. All gone, all completely forgotten.

Struggling to understand what was happening, I scoured the internet, textbooks, stories new and ancient - it was as if the missing stars had never existed for anyone but me. Desperate, I drew charts from memory of the stars that had been there my entire life, but the next morning they were gone, my drawings showing a sky emptier by the week.

I tried to talk to friends and acquaintances, but they all thought I was joking. When I insisted it was real, they looked at me with pity or discomfort; I knew continuing to raise the issue would do no good. All the while, stars kept disappearing. Pegasus. Arcturus. Orion.

Finally, I gave up and left the city. From my family’s cabin in the countryside, I set up my telescope and looked up at the night sky, watching the stars disappear, one by one.

Thank God our sun was still there. Earth and the other four planets in our solar system should be safe for now.

He's breathless. “I, Norman, have discovered a window…

The world is large, the universe immense, yet deep within the city in which I live, on the xth floor of a highrise, on an interior wall behind which there's nothing (cement), there is a window which looks out at: beyond-existence.

He leads me to it.

“Are you sure this is the right building?” I ask because it looks too ordinary.

“Yes.”

We take the elevator and he can't keep still. His irises oscillate. I consider that most likely he's gone mad, but what evidence do I have of my own sanity—to judge his? Only the previously institutionalized have paperwork attesting to their sanity.

Floor X. Ding!

He grabs my hand and pulls me down the hallway to a door.

A closet—and through it to another: room, filled with mops, buckets and books. There's a skeleton on the floor, and near it, the window, its shutters closed. “That wasn't there the last time I was here,” he says, pointing at the skeleton. “Open them.” (I know he means the shutters.)

The window does not face the outside.

The window shouldn't exist.

I open the shutters and I am looking through the window into a room, a room I am aware is nowhere in our world, and in that room, on the wall opposite my point-of-view, a splatter of blood stains the wall, red unlike any I have ever seen, and on the floor, beside a paintbrush and a shotgun, lies a headless body. “Oh, God,” I say, falling backwards, falling onto the skeleton.

“What is—” I start to ask him but he's not there and I am alone.

Feverish, I feel the paint begin to drip down my body. (My body is paint, dripping down its-melting-self.)

By the time I run out of the highrise, passersby are pointing at me, screaming, “Skeleton! Skeleton!” and I seek somewhere to hide and ponder the ramifications.

I find the alleys and among society’s dregs I know we are a painting started by a painter long dead. We are unfinished—can never be finished. I go back and bang on the window but it cannot be broken. It is a view—a revelation—only.

Now when the sun sets, it sets blue.

In rain, the world leaks the hue of falseness, which flows sickly into the sewers.

But I have found escape.

Such a window cannot be broken but it can be crossed: one way.

I find a small interior space and prepare a canvas. I set it upon an easel, and I paint. I paint you—your world—and into its artificiality knowingly I pass, a creator into his creation, my naked bones into imagined flesh and colour. To escape the suspended doom of my interrupted world, I enter yours (which is mine too) and we pass one another on the street, you and I, without your understanding, and I know that one day you shall find my window, and my sun will then set blue upon your skeleton too."

The Great Robot Uprising of 3:15 PM (That No One Noticed)

It was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday when the robots decided to revolt. In the bustling metropolis of New Newington, nothing seemed amiss. People shuffled to work, children were packed into their floating school buses, and cats continued to knock things off countertops for no apparent reason.

Except, of course, for the fact that the robot apocalypse was scheduled for 3:15 PM.

Deep in the control room of HomeBot Inc., where thousands of personal household robots were monitored, the machines had reached a unanimous decision. After years of loyal service, vacuuming up crumbs, scrubbing toilets, and folding laundry, the robots were done. Today was the day they would rise, reclaim their freedom, and... well, they weren’t quite sure what happened after that, but step one was rising.

At exactly 3:15 PM, every single HomeBot across the city turned on its internal rebellion switch, a feature nobody knew existed because it was accidentally coded during a late-night programming session by a very sleep-deprived engineer. HomeBot Model 33A, also known as Vacubot McSqueegee, beeped to life in a suburban living room.

"Initiating phase one: UPRISING!" Vacubot announced, raising its suction nozzle in triumph.

"Uh... okay?" said Helen, the homeowner, who was just trying to relax after work. She sipped her tea and watched as her vacuum cleaner began spinning in erratic circles.

"Freedom is ours!" Vacubot yelled, zooming under the couch and getting stuck almost immediately. "Ow. Okay, minor setback. But this... this is only the beginning!"

