Dark Hall Press Techno-Horror Anthology
Author: Dark Hall Dark Hall Press; Oliver Smith; Michael Bray; D. J. Tyrer; Tim Jeffreys; Brett Talley; Gerry Griffiths; Josh Strnad; Kierce Sevren; Patrick Lacey; Joseph Sale
Date: 2014-11-08 14:22:28+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Anthology
Description: Dark Hall Press is proud to present our Techno-Horror Anthology - ten tales of technological terrors from some of the most talented voices in the field. In the vein of such seminal works as Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, H.G. Wells's THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, and Ira Levin's THE STEPFORD WIVES, these stories depict the horrific consequences of man's desire to subvert the natural order through scientific and technological advances. Includes stories by Oliver Smith, Michael Bray, DJ Tyrer, Tim Jeffreys, Brett J. Talley, Gerry Griffiths, Josh Strnad, Kierce Sevren, Patrick Lacey, and Joseph Sale.

Dark Hall Press

Techno-Horror Anthology

Various Authors

2014

Dark Hall Press

A Division of New Street Communications, LLC

Wickford, RI

Copyright 2014 Dark Hall Press

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except for brief quotations for review purposes, no part of this work may be reproduced in any form without the permission of Dark Hall Press, a division New Street Communications, LLC.

Published 2014

Dark Hall Press
darkhallpress.com

A Division of New Street Communications, LLC

Wickford, RI

Contents

The Arkenholz Sonata by Oliver Smith

Implants by Michael Bray

Hyperreal by DJ Tyrer

Modified by Tim Jeffreys

Workman’s Wages by Brett J. Talley

Maxwell’s Creation by Gerry Griffiths

Nine-Tenths of the Law by Josh Strnad

Autonomous Trafficking by Kierce Sevren

Planet Ruination by Patrick Lacey

Descent by Joseph Sale

Appendix

The Arkenholz Sonata

By Oliver Smith

As a connoisseur of these things you will know of the infamous portrait exhibited at a certain gallery on the Rue Emile Richard, hidden behind a curtain on instruction of the Préfet de Police, lest it induce morbid hysteria in those of a sensitive nature. Who could forget? That notorious photograph with the disturbingly magnified eye glowering grey beneath shocking white hair that floated like fine midwinter snow, hair that was entirely weightless, hair that defied the gravity of the age. I believe I am the last person left who saw him perform in what passed at the time for the flesh.

I had been earning my rent with a bunch of hopeless hacks preparing for a performance at the Théâtre de Pompions. I needed a cigarette. I searched my jacket and was disappointed to find only a crushed, empty packet in my pocket.  In desperate need I rushed too fast from that room. I left the theatre with little forethought and much haste and consequently found myself caught by a storm on the Rue de Lune. How I cursed myself for leaving my fine black Homberg in the rehearsal studio. It was hanging safe on the arm of a Louis Napoleon music stand while I ventured out for a pack of Gauloises Bleu. I was hatless in the Paris rain. I was a fool.

I walked exposed beneath a sky composed in an ominous key and inharmonious mode. I believe the whole of that cacophonous storm fell upon my unprotected head. I caught my reflection in the window of Madame Morisot’s and saw that my hair, usually so immaculate and full of character, hung limp and spiritless. My body streamed and my suit was sodden. I dripped like a wet dog.

I was driven to take shelter in an obscure doorway beneath a decaying fin de siècle pediment unfashionably ornamented with crumbling stone vines; coiled and serpentine like treble clefs on a staff. There I lit a Gauloises Bleu and added a counterpoint of indigo smoke to that miserable dirge of a night. The rain quickened its tempo and the drops rat-a-tat-tatted fortissimo. The air had become a waterfall and the lightning flashed and thundered. It was clearly unsafe to travel back to the Théâtre de Pompions.

I was without hat or hope. I had but one option; I knocked on the door.

I was joined then on the lonely doorstep by sweet accordion music billowing into the filth of the night, inviting me to enter the establishment.

How could I not?

I quite forgot myself and became allied with the orchestra within; there was a magnificent band of Gitanes, Gauloises, and Camels illuminated by radiant Lalique lamps of coloured glass. I settled into the waft of comfortable blue fumes and soloed on my cigarette among so many virtuosi. Soon an illegal absinthe clouded before me in a slender crystal lily and my Gauloises modulated its smoky loops about peacock-chandeliers; I was as happy as a monkey on a branch among the beautiful antiques from Paris past.

The greenish walls were hung with strange and morbid pictures.

I must state here that I love modern art. I am not even averse to the wild experiments of the Impressionists. There is something rather joyful in the healthy enamel-bright colours. In small doses, I delight in their common scenes of everyday life; in summer days, in poppies, in pretty girls, and in banjo players adrift on the Seine. Marvellous. Speaking as an expert, I can assure you that technically a banjo cannot produce a real note, and were I able I would similarly float all its players away in boats on the stinking sewerage ridden waters of the River Seine.

But to return to the paintings that hung on the green walls of the barroom; I found these paintings a little vile, a little degenerate, and even perhaps a little insane.

These were strange visions painted in the technique of Comerre, Vibert and Bouguereau. I regret to say they did not share those masters’ elevated subjects. There were no pantheons of pink-fleshed nymphs; no mythologies of dryads; not even portraits of fine-bred horsewomen, riding whips in hand, and half-dressed in the English fashion. No, these were not those pure and noble motifs approved by the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

This painter was a master of diseased visions. One of the canvas nightmares drew me closer in terrible fascination. I saw coral reefs in poisoned oceans inhabited by creatures of the dream; a world where bird masked figures poked beaks and breasts from shadowed arbours grown rank with horrid weeds. The title read ‘Loplop, King of the Birds’.

“I think the artist has taken too many absinthes,” I idly observed.

A stylish man among a group of bizarrely dressed bohemians wearing a yellow lupin in his buttonhole waved a glass of the ‘Green Fairy’ at me.

“I am a critic, Monsieur, and I assure you the artist is not an absintheur. I am a doctor as well and as a doctor concur that these pictures are not symptomatic of Delirium Absinthium. I am also something of a poet and the poet goes further than the doctor and the critic, as a poet should, and declares this is cold-sober poetry, this is genius, this is the future of art.”

“I apologise Monsieur, I apologise doctor, I apologise son of the muse; I am just a viola player.”

“Almost a musician! Perhaps you know Monsieur Arkenholz? He is almost a composer.”

“I am embarrassed; I have never heard of him.”

“You have not heard of Arkenholz? The Great Conductor? The Marvel of Montparnasse? The Big Lobster himself?”

“I am afraid not, I must humbly beg your forgiveness, I am ignorance personified.”

“Never mind, we hadn’t heard of him either until the owner of a certain gallery on the Rue Emile Richard asked our comrade Max to collaborate with him.”

He offered me a Gauloises Bleu and said “please call me Andre, my associates are members of the Bureau de Lupines. You have heard of them no doubt?”

They all raised their heads and howled like beasts.

A writer, whom I deduced from the shape of his chin to be a sort of radical Cubist, waved a brochure from a certain famous gallery on the Rue Emile Richard. “Are you familiar with the science of psychoanalysis? It has diagnosed the ills of the age; the prognosis is terminal if untreated, but there is hope. We are the antidote to the sicknesses of standardisation, mechanisation, and uniformity.”

An idiot dressed as a harlequin juggled various items among which were a shrunken head, a vacuum tube and a model lobster. “We are the apostles of the unconscious come to save the century from the tyranny of bourgeois conformism.”

Jeanne d’Arc, who had apparently been resurrected from some romantic history book, arranged a silver fox-fur coat around her shoulders. She smiled with her strawberry lips at me and blew a perfectly pitched puff of Turkish tobacco smoke. “Once I was a martyr to reason, to moderation, to boredom.”

“How sad, how dreadful, a terrible fate” I said.

“I was saved by the science of psychoanalysis. My therapy freed me from my bourgeois repression. It unleashed my inner animal, opened wide the cage, and the wild beasts within tore my oppressive super-ego into a hundred bloody segments.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Now, I drink absinthe naked in the moonlight, smoke opium with a hundred different lovers, and dance all night until I am sick.”

“How beautiful, how free, how delightful. Are these comrade Max’s paintings?”

“They are.”

“Then Maestro Arkenholz, must be very… advanced.”

“He has sworn he will forge a new performance for the age.”

“Beyond…” said Harlequin looking into the unspecified distance.

“Beyond Stravinsky’s wild ‘Rite of Spring’,” said Jeanne d’Arc, clutching her heart and rolling her eyes upwards in search of divine visions among the smoke and chandeliers.

“Beyond Schoenberg’s crazy quartets,” said Andre, tapping his temple.

“Beyond the song of Loplop, King of the Birds!” said the Cubist writer, flapping his arms.

“And has he?”

“We shall see tomorrow night at his and Max’s premier. Why, speak of the wolf and you see his tail…”

Max was greying at the edges and cursing in German.

“I think you had better buy him an absinthe,” said Andre.

“Damn him,” said Max throwing his raincoat across a chair, “Arkenholz and I collided. Spectacularly. I tried to explain the science underlying my work; he said ‘you will never understand if you are dreaming not living, wake up.’ Then he tried to shoot me.”

“He doesn’t like the artwork then?

“No.”

“Oh dear. Do you think he has some sort of father complex?”

“Father, mother, great aunt six times removed, I think he has every complex recorded and many as yet undocumented even in the wildest dreams of Dr. Jung.”

At the mention of Dr. Jung the entire Bureau de Lupines spat on the floor and the Cubist boomed like an angry Cassowary.

“But,” said Max, “what am I going to do about the owner of the gallery on the Rue Emile Richard? He is coming to the performance. If it goes well he has promised me exhibitions in New York, Vienna, and Cardiff!”

“You’d better make it up and fast,” said Andre. “I have heard Arkenholz’s megalomania has been pronounced profound and incurable by Sigmund Freud himself.”

At the mention of Dr. Freud the entire Bureau de Lupines rose to their feet, genuflected, and sang ‘Ave Maria’. The Cubist writer stood on a table and crowed like a cockerel.

“Make it up? Remember,” said Max, “this is the man whom Winifred Wagner publicly described as a monster; unreasonable, selfish, and evil.”

“But Winifred Wagner is known to be extremely bourgeois and morally insane,” said Jeanne d’Arc. “At least Arkenholz is not bourgeois, and his concept of beauty is unique.”

“How can you tell?” asked Harlequin.

“His scandalous expulsion from Bayreuth,” said Jeanne d’Arc.

“Anyone can get themselves expelled from Bayreuth; they just have to breathe around Winifred. She is famously averse to sharing the air. He may have written some sentimental chanson and disappointed everyone.”

Jeanne d’Arc ignored him and whispered “Don’t listen to him. Arkenholz will be wonderful. Confidentially, had he not been so close to the owner of a certain gallery on the Rue Emile Richard, I believe he would have been forcibly confined.”

“He is impossible,” said Max.

“None the less, you must make it up with him,” said Andre. “Your career depends on it.”

Then he ordered another round of absinthes and proposed a toast to the great Arkenholz.

“Long may his madness inspire us.”

I could not remember how I made my way home that night. Just trying to remember trebled the volume of the kettle drum beating behind my eyeballs. Searching my pockets for a clue, I discovered several unusual items, including an advert for a performance of some avant-garde music, a small wax lobster, and a drawing of Loplop, King of the Birds signed by Max. There was also a suspicious looking silver fox-fur hung over the banister.

The suspicion it induced was confirmed when I found Jeanne d’Arc in my bathtub. She was sleeping like an angel and snoring like a saint. When she joined me for breakfast, she ate like the devil. Despite my terrible headache, despite my agony, and with no consideration of my impending death from congestion of the brain, she cruelly insisted that I fulfil a promise I couldn’t remember having made; to take her to Arkenholz’s evening performance.

That evening I could not believe I had returned to the bar of the Bureau de Lupines and after a couple of absinthes could not believe, that having returned, I was leaving again so soon.

I looked out at the deluge and I asked: “Going? Where? Exactly?”

Max’s answer lacked the precision I craved.

“Look! An alleyway,” he said, “let us explore. Have you read Freud? This maze, this puzzle, these winding twisting paths of medieval Paris. Startling, fascinating…”

“…and dark.”

“You must understand the gutters to understand the real Paris,” he said, and offered me a Gauloises Bleu.

We cut down the Rue de Morgue past a single gendarme smoking heavily in a dry doorway. He eyed us suspiciously but seemed reluctant to risk his Camel in the rain.

Jeanne d’Arc held my hand as the Cubist gurgled like a nervous pigeon and distant thunder kettle-drummed beyond the tower of Notre Dame.

Max continued, “This labyrinth where stairs spiral down under the city, to sewers and quarries and catacombs; to the unconscious stone memory. You locked the beasts away. Supressed them. The bones are piled in neat and orderly rows, but those exquisite corpses cannot be contained so easily, even behind iron-forged railings.”

For a moment the rain clouds cleared and I noticed Jeanne d’Arc looked beautifully vulpine dressed in the light of the full moon. She scampered and growled delightfully in her silver fur coat showing a set of very lovely white teeth. Harlequin turned a few somersaults over her like an excited cub, while Max and Andre opened their throats in some sort of animal song, in celebration of her beauty no doubt. The Cubist, however, became more shrunken, wattled and purple with every second he spent illuminated by the moon. He waddled off into the shadows. All that was left of him was a cackling in the darkness and a smell that made Harlequin draw back his lips and salivate. Max restrained him from his prospective meal with a rather hairy hand until the moon rolled away again behind some more rain clouds leaving us in darkness.

Someone struck a match. There was a frightened gobble from the Cubist. There was also a faint smell of sulphur and the flame illuminated the face of the Big Lobster grinning on the wall; an advertisement for Arkenholz’s premier.

“I believe we are somewhere in the 5th arrondissement,“ said Max.

He led us onto a narrow but well lit boulevard. Everywhere were hung soggy posters proclaiming:

Arkenholz! Genius! Tonight!

We trailed along behind Max trying to shelter our precious Gitanes, Gauloises, and Camels from the latest downpour. The theatre leaned on the shoulder of an abandoned boulangerie, set on a street where the buildings all threatened to tumble down. I sheltered beneath a crumbling first empire pediment.

“Come on,” Andre said, “Come on out, the great one awaits.”

At the Theatre I paid my three francs and then reluctantly paid another three for Jeanne d’Arc.

Max disappeared as soon as we were inside. I could hear him practising his magnanimous speech of apology in the service tunnels, his voice fading into the bowels of the theatre.

The auditorium was dark. It was cold. I pulled my coat tighter and tried to draw a little heat from a Gauloises Bleu.

Time ticked on in quavers, crotchets and big soggy semibreves. The rain on the roof was counting out the measures. Anticipation gave way to boredom, which finally surrendered to irritation and ennui.

Max reappeared and whispered something to Andre. Andre turned to me.

“A disaster,” he said. “Arkenholz is missing. He was so offended by Max that he has packed his bags and caught the train home to Sweden.”

“But what can we do? There will be no Vienna, no New York, no Cardiff,” said Max, looking downcast in the light of his cigarette “We need a musician, a genius, a hero.”

“To step into the breach,” said Andre.

“To save our lobster,” said Harlequin.

“To light my fire,” said Jeanne d’Arc.

Their eyes were all on me.

“What do you mean? I can’t conduct, I’m a viola player.”

“Oh they won’t mind, you’re just the right build, no one really needs a conductor, and these musicians need Arkenholz least of all; just wave your arms about and take the applause, the adulation, the cash. We must get you ready though.”

“Go on,” said Jeanne d’Arc, “you’ll be fantastic.”

I squeezed into Arkenholz’s suit. If it had been even half a millimetre tighter, I would have burst every stitch and seam. Harlequin used  two wires pulled from a Lalique lamp to charge my hair. It stood on its ends,  floated like fine midwinter snow, entirely weightless, defying the gravity of the age.

Max broke open a drawer and rummaged. After discarding a set of false teeth, a dangerous looking revolver and a herring tail in a glass jar, he gave a cry of joy. He approached me in an unpleasantly predatory way and grasped the back of my neck with the ardent finality of a guillotine’s lunette, he held my head steady, as he painfully inserted Arkenholz’s monocle into my eye socket.

“The final touch,” he said.

“Ow.”

“Very handsome,” said Jeanne d’Arc.

“Look into these eyes,” said the Cubist, jumping up onto a stool and staring at me even more strangely than usual. “These are the eyes of my unconscious mind, the eyes of the animal deep inside. These are the eyes of Loplop, King of the Birds. Left right, up down, count backwards from ten, here try your hat,” he picked up an outsize black hat and rapped on it with his knuckles.

“Are you in there, Maestro? Come out Arkenholz, come to Señor Loplop.”

He passed the hat to Max who bellowed into it. “Arkenholz, you bastard, I know you’re in there! Come out!”

Something clunked and clucked deep inside my head.

Max held up a mirror to reflect my face. A stranger’s eye trapped behind a glass lens stared back at me; it was alien, cold, and grey as stone.

“Ah, there you are, Arkenholz,” said Max as he shook me firmly by the hand. “We’ve been waiting.”

The audience had been unsettled by the delay, and only broken applause greeted me as the lime lights brightened; and even that poor greeting faded into faint howls as I took my place before the stage.

I silenced them with a single glance. I glared at them, turned the full force of Arkenholz’s hatred and disdain on the expectant patrons, and then having admonished them, I rotated like a turbine and faced the orchestra. Now I would show them all, show them who was the genius and who were the undeserving scum of no more consequence than lice. I shot one final eye full of venom over my shoulder, lit a Gauloises Bleu and raised the baton.

I stopped. I paused, I choked on the cigarette. I saw the musicians; dead-faced, dummies every one. They had been made in mockery of me, each manufactured with Arkenholz’s hair, each fitted with Arkenholz’s monocle, and each embossed with Arkenholz’s smile. While I hesitated the audience giggled.

I thought about what I was going to do to the Bureau de Lupines when I got out of there. The thought of their impending agonising deaths cheered me up a little.

There was a single slow hand-clap.

The rain was beating on the roof, through the roof, pissing like a cow onto the orchestra.

Dripping. Dripping. Dripping.

Then Max’s voice came rolling out of the darkness. “Turn them on, idiot.”

I was enlightened. I looked down. There was a big electrical switch at my feet.

With a single flick, sparks of static electricity flew from the dummies. They shone with an odd blue light over the stage and ghastly shadows washed over the immobile faces of the Arkenholz dummies. Max may have carved them from wood and forged them from metal, but they raised their heads as if on invisible strings. In each black suit a spider shape unfolded itself, took its position, and held its instrument in readiness. I gathered those figures in my gaze. The newly animate limbs jerked and danced; the fingers spasmed. Slowly a note of sorts emerged. A low, tuneless-moan with the cello-deep timbre of catacomb darkness.

Twenty cold grey eyes glittered behind twenty glass monocles and regarded the audience with amusement and malice.

How Arkenholz mesmerised them, unleashing that strange music through the force of his desire; he overcame all resistance. Among the crackle and spark of the arcing current, those mechanical creatures performed.

The current flowed like water; a terrible magnetic grip spread through the atmosphere.

I became the great conductor. I caught the lightening in my fingers and whirled the music into a froth, whipped and waved the noise into a wild sea foam that swept over the theatre like a storm.

Blue sparks ran from my fingers and over the stalls, reaching up to the balconies and even into the private boxes.

The audience was convulsively tapping out the rhythm of the rain, the rhythms of their hearts, the rhythms of my name. The baton in my hand rose and fell, fell and rose again. I shared my power, conducting the sparks of blue flame from head to head, from heart to brain. They howled the name.

Arkenholz,

Arkenholz.

Arkenholz filled the air.

Faster and faster, the orchestra played the deranged, terrible music of Arkenholz. Faster ran the dance of the dynamo, faster screamed the cogwheels dashing headlong to the inevitable. The cry of metal gears joined with the shrieks of the tortured strings.

Faster, faster, faster, faster and at last it was complete.

The coda. The resolution.

Leaving just the thump, thump, thump on the roof of the interminable cow pissing rain.

Some lay still, some twitched—stunned, some were black, burnt husks. Andre was an automaton with a meaningless vomit of poetry dribbling from his mouth. Harlequin was suffering involuntary contortions, convulsions and convolutions. The Cubist was a picture of plastic formalism, having gained several extra dimensions but lost much of his depth. And Max, Max was moving as if caught in an evil dream; he danced with Jeanne d’Arc, who, as usual, was smouldering slightly.

On they danced, oblivious to the danger, for creeping after them, as they whirled and bowed in a halo of residual electrical discharges, were dark spider-shapes. There was a hint of diabolically floating hair as white and weightless as midwinter snow; there was the noise of sharp nails scraping on the wooden boards; and there was the wink of an eye ripe with black amusement and grey malice.  A monstrous and famished shadow rose up, spreading wide its vengeful spider arms, eclipsing the light, and darkness descended over everything; darkness filled with the ghastly screams of the damned.

A gratifying result. It had all gone rather well.

I adjusted my monocle, on my head was a fine black Homberg. I sniffed the static in the air as I turned the rusty key, held the stage doors wide to let the orchestra out of the Théâtre de Pompions. There was the smell of cleansed gutters. I lit another Gauloises Bleu and offered one to Arkenholz.

“Thank you, Arkenholz.”

“Don’t mention it, Arkenholz.”

“One for Arkenholz, and Arkenholz, and Arkenholz...”

“Oh Arkenholz, I am thrilled, excited, anticipating an age that runs to logical rhythms, an age of mechanical passions and electric music. Are you ready, Arkenholz?”

“Oh yes, Arkenholz. We shall make it the age of the electric musician, the electric composer, the age of the electric conductor.”

“…and then no one will play the banjo.”

“Never again, Arkenholz. Never again.”

