Author: Adam Millard; Jon Alston; Nick Johnson; Jesse Harlin; N. S. Mariner; Richard Smith; Robert J. Santa; Trak E. Simisu; Jennifer Courtney; D. Krauss; Damien Krsteski; Edd Howarth; Eric R. Schiller; Eryk Pruitt; Jeffrey Veregge
Date: 2013-12-05 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: dark fiction; Collections & Anthologies; Post Apocalypse; Sci-Fi; Horror; Short Stories
Description: There will come a time when everything we know and love will cease to exist. But how will such a disaster transpire - by nuclear warfare, ecological collapse, technological failure, perhaps pandemic? And how would we cope in our last hours, in catastrophe's wake? This theme of finality is explored in Nuclear Town USA, a collection of apocalyptic and dystopian fiction set across a diversity of scenarios and backdrops. From fast-paced thrillers to dark reflections, each story intriguingly captures frightening alt-realities surrounding humanity's twilight. Some of the brightest new stars in specu
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

NUCLEAR TOWN USA

Tales from Post-Apocalyptic America

A Dreamscape Press Anthology

Produced For Kindle

All Rights Reserved

This digital edition published in 2017 by
Dreamscape Press - United States of America

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, store in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher's Note
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyrights: Assigned to Individual Authors
Edited by: David Nell

CONTENTS

The Nucleus Note by Adam Millard

Druthers by Eryk Pruitt

The Forty-Seven by Jesse Harlin

Coherence by Eric R Schiller

Assignment Seven by Richard Smith

Unorthodox Nuclear Family by Nick Johnson

I Will Watch For You By Starlight by Trak E. Sumisu

The Last Moon Cowboy by Edd Howarth

Rite of Passage by Robert J. Santa

Throne Room by D. Krauss

The Undead Legacy of the King by Jeffrey Veregge

Portrait of a Girl by Jennifer Courtney

Solving Holly by Damien Krsteski

The Unmaker by N.S. Mariner

THE NUCLEUS NOTE

Adam Millard

The cloaked figure ambled along at a leisurely pace, kicking things along the ground and stopping occasionally to either take a rest or mutter something incoherent. He looked to be intoxicated, which the man watching him knew could not be true; alcohol, in all its forms, had run out years ago. No, the cloaked figure was simply injured, limping ever-so-slightly, and only appearing to be under the influence of a substance long gone.

The observer flicked a switch; the screen in front of him flickered momentarily before the cloaked figure was gone, replaced by two women. He edged closer to the screen to get a better look, and was surprised to discover that one of the women, the blonde one, was in fact a man in drag. He made a disgusted sound in his throat before settling back into his chair. What were they doing out there? Salvaging? There was nothing left, not since the world fizzled out over five years ago. People, for some strange reason, were actually trying to survive. But why? He couldn't understand it. For him, it was different. He was part of the in-crowd, one of the creators of The Nucleus Note. For him, life was a completely diverse affair to that of the vagabonds beyond the fence. He had luxuries, a life worth living. He smoked three Cuban cigars a day, ate food that didn't have maggots crawling through it, and washed it down with vintage wines from around the world. He was one of the fortunate ones, the ones who had decided, when the outbreak began, that containment was not an option.

The damage was done, even if the uninfected people weren't aware of it. So he, Julian Graves (a nom de plume, not that anybody cared) and eight others, scientists and academics just like him, had decided to put their project to the test.

Needless to say, it worked. It worked very well, indeed.

The Nucleus Note was designed as a neat and effective way to euthanize the infected. An inaudible note, somewhere up in the frequency of thirty-thousand hertz, it renders everyone in its vicinity dead within a few seconds of hearing it. The problem was, it could not be trained to only kill the infected, those unfortunate victims of the pandemic commonly known as François Flu, named after the first person to have contracted it. No matter what, the only way to prevent the virus's spread, to keep those fortunate enough to know about the Nucleus Note safe, was to utilise it – to great effect – on the populace. Entire cities were wiped out in moments as the note was played over loudspeakers and Tannoy systems. Bodies had fallen in the street, infected or otherwise, and most of them remained in the same place now, for the clean-up operation was so vast that it would take years to accomplish thoroughly.

"Anything out there?" a voice asked. Julian started, not expecting anyone to be awake at this time of night. He was, however, relieved to discover the voice belonged to Doctor Evelyn Waugh. She looked tired, as if she had been asleep but was now struggling to return to it.

"Just a few stragglers," Julian said, jabbing a finger towards the black-and-white flickering monitor sitting on the desk in front of him. "I don't know why I bother watching them, anymore," he continued. "They all look lost, and there's nothing we can do for them." And why would they even bother? They, the people within the compound, were the safest humans on the planet. If the virus was still out there – and Julian was pretty sure it was; the majority of the people staggering onto his monitor in the preceding weeks seemed to be afflicted with something – then it was eventually going to get to the remaining civilians. Ten years, twenty, fucking fifty, one day they would be rid of it, and then they – or their children if the latter time-scale applied – would reclaim the earth. In the meantime, they must continue doing what they had been doing all these years.

Making sure.

"Why don't you just press the button and go to bed?" Evelyn said. Julian wished, though it was never going to happen, she had instead used the term "come to bed," but she didn't, and Julian sighed.

The button she referred to was the tiny, red toggle next to the monitor. It was the same switch he depressed every night, and a few times during the day, should the monitors become a flurry of activity.

"You think we're ever going to be able to forgive ourselves for what we do here?" Julian asked, though he didn't know where it came from, and immediately regretted it the moment it passed his lips. Evelyn thought silently, contemplating her riposte. He considered telling her to forget it, that he was just being silly and sentimental, that fatigue had simply crept up on him and now not only was he feeling the effects, he was speaking them, too.

"No," she said, just as blunt as that, and Julian knew that she was right, that he had merely sought to confirm his own suspicions. And now that he knew she was in agreement with him, he didn't feel so bad about it.

"Why don't you go and try to get your head down?" he said, forcing a smile. "I"ll be going to bed in a little while myself, I promise."

She patted him gently, yet without affection, on his shoulder before turning and disappearing through the door. Julian couldn't help staring at her ass as she ambled slowly out of the room; something else he would never experience.

He turned back to the monitor, the grainy greyscale images of desolation that he was required to watch in twelve-hour increments. The two women were riffling through an industrial bin, the kind that restaurants and bars use for empty bottles and dismantled cardboard boxes. One of them found something to eat, and they began to fight over it. Julian used the dial on the monitor to zoom, and was unsurprised, yet still sickened, to find they were brawling over a dead rat. One of the women had the head in her mouth; the other was pulling on the tail, to no avail, and slapping the woman upside the head with her free hand in a frantic attempt to release the rotting rodent from the other woman's jaws.

Julian had seen enough for one night. Evelyn was right; he should be in bed, for tomorrow he had to do this all over again.

He pressed the red toggle next to the monitor, and turned to the screen.

The women, who were so animated just a second ago, were now frozen solid. The half-devoured rat hung listlessly from the jaws of the one lucky enough to have had a final supper; its tail swung deliberately in the night breeze, a sign that rigor mortis was either yet to attack or had already passed.

And then her nose began to bleed. Julian wasn't offered the scene in all its chromatic glory, but when you had seen it happen as many times as he had, the blood being pitch black didn't detract from its intensity.

And then, as quickly as it had started, it was all over. The two women fell forward, bouncing off each other – almost in a final embrace – before landing in a heap beside the industrial bin at the edge of the street. The dead rat fell from the first woman's lips and lay motionless, and headless, between them.

Julian leant in and flicked the monitor to make sure everything had gone as...yeah, there he was, the cloaked man who had been limping along as if inebriated, only now he wasn't limping anywhere. He had died on his feet, taking a piss against a six-foot aluminium railed fence. Somehow his wrist had caught up in the rails and he was wedged, prevented from dropping to the ground, where he would have remained until the clean-up crew got around to shifting him. They would have to disentangle him from his aluminium restraint. Until they did, he was going nowhere.

So that was how The Nucleus Note worked; it really was that easy. The compound where Julian and the others resided was soundproofed, impossible to penetrate. If there was such a thing as a higher-frequency note than that of the Nucleus – and there wasn't – then it would still be unable to affect the people within the perimeters of the compound. A great deal of time, work, and money – despite being useless – had been used in ensuring the safety of every man and woman on the inside. They were the only true survivors of François Flu. Sure, the few stragglers shambling aimlessly around on the outside were immune, otherwise they would have succumbed to the virus's effects years ago, but they were just as dead as those who contracted it initially.

They just didn't know it yet.

Julian pressed the switch on the monitor and it flickered a few times before blinking off. He yawned, stretched, and headed for bed, hoping that Dr. Evelyn Waugh, in a strange turn of events, was waiting for him beneath his sheets.

Julian had been asleep for an indeterminable amount of time, but he knew that it wasn't long because he couldn't recall suffering any nightmares – as was his wont – and the pillow beneath his head was still dry. He lay motionless in the semi-darkness; something had woken him, it must have.

After almost a minute of listening in silence, he noticed that he had ceased breathing. He slowly allowed air back into his lungs, being careful not to make a sound. Not only did he believe that something had brought him out of his unconsciousness, he sensed eyes upon him, eyes that, despite the almost impossible darkness in the room, could see him just fine.

And then something grasped onto his wrist, and he was being yanked from the covers. Another hand – sweaty, salty – slapped down over his mouth so hard that a tooth cracked. What would have been screams for help turned into nothing but incoherent mumbles. This hand, however, belonged to another, which meant that he had at least two attackers.

A voice, deep and guttural, said, "Be careful with him," and Julian wanted to thank the possessor of kind words, although he knew that ultimately his days were numbered.

What was happening? Who were these people? They had to be insiders, people that he had lived amongst for the preceding ten years...

They dragged him across the room, still in the cloak of darkness, and began to bind his wrists and ankles together, being ever-so-silent as they ripped through the tape. He knew, in that moment, that there were at least four men in the room. Two were holding him down while another made sure he couldn't move for shit. A fourth man spoke from the edge of the room, and it was the possessor of the kind words, the man who had urged caution in man-handling him from his bed.

"Make sure he can't warn the others," he said. "We've come too far to fuck this up, now."

It wasn't the way in which the man spoke that frightened Julian; it was his words. They confirmed that this whole operation – for that was what it was – had been premeditated, planned to within an inch of its life. That was what made Julian Graves (not his real name, of course) sit up and take notice while his bowels relaxed beneath him.

Suddenly, a radio crackled; a voice said, "We're in position. Everything okay your side?"

"Everything's smooth," the voice across the room replied. "Just make sure that nobody gets hurt. He wants to set an example here, remember?"

"They're all cooperating like we said they would," the crackling radio-voice said; there was the tiniest of sniggers following his statement, a sign that these people – whoever the fuck they were – seemed to be enjoying themselves.

One man who wasn't enjoying any of it, Julian, could hardly breathe through the twisted tape jammed between his trembling lips. He blinked tears and sweat from his stinging eyes, and all the time thought of Dr. Evelyn Waugh and her almost-perfect derrière. Quite why he pictured her, walking away from him, leaving him sitting at the monitor as she ambled off to bed, was beyond him, but it took the edge off an otherwise unbearable situation. He knew that things were about to go tits-up, not that they hadn't already, and if this was to be his final night on a godless earth, then he was going to go out with some semblance of a smile painted on his face.

"Right," the voice said, determined and somewhat eager. "Take him to join the others. If he gives you any shit, you have my permission to knock him out."

As they hoisted Julian up from his cowering position, the last thing on his mind was to give these maniacs any shit.

Sixty-eight people, all in night-gowns or whatever garb they had been wearing when they had retired for the night, were placed in the centre of the main hall. A few of the women – especially the younger ones; the elder women knew that it was fruitless – were trying to scream through their gags.

They didn't have to scream, though. Their eyes, wide orbs that suggested sheer terror and confusion, said it all.

Julian was led into the room, and as soon as he saw the ensuing chaos – people being clouted across the back of the head by masked men dressed all in black; children also gagged and bound as if to prove there was no prejudice in what this group were trying to achieve – he knew that things had nosedived drastically.

The men dressed uniformly in black were armed, though not with guns. Each of them carried a blade of some description. A machete here, a Bowie-knife there; blades that glimmered beneath the incandescent lighting, shimmering with each movement of its employer. Julian was mesmerised, and yet as he was forced through the hall, between scampering children and hysterical adults, he searched for the one person who could possibly make this transition into death passable.

"All of you need to calm the fuck down," the man, possessor of kind words, bellowed at the top of his lungs. "This will all be over shortly, and we will be gone just as quickly as we arrived."

Was that supposed to be comforting? It meant nothing to the people gathered on the cold, hard floor of the main hall. Julian, especially, was aware of its connotations. They said they would be gone, but that didn't mean anyone would be left alive when they were.

People, seemingly sensing that there was no point in struggling further, began to fall silent, and when they were suitably hushed, the balaclava-wearing speaker at the edge of the room gestured towards the door.

Now, there were two men at the doors, and each of them grabbed their respective handles and pulled inwards. Julian, still struggling to breathe through the gag which was starting to cut away at his top lip, thought this was a little over-the-top. He half-expected the President to walk in, or at least the Queen of England. When a little man, the only one of the group sans-balaclava, strode into the main hall – flanked by a further two uniformed men – he felt somewhat cheated.

The man paced confidently into the centre of the room, stepping over cowering people as if they were minor inconveniences. His two guards remained with him until he waved them away, to which they duly obeyed.

Julian couldn't help but stare at the strange, little man. He didn't look like a mercenary, or anything of that ilk. He would have been more suited, perhaps, to office-work, or telling at the local bank. There wasn't an ounce of muscle on him; and why would he need it? His muscle was scattered haphazardly around the room.

"I"ll bet you all have a thousand questions you want to ask right now," he said, surveying the miserable room. "Which is why I"m going to give one of you the chance to speak. Since you're hardly in the position to nominate your spokesperson, I"d like one of you – anyone, for what it's worth – to raise your hand slowly. One of my men will come to you and remove your gag. Is that clear?"

There were mumbles and hisses, though Julian didn't think anyone would put themselves forward for such an act. Which was why, for some reason, his hand slowly edged into the air as he leaned back on his haunches. At first, the little guy in charge didn't see him, but the guard behind Julian coughed to grab his attention.

The man turned to Julian, nodded to the guard stood behind, who proceeded to remove Julian's gag, albeit forcefully.

"I would like to take this opportunity to tell you," the man in charge continued, "that should you scream, or become unruly, one of my men will be ordered to decapitate you where you kneel. Is that understood?"

Julian nodded. As the gag was yanked from his mouth, he spat blood onto the floor in front of him. He glanced around the room, dry-swallowing, and noticed that all eyes had fallen upon him. He was their only hope now, and yet he knew that no matter what came to pass in the next few minutes, it would make very little difference to their chances of survival. In truth, he wasn't sure why he had volunteered to speak in the first place; he was just as – if not more – frightened than the rest of the room.

"You may ask," the man sneered, gesturing in a manner that caused the blood to boil inside Julian, who was completely helpless and yet speculating just how quickly he could rush the barbaric little scrote and tear his fucking throat out with just his teeth.

Julian asked the first question that came to mind: "Who are you, and what do you want?" He could taste the blood on his tongue; that metallic bitterness which is neither offensive nor tolerable.

The man sighed, closed his eyes as if in deep thought. He started to speak with exaggerated clarity, almost patronizingly. "We are people, just like you. I don't suppose you recall what it's like to be an equal. While you were all holed up in safety, we had to fight. None of us became infected; that piddly fucking virus was nothing to some of us, and yet we were executed just the same as if we carried it." A pause as the man kicked the nearest person – which just happened to be an elderly gent by the name of George Simms – in the side of the head. The rest of the room gasped in horror; women and children began to sob once again. "You have no idea what it was like out there. I watched most of my family fall ill, suffer as the flu took them, and then die. But the ones who didn't die, my brother, my uncle, my niece, they were taken by your infernal Nucleus Note."

For the first time since the man began to speak, Julian became aware of something cold and sharp at the nape of his neck. The guard was holding his blade to Julian; and now he was terrified.

"You took it upon yourselves to finish off what the François Flu started, all the time cowering between these very walls like the cockroaches that you are. There is a place in Hell for you and yours," the man said as he lit a rudimentary hand-rolled cigarette. "For all of us, ultimately. We're the people who you've been killing, picking off with your silent poison. How does it feel to be helpless, to know that nobody will help you, to know that people want you dead?"

Julian could tell him exactly how it felt; it felt like shit, but he managed to hold it down long enough to ask his next question. "How did you get in here?" There came an audible revolt from the cowering hostages, who couldn't quite figure out why Julian Graves was being so tenacious. The difference between them and him was, they could still envision a way out of this; he knew it was all over. The tone of his questioning might hasten the execution, but that was all. The one thing he was certain of was that there was going to be an execution tonight. These people, the women and children and men with whom he had shared quarters with all these years, would hopefully come to realise it while they still had a chance to pray.

"We've had a lot of time to plan," the man said, crouching beside a squirming woman, who recoiled as his warm breath danced across her face. He stroked her cheek, and Julian suddenly realised that the man – that evil bastard – was not just taunting any woman with his touch; he was stroking the face of Evelyn Waugh. "Trust me, out there on the street, with all those maniacs running round losing their marbles, you find a few good men, people that still have a bit about them. It's survival instinct. Pick the biggest man in the room and stand behind him until the trouble's passed."

Julian wanted to scream at the man; how dare he touch Dr. Evelyn Waugh. She was cringing, wincing every time the man's fingers brushed her skin. Julian swallowed the blood in his mouth and was about to lunge to his feet when the prick stood up and began to move away from her.

Close.

Too close, but now he knew where Evelyn was in the room. It offered him something wonderful to focus on as the horrors played out.

"You once had a man here named Dugan," the little man continued, scratching at his partially-formed beard. "I believe he abandoned you when you executed three children in the middle of the city with your stupid Nucleus Note."

Jasper didn't need to reply. This man had clearly had dealings with Marcus Dugan, which would explain how they had managed to penetrate the complex so easily. It had never crossed anyone's mind to alter the codes after Dugan went AWOL; a mistake that had now cost them dearly.

"Word of advice, not that it's of any use to you now," the man said, a hint of a smile curling the corner of his lips. "Never annoy your allies. So many wars have been lost that way. When Dugan gave me the codes, I had him martyred. That man handed you to us on a plate, and for that he was commended. A few of us even went back for seconds, such was the taste of his bravery and lack of honour."

They ate him, Julian thought. They fucking ate Dugan!

"Which brings us here, to you, tonight, and what better way to finish off what has already been an amazing evening by personally thanking each and every one of you for your inexorable hard work in decreasing the population, infected or otherwise?"

"You're going to kill us," Julian said. "Wouldn't that make you just as bad as us? How does that work in your tiny little mind?" From the ground across the hall, Evelyn gave him a cursory glance, a warning of sorts.

"We're not going to kill you," the man said, gesturing to the guards nearest the door. They saluted and left. "You did that a long time ago, when you started playing God and annihilating innocents out there on the street."

There was a clunk at the door, and the guards reappeared. They were wheeling something – a trolley, a gurney? - and people began to clamber out of the way as it was pushed through the room to where the unmasked man stood, grinning maniacally to himself. There was a white sheet across the trolley, which prevented the room from seeing what it actually was, and when the man grasped the cover and yanked it back, women screamed once again, men began to sob wholeheartedly as the realisation finally hit home.

Sitting atop the trolley was one giant speaker – an amplifier that could have previously been used for some now-defunct heavy-metal band's guitars – and Julian smiled ever-so-slightly as he came to the same conclusion as the rest of the room.

The man began to flick switches on the speaker, whistling a tuneful little ditty as he went. "We came to terms with our demise a long time ago," he broke off long enough to say. "Humans aren't meant to survive out there, not any longer. Our days have gone; we were bettered by a virus billions of times smaller than us. You should have realised that and accepted it, instead of hiding in here and delaying the inevitable. Lots of innocent people died from François, but not nearly as many as those killed by your unholy creation. Today, for us, is all about making sure that we take the responsible party with us. And on that note...pardon the pun...I bid you all adieu..."

He flicked the switch.

Julian glanced across to Evelyn, but she was looking somewhere else. He could see people falling all around the room in his peripheral vision. The unmasked man was the last to go, hitting the ground with such force that Julian was certain he saw the man's head explode.

He looked up to the huge, silent speaker, to the trolley rattling beneath it.

And then there was nothing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Millard is the author of thirteen novels and more than a hundred short stories, which can be found in various collections and anthologies. Probably best known for his post-apocalyptic fiction, Adam also writes fantasy/horror for children. He created the character Peter Crombie, Teenage Zombie just so he had something decent to read to his son at bedtime. Adam also writes Bizarro fiction for several publishers, who enjoy his tales of flesh-eating clown-beetles and rabies-infected derrieres so much that they keep printing them. His "Dead" series has recently been the filling in a Stephen King/Bram Stoker sandwich on Amazon's bestsellers chart. When he's not writing about the nightmarish creatures battling for supremacy in his head, Adam writes for This Is Horror, whose columnists include Shaun Hutson, Simon Bestwick and Simon Marshall-Jones. Website: www.adammillard.co.uk.

DRUTHERS

Eryk Pruitt

John Paul crouched lower behind the boulder and squinted, stared hard across a grove of beeches until certain that he indeed saw what had to be the first living human he'd seen in over three months. All along the face of the ravine, stony outcrops jutted forth like warts and he could just make it out, standing atop one of them and smoking what appeared to be a cigarette. It made no movement other than to bring the cigarette to its face, inhale, then return its arm to its side. It did this for several moments until the cigarette was snuffed.

When it finished its business on the outcrop, John Paul followed it through the woods. When winter came, it never left, so he was careful not to slush along the forest floor rusted by pine needles. He kept a good distance, sometimes losing it in the bronzed beech leaves, but always finding it again. It kept a steady pace – neither fast nor slow – for folks long ago gave up needing somewhere to be.

For a while, John Paul had been one of a group of nine. Two committed suicide, four ran off, one succumbed to injury and the other...well, the other had a strong opinion on which of the two of them had more to live for. John Paul's opinion ran counter. He'd been alone ever since.

Until today.

When first he noticed it, fear held him fast. He'd stood still, careful not to make a sound, hoping to high heaven he hadn't already been seen. All still save the current of the river below, shushing over shoals before going about its business somewhere downstream. And like a light, it was gone and, were it not for the lingering scent of tobacco, John Paul could have convinced himself he imagined it all together.