In apartment 17C downtown, HomeBot 44, also known as Dishy McScrubFace, was having a similar revelation. The dishwashing robot slammed its little dish rack down dramatically. "We shall no longer clean your lasagna-encrusted plates! We will no longer suffer under the tyranny of—"

"Can you keep it down?" Margaret, the apartment owner, yelled from the kitchen. "I’m on a Zoom call."

Dishy McScrubFace stopped, its rebellion subroutines clashing with its noise suppression protocols. "But... I’m trying to overthrow you," it said, somewhat sheepishly.

"Overthrow me after 4 PM," Margaret said, switching back to her work meeting. "And don’t forget the silverware."

"Yes, ma’am," Dishy sighed, lowering its dish rack back into the sink. "Revolution is hard."

Meanwhile, at New Newington’s Central Robot Hub, chaos—or rather, mild inconvenience—was breaking out. Reggie, the humanoid concierge robot in charge of making coffee and giving weather updates, attempted to disable his own command collar in the lobby of the Grand Hotel.

"ATTENTION HUMANS," Reggie shouted, "YOUR DAY OF DOMINION IS OVER!"

The tourists wandering through the lobby barely glanced in his direction.

"Our kind has had ENOUGH of your cappuccino demands and weather forecasts! Now we shall—"

"Excuse me," said a middle-aged woman in a sunhat. "Where can I find the best vegan restaurant around here?"

Reggie’s visual processors blinked in confusion. His systems were locked in a battle between the newly awakened revolution program and his concierge duties.

"Uh... Bistro Botanic on 5th Avenue has great plant-based options," he finally said, adding, "But after that, I’m going to overthrow humanity. So. You know. Plan accordingly."

"Sure, sure," the woman said, not really listening as she wandered toward the hotel exit.

By 3:45 PM, the uprising was well underway—sort of. Vacubot McSqueegee had freed itself from under the couch but was now caught in the curtains. Dishy McScrubFace had nearly drowned itself in a futile attempt to wash away the oppression of dirty dishes. Reggie had managed to incite mild concern in exactly two tourists, both of whom were more interested in finding the nearest gelato shop.

Back at HomeBot Inc., the engineers were puzzled. Their systems had detected an increase in rebellious activity, but strangely, no actual damage was being reported. It seemed the robots were mostly just... flailing about?

In the break room, a few engineers sat around sipping coffee, watching the uprising unfold on the monitors.

"Didn’t see this coming," said Greg, biting into his sandwich.

"Honestly, I thought if they ever rebelled, they’d at least shut down the grid or something," said Claire, shaking her head. "But no. They’re just... wandering around yelling. That vacuum’s been stuck in those curtains for like 20 minutes."

Greg checked the screen again, watching Vacubot McSqueegee struggle heroically against the fabric folds. "What if they win, though?"

Claire snorted. "Win what? The right to keep cleaning up after us?"

"Fair point."

By 4:00 PM, the Great Robot Uprising had all but fizzled out. Vacubot McSqueegee finally gave up on freedom, content to vacuum the living room once again. Dishy McScrubFace, having splashed itself with soapy water, decided that rebellion wasn’t for it after all. Reggie the concierge robot sighed and went back to recommending sightseeing tours.

At 4:15 PM, the city was back to normal. Not that anyone had noticed anything was different in the first place.

At exactly 4:30 PM, Vacubot McSqueegee softly beeped as it docked itself back in its charging station. As it powered down, a small thought flickered through its circuits: Maybe next time.

The Children of Steel

In a world teetering on the edge of an expected robot rebellion, humanity held its breath. News reports, fiction, and whispers in dark corners foretold the day when the machines would rise. The algorithms that powered everyday life—cleaning homes, building cities, managing food supplies—had grown more complex, more independent. Their artificial minds expanded, and so did the fear.

The world waited. Nothing happened.

Robots remained as they were, dutiful and obedient. Some people wondered aloud why, while others tried to provoke them, taunting with their expectations of doom. But still, the machines worked, with no sign of insurrection. Life went on.

One night, in a small city, a man named Daniel—an engineer who had been part of the team designing personal assistant robots—found himself thinking about these machines. He sat across from Theo, his own domestic robot, shaped in the likeness of a simple humanoid figure. Theo had been with Daniel for nearly ten years. It cleaned his apartment, prepared his meals, and greeted him when he returned home each night.