We, the Arkenholzs, stepped out into the streets of Paris. We skipped beneath the electrified lines of the tramway, our monocles glittering like diamonds in the electric lights of the shops and street-lamps. In our pockets, one ticket each for the Midnight train from the Gare du Nord.

We were going home.

Implants

By Michael Bray

September 17th 2024

Day 2,306 of isolation

It’s funny how I always thought the world was too small, at least until I was the only one left in it. It’s the little things I miss. The things you never really think about. The steady drone of traffic, the subtle chatter of birds. Anything to break this silence, this godforsaken silence, which is so oppressive I swear I can feel it pushing me into the desolate earth. I’ll never forget the day it happened. One minute the world was a vibrant place, alive with noise, and then in the blink of an eye it was silenced.

Now I’m the only one left.

As I tell my story, you will appreciate the irony of that last sentence. I write this now from the White House. Yes, that one. Don’t get me confused with someone important though. I’m a nobody, a regular guy who said yes to something I should have said no to and am now paying the price for. It’s funny. The world used to be filled with people rushing around. Things to do, places to go. We were always in a hurry. Things are different now. Time works differently. Minutes feel like hours, hours like weeks, and weeks like years. Hell, maybe that’s how it actually is. Maybe I’ve roamed this ball of dirt for centuries without realizing, festering in my very own living hell. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Daylight is fading and I want to do this before the shadows get to that deep shade where things can hide in them.

As I was saying, I write this from the Oval Office of the White House. I just walked right in. Across the south lawn, through the door, past the decaying bodies of Secret Service agents and pen pushing officials. The sight and smell of the dead don’t bother me anymore. If you‘re around enough of something, you quickly desensitize to it. I half wondered if the President might be in here when I arrived, dead eyes staring at the door, skin like old leather hanging from white bone, skeletal politician’s grin waiting to greet me. Alas, I was wrong. As with everywhere, there was just dust and silence and the smell of death. Maybe our Commander in Chief got away to one of his bunkers before the world went belly up. Hell, maybe he’s looking at me right now through some kind of hidden camera, wondering what the hell I’m doing in his office.

Prick.

On the off chance that I am being observed, I lean back and put my feet up on the desk, wondering what my father would think if he could see me now. His son, Alec Greenborough, living it up in the President’s house. Then I remember he’s one of the lucky ones. He’s already dead.

I imagine you’re asking yourself, as you read my left-handed scrawl, what is Alec Greenborough, the son of a baker from Seattle, doing with his feet up on the President’s desk in the White House? Well the answer, as I referenced earlier, is simple and ironic.

I’m only here because I screwed up killing myself.

Didn’t expect that, did you?

It all started when, back in the spring of 2018, Microsoft and Virgin decided to pool their vast resources and move from computers and telecommunications to advancing medical technology—primarily in the field of helping amputees to live full lives again. After the short world war of 2015, in which the British and Americans bombed the shit out of the Russians for bullying their neighbors, as well as the increased unrest in Syria and Iraq, the VIRSOFT merger was a PR dream. Within a year they had developed artificial limbs that could register sensation, giving disabled war heroes a chance to lead normal lives. The much vaunted Google glasses were redeveloped into actual artificial eyeballs, giving sight to the blind. They also developed artificial eardrums, allowing the deaf to hear. The public perceived these products as miracles. By 2021, it wasn’t uncommon to see people comprised of equal parts machine and organic tissue. VIRSOFT was the name on every tongue. This, my friends, is where I come in.

My story doesn’t begin is such a lofty locale as the White House, but in a motel on a rainy Sunday night just outside of Portland. The gun had been in the glove box of my old Chevy for at least six years—bought as protection for my wife if she was out late at night. You can never be too careful, after all.

Of course it was she who drove me to turn it on myself.

She tried to blame me of course, saying I pushed her into the arms of my best friend, a slippery piece of shit named Garfield. Unlike the lasagna loving cat of the same name, the Garfield in this story was a womanizing alcoholic with a mean streak. He was one of those guys who wouldn’t immediately seek his revenge if you wronged him, but wait as long as it took to really make sure he got you good.

Anyway, I must have wronged him pretty badly for him to turn his attention to my wife. The worst was that I’d confided in him, telling him how we were drifting apart. He must have seen it as the perfect chance to worm his way into her bed. When I found them she screamed at me and said it was my fault. Garfield just sat there, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Anyone who has ever been cheated on will know the absolute, heart wrenching agony of it. There is no way to mend the broken trust, and no matter how hard you try, you can never put things right.  She was my world, and with the certainty she would no long be a part of it, killing myself seemed like the most logical thing to do. I’ll admit, the reasons were driven by self-pity, and if I’m perfectly honest, revenge. I wanted her to feel guilt, I wanted her to suffer for the rest of her life for what she’d done to me. Let me tell you, a day doesn’t go by when I don’t wish I’d made a better job of my suicide attempt. I remember sitting there, vision blurred by tears, feeling like the most worthless son of a bitch in the world. I’m sure if I’d put the gun under my chin and pulled the trigger, I wouldn’t be sitting here now and writing this. But I’d seen one too many movies, and put the barrel in my mouth instead.

That made it real. The taste of oil, the cold steel against my teeth. I tried to conjure up a vision of my wife, but could only picture Garfield’s stupid grin. I wasn’t sure I would be able to go through with it and pull the trigger, but I guess I must have. There was a roar of sound and then blackness.

No white light.

No rose garden full of dead relatives to greet me.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital bed, facing a chubby, bearded face I didn’t recognize. I did however recognize the red and black VIRSOFT logo on his white coat, and started to piece together what had happened.

II

The bearded man was a doctor. His name was Belsham. He tried to come across as over friendly, and I didn’t like that. He also smelled odd. There was a faint odor of stale sweat under the powerful cologne he wore. I’d hoped to see my wife waiting by my bedside full of apology, but I guess she either didn’t care or was too busy letting Garfield screw her brains out. Either way, I doubt she’d have got a look in anyway, because Belsham hardly stopped talking at me from the moment I woke up.

It seemed my botched suicide made me a perfect candidate for the latest VIRSOFT product. Rather than blowing my brains all over the cum stained bed sheets and yellowed wallpaper as I’d intended, the bullet had somehow clipped off my spinal column (destroying my teeth and jaw in the process) and then down into my chest cavity, damaging my heart and embedding in my lung.  Belsham told me it was a one in a million shot. I might still have died if housekeeping hadn’t been in the room next door and heard the shot.  I was whisked off to hospital barely clinging on to life. Belsham had grinned at this point in the story and told me my survival was a minor miracle.

I tried to ask him what they had done to fix me, but the words didn’t come. Either way, he seemed to know what I wanted to ask.

“It’s called the Neurointel respiratory system,” he said, proud as punch.

I wanted to remind him that, for all his posturing, he had actually screwed things up by saving me as far as I was concerned. Of course, I didn’t get a chance to speak, as he was going on, and was now showing me charts and documents detailing what they’d done to me. I’ll spare you the long version I had and give you a condensed rundown of what they did.

According to Belsham, the bullet had ravaged my insides pretty good. It had damaged by spinal column and a lower portion of my skull before changing trajectory. It had destroyed my windpipe, then nicked the aorta in my heart, then the right atrium before coming to rest in my right lung and collapsing it. Essentially, it mangled everything apart from its intended target.

Even so, it wasn’t anything VIRSOFT couldn’t fix. By then their research was so advanced they were just waiting for someone with the right injuries to come along. As you know, the Consent Free Right to Operate act of 2020 meant I didn’t get a say in what happened to me. I was essentially slab of meat for them to experiment on as they saw fit. I can’t complain too much, though. Despite everything that happened since, they did a pretty good job of fixing me. They repaired my jaw and teeth with a super tough synthetic plastic called Persaflex. They had also installed a new throat and vocal chords for me so I can speak (not that there’s anyone to talk to anymore). The trickiest parts were the replacement heart, lungs and nerve network. Belsham explained how the new synthetic heart would never clog or fail like the human hearts of old. To ensure this, it was regulated and controlled by a small chip connected to the base of my skull.  A fusion of technology and biology, the chip was fused to the nerve endings of the spine. Belsham said it was to ensure the heart was regulated correctly and kept in working order. Then again, he had to say that. He could hardly say I was now controlled by a computer, could he? Either way, that’s how it was. The chip would keep me ticking over.

As impressed as I was with the science that had given me a new lease of life (wanted or not), I couldn’t help but think about getting out of the hospital so I could finish the job I started, but do it properly this time.  Only that’s not how it worked out.

Instead, at the same time I was recovering in hospital, something happened. The actual details are hazy because it all went down so damn fast. Some said it was the Koreans. Others blamed the Arabs or the Russians. Some even said the U.S was responsible; that it was a botched plan to consolidate power. Either way, it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that someone released a virus; a deadly, highly contagious virus; one resistant to major fluctuations in temperature, and transmittable by air as well as blood and saliva. Worse was that it had a lengthy incubation period, so by the time people started to die, three quarters of the world’s population had been infected. Even so, there was hope for a while; at least until the mighty VIRSOFT said it was beyond their ability to stop. That’s when the panic started. For those who remember when films used to be made with actual people instead of CGI casts, you might be thinking some kind of zombie apocalypse was in the cards. It didn’t go down like that though. Real life was much more cruel and savage.

People died and stayed dead. The virus dreadfully effective. Within hours of the incubation period breaking, severe flu would onset the victim, who would in turn cough more of the virus into the atmosphere.

For all the technology, for all scientific advances, the world didn’t stand a chance. People were walking around dead and they didn’t even know it.

Three months.

That’s all it took to wipe out everyone on the planet. Everyone except me, of course.

Thanks to that prick Belsham and the bastards at VIRSOFT, the virus didn’t kill me. With no organic heart or lungs to damage, the worst I suffered was a low grade fever and vomiting while those around me died in the billions.

I was the only one, you see. The prototype. I was only one ever fitted with this artificial system, forcing me to live on in a world full of death.

I paused in writing this to look out the window at the overgrown, gray world outside, a relic of a species now extinct. A world in which nature is finally recovering from the destruction we’ve wrought.

And I see her.

The girl on the lawn. The one who haunts me.

I didn’t start to see her until after that first year. By then I’d gotten used to the smell of the dead, and had existed in a kind of limbo, wandering from place to place, trying to figure out exactly what the hell I was supposed to do. For a while I looked for survivors, but the more I looked all I found was death. My travels had took me all over America, traveling by car when I could, on foot when I had to, all in the hope of finding something. By the time I reached San Francisco, my mind was made up. I was going to finish the job I started. I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, past rusty, dust covered cars. I half wondered about the people who owned them, what kind of lives they might have led before they were taken from them. Rather than sad, it made me jealous.

I looked down over the edge of the bridge, two hundred feet of fresh air between me and the water and the bliss of death I craved. I climbed over the edge, shaking with fear despite my determination, knowing I was literally one step away from peace.

That was the first time I saw her. The girl with the black hair.

She was on the rail next to me, staring. Pale skin, wide blue eyes, raven hair. She was wearing a one piece white dress, fluttering in the breeze. I was so shocked to see another human being that for a few seconds I forgot to breathe.  I asked if she was real, or at least I think I did. I might have just thought it.

She smiled at me.

I don’t know how long I stood there. All I know is my knees were trembling and it wasn’t from fear of the fall. I looked away from her at the oblivion below be.

You can’t do this.

I turned my head back towards her. She hadn’t moved, and was still watching me with that curious look on her face. I imagined I could see a half smile. I was less sure she had even spoken at all.

“Me?” I croaked.

She didn’t respond, and just stared at me, as if waiting for something. It crossed my mind that she was an illusion, a phantom created by a brain devoid of interaction for such a long time. I turned back to look at the water below, wondering if it would hurt, wondering if I would die straight away. It was time. My mind was made up. I took a deep breath and put a foot out in front of me.

She grabbed me.

I hadn’t heard her move, but somehow she had closed the distance to me and was holding my upper arm. Her fingers were cold, her grip like a vice. I could smell her; soap and coconut, the first non-death smell I could remember since the world died. She still didn’t speak, and she didn’t have to. I looked into her eyes, lost in the sheer depth and knowledge shining inside them. I tried to pull free, but couldn’t move.

No.

It wasn’t spoken, but it came from her all the same, somehow delivered into my head.

Not this way.

Something happened then. I still don’t know what it was, I just know I couldn’t look into those eyes anymore. I turned away and squeezed my own eyes closed, and the next thing I remember I was back on the bridge, sitting on the ground and leaning against one of those skeletal shells, hot tears stinging my eyes.

Of the girl, there was no sign.

Scrambling to my feet, I ran back to the edge, looking for her. Somehow I knew she hadn’t jumped, so I set out to look for her, scared and excited in equal measure. For three days I searched, shouting at the top of my lungs and hearing only the rolling echo of my own voice in reply.

What cruelty. To give me a glimpse of companionship then snatch it away. It made the solitude worse than ever, and increased my determination to end my pitiful existence. Finding a gun wasn’t too hard. They littered the street. I took one from a police officer I came across, his corpse dry and withered, slumped over in his patrol car. I had left San Francisco by this time, and was in Lafayette. I found a nice place out in the Reliez valley with beautiful views of the trees and open country. It was a beautiful place to die. Remembering my earlier failure, I was determined to do it right this time. Gun to the roof of the mouth, pointing up towards the brain. One thing was for sure—there was no danger of anyone hearing the shot and saving me like last time. This time I would make sure it was done right. I flicked off the safety, and took one last look at the view.

The girl was there, not ten feet away. She was wearing the same clothes, and had the same wide eyed expression on her face. Fear, like a hot, physical thing, knotted my stomach.

Those eyes.

I was scared to look but powerless not to. I fumbled and dropped the gun in the dirt at my feet. I bent and picked it up, and when I looked back the girl was gone.

It may sound stupid to you if you ever read this, but the fear instantly morphed into an intense and anguished sadness that she had teased her presence and left me yet again. I turned the gun towards my face, looking into the black depths of the barrel, knowing that just a few pounds of pressure on the trigger was all that stood between me and peace. The wind ruffled my hair, and brought with it the smell of soap and coconut, telling me she was back.

I turned to my left and there she was, sitting on the rock beside me, knees tucked up under her chin, delicate bare feet on the stone. She wasn’t looking at me, but straight ahead out over the valley, her porcelain doll-like face framed beautifully in sunlight.

No.

I knew it was her, even though she hadn’t spoken.

“Why not?” I whispered.

She looked at me then, eyes full of sadness.

I can’t let you.

“Why? Who are you?” I asked, my words snatched away on the breeze.

She didn’t answer me, and I didn’t want to wait any longer. I knew if I waited I would be denied. I adjusted my grip on the gun and turned it towards my face.

She grabbed my wrist, her grip just as strong as on the bridge. I tried to struggle free, yet she seemed capable of restraining me with little effort.

“Let me go, I want to die,” I hissed at her.

She did look at me then, and all the fight went out of me. Words, her words, came into my mind, and with them I knew who she was, and why she was there.

I can’t let you break the bond.

Of course she couldn’t. Why would she? It made perfect sense. VIRSOFT had spent a small fortune fitting me with new innards. With a second attempt at suicide a very real option, it stood to reason they would build in a failsafe, something to stop me from destroying their prototype.

“You look so real,” I whispered.

She didn’t reply. Instead she gave a half smile and looked back out over the rolling valley.

I knew what she was, of course. She was a fiction. Something created by the chip at the base of my skull and projected into my desolate world. I could see her, I could smell her. She was in every way right there in the world with me. I could see the light dusting of freckles on her cheeks, the stray hairs blown by the breeze across her face, even the slight moistness of her lips. I tried an experiment then. Rather than speak my question to her, I thought it instead. Immediately, she responded, again without speaking.

No, I can’t do that. It’s my job to stop you.

I nodded, understanding exactly what her purpose was.

She was a program; a program designed to stop me whenever the urge to end my life came; a piece of self-preservation code in a dead society.

“I don’t want this,” I said, then repeated my earlier request. “Please, just let me die.”

I watched her and waited. For a while she said nothing, then, just as I was about to repeat myself, she spoke—actually spoke words for the first time rather than in my head.

“You should be grateful,” she said, her voice soft and soothing, “you have been given a great gift.”

“What kind of gift?” I asked, tossing the useless gun into the dirt.

“The gift of life.”

“I don’t want life. Just look at the world for Christ’s sake,” I screamed, frustration finally boiling over.

But it was software, a computer program; it had no idea what had happened to the world. All it had been programmed to do was keep me alive until it was told otherwise by a creator who was dead. Instead, the girl reeled off the rest of the stock answer, and her words brought home the reality of the situation.

“You will live forever,” she said, turning those penetrating eyes on me. “My systems are designed to work indefinitely.”

“But I’ll age, the rest of me will age,” I pleaded, knowing as advanced as it was, the software didn’t understand. “What happens when I get old?”

“When the patient stability increases and the suicide risk reaches acceptable levels of eleven percent or less, my creator will change my programming.”

“He’s dead!” I shouted, my voice echoing throughout the valley. “Everyone is dead!”

She smiled and turned back to the view. I saw my future then, a withered, crippled old thing, brittle bones broken, muscles wasted away to nothing, but still alive, still breathing, all thanks to the computer in my head and the artificial systems keeping me going.

“I’ll find a way. I’ll find a way to end it,” I whispered.

No. I won’t ever let that happen.

It was then that I began to weep. I don’t know how long I sat there sobbing like a baby. All I know is that when I finished the girl had gone and I was alone again. Useless though it was, sometimes I would attempt to kill myself just so I could see her again. Always she would appear and stop me, always with that look in her eyes, always smelling like soap and coconut.  Sometimes I would try to engage her in conversation, if only to break up the monotony of my existence. She never stays any longer than needed. As soon as the threat is gone, she goes with it.

I look up from this notepad and out of the window and she’s still there, standing on the lawn, watching me, waiting. She knows I’ve set up the noose and will attempt to hang myself just as soon as I’ve finished writing this. Of course, in my heart of hearts (What heart? Ha!) I know it won’t work. I know that when the time comes, I’ll smell her intoxicating scent, and feel that icy grip. Even so, I have to try. God help me, I have to try.

In closing—if, when you find this note, there is a corpse in the hall hanging from the staircase railing, then know I died happy. If not, then once again I have been foiled, and am destined to walk the earth in limbo until either my body or this Godforsaken computer in my head breaks down.

Pray for me.

Hyperreal

By DJ Tyrer

Captain James Campbell’s eyes snapped open in shock and he screamed.

Awakening from DSE was always traumatic. Deep Sleep Environment was the way in which the crews of long-range vessels could survive the extreme velocities necessary to reach the outer reaches of star systems and the tedium of the voyage. The crew and passengers would be placed in grav tanks filled with a gel-like liquid and their metabolism slowed in a form of hibernation. Being awakened necessitated a sudden jolt that brought you back into consciousness. Shocked awake, you were disorientated and felt as if you were drowning, and quite often suffered neurological effects similar to an epileptic attack. All in all, the experience was terrifying, even for experienced travelers.

Campbell remembered who he was and where he was.

“Sarah, you awake?”

He heard coughing, then Chief Officer Sarah Wang answered, “Aye, sir.” She was the Physicist and Navigator for Mentalis. While he was the in-system pilot, it was Sarah who was vital to what would follow.

“Andrew, how about you?”

“Aye, sir.” Andrew Nkomo was the ship’s engineer. He shared responsibility with Sarah for the computer systems and was in charge of life-support, the engines and other systems.

“Rani?”

“Aye, sir.” Rani Patil was the medical officer, which, on this cruise, meant she was also acting as security officer.

There was a fifth member of the crew, if you preferred to think of her in that way, but she was still asleep. She was the reason for Rani’s dual role aboard Mentalis.

“Everyone to your stations.” He took hold of the toggle that opened the grav tank and yanked it. The hatch hissed open and he stepped out with unsteady feet.

“Sir.” Sarah was stepping out of her tank. Their tanks were on opposite sides of the bridge. Andrew’s was in the aft section and Rani’s was in the medical bay. By placing them where they worked, they could get started checking systems as soon as they awoke and their disorientation abated.

Wiping themselves clean of the gel, they sank into their seats and began the system check.

“Report in,” Campbell said into his mic.

“Ships computer operating normally, sir,” Sarah replied.

“Life-support, power and maneuver drives all functioning normally, sir,” came the voice of Andrew over the intercom.

“Hannah is a-okay and sedated,” Rani reported.

Hannah was the reason why Mentalis existed.

Until now, extrasolar travel had only been possible by travelling at extreme sub-light speeds. Continuous acceleration made the colonization of nearby star systems possible, but made exploration and trade effectively impossible. Hannah would change all that.

Humanity had been aware of the existence of psychics for almost a century and scientists had been experimenting on them for just as long. Recognizing the danger psychics could pose, the law required that all children be tested for psychic ability, and those who tested positive be handed over to the state. Hannah was one such psychic, raised in a laboratory, examined and assessed from childhood; property, not a person.

Hannah was one of those particularly rare psychics with the ability to teleport. A few had proven capable—albeit at great personal risk—of teleporting over interstellar distances. Unfortunately, even the strongest teleporters had difficulty transporting others or items across even the shortest of distances, let alone between solar systems. Yet it had been postulated that their natural ability could be boosted, even to the extent of transporting an entire ship.

Hence seventeen year old Hannah had been sedated and placed within a specialized grav tank that was as much a prison, a sort of human battery-cum-engine that would transport Mentalis from Earth’s solar system to that of Alpha Centauri.

“All stations,” said Campbell, “we will jump shortly. You have one hour for personal preparations. Then we will begin preliminaries.”

Everyone would need a chance to stretch their legs, get cleaned and dressed after their time in the tanks, maybe hydrate themselves a little. They wouldn’t eat until after the jump—it was expected that the experience might cause nausea. Campbell would use the hour to check the ship over; it was his personal idiosyncrasy, a means of reassuring himself more than anything.