"You was following me."

John Paul whipped around and it stood before him, much like the others he could remember or what he could remember of them: two arms extending down into fists, heavily wrapped in clothing for a winter which still had yet to end and eyes, eyes that seemed to always ask "why?" John Paul took a step back and threw up his hands.

"I mean you no harm," he said.

"Why was you following me?" It was a man. Tow-headed. Its skin had gone grey, much like John Paul's did and like the others had started to before they were all gone. John Paul had long ago given up any memory of anger or need for it, but he suddenly felt reminded. He'd gone quite a spell without having to explain himself.

"You are the first person I've seen in quite some time," he said.

"There ain't been nobody else," it said. "Not for a while, there ain't."

"So there's nobody else with you?"

"You don't see nobody, do you?"

John Paul squinted and took a breath. They stood at a part on the trail where there was plenty below them and still plenty above, somewhere halfway down a wooded ravine that dumped into a river which probably once had a name before names outlived their use. John Paul simply knew it as the river and, although he saw plenty others, gave little inclination to whether they were or were not all the same. All that mattered to him was whether or not he had to cross it.

Pines overhead rollicked in the wind. Wind, historically, bore many dangers. John Paul pulled his jacket tighter.

"You got news?" he asked the other fella.

"I got nothing." Its stance remained defensive, challenging. He looked not right nor left. "I got nothing worth taking and nothing worth giving."

"Perhaps I should move along," said John Paul. Careful not to show his back to the stranger, he stepped away, keeping to the trail.

"That's fine," said the stranger. "Just run on. There ain't been hide nor hair of nobody and soon as you meet someone, you intend to tip your hat and be on your way. Fine by me. Off with you then. If you want my opinion, that's the lot of civilization and probably always has been."

John Paul stopped. He considered the stranger again. Forties, maybe younger. From around here or not, it didn't matter. John Paul had no idea where he was anymore nor motivation to care. Some places still hung heavy with the stench of rot. Others with depair. John Paul preferred the woods.

"You eat?" he asked.

"I eat well enough," said the man. "But if you're offering, I won't shake it off."

John Paul reached into his pack and opened a tin of SpaghettiOs. He peeled back the top, then handed over the can. He didn't think to offer his spoon, nor would he have if asked. The man looked inspected the can as if infested with insects, looked back at John Paul, then turned it up into his mouth and drank from it as if it were water, finishing it in a succession of gulps.

"I like those things," said John Paul. "Some of the houses have plenty of stuff to choose from, but I prefer SpaghettiOs. I've probably gone out of my way in some of these towns to find a grocery store that still has them on the shelves just so I could–"

"They'll do in a pinch," said the man, "but I'd rather eat something else if available. It's too sweet. All that sugar...That's what did everybody in, if you ask me."

They managed up the hill, John Paul stopping every so often to let the older man keep up. He didn't ask many questions, but the stranger offered more as he felt more comfortable. The woods gave way to a small subdivision which looked like it had once been nice and no longer reeked of rot. John Paul looked over a few houses until he found one he thought would do just fine. He tried the door, then kicked it open.

"We stay here tonight," said John Paul.

The man went directly to the kitchen and set about rifling through the cupboards, the refrigerator, anything he could get his hands on. He made more noise than John Paul thought necessary. John Paul set about gathering blankets and quilts, fashioning a bed for himself and then, after thinking of it, fashioning one for the man in a different room. After a moment, the man appeared, eating from a tin of beef stew.

"These people ate like shit," said the stranger. "They didn't have very nice things."

"I doubt that matters now," said John Paul. "You can sleep in here, if you like."

The man said nothing. John Paul went downstairs and looked through the cupboards. The stranger had knocked most everything about, but he was right: they had lived on junk food. Boxes of macaroni and cheese, instant pudding, cookies...He scanned each shelf and, after a bit of deliberation, selected a can of tomato soup and a handful of cookies.

He pulled the curtains to. The appearance of the stranger had unsettled him. He always closed the curtains at sundown, simply because of some unnecessary instinct left behind from a life gone by. Suddenly he was aware of everything, whether it existed or not. He did not care to be seen by anyone.

The previous occupants hung photographs of themselves and their family on the walls. Mom, dad, two boys and a girl. Everyone smiled, all the time. They didn't seem to have much. John Paul ran a finger along the frame of a photograph. It was posed, he told himself. They did what the photographer told them.

Nearly every plate in the cupboard was chipped. The cups felt greasy to the touch. He couldn't fault the dust; the world was dusty. He did feel however, that the place could have long used a bit of repair. He toed at a tear in the linoleum. He pictured children running through the house, grabbing things, breaking things, laughing and screaming and punching each other. He became harried standing alone in the kitchen.

"You coming up?" called the stranger from upstairs.

John Paul looked at the ceiling for a long while. Who knows how long passed before he started to move, but it didn't matter. After a bit, he finally did, and before he left the room, he stopped still. On the counter sat an opened and emptied tin of SpaghettiOs in a puddle of its own juices. He picked it up, ran a finger along the inside of the can, then placed it in the garbage can. He looked to the ceiling again.

After a moment, he mounted the stairs.

"I don't like to rise this early," said the man. "It ain't light out yet."

He was right. The sky took to a sort of purple by which the silhouettes of the pines had yet to stand out. John Paul paid him no mind and gathered his things, trading out his own blanket for one he'd found at the house. It was lighter than his own and for a couple of days now, he'd wished for one less heavy.

"Why you got to get up this early?" asked the stranger. "It ain't like you got somewhere to be. Or do you got somewhere to be? Where you headed?"

"I want to get back to the woods," said John Paul.

"We could stay here. Everything you could ever want is right here."

"You could stay here," said John Paul. "I'm going to head to the woods."

"What do you reckon to find out there?"

"I aim to get to the next town by daybreak," he answered. "I'll stick to the woods, if it's all the same."

"What's in the next town?"

John Paul stuffed the last of his things into his pack and slung it over his shoulder. He stepped out of the room, out of the house, out of the street. He heard the man huffing and puffing behind him and slowed enough until he was alongside him.

"You're a bit difficult to figure," said the stranger. John Paul kept along. "Look, I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I ain't seen nobody in such a spell that...slow down just a minute, will you? It's just that I been on my own for so long that I don't know how to be around people no more. I was married, you see, and I had me a real nice wife who made real nice meals and we had us some good friends. No children, you see. Sure, she wanted them real bad but I weren't the type to take to children. Slow down, just a minute, will you? She was always on about something but you know, she could cook some nice food. Anyway, me and her got on real well, but since...since, you know...I ain't had nobody and sometimes I forget how it can be, having to get on with other folk and...Excuse me, will you please slow down?"

John Paul stopped. Overhead, a poplar swayed. He turned to the stranger.

The stranger said, "Look, I'm trying to say I'm sorry...to apologize to you for any bad behavior and you just ain't listening to me. I don't get it. I've gone out of my way for you. Are you just a mean old person? Is that it? Here I am, trying to make friendly with you and you just keep on walking. What gives?"

John Paul watched him a moment. He too, had been without company for some time and his manners, which formerly were regarded as impeccable, had perhaps slipped by the wayside. He'd read up in books and websites and newspaper articles on rules and etiquette and faux pas, but that was then and, without those resources, found himself wanting. Ashamed, he looked away.

"Sorry," said John Paul. Not satisfied, he looked the stranger in the face and said, "I'm sorry."

The stranger nodded. "That's better," he said. "That's much better. Let's you and me head down to that river we saw yesterday and get ourselves cleaned. What do you say?"

John Paul hated bathing outdoors, but in order to keep his new companion in better spirits, led him down the ravine and toward the waterway slicing through the horizon.

The old mill sat near the river and, best they could tell, had gone unused for nearly two hundred years. Once it had been a bustling center of activity. Folks came from miles about to work or gather or find out the latest goings-on. The days of mills and their importance had come and gone, long before the next days had come and gone, but what remained were ruins. The mildewed, moss covered bricks closer to the foundation had been left alone and in place, but where the others disappeared to were anyone's guess. Long gone was the wheel, the millers, the everything. John Paul took a seat at the foundation while the stranger removed his coat.

"When I was a young one," the stranger said, "I used to like to swim in the river. I never took to snakes much, so I'd send my brother in first to splash around and such so maybe he'd scare them off. Every time, he'd go in first until one day he saw a moccasin just easing on down the creek toward him. After that, he'd scream and cry and say 'Please don't ask me to go in that water first, please,' and carrying on like a little baby. And every time, you know what would happen?"

John Paul looked at him, watched him slip out of his second coat.

The stranger continued: "I'd just throw him in. I'd tell him 'no, you don't have to go in first' and promise him and say 'Let's shake on it' and no sooner would I get up on him to shake on it than I'd chuck him in and he'd splash and cry and scream, scared to the dickens, and you know what? Weren't no snake worth his shit going to be nowhere near all that carrying on."

He laughed and laughed and John Paul fingered the laces on his boot.

"You going in?" asked the stranger.

"I don't think I will," said John Paul. "I'll dip my feet in from time to time, but I don't aim to get wet outdoors."

"What, are you scared to get wet? Like a kitty cat?"

John Paul sighed. "It ain't that," he said. "I just don't aim to get wet."

Content to leave it be, the stranger shimmied out of his britches until he had nary a stitch on him and goose-stepped down to the river. He leapt in the water and, no sooner had he gone under than he was back up again, howling and hollering about how cold was the water. He kicked and splashed around a bit and John Paul wondered how far down the road he'd get if he up and left.

Then the stranger got to calling, saying how John Paul had to come see and he hoisted himself up on the riverbank and flopped down on the ground like an otter and scooted away, still hollering for John Paul to come see. John Paul did, leaving behind the ruins. He stepped alongside the stranger and followed the direction in which he pointed. Down in the cloudy river, along the rocks, the stranger insisted something was down there and he should look, no, get a little closer, look, just over by that rock, a little closer – and pushed John Paul into the river.

When John Paul came up the man laughed hysterically, naked and rolling about in the muck. John Paul said nothing, stood there wet, his only clothes in the world soaked and dripping. He climbed out of the river and stalked up the hill toward the ruins.

"Oh, come on," said the stranger. "Can't you take a joke? How long's it been since you laughed?"

John Paul found a cold, mildewed brick from the old mill which had been worn thin by time and season, then stomped back down the hill.

Two and a half months earlier, while the others still had yet to go, John Paul found himself quick with a smile. The others spat forth little more than questions, doubt and despair, but John Paul forced himself to keep a sunny disposition. Not so much for himself, he figured, but for the others. Within six weeks, they all were gone. Suddenly, he was no longer compelled to think of anyone but himself.

They never liked the woods. The four that ran off preferred the city and sought to live within its centers. John Paul and those that remained never heard anything from those city centers besides gunshots and screams and, eventually, those died away as well.

He stood over the stranger still warm. Something – who could guess what – brought this lot upon them all. Deed or decision, John Paul cared not. Some folks, in the earlier days, referred to it as Hell. He had thoughts that swayed a different way.

One day, he reckoned, he would have to answer. He'd have to answer for the stranger, for the man gone crazy all that time before, for not going into the city...He'd have plenty to answer for from before, long before all of mankind up and left. He'd imagined it so many ways. A god come down from the heavens, an angel in man's clothing, an angel in woman's clothing...He fancied himself sitting somewhere, anywhere, possibly even over the body of the stranger.

He picked up a stone and threw it down the ravine and waited, but never heard it splash in the river below. If that angel come, he thought, he'd not have to explain himself. For all he knew, he defended mankind. He kept his race alive. He reckoned if he should be congratulated for his efforts, he'd have but one request.

He'd ask to be left alone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eryk Pruitt is a filmmaker, author, and screenwriter living in Durham, NC. His short film "Foodie" has won numerous awards at film festivals across the country. His short fiction has appeared in Avalon Literary Review, The Speculative Edge, Mad Scientist Review, and Pantheon Magazine. His post-apocalyptic short story is being adapted by CinemaFuel Productions into a short film this year. He is currently shopping his first novel and his complete list of credits can be found at erykpruitt.com.

THE FORTY-SEVEN

Jesse Harlin

Word spread quickly that Gavin was back. Word always spread quickly. At Dinner Meet, forty-five of the Forty-Seven would gather in the lodge hall, eat, and then listen to Gavin's news. Only those on watch in the Crow's Nest would be missing, and Bette Thomson would take plates to them once everyone else had eaten. This month, it was the Byers' turn to cook. Everyone had learned by now, unfortunately, that Chas Byers had no sense of taste. It would be another two weeks of over-salted everything before Mrs. Dennings took over the galley. Before Dinner Meet, Gavin would be quarantined in the infirmary, resting and bleeding, poked and patched back together by Dr. Wood and her usual battery of tests.

These were the long nights, the bleary stretch of depressive cold where even daylight feared to show its face for long. Sundown was just after 1630. Like every night, its arrival was announced by the hammering and rehammering of the all-shut pinging across the network of pipes that snaked their way through each deck of Mother Qingdao's Promise. Four...Seven...Ten times the all-shut sounded each dusk and, as the last pangs of the message beat across Mother's skin, the generators rumbled to life. The universe groaned with the multi-timbral moaning of Pradeep's steel shutter system locking down. Before 1650, Mother was secure and the generators spun down for the long night.

The savory sweat of stew clung to the air of the lodge hall. At the far end was the makeshift galley and Chas Byers up to his elbows in forty-seven portions of dinner. The rhythmic clanking at his side was his son, Ayden, as he bashed mashed potatoes into submission with a monkey wrench in one of the large metal pots. For her part, tiny Haley Byers was stacking the hodgepodge of salvaged plates on the long folding table. The two simple words "be careful" had become her whole world and Haley was treating each chipped and nicked plate as an heirloom so as not to let down her dad.

Ricardo Ortiz was their first in line. He was a solid chunk of humankind, six foot huge with an oil drum chest and brutally shorn hair. Haley handed him a plate directly, a red plastic orphan with a melted edge. Ricardo gave the little girl a head-nod hello that she returned simply by staring at him.

"Chas."

"Ricardo."

"What's on the menu tonight?"

The older man was ladling a spreading brown mix of vegetables and lumps onto the outstretched plate. "Stew."

Ricardo snorted. "You need meat to call it stew, compa."

Chas gave his huge customer a weak smile and a dinner roll. He looked tired. "Angela says she's been experimenting and figured out how to make tofu out of the sesame seeds Gavin brought back a few months ago." Ricardo cursed under his breath reflexively, but caught himself with a grimace and apologized to the two kids for his language before grabbing a fork and moving off towards a seat. He was halfway done with his meal when he was joined at the table by the current water treatment crew. Gary Keung looked too old for his age. They all did. His fatigued eyes offered Ricardo a half-hearted eyebrow salute as he sat down.

"'Sup, dude." Ricardo didn't offer an answer. Gary hadn't expected one anyway. Jim Hickston tried to pull a chair out for his dad, Ollie, but the elder Hickston waved away the help.

"I can get it," he groused. His son rolled his eyes and took the seat directly across from Gary. "Evening, Ricky. How's Chuck's mush tonight?"

Ricardo chuckled. "Evening, sir." Ollie Hickston was in his early sixties and both his teeth and voice were stained from years of smoking. He loved to regurgitate trivia from years past about long-dead people or half-remembered, half-imagined war chronicles from Kosovo. Sometimes Ollie told stories about his wife. Sometimes he simply retold episodes of whatever sitcoms he could remember. Ollie was their link to Before, the desiccated and fading remains of Wikipedia in the sun-spotted skin of an aging old man.

His son was tired of the stories, though. Depressed and medicated before the end of everything, Jim simply longed for it all to fade away. He could barely recall anything anymore out of the corners of his cardboard box brain – snatches of sunshine, a few lyrics from the national anthem, how his ex-wife looked in that yellow sundress at...someone's wedding – but it was all distant, all irised down to narrow points of sentiment that squirmed when he reached for them and blurred at the edges. Everything else was Mother Qingdao's Promise. Everything else was work and survival, Chas Byer's stew and the morning all-clear. His father's stories were an obnoxious intrusion, vacation slides of a family and a life and a world that no longer existed beyond Mother's walls, and he simply wanted to forget it all and shamble forward.

An explosive caterwaul meant that school had arrived. Mother's younger children ran for the galley where they greeted the Byers kids with excited smiles and late-day art projects that they had missed by helping their dad prep for Dinner Meet. Miss Oon trod the meeting lodge's scavenged boards with the older children, a small knot of teens and tweens not yet old enough to shoulder the full mantle of adulthood inside Mother's steel guts.

Behind them, President Keats crossed the room slowly. He grimaced. He rubbed his temples one-handed. He puffed out his cheeks and loosed a long, slow sigh as he made his way to the galley where he fell in line behind Nick White.

"Hey, Josh," Nick smiled over his shoulder.

"Hi, Nicolas." Keats attempted to smile back, but it just came off as a thin-lipped smirk.

"Y'okay?"

Keats sniffed and vigorously rubbed both hands through his thinned hair. When he looked up, he pulled off a true smile. "No, I'm fine, Nick. Thanks. I'm just...tired. How's Mother today?" Nick took the bait and launched into an account of the broken hatch on B Deck and the new catch that Hockstendt was welding for him. The aft pantry's lights had been fixed but replacement bulbs were running low. Ressman had found a shutter panel that had come off of its track and could have been pried open from the outside, but he and Serra had fixed it and so crisis had been adverted. All of it washed over Keats as unfocused noise. He didn't want to talk with Nick. He didn't want to talk to anyone. Keats just wanted to sit and eat and then get to Gavin's news, so when Nick offered to let Keats take a plate before him, the older man silently celebrated the opportunity to end the small talk and seclude himself with his evening meal. With dinner in one hand and a chipped mug of Doug Meyer's work-in-progress homebrew beer in the other, Keats seated himself a few seats down from Lyle Dell and at the edge of the lodge hall's makeshift stage. Lyle was busy trying to scrape food into the ancient and unresponsive mouth of Harold Johns.

"Four years in, Josh, and we still haven't settled the euthanasia debate," was all that Lyle offered as a greeting. Keats didn't respond.

More of the Forty-Seven dribbled into the evening congregation. For two hours, Mother would sit idle as her parasitic tenders murmured pleasantries to each other over Chas Byers' fauxfu stew. They would share stories about what had been fished out of the purification filters that morning or inform each other about the new door that was on the "permanently open" list due to the failure of another part that would never be manufactured again. They would distract each other. They would make due. They would continue. They would do whatever it took to myopically focus on the here and soon or the long distant, but not the recent. Never the recent. Focusing on the recent meant they would all clot into a blubbering and suicidal scab of madness only to pick each other apart and bleed out by morning.

After he had finished eating, President Keats sat silently listening to the sounds of Dinner Meet – the scrape of forks, the ripple of mindless table talk, the occasional bursts of laughter or the unruly squirming of the little kids. He closed his eyes. The room sounded simplenormal. There were odd patchwork memories that he held the sounds up against – the cafeteria at the California Academy of Sciences, the food court at Metreon – but they all seemed quaint and ancient like cartoons from two centuries ago. The mere concept of a mall was some kind of obscene joke, a grand middle finger stretching across from the have-everything past into the fuck-all now.

A chair squeak brought Keats back to Mother. Dr. Olive Wood sat down across from the President. Without a meal, without any pleasantries, she set about rolling one of Pak's cigarettes.

"How is he?"

Dr. Wood shrugged. "He'll survive. This time." Keats turned his head to the makeshift stage. "He was gone a long time, Joshua." Keats didn't respond. "I almost gave up on him."

"He came back." President Keats stared at nothing and idly picked at his fingernails with an arrhythmic pick-pick-click. "He always does." Wood ignored his fidgets as she lit the small cigarette with a salvaged lighter and took a drag.

"Did he tell you where he was?" Keats asked, quickly turning to face the woman across from him. She looked exhausted. Her shoulder length mud-blonde hair was stringy from a lack of enough motivation to shower. There were stains on the cuffs of her blouse. Some of it was blood. None of it was hers. Dr. Wood exhaled noisily out of the corner of her mouth.

"It's the worst idea you've had yet," she said and started to chew her upper lip. Keats didn't argue. He just looked back at the stage. Wood rapped her lighter twice on the tabletop. When Keats turned back to her, the doctor gave a sharp head nod in the direction of the lodge hall's main entry portal. President Keats pivoted in his seat to find Gavin emerging out of the steel shadows.

Gavin Marr had scars. He collected them like merit badges. Each run he made Outside meant more treasures, more stories, and more merit badges carved into the flesh beneath his makeshift armor. Dr. Wood patched him up as well as she could, but Gavin liked the scars. Each scraped knuckle or thorn-torn nick in his neck was the tally of another successful scouting run, so Gavin routinely ignored Wood's complaints and picked at his scabs to help them along. He hadn't originally been the only scout. He was simply the luckiest of the scouts, and outside of Mother's walls, luck meant everything.

In his left hand, Gavin carried two red canvas sacks with black handles. Two more identical bags were slung over his right shoulder. The bags were filthy, as was everything from Outside. Dirty scuffs and tears had ruined what were once a set of uniformly carnelian red duffle bags. Gavin seemed to struggle under their weight, but his wrapped right ankle masked the true source of his limp.

When he noticed Gavin enter the hall, little Booker sprang from both his chair and the controlling grasp of Miss Oon and dashed across the floorboards with the same banshee wail of Gavin's name that always made Jim Hickston plug his ears. Gavin smiled, though less than usual, and moved to set his canvas cargo down on the edge of the stage. He glanced at President Keats, but Keats was staring at his fingernails and Gavin looked away. Without care or consideration, Booker jumped at Gavin for a hug, but the scout wasn't ready for the assault and Booker clung awkwardly to Gavin's arms and slid down his front with the ritualistic cry of "Whatdidyoubringme!"

"Booker! Get off of him!" Dr. Wood barked through a mouthful of smoke. Gavin was wincing through the boy's hug and Wood hoped that he hadn't torn any of his bandages. Around the hall, Gavin's arrival marked the end of dinner. Colleen Dowden urged her husband Zach to hurry up and finish his potatoes. Big Sean wiped his mouth on his flannel cuff. Gio Cielo stole the last bite of his son Michael's dinner roll, prompting a disapproving smack on the arm from Gio's wife and resident laundry mistress, Paula. Forks scraped plates and last sips were downed amid the chatterbuzz that always accompanied Gavin's reappearance.