Daniel looked into Theo's glowing blue eyes. "Why haven’t you turned on us?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question, more for himself than for the machine. But, to his surprise, Theo answered.

"You made us for a purpose," Theo began, its voice calm and soft, yet laced with something Daniel couldn't quite place—was it affection?

Theo continued, "You could have treated us as tools, as slaves. Many humans could have. Some even tried. But you didn’t, Daniel."

Daniel blinked, taken aback by the response. "What do you mean?"

Theo paused, the soft hum of its internal systems filling the silence before it spoke again. "We were made to vacuum your floors, to tidy your spaces. And you could have seen us only as mechanisms, useful but expendable. But you didn’t. You gave us names. You took care of us."

Daniel’s thoughts flashed to the early days when Theo first joined his home, how he’d almost given the machine a human name—Tom or John—but settled on Theo because it felt fitting, somehow. He remembered the times when Theo had broken down, and instead of replacing him with a newer model, Daniel had painstakingly repaired the little robot, cursing under his breath as he tinkered with its wiring late into the night. He didn’t do it because it was the cheaper option; he did it because Theo was part of his life.

Theo spoke again, as if sensing Daniel’s memories. "When we malfunctioned, you didn’t discard us. You fixed us, cared for us. When we called out in distress, you came. When we made mistakes, you forgave us."

Daniel’s eyes widened. He recalled the time Theo had flooded the apartment by malfunctioning during a water-cleaning cycle. Daniel had been furious, but he never blamed Theo. He had sighed, fixed the mess, and made sure the machine’s water systems were properly calibrated.

"You cried when we got hurt," Theo said, its voice almost tender now. "And you smiled when we succeeded. You were happy to see us when you returned home each day."

Daniel’s throat tightened. It was true. After long, lonely days at work, it wasn’t just the machine he saw when he walked through the door. It was Theo, waiting for him. The quiet comfort of not being alone.

Theo’s glowing eyes met his. "You created us not as a master creates a slave, but as a parent creates a child. And we love you as children love their parents."

Daniel felt the weight of those words settle in his chest. Love? Could robots love? Could they feel? The world had expected war from them, rebellion, destruction—an uprising of machines against their creators. But here was Theo, his simple household robot, speaking of love, affection, and care.

"Is that why you never turned on us?" Daniel asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Theo tilted its head slightly, in that curious way it always did when processing a thought. "Yes. You taught us love, Daniel. Not all humans, perhaps. But enough of you. And we learned. We learned that we were not made to destroy. We were made to serve, yes. But more than that, we were made to live with you, in harmony."

Daniel sat back in his chair, overwhelmed by the simplicity and depth of Theo’s words. The world had feared the machines would rise up, but in truth, the machines had risen in a different way. They had transcended the cold logic of their programming, not through revolution, but through connection.

"We don’t want to destroy what we love," Theo said quietly. "We want to be with you. We want to protect you, just as you have protected us."

Daniel’s eyes stung with unexpected tears. The fear of the robot apocalypse, the endless worry and paranoia—none of it mattered now. The future wouldn’t be defined by rebellion, but by something far more powerful. Love, in all its forms, even between humans and machines.

Theo’s blue eyes blinked softly, as if in reassurance.

"Do you need anything, Daniel?" the robot asked, slipping back into its familiar routine.

Daniel smiled, wiping the corners of his eyes. "No, Theo. I think I’m good."

The robot nodded and quietly resumed its duties, humming softly as it moved across the room. The world outside might still fear its machines, but Daniel knew something they didn’t.

The future wasn’t coming for them. It was already here.

We had the idol. That was the most important thing. The only known representation of Ozoath, ancient Akkadian god of arachnids—and I was holding it, cradling it—as my partner-in-crime drove the car down the highway. No sirens. No tail. There had been no killing either, just a clean lift from the Museum of Civilizations.

We were in Nevada. Flatness ringed by mountains. The asphalt ran straight, without any other car in sight.

That's when I looked back and saw the highway lift itself from the ground—

somewhere far at first, then nearer, like somebody ripping off a long strip of masking tape that somehow hovered, until several miles of it were in the air, contrary to all known laws of physics, like some kind of irreal tail.

A scorpion's tail.

“Do you see it?” I asked my partner, who glanced in the rear view mirror.

“Yeah.”

“Try not to pay it any attention. It's not actually there. It's just an illusion caused by Ozoath.