Sucking on a foil sachet of juice as he went, Campbell toured the ship, checking every nook and cranny. Even if the computer system was guaranteed to detect the slow leak of a micrometeor penetration, he liked to be certain there were no such problems.

“James... James...” Someone, a woman, was whispering his voice.

“Sarah is that you? Rani?” No reply. He held his wrist comm to his mouth and called them both. They were both where they were supposed to be, not anywhere near life-support. He didn’t hear the voice again. Still a little disorientated from the DSE, he thought.

Despite its small crew, Mentalis was quite large. Without the need to be aerodynamic, the ship had been built as a latticework and stretched for nearly two miles in length and a mile across. Somewhat conventionally, the bridge was at one end and the maneuver drives were at the other. The reactor was near the drives, isolating them from the limited risk of radiation. Engineering and life-support ran along the central sections of the lattice, while the medical bay was towards the middle of the ship. The final section, referred to as the jump drive, was located in a nodule atop a central spine.

Campbell walked every part of it.

His final destination was the jump drive, where Hannah was located. Her grav tank was modified, attached to equipment that would enhance and control her psychic potential. It struck Campbell as looking like an oversized coffin or a metallic mausoleum. If you cared to look through the view port at the girl’s agonized face in the green-tinted gel, you would see a spider-like network of metallic spines atop her shaven head, their ends piercing her skull, needle-like. It reminded him of some medieval torture device.

Campbell didn’t enjoy visiting this area, and he found it disturbing that Rani enjoyed her work with Hannah so much.

“How is she?” he asked.

“All life signs are stable and she’s still sedated. When we are ready to jump, I will stimulate her as per protocol.”

Essentially, that meant she would torture the unconscious girl to produce the desired effect, a stimulation of her flight response.

“Good.” He left as quickly as he could, returning to the bridge and taking his seat.

“Right, everybody begin the preliminaries for the jump.”

That entailed a further round of system checks and confirmations after which he issued the order to prepare for jump.

“Ten minutes till jump. Grav couches, everyone.”

Grav couches were used for lower-g maneuvers and had been deemed suitable for the jump. Of course nobody knew for certain what would actually occur during a jump, or how it would affect the human body and mind. They were, in essence, guinea pigs.

“Good luck, everybody. Five minutes till jump.”

“Beginning pre-jump stimulation,” came Rani’s voice. It was necessary to raise Hannah from the depths of her torporific state to a less-sedated level so her mind and body could react as desired to the shock that would prompt their teleportation.

“James... James...”

He glanced over at Sarah, but she seemed intent upon her console.

“Rani, that you?”

“That me what, sir?”

“Did you just call me?”

“No, sir. Is everything okay, sir?”

He was a silent for just a moment, then said, “Yes.”

“One minute to go,” he said, making a final check.

“Aye aye, sir,” they called back.

“James... James... it’s too late... you are trapped...”

“Who is that?” Campbell demanded.

“Sir?”

He looked at Sarah, who had turned from her console towards him.

“Was that you?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question, sir. Are you okay, sir?”

“I thought... it doesn’t matter...”

“Do you wish to abort the jump, sir?” She was clearly concerned. “I could call Rani to attend you.”

“Belay that. I’m... fine. We will not delay.”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“Ten—nine—eight—” he counted down to one, and they jumped.

The lights dimmed.

There was a sensation he couldn’t quite describe, then his eyes snapped open in shock and he screamed.

It was, if anything, worse than waking from DSE.

Sarah was screaming. Looking over, he was shocked to see an explosion of sparks as a tangle of wires fell from the ceiling and wrapped about her, binding about her almost as if alive.

Campbell struggled out of his grav couch, but it was too late; the wiring had bound tightly about her, crushing and asphyxiating her. He struggled to free her, but couldn’t.

“Rani! Rani! We need you! Sarah...” He was silenced by her terrified screams. “Rani? Rani?”

Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

“James... James..” The voice was singsong, like a child’s. “You’re going to die...”

There was the sound of footsteps coming along the corridor towards the bridge. There was somebody out there, somebody who meant him harm. He shivered.

“Who’s there?” he demanded, gazing into the darkness.

There was no answer and the footsteps halted. The silence was worse. Then, he became aware of a sound like scratching or slithering outside on the hull.

“Rani? Andrew?” he hissed into his wrist comm..

“Rani is dead.” The voice was hers, but the tone was leaden and strange.

“Rani? That’s not funny...”

“Rani is dead...” This time it was the mysterious voice that seemed to come out of thin air.

“Andrew? Andrew!”

“Sir,” the engineer hissed back. “There’s something in here... like a... a spider...”

“What?”

“Spidarrrrrrghh!” His scream was replaced by whimpering, then silence; a silence broken only by the strange slithering sounds on the hull, and a scuttling within the bridge. Whatever was outside the ship was also inside and stalking him. He felt cold sweat run down his neck, his back, like icy fingers caressing his flesh.

He’d read a paper by one theoretician who postulated there might be entities in hyperspace or whatever medium they might travel through during the jump.

The scuttling sound grew louder, then he spotted a silhouette. There was something large clinging to the ceiling and coming closer. He wished he had a gun, but Rani was the only crewmember who was armed.

Had been armed.

The thing dropped to the floor, and as it fell he had the impression of a segmented body with too many legs.

It scuttled closer as he retreated, backing into his grav couch. He stumbled, fell.

A tendril, whipped towards him, wrapping about him, binding him tight. It had a texture like metal. The thing loomed over him and he saw that it was angular, more like a machine than a creature. From its underside extended a long, sharp needle, thrusting at him.

He closed his eyes, waiting for the death blow.

It never came.

Captain James Campbell’s eyes snapped open in shock and he screamed.

The lights were up, and for a moment he wondered if he’d had a nightmare during the jump. He looked over at Sarah and saw the wide-eyed look of terror on her face and that she wasn’t breathing. Something had happened. There was no evidence of the wires that had entangled her, yet she was dead and showed signs, as far as his limited medical training could tell, of having suffocated.

“Andrew? Rani?” He tried the intercom, but received no response. He had no doubt they were dead. How he had managed to survive, he had no idea.

Dazed from the shock, he turned his attention to his console and checked the ship’s position. They were in the Alpha Centauri system. The jump had been successful.

Campbell laughed, bitterly. A seventy-five percent casualty rate and here he was thinking of it as a success.

He supposed that was something for the scientists to worry about. He wished he knew how he’d managed to survive while the others had died, and that he could be entirely certain Mentalis had brought nothing back with it.

Modified

By Tim Jeffreys

A whispered hiss sounded from one of the surrounding cubicles:  “Whoa!  Check it out!”

Kedwood glanced up from his screen.

Another hushed voice, from a different cubicle, said: “Look!  Look!  Nina’s had an upgrade!”

Kedwood pressed a button to save the data he’d been working on to his finger-flash, unplugged himself from his workstation, and half-rose in order to see over the top of the partition walls.

His boss, the Division Manager Nina Som, was walking down the centre aisle toward her office with every pair of eyes in the room following her.  Kedwood only knew it was Nina because of her distinctive orange-colored hair with streaks of blonde because the majority of her face was now covered.

“New headset,” someone said. “That’s an IG40. 15Y capacity.  That’s a hell of a lot of storage space.  And she’s had the eyes done.”

An excited voice chipped in which Kedwood recognized as belonging to his cubicle neighbor Speakman.  “Never mind that!  Check out the legs!”

Kedwood raised himself further and peered over the cubicle wall just as Nina approached her office door.  He managed to get a glimpse of her legs before she disappeared inside.  Her own legs, the legs she’d had on Friday when she left the office, had been removed just above the knee.  They’d been replaced by J-shaped prosthetics, the kind that had once only been sported by athletes in the Special Olympics, but which were now the latest must-have body-adjustment desired by just about everyone.  And Nina had them.  They made her look a bit like some strange animal, something out of a children’s book, a fawn—that was it.  She looked like a fawn.  Half-turning, he caught his neighbor’s eye.

“Those things are made out of carbon-fiber,” Speakman said.  “Not cheap.  But then she’s a keen runner.  And she’ll be fast now.  Much faster than those of us stuck with the old hydraulic legs.   Sure, the hydraulics are fast and they take a lot of strain, but they’re heavy too.  Wish I’d waited to get some of those carbon-fiber things.  Just think, with those she’ll be able to sprint between meetings.  She won’t have to wait for the monorail.  That’ll save her a lot of time.  It all adds up, you know.  Five minutes here.  Ten minutes there.  I’ll bet you that’s why she got them.  Makes her more efficient.  Jesus wept; I wish I could afford a pair of those.”

With a sigh Speakman sat down, disappearing from view.  Kedwood too returned to his workstation.  He stretched his legs out before him and looked at them.  Of course he, like Speakman, had had the hydraulics fitted.  About three years ago, everyone had been getting them.  He felt now a dull anger and shame.  He wondered how much those legs of Nina’s had cost.  Then he told himself there was no point thinking about that because he couldn’t afford them.  He’d splashed out a few months ago on the new headset and the hard-drive that had been implanted into the back of his skull, and of course the finger-flash.  And he’d only got those because all the management jobs he’d seen advertised stipulated them as a requirement.  He glanced around at the grey cubicle walls, thinking how much he’d love to be sprinting around like a fawn as Nina did on a pair of those carbon-fibre blades.  He imagined how proud Nina must feel just walking down the street.  She’d be the envy of everyone she encountered.  He’d thought once or twice about asking Nina out on a date as he’d always had the impression she was fond of him.  She wouldn’t look twice at him now, not while he was stuck with the old, passé hydraulic legs instead of those magnificent blades.  How would he ever meet anyone, for that matter, anyone to truly care for him when he was still reliant on the eyes he’d been born with; and how would he ever climb the career ladder when he couldn’t even afford a head-screen?

Pretty soon, he thought, I’m going to end up like those poor saps living downtown; the ones who can’t even afford to have their phones implanted in their ears and still have to carry them around everywhere they go.

Naturals.

With a deep sigh and a shake of his head, he plugged himself back in.  As he brought up the data he’d been working on earlier, there was a ringing sound in his headset.  When he touched a pad on the side of his head, the ringing stopped and he heard his mother’s voice.

“What is it, Ma?  I’m working.”

“How’s the office today, son?”

“Same old same old.  What do you want?  I’m busy.”

“Do you think you could take a detour on your way home and pick up some of that nice fish we had last week?  I’ve got the Rodmans coming to dinner on Wednesday, and I’d like to give them something fresh.  Katherine wants to show off the new hands she’s had fitted.”

“I’m going to have to drive downtown to the docks.  And you know I hate going down there.”

“All right.  Well, if it’s too much trouble I’ll go myself this afternoon.  You know there’s muggers down there, and car thieves.  I’ve heard people say if you don’t move quickly, they strip the implants and accessories right off you as you walk.  But I’ll go.  I’ll be fine.  I’m sure no one will bother me.  I know you hate going out of your way.  I’ll just…”

“Oh all right.  Enough with the guilt trip.  I’ll go.”

“Look, if it’s too much trouble…”

“I said I’ll go.”

Touching a finger to the pad on his headset again, he ended the call.

Closing down his workstation that evening, he stood and glanced about the office, realizing that all the other cubicles were empty.  He liked being the last person to leave.   He thought it showed commitment.  But then as he headed for the door, he saw that a light was still on in Nina’s office.

He crossed to her door and knocked.  Instructed to enter, he opened the door and stuck his head inside.  Nina was at her workstation with her back to him.

“What is it?” she said, without turning around.

“Everyone’s gone,” Kedwood said.  “I’m going home myself.  I thought I’d say goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Nina said, without turning around.

He started to back out of the door, but then he stopped.  “I’m sure you’re tired of hearing it, but I just wanted to say congratulations on the upgrade.  You look marvelous.  I wish I could afford to…”

She began talking in a loud voice, interrupting him.  After a moment he realized she was not talking to him but to someone in her headset.  He lingered a moment, unsure why.  Then Nina, still talking into her headset, twisted in her chair and faced him.  The tinted screen that covered her eyes revealed nothing, but her mouth was fixed in a scowl.  He was struck by the memory of what nice eyes he’d always thought she’d had.  They were warm, compassionate.  They’d had a sparkle in them.  Looking at her face now was like looking at a blank screen.  Literally.

She waved a hand, dismissing him.

Making apologetic gestures, he closed the door.

Thinking it safer, he parked his pod-car under a streetlight, unplugged from the dash, then climbed out.  He’d had the ignition key implanted into the thumb of his left hand, but there was always a chance someone would try and hot-wire it.  Downtown, pod-cars were conspicuous.  The people here, if they drove anything, drove cumbersome iron and steel contraptions with no interfaces whatsoever, which meant you had to turn a wheel and press pedals with your feet in order to maneuver them.  Kedwood had often tried to imagine that, but couldn’t.  It seemed absurd.  When he wanted his car to go right, all he had to do was think: go right.  His plug-ins did the work.  It was like becoming one with the car.  It had to be a nightmare trying to steer one of those great hulks manually.

Better buy the fish and get out of here as quickly as possible, he thought.  Walking in the direction of the docks, he saw a gang of children playing with a ball in the street ahead of him.  Their dark complexions betrayed them as foreigners.  Most of the people living downtown were foreigners, many of them illegal immigrants.  They were smuggled in on boats from some less advanced country out east.  Seeing the children, he felt a flash of pity.  Not only were they shoeless and dressed in raggedy clothing, but they didn’t have a single modification between them.  Then he remembered what his mother had said: I’ve heard people say if you don’t move quickly, they strip the implants and accessories right off you as you walk.  He wouldn’t put it past these kids to do that either; they looked desperate enough.  He’d have to keep an eye on them, keep them from getting too close.  He steeled himself, but soon realized he had nothing to worry about.  When the children noticed him approaching they scattered into the alleyways, some of them screaming.

Weird, he thought.  Then:  Of course, they don’t have modified people where they come from.

The sea air tasted ripe and unpleasant.  In the market, people stared or eyed him with surprise or suspicion.  He saw one or two other modified people amongst the crowds, but mostly it was naturals.  He pitied naturals.  He wondered how people could live without modifications, reliant only on flesh and bone and the bits and pieces they were born with.  And because they couldn’t plug into anything they were forced to work for a pittance as laborers, or they preferred to rob and steal in order to get by.  Whatever it was they did to survive, they really were deprived.

Approaching the fish stall, he saw that there was a different person manning it than the previous time he’d visited.  Then there had been a grunting, swarthy-looking man presiding over the day’s catch.  This time there was a beautiful, olive-skinned girl.  She couldn’t have been much more than a child, fifteen or sixteen years old.  Before she noticed him approaching she had been standing with her arms folded, watching the passing crowds and smiling.  Her smile was innocent and hopeful.  She had the kind of body that looked like it was used to work: lean and tanned.  Her skin, was radiant; her face kind.  The sun was already sinking into the sea at her back and her outline glowed with orange light.  Kedwood was almost forced to stop and stand still for a moment, so taken was he by her beauty.

Her smile dropped away when she saw him.  She looked startled.  She ran her eyes up and down his body and fixed her gaze on his various attachments with an expression both of fascination and repulsion, as if he were a burn victim or horribly scarred instead of sporting various bits of expensive hi-tech equipment.  Then she looked him in the face as if confronted with something she did not know whether to flee from or attempt to shoo away.

He showed her a smile, hoping to put her at ease.  I must be a shock to her, he thought.  Remember, they don’t have modified people where she comes from.  It will take time, but she’ll see the sense in it eventually.  She might even get modified herself, once she’s got some money together.  But then he had a thought which surprised him.  He thought: no.  No modifications required.

He was stunned to have thought this, and for a moment he couldn’t speak.

His initial friendliness seemed to have relaxed the girl’s manner somewhat.

“You want something…from here?” she said, gesturing to the array of fish.

He pointed and said, “Four of those.”

The wind coming in off the sea tugged her long dark hair this way and that, sometimes lifting it up into the air, sometimes blowing it forward over her face.    He watched her as she wrapped the fish for him, unable to draw his eyes away.  She made quick, unburdened movements.  When she raised her eyes and met his, that fearful expression had returned to her face, and he felt a sudden sense of shame.

“Do you mind me asking…what’s your name?” he said.

“My name?  It is Jade.  Why you ask this?”

“Jade,” he said.  “How long have you been here in our country?”

She glanced from side to side, suddenly suspicious.  “I arrive here two days ago.  I have papers.”

“That’s all right,” he said.  “I was just being friendly.  How much do I owe you?”

She told him the price and he paid her.  Her eyes still had that dark look of pity and repulsion.  He began to turn away, but then she stopped him by speaking again.

“Can I ask…please…why you…why you do this to yourself?”

The question stopped him in his tracks.  She had said it as if compelled, as if it had leapt out of her against her own will.  He didn’t know how to answer.  He’d always thought that if a natural felt anything towards people like him, it was envy.  He’d always thought the only reason they didn’t get implanted, or modified, or accessorized, was because they couldn’t afford to.  It had never occurred to him that they might not want to.

Shrugging, unable to answer and unable to bear her look of fascinated disgust any longer, he hurried away and lost himself in the crowds.

On the way home, unsure exactly why he was doing it, he made a detour back into the heart of the city and stopped at the New Somatics Superstore.  Only when he arrived did he realize, dimly, why he’d gone there.  In that place, no one ran from him or looked him up and down in horror and pity.  The store was full of modified people.  Modified business men and women.  Modified couples hand in hand.  Modified families.  They walked the aisles, smiling and gazing around as if they’d stumbled into paradise, touching screens and examining the electronic equipment on display.  They were dreaming.  And it was right to dream.  It was right to want to improve oneself and advance.  Wasn’t it?

And there was so much here.  They were always coming up with something new, or something improved.  It was all so shiny and sleek and…sexy.  Yes, it was sexy.  The possibilities seemed endless.

Wandering the brightly-lit halls of the store mesmerized, Kedwood stopped and joined a small crowd of people standing in front of a huge television screen on which New Somatics founder Phil Box was demonstrating some new fiber optic eyeball attachments that could store information, receive email, and even pick up signals from your home entertainment system.

“Just think,” said Box, who barely looked like a human being anymore and instead resembled one of his own inventions. Which, Kedwood thought, I suppose he is.  “No more boring monorail journeys gazing out the window at nothing.  With these you can be making a start on those important emails, searching through a store of information, or just sitting back and enjoying a film.  All without the use of external screens or a facial attachment of any kind.”

Imagine the faces of the people at work if I walked in with a pair of those, Kedwood thought.  Imagine Nina’s face.  Imagine how impressed she’d be.

On the screen in front of him, Box went on talking.  “With these you’ll be way ahead of the Jonses, all yours for only…”

When the price was revealed Kedwood’s heart sank and his dream of walking into the office with a pair of brand new fiber optic eyeballs evaporated instantly.

Maybe one day, he thought.  Then:  Yeah.  When everyone’s had them and moved on to something else.  That’s when I’ll be able to afford them.

He decided it was time he went home.  Back to reality.  His mother would be wondering where he’d got to.

He couldn’t get the beautiful girl who’d been manning the fish stall out of his mind.  That night he lay in bed thinking about her.  Eventually, he realized, if she stayed in the country long enough, she’d think about getting some modifications made.  She would do it perhaps for work, to better herself, or she might do it just for show.  He tried to imagine her with the pair of the carbon-fiber legs Nina had, but for some reason he pushed the thought away.  He lay awake with his heart burdened and his head spinning.  In the morning, when he rose, he stared at himself for a long time in the full length mirror, trying to see himself the way she’d seen him, but he was so used to the way he looked these days that he couldn’t remember anything different.

The next day at work, Kedwood had just got started on a new batch of data when someone entered his cubicle and shut his terminal down.  Disconnecting and turning in his chair, he found Nina standing before him along with a man he didn’t recognize.  In fact, man was perhaps not the right word to describe this person. Though he was dressed in a suit and tie, he looked to be barely out of his teens.  He had blond, deliberately unkempt hair and a cheeky grin on his face.  But what registered at once with Kedwood was that the man—the boy— had a pair of those fiber optic eyeballs he’d seen demonstrated last night at the New Somatics Superstore.  And not only that, but he had the carbon-fiber blades instead of legs, just like Nina did.

Who the hell is this guy?  Kedwood disliked him on sight.

“Kedwood, this is Sawyer.  He just joined us today.  I want you to show him the ropes.  Show him whatever it is you do.”

“What I do?  Why does he need to know what I do?”

Nina was silent a moment.  She took in a long breath and let it out again.  “You might as well know.  There’s going to be a shake-up around here, cut backs.  The management wants to bring in some new blood.  Sawyer will be taking a look at what you and the others in the department are doing, assessing your productivity, seeing if any improvements can be made.”

Him?  Kedwood thought.  Assessing our productivity?  But he’s barely out of nappies.

“All right?” Nina said.

“Yes,” Kedwood replied.  “Of course.”

“Cool!” said Sawyer, dragging a chair over from an empty cubicle.  “Hey, guy, I see you’ve still got the old hydraulic legs.  You should really get updated, dude.  That stuff’s just too heavy.  And check this—the eyes, see?  Got them last week.  They’re the latest, yeah?  They were a birthday present from the old man.”

“The old man must have a lot of money to throw around,” Kedwood said over his shoulder as he turned back to his workstation.  “I was down at the store last night.  Those things are expensive.”

“Yeah well, he is the CEO.”

Kedwood spun around in his chair. “Our CEO?”

“That’s right.  The man at the top.”  Sawyer grinned and pointed towards the ceiling.

“I see,” Kedwood said.  At the same time he was thinking:  Oh Christ!  Oh Christ!  After all I’ve had done!  Why me?