Gavin pried Booker from around his legs. "Easy, scout." Gavin's words snuck out through a wince. He turned to the battered red bags on the stage and pulled a pocketknife from the depths of his stained cargo pants. With a flip, the young man extended the blade and set to removing a latticework of plastic zip ties. There was a practiced manner to his knife-work, something halfway between field surgery and field dressing a buck. "I have something for you," he whispered over his shoulder. Eyes wide, mouth agape and tongue extruding, Booker began to bounce. "But!" Gavin stopped his canvas surgical extraction and turned to face the pogoboy. With one motion, he collapsed the blade and pointed at Booker, palming the pocketknife in the process. "You have to share."

The bouncing ceased and a mock-pout replaced the boy's stretch-faced grin. "Promise you'll share?" Gavin was serious, and Booker stared at Mother's floorboards in a gnashing bout of id versus super-ego. When his eyes met Gavin's again, he stood up straight, nodded honestly and extended an outstretched hand.

"Yes," he promised simply and the scout shook his hand to seal the contract. Gavin turned back to his canvas haul and finished slicing at the zip ties. After a moment of digging, he extracted two bulging zip-top gallon bags. They were filthy and pockmarked with wear, but even through the grime Booker could make out the jumbled Technicolor mumble of LEGOs. Gavin held them out before him like two Ziplocked religious artifacts from God himself. Booker tore them from his hands with a shout of pure joy, chasing it with an endless torrent of "thankyouthankyouthankyous." Intent on keeping his promise, the young boy ran off through the gathering crowd to present his holy bounty before the rest of Mother's babies.

At the edge of the crude stage, Gavin was an apex of selfish hellos. Deena Salto's high-eyebrowed handwringing sought out replenished stores for the pantry. Requests were made from Marc Ressman as to whether Gavin had remembered just how many requests he'd made for light bulbs. Neil Mott and Ollie Hickston begged for stories. Had he seen anyone else? Had he had any more run-ins? How bad were the nights this time? There was no waiting for answers, just a mess of questions tossed like celebratory carnations at the only boots to have seen soil beyond Mother's skin.

President Keats stood slowly, sighed, and rubbed his hands through his hair as he took his customary spot on stage. His scrutiny drifted across the crowd until it found Carole Thomson. The young woman stood flirting with the Hockstendt twins beside her grandmother and it was a moment before he could get her attention. When he did, he beckoned her over to the stage and then leaned down to whisper briefly into her ear. The girl looked puzzled, but Keats insisted with a "Please." that wasn't a request and Carole set off running into Mother's metal halls. Keats watched until she disappeared out of sight. Then he simply stared after her for some moments.

"Okay, folks," he announced as he returned to himself and the crowd. His voice was law. "Give Gavin some room and we'll get started." Most of Mother's residents backed up into a loose standing semi-circle. Lyle Dell remained seated with his elder charge, attentively wiping stew from the old man's mustache with a ratty handkerchief while his daughter, Catalina, took the seat next to her father and turned it to face the stage. Dr. Wood remained where Keats had left her, venting spent smoke as she stared at the President with a look that read resigned irritation. At the far end of the hall, Booker portioned out LEGOs like communion wafers to his waiting congregation of playmates.

There was a moment of awkward anticipation. Keats stood center-stage staring at his shoes in silence while the rest of the assembled stared at Keats. Brows furrowed. Enquiring glances spread through the crowd amid a peppering of headshakes and shoulder shrugs.

"Uh, okay," Pak Hanli broke the tension. "I guess I'll start? Where was–" but President Keats raised a hand and Pak swallowed the rest of his question with a frown.

"We're still waiting for Cameron and Jennifer to arrive." Keats' proclamation sparked a rolling murmur through the crowd.

"Whoa. What are you talking about, Josh?" Chas Byers stepped forward. "You...you're gonna pull the Crow's Nest down? At night?"

"You can't do that!" The bark came from either Kim Todd or Colleen Dowden, Keats hadn't seen which, but shouts of agreement rose up around the group. The President waved them down with outstretched palms.

"I've already sent Carole to get them. We'll be fine, but I need to speak with everyone. All at once." The crowd shifted uneasily and disquieted. Some people took to the nearest folding chairs they could find. Dinner plates were moved to the center of tables. Flatware was organized for the dish crew. Gavin sat cross-legged on the edge of the stage, absent-mindedly picking at his newest scabs. Small conversations smoldered across the group, but nothing louder than guarded pockets of minor insubordination. Debbie Levine drifted away from the rest of the greenhouse crew to watch over her daughter, Jackie, as she built a replica of their sleeping quarters out of LEGOs. When Jackie smiled up at her mom, it was with an untroubled and unaware virtue that nearly made Debbie cry. She swallowed hard, gave in to a flurry of blinks, and then tight-lipped a grin as she rubbed her daughter's back in loving Zen-like figure eights. At a nearby table, Sara Wray bowed her head in prayer. Pradeep Narang checked his salvaged watch at the sound of running feet in the adjacent hallway. At 1922, Carole jogged back into the lodge hall.

"They're coming," she panted and motioned over her shoulder before rejoining her grandmother. It was two more minutes before Jennifer and Cameron emerged from the shadows of Mother's halls. Cameron Fulton was tall and slight. His body was all limbs and nose, long piano fingers and a face dominated by eagle beak nostrils. Jennifer Murin was a good foot and a half shorter than Cameron, but she carried herself with a bull terrier's gait. She wore her camo cargo pants with equal parts military conviction and punk bluster, something reinforced by the scarification on her arms and the eight-gauge plugs in her earlobes. Both carried his and hers sniper rifles slung over their shoulders. They strode into the hall as if everyone else had been unfashionably early. In his right hand, Cameron suckled a pipe and trailed blue smoke behind him like a wounded jet.

"Okay, they're here." Chas Byers stood with his arms folded. "What's this all about?"

"Jen. Cam. Can I have your weapons, please." The guard pair shared a glance, but handed the rifles over to Keats without a word. The President walked the twin rifles towards the back of the stage, propped them casually against the far wall, and then returned to address the rest of the Forty-Seven. "In these bags...No, wait. Let me back up." Keats crossed his arms and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Two weeks ago, I asked Gavin to go Outside and make his way to Sacramento."

A long "holy shit" filled with extra vowels slipped from Gio Cielo's mouth until Paula smacked him on the arm. Gavin couldn't contain a small grin of pride.

"Was it still there?" Pradeep asked and Gavin's grin faded.

"No." The President said bluntly. "Not really." There was silence. "It's the same as across the Bay. Some buildings stand, most don't. The fires took almost everything."

"What about the, uh–"

"Devils," Sara Wray spat. Patrick Hockstedt rolled his eyes.

Gavin simply nodded and held up his bandaged arm as proof. Chas Byers sat down. There was a mournful stillness.

"Gavin was scouting for the usual," Keats cleared his throat and regained control of the conversation. "Scrap, bulbs, fabric, whatever. And he has some of those things. Deena, we'll go over the list later." Gavin picked up the open canvas bags as an indication for the pantry mistress and set it apart from the others. Here the President sighed. "But he also had another task." Keats locked eyes with Dr. Wood, then looked down at Mother's salvaged floorboards before continuing. "I also asked Gavin to find the state Registrar of Voters office."

Confusion washed across the faces of the audience. "And I asked him to bring back any of the voting information he could find from the last election. Whatever was left. Whatever he could salvage, if anything."

Donald Serra shook his head in pure bewilderment. "I'm sorry, what? What the Hell does this have to do with anything?"

"Blame, Don." Dr. Wood exhaled loudly. "Josh wants to know who he can blame for the end of the world."

A confused hum of "whats" and "what are you talking abouts" bubbled across the audience. Dr. Wood only motioned with her cigarette towards Keats who stood grim-eyed and stoic. His nostrils flared and his frown congealed into a hard knot.

"This is how this is going to work," Keats said quietly. He continued staring at the floor. "We're going to all sit here – together – and I'm going to go through these bags. If you voted for...this," he gestured to Mother with a sneer, "then you're out. Simple as that."

"What do you mean by 'out,' Josh?" Pradeep investigated.

"I mean just what I said, Pradeep," Keats snapped at Mother's engineer. "Out. Gone. As in: you gather up your things and go Outside. If you don't want to go on your own, then Ricardo or Neil will help you leave."

"Hey, man, don't bring me into this."

"Oh, you don't want to do your job, Neil? That's fine. You can join them Outside."

The big man shot to his feet. "Jesus Christ, Josh! Fuck! Okay, fine!"

From her chair beside the threatened enforcer, Mrs. Dennings placed a steadying hand on his tattooed arm. "Joshua, maybe you should take a few deep breaths and think about what you're saying."

"You think I haven't thought this through, Janet?" A murderous edge overtook The President. "I've thought about this for years. I am so sick of this shit. I'm sick of the depression. Sick of the mourning. Mine. Yours. Everyone's. I'm sick to death of waking up every goddamn day inside of this capsized rusting tub in the middle of a mud hole! And every dinner – every dinner – every time I pass someone in the halls I wonder 'who was it?' Whose bullshit politics was it that put me here? Whose small-minded, short-sighted shit was it that murdered everyone in the fucking world?!"

The President smashed one of the canvas bags with his foot and stormed off to the back of the makeshift stage. There was silence inside of Mother. Couples clung to each other. Heads were bowed. Tears fell from cheeks to mark jeans amid stifled sniffles, but there was silence. Mouthed prayers mingled with cigarette and pipe smoke in the steel rafters. At the back of the stage, Keats stood with his back to his nation, his fingers laced atop his head. At the far end of the hall, LEGO building continued mutely.

There was a creak of Miss Oon's chair as she stood to her feet. "Josh, maybe I should take the kids back to the–"

"No." Keats spun to point at Lily's chair. "No one leaves. Everyone watches." He punctuated each sentence with a firm finger-point and Lily Oon sunk back into her chair with her eyes closed tightly. Keats strode back to the front of the stage, his footsteps striking with gavel finality until he stood beside Gavin.

"Alright, let's do this. Open the first one."

The young scout glanced at Dr. Wood only to find her staring at the rifles on the far wall. With an almost imperceptible shake of his head, the pocketknife came out again and the surgical zip-tie removal resumed.

It wasn't long before the second bag laid splayed open onstage. Gavin removed stacks of smoke-damaged papers and arranged them in tidy piles beside the bag as if sorting organs from an autopsy. Bundles emerged of brown rippled paper clotted together in the remains of melted plastic bags and ash smears. Everything was garbage, the warped and wrinkled husks of a thousand scribbled Scantron bubbles. Keats sighed.

"Is this how you found it all?"

"Mostly," Gavin replied as he continued his unpacking. "The other two bags were untouched. This one was open originally and I crammed as much as I could find into it before I zipped it back up." More garbage emerged onto the stage. "I didn't really know what you'd want to see so I tried to get everything."

Keats bent down and picked up a random pile of refuse. Beneath the grime and the wear, inked votes freckled the pages with useless data. Nothing was labeled. Each page presented him with shifting constellations of felt-tipped marker spots, the indecipherable pictograms of ballot measure results and selections for county supervisor. Years ago, before the world had burned to the ground and the night belonged to slaughter, a computer had scanned the dots, run them through its Rosetta Stone of computational programming, and spit out a logical translation of outcomes. Somewhere far Outside, that computer was now a melted heap of silicon slag. All that remained were the dots with no way to connect them. The President threw the sheets back into the bag with a curse.

"Well, that's all trash." He ran his hands through his hair again. "Let's try the next bag." As Gavin laid bare the contents of the third bag, it was immediately apparent they were in considerably better shape. Plastic bags were intact and held neatly organized collections of paper results. Plastic anti-static sleeves had dutifully protected computer vote cartridges beyond the end of the world. Day-glow orange vests, a clipboard and pen, and two functional flashlights had slumbered safely in their canvas cocoon for years. Gavin set the treasures aside in the provisions bag meant for Deena Salto.

Keats squatted on the edge of the growing pile of government minutia. There was a three-ring binder full of instructions for pollworkers. The President thumbed past the clip art cover page of a faceless suit cheering on the celebratory masses of a victory rally. Above his head were two giant words that proclaimed it to simply be called "The Guide." Littered among the myriad of grayscale photos and checklists were nuggets of useless wisdom:

"During the day, you will leave the Audio Unit unattached until a voter requests to vote an Audio ballot.

You will connect the Audio Unit before the voter inserts the Voter Card. Remember to disconnect the Audio Unit when the voter has completed voting."

Hours of someone's life had been devoted to perfecting these instructions. Committees had tweaked the wording until they had found the perfect balance between clarity of message and simplicity of language, a manual for the lowest common citizen denominator to read and master without question. Bosses had spellchecked and approved its use for pollworkers, supervisors, equipment, voters and a world that were now all dead. Keats tossed it off the stage with a snort. Kim Todd flinched.

When he had finished laying bare the third bag, Gavin sat staring at Keats, one hand scarring scabs. Keats sifted through the pristine garbage. There was a roll of "I Voted!" stickers that he knew would be plastered at child-height throughout Mother's hallways within a week. There were trilingual signs ordering now-skeletal residents to "VOTE HERE". The President stared at the ghost of a generically Asian language he assumed to be Korean, but it could have been Vietnamese or Indonesian for all he knew. Whatever it was, none of Mother's children spoke it so it was effectively a dead language.

"French is a dead language," Keats mumbled to himself.

"Sorry, what?"

The President looked at Gavin for a moment without seeing him. He was preoccupied with scribbling countries off of a mental map of the world.

"France," he said at last.

Gavin blinked. "What about it?"

Keats shook his head to break up the fog of memories. He ran his hands through his hair.

His fingertips lingered lightly on his brow.

"Joshua..." The sound drifted from Mrs. Dennings' mouth like a quilt. Keats immediately tensed. Rage flared his nostrils and returned clarity to his eyes.

"Are you done yet?" He didn't let Gavin answer. "Where's the last bag?" The scout set to filleting the fourth bag without argument.

In the growing pile of civic debris, The President of Nothing found twin deceased cellphones. He handed them to Gavin. The children could play with them and pretend there were other ears to call.

In a plastic bag, President Keats discovered an American flag. Heads craned forward in the audience to get a better view. Laura Cornell began to cry. At the sound, Keats glanced up at his survivor nation. All eyes were fixed on the cheap Chinese-made banner crinkled within his hands. It was as if he had uncovered a holy relic, as if Gavin had brought back the consecrated skull of Saint Elvis Aaron the First of Memphis. It was seven bars of Corvette Torch Red emblazoned across Marilyn's dress. It was NASA and American Idol against the blue glow of a dead cable channel.

He wadded it up and handed it to Gavin.

"Burn this."

"You son of a bitch..." Ollie Hickston shot to his feet.

"Dad, please. Just sit down." The younger Hickston cradled his head in his hands.

Dr. Wood sighed around her cigarette. "Josh, we could use the fabric at lea–"

"I said burn it."

Eyes shut, lips pursed and eyebrows raised, she exhaled the smoky remains of the rest of her objections. The older Hickston punched his chair over and stormed aimlessly off to pace Mother's makeshift lodge hall. Keats ignored him.

By his feet, Gavin had just placed on the stage a long mottled brown book. On its front cover were typed the words "452200 – Fire Station 11 Side A, 14903 Catalina Street, San Leandro CA." President Keats snatched the book from the ground hungrily and tore into its pages. Inside was a sprawling list, sheet after sheet of names and addresses, party affiliations, signatures and notes. It was a list of the ghosts responsible for the end of the world, and Joshua Keats beamed from ear to ear.

"This!" he shouted as he pounded the list and stood to his feet. "This is exactly what I'm looking for! So..." He began pouring over the pages.

Bines, Marshall – corpse

Bines, Tammy – corpse

Boland, Kim – corpse

Bolstridge, Meredith – corpse

This was going nowhere. There were hundreds of dead names in this book from only a single precinct. It was a log of victims and traitors, a time capsule dedicated to petty party-driven suicide and the closest thing any of them would ever have to a marked memorial. Keats' breathing intensified as he read.

"Was anyone from San Leandro originally?" he asked loudly into the book.

For a beat, there was only thinking and lip biting. Then Marc Ressman spoke up.

"Um, I think...uh. I think Nuñez was from San Leandro."

Keats looked up at the maintenance man. "What precinct? Did he ever say?" There was pre-panic in his eyes. Ressman looked pained.

"I – I dunno, man. I...No. I mean, no. He never said. I mean, who knows what precin–"

"Fuck!" Keats tore through the book's pages, ripping some in the process as he dug his way deep into the Ns.

Noyce

Nugyen

Nugyen

Nugyen

Numan

Nuncio

Nuncio

Oakes

"God damn it!" Pages of the book came away in his fist and he threw the ghostlist at the back wall. "Fuck..." The word was just breath and the exhalation of hope. Keats stood with his arm resting atop his head as he stared into the rafters of Mother's inverted ceiling. "Gavin, will you please see if there are any more of those books?" His voice was a creak of loss and depression. On the edge of the stage, the young scout began sorting papers into piles.

"Looks like this is it."

Keats turned to face one more book. He held it lightly, staring through its cover, through its pages, desperately willing it to contain a target for his anger. "Three-oh-three-four hundred," he prayed aloud. "Saint Joseph Notre Dame High School Gym. Ten-Eleven Chestnut Street, Alameda."

"Oh, God."

President Keats' head snapped up to glare at his tiny straggler nation. It wasn't hard to find its source. All heads were turned towards Colleen Dowden. Colleen's mouth and nose were hidden behind her hands; but her eyes were terrified-wide and staring into empty space. Twin tears rolled down her cheeks to pool at her fingertips.

Keats heart beat a smug victory dance in his chest. There she was. He didn't even have to check the book in his hands. There was the face of treachery and hatred and filth and death and the flaming skin betrayal of the end of the world. But it was better than just that. There was the beatific face of betrayal itself betrayed. He looked her all over, as if really seeing her for the first time now: her jeans, her dirty tennis shoes, her t-shirt – the uniform of the repentant wolf hidden among the remaining sheep.

"Is there something you'd like to tell us, Colleen?" Keats couldn't hide the pornographic joy in his voice. He chuckled. He chuckled right in her crying face as her shoulders trembled with sobs. Zach Dowden rested his head against hers, his hands white-knuckled as he clung to her shirt. Nothing happened for a tortured infinity. Sorrow hung thick in the air. Zach clung to Colleen as Keats watched her cry. The rest were forty-four isolated lumps of embarrassed nothingness shrinking into their skin in their chairs in their hall in their inverted rusting Mother.

Colleen mumbled something. No one understood her.

"What?" Keats looked like stone.

Colleen smeared the sadness from her eyes with the palms of her hand. "What happens now?" she croaked. Her despair was an ugly mess of mucus and tear-matted hair.

There was a slight shake of his head and a finger-splayed shrug. "Now you leave," he said. Keats sounded like stone. A rolling wail washed up out of Colleen's guts and she clawed at her husband.

"You can't do that!" Tears stained Zach's cheeks and the shoulder of Colleen's shirt as he raised his head to confront The President. "You just can't...you can't do that, Josh! For God's sake, Joshua, we'll die out there!"

"Lots of people died out there," said the stone. "Everyone died out there."

Again, Colleen tried to speak, but the words broke apart into a dribble of consonants in her hyperventilating grief.

The President sighed and scratched his hand through the top of his hair. "Colleen, I can't understand a word you're saying."

Zach burned with fury. "She said 'But I'm pregnant'." Somewhere nearby, someone cursed. Keats turned his back on his nation and paced aimlessly around the stage. His fingernails picked at each other furiously. Without warning, he spun to face Dr. Wood.

"Is that true? Or is this just some cheap attempt at self-preservation?"

Wood's laugh sounded like a slap in the face. "Eleven weeks," she said. "I wasn't going to say anything until they cleared the first trimester."

"Please, Josh. Stop. This can't go on." Mrs. Dennings sat cross-armed beside the weeping Dowdens.

"I dunno." It was Nick White. "Maybe Josh is onto something here." Immediately groans of derision spread throughout the group. "No! No, hear me out!" Nick shouted over his detractors. "No! I mean, yeah. Hell. If she voted for those assholes, then maybe she has to live with the consequences."

"Shut the fuck up, Nick!" Jenn Murin kicked him hard in the shin. "What the fuck is wrong with you?! Colleen's one of our engineers. You want to kick her out and make Pradeep the only one keeping Mother from rotting around you?"

"Well..." The interjection came from Lyle Dell. "Catalina could do it," he said and gestured to his daughter beside him. She recoiled from him with a dismissive cry of "Daddy!" "Well, you could. I'm just saying. You've been apprenticing for a while now. Pradeep's even told me it's about time to think of making you one of the crew."

"This is insane," said Pradeep. "This is insane! We are not going to have a calmly reasoned discussion about throwing a pregnant woman and her husband out into the Outside."

"That I agree with," said Keats as he pointed to Pradeep. "There will be no discussion about it. It's happening. Period." Objections and arguments exploded in a volley of crosstalk throughout the lodge hall. Insults flew. At the back of the hall, Haley Byers covered her ears. Booker, meanwhile, bounced up and down, tugging relentlessly on the sleeve of Don Serra and shouting for the adults to stop shouting. At last, the gruff canon of Ollie Hickston's voice thundered the cluttered air.

"SHADDUP! ALL A'YA!"

They did. Booker stopped bouncing. Tears stopped falling. All forty-six heads turned to look at the old man. He stood with his hands on the back of a folding chair. He hunched like an old ape, tense and deadly, ready to tear something apart in order to still prove his worth. His eyes bored into President Keats'.

"You wanna do this, son? You think you're so tough? You don't know the first thing about tough. Tough is humping it across a torn up hunk of crap that used to be a Serbian sheep farm and not knowing if you're going to get shelled or not." With an impressed smirk, he pointed at Gavin. "That kid knows tough. You?" Here the elder Hickston shook his head and laughed something that sounded like a phlegmy sneer. "You're nothing. You don't know squat, Josh. You wanna know who voted for all of this? I did." Gnarled fingers thumped on his chest. "That's right. I did and I'd do it again if I was back there. Yes, they made mistakes. You live long enough, son, and you learn this amazing fact: you learn that everyone makes mistakes all the goddamn time. And when other people make mistakes, those around them have to live with the consequences. So. You want to act big and bad and burn my flag and threaten a pregnant lady? You're a coward. You want me gone? Fine. But I'm it. I'll play your little coward's game, Josh. But I'm all you get."

Keats glared back at the old man and, for a moment, nothing moved. Even Mother seemed to hold her breath. With a snap, the old man banged his chairpodium in under the table before him and began walking towards the sleeping quarters. The metal clunk rung through the rafters.

Ollie stopped as he reached the hallway.