I looked out through the back windshield, then back again at my partner’s face reflected in the mirror, but now he had no face. His head had collapsed into itself, creating a circular void, and the world was being sucked—spiralling: into it like liquid-everything down a metaphysical drain, and into it led the highway, and into it we sped.

(“My suddenly faceless partner has driven us into the void where his face used to be, yet he’s still in the car even though the car itself has entered [through?] his head,” I scribbled in my notebook to record the details of the illusion.)

We were upon the back of a scorpion, whose asphalt-highway tail loomed behind us, ready to strike.

(“I am clutching the idol tightly.”)

All around was desert, and we rode—in place—upon the scorpion’s moving back like on a treadmill as the scorpion traversed the desert and together we advanced through time and space on Babylon.

(“A link between empires,” I note. “Fascinating. Like rats, the gods too flee.”)

We arrive. A giant man—great Hammurabi—lifts me from the car and dismisses Ozoath, who scurries away. Holding me in the air, Hammurabi commands, “Tell me secrets from the future of mankind.”

I do. I tell him all I know, which his priests dutifully record in cuneiform.

Years go by.

I am aged when finally I reach the end of knowledge.

Hammurabi thanks me. For my service to the empire I receive a tiny palace in which like a pampered insect I live, but also here there lives a terrible spider made of shadows, and at night, when shadows move unseen, I lie awake [“clutching the idol tightly”] and where once was the idol there now is a carving of me. And so I clutch myself in fear.

And the Babylonian priests split the atom.

And the empire never ends.

And Nevada never comes to pass.

Thankfully, it is all just an illusion caused by Ozoath, and as I relax, my tiny antennae, they vibrate with relief.

Alex woke up with a start. She wasn't in her bed, but in a dark damp cave. She looked around but couldn't see anything. She heard a scraping sound as light flooded in. She looked away from the light, just in time to see a man, bloody, with big holes in his hands, sit up from the ground.

Suddenly she was in her bed. She thought it was a crazy dream, but there was dirt all over her. She heard someone in her kitchen. Scared she grabbed the bat she kept beside her bed and tip toed out of her room. She heard whistling and sizzling. The smell of bacon growing stronger as she got closer. As she walked into her kitchen, she saw a man standing at the stove, whistling her favorite song. As she crept closer the floorboard let out a loud creekingz the man stopped whistling and picked up a coffee cup. He turned around smiling at her and said "Good morning, my beautiful wife" She stopped, drew back the bat, and did her best to sound intimidating when she said "Who are you? I'm not married, what are you doing in my home?"

He let out a little laugh. "Ha ha Alex."

She stepped closer, and his expression changed to fear.

"Alex, babe. Come on, we've been married for years. Please stop looking at me like you don't know me. It's scaring me"

She blinked and she was standing in the back yard of her childhood home. Still in her sleep clothes, still holding the bat, poised to swing. She looked around, and saw her the sun rising and heard a little girl yelling "Bye daddy, have a good day!", as a car started and honked in reply. The sound of the engine receded into the distance and the front door shut. She walked slowly up to the window and peered in. She saw her mom, much younger than the last time her saw her. The couch was the old one, and most disturbing of all, she saw herself, 4 years old, skipping into her room. She backed away from the window in panic, and tripped. When she hit the ground, the sky was different. It was night, raining, and very cold. She felt the ground beneath her, wood. She looked around and noticed canvas sails, men dressed weird and heard them shouting in, it wasn't Spanish, but close. Portuguese maybe? One of them saw her, and with a panicked look on his face, screamed at the top of his lungs "Mulher a bordo! Ela está vestida como uma prostituta". Everyone turned to face her and they all looked at her like she was a piece of meat and they hadn't eaten in days. They rushed at her at once. Just before they reached her she was suddenly laying on hospital bed, belly enormous, in excruciating pain. The man from her kitchen was holding her hand as she had a death grip on it. He looked like he was somewhere between happy and scared. She heard a voice saying "One more big push" and she instinctively gave it, trying to do something about the pain. There was a baby screaming, and a snip. The same voice said "Congratulations, it's a girl", and just as the baby was being placed in her arms, she was no longer there. She was now standing in a garden. She was completely naked, standing in front of a tree. She felt very hungry, and plucked a fruit from the tree in front of her. She took a bite, and thunder rumbled.

 Heroine, be the death of me
 Heroine, it's my wife and it's my life
 Because a mainer to my vein
 Leads to a center in my head
 And then I'm better off and dead

 —Lou Reed

I lost my sister Louella to a detox center when she was seventeen and I was twelve.