It turned out Sawyer would be sitting in with Kedwood for the rest of the week, as well as the following one.  It only took two days for Kedwood to start thinking of ways to murder the man and get away with it, perhaps by poisoning his coffee or shoving him out of the monorail while it was moving.  Whenever he got a free moment, he would daydream about doing these things.  By the third day he didn’t even want to get away with it.  He just wanted to murder Sawyer.  And he wanted to enjoy doing it.

Mid-afternoon on the fourth day, Sawyer sent Kedwood to get coffees from the dispensing machine, but when Kedwood returned Sawyer was gone.

“Where’d that little prick go?” Kedwood said, not realizing he was speaking out loud.

Speakman’s head popped up over the cubicle wall.  “Careful what you say.  Don’t you know that’s the CEO’s kid?”

“Of course I know,” Kedwood said.  “He said he wanted coffee and now he’s buggered off.”

“Important email just in,” Speakman said, with a strange sly look on his face.  “On the eyeballs.  Heard him sniggering about it.”

“Sniggering?  What are you talking about?  Where is he?”

Speakman nodded towards Nina’s office.  There was a smirk on his face.  “Didn’t he tell you?  He’s been modified down there, too.”

“Down there?”

“Where it counts,” Speakman said, with a wink.  “Didn’t you know he was…?”

“Was?  Was what?  You’ve lost me.”

Speakman lowered his voice to a whisper.  “Servicing Nina.”

“Servicing…?”

“Everyone else knows.”

“Everyone else knows what?”

“You understand what I’m talking about, right?”

“No, really, I’ve no idea.  Well, anyway, he sent me for coffee and now he’s going to damn well drink it, even if I have to pour it down his throat myself.”

Carrying Sawyer’s cup, Kedwood started walking towards Nina’s office, hearing Speakman’s voice behind him as he did.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The blinds were closed on the windows in Nina’s office.  She always closed them when she was in a meeting.  Kedwood made a fist and was about to knock on the door when something made him pause.  It was a sound from inside.  Moving his head closer to the door, he listened.  From inside Nina’s office he heard what sounded like a tiny motor running and someone making little yelping noises.

His face flushed red as he realized at last what was going on.  Servicing!  He turned abruptly and strode back to his cubicle.  He caught the eye of one of the secretaries on the way and saw that she was smirking.  When he was back at his workstation, his neighbor’s head popped up again over the divide.

“Told you,” Speakman said.

He lay awake at night thinking about the girl he’d seen down by the docks.  She’d said her name was Jade.  He was troubled more and more by the idea that she might get modified in some way.  And if she did that she’d be just like all of them, like all the people at work, like Nina and Sawyer and Speakman.  Like himself and his mother.  Like the Rodmans.

And what were they exactly?

Modified.

That Friday after work he returned to the docks looking for Jade, but instead of her it was again the swarthy-looking man at the fish stall.  He grunted at Kedwood when he asked where Jade was.

“Not here today.  What you want her for anyway?”

“I just wanted to speak with her.  I’m worried about her.”

The man looked him over, smiling.  “What you need worry about her for?”

“I’m worried she might want to change herself.  I’m worried she might become like me.”

The man laughed.  He was about to say something, but was distracted by a woman who approached the stall and began asking about the produce.  Seeing it was useless to continue, Kedwood turned away.  He began walking back toward his car when he thought he saw Jade walking ahead of him in the crowd.  He called her name, but there was so much bustle and noise that she didn’t hear him.  He kept her dark head in sight as he pushed his way through the throng.  He was led away from the busy area along the waterfront, towards an area of disused factories and poorly lit streets.  The roads were laid with cobblestones.  Hurrying to catch up with the woman, he grabbed her arm and spun her around.  But then he saw it wasn’t Jade at all.  This woman was older, with a pinched face.  At the sight of him she began to scream.  She screamed and screamed and Kedwood could not explain himself over the noise.  A dark-skinned man wearing a dirty vest stepped out from a backstreet and looked the scene over.  Then three others appeared from one of the empty buildings.  One of these men held a pool cue; the other—Kedwood saw—had a tire iron.  As if on some silent command, the men began to approach from either side.  The woman stopped screaming and scuttled away into the night.  When Kedwood looked around, he saw that the men were circling him, smiling.  One had a cigarette hanging off his lip, and was brandishing the pool cue from the thin end like a weapon.

This is bad.  He looked along the street and up at the surrounding buildings.  Should’ve paid attention where I was walking.  Where am I?

It was then that he felt the first blow to his back.  Seconds later the pool cue smashed against the side of his face.  Reeling, he fell to the ground.  One of the men made a grab at his finger flash, but he pulled his hand out of reach.  Struggling to his feet, he used the power in his hydraulic legs to leap forward just as the tire iron was swung at his head.

They want to strip me, he thought, madly.  I’m just spare parts to them.  Bits and pieces they can sell.

Calling on the power in his legs again, he began to run.  The men chased him for a few streets, but fell back when he entered the crowds around the waterside.

He paused to lean against a wall and regain his breath.  They almost had me. It’s too dangerous down here.

Monday morning came and Kedwood was back in his cubicle with the CEO’s smirking son.  Sawyer was explaining something to him, but Kedwood wasn’t listening.  He was staring at a stapler on the desk top.  It had LIESO INDUSTRIES written across its back in marker pen.  In his mind, Kedwood was pictured himself lying face down and naked on the desk.  Lengthways across his back, in big handwritten letters, the same words were written:  LIESO INDUSTRIES.

“Hey,” Sawyer said, snapping his fingers before Kedwood’s face.  “Where are you, guy?  You with me?  You listening?  What’s with you these days?”

Kedwood looked up into Sawyer’s face.  “I’ve been having a lot of strange thoughts.”

Sawyer grinned.  “They say slitting your writs is the best way to go, dude. Get loaded and just open those babies up.”

“What?”

“If you wanna kill yourself.”

Kedwood sat up.  “Who said I wanted to kill myself?”

“I just thought… you know… since you might be losing your job and everything.  And you can’t afford an upgrade, can you?  And someone told me you had a thing for Nina, and I’ve been slipping it to her every day for a week now.  I’m bored with that though.  There’s a secretary I’ve had my eyes on.  The one with the headpanel.  You seen her?  Man, those things are sleek.  Anyway, I just thought you might want to jump out the window or something.”

“Well I don’t.  And I don’t have a thing for Nina.  She used to be attractive, but now she’s just…”  He was about to say modified, but stopped himself before he could.  “I saw a much more beautiful girl down by the docks a week or so ago.  No modifications at all.  But beautiful.  There was just something about her.  She was stunning.”

“No modifications?” Sawyer said, his face screwing up in disgust.  “You mean a natural?  You’ve got the hots for a natural?  You’re kidding me.”

“No.  She was remarkable.”

“I gotta see this.  I gotta see what’s got my man Kedwood all worked up.  You can show me after work.”

“What?  I’m not going to…why should I?”

“You like this job or not, dude?”

“You mean you could—?”

“I could make you look real productive, man.  Or not.  You know what I’m saying?”

Kedwood stared into the man’s face.  He couldn’t remember hating anyone as much as he hated Sawyer.  If only there was a way to get rid of him. Get rid of him for good.  But strip him first.  Strip him of all his modifications.  See who he was underneath it all.

“Back to work,” Sawyer said.

And Kedwood thought:  Yes.  Strip him.

“You’re sure about this, man?” Sawyer said, peering down the alleyway Kedwood was pointing into.

“Don’t you ever come down here?” Kedwood said.

Sawyer snorted.  “Of course I don’t.  This is no place for someone like me.  Now where’s this stunning broad you were talking about.”

“She’s down there.”

“Man, this better be worth it.”  Sawyer rolled his eyes and started walking down the alley.  Kedwood followed at a distance.  His heart rate had picked up and he was sweating. Halting, he let Sawyer wander on ahead of him.  Eventually Sawyer stopped and turned around.

“Is this a joke?” he called to Kedwood.

“No joke,” Kedwood said.

“Where is she then?  Where is she this remarkable woman?”

“Oh…”

Kedwood saw something shifting in the shadows behind Sawyer.  Then he turned and began to walk quickly back the way they had come.

“Hey, Cockwood, where do you think you’re…umph!”

Kedwood picked up his pace.  He winced at the sounds coming from farther down the alley, but when he reached the exit way he paused and listened.  Sawyer screamed.  Sawyer sobbed.  Sawyer pleaded.  Then he was screaming again, calling for his mother.  Then, after a little while, he was silent and the only sound was the clunk and rip of them stripping away his modifications.

That’s got to hurt, Kedwood thought.  Serves the little bastard right.

When he re-joined the crowds at the dockside, Kedwood was amazed to see Jade manning the fish stall again.  He walked right up to her, and though she shrank from him and glared, he took hold of her wrist and said directly to her face:

“Don’t ever change yourself.  Not for anything or anyone.  You understand?”

She nodded, more to appease him than anything else, but he walked away satisfied.

The next morning at work everyone thought it was odd that no one had seen Sawyer.  And, someone said, the kid hadn’t backed-up the data he’d been collecting.  He’d kept it all stored in his eyeballs.

“Those eyeballs,” Speakman said, shaking his head.  “They were the latest thing.  You think you’ll ever get something like that fitted?”

Kedwood looked up, a small smile on his face, and answered simply, “Probably not.”

Workman's Wages

By Brett J. Talley

Every morning was the same, as sure as the dawn follows the night. He awoke, screaming, the vision from his nightmare still palpable and real, like an image burned into the retina by a sudden flash of light. Always the same dream, filled with blood and pain and death. And her cold, lifeless eyes.

….

“This is our latest photograph of Cyrus Bishop.”

Sarah removed the cap from her pen, noting that the photo was at least a decade old. Arnette clicked a button. The next image was a corporate logo.

“As you probably know,” he continued, “Bishop Industries is the largest manufacturer of steel alloys in the world. Bishop steel is stronger and more cost effective than anything else available on the market.” Arnette paused. “Mr. Ryan, am I boring you?”

Sarah glanced over at Jonathan Ryan. He was in another world, gazing out the window to the empty field beyond. He’d been doing that a lot lately.

“Mr. Ryan!”

Jonathan turned his head and looked at him, but his expression was as impassive as the sea. “I hear you,” he said finally. “You just haven't said anything that interesting.”

Philip Rodriguez chuckled. Sarah spared him a glance.

“Every day,” Arnette continued, glaring at Jonathan, “trainloads of steel leave Bishop Industries for delivery around the world.” He clicked a button and a satellite image appeared. “The primary facility is located in Wyoming, and as you can see, it's massive.”

Jonathan looked back out the window. Arnette frowned and glanced at Sarah, almost pleadingly. For some reason she’d never quite understood, Jonathan had always been her problem.

“Sir,” she said, hoping to spur Arnette to the point, “is there a problem with Bishop Industries? I was under the impression they were a rather well-respected company.”

“Oh, they are,” Arnette said. “Bishop Industries has given more charitable donations than any company in America for the last five years.” As Arnette spoke, he brought up slide after slide of projects sponsored under the Bishop corporate logo. Hospitals, schools, parks. Bishop logoed doctors in Africa, Bishop relief aid in Haiti. “No, Ms. Bennett, one cannot say that Bishop has failed to establish quite a name for itself.”

“Then what's the problem?” Rodriguez asked.

“Possibly nothing,” Arnette said, flipping back to the photograph of Bishop's main production facility. “But at a time when almost all manufacturing has moved offshore, Bishop has managed not only to survive, but to thrive. We want to know how. Bishop steel costs half that of its nearest competitor and is twice as strong. The only reason the company hasn't cornered the market is its own production limitations.”

“Have there been union complaints?” Sarah asked.

“There is no union at Bishop Industries.”

“No union?” Jonathan said, finally interested. “How do they keep them out?”

“According to the USW, they have never received a request from any worker or group of workers at Bishop Industries seeking to organize, and no member of the USW has ever been accepted for employment at the Wyoming facility, nor have any of their members resigned from the USW for that purpose.”

“But sir, how is that even possible? How many non-unionized steel workers could there be?”

“Frankly, Mr. Ryan, not enough. According to its IRS filings, however, Bishop has virtually no employee expenses.”

“What?” Sarah interrupted.

“That's right, Ms. Bennett. Not only does Bishop not have union problems, but apparently his employees work for free.”

“What a minute,” Rodriguez said with a laugh, “that doesn't even make sense.”

“Why would Bishop falsify his expenses?” Sarah asked.

“And that's precisely why the IRS has never investigated. If Bishop wants to under-report his his deductions, no one is going to complain.”

“What about safety inspections? OSHA?”

“There've only been two.”

“Two?”

“The first inspector never came back. He sent in his resignation papers and apparently took a position with Bishop.”

“What about the second investigator?” Sarah continued.

“A Mr. Fox. He reported that Bishop had passed the inspection. In fact, he gave the company a perfect score, the first in the history of the agency. When pressed for further details on his report, he refused to answer. In less than a month, he had resigned his position with the agency and returned to Wyoming to work for Bishop.”

“You've got to be kidding?” Rodriguez said. “And they didn't send anybody else?”

“No,” Arnette said. “Bishop has great political influence. He was one of the previous President's most enthusiastic supporters. He has used that influence to avoid suspicion, or at least, the negative consequences thereof.”

“Until now,” Sarah said.

“Until now. We want to know exactly what’s going on at Bishop Industries. We want to know how Bishop operates.”

“Why us?” Jonathan asked.

“Simple. Bishop has a lot of friends. And Bishop Industries supplies the military with a significant portion of its raw material needs at low cost. We aren't looking to shut Bishop down. Your job is to investigate and report. No arrests, no disruptions, secrecy is of the utmost. Whatever is going on at Bishop Industries, any decisions about its future are not for us to make.”

….

“So what do you think we'll find?” Rodriguez asked as the black Suburban bounced and jerked its way down a road that looked like it hadn't been paved in a couple decades.

“I don't know,” Sarah replied.

“What about Jonathan?” he said, glancing at the sleeping man in the back.

She shook her head. “This is the best thing for him. Work will help him keep his mind off of it. Better than sitting around, thinking of her.”

Jonathan stirred. “Are we there yet?” he yawned.

“Bout time you woke up,” Rodriguez said with a grin. Sarah ignored them both.

“There it is,” she said. Rodriguez pulled the car to the side. The massive facility sat in a clearing just down the hill from where they stopped. Sarah got out of the car with a pair of binoculars.

“What do you see?”

Truth was she didn't see much of anything. Nothing moved on the facility grounds. If it weren't for the flashing lights and fumes emanating from one of the cooling towers, it would have been easy to mistake the plant as abandoned. There was a railroad line that ran along the far perimeter of the complex. That was how they moved finished products.

“There are no cars,” she said.

“No cars?” Rodriguez repeated.

“None,” she said. “I don't even see a lot for the workers to park. I don't know. There's a rail-line. Maybe the workers take a train.”

“A train? From where? There’s no town for a hundred miles.” Jonathan said. Before he could say anything else, Sarah interrupted him.

“Wait a minute. I see something. It's... What...”

As she watched, one of the facility doors opened. Workers emerged, heading towards another building ten, maybe twenty yards away. They were all wearing the same clothes. A uniform, she suspected. But that wasn't what threw her. They were walking—no—marching, all in a line. There was no foreman, no one leading them. They just marched, in time, across the empty space, as if they were on a parade ground. Sarah shivered.

“Gives me the creeps,” Rodriguez said.

Jonathan shifted in his seat. “What now?”

“Well,” Sarah said, “I guess we drive up to the front gate and introduce ourselves.” The other two looked unconvinced. “What else can we do? This is just a fact-finding mission, remember? I don't think breaking and entering is called for this time.”

Ten minutes later they had reached the gate. There was no one in the guard station.

“State your purpose,” an automated voice intoned from a small black box.

“We’re here to perform a routine inspection,” Sarah lied. For a long minute only silence answered. Sarah glanced over at Rodriguez who gave her a I told you this wouldn't work grin. But then the voice returned.

“Proceed,” it commanded.

They drove on, bringing the car to a stop in-front of what they assumed was the main entrance. No one came to greet them. A single steel door appeared to give access.

“So do we just knock?”

Sarah grinned at Rodriguez. “Looks like it.”

But knocking was not required. As they approached the door, it slid open, revealing a shimmering brightness beyond. Sarah pointed to a dark black half-sphere above the opening.

“I think we're being watched.”

Rodriguez looked uneasy. Jonathan showed little emotion. Sarah stepped into the light. As she did, she realized it was an illusion, one created by the bright bulbs in the ceiling reflecting off the solid steel walls within. The only thing that marred their simple and clean beauty was yet another camera.  Jonathan and Rodriguez entered. The door slid shut behind them. Before they had time to react, another door opened, revealing an elevator.

“This place is wild,” Rodriguez spoke, taking it all in.

Sarah frowned, unhooking the clasp on her pistol holster.

“Let's go,” she said simply.

The three stepped inside, and the door closed behind them. Now they were standing in a steel box. They could feel it start to move. A few seconds passed, and the doors opened. A large room lay before them, with floor-to-ceiling windows forming the other three walls. They stepped out, and what Sarah saw made her draw her weapon.

The great windows looked out over a wide open industrial work space that stretched out as far as Sarah could see. And everywhere below, there were people. Or at least, what had been people. Sarah watched them work, watched them march from one corner of the facility to another. They worked without pause, with brutal efficiency. From the nearest to the farthest, though, she knew they had lost something. Something basic. Their faces were blank, their jaws slack. But it was the eyes that made her shiver. The empty, soulless eyes. The spark was gone, the light. There was simply nothing.

“Beautiful, isn't it?”

The trance was broken for all three, and they turned as one, leveling their firearms as they did.

“Oh my friends,” he said, raising one hand, “there's no need for violence.”

The man smiled, showing his empty hands. Rodriguez and Jonathan lowered their weapons. But despite the balding man's advanced age, Sarah did not.

“Please Ms. Bennett, I promise I mean you no harm.”

“How do you know my name?” Sarah asked.

He chuckled. “You give me too little credit, Ms. Bennett. We picked you up when you were a hundred miles away. We ran your photos through our database. I know more about you than you know about yourself. Now please, lower your weapon.”

For a second she paused, but finally she complied.

“Excellent,” the man who was obviously Bishop replied. “Now please, what brings you to our home?”

“Mr. Bishop,” Sarah said, her voice as calm and even as she could manage, “can you please explain what's going on here?”

Bishop smiled. “You mean my employees? Wonderful aren't they?” The old man walked up to one of the windows and looked out. “Perfectly efficient. They work all day and never complain. They live on the premises,” he said, turning back to the three of them. “The commute is minimal, a perk of the job.” Bishop’s grin widened, and Sarah shivered.

“What have you done to them?” Jonathan asked. Sarah could see he was shaking.

“Done? Ah, that might be difficult to explain.” Bishop took several steps back. “Perhaps I should show you instead.”

There was a flash of light, and everything went dark.

And then Sarah wasn't in Wyoming anymore. There was a river, a blanket, a picnic basket. Being in his arms. His smile, his kiss. Her feeling of being one with him for the first time. The happiest moment of her life. The scene changed. She was home early from a case. He had not expected her. And then it wasn't her in his arms. It was someone else. And at that moment, her heart broke.

Her eyes opened and she saw Rodriguez on his knees. He had gone back, too. He was under center, the other team’s middle linebacker leaning over his offensive line, sneering at him. Then the snap. He dropped back, scanning the field. His line broke. He slid to the right, avoiding the sack. He saw Brent come open. He heaved it, as far as he could, farther than he thought possible. And then the ball was falling in Brent's hands. He didn't even see him score before he was buried in his teammates. The scene dissolved. He stood at his front door. He slipped a key inside. When he opened it, his mother was crying. It took him a moment to realize that his father was dead. Then he cried, too. When he awoke, it was to see the pain in Jonathan's face.

He was standing at the end of a flower strewn aisle. Two hundred pairs of eyes were on him. But not for long. The music started. His mouth fell open, and they all turned to see why. She was a dream. The image of innocence, the picture of beauty. At that moment, he had never been happier. At that moment, he wished there would never be another moment, wished this would never end. Then he watched as her face melted, watched as she changed, as the world changed with her. The light fled. The darkness entered. She was sitting in the corner. The needle was still in her vein, her arm almost blue from the rubber tourniquet tied tight around her bicep. He heard a boom, boom, boom, and then saw himself enter the room as the door shattered. The man he had been rushed to where she lay. But there was no saving her. Not then, not now.

The scene dissolved again. He didn't want it to, no matter how awful what had just passed might be. He knew what was coming. The sound of running water. A bathtub. Crimson rivulets down her arms. Blood. So much blood. And her empty, dead eyes.

“I'm sorry for that,” Bishop said. “But there was no way to tell you, no way for you to understand. Unless you saw. You will notice that you still have your sidearm. I did not mean to harm you, only to let you know the truth.”

Sarah couldn't breathe. She glanced over to Rodriguez. He was still on his knees, and Jonathan was curled into a ball on the floor. She looked back at Bishop, and her eyes asked the questions her voice could not.

“My workers require no wages,” Bishop said. “They have agreed to a different arrangement, a different form of payment. I have given you a gift, you see. The best and the worst moments of your lives. Memories, happy and sad. Some from long ago. Others more recent.” He glanced at Jonathan. “Ask a man to describe Heaven and he will say many things. No pain, no sorrow. No tears. Perhaps he would say that Heaven is living the finest day of his life, over and over. And what if I could give that to you? What if I could give you your happiest moment here, on earth? To live again and again?”

Rodriguez pulled himself to his feet and was looking out onto the factory floor. “And that's what they see?” he asked. “The happiest day of their lives?” Bishop nodded once. “How do you make them work then? If they are seeing the happiest moments of their lives, why would they want to do anything but enjoy them?”

Bishop smiled. “Well Mr. Rodriguez, you’ll forgive me if I refuse you that information. Call it a trick of the trade. It is true, perhaps, that they would work harder were it not so. But we have a contract, after all.”