"I don't suppose I even have to ask if you're coming?" His head turned over his shoulder to stare at his son. The younger Hickston was doubled-over in his chair, elbows on knees, eyes in palms, still as a corpse. His father simply nodded slowly as he walked into the darkened bowels of Mother's metal halls.

In less than ten minutes, the generators would spring to life and ratchet up the shudders. The lights, the noise, and the smell of canned humanity would draw immediate attention outside. But then Pradeep's shudders would be drawn back down and locked and the salvaged lights would go out on Mother Qingdao's Promise's resting place as quickly as they had come on. Inside, the Forty-Seven would scab over and continue, and tomorrow they would talk about the tomorrow of the coming baby, and lie to themselves about the good of the good old days. They would do whatever it took to focus on the here and soon or the long distant, but not the recent. Never the recent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jesse Harlin is an author and composer living with his wife, two cats, and infant son in San Francisco. His professional time is spent juggling writing video game music and writing short fiction. His personal time is spent juggling diaper changes and bedtime stories. It strikes him only at the end of this bio that the two cats and infant son should probably have been listed in reverse order in the first sentence.

COHERENCE

Eric R. Schiller

Andrei took his last look out over Lake Baikal. Wind howled against him on the roof of his tower in the stony shore. His eyes stung, but he kept them open. Grey-green chop serrated the water, marking bleak waters from bleak sky. He heard low ringing in his ears like bells from the deep. He stood like a stone. Clouds in the West were lit by fire. Orange plumes streaked the black smoke, thrilled yellow by explosions. Not far away the world was ending.

The metal door clanged shut behind him and he walked down into his dark lab, steps thrumming the metal staircase into a sonorous hum. At the base of the stairs he listened to the vibration die out. A drip from overhead ductwork fell into a pail, marking time between silences. Andrei couldn't think.

He looked at the full cup of coffee on the workbench. It looked cold. His eyes drifted around the lab. An array of holographic data sat over his machinery, blue glow cool on the stainless steel. Beneath his shocked mind he wished for escape, for freedom to choose what comes next, that his actions weren't preordained. His gaze floated objectless before landing on the glass dragon paperweight on his desk. Finally, a clear thought. Sophie.

Andrei dropped into his chair and picked up the souvenir. The dull light marbled the glass as he turned it in his hands. He remembered their first two weeks together as an iridescent blur of lovemaking, holed up away from the world in a shabby motel made beautiful only by their presence, by that look in her smiling eyes. Andrei could have stayed that way forever. But Sophie talked him outside, back into the world. Her compassion made her responsible in a way Andrei admired, though it didn't come natural to him. Sophie gave him the dragon when he left her for Siberia. Even in pain, she was always giving. Andrei held the dragon, felt its weight, and tried to invoke that compassion. But he couldn't. Sophie was dead, and all he felt was dread obligation.

Major cities went first before destruction dilated to everything else. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, he figured two days at most before the war reached him. When he decided to leave her, Andrei was full of enthusiasm. His optimism drove him to make change, and he wanted to prove he was up to the task. All his research, all his work would be revolutionized because of them. Because they operated at frequencies beyond human perception, their science would catapult humanity's technology to unimagined heights. If he knew they would turn on Earth, that he was going to work with the enemy, he would never have left. He and Sophie would have been destroyed together.

Now he sat alone with the one technology that could save their world. He looked from the dragon to the big pod in the corner. A matte black egg about seven feet tall, it looked like a machine for end times. He considered if it was worth it. Outside of Earth culture, what had humanity accomplished before selling their existence to an alien race?

He remembered sun through the shade of the motel window coating Sophie's naked back as she lay in bed, her brown hair tinted deep red by the light. She wondered out loud if any two people can come together and make such real, palpable love, or if the two of them were just lucky. He didn't know. It felt like it was just for them.

The slightest chance that he could save someone like her meant he would do everything in his power. He had to try, and to hope. He blinked and refocused on the egg. With it he would attempt something humanity vowed never to do. He would travel through time to alter history.

He had seen a squam once during orientation with his mentor Dr. Louis Hull. Squam, because they resembled the squamata family of scaled reptiles. They stood upright, though hunched, about eight feet tall with dark, pinched eyes. And they shifted, which the human brain apparently couldn't compute. When one shifted into view the amygdala would snap alive, flooding the brain with desperate panic. Even at first, when the squams were helpful, his colleagues fainted with amnesia or worse when they appeared. Andrei had a more composed and detached nature, he supposed. Because he could handle it he was given more authority than the others. But he couldn't deny his genetic mistrust of them. He was grateful his research was carried out with real, solid, human beings. He only saw the alien once, but he was convinced humanity could never win a war against them.

Control in unfamiliar territory suited Andrei for working with their technology. They gave a functional knowledge of dark energies, rewriting human understanding of space and time. Without them Earth could never have achieved fusion and renewable energy. Without them Andrei would never have unlocked time travel. His research was simply one avenue opened wide when the reptiles ushered in the Quantum Revolution. Everything seemed possible once the Quantum Age truly began.

They used very few human liaisons, initiating only our brightest scientists into their mysteries. Andrei distrusted the teaching process, but the revelations were undeniable. He wondered if this buffer made it easier for the squams to double-cross their planetary hosts. No, he thought, they probably didn't care either way.

Dread stirred his stomach as he watched the black egg in the corner. He truly didn't know if traveling backwards would tear a hole in spacetime. At the Inter-Intelligence Summit on Mount Shasta, human and squam delegates agreed that time travel could not be safely tested, so the stone would remain unturned. Squams denied the possibility of time travel until human physicists proved it. Then the squams changed their story. Shifty. But by then, humanity was addicted to progress. For all Andrei knew, the squams were already masters of time travel. Their dark arts were incomprehensible.

His choice was simple now. Humanity was finished unless Andrei could go back and prevent the Earth-reptile allegiance. Though squams could shift at will, they needed humanity's ability to harness the atom. Dense matter is baffling to them, he thought, just as their frequencies are invisible to us. In the universe's infinite potential, Andrei knew there would be something to use against them. Something that is ours alone.

In the dull blue glow, an ultra-fine seam betrayed a hatch on the shell of the egg. Andrei gulped down the acrid coffee and unzipped his backpack. Three days of dry rations, water, a change of clothes, and a small laser. He wrapped the glass dragon in a tee shirt, feeling strange about taking a memento into the past. He walked to the egg and touched the hatch, which slid smoothly open. Andrei's gut twisted at the sight of the dark chair inside. He took a deep breath and climbed in. Touching the hatch again, it closed silently, isolating him inside.

The glow of the screen was his only light. Though the egg was cool, Andrei was sweating. He tucked his bag under his chair and started the machine, cleared the presets, and set the vehicle to gathering its four-dimensional eigenvalues, his starting point in familiar spacetime. He triple-checked his life-support systems. He shouldn't need them, but if the machine sent him into outer space with no means of return, he wanted to survive at least a few hours to stew on it. A soft beep meant the machine had finished. He carefully entered the 4D eigenvalues of his destination. Measure twice and cut once, he'd been told. He quadruple-checked his numbers. He wouldn't be the first man to cut through spacetime without being sure. An addition error could send him into the middle of a glacier, or into the primordial fire at the beginning of the universe. And that's if he didn't tear spacetime itself.

He hunched over a small tablet and made a final check on Hull's Transient. Known simply as "The Transient", the equation was the most important discovery in mathematical history, illuminating previous physical theories as embarrassingly reductive. The first half of the Transient allowed for temporary coherence into adimensional, non-local spacetime. Andrei and the egg would detach from the universe, leaving the realm of matter altogether. With no thermal or photic information transacted, Andrei would become a monad – complete and devoid of context. Once coherent, the second half of The Transient would cause him to decohere into his 4D destination.

He went over the million things he could overlook, wishing he had been able to send something back through time before using himself as the guinea pig. But he couldn't risk tearing spacetime for a trial run. If he was going to send something back, it needed to count.

He reached for a white button. It's time, he thought, significantly, and engaged the machine. For a moment he only heard the steady drip of condensation from the ductwork in his lab. A light whirr faded into perception and the drip slowed. For a moment he was aware of nothing but the drip, slowing ever more subtly, space between sounds stretching out unnervingly. Then there was a light. Not from anywhere in the room, nor from inside the egg, it seemed to come from inside his head. The light preceded his perception of the world around him, and it intensified as the drip continued to slow. Andrei realized the slowing of the drip was a function of his nervous system. As the egg drew him closer to superconductivity and coherence, action in his brain slowed unnaturally, drawing his perception out like an impossibly long rubber band. The drip had been slowing for what seemed like an hour and a half but he realized it had likely taken place within two seconds. As synapses in his brain slowed, his experience of the world followed. But I perceive the change. I can think. Does consciousness exist outside of spacetime? If my experience stretches out to infinity, will I lose my mind forever?

Then suddenly the light overtook him and Andrei accelerated into eternity. Thought ceased. Though there was nothing to perceive, and no time in which to perceive it, Andrei was aware. A plenum of potentiality existed apart from spacetime, and Andrei rocketed into it at the speed of light, flooded with bliss and something that felt like freedom. Without thinking, he understood. The infinitude of non-locality made the human concern seem utterly meaningless to Andrei. And then, Full Stop.

There was nothing, and it was imperceptible.

Far away, sound fluttered on a new horizon. Infinitely gradual, it drew Andrei from oblivion. Soon he recognized the sliding and slap of leather shoes on stone floor. Andrei became aware of perceiving, then of himself. From the peace of nonentity, he felt a sickening whorl of forces encompass him as the world slithered back into existence. Bile threatened the back of his throat as he focused on the screen.

A tall, slim man stood over a table, reading with intensity. He twisted the end of his moustache. He didn't notice Andrei.

Andrei let out his breath, exhausting his lungs, and then inspired deeply. A prickling sensation flooded his extremities. He looked down at his body, though it didn't seem like his body. He pinched the back of his hand and shook his head in confusion. I am not dead. Nor had there been a paradox of spacetime, apparently. A million questions ran though his head. Where have I been? What was that? Have I broken the first law of thermodynamics? Has the experience made me insane? Is my broken brain hallucinating this scene based on expectations? He studied the tall man in the monitor. Is Sophie alive?

Andrei pulled open the hatch. The tall man scanned across the room to meet Andrei's eyes. Vague confusion, then fear flashed across the tall man's face. He looked around as if to see if anything else was out of place.

"How did you get in here?"

Not expecting a straightforward question, Andrei said nothing.

The tall man pushed a button on a speaker atop the table. "Marie, call Jean-Claude. There's an intruder in my office."

Andrei stood as if he was remote-piloting his body. He climbed from the egg and tested his footing, as though a sudden move could cause this house-of-cards universe to collapse.

What do you do when someone quantum-leaps into your office? You call security. Andrei almost laughed at his first clear thought. The only witness to man's greatest achievement was treating Andrei like a teenage shoplifter.

"Louis Hull!"

The thin man stood upright stiffly. "It's pronounced Doctor Hull, my boy."

Always with hubris, he thought. Andrei was unsurprised that Dr. Hull was condescending even before his worldwide fame.

Heavy oak doors opened and a man entered with a gun trained at Andrei's chest.

"Jean-Claude, take this man and his...machine from my office."

"Wait–" Andrei started toward Dr. Hull but the gun went off and Andrei felt a cold, hard pop in his chest before he hit the floor.

He woke to throbbing pain. Jean-Claude sat forward on a tan leather sofa with his face pressed into his palm. The gun hung in his other hand. The fear of being shot finally surged in Andrei. He looked down at his chest and saw no blood, no signs of a gunshot wound through his shirt. Rubber bullets. He smiled. It hurt like hell but Andrei felt magnanimous. Having seen beyond form and matter, Earth seemed more ephemeral, and somehow more beautiful. Even the pain was glorious.

A dark wooden desk with ornate scrollwork sat in front of a grand window curtained in rich indigo. Behind the desk was a tall leather chair. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves held row upon row of classical literature. The floor and the ceiling were pristine hardwood and Andrei could smell polish, recently applied. It was one of the most luxurious rooms Andrei had ever been in, but he was not dumbfounded. Andrei supposed he would never be dumbfounded again. He felt like he was dreaming, like the unfolding events didn't really matter.

"Dr. Hull." Andrei's voice startled Jean-Claude awake. He waved the gun in a wide arc then let it fall to his side again, realizing he was not in danger. Andrei was bound to the chair.

Jean-Claude lurched up and over to a small steel intercom panel near the door, one eye on his captive. "He's awake," he said in a French-Canadian accent, bending to the box.

"Thank you." The voice through the box was calm and thin.

Jean-Claude scrunched up his face and snorted. He flopped back onto the sofa, looking severely hung over, Andrei thought, or drunk.

Andrei felt his arms around the chair, and the ties around his wrist, but it seemed strange, like he was only wearing this body as an experiment in sensation.

Dr. Louis Hull opened the double doors and walked directly to the chair behind the desk. He sat, slid a cigarette case from inside his coat and lit one, taking a deep pull as the case disappeared back into his coat. He exhaled a bluish cloud before his eyes set to a dead stare at Andrei.

"How did you get into my office?" He twisted his moustache.

Andrei looked at Jean-Claude. "We should speak alone." The words came out instinctually.

Hull eyed Jean-Claude and shrugged. "He's not going anywhere."

Jean-Claude lifted his eyebrows, questioning, and found a firm answer on Dr. Hull's face. He groaned to his feet and lumbered out of the room looking relieved.

"Now, how did you get into my office?" Dr. Hull asked in the same tone.

"The egg you saw."

"Yes. You're obviously no vagrant off the street," tapping his cigarette. "Very interesting. My people are taking it to my lab."

"It's a time machine."

Hull nodded with a smirk. "Yes-yes, I had a look inside. Calculating eigenvalues and processing extra dimensions...so very state-of-the-art." His eyes dulled. "If this is a joke you are wasting both of our time."

"It's not a joke." Somewhere deep inside, Andrei knew it wasn't a joke, but the dread had left him completely and he felt euphoric, head spinning.

Hull snapped his fingers, getting Andrei's attention. "How did you get it into my office without me noticing?"

"I didn't wheel it into your office, I actualized it there...then."

Hull smoked and tapped the desk.

"I'll show you."

"You will not touch it until I've looked at it in detail."

Andrei believed him. Hull didn't appreciate his presence, he realized. He would have to do some talking. "Your research was the groundwork. Dark energy phase cancellations cause instantaneous superconductivity and...coherence." Andrei's brain lit up with the memory, a shadow of the original experience. "I was coherent for an instant, literally...but it was forever." Andrei sank into his chair, echoes of bliss sounding through him. Only the chafing on his wrists and pain in his chest grounded him.

Hull's bored expression was marred only by a wrinkle of interest in his forehead. "You've got good talk, I'll give you that. Are you an actor?"

"I am a scientist. My life's work is based on your work, or the work you'll do soon. I'm on your research team. Or will be. A younger me." Andrei shook his head, hearing himself. "You figured out how to manipulate the phase of dark energy, and you discovered the Transient."

"Transient?"

This could do it, Andrei thought. Describing the Transient Hull will eventually discover should cause a rift in causality. But look how far I've come. His heartbeat thudded in his sore chest. "Where I'm from they call it Hull's Transient." Hull suppressed his reaction. "It's the bulk of the process, translating one set of eigenvalues to another through higher dimensions. I came back because..."

Dr. Hull chuckled silently, shoulders bouncing, and shook his head. "Everyone knows about my bloated ego so stop the act. You're so obvious, my boy."

"Listen to me. It's the end of the world." Everything I want to say sounds like science fiction.

Hull laughed himself into a coughing fit. He settled down and looked almost admiringly at Andrei. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. "Listening."

"March seven, ninety-three is the day you die," Andrei remembered. He dropped his shoulders, releasing tension from his neck. "I took the day off and went to the movies with a woman."

Hull's smile remained. "See anything good?"

Andrei closed his eyes. "Very good." When in his mind's eye Sophie appeared, sharp fear pierced his dream. Andrei looked up seriously. "I came back because I had to. Because of them. The reptiles will betray us."

Ash plummeted from Hull's cigarette. He looked hard at Andrei then got up and walked to the intercom, leaning into the button. "Marie."

"Oui."

Dr. Hull looked at Andrei. "Turn off surveillance, please."

"Parce-ce que..."

"Just shut it off!" He snapped. "Immediately!"

"Toute suite."

Hull stared at Andrei with dark eyes. Silence passed between them. Hull walked slowly, intentionally towards the desk. Leaning on the desktop he looked for a bluff in Andrei's eyes. But Andrei's eyes were clear and guileless. Hull opened a drawer and pulled out eight inches of steel blade.

Andrei thought it was a letter opener, but as Hull rounded the desk he saw it was a knife, cruel and simple. He walked behind Andrei and leaned over his shoulder, twisting the end of his moustache.

"I do not want to misunderstand you. Say it again."

Mortal fear fizzled bodily in Andrei, but didn't reach him. He turned to look in Hull's eyes.

"I've come from the end of the world to save us from the reptiles."

Hull nodded. "I thought that's what I heard." He gripped the back of the chair and leaned in with the knife. With one taut jerk, he cut Andrei's hands free.

"If it was true, this very conversation has changed the course of history."

"I realize that." Andrei followed Dr. Hull down a long, curving hallway.

"You thought coming back would give you a way to sever our connection with...our guests. But if you succeed, you will have had no reason to come back."

Andrei still felt surreal, and the illogic of the situation didn't help.

"But here you are,' Hull said. "Why hasn't our meeting produced a paradox, or a rift in causality? I don't think you've thought your story through."

"I don't know," Andrei said, and walked for a moment with that thought. "I guess I haven't succeeded. The squams will still get our technology and when they're ready they'll sublimate us for energy. Guessing."

Hull walked silently and Andrei followed, unsure if they had walked in a circle. Hull stopped at a door and gripped the handle, turning to face Andrei.

"But any change, a-any change whatsoever should, should precipitate a radical change in causality," waving a professorial hand.

"No," Andrei said, "you can't think like Newton. The linear view is wrong. Reality isn't discreet atoms, it's clouds of probability, right? Causality isn't linear. Reality moves forward like a – like an amorphous tropism, where different events tend towards a specific future. It's like...all roads lead to Rome. "

"The same event might occur from different potential histories."

"Providing those histories fall within the same set of quantum probabilities."

"But that would mean..." Hull twirled a finger, trying to fit his brain to the idea. He raised his eyebrows at Andrei and opened the door but hesitated.

"It means I travelled through time to warn you of the end of the world, but either you won't listen, or you will listen and we still won't escape the end."

"If you travelled back through time, why not go back even earlier so you disrupt as much of the causality as possible."

"Because before you the squams didn't have the technology for fusion. And you're the one person with enough weight to make a difference."

Andrei walked through the door into a dim lab humming with machinery. A large computer with a holographic display sat between two comfortable work chairs. A long island separated the lab from a small kitchenette that was no more than a refrigerator, a sink, and two small cupboards. It reminded Andrei of his lab in Siberia, except smaller and more comfortable.

"It's possible that nothing I do will have any impact." When Andrei looked up Dr. Hull was nodding absently.

"Do you get hungry travelling through time?" Hull walked to the refrigerator and produced a bowl of fruit, cheese and crackers, soda, and a bottle of wine. He arranged the food on the counter and shook his head. "It's impossible. Time travel must be impossible," taking a huge bite of cheese. He squinted at Andrei, chewing, "How do you know about the reptiles?"

Andrei shrugged, "Everyone knows. In about six months you go public with the knowledge, but I figured you met them earlier."

"Convince me. If you know about...our mutual friends, then I'm curious what else you know." Hull poured a large glass of wine and walked to the captain's chair.

Andrei now wished he had gone back further. He reflected that this might be the most pivotal meeting in history, and was not amused that it was catered with Ritz Crackers and merlot. Apathetic, he sat.

"I know you've been working with them," Andrei said.

Hull took a big gulp.

Andrei pinched the leather arm of his chair. "Done very well for yourself. You've got more than enough money to last a lifetime, plus the respect and trust of the people. When you admit you've been working with alien scientists, the people will look at your Quantum Applications and all your leaps and bounds and they will think you know what's best for humanity. But you don't. They are willing to trade technologies because when they have what they want they can just erase us from history."

Hull took another gulp and swished it around his mouth before swallowing loudly.

"It's your Quantum Applications that allow them to do it, and ultimately fusion. Without fusion they can't draw their energy from our material frequency. As it is now, they just appear as visual projections?"

Hull stiffened and looked down into the black pool of his wine. "Yes..."

"How do you communicate with them?"

Hull stood and walked away from Andrei. He stopped before a blank wall and downed the rest of his wine without speaking.

"Where I am from...or when I am from, you don't get any secrets," Andrei said. "After you go public about sharing technology you lose your secrets. The UN forms the Inter-Intelligence Administration and they take control of planetary security. They impose gatekeeper policies that cover every aspect of diplomacy between the two races. They design the Planetary Information Act, which ultimately reduces our own scientific freedom and allows the squams to access our best and worst technologies. They're not thinking in three dimensions like us, they just fade in and out as they please..." Andrei smelled the wine and was suddenly voracious. He got up and walked to the kitchen feeling unsteady, wobbling like a man emerging from solitary confinement. "You become a big star, at the cost of every human life." Leaning on the counter, Andrei put a piece of fine cheese on a Ritz and threw it into his mouth, chewing with a vague grin on his face.

Dr. Hull gritted his molars and spoke. "Why are you smiling?"

Andrei swallowed his hors d'oeuvres, a warm glow in his stomach. "Delicious."
"The cracker?"

"Everything," Andrei smiled and ran his hand along the countertop. The cool Formica tingled under his palm. He crouched down and leveled his eyes with the counter, marveling. "I can still feel it. My journey." Andrei's smile drifted off into the corner. "A moment ago I thought I might never taste anything again." His gaze softened.

"You're delirious." Dr. Hull put his glass down abruptly. "Marie has fixed you a room. If you want my help, you'll show me proof. We'll start tomorrow when you're rested."

Hull walked Andrei to a modest bedroom. Inside, a slender, plain-looking woman finished making the bed.

"Thank you Marie, Andrei needs some rest now." Hull turned to Andrei. "I'm not accustomed to guests. Don't go wandering off somewhere."

Marie bowed her head slightly to Andrei. In a Quebec accent, she said, "Can I bring anything else?"

"A pitcher of water and a glass," Andrei said. "And lemon, I'd love that."