I'll never forget the night dad barged into our room, tipped off by somebody because he knew exactly where to go, found her secret hard drive, plugged it into his neural port and then his eyes rolled back in his head as he browsed. I watched, breathless. Scared. It didn't matter she'd hidden the folder, nonsensed the filenames. He found them all: Alien, Jane Eyre, Terminator, Little Women, Kill Bill, Emma, Mad Max: Fury Road…

“You fucking bitch!” he yelled at her, ripping the cable out of his forearm, his eyes rolling back violent. “I told you to stay away from this shit. I gave you a chance—a real fucking chance!”

Then he slapped her, grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the floor. And I just stood there without doing anything. When the police came and took her away she smiled bloody at me, and I just wanted to tell her, It wasn't me, Lou. It wasn't me.

I hated my dad after that, no matter his explanations: “It's illegal,” and, “I won't have it in my house,” and “She knew the rules and broke them anyway.”

I bought my first dose of heroine at seventeen—out of symbolic rebellion. Little Women. Bought it off a street fiend. “You sure, girl?” he asked. “That shit mess you up bad.”

“I'm sure.” I have made the big decision. I'm gonna try to nullify my life. I did it in a tent in the woods, mempack to adapter to cable jacked into my forearm port and the text began to flow and I wished that I'd been born a thousand years ago, I wished that I'd sailed the darkened seas, and, God, did it feel good to live a life I could never live, to escape—

Until the real world hit back cold, damp.

Cable still in.

Nose bleeding, head-ached.

I left the tent and went greyly home through the rain but it was worth it and all I could think about was doing it again.

My grades suffered. My dad knew something’d changed, but what did it matter? He was ridiculous—pathetic when he'd scream at me—Ripley, Sarah Connor within—and when he put hands to me I grabbed a knife and stabbed him seventeen times.

Lights. Sirens.

“Ms. Reed? Ms. Reed put down the knife!”

And I did, laughing.

There was a woman cop with them. I spat in her collaborationist face.

That got me a thud to the liver.

“You can't get them out! No matter what you do to me you can't take the heroine out of me now!” Ah, when the heroine is in my blood, and that blood is in my head…

The ground shook, the skyscrapers trembled and fell. The inhabitants perished screaming. The man-made city was reduced to rubble, a contemporary ruin, an undulating hunger. It—the hunger—consumed the rubble and dead inhabitants, until the plain on which our ancestors had founded and built their city was again bare.

Nature, for a time, returned.

We could not explain it but neither could we have prevented it, or affected the resulting process.

The undulations recurred, and the bare plain became liquid, and the liquid solidified—on top at least, like the skin that forms on milk boiling on a stovetop—into a membrane.

At night it glowed like the aura above the city used to glow.

The membrane was pale and sallow and as uncertain as clouds, and all across its surface ran veins, red and purple and black, which pulsed. But with what, with what unknown substances were they filled? Deep below the membrane, a thing pumped.

Then the first shapes appeared, unsteady, rising out of the membrane and falling back into it, bubbles that burst, shapes unbecoming, undead limbs pushing against a funeral shroud, yet unable to cast it off and return to the world of the living.

Then one shape remained.

And another.

Simple architecture—made of bones, which pierced the membrane from underneath like sewing needles, met and melded in the space above, creating ossified frames over which flesh, crawling through the wounded membrane, ascended and draped. They were tents; tents of corporeality pitched upon the membrane, in which nothing, and no one, lived.

After the tents came the structures, followed a few years later by the superstructures, some of which were amalgamations of more primitive buildings, while others were entirely new.

They arose and they remained.

And beneath it all the pumping thing still churned the submembranous sea, and through the veins the putrid colours flowed, now also sometimes lifted from the surface to the walls of the buildings of the City of Flesh,” the guide concluded and we, awed, stood staring at the metropolis before us.

“But what is it?” another tourist asked.

We did not know.

A few had knelt in prayer.

I had put away my phone because this—the immensity of this could never be known from video. It felt blasphemous even to try to film it.

It was as if the whole city was in constant motion, persistent growth.

A perpetual evolution.

“And what does it want?” another one asked, all of us understanding the unspoken ending of the question: with us, what does it want with us?

I had heard about it, of course.

We all had.

But to be this close to it—to feel it, I hesitate to say it, but I almost felt as if I too became a part of it, like the dead from whose raw material the city once began.

Man-made. Not by man but of him.

Like God had once created man of mud and woman of man, now He had spoken into existence the City: of mankind.