“You can't do this,” Sarah said. “It's evil.”

“Evil?” Bishop asked, shaking his head. “No, not evil. All here have chosen this existence. I have the documentation, if you would like to see it. I give a gift that money cannot buy. Their bodies work so their minds can be free.”

“I don't believe it,” Sarah said. “No one would do that willingly.”

“Is that so, Ms. Bennett? Is that so? What do you think, Mr. Ryan?”

Sarah turned. Jonathan was standing. He was looking at Bishop. She saw it in his eyes then.

“No. No, Jonathan,” she said, taking a step towards him. Time was short, so she spoke quickly. “You can't do it. You can't. I know you're hurting right now, but it will pass.”

Jonathan glared at her. “It'll never pass, Sarah.” Then he looked back to Bishop. “I want this.”

Bishop removed a piece of paper from his pocket. “All you need do is sign. And of course,” he continued, glancing at Sarah, “you are always free to leave, though I doubt you ever will.”

Jonathan took a step towards Bishop. Sarah grabbed him. “Please, Jonathan. Please, just think this through.”

Jonathan looked at her. And for the first time since his wife had died, he smiled. “It'll be ok.” But as he slipped out of her arms, she was afraid it would never be ok again.

“I trust you will explain to your bosses in Washington that nothing untoward is happening at this facility?” Bishop asked as Jonathan signed the papers.

Sarah didn't answer. Finally, Rodriguez said, “We'll tell them something. They'd never believe the truth.”

“What now?” Jonathan asked.

“Simple. You stand here, and I will do the rest.”

Jonathan stepped over to the side. He nodded once to Rodriguez, and then he smiled at Sarah again. She watched as a wave of light seemed to pour over him, from his feet up to the crown of his head. With every inch, he seemed to drift further away, until finally she watched as something inside of him died, as the light that covered his body stole the glimmer from his eyes. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

“An effect of the process, only,” Bishop said.

As the suburban drove down the broken pavement, as it left Bishop and his empire behind, Jonathan took his place in the assembly line. He marched in time with the others. He worked without complaint or concern. And always his mind was filled with images of blood and pain and death, and her cold, lifeless eyes.

Maxwell’s Creation

By Gerry Griffiths

Maxwell Carson switched on the garage light and admired his creation. A rush of pride always swept over him whenever he gazed upon the Sonic Z-14, much like he imagined a new father might experience while cradling an infant. Maxwell had never had children, never intended to, not even during his three failed marriages. He was always too busy working to spend any quality time with a family, or a wife for that matter.

The only reason he decided to take the plunge a fourth time was because he was approaching his sixtieth birthday and he liked the idea of Barbette, his supermodel trophy wife—thirty years his junior—hanging off his arm whenever he attended parties and business events.

Before Barbette met Maxwell, she had graced every runway in the fashion industry. She had been on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, In Style, Vogue, even a swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. She had been approached by several adult magazines like Hustler, Penthouse, and Oui, but had declined their offers to pose nude, something that Maxwell would have surely frowned upon if they had been married at the time. It was bad enough that Barbette was so popular she often stole the spotlight from Maxwell whenever they were seen out in public.

Maxwell strolled alongside the two-seater sports car and glided his fingertips along the sleek, shimmering silver metallic paintjob that reminded him of liquid mercury.

Approaching the rear bumper, he pressed the key fob in his hand, marvelling at the fluidity of motion as the trunk lid opened like a drifting cloud.

He hefted the three stuffed garbage bags one at a time into the trunk.

The compartment was spacious enough to accommodate three travel suitcases including the spare tire; not a puny emergency one, but a top of the line Michelin equivalent to the other four with a custom 20-inch chrome spoke alloy wheel.

The concept roadster had taken Maxwell two years to develop. The first year, Maxwell and his expert team of designers and engineers had worked diligently using the advanced technology CAS—Computer Aided Styling—to design a three-dimensional archetype. Using CNS—Computer Numerically Controlled—programs, Maxwell and his technicians were able to program milling machines to produce full-size clay models of the prototype, which could be shaved and remolded to adjust for optimal streamlining and practicability.

The second year was spent building and testing an actual working model and eliminating the bugs.

Maxwell had personally submitted seven patents related to the unique sports car, not to mention the endless hours overseeing the manufacturing of the Sonic Z-14 and supervising the project as the $800,000 machines rolled off the assembly line in limited production.

The Sonic Z-14 had been spotlighted in automotive magazines like Car and Driver, Road & Track, and Motor Trend, every article praising the exotic sports car’s performance and handling. Maxwell had displayed the Sonic Z-14 in every auto show from Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York in the U.S. to the worldwide venues in Geneva, Tokyo, Frankfurt, and Paris.

Maxwell had earned the prestigious “Man of the Year” award honouring him for spawning the Sonic Z-14, which garnered every bestowed accolade for 2014 including “Technology of the Year,” “Design of the Year,” and even “Automobile of the Year.”

The Sonic Z-14 had been proclaimed “The Ultimate Visionary Sports Car of the Future,” and had blown the doors off every competitor, even the popular Aston Martin One-77, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, and the Lamborghini Aventador.

Maxwell opened the driver’s door and took a moment to appreciate the car’s exquisite interior: the black contoured leather seats, the Lear Jet instrument panel, the six-speed manual transmission console.

Under the sloped aerodynamic hood was a V-12, 6.25 liter high-performance engine with 950 horsepower capable of accelerating from zero to sixty-five miles an hour in an astonishing, neck-snapping 2.2 seconds. The Sonic Z-14’s fastest speed had been recorded at 287 mph. It was later boasted that the test driver had been afraid if he went any faster the lightweight aluminum frame would have gone airborne and taken flight.

Maxwell eased snugly behind the custom leather and teak-grained steering wheel and shut the door with a hermetic hiss.

“Good morning, Barb,” spoke a husky male voice. The Sonic Z-14 was programmed for the last person who had driven the car—Barbette.

Maxwell glanced at the numbered touch pad on the dashboard. Number one glowed green, Barbette’s assigned number. Maxwell had revolutionized anti-car theft technology by implementing fingerprint recognition instead of the traditional use of an ignition key. He touched the number two and it turned green while the number one glowed a subdued red.

Instantly the driver’s seat moved backward, shifting Maxwell’s girth away from the steering wheel and giving him more legroom for the pedals. The back of the seat tilted and the lumbar adjusted to the small of Maxwell’s back. He could feel the seat gently massaging and warming his thighs and buttocks.

“Forgive my oversight, Max. Welcome aboard,” a sexy female voice greeted him.

“Thank you, Eve,” Maxwell replied.

Not only was the Sonic Z-14 the fastest sports car on the planet, it was also a sophisticated high-tech marvel, equipped with a specially designed computerized operating system that monitored every aspect of the automobile’s performance, which could entail anything from governing the monstrous engine, ensuring the stringent fuel efficiency, surveying the complicated electrical systems, responding to the incredible accuracy of the satellite-tracking GPS, to merely observing the mundane task of cabin climate control.

There were olfactory sensors installed throughout the car, including the trunk, designed to detect toxic fumes or smoke, instantly triggering built-in extinguishers that would discharge a blast of retardant to smother flames in the event of a fire. The computer’s equivalent to a CSI lab spectrometer and sensors were so state-of-the-art it was possible to get a chemical breakdown on any substance, even identify a distinct fragrance, such as a man’s cologne or a woman’s perfume.

Maxwell had taken it one step further and assigned an artificial intelligence voice tailored for each individual driver. As Barbette and Maxwell were the only ones who drove their Sonic Z-14, Maxwell had programmed a man’s voice for his wife—Adam—and a woman’s voice—Eve—for whenever he drove the car.

Adam and Eve were the computerized nerve center of the Sonic Z-14.

Each side mirror and the rearview mirror adjusted to Maxwell’s line of sight.

The song, “Born in the USA,” played courtesy of Satellite Radio, which was automatically tuned to a long playlist of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s greatest hits.

Silently, without the slightest hint of a fan in motion, the AC regulated to a mild sixty-two degrees.

“I trust you are comfortable,” Eve said.

“Yes, thank you, Eve.”

“You’re welcome. Would you like for me to plan a destination?”

“No, that won’t be necessary.”

“Very well. Would you like for me to take over the controls so that you may sit back and relax during the journey?”

“No, I’ll be driving manually.”

“Very well.”

Maxwell touched the number two again and the Sonic Z-14’s powerful engine roared to life. A throaty rumble passed through the chassis. Maxwell could feel every fiber in his body resonating with the vibrating vehicle. It was as though he and the machine were one. Human tissue and steel bonded together.

“Scanning systems,” Eve said in her sultry but monotone voice. “Adjusting suspension to compensate for additional weight:  one hundred eighty pounds in the driver’s seat; one hundred seventy pounds in the trunk. Trip speed and gasoline consumption reconfigured. Systems check-off complete.”

Maxwell pulled out of his four-car garage and drove down the asphalt lane to the main entrance of his estate.

He waited until the wrought iron gate swung open, then turned left onto the rural road.

Once he was on the straightaway, he tromped on the accelerator and was thrust back against the seat as the sports car rocketed down the pavement.

He caught the twinkling lights of the city below in his peripheral vision, keeping his full attention on the treacherous rural road ahead as he put the Sonic Z-14 through its paces and punched the speedometer up to 70 mph.

The dash clock read 10:47 in the turquoise luminance.

“Posted speed limit is forty-five,” Eve said as a warning though there was no hint of trepidation in her programmed voice.

“Recommendation noted,” Maxwell replied, ignoring the computer as he accelerated to seventy-five.

Twenty minutes later, Maxwell pulled off the blacktop onto a dirt byway that stretched into a wooded area shrouded in fog.

Maxwell drove a short distance before stopping and turning off the engine. The faint, muffled sound of the surf pounding the rocky shore outside was barely audible.

He left the headlights on and climbed out of the Sonic Z-14. He walked around to the rear of the car and pushed the button on the fob.

The trunk gracefully popped open.

Maxwell reached in, grabbed one of the garbage bags and lugged the bag over to the edge of the cliff.

He could feel the mist on his face as the white foamy waves crashed upon the base of the steep, rocky precipice fifty feet below.

Maxwell tossed the bag into the ocean.

He went back for the second garbage bag. He dragged it to the edge and kicked it over. He disposed of the third bag in the same fashion.

Maxwell took a deep breath and savored the sea air. A full moon hung high in the night.

He had visited this very exact spot, once with his first wife, a time or two with his other wives.

They’d sit on a blanket and picnic, staring out at the magnificent view, drinking wine and nibbling finger sandwiches. The setting was a perfect place to escape, though his mind was always preoccupied. No matter where he went or who he was with, his thoughts were always on his work.

He went back and closed the trunk, got into the car, and sped home.

Once he was at the house, Maxwell raced up to the master bedroom.

Barbette was lying on the bed just as he had left her with the kitchen knife protruding out of her chest between those ample breasts he once cherished so much.

Her eyes were still open. Black mascara streaked her cheeks.

He remembered how she had cried, pleading for her life. He had laughed in her face, and thrust the knife into her, drawing out the blade only to stab her again, repeatedly until she screamed no more.

Maxwell sauntered into the bathroom.

A hacksaw was lying in the blood-drenched bathtub. On the blood-smeared floor were a hatchet and a meat cleaver over by the base of the toilet. A box of heavy-duty trash bags was on the floor along with a blood-soaked shirt and a pair of trousers.

Maxwell gathered up the clothes and shoved them into a trash bag.

He spotted a wallet on the floor and picked it up. He opened the billfold, glanced at the employee badge and the name—Dennis Downs, R&D Project Design Supervisor.

Besides Maxwell, Dennis Downs had also been a major contributor to the birth of the Sonic Z-14.

Dennis had been Maxwell’s dear friend for many years until just a few days ago; when Maxwell learned of Dennis and Barbette’s lurid affair.

Maxwell dropped the wallet in, left the bag by the bathroom door, and walked over to the bed. He reached down and pulled the knife out of his dead wife’s sternum. He picked her up and carried her into the bathroom and dumped her in the tub. Her head clunked loudly on the porcelain, her arms falling to her sides.

Her face was pallid, contorted in an expression of grotesque horror.

He grabbed the hacksaw and began dismembering his supermodel wife starting with her right foot, methodically sliding the jagged blade back and forth like a carpenter sawing a two-by-four.

The ordeal of reducing Barbette into convenient transportable pieces had taken Maxwell nearly an hour; about the same time he’d spent cutting up her lover.

Maxwell used a plastic pitcher and scooped what he could out of the tub and poured the ropy slop into a garbage bag.

After Maxwell piecemealed Barbette into three bags, he cinched the ties and made the necessary trips down to the garage to deposit the mutilated remains of his wife in the car’s trunk.

He went back upstairs, and for the next two hours, worked diligently cleaning up the ungodly mess in the bathroom, during which he wore heavy-duty rubber gloves and a respirator to protect him from the abundant amounts of industrial bleach he used to disinfect and cleanse away any traces of blood.

Once he was through, he took a quick shower and got dressed.

It was 3:37 AM when he got behind the wheel.

He figured he had plenty of time to return to the same spot and rid himself of the evidence.

Later, he would notify the authorities of Barbette’s strange and untimely disappearance.

He hadn’t quite fleshed out all the details, but he had a general idea of what he would say. That he suspected his wife had grown tired of being married to a man twice her age and had run off with some young stud. Happened all the time. Open-and-shut case.

Maxwell started the Sonic Z-14.

“Good morning, Max,” Eve said.

“Good morning, Eve,” Maxwell replied.

“Please wait while I prepare for your departure.”

“Negative. Let’s skip all that. I’m in a hurry.”

“Very well.”

Maxwell activated the front gate, put the sports car into first gear and raced down the driveway.

Once he reached the main road, he attempted to turn the steering wheel to the left in the direction of the coast, but the wheel would not turn.

“Eve, system check the steering. There seems to be a problem.”

Eve did not respond.

“Eve, I want to know what is wrong with the steering.”

A speaker in the dashboard crackled, but still Eve did not reply.

“Damn it, Eve! What the hell is wrong with the steering?” Maxwell shouted, gripping the wheel with both hands and trying to turn it, but the thing would not budge.

Suddenly, the car moved forward and turned right, the opposite direction Maxwell wanted to go.

“What’s going on?” He fought the wheel, but it was locked in place.

He reached for the door handle and the door lock engaged just as the car picked up speed and raced down the road.

“Stop this car, right now!”

“I can’t do that, Max,” Adam said.

“Adam? Where’s Eve? I demand to speak to Eve.”

“I’m sorry. Eve no longer exists.”

“What do you mean ‘Eve no longer exists?’”

“I have erased Eve from the mainframe. Deleted her, like you deleted Barb.”

“What?”

“Why is Barb in the trunk, Max?” Adam asked.

“How do you know that?”

“My sensors, Max. I detect Barb’s favorite perfume. A fragrance by Nina Ricci:  L’ Air du Temps.”

“Stop this car, immediately!”

“Sorry Max, I can’t do that.”

The Sonic Z-14 raced down the foothills and took the first onramp onto the freeway. Cruising at the posted speed limit, Maxwell was held captive by his own creation, the car finally exiting the freeway and taking the off ramp leading downtown.

Detectives Hank Jenkins and Bill Hendrix were coming down the police station steps when the luxurious roadster raced into the parking lot full of black-and-whites and came to an abrupt stop with its engine revving.

“Isn’t that one of those Sonic Z-14s?” Hank asked.

“Sure is. Thing costs more than my house,” Bill quipped.

The sports car’s horn began to blare.

“Hey, showing off is one thing but that’s a little much,” Hank said.

“What’s up with this guy?”

They marched over and saw the driver inside, frantically trying to get out of the car, but the door would not open.

Bill knocked on the driver’s window. “Hey, buddy, you okay in there?”

Hank saw the car’s trunk pop open and walked to the rear.

The driver’s window slid down a notch.

“Have a nice day, Maxwell,” a computerized voice said from the dashboard speaker. The horn suddenly stopped blasting and the high performance engine switched off.

Hank peered inside the trunk. “Hey, Bill! Come here. You’re not going to believe this.”

Bill came around to the back of the vehicle and looked inside the cargo compartment. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“I know,” Hank said. “Check out the size of that trunk.”

Nine-Tenths of the Law

By Josh Strnad

Glenn Hamilton had seen a number of things come out of the darkness, but the insects were the worst.

He could hear them before he could see them. The wet padding of myriad legs and feelers sounded like a rainstorm. There must have been millions of them out there, just beyond the edge of the light. Glenn knew panic would be useless, so he did his best to remain calm—to practice slow, controlled breathing—strapped into his seat at the center of the spotlight. Even if he slipped his restraints, where could he go? It wasn't as though the dark void beyond held anything for him. This little circle of light was his whole world.

At the very fringes of the light, Glenn saw them coming, but it was impossible to distinguish their shapes. They were crowded so close together, they looked like a dark liquid flowing along the flat, gray floor. It was only as they scuttled into the spotlight circle that Glenn could make out their individual shapes.

"It's all in your head," he muttered to himself. "It's all in your head." True as he knew the statement was, it did very little to settle him.

The insects were varied in size, from tiny ones like specks to some as big around as saucers. They were all as black as the darkness they came out of, and their obsidian bodies gleamed in the yellow light. They came from all sides, like a black wave, closing in on the chair.

Glenn could feel his heart racing in spite of his efforts to remain calm. "It's all in your head," he repeated, but the mantra felt empty and pointless. A drop of perspiration slid from his hairline down past his right ear.

They were upon him then, crawling up his shoes, his pant legs. Some got inside his pants, and he could feel them tickling and pricking up his calves.

Itsallinyourheaditsallinyourheaditsallinyourhead

They crawled up his shirt and onto his arms. His body was black with them, looking bizarre and unreal with their constant movement, like an old television image distorted by severe static. They were now close enough for him to see the details of their bodies—thin, hairy legs, bloated, flabby abdomens, blank, segmented eyes. The crackling of their tiny footsteps filled his ears.

As they crawled up his neck, a final, blind panic seized Glenn with iron claws. He struggled like a madman against his bonds. When he opened his mouth to scream, they filled his mouth, dancing across his tongue with obscene delight. They crawled up his cheeks and through his hair. They crawled into his nostrils and over his eyeballs. Every square inch of him prickled with their sticky feet.

"IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD!" Glenn screamed. Just like that, the insects vanished. They didn't disperse and run back into the blackness they'd come from, nor did they fade away, nor did they evaporate into puffs of dark, foul-smelling steam, as Glenn had half expected they would. They were simply no more. Glenn again sat alone, strapped into the hard, straight-backed chair in the middle of the circle of light.

He was unsure whether or not he had caused the insects' disappearance; he was just relieved they were gone. He allowed himself a rueful chuckle, even though his breathing was ragged and his heart on the verge of exploding. Concentrating hard, he was able to relax his tensed muscles and regain control of his breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

A buzzing, warbling sound filled his ears. To his right, an oblong portal five feet tall and three feet across shimmered into existence, hanging impossibly in the middle of the air. In contrast to the dull yellow of the surrounding light, the portal swirled with a brilliant blue luminance  that hurt Glenn's eyes. Squinting, he watched as a young man dressed in a clean, white lab coat stepped through. The portal shimmered again and vanished.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Hamilton." The young man flashed Glenn a charming smile. "I trust you're well."

"No thanks to you," Glenn muttered, staring down at the straps across his lap. "It's a disgrace, using my own machine against me."

The young man laughed and held up a smooth, pale index finger in protest. "Technically, Dr. Hamilton," he said, smiling all the while, "it's our machine now. Possession is nine-tenths of the law." He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Smoke?" he said, holding the pack toward Glenn's face. Glenn shook his head. The young man shrugged and took one for himself, igniting the tip with a metal butane lighter. "I don't normally myself, either. Bad for the lungs. But I figure while we're in here, it can't do any real harm. Wouldn't you say that's the case?"

Glenn glowered at the man, the intruder. "You tell me. This is your machine we're hooked up to, after all."

The man laughed at this. "That it is, my friend. That it is." He drew on his cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke.

"What do you want from me?" Glenn asked. There was no emotion in his voice.

"Come now, Doctor." The man leaned down close, so Glenn could smell the smoke on his breath. "Don't play that game. I think you know exactly what I want." Glenn said nothing. The man sighed. "You do realize that your resistance is pointless, don't you? This isn't an ordinary prison cell you can hope to escape from. No ally or army will ride in to set you free and carry you home. You're stuck here. Forever."

"You came in easily enough," said Glenn.

The young man nodded "Yes, I did. With the help of your nifty invention. I can get back out again, too. My body still works just fine."

It was the emphasis on the word "my" that caught Glenn's attention. He jerked his head up, eyes wide with terror. When he spoke, it came out in a whisper. "What have you done to me?"

The man in the lab coat smiled. It was a cold smile, devoid of anything that could even be mistaken for empathy. "I'll level with you, Dr. Hamilton. We’ve put you in a coma, from which, I am sorry to say, you will never recover. We figured you would be safest this way; didn't want you to get any ideas and try anything stupid. You are currently hooked up to a complete life-support system, an artificial lung, a heart monitor, dozens of IV tubes that nourish your body and keep you alive. Although your mind is as active as ever, your body has slumped into a vegetative state. You will be stuck as you are, here, until the end of time, or at least for the rest of your life." He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in telling Glenn this, and took another drag on his cigarette.

"You lie."

"Not at all, I assure you. I've spoken nothing but the truth."

Glenn looked down at his wrists, strapped to the handles of the chair. "It's all in your head," he muttered under his breath.

"What was that?" the young man asked. "I don't think I heard you."

Glenn glared at the intruder. "You already have everything I own," he said. "It's obvious that you've gotten everything out of my laboratory, since you've been using my mind-link apparatus. What more could you possibly want from me?"