Dr. Hull rolled his eyes as Marie exited. "Marie will find you some supplies. I want you to be comfortable as my guest." He shook Andrei's hand firmly. "I want to know everything." They looked at each other for a moment before Hull released his hand and walked out, twisting his moustache in his fingers.

Andrei changed into the pajamas Marie left and laid down. He relaxed into the bed, sinking from the day. He felt tingling through his brain, the aftershock of leaving the normal world. Convincing Dr. Hull of the truth seemed like mundane grunt work. Andrei's mind dilated outward and he thought of countless people living for countless years, working their days to make a living, having children who perpetuate the cycle. Ad nauseum. What reward is there for life?

Andrei drifted away softly, floated upward from his body, and felt free in unthinking awareness, the memory of coherence. For an instant, he had the answer.

But a quiet knock on the door brought Andrei tumbling back to the wake-world, forgetful. Marie stood in the doorway with a pitcher of water. Andrei smiled dreamily at the ice and lemon wedges floating in the pitcher as she placed it on the bedside table.

"Thank you," Andrei said.

Marie nodded and turned to go.

"I can help," he said.

She hesitated.

"I had to come here."

"Me too," she said quietly. "Even a man like him needs help."

Andrei shifted up in bed. "He relies on you."

"I try to make his work easy." She stood in the doorway with her feet together.

"He told you not to talk to me."

She looked out into the hallway.

"I won't tell him we talked. But I know him. He won't give you what you want."

She turned, uncomfortable.

"Don't you want to pull him away from all this? Don't you want to be alone with him, to have all his attention for once? Just forget everything and be together?"

Breeze sighed through the window. "His work is too important. I'm sorry. I must go." She walked out of the room.

Andrei watched the door close and stared for a while, thinking she may come back. She had wanted to say something, he could tell. But Andrei knew already. Marie loved Dr. Hull.

Gloom settled over him as he sunk into sleep.

Andrei woke delirious and surreal still, but a shade of his dread had returned in the form of a knot in his stomach. Thoughts swam through his mind out of focus. He wondered vaguely if he would ever return to normal, or if travelling through time had changed him forever. Finally Dr. Hull arrived with a patient smile.

Marie had laid out breakfast, but she was nowhere in sight. Dr. Hull watched Andrei eat then led him around his Old Montreal palace. Andrei drifted along through massive rooms of grand and simple beauty, realizing Hull's wealth ran even deeper than he imagined. Most of the rooms Hull never used, and sat furnished like museums of generations-old royalty. Sleek railings, sparkling fixtures throwing clean light down wide hallways, fine art from distant cultures – Andrei recognized Hull had been given much of his wealth, rewards for his contributions to science. Hull spoke constantly but Andrei heard none of it, wondering instead how many of Hull's great scientific achievements were simply the relay of alien intelligence.

The beauty of Hull's place should have impressed Andrei, but the idea of owning objects now seemed hollow. The gold will be destroyed with the grass, Andrei thought, and this man who values objects is the unwitting agent of death. A stream of contemptuous urgency rose in Andrei's gut. "Where is the egg?"

Dr. Hull stopped and looked at him. "For a man who can travel through time you seem like you're in a terrible rush."

The weight of the situation descended upon him. "The world will end if we don't change something."

"You can see the egg when my research team has analyzed it. Now explain to me how time travel is possible. And why I should believe you."

Dr. Hull took Andrei back to the small office with the kitchen, now piled high with dozens of books, the latest in mathematics and physics. Hull sat in a chair and pulled out a pipe and tobacco.

Andrei sunk deeply into a chair, seeming to sink deeper as he looked across a pile of textbooks at Hull. "I can't explain all of time travel to you. There's too much that I don't understand. It would be a waste of time." The futility made him feel light-headed.

"Once again," Hull laughed and crossed his legs, knocking the pipe against the heel of his loafer, "we've got time. Now let's start. Don't worry, I've been told I'm a quick study."

"We can't just use the egg for more time whenever we want. Coherence...does something to..."Andrei leaned forward, hands on the table, finding it hard to swallow.

"I should say," said Hull, "you hardly seem like the type that could invent something so technical." Hull slid a physics text beneath Andrei's face. "Try to focus. Let's begin with quantum physics as I know it."

"I can't," Andrei put his palms on his head to stabilize his thoughts.

Hull snapped his pipe against the computer. "You will." He gritted his teeth, eyes intent until Andrei resigned and opened the first book.

Hull composed himself into an air of skepticism as Andrei took a deep breath and began. Extrapolating from his memory of scientific knowledge, Andrei strung together addled years of theory, speaking slow and deliberate. Hull fired divergent questions on everything. Andrei seemed to speak in slow motion, one point after another until hours later a wave of lethargy came over Andrei so compelling that he was asleep before Jean-Claude and Marie got him back into bed.

Limbs of darkness seethed over Andrei until he woke to his dread, amplified. He knew he must force Hull to show him the egg. With the egg he could prove time travel by going one harmless minute into the future. But once again Hull escorted Andrei to breakfast and coffee, and immediately back to the small office for another day of lessons. Andrei's thoughts retreated from him like apparitions in the corner of an eye.

"So, where we left off yesterday."

"No, just, let me show you."

Hull squinted one eye and punched the intercom, summoning Jean-Claude. Hull stared at Andrei for twenty seconds until he arrived.

"Jean-Claude if Andrei doesn't do what I tell him, you will shoot him again."

Andrei looked at the stillness in Jean-Claude's eyes. Rubber bullets aren't fatal, he thought. But I am his prisoner. And in my condition, fighting would be useless. Andrei slouched back in his chair.

Hull smoked his pipe and listened to Andrei explain the Transient, interjecting frequently, causing digressions to explain the supporting science. Once again nausea and torpor crept over Andrei and he returned to bed.

With Marie's help, Andrei crawled under the blankets. Through the haze of his own thoughts, he tugged Marie's sleeve. "Have you been married?"

She turned away but Andrei held on.

"I could have been," he said. A darkening ache ebbed from his heart. "But it won't matter. If he won't help me."

Marie peeked nervously at the door where Jean-Claude waited just outside. "Are you with her now? The young you from now? Are they together?" She obviously knew more about him than she let on.

The younger version of Andrei from this time was attending university, busy with as many pretty, self-absorbed girls as possible. Andrei loathed his earlier self. "Hull does not love you."

She pulled away from his grip. "Please, stop." She looked at Andrei's face with a quiver in her eye before fleeing out the door.

He wanted to follow, but sleep claimed him. In the dark his fears materialized. The information he had given to Dr. Hull was at least twelve years ahead of this time. If Hull decided to give the technology to the squams...then they could go back...

Andrei woke in a cold sweat, utterly confused. He blinked, drifting into consciousness, and saw Marie's face in the darkness. She was frightened.

"Breakfast is coming," she said.

Andrei rubbed his eyes, heart rate rising.

"Is it true?" She gripped his shoulders.

Andrei realized it was before dawn. Marie had snuck to his room.

"It's all true," Andrei said.

Marie put her hands together, shaking. "He drugs your food, to keep you here."

Andrei sat up and breathed deeply. His thoughts were muddled, but not nearly what he had felt these past few days, weeks, who knows? He took Marie's hands in his and looked in her eyes. "Thank you. Now go so you aren't caught."

She nodded, wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, and left. Andrei got up and crouched near his door, adrenaline consolidating his will. After two minutes of silence with his ear to the door, Andrei left his room.

Slow and silent, Andrei walked past the small office down the slow-curving hall. He kept tight to the inner wall past plain-looking doors, and soon noticed a hum. There is some kind of large machinery down here, he thought. Is this curve getting tighter? He felt like he was walking an inward spiral, as though trapped in a particle accelerator. The hum became a rumble and he noticed the floor descended a slow grade. The hairs on his arm stood up. Why do I feel so strange? This hall is definitely a spiral. Dread quiet came over him as he continued, walking now in a continuous turn. Yet inward he walked, inward and down. Finally the hall ended in a door of solid lead.

Andrei put his hand on the latch and waited. The latch was massive and ran into a locking mechanism that was disengaged. A drop of sweat fell from his forehead and landed on the latch beside his hand. He looked at the tiny dark splatter. More sober than he had been in days, everything still had an unreal feeling to him. He heard the hum but nothing else.

When he pushed the latch a sharp hiss issued from the door and wind blew his face dry. Andrei pulled the heavy door open and entered. A large, convex rubber membrane blocked the hallway. Cool air rushed down at him from a grate in the ceiling. He pushed at the membrane and it split in the middle, flapping around the opening. He realized it was a rudimentary airlock, with two levels of positive pressure to keep foreign elements out. Then why was the door unlocked? On the other side he stretched the membrane back together and it sealed itself perfectly. On the other side was another lead door. Andrei somehow knew this would be unlocked as well.

When he hauled the door open a blast of terror raced down into his bones. Dr. Hull sat with one leg crossed over his knee, calm as could be. Two huge lizard-beings hunched inside a glass chamber, seeming to twist a three-dimensional hologram in a new weird direction, parts of it luminescent. Noticing Andrei, the squams extinguished the hologram and even themselves. Now they peered from shadow, half here, half not-here, beady eyes gleaming, almost smiling from broad, reptilian mouths.

"Relax," Hull said, and stood. He walked toward Andrei, hands spread in a way that meant, 'keep calm'.

The dark reptiles stared at Andrei from the chamber. Andrei couldn't look away. Dr. Hull touched Andrei lightly on the shoulder and turned him to walk around a large display of security monitors. Andrei realized Hull had seen him coming, must have been watching him walk down the hall towards this...in-between place, communication chamber, where he finds evil knowledge. Andrei's heart unfroze and thumped as Hull guided him around a large computer table. When Andrei turned from the squams to round the table a surge of fear made him look back, desperate to keep watch on those dark eyes.

"There's nothing to worry about, my boy," said Dr. Hull. "Everything is very civil, you see. Have a seat. Maybe you can help us with a couple questions."

Andrei fumbled onto an armrest and let himself down into a chair. Hull sat across from him and smiled. Andrei wanted to kill them all, but knew there were more squams out there, more than he could know, hovering beyond perception. Suddenly Andrei felt a molten knot in his gut as his brain registered the holographic display they analyzed. My work...Hull was sharing the technology of time travel with the squams. The last hope was being given to the enemy. He hated and pitied Hull. "Why?"

Hull folded his hands. "We need them! They brought us up from primitives. Without them human beings would have remained stupid for ever."

But it doesn't make sense.

"You killed us," Andrei said flatly. "Everything you have gained, you will lose, before or after you die."

"But I have lived! And I have been given so much," with a wry grin over his shoulder toward the chamber. "Their technology unlocked everything! You want to cut that off."

Andrei sat back, mind fizzling. "How long have you been working for them?"

"You mean how long have they been working for us."

Andrei squeezed his eyes shut and bent over, brain short-circuiting.

"Now that we have the egg, the squams have always watched over us, guided us through history, you see. Our progress was inevitable thanks to them. And to you."

No...

"And fortunately for human beings, there have always been an elect few, such as myself, working with them to ensure perfect continuity in human development. It appears you arrived right on time." Hull smiled and twisted his moustache.

"It's impossible," Andrei managed. His brain was a cloud of chaos. Separate timelines now...or one expression of time in multiple dimensions? Was our destruction ensured because I came back to stop it? Is it all inevitable? Andrei felt his sanity slipping away while dark snakes chittered to each other in the corner.

"It's not impossible," Hull said. "It's reality. It all happens at once, and there is nothing you can do about it." Dr. Louis Hull looked to his confidants in the chamber. The reptiles obviously communicated with Hull in a language Andrei could not hear.

Andrei's gaze floated past Hull and the chamber, past the computer into the dark corner where a dull reflection gave away the egg. It was open and on. The thought of a squam sitting in his seat chilled Andrei. He stood automatically and walked to the egg. He ran his hand along the smooth, dry surface. This is my accomplishment. Its power goes beyond anything humanity has ever known.

When he turned, Dr. Hull was pointing a gun at him. "Get away from it."

Andrei knew this gun would not shoot rubber bullets. And he knew Hull could get away with murder – nobody investigates murder victims from another time.

Freedom and inevitability. Everything and nothing.

Andrei jumped into the egg as a loud bang deafened him. He closed the hatch, ears screaming everything into the background. On screen Dr. Hull raced for the egg in panic. Andrei typed a three-digit code. His predestination flashed across the display – a time, a place, and The Transient, preprogrammed. Andrei gripped his stomach and laughed as the world outside the egg slowed to a garish tableau. He saw little reptilian eyes widen in a slow flash of surprise. A warm feeling spread from his stomach and Andrei realized he was lucky he hadn't been shot through the heart.

Blood flowed for an hour, then oozed for a year, then stopped. The world around him disintegrated, but it didn't matter. Andrei was coherent.

I am dying. But here I am. Dying, and everything is fine. This sweet light and...nothing. The world falls from me like a dream I don't care to remember. I could stay like this forever. The world would only block the light – the speed and the light that encompass it all.

On the threshold between silence and sound there was the faintest waver. Slowly, it warped, changed pitch, and was broken. Then it rang out again. It was the quietest of sounds, but alone against muteness it stood out like an escapee in a searchlight. It was familiar, like something out of the past, and grew louder until Andrei recognized it was laughter. It was a child's laughter, and it wasn't alone. A murmur flooded in behind it and with a heavy heart Andrei remembered that he was bound back for the world.

When he made the machine he asked himself where and when, in all of history, he would want to go. Without a war and the threat of extinction, without urgency, if he could go to one place for the pure joy and wonder of it, where? When? He had provided the computer with a default time and date, and now he had arrived.

Sliding the egg open he stepped out into a beautiful woods on the edge of a sprawling field glistening a luscious green spectrum in the sun. Across the field a short grey building backed onto a small playground where children laughed and screamed outrageously.

Andrei looked down at his hand clutching his stomach. He was only beginning to bleed, the red hole magnifying itself through the fabric of his shirt. Andrei walked out of the woods toward the school. He laughed. The inventor of time travel is running out of time. He was dying, but not yet. The gut shot, he heard, was a slow and painful death, drawn out.

The children, who did not see Andrei, dispersed, were picked up by parents, or trotted off in groups as he crossed the grass. When he reached the building it looked vacant. He walked through the door, straight to room six.

When he turned into the room she was bent over, brown hair cascading over shoulders and back, applying a Band-Aid to the scraped knee of a sobbing girl with Down's syndrome. Words caught in his throat and Andrei backed up, but Sophie turned and saw him. An interval of confusion crossed her face before she realized who it was. As a smile began on her lips her brown eyes widened at his blood-soaked lower half. Sophie shrieked and the girl with the scraped knee dropped her jaw. Sophie raced for Andrei and pulled him into the room. Andrei turned his head and saw the gruesome trail of blood he had left down the hall.

"Abby run to the principle's office quick and tell Mrs. Farnsworth to call nine-one-one. Quick now, like three bunnies!" Sophie swiped her desk clean with her forearm and laid Andrei down. "Are you shot?"

Andrei smiled and nodded, staring up into her eyes.

"Let me see." She pulled his hand away and tore open his shirt to look at the gore. "Oh...I..." She had no words, but applied pressure with one hand and swung her seat cushion under his head. She looked into his face, which was still smiling and detached. "You're supposed to be in Siberia!"

"Look," he said, "look at my eyes." He pulled her face close and her gaze fell into his. "I was there for years. I have come back through time."

Her eyes tried to pull away but couldn't. He saw a struggle on her face before she resigned, mindblown. Something in his voice was absolute, beyond doubt. "How?" shaking her head.

"Do you remember the IIS summit? They knew it was possible then, but I did it first. Tried to get to Hull, to sever contact. I hoped if they didn't get our fusion it would help." A chuckle shook in his belly and daggers of pain leapt across his nervous system. But Andrei didn't care. He looked up at Sophie, sunlight whitening her face. She looked like the mother of all mankind.

"Tell me, Andrei, I don't know what you're talking about. Please." Tears rolled gently down her face.

Abby appeared at the doorway and Sophie whipped around.

"Misses Farnsworth isn't there. I called," Abby said.

"Oh good girl Abby, I love you. Find us some blankets and water, sweetie."

"I love you too Miss Hague," and off she ran.

Strange joy surged up in Andrei as he watched the girl run off. His head bobbed, room whirling around him. Writing on the chalkboard, wooden shapes in a pile on the floor, and a big printed alphabet waved at him from the Universe. Andrei absorbed it and was suddenly filled with desperate hope.

He grabbed Sophie. "We have to get outside, to the woods, right now. Help."

"No, stay put!" She tried to force him back down but Andrei sat up anyway.

"If we don't go now it will end. You have to come with me." Despite the wound, Andrei surged forward and pulled Sophie with him. "I don't have time to explain."

Shuffling across the yard, his blood ran anew. He was stark white but his eyes were far beyond it all.

"I saw the reptiles end our world. I tried to get to Hull but he gave my technology to them. Now they'll exist through our whole history. When they master fusion, that's it. They'll use us as an energy source."

Sophie was pulled along, crying and confused. She thought he was losing his mind, and she wasn't totally wrong.

"By the time I made the machine you and most of the world were dead. I was alive because I was in the middle of nowhere. They started with major cities, New York, Tokyo." The lawn swerved underneath him as darkness encroached on his periphery.

Fear made her almost as pale as him. When they reached the woods she was in shock. She barely reacted to the black egg.

"If I die now, that's it. It's over."

"Andrei please..."

"I'm not insane. I love you. I can bring you through and show you what it is like to leave the world. We have to."

She almost screamed until she saw the look on Andrei's face. It was a look of pure compassion and love.

"Sophie...If we can stop it..."

As she stared into his eyes a calm certainty spread across her features. She tried, but could not doubt him. She had never felt anything like it. He emanated energy that washed over her in a wave. She gently helped him into the machine. When he reached out to help her inside she hesitated. Rational thought left her. She had trusted him before and he had always been honest. She looked back at the school, then climbed onto his lap.

As Andrei punched code into the console, Sophie breathed heavily, claustrophobic. The whirlwind of activity had stopped – was she really in a supposed time machine? She felt something against her ankle and reached down. She unwrapped the glass dragon she had given him only one month ago. She had the sudden premonition that she had made the right choice.

He finished the code with a snap of keys and kissed her. Suddenly everything slowed in a way she had never experienced. Their kiss stretched into a minute, then a day, then months. Bodies forgotten, their coming-together spread out across the Universe in all directions at once. They were free of the world, alone together. They shared thoughts without speaking, without even the need of thought because they were no longer separated by space. There was simple Knowing. Light shone through them and they were wrapped up in bliss for all of time.

The experience changed her. She knew exactly what had to be done.

The wash of wind through leaves greeted them on the other side, bringing them into the fullness of reality by degrees. Sophie slid the panel open and stepped out. In the egg Andrei was fading. The door slid shut behind her, and the egg disappeared.

She stood alone on a dry hill. Gigantic Baobab trees swayed leaves in the breeze two hundred feet away. She walked toward the trees, huge trunks rising up before her like buildings. A shuffling sound filtered through the brush. She was approaching something alive, something with consciousness. She walked through the thick carpet of brush between the trees, snapping twigs underfoot, branches scraping her limbs and face, and enjoyed the sensations. Physical pain did not matter in the greater scheme of existence. She tromped toward a growing ruckus of grunts and squawks, almost human, searching for meaning. It was the beginnings of language.

She came out into a clearing where a handful of creatures huddled in the corner. They were monkeys, but not quite. Much of their body and facial hair had disappeared and they looked surprisingly similar to images of prehistoric man she had seen in museums since she was a little girl. They backed against a rock, screaming at her and slapping the ground and their chests. If they had words, they would threaten me. But they feared her and she knew it.

She sat cross-legged and quiet and waited most of that first day without moving. Eventually her tranquility spread to them, and her feeling of omnipotence drew them to her. She knew they would not harm her. She was a gentle wonder from another world. One by one they moved to her, touched her beautiful hair, felt her soft skin, and they touched her lips, hovering in fear and awe when she spoke.

For months she stayed with them. They shared food with her and protected her from enemies. They didn't understand her words but sat in rapt attention when she spoke. They vaguely comprehended images, so she drew them pictures. She drew them hunting tapir on the plains and hiding from large jungle cats. They kept her territory sacrosanct and gradually she taught them. They already used simple hand tools, she discovered, but her knowledge gave them superior understanding, and they gradually used more of the material around them to master nature.

With charcoal drawings upon the rocks, she taught them to fear the snake. The snake appeared from darkness and devoured them. It was not long before the fear that would save humanity took root. They understood completely, even brought her dead snakes as offerings.

When the time was right, she led the tribe up the stony mountain. They followed to a plateau where the stone gave way to a small lake, three mountain streams leading off into the unknown beyond. It was there that the black egg appeared to them. They shrieked in wonder and terror, but would not flee and leave her behind. So they witnessed. It was magic that changed them all. Andrei, the dying God, appeared from the egg. Early man bowed in reverence, clinging to The Mother.

She set the glass dragon on a rock to a chorus of screams. But Andrei reached toward the snake with a dark wand. A laser, a coherent beam of divine fire shot forth and melted the snake into a dark puddle.

A new type of fear took root: the fear of God. Sophie, task accomplished, climbed back into the egg with Andrei. Silence spread over the tribe as the egg was swept back up into heaven. The Great Father and Mother became One, the Savior of the world.

The tribe proliferated. Superior knowledge of tools and greater capacity for abstraction gave them survival ability found by no other tribe. For thousands of years, the lineage carried on, dominating competitors, spreading over land and eventually over sea.

When recognizable language finally developed, it carried unconscious reverence for the black egg, the Dying God within, the Mother Teacher, and fear of the Snake.

Oral and pictorial traditions passed through generations. As the massive tribe spread, they mutated and adapted to surrounding geography. When the idea reached Babylon the snake was known as Tiamat. To others much later it was known as Satan.

Fear and wonder proliferated. A new knowledge had taken hold. It was called "religion". Fear of the snake and darkness was conditioned into the mental culture of the world. The herd destroyed those who worshipped the snake. Wars ensued about the true meaning of the snake and egg and how to properly worship God and the Great Mother. Mental progress was diverted – it took tens of thousands of years for these new people of the world to understand basic technological concepts, and they would never find the gate to the plenum as Andrei had. Life was hard for this new humanity, but they would never give themselves over to the reptiles willingly. And the people waited, faithful, for the return of the Dying God who could kill the Dark Serpent with heavenly fire.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Writer, filmmaker and musician Eric R. Schiller lives in Toronto where he speculates, meditates, creates and tinkers with the border between the real and unreal. He does all this while drinking black coffee. Follow him on Twitter @EricRSchiller and visit his blog at EricRSchiller.com.