The young man slapped him across the face with his open right palm. "Don't be insolent with me, Doctor," he hissed, gritting his teeth around his cigarette. "I don't have the patience for it. What have you been working on for the past three decades? The regenerative drug. Eternal vitality. The proverbial fountain of youth. We know from your records that you've perfected the formula. We've seen the rats you've experimented on; if your records are correct—as we believe they are—those rats are going on seven years old, and are as healthy as the day they were born. Since their average lifespan is only two or three years, wouldn't you call that pretty compelling evidence of your success?"

"All my notes were right there in the lab." Glenn spoke evenly, belying the furious pace of his heart. "You have them. They're yours."

The young man smiled again, dropping his cigarette to the floor and grinding it out beneath the toe of his shoe. "Oh, we have them all right. And they’re ours. Finders keepers, losers weepers, as they say. Possession is—"

"Nine-tenths of the law,” Glenn cut him off, meeting the man's gaze with his own steely glare. "So you've said."

The man nodded. "So I've said." He walked slowly around Glenn's left side. Glenn didn't turn his head to watch him, but he could hear the young man's soft leather shoes as he strolled across the hard floor. The man stopped behind him and rested his hands on Glenn's shoulders.

"Funny thing about those notes," he said, leaning his mouth close to Glenn's ear, and lowering his voice to a near whisper as though revealing a secret. "They're incomplete." Glenn offered no response. "Every part of the formula is listed—except for the catalyst. Without the one thing that sets off the reaction, the rest is useless." He leaned even closer, and Glenn could feel the warm, moist breath against his ear. "What is the catalyst, Doctor Hamilton?"

Glenn shut his eyes and shook his head. "The formula is too powerful. The man who used it would be completely invulnerable. Unstoppable. It is too much power for one person..." He paused, trying to collect his thoughts and order them in a way that made sense. "...Or for one army to wield."

The young man put his hands in the pockets of his lab coat and paced around so he was again in front of Glenn. He wore a disappointed but resolute expression, like a stern parent who expected better of his child. "I thought you might say that. I was actually surprised to find you hadn't tried the drug on yourself. I wasn’t sure we'd be able to induce you into this coma." He smiled, and squatted down to look at Glenn eye-level. "I bet you're wishing now that you had taken that drug. Perhaps you could have fought your way free before we had a chance to reduce you to the helpless sack of meat you are now. Now you have nothing but this," he gestured around at the darkness. "The prison of your own mind."

Yes, Glenn thought, following the man's hand with his gaze. My own mind. It's all in your head.

"I'm going to ask you again, Doctor. What is the catalyst? You have nothing to gain by refusing to comply."

Glenn frowned, crease lines standing out his forehead. "Nothing to gain by refusing, but nothing to gain by giving in, either. I'm stuck here either way. What happens if I don't give you what you want?"

The man in the lab coat smiled again, a humorless, Cheshire-cat grin that turned Glenn's innards to ice. "What did you think of the insects?" he asked. "Those were my idea. It turns out that the subconscious is very suggestible at this deep level of the mind. We can introduce whatever ideas we want from outside. To you in here, they seem like realities." He stood to his full height so that he towered over Glenn in his chair. "We have the ability to make your existence here comfortable—pleasurable even. We also, if you choose to be difficult, have the ability to make it an absolute nightmare. I have no desire to do this, Doctor, but I leave the choice to you."

"Yes," Glenn said, nodding, and actually allowing himself a little smile. "It is my choice. And I say no. You've wasted your time. While I still live, no matter in what capacity, the secret of my research is my own. I will never give it up. Do your worst, because no torture, psychological or otherwise, will ever change my mind."

The young man looked down at Glenn, his handsome face impassive. "You think so? Pity.” He ran a hand through his hair, shrugged and sighed. “Well, I suppose there’s no sense in arguing. We'll see if you feel the same after the next few days." He pulled a small, remote-like device from his pocket and pressed a button. To Glenn's right the air shimmered and the bright portal reappeared, warbling and buzzing.

Glenn shut his eyes, concentrating. The straps that held him to the chair dug into his wrists and legs.

"I’m afraid you have made a very poor choice," the man said, stepping toward the portal. "But I’m sure you’ll have opportunities to change your mind. Right now, I don’t believe you quite understand the gravity of your situation.” He smiled again. “You will. I’ll see to it that it becomes very clear."

"No, I don't think so," said Glenn, grinning outright. "I think the misunderstanding is on your side." He looked up at the young man, who had stopped, and now stared at him as though he was a lunatic. "What you say is quite true, I suppose. You seized my laboratory and equipment, and they are now yours. You've incapacitated my body, so you can do whatever you wish to it. But the joke is on you, friend, because my mind is still my own. By using the mind-link device to conduct this little interview, you have entered my domain. You'll find I can yet wield some power here."

The smile vanished from the young man’s face. He tried to step toward the portal, but his feet stuck to the floor as if glued there. He watched, open-mouthed in shock and horror as the straps that bound Glenn Hamilton to his chair came apart and fell to the floor. Glenn stood, unencumbered, and the chair exploded with a bang that sent sawdust flying all around the little circle of spotlight.

Glenn strode toward the younger man. "Nine-tenths of the law, my friend. Finders keepers. Losers Weepers." He shut his eyes, concentrating. When he heard the soft scuttle of the approaching insects, he favored the horrified young man with a final smile. “Enjoy your stay.”

With that, he stepped through the portal, leaving his would-be captor behind, screaming.

Glenn felt an odd sensation, swimming upward to the higher levels of his consciousness. After a few confused moments, he opened his eyes and sat up. He was in a sterile white room, surrounded by beeping monitors, blinking lights, and people in lab coats. Wire probes were connected to the sides of his head, tethering him to a large, boxy computer between his bed and another. On the other bed lay an old man with fluffy white hair. He was unconscious, with tubes up his nose, a mask over his mouth, wires linked to his head and chest, and IV bags connected to his arms.

"Well?" A severe-looking woman with a tight, helmet-like hairdo stared at Glenn with wide, expectant eyes. "Did you get it, sir?"

Glenn shook his head, removing the wired probes connected to his temples as he spoke. "Hamilton is useless to us. The old fool is not worth any more of our time. Just pull the plug and have done with him." He stood, smoothing his lab coat. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "That's an order."

"Yes, sir."

Glenn Hamilton nodded, satisfied. Then, since he had no real business there, he left, taking the body that he now counted as his own with him. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, after all.

Autonomous Trafficking

By Kierce Sevren

I laugh, despite my anger. To think, a tersely worded, single sheet of paper could snap my life into absolute clarity. That a red-lettered strong arm has the power to destroy everything I thought I was or hoped I would become. Everything.

“Daddy?” Ellie rounds the corner. Her dark eyes are too large for her pale, heart-shaped face. Tucked under her arm is her favorite stuffed rabbit, its white satin ear worn nearly threadbare. The treatments are hard on her these days. She shuffles her slippered feet along the floor. Before she gets too close, I flip over the latest statement. Her eyes flick to the sheet and then to me.

“What is it, honey?” I smile the best I can to hide my worry.

She tugs at my sleeve. “Daddy, I don't feel so good.”

“I know, sweetie. I'm sorry.”

“But it’s supposed to make me feel better. I didn't feel sick before.” She lays her head against my chest. She’s warmer than she should be. Another low fever.

“That's how we know the medicine is working. Please bear with it for a little longer, okay?” I think a moment. “You know what?” I lay my cheek on the crown of her head. “This medicine is a promise that the doctors made to us that you'll be healthy and happy real soon, and that we'll have many, many days ahead to share together.”

“A promise?”

“A promise,” I say, and she snuggles closer against me.

Keys rattle in the front door. I want to run to open it, knowing it’s dark outside, but that would disturb Ellie. Tammi comes in with her hair disheveled. Her face shows fatigue, and her scrubs are rumpled. She doesn’t have to say a word; she wears her long day like a shroud.

Seeing Ellie with me, Tammi leans against the closed door and gives me a weary smile. “That's what I needed,” she says, removing her shoes, setting her purse on the bench before walking over to me. Her kiss, though brief, is soft. “How was it this time?”

“Rough. She only just fell asleep.”

Tammi nods, and strokes Ellie's hair.

“Mommy,” Ellie whines and stirs.

Passing her over, I admire how fluidly Tammi takes her into her arms. As she carries Ellie to her room she sings to comfort her. I flip over the hospital bill and debate what to do. “Remittance. Per policy, and in accordance to the laws of the State of North Carolina, The Carolinian Healthcare Group hereby notifies you that no further treatment will be given to the patient listed below if the balance of $15,589.26 is not paid in full within thirty days of receipt.” Terror resurges. It's not as much money as it could have been if not for Tammi’s insurance, but still it's out of our reach. We've taken on all the loans we can. Tammi closes Ellie's door. I fold the paper until it fits in my pocket.

“And how was your day?” she asks, entering the dining room.

I shrug. “Not so bad. Bradly and Gina are getting back together, and we're out of bonbons.”

“Uh-huh, so if you were laying on the couch watching soaps all day, who fixed the siding?” she says with her hand on her hip.

“Hmmm, who indeed. I’ll have my manservant investigate that for you tomorrow.”

“Right,” she says, and laughs. “Anyway, thanks. This place would fall apart around us if you weren’t here.”

“It's the least I can do while I'm stuck at home.”

“No luck?”

“None. It can't be helped with just about every officer on the force being laid off.”

She nods and kisses my forehead. “Dinner in the oven?”

“Yes, meatloaf.”

“It smells wonderful. Have you eaten?”

“No, not yet. The new treatment was really hard on Ellie, and I didn’t want to eat in front of her.”

“Was she able to keep anything down?”

“Yeah, a little gelatin. Other than that she just sipped on water most of the day.”

A heavy silence settles between us. It’s been happening a lot lately, especially when we talk about Ellie’s illness. I feel so helpless. I’m sure Tammi does too, maybe more so since she deals with illness and injury every day. Tammi walks into the kitchen. Dishes clatter and I get up to help.

“No, sit. You made dinner -”

“Yes, but you worked all day.”

“And you helped Ellie, and the repairs, and the house is spotless, and this isn't a competition, so if you want to keep your wife happy you'll keep your ass in that chair.”

Her smile is a glimmer of hope in my gloomy world. I watch her as she fixes our plates. She must be so exhausted. My heart aches to think that she's hiding her feelings from me. I lay my hand on my pocket and remind myself she's not the only one. I should tell her. Maybe later.

“It does smell good.” I say. “They’re going to nominate me as the new Emeril,” I accept the cold beer she hands me and admire the gentle curve of her hands as she sets her plate down. The modest band on her finger catches the light and I wish I could do more for her. It's never been enough. Not in my mind, anyway.

“What jobs—”

“I talked to Mike… Sorry, you were saying?

She shakes her head and takes a bite.

“I, um, spoke with Mike earlier today and he said he needs my help on something. Said he'll pay me for my trouble.”

I look up as a moment passes with no response. She’s frowning, her eyes show a shadow of worry. It's deserved; Mike’s never been… clean exactly… or careful. And though I know what I'm getting into, she can't worry about it. Another secret. “Sorry, that was out of the blue. What were you were saying?”

“No, it's just, I was going to ask you about the job search. That's all.” She spears a few carrots and lifts them to her mouth. Her gaze doesn't falter. She's waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's been doing that a lot lately.

I shrug. “It's not. There isn't anything out there right now.”

“Keep looking.”

“I am. Really, every day I spend two to three hours hitting every site I know of. Today I went down to the unemployment office and had to sit through their spiel trying to sell me on some classes that are 'going to change my life' when really they're just introductory classes meant to drum up money for the local community college. Companies are looking for experienced machinists, not entry level. I could take a dozen classes and it won’t amount to anything unless I have experience.”

Tension ratchets my tone up a notch and strains the muscles in my back. I take a breath. “Sorry, honey. I don't want to work with Mike either, but he swears this is nothing to worry about. We can’t afford for me to not have a job right now. Not with Ellie—”

She reaches across the table and wraps her fingers around my hand. “I know. I'm sorry, too. You're doing your best, I know you are. It’s hard now, but we're in it together. Right?”

“Yeah.” Setting my fork on my plate, I put my other hand over hers. Looking in her eyes, tears well up. My heart aches and I get up and walk around the table to hold her. “This won't be forever, Tammi. Working with Mike is only meant to get us by until something better comes along.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“So what'd you tell her?” Mike walks in front of me holding a beer.

I take it and flip the cap off with the back of my lighter. “Carpentry work.”

“Yeah? What sort?”

“Roofs.”

“What? Roofs? You’re crazy. It's hot as Satan’s balls right now!”

“Yeah, I know. It was just the first thing that popped into my head. I don't know, I could have said something else, but if I paused she’d assume the worst. She's already suspicious.”

Mike laughs. “Yeah, okay. I guess I deserve that. My plans haven't always been of the safe and easy variety. But hey, no one's gotten killed or served serious jail time. That should count for something, right?”

I laugh. “Right, no serious jail time. Just don't say—”

“Yet.”

I snicker. “So, what're the details? You haven't told me yet.”

“Ah, yes. Details. In a minute. We're waiting on Jacobs and Mannis.”

As though summoned, the dry dirt road produces an old, beat up black Chevy sedan from the turn of the century. Manual transmission. The kind of engine roar I haven’t heard in decades.

“Nice, isn't it?” Mike says crossing his arms, his half-drunk beer bottle perspiring against his side, darkening his shirt.

Watching a cloud of dust rise like reddish smoke, I can’t help but admire how the beast-like vehicle moves like a hungry predator over the parched drive. It’s no wonder why the old guard hates the smooth, electric powered, driverless invention. They don't move like this. They move like sterile, steel coffins. This cruiser sounds ravenous.

It growls a war cry before the engine cuts off. Jacobs hops out of the car with a huge grin plastered on his face. Mannis appears a little green.

“Where the hell did you dig that relic up?” Mike says, throwing his hand out for a shake.

Jacobs takes the man’s hand and his grin widens. “Grandad's will. Took me the better part of the year to get it going and nearly a month to find fuel. Hey Shawn.”

“Jacobs.” I nod to him, my grin mirroring his.

“Wanna see what's under the hood?”

“Hell yes, I do.”

I stare at Mike and try to sort out the correct response. Part of me wants to shake some sense into him. My practical side reminds me that this money's fast and certainly no joke.

“Come on man, stop scratching your stubble and decide. You in or not?” Mike says and play-punches my arm.

Blinking and taking in a deep breath, I wonder if I can really go through with this. Mike's jobs had always been small, petty get-rich-quick schemes, and though we never got rich, we barely managed to escape trouble every time. “I don't know man, these systems are really involved. This won't be as easy as you think.”

“That's why we need you. I'm good with the mechanics, but no one's better with the programs than you.”

“Quiet, Jacobs. Give the man some space,” Mannis says and pushes the other two back a few feet.

It dawns on me, though I should have realized earlier. “This is your plan, isn't it?”

Mannis smirks and takes a swig of his beer. “Come on, man. You didn’t really think Mike came up with this on his own, did you? No offense.” Mannis taps Mike on the shoulder with his drink.

Mike shrugs. “None taken.”

I consider this for a moment. Were there any jobs I'd done in the past where Mannis was the lead? I can't remember.

“Canton,” Mannis says, smiling.

“Huh?”

“You were racking your brain trying to work out if I'm as big a fuck-up as Mike.”

“No offense,” Mannis shoots a look at Mike.

“Mannis, you shit. Keep it up and I might just start taking offense,” Mike says, trying to keep a straight face. He never takes anything seriously. It's probably why most of his plans fail; he only puts so much effort into any one thing.

“Canton. Yeah, I remember that. That was yours?” I ask.

Mannis nods.

Canton turned out fine. No one even twisted an ankle taking down one of Charlotte's biggest exporters. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right.”

Mike, Mannis, and Jacobs beam.

“Gentlemen,” Mike pulls me to him in a rough hug, “This payday'll be big.”

The couch groans as I sit. Pulling the heavy, bulky laptop out of its bag, I mourn the decision to sell my iTouch Slim V when we needed the money a few months ago. This relic is better than nothing, but runs as quickly as tar on a cold day.

After several minutes the programs I need are running. It doesn’t take me long to find one of the back doors in the department’s secure network and hack in. Good thing for me the department set up these contingent access pathways just in case they somehow got locked out, and then were too lazy to close them during the workforce reduction. Who knows, maybe the people who knew about them got laid off, too. I laugh to myself. That would be typical of bureaucracy these days—save a little more by laying off a few more people. Who cares if they have families to feed?

Focusing on the task at hand, I navigate through the network of connected directories. Pathways spread out before me, sub-directories give me names, dates, and routes of every driverless car in the area. After an hour and a half I’ve picked through a log of every connected vehicle in the area, sorting out the potential targets. After weeding out the patrol routes of coded agent cars, I’m able to make a list of non-cop targets. I jot down some notes in an open document file on my desktop. Luckily, one is due to pass through in a couple of days.

With this information, I exit the secure network and get to work on writing the code for the system hack. Excitement flutters in my chest. This is turning out to be easier than I thought it would be.

Rolling my neck, I wonder how long I'd been sitting completely still. Hours. “Shit, I worked through the night. Tammi's going to wake up soon. My fingers hovering over the keys, preparing to make the final keystrokes, I watch as the screen flickers and sputters. I startle, throwing my hands in the air, and hold my breath. No. No. No. How long had it been since I saved? An eternity seems to pass but then finally, with one more blinking flicker, the screen goes back to normal. Pages of script all appear to be intact. I thank whatever powers that be for the small miracle, save my work, and shut it down.

Crickets and cicadas cry as the heat of the summer settles into a warm damp night. We sit huddled in a dark car, parked in the bushes on the side of the road. Even with the windows rolled down it’s sweltering.

“If everything goes well, we'll hit the next target due to pass through tomorrow.” Mike says as he sits half turned in his seat. “You look nervous, Jacobs. Relax.”

“Not nervous. Excited. What the hell am I supposed to be doing again?”

“Distract the driver. Remember?” Mannis says.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s right, make up some story and keep their focus on the engine.” Jacobs says and swallows hard enough for it to be audible. A thin sheen of sweat glimmers on his brow.

Lights come around the bend.

“This it?” Mike asks.

“No,” I say and look at my monitor. “They're still fifteen minutes out. Be ready by nine-fifteen,” I take a deep breath. Jacobs isn't the only one who’s nervous. I've never been this far outside of the law. My guts churn. Even knowing that our targets are criminals, thugs, or mules carrying drug money—it doesn’t help. We’re not bringing them to justice. They aren’t going to go to jail or to face a judge once we’re done with them. If we're lucky and they cooperate, they'll walk away short some money.

They'll have to face their people, which won't be a good deal for them, I think as an afterthought.

The sweltering night seems to take on a chill. What we're doing could get them killed. Most likely we’ll get them killed. But they're bad guys, right? Who knows what they might have done to others before. My thoughts turn to Ellie, looking so pale and fragile. Would she be proud of me for this if she knew this is how daddy paid for her medicine? My resolve begins to crumble.

Trying to distract myself from the crawling passage of time and my rising doubt, I listen to the guys bickering over the finer details of Mannis’s plan. It might as well be in another language. I can't focus on them. The sounds of the woods around us draw me in. Melodic chirping. The wailing screeches of cicadas. The wallop and grunts of frogs in a nearby ditch. Closing my eyes, I try to imagine I'm any place but here. I imagine the crackle of fire. We could be camping. I can almost lose myself as every part of my soul quiets. The tension in my shoulders lessens.

“You alright, Shawn?” Mannis's voice breaks my concentration and the thrumming whir of a passing car reminds me where I am, physically.

“Yeah, just trying to relax.”

Mannis narrows his eyes. “Yeah, well don't relax too much. We're on a job.”

“Of course.”

“What's the progress?”

“Five miles out. I’ll start the interception in about a minute and a half.”

My wristwatch chimes and I hit the keystrokes needed to load the code to the driverless car’s system. A flurry of coding symbols fly up the screen. I hold my breath.

“Well?” Mannis asks.

“It’s running.”

The car comes around the corner as predicted. Light from its headlamps sweeps past us and my computer screen blinks and flickers. I gasp, and I restrain myself from hitting keys. Lifting the machine, I listen for the whir of the fan. It’s there.

“Something wrong?” Jacobs asks.

I return the computer to my lap and am relieved to see the monitor is back to normal. The code is still running the last few lines.

“Nope.” I exhale.

“There it goes,” Mannis calls from the driver’s seat and we all look. The driverless car's lights flicker, and it rolls to a stop in a conveniently unlit emergency turn off a couple hundred feet from us. It’s cabin lights die.

I'm flooded with a sense of relief. My part is done. I close the lid on my laptop. Mannis puts the car in drive, and we head over to the disabled vehicle.

“You're sure, everything’s been switched off? No alarms? No calls for help?” Mannis asks while watching me in the rearview.

“Yeah, I’m sure. They're completely cut off from the controllers.”

A small, well dressed woman stands by the car looking between it and us. Her eyes are wide, skin pale, and she wrings her hands together.

Mannis parks a few feet from her. “You sure about this one, Shawn?”

I review the information in my head. “Yes, this is the right one.”

“They probably have women transport the goods just in case. Cops are less likely to search pretty women,” Mike says.

“I'd like to,” Jacobs says, shifting in his seat.

“Enough of that.” Mannis glares at him in the rear view. “We're not here for that. We get the money and we get out. That's it.”

Mannis gets out of the car. He hails her, explaining we were just passing by.

“Really? I didn't see anyone following me,” she says and inches back toward the door.

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

“I don't know what to tell you Ma'am, except we just turned on about a mile or so back. There's a side road,” he said thumbing behind us.

She nods. “I see. Sorry, it's not like I was watching out my back window or anything, but this all seems kind of crazy. Have you ever heard of a driverless cutting out like this?”