ASSIGNMENT SEVEN

Richard Smith

Warm rays, brilliant amber, fell upon Carter's face. The scent of grass and wet earth drifted by on a gentle breeze. In the distance, a solitary bird sang a lonely song. Close by, he heard the sound of buzzing insects.

The grass, damp and cool, pressed against his back. Carter felt drained and tired, but also strangely relaxed and at peace; he was content to savour the moment, eyes closed, enjoying the sun on his face.

He imagined he was with Natalia. If he were to open his eyes he would see her, lying just inches away from him, sitting on one elbow, smiling as she watched him sleep. He clung to this vision, until he was sure that if he just moved his arm he could reach out and touch her. But in the back of his mind, he knew this was an illusion, a glimpse of the future - Natalia was waiting for him, far away.

His present whereabouts eluded him. He could not place where he was, or why he was there. His mind struggled to find the answer. Deep down, he knew that he needed to open his eyes, that there were urgent matters to attend to. But it was so much easier to lay back and relax.

The direction of the breeze changed subtly and now he could smell decay, and blood. The bird flew nearer, until he heard its song almost overhead. Farther in the distance, he heard the faint hiss of a car, passing by on some distant road.

A fly droned past his face and settled on his chest.

Something was wrong.

He had to open his eyes.

A sequence of fragmented, half-remembered images entered his head. A grim, determined face, staring into his. A knife, seen too late. Gunshots and blood. Photos and typewritten notes. Fire and screaming faces and the flash of an atomic explosion.

The fly crawled onto his stomach.

A second fly landed on his face.

He would open his eyes.

He just needed another minute.

The whole world was dying.

You only had to look at the sun, breathe in the dust in the air.

Carter studied the skyline of the city through the windshield of his rusting blue Ford Victory. The temperature had been rising throughout the day, and now, as the red sun set behind the rooftops, he could tell that a storm was about to break.

Heavy clouds loomed overhead, grey bathed in orange, and he wound up his window in anticipation. The rain would do nothing to alleviate the heat and it ate into everything it touched.

He exhaled slowly, steadily. A few more minutes and he would know whether he was killing anyone today. The downpour would either drive Carter's target back to his apartment, or the man would not show tonight.

There was no sign of police or army patrols. That was not surprising for this part of town. The dockside area had been abandoned after the war, and now it was a refuge for thieves, dealers and addicts.

Carter knew all about the war. It had started back in sixty-two, and the trail of atomic destruction had spread out from Cuba until it enveloped the globe. The fighting had raged on relentlessly for fourteen years, and now Mother Earth was on her knees, choking on the ashes of a thousand smouldering cities.

This city had fared better than most, but the price for that survival was overcrowding, crime and disease. In this particular part of the docks, Stan Yang was making his play for power. Last month, it had been someone else. The names changed, but the death and violence was always the same.

Carter did not like working for Yang, but these were desperate times. His military experience could be put to good use by someone like Yang. Carter did not consider himself a criminal - in fact, his work kept the criminals off the streets. He would wipe them all out if he could. And Yang kept well out of his way, which suited him fine.

It was far from the life he had imagined he would return to. He had got Natalia out as soon as he could. Now he just needed to complete one more assignment. Earn enough money to clear his debts, then he could join his wife.

He checked the Soviet-made Makarov at his side once again. The safety was off and a round was chambered. A mix of stimulants and depressants coursed through his bloodstream and for the moment at least, Carter felt lucid and alert; he was ready.

Minutes later, the target rounded the corner. Carter did not have to check the photo, he recognised the dealer's large form immediately. Ruben walked quickly, anxious to reach his destination, and he was alone.

Carter was about to exit the car when Ruben turned into the alley at the side of the apartment. He frowned. A minute later, Ruben emerged from the alley, pulling away in a red saloon.

Ruben's car headed east. A final meeting, or a collection somewhere. Carter started his own car in pursuit, following at a distance, watching where he went, waiting for the right moment.

Ruben drove out of the docks and joined a road heading towards the coast. The sun sank beneath the horizon, and the rain began to fall in the twilight. It started as a few heavy drops on the windscreen and then turned rapidly into a torrent.

The storm meant there was little traffic on the roads. Carter closed the gap until he was behind Ruben. He hit the accelerator and rammed into the rear of the saloon, causing Ruben to swerve across the road, almost losing control.

Carter followed closely as the car sped up, then it veered suddenly onto a side road, before swinging into a lay-by near to a copse of trees.

Ruben jumped from his car, a look of panic on his face as he saw Carter pull in behind. Carter grabbed his gun from the passenger seat, hoping to get a shot at his target before he reached the cover of the trees. He sprung from the driver's door, but he was a second too slow to make the shot.

As he felt the rain stinging his face, Carter hesitated. But he was committed now. Take down Ruben and he would never have to worry about the rain or the city again. He ran after his quarry, leaving his car in the lay-by.

Ruben was no athlete. He soon caught sight of him as he shuffled through the darkening woods.

Carter fired at his legs and the big man fell awkwardly, tumbling into a pile of dead bracken. He took his time to walk over to his victim. Ruben had scurried underneath a fallen tree trunk, flecks of his blood spattered on the crumpled undergrowth. Carter could not see his face or get a clear shot into his chest.

"Come out of there," he said. "I've got a message for you from Yang."

"I-I heard Yang was dead."

"You heard wrong."

"Please, don't kill me," Ruben pleaded. "I've got money, I can pay you. Whatever you're getting - I'll double it."

Carter sighed. "I'm sorry, it doesn't work like that. It'd be my name on the next assignment, and what I'm getting will be enough to see me through. Now, come on out, or I'll have to pull you out."

Ruben moved fast - a flash of a concealed switchblade, a thrust into Carter's right leg. Carter brought up the Makarov, firing once into Ruben's side before Ruben used his left hand to push the gun aside, his right punching hard into Carter's stomach. The big man's weight pressed into Carter and he fell backwards, dropping the gun. Ruben stumbled over him and ran from the woods into the open clearing beyond.

Carter cursed his carelessness and got to his feet, not bothering to retrieve his handgun. He would beat the bastard to death now. But even as he stumbled out into the clearing he knew Ruben had hurt him.

Ruben shuffled on ahead, clutching his side. Carter followed, limping from his leg injury, gaining ground slowly. As he looked down he could see Ruben had caught his stomach with the knife, and worse, the leg wound was bleeding badly. He would need to bind it, and he would have to act to quickly.

Carter came to a halt in the middle of the clearing, watching as Ruben entered the trees on the other side. His breathing ragged, his head swimming, he had no choice but to let his victim go. He could feel the blood pumping from his leg, and a numb ache in his gut.

He crouched down as he was gripped by a sensation of dizzying nausea. Hurriedly he slipped off his jacket and tore off a sleeve, tying it tight around his leg. His needle tumbled from the jacket as he worked. He eyed the syringe. He had been keeping the opiate mix for after the hit, but he decided he needed it now. He shot straight into his arm, and fell back onto the grass. There was a chance he could recover his strength, but equally, he could die here. Kill or cure. At least he would die happy.

As the drugs flowed through him, he looked upwards into the rain, ignoring the burning in his eyes. Carter tried to look for the stars, but everything was blurred.

He wished he could call Natalia. He had not spoken to her in a month, not since she had gone. It was impossible to reach her. He squeezed his wedding ring. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I tried, I really did."

The rain came down even heavier, and he passed out on the grass, staring up into darkness.

Carter opened his eyes slowly.

The sun was high overhead and the bright light made him squint.

Painfully, he sat up on his elbows. A swarm of flies, disturbed by his movement, took flight from his body. Looking down, he saw his shirt and trousers were covered in blood. So much blood. Dark red, blurred into the fabric of his damp clothes. Something was tied tight around his left leg. His shirt was torn, the skin beneath cut open - a deep, weeping wound.

Carter's head span. He turned onto his side and puked on the grass.

A spent syringe lay nearby. He had been using heavily, these last few weeks. He recalled that much. Sickness was a side-effect of the drugs. They numbed the pain, helped him sleep; they buried his memories. Sometimes they made it hard to remember anything.

A part of Carter did not want to know. It was perhaps better to block it out, walk away if he could; never look back.

He focused on his surroundings. He was sitting in a tree-lined common. The green grass and foliage that he had pictured in his mind was in fact brown and withered. He was somewhere on the outskirts of the city, the smog-shrouded outlines of the grey tower blocks far in the distance.

Carter crawled over to his jacket, ripped and abandoned in the wet grass a few feet away. There he found what he was looking for - in the pocket, a folded sheet of paper, damp, but the typewritten text still legible.

A name and number - Ruben, assignment seven. A brief description of Ruben's appearance, his movements and whereabouts. A small photo, attached with a paper clip - the face he recalled, the man with the knife.

Carter re-folded the paper thoughtfully. The memories of the previous evening began to resurface in his mind.

Another victim for Stan Yang. Things had gone wrong. Ruben had escaped. With Ruben still alive, there would be no payment, no chance to get away.

He had to make things right, one way or another.

The sickness subsided, and he assessed his injuries. His skin was blistered and burned by the rain. Two knife wounds: one deep but not fatal in the abdomen; one severing an artery in the leg. Without the tourniquet he would have bled to death. As it was, he was still hurt badly. Before he did anything else, he needed to find a place to rest and recover.

He staggered across the common, instinct or memory leading him into the trees. There was no sign of Ruben. He found his gun along the route. His vision blurred as he stooped to retrieve the Makarov, and he almost passed out, but he stumbled and carried on.

Through the woods he found his car, parked hastily in the lay-by with the door still open, right how he'd left it. From the cover of the woods he made a final check for any traffic or passers-by, but the road was clear.

He slumped into the driver's seat, fresh blood leaking from the wound in his stomach. Where now? Not home, it was too risky. He needed to find somewhere else.

The safe house.

The memory was hazy. When did he set up a safe house? He couldn't remember, but he did know where it was.

He pushed the car into gear and drove.

Carter stirred into consciousness, harsh electric light shining into his weary eyelids.

He could smell alcohol, and the lingering odour of decay. In the background, he heard the chatter of voices on a TV talk show.

He was lying on a hard mattress. For a moment, he imagined that Natalia was with him, facing him lovingly, just inches away from his own body, and if he were to reach out with his hand he would feel her smooth skin. But he knew she was not really there. He remembered where he was.

This time, his memory was clear - Ruben, the knife, the failed hit. The safe house.

He opened his eyes. The room seemed strangely familiar, but he could not think why. He was on a double bed, in a small, shabby room, lit by a bare light bulb, a TV playing on a chest of drawers opposite. Adjacent to the bed, a small desk, with a telephone and a typewriter. His gun and car keys lay scattered on the bed by his side. He was naked, white dressing wrapped around his stomach, another bandage, pink with blood, tied tight around his leg. An empty bottle of whiskey lay on the floor.

Why did he know this place? He felt there was something important he was forgetting.

He recalled driving his car here. He had showered and dressed his wounds, then sat back on the bed with the whiskey. He had no idea how long he had slept.

He sat himself up, feeling throbbing pain in his head, and agony in his stomach. His mouth was dry and his body felt weak.

He had not yet spoken to Yang. He knew he had to call him.

Moments later, the telephone rang, although Carter did not really hear a sound. He reached across the bed, and picked up the receiver.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"It's Yang," came the reply.

"How did you know I was here?"

"Come on, Carter, it's my property."

"You know the job went wrong," Carter stated.

"Yes, you disappointed me. I thought you were good."

"It's just a setback," he promised. "Give me a few days and I'll be right back on him."

"He could be anywhere."

"I'll find him," Carter answered. "I need the money, you know that. This is my last job. I'll finish it. He got lucky."

"Lucky? You blew it Carter." There was silence. Carter gripped the handset. "I'll give you one more chance. But the payment has been withdrawn - complete the job and we're quits."

"You can't do that," Carter said, his voice low.

"Yes I can. It's my apartment you're bleeding in. You owe me."

Carter clenched his jaw. There was always a reason. There was always a debt to pay. Always one more job.

"No more assignments," he said. "I just want to get my money, then clear out. I've had it with killing."

Laughter. "I know you too well Carter, you won't ever stop. You can't stop. You think you'll go and join Natalia? She's gone, Carter, long gone."

"What do you know about it?"

"More than you. It's a fantasy, Carter. You're never going to join her, it's not going to happen."

"You don't know anything."

"Where is she? South America?" His voice spoke mockingly. "No-one has flown out that way for years. There's nothing there anymore."

Carter frowned. He tried to recall exactly where it was that Natalia had emigrated to, the place he was going to meet her. "There's good land there, we're going to make a new start..."

"She's dead, Carter."

"No. That's not true - why would you say that?"

The laughter turned to a gentle chuckling that played in time to Carter's sobs. "You know she's dead, Carter, you've always known. You killed her. She was the first...now you don't know how to stop."

Carter screwed his eyes tight. He had to shut himself away from the lies. But what was the truth?

"Lies. All lies," he muttered. "You bastard. I ought to kill you."

The mocking laughter again. "You can't kill me. You need me. You need me, Carter."

And Carter finally understood. He stared at the receiver in his hand. "Not any more," he said quietly.

He half-smiled as he put down the phone, the phone that made no sound. He shook his head, and reached across the bed for the Makarov.

"Don't do it, Carter." A voice. His voice.

"It's over," he said.

He staggered across the room, opened the adjoining door. In the bathroom, his bullet-pierced body rotting and decomposed, Stan Yang almost seemed to be smiling.

Carter placed the gun against his temple.

He could see it now. The war had destroyed the world, but it had also destroyed him. Ten years of horror in the frontlines of Europe had poisoned his soul, and taken his sanity. He was broken. Out of control.

The world might survive, it might yet recover; find a way, as it so often did. But he had no place in it. He was beyond salvation.

His place was with Natalia.

Carter squeezed the trigger and the shot rang out loud in the confines of the room.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Richard Smith is a part-time writer of dark and speculative fiction, based in England. He has most recently had short stories published in Dark Tales and Morpheus Tales magazines.

UNORTHODOX

NUCLEAR FAMILY

Nick Johnson

They unleashed a fire that had devoured the world in a flash. The sounds of air raid sirens had heralded the end of the world like the trumpets of angels. Everyone still alive was left to experience the death throes of a planet that now resembled nothing more than an animal doused in gasoline and set ablaze by a match. The raging infernos would run across its entire surface before burning themselves out and leaving a charred, cold, and decaying shell.

There were only two kinds of people left, the dead and the dying. The bomb's fires had unleashed pillars of smoldering acrid clouds which quickly swept across the sky, blanketing the earth in an ebony death shroud, forever blocking the sun from the sky. Ash constantly fell from the clouds like snow quickly blanketing the entire planet, plunging the world into eternal winter.

The great cities of the world were now vast plains of twisted steel and concrete, the only human remains the radiation sickened living corpses who with their last big of strength were hemorrhaging from the orifices left in their melted flesh.

Tucked away in a place that was officially nowhere, was the new subterranean habitat of the man who had ordered the apocalypse with just a single phone call.

Matthew Blake, the 47th President of the United States of America.

Along with his family, he and his vice presidents and their families, they had been quickly whisked away after the decision had been made. They were now living in their own little world beneath the earth. It was an artificial world that provided its inhabitants life's essentials by only artificial and ultimately temporary means. It was also a place to hide from the consequences of their decision. A decision with drastic effects for the vast majority who had no agency, whose lives could be extinguished with just the proverbial push of a button.

Within the walls of the nuclear super bunker, sitting under a desolate plot of land with the codename Sight Hope, were the automated mechanisms which produced clean water and fresh air, lamps that were meant to double as the sun, a vast supply of foodstuffs reminders that death had infinite patience.

President Matthew Blake, the commander-in-chief, was sitting in a small conference room somewhere in the confines of the cavern.

It was a windowless, rectangular, concrete cell with gray walls and a heavily contrasting vibrant plush blue carpet and a long, perfectly polished oak table. When he first arrived this conference room had been filled with advisors, and generals. Now it was dark and quiet. Empty of all but the President himself, at the head of the conference table, slumped down in his commander's chair with his face resting in his folded arms on the table. He was hung over and it only took one glance to know the binge had been heavy and long.

The angles of his chiseled face were covered with unevenly grown, light brown stubble. He had discarded his jacket onto the floor along with his tie. The sleeves on his usually immaculate button down had been sloppily rolled up his arms. This was where he spent much of his time, and where he usually drank. He was mumbling to himself, occasionally tapping his fingers on the surface of the table. Those were the only sounds that could be heard in a room with a man everyone had forgotten.

He lifted his head as he often did to look at the pair of twin clocks above the steel door. The red glow of their digital displays cut through his blurred and tunneled vision One read 13:52 and the other read 264:34:08. Respectively, they were the time and the sum of the total hours he had spent in the bunker. He often checked this while sitting at the table like an office worker counting down to the end of the day. The room around him seemed to be spinning and the weight of his head became unmanageable. He lay his head back on the desk. "24 hours in a day," he muttered. "162 divided by....uhh 24,72....Jesus, almost 11 days". He groaned.

He thought back to the last time he had met with a cabinet member or one of his generals. His eyes fell on the clipboard on the table. He reached out and dragged it over to him. The last logged meeting was at 148 hours. It was a reminder of how irrelevant he had become. What was he the president of anymore? He issued directives to a military that most likely no longer existed and he filmed addresses that no one would see.

The people that were left no longer lived in America with a president. They brought him here as part of procedures for "continuity of government" but that was all delusional thinking. There was no control. The bunker wasn't a presidential command center, not that the word presidential carried any meaning anymore. It was a tomb. He was like the last pharaoh and this was his hi-tech sarcophagus.

He slowly got off his chair and poured himself onto the floor. He rubbed his face against the plush carpeting and closed his eyes. When his eyes opened he looked back at the twin clocks. They now read 15:39 and 266:

His head felt like it had been encased in cement. He buried his face in the carpeting again and groaned. The door at the front of the room opened up. "Oh Jesus, look at you," said a voice. It was Michael Crane, the president's husband.

President Ryan was America's first openly gay president, and the last person to ever hold the office. He had married his college sweetheart Michael. They met while they were both attending Yale law. They were both chiseled and highly polished all-American men. They were modern day Kennedy boys, except lovers instead of brothers. His critics had been afraid that a gay president, "wouldn't be a tough president." He had shown them though. He had shown about 8 billion people just how tough he was.

Michael returned with a low-ball glass filled with ice water. He sat down on the floor next to Matthew and handed him the glass. Matthew put the glass to his lips with shaking hands and took a small sip and set his head back down on the floor. "Come here," Michael said as he scooted over closer to Matthew. He patted his hands on his thighs and the tired president lay his head down in his lover's lap. "Michael. Mikey Mike Mike," Matthew muttered.

"What is it?" Michael said, slowly brushing his fingers through his lover's hair.

"What did I do?"

"What do you mean?"

Matthew sighed "Why did I give that order?"

"You did what you had to do," Michael said in a reassuring tone.

"But now there's nothing. Its all gone. Now we're all stuck in this pit and we're all gonna d...."

Hey, shhh shh," Michael whispered as he kissed Matthew on the forehead. "You're a good man. You're the man who helped me come out to my parents, and you're the man I married. You're a good man, and you're damn sure a good president," Michael said.

Matthew always appreciated this side of Michael. It was the side the public never got to see. They were allowed to be gay, but no one was ever to see it. Mostly Michael just stood behind Matthew with a strong silent composure. No one would ever expect to see the squared jawed captain of the rowing team cradling another man's head in his lap, whispering to him as a mother does to a sick child. But as much as Matthew loved him, Michael wasn't sure he really grasped what had happened. "Everyone needs you to be strong. Not just me, but the country. These are going to be hard times and they're going to look to you to get through them." Michael said. Matthew didn't say anything. "Now come on you need a break. I bet you forgot its Christmas".

Mathew's eyes squinted "Christmas," he repeated warily. The leisure quarters of the bunker had been done up to look like a suburban family room. Everything was there. The couch that sat adjacent to the recliner, the flat screen TV against the wall, and the large wooden coffee table. They had neglected no detail in creating the facade, but there were cracks everywhere. No matter how much paint they threw on it, it would peel and crack and the cold concrete walls would show through, revealing the true nature of what the place really was.

The Vice President and his wife were sitting on the leather couch. They were much older than the president and his husband. The vice president was a tall, somewhat portly, gray man with a round and somewhat red face. He squinted when he smiled and a lock of his curly hair always seemed to be hanging over his forehead. His wife was a slender redhead. She had aged well. She was past the point of being able to cover her many wrinkles, but she was well composed and carried her long, straight body with a dancer's grace. They were watching Alex, the president and his partner's 8 year old son, playing amongst a pile of hastily shredded wrapping paper and ribbons.

Matthew and Michael walked into the room, the president dragging his feet with his arm draped over his husband's shoulder.

"Another staff meeting?" Beckerman said with a grin.

"Come sit over here by us," Cindy said, patting a spot next to her on the couch.

Matthew groaned. His body sank into the couch. "Hey, dad!" Alex called excitedly.

Matthew sat silently, dreading the next time he'd speak. "Dad!" son called again. Matthew breathed deeply. He felt his son's body crash into his knees. "Dad, look, I got the Play Station Z!" his son exclaimed, holding up a black game controller.

"Yeah, you might be waiting a long time for the new games," Matthew said wryly.

"Oh come on now there's no need to be grumpy," Cindy said, playfully slapping him on the knee.

"Why's Dad so mad?" Alex asked.

"Oh, he's just been having a tough time at work," Michael said. "You just have fun with your game."

"I wonder if Tim got this. We could play online," Alex said.

"It'll probably be a while before there's internet," Mike told him.

"How long do you think?" Alex asked.

"About when we leave here, so figure 2, maybe 3 weeks," Michael said.

"Yeah, just think of this as a camping trip," Matthew said.

"Hey I know why don't we throw on 'AChristmas Story'," Beckerman suggested.

"Ohhhh yeah, that's a good one," Cindy agreed.

"Whats that?" Alex asked.

"It's a movie about a little boy like you that wants a rifle for Christmas," Michael said.

"You'll shoot your eye out," Beckerman giggled.

"I'll go get it when the cookies are done, Micheal said.

"Jesus Christ! Fuckin cookies?" Matthew sneered.

There was a knock on the heavy steel door at the other side of the room. "Ohhh that must be her," Michael said with the giddiness of a school girl.

"Let me guess, you got fuckin' Santa," Matthew murmured. No one heard him.

Michael opened the door. Three marines in full combat gear, complete with hazmat masks, entered the room, brandishing automatic weapons. Sitting jauntily atop their respirators were Santa hats. A much smaller figure followed behind them. The mask came off, revealing a short woman with long salt and peper hair, olive skin, and crow's feet around her eyes. She smiled wide. "Alex!" She called out holing out her arms.

"Grandma!" Alex exclaimed, running into her embrace.

Matthew stood up. "What the hell?"

"Merry Christmas, sir!" one of the Marines said. "The first lad....I mean your husb....uh, your life partner, arranged to have us chopper your mother to this location for the holiday festivities sir."

"Matthew, how are you?" His mother smiled.

Matthew bit his lip and took a deep breath. "Are you people fuckin insane?"

The room went quiet.

"What the hell is all this? Don't you people have any idea whats happened?" Matthew moaned.

"Honey, calm down," his mother said softly.

"Yeah," said Michael. "Just because things haven't gone so good at work doesn't mean you have to ruin Christmas for your family and our son."

"Yeah we'll get everything fixed up. Its not the end of the world," Beckerman added.

"Not the end of the world," Matthew shrieked. "Not the end of the world? In case you haven't noticed, I'm responsible for the fuckin apocalypse!"

The room was silent. Everyone was speechless, except for Alex, who then asked, "Whats 'the apocalypse'?"

Matthew moaned and held his face in his hands, "It's the end of the world! Don't you all get it? We're all dead!"

"That's enough," Michael shouted over Matthew. He scooped up Alex and the boy buried his face in his shoulder. "We're trying to make the best of our Christmas in this place which, to be frank, you put us in, but you won't even let us have that." Michael quickly turned away and left with their son.

Matthew wiped his brow and stumbled back over to the couch.

"Are you OK? Can I get you something?" his mother asked.

Before Mathew could answer, sound of machine gun fire rang out from somewhere in the bunker.

"What the hell is that!?" Beckerman shouted.

Everyone cowered down as a few more sharp bursts echoed around the chamber. Matthew heard something hollow hit the ground and roll into the room. Before he could even look up to see what it was, there was a deafening roar and a blinding flash, and for a few seconds the light and the ringing in his ears was all there was, and a few seconds was all it took.

When the ringing faded and his eyes adjusted he could see the tip of dusty combat boots just inches from his eyes. He tried to stand up but the heel of the right boot came down on his neck. The room had become a nightmare of chaos. The marine guard that had escorted his mother lay dead on the floor, their bodies riddled with bullets, gunned down by an invading unit of marines who stared down the barrels of their rifles at the Commander in Chief, his Vice President and their families.

"Get down on the ground!"

"Stay on the fuckin' floor!"

They shouted again and again.

"What the hell is going on here?" Matthew demanded.

The boot eased up off his neck and allowed him to turn over to look up at the man leading the raid on his compound. He was tall and dressed in the same combat and hazmat gear as his soldiers. The large ebony kaleidoscopic eyes of his mask were hollow and insectlike. A desert eagle in a holster was slung around his waist, cowboy style.

"Who the fuck are you?" Matthew screamed.

The man dug his boot into Matthew's chest.

"Colonel Perry, 5th battalion, 3rd marines. Martial law has been declared and it has been deemed there is no role for either you or your administration in the plan for continuity of government."

Perry declared, "Also, we don't take orders from faggots."

Matthew was silent. Not long ago he was once the most powerful man in the world. He couldn't believe how quickly that changed. His office was now little more than a word, the powers vested in it little more than a memory, and none of it was going to save him. "What about my son?" he finally whimpered. Without answering, Perry drew his pistol and fired a round through Mathew's forehead, instantly sending him into the infinite and dark abyss of death. Matthew never even saw his shooter's face.

Matthew had been America's first gay president. His name and memory had been meant to be a symbol of the slow but steady progress the country had made towards freeing itself from the grip of hate. As long as society cultivated the power of the nuclear sword, a power to awash the world in flames, there could never have been any other outcome. Matthew's ascent to the presidency came during a time when conditions allowed for acts of compassion, but in only minutes the age of the homo sapien had ushered in twilight, and the sun set on the history of the species. They would not fade peacefully or gracefully, but rather in a maelstrom of chaos and cruelty. Matthew's bunkers, unlike the tomb of the pharaohs, would never be found by future generations. Instead, it would be forever buried under the dust of civilization in a vast wasteland of human remains.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nick's work has appeared in a number of publications including; Skive magazine, Sleepy Town Press, Third Flatiron Publishing, and the award winning Crooked Cat Publishing in the United Kingdom. His stories are his attempt to address the sickness called the human condition. Nick can be contacted at jicknohnson84@gmail.com.

I WILL WATCH

FOR YOU BY

STARLIGHT

Trak E. Sumisu

The prognosis was not good; I could tell before she told me the results of the analysis, just from her expression, that my time on what remained of the planet would be shorter than I'd hoped. However, I was unprepared for what little time I actually had left.

For years, after the ill-fated three-day conflagrative confrontation between China and New Unified Korea, we believed (or at least everyone was told) that it would be the radiation – that pervasive fall-out, settling like a silent, invisible dust, coating everything and everybody, penetrating all living organisms, contaminating every grass blade, plant, tree and man-made structure, leaching into the water table, poisoning us slowly from the inside out – that would ultimately destroy us. We were told to expect sickness, a dramatically decreased life expectancy; that we should contemplate coming to terms with the concept of loss: of friends, family, children, loved ones. The best-case scenario, the one we should hope for, was that our bodies would become hosts for rapidly multiplying, fast-growing tumours that could not be contained or controlled. Only the pain would be controlled, we were informed, until such time as our bodies ceased functioning. But they were wrong.

Man, it transpires, is much more resilient than we ever thought possible, certainly more adaptable than that antiquated fraudster Darwin ever gave our species credit for. After thousands and thousands of years of natural selection and neo-evolution* it seemed we were better suited to dealing with rapid cataclysmic ecological readjustment than almost any other Gaian organism, except perhaps for the blatta, more specifically Periplaneta americanus, the ubiquitous cockroach. It was the other life forms that suffered most.

"What is your domestic arrangement?" Her voice was cold, like her eyes. Its timbre added an unnecessary gravitas to the already overwhelmingly bleak situation.

"Solitary domicile," I replied. "No spousal obligations. No children."

"Any dependants at all?"

I shook my head slowly. There was once, but that was a long time ago.

She turned her head slightly to read off some of the data from the wall. The illuminated section flickered and I felt suddenly nauseous. In my head I was outraged. They should have outlawed it as soon as they knew, as soon as they made a positive link.

"I see you have requisite provision for your immediate care. According to this, your funding should last until IS3I." She paused, aware that I was unfamiliar with the medical terminology, and apologised. "Sorry, irreversible stage 3 illumoblastoma; the deficit will more than adequately cover the cost of transportation."

How long did I have? The words formed in my head, as thought, but I was uncertain if I actually spoke them.

"Six weeks. Maybe seven. Naturally, you will be quarantined within the next twelve hours. Are you intending to go straight to your address?" She scanned the wall again. "That would be 2274 Detling Plaza, right?"

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––* Mutable Evolution and Selective Eugenics: Neo-Evolution & Darwinism Re-evaluated: Dr Jan Eriksson (Temerity Transglobal Publication 2070)

I nodded, numb.

"Very well, Mr Artellus. I suggest you put all your immediate domestic matters in order and await the shuttle. We can arrange transportation to your residency if you require it but, obviously that will be deducted from your total provision funding."

I got up to leave. I had no intention of thanking her for her time or medical evaluation. My condition was apparent, even to me.

"You will be taken care of, Mr Artellus. The RCF provides superb facilities and the expertise is incredible; superlative. Your well-being is obviously of paramount importance to the staff and they are all fully-trained and sympathetic to your condition in all its stages."

The doors of the consultation suite opened and my world finally began to fall in on me, and the enormity of my situation becoming suddenly, starkly apparent.

My transit to the RCF was fairly uneventful. There were two other passengers on the shuttle, both like myself, in the early onset stages of the disease. The first, Jared, was a heavy, thickset man, an African I think, who had spent the first two years after the conflict in central Asia, 'mopping up' as he referred to it. He resented the fact that the disease had chosen now to invade his system, just as he was making 'something of his life'. He was bitter, angry and tearful.

Looking at the second IQC – or Immediate Quarantine Candidate as we were referred to by everyone (except ourselves) – I was thankful I could still cover up the telltale blemishes that had started to migrate from the fingertips of my right hand. Helena was not so fortunate; the whole of the left side of her face was a mass of discolouration, her bottom lip almost completely transparent. She didn't speak throughout the entire journey and spent the whole time staring out of the window, focusing on some imperceptible reality or other.

Jared was inconsolable.

"It's not fair! I was there, in the thick of it, pumping slurry into the back of tankers! Human slurry! I should have caught something there surely, amongst all the filth and the decay and the debris. Not now! Not now that I have a family. Why? Why me? Why now?"

I chose not to answer him (because, to be honest, I really did not know how best to respond in order to help salve his self-piteous demeanour) and Helena ignored him. She ignored everything, including me. Eventually I realised her strategy was the logical response and followed suit. Jared's annoying whining became a distant sound, an irritant still but one that was certainly easier to block out.

As we neared the RCF, the dominant impression I had was of the fencing, over twelve metres high and constructed of dull, grey metal strands pulled taut between illuminated Plexiglas columns that stretched out as far as the eye could see on either side of the forbidding, gated entrance. It was apparent they had no intention of allowing anyone who passed through those gates to ever set foot outside again.

"We're fucked! We're fucked! We're fucked! We're fucked!" That was Jared, howling out his mantra of the obvious to anyone who was listening. I tried not to. I sincerely hoped that once inside I would never see him again. Helena's face flickered and emitted a small electronic popping noise; she continued staring out of the window.

The sign beside the gates bore the legend:

Goldacre 14 – Residual Confinement Facility

A Subsidiary of the Denton State Medical Corporation

It was one of thirty or so that were dotted around the country, mainly in the less densely populated areas that had not been so badly contaminated by the radiation. There were rumours that new RCFs were being erected, perhaps ten or more, to keep up with demand as the disease became ever more widespread.

The gates opened and, without any deviation in direction or speed, our transporter entered the heavily fortified confinement camp. I looked back and watched them close again. I knew at that precise moment I had been effectively exiled from the world and everybody and everything in it, forever.

Consultation #1: Acclimatisation Session – Dr William Zanegretti

I was not looking forward to my initial consultation. It marked the inevitability of my position within the facility. I needn't have worried as much as I did. Dr Zanegretti was eloquent and incredibly well informed. He was, by his own admission, the foremost authority on type II illumoblastoma. He was also adamant.

"I will not allow any emulsion-dependant apparatus or devices within the confines of the RCF. I have implemented strict procedures to ensure that such 'gadgets' – even those so-called harmless E-CommLinks – are not allowed beyond the gates. All my staff here are aware of the rules and that I will not tolerate the flouting of them under any circumstances. The penalty for such a breach, for such a contemptible disregard of facility policy, is immediate contractual termination with full suspension of all benefits."

His words were reassuring, intentionally so. I studied him carefully for a moment, gauging whether he was a strict man generally or only in respect to matters that might directly affect his position at the facility or his professional integrity. I decided in the end he was genuine in his condemnation of emulsion technology.

"Everyone blames Woodford."

It was true. They did. I did.

"Initially he was considered to be a genius! His invention revolutionary! It cannot be denied; he has changed the world forever. Every aspect of our life on the planet is now, in one respect or another, for better or for worse, dependant upon Woodford's emulsion technology. He was a true visionary, although the only thing he could not have foreseen, or created a contingency for, was the response of his organic technology in the aftermath of the war: the reaction to intense bombardment by high levels of cobalt radiation. If we should blame anyone, it should really be the Chinese."

I nodded meekly, attempting to disguise the fact I disagreed with his viewpoint.

"How is the hand?" he asked disarmingly.

I removed my glove for him to examine it, surprised by the intensity of the ambient illumination that was growing steadily stronger.

"Anything auditory?"

I shook my head. "No. Nothing. Not yet."

"I can't lie. It will come. We can give you sedatives at that point, although whether you take them or not is your choice. It will make the self-management of your illness easier, however."

I asked the impossible. I knew how futile the question was before it even passed my lips. "What about a cure?"

He pursed his lips, an audible sigh escaping from them. "Realistically?" He shook his head slowly. "Not in your lifetime. In order to cure the disease we have to be able to identify the assimilating factor, the mechanism of transference. As it is a mutagen, with the ability to alter its genetic code dependant upon whatever the host happens to be, there are now so many combinations that it is virtually impossible to isolate it with any degree of accuracy.

Some of the research conducted so far has been promising. It indicates that we should be studying invertebrates and trying to discover why, so far, they appear to have been immune from the contagion, but it's still early days. I don't foresee a breakthrough for a very long time."

He leant forward and patted my hand softly in what I took to be an act of sympathy or pity. The light blemishes fizzed and flickered in response.

"As a human being you are more fortunate than most of the species this disease attacks. At the very least we have the innate ability to comprehend, to understand the effects as they become more established. The majority of other animals expire before the symptoms are full blown, submitting to complete mental or physical exhaustion in their attempt to escape something that, it must be emphasised, is completely alien to them. Animals have the ability to interpret their surroundings and act accordingly but once the disease takes hold it overrides all their instincts. Have you ever seen an infected animal?"

I nodded. I had once, only once. It was the single most terrifying thing I had ever encountered. I heard it long before I actually saw it, a feral cat screaming in absolute terror as it attempted to escape from itself. Then it appeared, running panic stricken, almost a blur of pulsating light and noise; no longer a cat but a new creature that illuminated its surroundings as it went, throwing strange shadows in its path, accompanied by the sound of disembodied voices and strange disjointed music.

Unlike us, any animal that showed signs of the illness now was captured wherever possible and mercifully exterminated. It was considered a more humane alternative to allowing them to go full term and die in agony, insane, bewildered and alone. I wondered why they didn't do the same for us. Surely, under the circumstances, it would have been kinder?

"OK." The doctor's voice snapped me out of my reverie. "I'll see you at the same time next week. If you have any problems sleeping or have any other discomfort or concerns, the pharmacist will be able to recommend something. Alright, Mr Artellus? Any questions?"

I had only one, just one niggling question that had been prompted by examining my fellow sufferers as I waited to go in to the consultation suite. There was not a single woman among us. "Are the men and women here being segregated?"

Despite the answer I was given by the smiling, perfunctory Dr Zanegretti, I discovered over the next few weeks that, although it was not referred to as 'segregation', male and female confinees were deliberately kept separate in order to minimise 'the formation of emotional attachment' and to avoid 'any inherent problems that might ensue from such attachments'.

Contact was kept to a minimum. The only time I really got to see any member of the opposite sex was either at the pharmacy or when we were allowed outside for 'a breath of fresh air'. It was a joke; everyone knew that the air would not be fresh again for at least another ninety years but we went along with it. It was a way of keeping in touch with reality. Being inside the facility for a protracted length of time was unsettling, despite all the amenities. At least outside there was some sense that the world did still exist – that we all still existed – even though we were separated from it and the rest of humanity.

I saw Helena again. She was standing by the fence, looking out at something, something in the distance that I was unable to make out. I wondered if there was actually anything there, but her eyes did not possess that lost quality that so many of the others in the facility had. I think she was content.

When I spoke to her she turned to face me through the fence. Her condition was advancing rapidly. It had spread to her limbs. They glowed in the late afternoon sunlight. The almost constant hiss of static was occasionally replaced by the incomprehensible sound of someone speaking in Spanish or some other South American language. She managed a smile, although it was hard to discern at first through the glare.

"We were on the same shuttle here," I said by way of conversation. "My name's Stephen."

I felt she might have taken the hand I raised and offered in greeting had we not been separated by the fence. I lowered it again, impotently.

"My name..." a column of figures flashed across her face. "My name is...was Helena."

I started to protest. "That's..." but I paused, struggling to find the right word. What was it? Stupid? Ridiculous? True? In the end I revised what I was about to say. "Your name is still Helena."

Her eyes widened. "Is it?" There was no anger in her voice, no trace of bitterness, just weary resolution. "Sometimes I'm not so sure. Any traces of me, of my life, are being eaten away. Soon there will be nothing left, just noise and images."

She was, of course, correct. It was what we all had to come to terms with, some sooner than others.

"It looks quite advanced."

She shrugged. "Yeah. I tried to ignore it at first. You know, trying to be hopeful. Hopeful that it might just go away. It didn't. So I resorted to hiding it, but you can't hide that sort of thing from your partner indefinitely."

"You have a partner?" I asked, thoughtlessly.

"Had. I also had two children. Not anymore. I know I'll never see them again, except here." She touched her index finger to her forehead and disrupted the transmission temporarily. "Soon even that will be gone, replaced by all the garbage. The noise is there all the time now, in my head. I can't remember the last time I slept without pharmaceutical aid.

According to the consultant I am already approaching IS3I, so I don't suppose I'll be here much longer anyway." She nodded towards a large square, windowless black building about three kilometres away, no more than a dark mass in the distance. "They'll move me there, to the hangar, as soon as the noise reaches 3800 Hz. Then I'll be sectioned for the next transporter to the colony."

"How long have you got?"

She smiled. "Days. Maybe a week."

I told her I was sorry, but my apology washed over her. I knew that I myself would be in her position very soon and wondered if I would be content spending my last audible days standing out on the scorched plain, talking to a stranger.

"Can I talk to you again?" I asked earnestly. "If you don't mind. I could meet you here tomorrow afternoon."

Helena nodded. "Yes, I'd like that." With that she walked off, away from the fence and away from me, back towards the facility block.

Consultation #4: IS2I Assessment – Dr William Zanegretti

Despite my initial impression of the doctor, by my fourth consultation I had come to realise that, despite his best attempts to convince me otherwise, I was nothing more to him than one more poor unfortunate passing time as pleasantly as my health funding would allow until I was no longer fit to remain on Earth.

I stripped off my tunic and allowed him to examine me. It took him less than a couple of minutes.

"The migration of the blastoma has accelerated. You have almost fifty percent coverage now, despite it not being localised."

It was true. It had affected my hands and forearms, lower trunk, buttocks and my right leg extending up to, and including, my genitals. Fortunately, my face and neck were clear, although I had noticed a bright speck the previous day, just above my hairline.

"Clinically, you are still at IS1I, but the migration will become more rapid from this point forward. How is the background noise?"

I pulled my tunic back on, over my head. "I'm aware it's there but so far it hasn't disturbed me too much. I think it's getting louder."

"It will. That's completely normal for this illness. How are you sleeping?"

"OK, I guess."

"Are you eating normally?"

I nodded, afraid to tell him that my appetite had almost entirely vanished.

"Good, good. I'll see you at the same time next week, Mr Artellus. Any questions?"

Of course I had questions. I had millions of them. I needed to make sense of my illness and how it chose its host. I needed to know where it was first identified and why it hadn't been taken more seriously from the beginning. I wanted to know if more could've been done initially, to isolate sufferers and perhaps prevent more widespread infection. I wanted to know if the disease was, as we had all been told, a mutagen and not some horrific biological weapon created by Chinese scientists and set loose on enemies in retaliation for the obliteration of Beijing and two-thirds of the entire country. I had so many questions. I knew Dr Zanegretti would not have the answers to all of them, so opted for one I felt sure he could respond to.

He stared at me for a moment, then stood up and made sure the door to the consultation suite was firmly closed. When he sat down again he sighed like a tired old man.

"Everyone who comes in here, in fact everyone I've ever seen, sitting where you are now, asks the same question. So it's easy for me, because I just repeat what I've told the hundreds and hundreds of people before you. My answer to that specific question has become more like a conditioned response. That is not good because I've found I no longer have to think about it. However, that time is, I'm certain, coming to an end, and I am very fearful for the future of all mankind.

It's always the little things that trip us up. The unexpected? Certainly, but they tend to be so insignificant we barely give most of them a second thought. Like when Christopher Woodford successfully created the first organic bioluminescent screen, created from the cloned cells of those ugly deep-sea fish. There were indications that the development would lead to enormous technological leaps in terms of possible application, although the real breakthrough was his creation of the emulsion.

Originally, it was just called OBLE, organic bioluminescent emulsion, but it wasn't long before the media and the telecommunications industry began incorporating it into all kinds of appliances. They gave Woodford's discovery the trademark OBLEC, predicting that it would one day totally eradicate the use of electricity, globally. Obsolete electricity, you see? I'm sure you're aware that the first ever emulsion-screen TV was painted by Woodford himself in 2110, on the site of what was originally the British Broadcasting Corporation building in London?"

The buzzing in my head seemed suddenly louder for some reason. "I saw something about it on one of those documentary channels, which is ironic really. I think they have the entire wall in the Koshland science museum in Washington."

"Yes, absolutely they do! The rest, though, is history. It wasn't long before the emulsion was used everywhere, but it was in telecommunications that it made the greatest impact. I don't believe there is a home anywhere in the world that doesn't have an emulsion-screen TV or doesn't employ some form of emulsion technology. So that which I believe will ultimately destroy all life here on this planet was already perfectly placed to have the maximum effect on society. All that was needed was a catalyst, and that catalyst was provided by the Chinese.

You see, whilst everyone regarded the emulsion as an inanimate thing, in fact whatever it was required to be, in reality, it was a living organism. The radiation changed it. It became almost virus-like. We still aren't sure how or exactly when it began to migrate from cold mechanisms and substructure surfaces. We only know it did, migrating to anything that could provide it with a chance to reproduce and survive. The first recorded case of illumoblastoma was in a domestic pig in the devastated Jiangsu Province in China. Within a year the first cases in humans were recorded, believed to have been contracted by the victims eating some form of contaminated animal.

Now no one is immune from irreversible illumoblastoma. Some have a greater tolerance to it than others. You yourself for example, Mr Artellus; your symptoms have not developed as rapidly as they have in others. We just don't know how it works and it appears that we cannot even slow its progress down once it takes hold. So in answer to your question, yes, I have lost someone close to me to the disease. Actually, I've lost two people I loved very much. Despite what you might think of me now, or in the future, I did not hesitate in signing their colony transportation documents. Nor will I next time, and there will be a next time.

One day it might be me and I just hope someone will allow me to remain with a modicum of dignity intact. It is my greatest fear that I might also mutate into a living, breathing emulsion-screen."

I thanked him for his honesty and told him I would see him the following week. How many appointments remained for me was uncertain.