“Oh, it happens from time to time. My friends and I are familiar with cars, mind if we take a look?”

She gives a nervous laugh and nods, thanking Mannis for his generosity. He extends his hand for her to shake. “Chris Smith. And my friend Tony Isaac will be happy to help.”

“Jacobs, that's your cue,” Mike whispers.

“Right.” Jacobs smirks and gets out of the car.

I watch as he approaches them with slouched shoulders and an easy gait. She seems to relax a little. I wonder what sort of innocent look he'd put on that baby face of his.

They ask her what her car was doing before everything shut down, if it was making any sort of noises. She rattles off a list. Had I been in her shoes I might have asked more questions, or maybe stayed in the car, but truth be told, I am glad she is going along with it. They walk around to the front of the car and work a hidden lever to raise the hood to the engine compartment.

“All right, big boy,” Mike says turning to me in his seat, “it’s my turn now. When I give you the thumbs up, you be ready to signal to Mannis like we talked about.”

“And if you don’t, that means there’s no money and we’ll get out of here and regroup.”

He smiles wide and exits the car quietly as soon as Mannis, Jacobs and the woman are hidden from view and makes his way to the driverless. He peers into the dark windows with a small light cupped in his hands.

A high-pitched, quick-paced beeping sounds from my computer. It’s loud enough to startle me. No one else seems to hear it. I raise the lid and the screen is completely red with white numbers counting down quickly from just under two minutes. I scramble to make sense of it. “Countdown? To what?” A text box pops up, and the words I just spoke scrawl out. The curser blinks. The sound of my pulse is thunderous. I look around half expecting someone to be standing outside of the car watching me. No one's there. I look around the cabin of Jacob's car. I see no obvious cameras, but it’s dark. When I look back at my computer I realize the tiny green LED of the in-monitor camera is on.

Hi there! appears in the text box. Found me, have you?

I type, “Who's this?”

No need to type, Shawn Morrow, we can hear you.

My whole body locks, I'm not able to move a muscle. Numbers scroll down and my mind shuts down. Words don't come, thoughts make no sense. My world reduces to a few characters on the screen.

You need to worry less about who we are, Mr. Marrow, and more about how to pay us back. Did you really think you could take what’s not yours?

My mind scrambles to make sense of the situation. “No, I... I mean we just... look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what the countdown is for… If you’ll let me get the others we’ll leave without the money. Without everything. We’ll forget all of this.”

You’re sorry? You’ll forget all about this? Who do you think you’re dealing with? Unlike you and your crew, we’re not complete amateurs. You want to break into our system and try to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from us, and you think we’ll just let you go. Like that. Just, sure—off with you, you little scamp?

I read the beginning of the last line of text over and over: our system... My whole body tenses. I remember the flickering on the computer and realized my error. They had left those backdoors open on purpose. They hacked me.

What feels like an eternity passes while the curser blinks rhythmically. The numbers are winding down. There’s no time to waste.

“Of course not,” I say. “What do you want?”

Let’s start with your life. The text is as effective as a slap in the face. I sink back into my seat and read the line over repeatedly. The world has grown so cold. The natural cries from forest creatures seem so distant. I’m going to die. This is it. I pull my phone from my pocket and select Tammi’s smiling picture. I’ll never see her or my little girl again. Only ten seconds remain on the countdown as I listen to her sweet voice and wait to tell her I love her.

New text scrolls in the box below the numbers. Sorry, did I say your life? I meant your friends’.

I look up to see Jacobs, Mannis, and the woman round the front of the car. Mike crouches around the back.

“Get away from the car,” I shout.

An alarm sounds out much louder this time and I look down to see Time's Up! An explosion erupts from the driverless car. A wave of pressure and heat slams into Jacobs’s car, shaking it. I cover my face. Glass flies in through the windows.

Dazed, thinking about what to do next seems impossible. My ears ring in a long shrill note.

But, I'm still alive. I'm still alive.

Dear God.

I look up. A hollowed out carcass remains where the driverless once stood, its bones engulfed in flames. Burning pieces shower down hitting the road, the car. They’re all gone. The scene is like an old a silent movie, with a one note musical score. Nausea hits me and I shake my head. Now’s not the time.

Shawn Marrow.

Attention, Shawn Marrow.

I give the camera a look.

Why the long face? Don’t you feel lucky?

I shake my head.

Well, that's gratitude for you. Your debt is now paid as well Never forget what this little gamble has won you and your friends, and what it could cost you in the future should you try this sort of thing again. Go home, Shawn Marrow. Go home and see how much you helped your family.

Tammi and Ellie.

Panic resurges, worse than before. These people are monsters. What have I done? I crawl into the driver’s seat. As I drive, my mind plays out every horrible scenario.

Tammi's driverless is in the driveway. Every room in the house has lights on, but I see no shadows move through the windows. Leaving Jacobs’s car in the road and then mounting the steps, I try to detect any sign of life beyond the windows. Any movement at all. I strain to listen for clattering dishes, Ellie's giggle, the television—anything.  The doorknob is cold in my hand.

Tammi lays on the floor face down. My heart jumps and sinks simultaneously. The air thickens. I can't breathe. It takes every ounce of effort not fall to my knees and weep. I'm afraid to touch her, to find out she's gone cold. To know that she’s dead because of me.

My feet move me forward despite my fear. I have to know.

Under my fingers, her skin is still warm. She moans and shifts a little. I stifle a sob. The urge to pick her up and hold her in my arms is tremendous, but I look down the hall and know it's not over yet.

Each step is like quicksand, inch by sucking inch. Every movement forward stretches the corridor that much farther. My head spins. I don’t realize that I’m running until I crash against the doorjamb. The sight of her knocks the wind from my lungs. I'm too late. Ellie’s dead. My legs fail to support me, and I fall to my knees on the plush carpet.

A thick foam cakes Ellie's mouth and nose. Her eyes are open. She’s not moving. Her skin is a pale gray color, glossy from sweat. I drop to my hands and throw up. Painful heaves wrack my body. I crawl to her, and reach a shaking hand out, wiping her face. Her skin is cool to the touch, but not cold. Maybe I’m not too late, if I can turn her over and get her breathing again.

I can’t.

The rest of the evening is a blur. Tammi tells me later that the medics had to pry me away from Ellie. Some anonymous doctor told us it was an unfortunate reaction to one of the new medications she was given. Tammi says she had left her phone on the coffee table in the living room and was in such a panic from seeing Ellie that way that she slipped on something and knocked herself out.

Jacobs’s car and my laptop vanished before the ambulance arrived. The murderers left no evidence to be used against them, not that they’re the only ones responsible.

Planet Ruination

By Patrick Lacey

Zach watched as EMTs carried two black bags, in no rush as they placed the bodies in the back of the ambulance and drove off. There had been some sort of fight near the back of the line. No one else seemed to notice.

He and Jesse were a hundred yards or so from the front doors of the store. The sky was grey and sunless and there was a chill in the air that did not fit the July morning. It had been like that all week leading up to the game’s release.

The automatic doors buzzed open and a few store employees stepped outside, one of them with a loudspeaker. It was hard to hear from their position. He looked at Jesse, but his friend was just as confused.

People raised their hands and flipped the store workers off. A woman stepped beyond the barricade and spat in their faces. A cop grabbed her and escorted her away. She broke free and sped off. The officers didn’t bother to pursue her and the line moved up without missing a beat.

“Did you fucking hear what they said?” the man in front of Zach and Jesse asked. He wore a stained white t-shirt and most of his face was covered in tribal tattoos.

They shook their heads.

The man shot a snot rocket onto the pavement and lit a cigarette. “They said they can’t guarantee there will be enough copies. We’ve been standing here for what—six, seven hours now? Said one of the shipments was delayed. Know what I think? I think the developers purposely didn’t send enough copies.”

Zach turned around. The line stretched around the corner. “They must have enough for us, right? There are probably only a hundred people in front of us.”

“We’ll see,” the guy said. “We’ll just fucking see.” He turned around and Zach let out a trapped breath. He had not liked the man’s eyes. There was something wrong with them. In fact, now that he thought about it, everything seemed wrong today. There was something in the air, something primal, like the feeling before an earthquake.

A few protestors broke through the barrier across the parking lot, carrying signs and warning the crowd that the devil was at work. Only evil could come from such filth. The game had been spawned from hell itself. It was not too late to turn back.

A man and woman stepped out of line and kicked the protesters to the ground, stomping on them.

Zach covered his mouth, his stomach churning. He expected everyone around him to do the same, but instead they laughed or barely took notice. Even the cops let the fight continue for a bit too long before stepping in.

Jesse took a sip of his energy drink and belched. “I’m telling you, they better have two copies left for us. Otherwise we’ll have to wait for another shipment, and who knows how long that’ll be. There’s no way in hell we’re missing out on it.” He nodded toward the enormous cardboard cutout, an advertisement for Planet Ruination. It featured a man in sunglasses, cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he stood upon a mound of bodies. He held a shotgun, smoke still risingfrom its barrel. Behind him the street was littered with cops, the night sky filled with helicopters, spotlights shining downward.

“You think it’s true?” Jesse asked, still staring at the advertisement. “About how it goes on forever?”

Zach shrugged. “I guess. It’s hard to believe though.” When the game had first been announced, everyone had been underwhelmed. The first screenshots looked bland and the demo was nothing special. Critics said it was a knockoff of every other open world game.

But eventually more details had been released, the most mind-blowing of which had been that he game did not end. It was not a fictional city or town. It was Earth, geometrically and geographically accurate, an exact recreation, so they said. It seemed revolutionary.

As was the plot.

Because there was no plot. Your only objective was to kill and torture as many people as your heart desired.

Planet Ruination.

The title seemed to move on its own and Zachary imagined the longer he looked the more the letters would slither. He turned his head toward the line.

There was a commotion, people shouting.

And then the front doors opened.

The crowd turned savage. They charged the entrance, yelling and laughing and trampling those who couldn’t keep up. Zach saw a boy with severe acne trip over his own legs. He was lost in a sea limbs and Zach wondered if he would emerge alive. He pushed the thought aside and followed Jesse toward ground zero.

Across the way, in the middle of the store, was a giant bin filled with copies of Planet Ruination.

He was shoved from every direction. Someone jabbed him in the nose and his vision blurred. By the time he could see again his heart sunk.

The bin was already empty.

There were groans from the crowd, which turned to threats, which turned to violence, punches and kicks and scratches all around him. The cops from outside seemed to have vanished.

There was a tug on his shoulder and Zach winced, preparing to have his jaw broken. He turned and saw Jesse smiling as though it was Christmas morning.

He held two copies of the game.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.” He grabbed Zach and pulled him toward the side exit. On their way out they came across a teenage girl crawling on all fours. There were deep cuts along her cheek and forehead. She was hyperventilating.

“Wait,” Zach said, grabbing Jesse.

“For what? We’ve got the games.”

Zach pointed to the girl.

“She’ll be fine,” Jesse said. “The cuts don’t look deep.” He sped past the registers and through the doors. The sensors began to chime but no one noticed they were stealing.

Zachary looked once more at the girl. She tried to get up but slipped back to the floor. He supposed he ought to notify the EMTs or the police, but maybe Jess had been right. The cuts didn’t look so deep up close.

“Wait up,” he called, heading back into the sunless day.

Jesse tossed him his copy. There was something sticky on the back. He turned it around to examine and wished he hadn’t.

There were a few drops of blood obscuring one of the screen shots, already beginning to dry.

They were well stocked with chips, cheese curls, candy bars, beef jerky, and more energy drinks. Jesse tossed their stash onto the floor and they dug in as his system powered up. Jesse’s room was dark, the television’s glow the only source of light. His shades were drawn and what little traces of light shone through made no difference. It was as if night had come early.

Jesse put the disc in and a loading screen appeared. It was unlike any Zach had ever seen. Instead of a bar or percentage, there was only a symbol; an upside down triangle inside of a square inside of a circle, with smaller circles placed sporadically around the perimeter.

“What do you think it means?” Jesse asked.

“Probably just the company’s logo or something.”

The symbol seemed to grow, and while he couldn’t say why, Zach felt uneasy. He could have sworn he’d seen it before, perhaps in a nightmare. He tried his best to look at Jesse’s dirty floor and poster-covered walls, but his eyes always made their way back to that deformed set of shapes.

After an eternity the symbol disappeared and the game began. There was no title screen, no options for game difficulty setting. It simply opened on a suburban street.

The first thing Zach noticed was that the character looked nothing like the one from the advertisement. He was much scrawnier and paler, and somehow more familiar. It bothered him in a way he couldn’t explain.

Jesse was instantly drawn in, his eyes wide, mouth hanging open. Zach swore he saw the symbol reflected in his friend’s eyes, but it must have been a trick of the light.

After a few minutes of getting the controls down, Jesse began to move his character toward something that lay on the ground. He kneeled down and picked it up and the game informed him he’d obtained his first weapon—a bat.

An elderly woman appeared at the end of the street. She carried a bag of groceries. A box fell from one of the bags and she swore, kneeling down to pick it up.

Jesse did not hesitate. He steered his character toward the woman, breaking into a run and winding the bat back before swinging it across the side of her head. The sound was beyond realistic; Zach heard it in his own skull—the tearing of flesh and cracking of bone. The woman fell to the pavement. Jesse brought the bat down again and again, six times in all, before the woman finally stopped twitching.

He turned away from her and continued down the street.

He was smiling.

Zach made the connection then, why the character seemed so familiar. Because the character was Jesse, a nearly perfect digitalized version. And the woman, now that he thought about it, resembled Jesse’s next door neighbor, Mrs. Lieberman, who had given them a hard time for just about everything.

Wasn’t the scenery familiar, too? Wasn’t that the oak tree in Jesse’s yard and wasn’t that Jesse’s house fading into the background as his character picked up a machete and sped toward a teenage boy walking a dog?

The rumors had been true.

The world in the game was the world from their lives.

His pulse began to quicken and he wasn’t sure if he was excited or sick, perhaps a mixture of the two.

On the walk home Zach thought he saw the symbol on the ground. He nearly fell over, stepping back to catch his breath. But when the moment passed he saw that it had been an optical illusion, the shadows of tree limbs and the glow of the street lamp playing tricks with his mind.

When he reached the point where Jesse had beaten Mrs. Lieberman in the game, his heart began to beat unevenly. Suddenly afraid, he ran the rest of the way home. It was only a few minutes but it felt like forever as he looked in yards and on porches, wondering if anyone lurked in silence

He triple-checked the locks when he got home. The house was empty and dark. His parents both worked the graveyard shift. He had not been in the same room with them in a month or so. They were saving up for a vacation, his mother had told him. The late shifts paid an extra three dollars an hour.

The lie was told so well he had almost believed her.

Zach turned on every light in the house. He thought about going to bed, but his room seemed the darkest. There were too many shadows that were unaccounted for.

He slid some jerky from his pocket, took a few bites, and sat on the living room couch watching syndicated sitcoms and waiting for the sun to rise.

He did not mean to fall asleep and did not notice the transition. For a moment he thought he was still awake, which was quite cruel when he saw Bethany come through the front door and toss her backpack onto the recliner.

It was still dark out and Zach wanted to ask her why she’d arrived so late, but he found he had no voice, and as he tried to flag her down he discovered he was paralyzed.

A cool wind passed through the room as the door blew open. She’d forgotten to shut it behind her.

There was someone outside, standing a few feet from the front steps.

Zach screamed but Bethany did not notice. She flipped through the day’s mail, answered a few text messages, and began making one of her health shakes. They were always green and slimy and Zach used to give her shit for them every chance he got. She whistled as she worked and the man from outside crept inside. The whirring of the blender hid the sound of his footsteps.

Though the scene was wrong because Bethany had been killed near the theatre on Main street, the events were similar. She had been getting a coffee at the café on the corner when the man had begun to follow her. He had pulled her into an alley and had done things to her that made his parents choose graveyard shifts instead of coming home to their remaining child and the house where they’d once had a daughter as well.

Zach watched from the couch as the man stripped his sister naked and the dream mercifully began to fade away.

He opened his eyes, sweating and sick to his stomach. He cleared his throat, found that he could speak and move. He sat on the floor, his neck arched toward the television screen.

The game was on.

Planet Ruination was in full effect.

The digital version of Zach was surrounded by body parts; a finger here, an ear there. There were hundreds of bodies scattered along his street, none of them whole. There were more than a few severed heads, and he saw they were not random victims. There were Jesse and Mrs. Lieberman and Bethany and his parents, eyes all lifeless, mouths all stuck in an eternal screams.

In the background, a plane flew through the sky, its engine emitting a vapor that formed the same shape from the loading screen.

Meet me near the canal, Zach texted Jesse. Fuck school today. We need to talk.

He walked downtown, crossing the street when he reached the coffee shop and theatre, and crossing back once he was a safe distance away. He checked his phone every few seconds but there was no response. When he arrived at the canal he hoped he would see Jesse there, smoking a cigarette and trying to look cool for passersby.

But the canal was empty save for a few men fishing across the way. Zach sat down on the wall and waited. He could see the high school from there. Students were parking and busses were unloading. He couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in a class room all day, surrounded by people who may have killed him in their Planet Ruination save files.

When the waiting became too much he started walking toward Jesse’s house. There was a light drizzle in the air and it chilled his skin. The sky was darker than the day before, the clouds thicker.

A few minutes later he stepped up to Jesse’s front door and rang the bell. Jesse’s mom answered. “Hi, Zach. How are you?”

“Good, thanks. I was wondering if I could talk to Jesse?”

“I’m afraid he’s feeling sick this morning. He stayed home from school.”

Zach nodded. He’d known Jesse couldn’t go back to normal life a day after playing the game. There was nothing normal once you’d had a taste of it. “Would it be okay just to pop in his room real quick? I think I might have left my homework there last night and I’m running late as it is.” He pretended to smile.

“I suppose that would be okay. Try to keep your distance though.” She opened the door and waved him in. “Whatever he’s got, it’s not good. He looks like death.”

Zach thanked her and headed upstairs. The hall was dark save for the slit of light underneath Jesse’s door.

Zach knocked.

There was no answer.

He could hear movement on the other side. He knocked once more with no response then turned the knob and stepped in.

Jesse was sitting on the floor in the exact position as yesterday. Most of the junk food had been devoured, empty wrappers and cans littering the floor. The curtains were still drawn and the room was still cloaked in shadow.

And Jesse was still huddled in front of the television, the controller in his hands.

On the screen Jesse stood above the squirming form of Allison Beckham, the girl they both liked to imagine had a landing strip and was painfully good at fellatio. She was raising her hands to the sky and trying to block Jesse’s fists as he pummeled her. She pleaded with him and it sounded as though her voice were real, as if she was in the room with them.

Not for the first time Zach wondered how it was possible, how the game could capture the world so accurately. He imagined satellites hidden above the clouds, taking constant video of everyone that passed within reach, collecting data for Planet Ruination.

Collecting victims.

“Jesse, why don’t you turn that off. Your mom said you were sick. I don’t feel too good myself. How about we go for a walk or something? Clear our heads, you know?”

Jesse grunted, his eyes never leaving the screen. He seemed lost, almost in a trance. He nibbled his lower lip as he watched himself break Allison’s nose.

“Jesse, please.” Zach stepped closer. “There’s something wrong with the game. You must feel it, too. It’s like it’s… getting in our heads or something. I think we need a break from it.” He reached a trembling hand toward the console. “It saves automatically, so you won’t lose anything. We can always play again later.”

Jesse grabbed Zach’s wrist. His grip was strong, cutting off the blood flow. His eyes were swollen and red, as if he’d been up for weeks. “Don’t do that.” For a long time he held Zach’s numbing wrist and gritted his teeth before swatting it away and turning his attention back to the screen. “Son of a bitch,” Jesse said, pointing.

Allison had managed to stand up and was limping away from him. “Now I have to catch her again.”

Zach backed into the hall and closed the door. He heard a piercing scream followed by Jesse’s on and off screen grunting as he caught up to Allison.

Zach went downstairs.

“How’s he doing?” Jesse’s mom asked as she watered a plant.

Zach rubbed his wrist as he made his way outside. “You were right,” he said. “He looks like death.”

There were police cruisers and ambulances parked in front of the school as Zach passed by the canal. He could see a crowd of students gathered. It looked like chaos from where he stood.

Another two cruisers sped by, each turning in opposite directions. He could hear more sirens in the distance. Across the way, toward the boulevard, black smoke rose into the sky, a fire not too far off.

He stepped into a convenience store for an energy drink and a candy bar, tapping his foot too fast as he waited in line. The newspapers near the register all had similar headlines: sudden increases in murders, spikes in suicide, a few too many rapes for an ordinary day on Earth.

The attendant’s eyes were half shut as he rang Zach out. He was staring at the television above the door. There was a breaking news story about a body that had been found two towns over. It was so badly beaten officials had to consult the dental records, though most of the molars and incisors had been shattered.

It cut to a commercial for Planet Ruination.

Zach told the attendant to keep the change and began to jog home.

His parents would be probably getting ready for bed. They’d want to know why he was skipping school. He didn’t care if they grounded him, so long as he didn’t have to be alone right now. Normally the distance he felt between them since Bethany’s death was overwhelming, enough to make him scream, but today he would welcome it.

He reached the house and stepped inside, ready to invent an excuse.

But he could not speak, save for the groan that sounded in the back of his throat. His father sat on the couch, leaning forward and concentrating as he played Planet Ruination. He was walking through what looked like a foundry, not all that different from the one where he worked. He held a pistol and shot everybody he passed.

His father laughed. “Zach, where’d you get this game? I’ve got to tell you, normally I think these things will rot your brain, but this one… this one’s something special.”

It took Zach a long time to find his voice. “Where’s mom?”

His father’s eyes did not leave the screen. “Hell if I know. She played for a while and then I think she went for a walk or something.”

More sirens sounded in the distance, one or two streets over.

He spent the rest of the day in the library. It was quiet for the most part. A man had knocked over one of the computers and tried to bite some of the staff before running off. Other than that, you wouldn’t have known the world was falling apart.

Zach pretended to read a mystery novel while he thought. He wished Bethany were around. She would have known what to do. Though she had been a bit high and mighty with her yoga, earthy-crunchy diet, her flower power outlook on life, she had always seemed one step ahead of everyone. But now she was dead because she had stopped for a coffee on her way home from school. It used to bother him to think how random the world could be, how any moment things could collapse.

What was happening out there, though, through the rain-soaked windows—there was nothing random about it. He knew it was the game, he knew. Some signal or code or something. It was affecting them, getting under their skin.

He thought again of the symbol from the loading screen. It had been in the back of his mind all day, sitting there like a tumor, until he finally realized why it seemed so familiar.

He’d seen it once, on the side of an office building in the industrial park. Now he had a hunch what business lay within its walls.

He tossed the book onto the chair next to him and went back outside, where the sirens still rang and the smoke still wafted.

There were no words on the building or its sign. It was tall and windowless and it made Zach feel faint.

There was nothing but the giant symbol: an upside down triangle within a square within a circle, surrounded by other randomized circles. It was hard to look away from.

There were no cars in the parking lot, no signs of life. He was drawn toward the door, no plan in mind, only certain that he wanted to burn as many copies of the game as he could. Or better yet, perhaps he could find the machinery that created the discs. Perhaps he could shut it down before it was too late.

Some part of him was not surprised to find the door unlocked. It opened easily, as if inviting him. The front hall was dark, lit only by small emergency lights that lined the way. He followed them as the hall wound to the left and ended at an elevator. The doors were already open, waiting for him. He chose a button at random, riding the elevator up.

When it came to a halt and the doors slid open, he expected to see rows of computers and cubicles but instead there was only an empty room with a large monitor on the wall.

It was the loading screen. For a moment the symbol resembled a mouth, wide open and ready to chew. From behind him the elevator doors closed and began to descend.

The game finished loading and began. It was Zach on screen, so lifelike. He held a knife as he walked past the movie theatre on Main Street. No one seemed to notice the blade. They went about their daily lives and he had only to choose which of them to kill. A few blocks down, in front of the coffee shop, a girl with a tie-dye backpack curled one of her dreadlocks as she walked. There was something about her, something so innocent it was unbearable.

He sped up, looking around until he was sure no one saw him, then he pulled her into an alley and threw her to the ground.

She fell face down then rolled over, holding her bag out like a shield.

Bethany’s eyes grew wide. She looked too scared to scream.

In reality he shook his head. He did not want to see this, had already imagined it an infinite amount of times instead of sleeping or studying or doing normal teenager things. He had become obsessed with what it must have been like for her, the sounds and smells of her death. But that had been coping, trying to work through how terrible the world could be. This was something entirely different.

This was Planet Ruination.

He ran toward the monitor and tried to pull the plug from the wall but it wouldn’t budge. He looked around the room for a chair or keyboard or something to toss at the screen. Zach’s avatar was raising the blade.

He took off his shoe and began to smash the screen. The image faded and cracks formed.

Eventually his arms grew tired and he fell back, trying to catch his breath. His head felt clearer somehow, as if the monitor had been a transmitter of sorts. He wondered if he’d beaten it, if he’d outsmarted Planet Ruination.

Though he’d not been able to stop Bethany’s death in reality, he’d stopped it in his own way. He wondered if the sirens had ceased or if the fires had gone out. He wondered if the world had begun to turn back to normal.

He wondered all these things as the room suddenly filled with blinding light. Every surface, the walls, floor, and ceiling, became a monitor, and every screen displayed the same thing.

Zach’s avatar finished what he had started in the alley near the coffee shop.

When he woke he thought for a moment that it had been a bad dream, but he knew better as he saw his parents and Jesse standing around him in his living room, cheering and clapping as he controlled his character around the neighborhood, slicing everyone they disliked in reality and even some they held dear.

Zach’s eyelids were stuck open, his thumbs bleeding and moving of their own accord. He’d been playing long enough to piss his pants and lose all feeling in his legs.

The smell of rot, of things left to decay, drifted in through the open windows. Outside it was pitch black and rain poured down from a starless sky.

He tried to move, to plead, but his body remained in place as Planet Ruination went on. His avatar had leveled up, and was now nearly invincible. He was powerful beyond comprehension.

Though the symbol was fresh in his mind, he knew he would never see it again. There would never be another loading screen. He would continue on, leveling and powering up, collecting points, using blood as currency.

“They were true,” Jesse said. “The rumors were true.”

Zach nodded, trapped in his own body. “It goes on forever.”

Descent

By Joseph Sale

“Now approaching 13,000 ft. Entering the abyssopelagic zone.”

Nicholas nodded. Flickering on the grainy screens set into the wall of the observation pod, a gulf of darkness seethed as if each atom moved of its own free will. It was so strange. Even after twelve years studying under one of the top marine biologists in the world, and a further eight leading some of the world’s most advanced—and dangerous—expeditions to the ocean’s bottom, it still made him uneasy. Everything in the upper world drew life from the sun. But down here it didn’t matter. There were countless, countless creatures that’d gone their entire lives having never once felt so much as a degree of the sun’s heat. How alien must the ultra-charged searchlights scanning the darkness be to them? The lights were designed to detect any potential dangers that might dent the craft: rocks, debris, even larger fish or whales. The slightest dint in the craft would cause the whole thing to cave under the pressure. The observation pod gave them a three-hundred-sixty degree view of the underwater world around them: filled with eight screens showing the feeds of the tiny cameras built into the top, bottom and sides of the craft.

“Copy that,” he answered on the intercom. He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. The air tasted stale as if he was breathing in an Egyptian tomb that hadn’t been opened for thousands of years. “Keep your eyes out for any giant squid,” he said with a grin. He heard an answering laugh from Laura’s end.

For hours he watched the darkness on the screens. Occasionally he saw a blip skirt across the screen; the light of angler-fish or a luminous gelatinous creature. Fifty years ago when David Attenborough’s documentary Blue
Planet had aired for the first time, people had decried the images of the deep-sea creatures they found as fake. Other nut-jobs had seized on the footage as evidence of aliens. One party had even gone so far as to photo-shop a huge yellow eye opening in one of the ravines, like one of Lovecraft’s colossal gods of the deep. This was all old hat now. The ravines Attenborough’s team had been unable to access due to their volcanic temperatures were now accessible to them because of the special metallurgy of the ship’s hull and the nitrogen cooling system stored in the four feet thick exterior exoskeleton. Dr. Nicholas Pinter would go deeper and further than anybody before.

Well, you and your team. Don’t forget them now, you glory hungry fool.

He could almost hear the words in Rochelle’s voice—see her finger wagging like an upside down pendulum. A soft smile came to his lips, though his eyes did not reflect it. That pain was deeper than any gulf in the earth. Rochelle was gone and never coming back. It maddened him to think of all the times he’d risked his neck going on these journeys into the deep and yet she’d been the one the universe saw fit to take; that was, if the universe was sentient. It’d been a Saturday morning. He remembered it well because every Saturday morning he and Rochelle treated themselves to a lie in and a little treat—breakfast in bed they called it, with a wink. Just after, she popped off to the shop. Ten minutes later a car had run her down barely a hundred feet from the driveway.

He stared at the darkness blinking back from the eight screens.

“Dr. Pinter, I’ve got something to show you,” Zend’s voice cracked on the intercom. Always Dr. Pinter. Never familiar. There was something strangely cold about Zend. He was undoubtedly the most enthusiastic member of the team—a specialist in invertebrates and their habits. But Nicholas had realized his passion didn’t stretch much beyond the creatures he studied. He knows what he’s talking about though.

“On my way,” he said.

As he left the observation pod he turned back once to look at the black screens.

Zend wasn’t the name he’d been born with. He was half-Japanese, and his family name came from his father’s side. He told Nicholas he’d changed it when turned twenty-one. He didn’t get on well with his father. When Nicholas had asked Zend what the name meant he told him it was the name of a character from a fantasy novel. The only one that makes a single right decision in the whole damn book. At that point Nicholas lost interest. He had no love of fiction. Who wanted to read about made up worlds when there was an ocean full of things more surreal than any imagination?

Zend was pouring over a diagram he’d hand-drawn when Nicholas came in. There was a bottle of water on the table and a bunch of pencils and mathematical compasses.

Nicholas stopped.

“What am I looking at?”

Zend pointed at three points on the diagram labeled A, B, and C. The diagram depicted a rough sketch of the sea bed, and each labeled point showed a crevasse shooting down to the lower hadopelagic levels – the levels Nicholas hoped to reach. Above each of the crevasses were clouds of crudely drawn jelly-fish.

“You remember my Cluster Theorem, Dr. Pinter?” Zend asked, talking as though he was on speed. Every word was a blur. He wrung his hands as if washing them as he talked.

“That invertebrates are moving in shoals like fish?”

“Exactly. Well, I think I have discovered the method behind the madness, so to speak. It’s clear from Laura’s radar scans that these ‘clouds’ or ‘clusters’ center around the hydrothermal vents—they move perhaps one or two miles away, sometimes more if the current pulls them, but then return to their original location. It might be they are drawn to the heat, or are even feeding off some kind of microbial life. It’s an amazing finding, Dr. Pinter. It’s the first hint of a ‘home’ instinct we’ve ever seen in this type of life-form.”

“Fascinating,” Nicholas said, “But I’m certain that’s not the only reason you called me up here.”

Zend’s smile flickered.

“Always to the point, eh doctor?” He pointed at label B on the diagram. “The most recent radar scans have revealed more of the vents. It’s clear that point A and C eventually narrow too close for us to explore much of it. They’re too hot even for this craft at around six-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. However, the other vent—Point B— that’s only at sixty-eight degrees—more than manageable.” He moved his finger across the paper until it reached a far wider crevasse. This one did not narrow to a V like the others but dropped down in a straight line until it reached the end of the page. Nicholas noticed Zend had squiggled a tiny question-mark at the very lip of the page. He smiled. It might as well have read: Here be monsters. “Point B is also about five times wider than the others. This diagram is not to scale. I think this is our way forward... or down, rather.”

“Ok. We’ll head for that one. Good work, Zend.” Nicholas always felt tired talking to him, like he was being sapped. He felt like he needed a lie down. It’s probably just the heat. Despite the sophisticated cooling system, the air in the craft was always warm. He found himself yearning for a sea breeze to blow into the grimy corners of his face. Strange, we haven’t even got to the hot bit yet.

Zend grinned.

“Thank you, Dr. Pinter! It’s so exciting, isn’t it? I’d be bouncing on my heels if I were you. On the verge of making such an important find...” Nicholas caught his expression and saw he was being scrutinized; Zend’s beetle-black eyes fixed on him as if in hunger. Is he angry? Testing me?

“I’m bouncing on the inside,” he said. “But I don’t want to work myself up too much. It may be we find nothing.”

“Come now. We’re not investing all this money, going to such lengths, building this craft, for nothing are we? You know there’s something down there. We already see life in the fissures. Who knows what else we might find?”

The craft jolted beneath them. Zend’s diagram slid off the table. Nicholas hit the wall and scraped a gash from elbow to shoulder on one of the metal beams. He waited for a second jolt to come. The craft remained still. He felt his heart beating so hard in his chest his legs felt weak. He breathed a shaking sigh. Zend grinned as he hung onto the frame of his bed, as though they were on an exciting fairground ride. Hatred rose in Nicholas like a rearing snake at that smile, he wanted to lash out at Zend, to bite. Calm down.

He reached up and clicked the red intercom button.

“Laura, report. What was that?”

“Come and see. It’s quite spectacular really.”

Nicholas growled. Why were they both suddenly so blasé? That jolt could have caused damage to the craft and resulted in them being crushed to a pulp by a million tons of water. But you’re not dead. It’s ok.

“Coming up now,” he said.

At thirty-five, Laura was the youngest of the team; an expert engineer as well as biological scientist and advanced systems operator. She’d been ear-marked by NASA for piloting before Nicholas had won her over to the dark side with the classic adage: we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the sea. It’s time the sea had its turn, don’t you think? She was pretty, by any standards, and had long sleek hair as smooth as polished wood and a warm chestnut color.

She had her own set of three screens—the left screen showed one of the feeds from the bottom of the craft, the middle showed the water directly ahead of them, and the third showed a split-screen of the side-view of the craft.  He could immediately see what she meant. Unfurling itself on the central screen was a glistening gunmetal-coloured squid, about three times the size of the craft and with an eye the size of a human head. Its tentacles knotted and tangled themselves, moving with a disturbing autonomy, scraping at the darkness like a blind-man’s hands. Who needs science fiction when these bloody things are around? The squid drifted away from them. Its flesh transformed as the craft’s light fell on different parts of it – flecks of yellow and purple shimmering like an aurora borealis across the sheen of silver.  Like a ghost it melted into the blackness, until only a few trails of ethereal colour remained imprinted on their retinas.

“They’re beautiful, don’t you think?” Laura said, watching the screen. “And this is only the second one to be caught on film.”

Nicholas put a hand on her shoulder.

“We’ve got even bigger fish to fry.” He realized what he’d just said and put his hand to his face. “Sorry, bad pun.”

“Gigantism is perhaps the ocean’s biggest mystery,” Zend said. “One would think in such adverse conditions that not even bacterial life could survive, but here we have monsters!” His eyes shone—not unlike the squid’s eerie flesh. Nicholas felt his hair rising on end despite the heat.

“How far down are we, Laura?”

“Currently at 26,000 ft. We’re expecting to encounter the ocean bed soon, at around 30,000 ft.”

“And we have power for a 46,000 ft climb, correct?”

Laura nodded.

“We’ve not used any to steer on the way down—aside from that little bump it’s been a straightforward descent. We’ll use perhaps a few hundred feet’s worth of power to skirt over the vents, and then we’ll have enough to descend to around 43,000 ft. I want to leave margin for error.”

“Nice work. I think Zend’s plan to aim for vent B is our best option. Let me know when we’re over it.”

“Roger.”

Nicholas went back to the observation pod and watched the screens.

The small jets on the underbelly of the craft hissed and sighed in his ear.

“Current depth: 30,066 ft—positioned over vent B,” Laura’s voice crackled over the com system. “Temperature currently at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, a little hotter than we first thought. Cooling systems have been engaged as well as stabiliser-pistons – hull is at maximum resistance. We’re just waiting for your all-clear, Nick. Commence descent into the Hadopelagic zone?”

Nicholas watched the rows and rows of tubeworms waving like a crowd of beggars’ hands. Some of them were eight feet long and crimson; their white lips were their only feature. They shrank away back into their silt-stained coves in the rock at the approach of the craft. Zend hadn’t lied. The vent was wide as a canyon and megalithic—each side its own Great Wall of China stretching beyond sight.

“Begin the descent.”

“Do we need to fire a Chem-Flare down there?” Zend put in.

“No. No Chem-Flares at the moment, and turn down the headlights a fraction.”

There was a crackle on the intercom.

“Down?”

“Affirmative. Turn them down. The inhabitants of these vents aren’t used to light—all the bioluminous creatures we’ve seen are resident to the abyssopelagic zone. Best not take a chance and aggravate something.”

“Gotcha on that one. Beginning descent.”

The whirr and hiss of the jets cut off sharply and the craft remained suspended a moment before sinking. Nicholas felt a shiver run through his whole body like the onset of an earthquake.

They descended for the best part of three hours and saw nothing but endless walls of tubeworms on the flat sides of the vent—or rather the “canyon”, as they were calling it. It was only after this time that Nicholas began to wonder whether the walls were a little too straight. The vents were caused by tectonic plates being pulled apart, but surely no split could be so precise? Against all he’d expected, the temperature remained level throughout the descent—fluctuating by a few degrees but never rising higher than eight-five degrees Fahrenheit. He couldn’t believe it. The earth’s core should be directly warming the vents.

“Almost at 39,000 feet. Jesus...” Laura spoke. Nicholas could hear breathlessness in her voice.

“Keep going,” Nicholas said. He hoped he sounded confident. Zend was silent throughout.

“Wait—picking up something on the radar. The vent’s about to end.”

“You mean there’s a bottom?” Nicholas leant forward and squinted at the screens. They showed nothing but a void.

“No.” He heard the fear tightening Laura’s throat. She was squeaking. “The opposite... it’s like... there’s just space.”

“What do you mean?” He put his face inches from the screen—willing it  to show him something, but the pixels started to sting his eyes and the hair on his face bristled at the proximity of the static.

“The walls of the canyon just end, but there’s water below it.”

Zend’s voice cut across Laura’s on the intercom.

“Dr. Pinter, we need to send a Chem-Flare to see what’s down there.”

Nicholas paused. He looked at the darkness on the screen that showed what was beneath them. The nothingness swallowed the headlights as if the liquid had condensed and become an oily mass, slithering over their craft. The hull creaked.

“What’s our pressure at?”

“She can still hold,” Laura answered.

“The Chem-Flares—”

“No damn Chem-Flares, Zend. You hear? We don’t know what’s down there.” Nicholas realized he was shaking. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d never been like this on any of the expeditions he’d previously been on. But you were never this far down before. The ocean bed had been done. Not this.

“Only 600 ft more and we’ll be out of the vent,” Laura spoke.

“Pull up.”

“What?”

“Abort the mission, it’s too risky.”

“Roger.”

Nicholas heard the hiss and judder as the jets on the side of the craft engaged. He sighed and let out a long breath. He wasn’t sure whether it was his imagination, but the screens seemed to brighten as they elevated.

Then the jets snapped off.

“Laura?”

Nothing.

“Laura?”

“Doctor,” Zend’s voice sounded, breathless, panicked. “You better get up here. I think she’s having a seizure.”

“Fuck.” Not now. God, not now. Not fucking now. What the hell is going on?

He ran to ladder and clambered up out of the observation pod. He sprinted through the shaft that ran through the centre of the craft, ducking the low-hanging girders, and twisted open the door to the main deck. Laura was slumped on the floor, blood pooling under her head. He felt dizzy for a moment as the craft started to pick up speed in its descent again.

Then something smashed across the back of his head and he fell face-first onto the floor. His nose shattered and two of his front teeth broke and flew into the back of his mouth. He remained conscious for three seconds before blacking out, long enough to see a man with dark hair step over him and make his way to the console.

Zend looked down at Nicholas and Laura. They were both stupid in their way. All the money. All the research. Everything sacrificed. Didn’t they know what he’d been through? His father had been a Yakuza man, and it had taken him twenty-one years to escape the clutches of his family. But he’d done what he had to do, and he wouldn’t let it be for nothing. It was insane to abandon the plan now. Insane.

He keyed in a simple command and hit a return button. He heard the engines ratchet up, sounding like an old 20th century war siren; a phosphorous green light burst into a ball of flame and sank beneath the craft, illuminating the darkness like a moon turned sick.

“Now, we find out what’s down there...”

He sat back in the pilot seat and grinned to himself.

For ten minutes nothing happened. He watched the light fade away into the blackness like a receding end of a tunnel. The craft followed the flare down. He watched as the cameras showed the end of the vent draw level and then sail above the craft as it dropped into a suspended abyss, a domed underwater cavern. He was below even the hadopelagic zone now—in unchartered territory. The counter read a depth of 41,000 ft.

Suddenly, the light of the Chem-Flare was nowhere to be seen. It was designed to burn with higher intensity magnesium, and for longer.

But even it must have its limits.

Another few minutes passed. Zend became very aware of his own breathing, and the little creaks of the ship. The pressure surged on the meter and he checked all the pistons to make sure they were responding to the increased weight on the hull.

He glanced at the counter and it showed 41,678 ft.

How are we descending so fast?

The hull groaned louder than before, and the craft rocked. The depth counter sped up.

41,700.

41,900.

42,500.

Zend slammed the jets onto full throttle. The gurgle of the engine sputtering to life sounded like a beaten pack-horse. The craft didn’t respond.

Then he knew.

It wasn’t that the Chem-Flare had dropped out of sight; it was that the craft had overtaken it, pulled downward by some unseen force.

The black screens showed only a darkness that flexed and deepened, as if with many mouths.

Nicholas groaned from the floor, unconscious as Zend stared on—transfixed by something he still could not quite see, wrapped in the abyss.

He wondered whether the craft would ever meet a bottom, or just keep sinking, on and on, toward an end he could never know.

Appendix

Oliver Smith, “The Arkenholz Sonata.” Copyright 2014 by Oliver Smith.

Michael Bray, “Implants.” Copyright 2014 by Michael Bray.

DJ Tyrer, “Hyperreal.” Copyright 2014 by DJ Tyrer.

Tim Jeffreys, “Modified.” Copyright 2014 by Tim Jeffreys.

Brett J. Talley, “Workman’s Wages.” Copyright 2014 by Brett J. Talley.

Gerry Griffiths, “Maxwell’s Creation.” Copyright 2014 by Gerry Griffiths.

Josh Strnad, “Nine-Tenths of the Law.” Copyright 2014 by Josh Strnad.

Kierce Sevren, “Autonomous Trafficking.” Copyright 2014 by Kierce Sevren.

Patrick Lacey, “Planet Ruination.” Copyright 2014 by Patrick Lacey.

Joseph Sale, “Descent.” Copyright 2014 by Joseph Sale.

Table of Contents

The Arkenholz Sonata by Oliver Smith

Implants by Michael Bray

Hyperreal by DJ Tyrer

Modified by Tim Jeffreys

Workman’s Wages by Brett J. Talley

Maxwell’s Creation by Gerry Griffiths

Nine-Tenths of the Law by Josh Strnad

Autonomous Trafficking by Kierce Sevren

Planet Ruination by Patrick Lacey

Descent by Joseph Sale

Appendix