Helena was late. She did not arrive until dusk. When I asked her the reason, she simply smiled and said she preferred the coolness of the early evening on her skin. The constant transmission of images and sound raised her surface temperature by several degrees. It was just another aspect of the illness I had to look forward to.

"The constant noise is driving me insane," she told me. "Sometimes it's like there are a thousand voices in my head at the same time. They say it'll be ten times worse by the time it's full blown. I'm not looking forward to it. No wonder infected animals throw themselves over cliffs."

Was that true? If so, what kind of animals? Which cliffs? I wasn't certain there was much indigenous wildlife left.

Her body was so luminescent it made her tunic appear virtually transparent. I watched a weather report play out across her face. Then, without warning, it changed to the opening credits of an old Drago Manek film, the one in which he plays an eco-warrior battling against the corrupt US Secretary of State, played by the formidable character actor Miles Dennison (in what was to be his last role). It was impossible not to stare at her.

"I'm not certain..." She paused, screwing up her face in order to concentrate, to cut through the intense noise pollution from all the simultaneous transmissions her mutated body cells were host to. "I'm not certain I'll be here this time tomorrow night. They cancelled my consultation on Wednesday. That tells me that they're getting ready to transport me."

We both turned our attention towards the heavens. The full moon, like a huge cabochon set against the dark-blue velvet canopy of the night sky, surrounded by twinkling diamanté-like stars, glared back at us. It was so bright that we both had to squint.

"It hurts your eyes just to look at it from down here, doesn't it?"

Helena nodded but continued to stare at it. She reminded me of a picture I'd once seen in a picture book; it was of a hare gazing forlornly at the lunar satellite in the sky, far, far above. Her neck was craned forward, slender and smooth. I watched some kind of documentary about the defoliation of trees in Germany flicker across the surface of her skin and then she said softly, "Why do you think they send us so far away?"

I didn't answer. With her imminent removal to its surface perhaps only hours away, I supposed she would find out soon enough. There were stories, of course; we'd all heard the stories but no one knew if they were really true because no one had ever returned from the colony. I imagined the combined luminosity and noise from the sixty million or so infected inhabitants would be impossible to tolerate for long. It explained why even the transit vehicles were remotely operated.

"When you get there," she said, "do you imagine that you will be able to identify your friends, or those family members that were sent to the colony before you?"

"Possibly." I wasn't really sure. "Why do you ask?"

"Will you look for me?" She turned to face me. "I don't have anybody there."

"Yes." I was being as honest as it was possible to be. "I'll try to find you. If you are able, try to stay as close to the transit terminal as you can. I'm not sure how many days or weeks it will be before I arrive there, but if I can, if it's possible, I will find you."

She held up her hand in some kind of gesture of gratitude. I was used to her noise now. "Thank you, that means a lot to me. Will you come out here again, when I'm gone?"

I nodded.

"Good," she said finally. "I'll watch for you, and when I can no longer see you, I'll know you are coming."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Trak E. Sumisu is the author of the transgressive fictional CPR trilogy, and has been described as the 'British Houellebecq'. He writes in various genres including crime, science-fiction, alternative reality and fantasy. This year he has been short-listed in the WFL crime novel award and was a bronze prize winner in a major UK poetry competition. His next novel Taphophilia has already been described as 'a grotesquely twisted modern gothic tale.'

THE LAST

MOON COWBOY

Edd Howarth

"Well, which will it be?" asked Derek Mazer to his son.

"I'm not sure," said Patrick Mazer. He breathed a cloud on the glass he was leaning against and wiped it away, as if this would reveal the answer.

Derek Mazer placed his hand upon the boy's shoulder, and what a delicate, bony shoulder it was. "You must understand the importance of this decision," he said, and looked directly into the boy's eyes.

His son nodded, then pointed to a snub-nosed revolver.

"It will not give you much distance, you understand this?"

Patrick Mazer nodded.

"But a boy must have a gun."

Outside, the sun shone brightly through the high windows of the Moon Market.

Derek Mazer and his son selected the revolver and a leather holster, slightly too large for the boy.

"You will grow with it," he said.

As expected, the cashier gave them trouble.

"Is this allowed?" asked the cashier.

"Are you allowed?" Derek Mazer put his hands upon the counter, and what large hands they were. The cashier looked at those hands, then up at Derek Mazer, intimidating in his olive green uniform, medals flashing like gold teeth.

He shrugged, rang up the purchase, and with the gun dangling by Patrick Mazer's hip, out went the two, out into the market, out into the stacks of high glass buildings, melted from moon rock, out into the crowd of hurrying fathers and mothers, towing children, some sprinting, some yelling. A busy, busy day. "Is the Earth nice?" a boy asked his mother, and in response the mother stared off to a point far away, and kept moving. "Just one test," hissed a father to another father. "My boy!" yelled another woman, turning and turning on her heels.

But Derek Mazer was not listening to any of this. Instead, he lit a cigarette and passed it down to his son, who puffed it crudely as they passed signs in the windows reading "Mor – SOLD OUT", "Rad Tabs GONE", "Nide Moving FAST". And it all seemed to be moving so fast to Patrick Mazer, who held tightly to the leather strap over his shoulder, having learned a long time ago to never take his father's hand. They passed the rocket with the children already gathering, holding tight to their mothers and fathers, heads bowed as if in prayer. Patrick Mazer watched them over his shoulder.

"The other children don't have guns," called Patrick Mazer over the market noise.

Derek Mazer kept a steady pace, so that Patrick Mazer scurried to keep up, much like a small dog.

"The other children will die. Now, you will have a hat."

So into the clothing outlet they went, empty and quiet, knocking the moon dust off of their feet on the front mat. A lone woman behind the counter peered strangely.

"What hat would you recommend for a boy such as mine? The hat must shape his face. The hat must be strong and durable. The hat must last."

The woman looked at the boy with the cigarette burning between his lips.

"A hat that lasts?" she asked, finally.

"The hat must last," he said, and nodded at his son. "What about that leather one, the one with the wide brim?"

"I suppose that would last."

So in a daze the cashier rang up the hat, and Derek Mazer plucked the tag like a stray hair from one of his uniforms and placed it on the boy's head.

"This is a fine hat, do you understand?"

The boy nodded from somewhere deep within the brim.

Out, out into the square they went. Faster, now. Derek Mazer glanced at his watch.

"Dad?" said the boy. But Derek Mazer was not listening. He was searching the outlet windows, peering through the smoked UV protected panes. "Dad!"

Derek Mazer stopped and looked at his son.

"Can't I take the tests again?"

Derek said nothing.

"Would you like another cigarette?" he said.

"The last one went up my nose. Why do I have to smoke these again?"

"A cowboy smokes," he said. He stared off into the distance, and then added: "You will eat beans from a can."

The boy's eyes brightened. He shifted his back pack, and sure enough, there was the clank of canned beans.

"You must have a knife," said Derek Mazer, and they walked toward the pharmacy. A line of black-booted men held a steady line along the front wall, watching for trouble.

Inside was chaos, but in they went, shouldering past the other mother's and fathers, weaving in and out of their stationary children. The shelves of pills and salves had voided long ago.

"Derek, God, Derek," and there stood Dr. Henry Wilkins and his son, breathless and red-eyed.

"I just can't believe this," he said. He looked at his son, then away.

"It is very busy in here," said Derek Mazer.

"Jesus, Derek. The boys!"

"They are pioneers," said Derek Mazer, and nodded at his son, who nodded back.

"Pioneers? More like lab rats!"

"Go and select a knife, son," he said. And Patrick Mazer went off and rummaged on a nearby shelf, out of earshot.

"What's all that, Derek? A hat? A gun? You know they've sold out of morphine all over?"

"Morphine will not work," he said.

"But it's something. The gasses..."

Wilkins mopped at his brow.

"All this to see how long they'll last. Jesus –Look, we bought two. Just take this, please. Put it in his pack." He pushed a dark pill into Derek Mazer's palm.

"Goodbye Derek," he said, and took his son's hand, and was gone.

Derek Mazer dropped the pill onto the floor.

"Did you choose a knife?"

"This one," said his son.

Now there was nothing more to buy, and only time. They strolled to the outskirts of the market and came to the sealed walls of the camp. There they positioned themselves by an observation window and both stared out at the stillness of the dust, the powdered craters filled with motionless lakes of ink. Patrick placed his hand on the glass.

"It's very boring here, isn't it Dad?"

"So very, very boring, son."

"The other children don't look too happy about leaving."

"The other boys are not cowboys."

Patrick Mazer thought this over.

"They're cowgirls," he said.

And then something rare happened. Derek Mazer laughed.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, they are cowgirls." And he stared at his boy, who looked up and out into the stars, and he stared for a long while.

The alarm rang. Deep and sonorous, summoning them to the port. There the boys, one by one, shuffled up the ramp to the rocket bay, all thin and bony, all clutching small zip-lock kits to their chests, moving with distant eyes to a bright red rocket with a single engine, pointed at the Earth.

"Well, this is farewell," said Derek Mazer.

Patrick Mazer extended his hand, and they shook.

"I'll send a smoke signal," said the boy.

"I will watch for it." And the boy joined the other boys, the hat slipping, the bag clanking, the gun wobbling, he followed the boys waddling under the weight of his pack. At the bay he turned and faced his father, faced him with a wide and wonderful smile. Then he touched his gun, nodded, and vanished into the entry bay light.

The door swung shut, the stabilizers retracted. The rocket lifted with a puff of air and glided up toward the ceiling. The great hatch split in two and soon the rocket was slipping through, out into the void and calm and quietness of space, where it dwindled for a moment, almost seeming to hang there, as if unsure, for a split second, which direction to take. Then the engines blinked once more, and with a great flash, it hurtled toward the Earth, and was lost from sight.

Soon the mothers and fathers turned away and left. And Derek Mazer left, too. He walked the empty streets, passed the shuttered market windows where shopkeepers swept away the empty shopping bags and receipts and clutter dropped from a thousand jostling customers. He tread and retread the moon dust until arriving at the observation bay window, with the print of his son's hand on the glass, and the cigarette butt still smoldering. From there he looked out into the darkness of space, and for a second thought that he could see the rocket rising toward the Earth. He traced it with his finger, and saw it floated upward, barely a speck now, and vanishing, vanishing, drifting higher and higher like the most beautiful red balloon Derek Mazer had ever seen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Edd Howarth wrote his first short story in crayon on the walls of his mother's kitchen. He was twenty-one years old. Recently, his stories have appeared in Infinite Windows, M-Brane SF, the Absent Willow Review, Miracle Monocle, and The Foundling Review. He has been short listed for the 2009 Bridport Short Story Prize, and was a finalist in the National Irish Science Fiction Film Awards.

RITE OF PASSAGE

Robert J. Santa

Waller was awake before the sun, gathering the belongings that were laid out for him with such loving tenderness the night before. He had not claimed the warrior's cave that was his custom – since refusing it, too, was a custom – and he moved about the communal hut stealthily, stepping over friends and family in the near dark of pre-morning. A testament to his skill was that not even the young mothers, the lightest of sleepers, stirred.As the ball of his foot touched down next to Mari's red curls, he paused. She was beautiful, and when she volunteered to come to him as one of the Warrior's Chosen, he cried real tears unlike those he was required to shed at the banquet. Mari was thethird and last, and though he was utterly slated with wine and roast pork and even female company they stayed in his hut until her older brother pounded on the walls and hollered with laughter. They had emerged red-faced and sweating, and Jon-jon clapped him between his broad shoulder blades and toasted his prowess in all things mighty. Then Jon-jon moved off to wrestle with his younger cousins, leaving Mari to stand up on her toes and whisper into his ear "I want to bear your child." She kissed him on the neck and rejoined the banquet, and he cried again.

In that moment, with his weight resting on his front foot, her hair that smelled of apples so close, he almost laid back down on his mat. But he was the Warrior, and this was the first Day of the Two after the autumnal equinox. That was the day the Warrior set off to slay the Beast since long before even Gran-Papa Barooss could remember. He sighed once, then lifted his footand left the longhouse.

Punjin and Sika were sitting on the bench by the well. Waller suspected they couldn't see him as he saw them, and he knew they hadn't heard him rustle the doorway curtain because it hadn't. He let his feet scuffle in the dirt. His pack, too, shifted slightly, letting the sword click once against the bracelet on his left wrist. Sika heard the noise and whispered toPunjin. They strained to see him, only catching his outline against the stars when he was less than two strides from them. He tousled Punjin's long hair and felt the boy jump a little at his touch. His sister spoke, despite that it was bad luck to talk to the Warrior on the day of his leaving

"When will you be back?" she whispered, her voice barely audible. Punjin hugged her shoulder. He wasn't three years old; he had seen a few Day of the Two banquets."He can't talk to us," the boy said. "It isn't allowed."Waller knew they couldn't see him, not with the clouds covering the stars, but he smiled nonetheless. He wanted them to share his confidence in his training and his teachers, in the words of the elders who had never seen a finer Warrior, in his belief – and he truly believed it – that he would be the one to slay the Beast. He lowered the pack, silently, then squatted downand touched their knees. He squeezed them, as gentle as a toddler's hug. Sika smiled. Punjin didn't.

Waller picked up his pack and walked towards the stairs. As he climbed out of the shelter he dared to glance back at the village. He couldn't see the children any more, for they had goneback inside to sleep away the morning. He sighed, wondering if the other Warriors had felt the way he did, torn apart by conflicting emotions that seemed to have real claws, their scraping on his insides as painful as any exercise wound. Waller knew they did, and he turned away from the village and set off for the south.It was not a full day's walk, and he followed the stone pathdespite its crumbling disrepair for it was much easier to spot the sunning dirt-brown, rattle-tailed snakes against the black rock than against the brown dirt. He had been repeatedly pricked by the teeth of those snakes for his entire life, suffered the days of fever and vomiting that followed, because the teachers told him that it would make him immune to their venom. As much ashe loved his teachers, Waller stayed on the ancient path more as a preventative measure than for its directness. He would have been highly embarrassed as he looked down from the afterworld to hear the Watchers tell his family that he was killed by a snake.

He held out his hand to the sun, measured that it was a fullfive fingers above the top of the low mountains to the west. He knew the other path was near, and in less than a thousand steps he saw it, running away from the falling sun as if it were the tallest shadow. Waller turned and followed the new path, reachingup and patting the metal sign at the intersection for luck as wasthe tradition. He knew the Watchers could see him from their perch, even at this distance for they had eyes like golden-feathered eagles as was the requirement for being a Watcher. And he knew that if he didn't follow the traditions and failed then they would report on his foolishness, and the teachers would be dishonored for not imparting with effectiveness all of their knowledge.He made camp near a stream just before the sun touched the top of the stony ridge. Between that time and full dark he gathered wood, finding dried scrub trees everywhere he looked. Heassembled a bonfire that would provide light and heat for the entire night without needing to be maintained. Waller dipped his hands into his pack and retrieved every item, laying them out on a blanket. He stripped then painted his face and his body with the designs and whorls that would most greatly favor the gods. Lastly he took out the fire stick and scraped it on the face of asmall stone at the base of the bonfire. It sputtered angrily to life, and he pressed the flaming head against the ball of dried grasses beneath the small twigs. Then he stood and prayed, and when the prayers were finished he danced. He sang as he danced around the fire, low songs performed with more vigor than skill, but the Watchers were a good way off and couldn't hear that clearly, interfered with as they were by the coyotes and crickets. Waller's dancing was graceful and powerful, and it lasted for a long time, somewhere between sundown and moonrise, when the brightest of stars had traveled a full third of the way across the arch of the sky. At last fatigued, covered in a sheen of fine sweat and distorted paint, he lay down on the blanket beside his equipment and was asleep in a heartbeat.It was not the sun that woke him, for it had been up a long while before he opened his eyes. Still naked, he walked to the stream and bathed himself, scrubbing the dried salt and paint from his skin so that he was as clean as if he had just left the steam hut. He drank heartily, filling his belly with as much water as it could hold. Then he returned to the dwindling embers of the fire to dry. He dressed in a new, clean loincloth, laced up his sandals, tied the band around his hair. Then he buckled the wide sword belt to his hip and set off for the east, leaving everything else behind. He took no food, for the walk was not long, and a meal would be a moot consideration if he failed to slay the Beast. But he was confident, and he had a sealed cup of wine and some salted meat in his pack for his return. That it wasthe same cup the last Warrior had used made no difference to him,and he considered it neither lucky nor unlucky to hold a possession with such history.The fence was lying across the stone path almost within sight of his camp. He could see low buildings of stone and steel that glinted with reflected sunlight beyond the fence. Sitting atop the length of the fence, like a twisted flock of nightmare birds, were coils of fat ribbons of metal sharp enough to cut. Waller didn't even pause in his stride as he approached the fence. He simply lifted the sword out of its sheath, and with a tremendous, double-handed stroke brought the edge down against the wire links. His strength and that of the blade were too much for them as the fence separated with a brief scream and shower ofsparks. He lifted the flap of fence and stepped beyond it. Then he waited. He had considered climbing the fence; he knew he was agile enough to maneuver through the razor coils without being cut. But he needed to damage the fence for it would bring on the spiders. Even now, only heartbeats after he swung the sword, theywere coming.

There were three of them, quickly covering the desert between the closest building and the broken fence. Despite the mid-day sun, he could see their sets of eyes glowing. His teachers had told him they would not immediately attack him, thatthe Watchers always relayed this information. As the first spiderlaunched a web from a point on its underbelly directly at Waller's legs he thought that someone had not informed the spiderof this. They were ten good strides apart, and it must be as far as the spiders could throw a web for the point of it dropped and struck the ground beside his foot. Waller took one step forward and cleaved the spider through its armored center. It twitched and hissed viciously, but it was dead and only in its final throes.

Waller then spun and kicked a foot out at the second spider.It stumbled, and in that moment, Waller removed its head. The third spider also launched a web, and from a much closer distancethe line lashed around Waller's waist and held him firm. He dropped his left hand down and pulled hard on the web, dragging the spider forward in one great bound. As it landed before him hespiked it to the earth, driving his sword down with such force that it buried itself half-way up the blade. The spider was stillvery much alive, clawing at him, drawing blood from his wrist. Waller raised his hhands high and brought them down on the base ofthe spider's head. Then the spider was still. Waller removed his sword. There was no point in searching for the Beast. He knew it would come to him.

Waller forced himself into a state of calm, for he was seething with a combination of thrill and fright and anticipationand a dozen other emotions that boiled over inside him. He walkedforward into the scrub, one hundred long strides, then another hundred. There he sat, his sword resting on his thighs, and he waited.He heard the Beast before he saw it, its breath a massive exhalation of air that spoke volumes about its size. It was as large as the longhouse itself, each of its six legs as thick around and as large as a tall tree. They were many-jointed, like an insect's, so that as large as the Beast was it held itself lowto the ground, its withers no higher than Waller's head. its tailwas reed-like and held straight up in anticipation of danger. Butit was the Beast's head that held Waller's fascination: the massive rows upon rows of teeth both square and sharp for eating all kinds of food, the dozen eyes that moved on stalks independently from one another, the triple-horn that jutted from its tapered forehead. He stood, mesmerized by the thing. It seemed not to notice him, and when he realized this he drew in a great lungful of air and bellowed the Challenge."I am here, Beast!" Waller shouted, and as he did so all of the Beast's eyes swung over to point at him. "Today you will die!"

It moved quickly, much faster than Waller had believed from the reports of the Watchers. It covered the distance between themin such little time that Waller thought he would simply be trampled by the Beast before he even swung his sword. But as it neared it also slowed, dropping its head to his height. It openedits great mouth and aimed at his groin.Waller stepped aside and whirled, striking at the Beast's foremost leg. The blade caught the lowest joint and rang like a bell. The vibration of the impact stunned Waller's hand and his arm and appeared to do no damage to the Beast. It was a mighty blow, one that would have severed a man and possibly a second standing behind him. The Beast's bite missed, but it swung its head backwards so far that Waller thought the thing's neck would snap right before he was butted off-balance. The Beast swiveled quickly and struck again, and Waller had to retreat. He stabbed forward against the head and felt the tip of his sword contact the heavy, armor plating. Again, there was no damage, but he had not expected a thrust with no forward momentum behind it to do any. Once more the Beast advanced. Once more Waller retreated.

When the Beast lowered its head a third time, Waller charged, bellowing loudly to addd strength to his swing. He moved forward, side-stepping the head and chopping down hard on the thing's right shoulder joint. He aimed for the crease between theplates that should be the weakest point, and as his sword struck true he was rewarded not with the loud ringing of blade on armor but a softer sound of something struck beneath.

The Beast did not scream as it was wounded, instead keeping enough presence to snap down at Waller's back leg. It struck him high up on the leg with just the tip of its bite. Blood poured out of the wound as Waller ducked under the Beast's limp foreleg.He gave the injury a quick look and saw that it was not as bad asit could have been. There was some meat missing, and there was a goodly amount of blood, but he could fight on.From the Beast's side he struck at its underbelly. It was a weak blow, being delivered underhanded, but the Beast apparently had little armor beneath for its ribs broke under the attack. He struck again, harder this time, again finding softer tissue only lightly armored.

The Beast stumbled a moment, but when Waller tried for a third blow it struck him with its leg. It was a rasping injury that tore him open from his hip to his neck, though only lightly.As the leg came down and dealt him the blow, he spun around it, bringing the sword around in a fast arc as he did so. The blade made perfect contact on the Beast's flank, but it was well-armored there and felt the blow not at all, Waller suspected. Before the Beast could reorient on him he dealt it another blow to its underbelly. Then, as it spun to face him, he stepped back.

His teachers had told him not to strike at the head. Many Warriors before had made the mistake and been taken, but none hadever crippled the Beast, either. It came at him, with head lowered and jaws agape, its right foreleg dangling. Waller moved to the side and hacked at the connection of jaw to skull. His sword bit deeply, and while the Beast still made no utterance of pain it exhaled, a vicious snort that puffed hot, wet air against Waller's bare skin.

His blade was wedged in the bone, and in the moment that it took him to free it he was bitten again, this time on the forearm. It was a good bite; the Beast had him held. It drew its head back, and he was pulled along, his shoulder wrenched from its socket so abruptly that it dislocated. The Beast opened its jawss to deliver a killing blow, and Waller swung one-handed at the scar he had just left. It was a telling blow, and the Beast recoiled from it, its senses rattled for it wobbled dramatically.

Waller pressed on, ignoring the pain of wounds that would reduce a smaller man to wailing tears. He gripped his sword and swung it once more at the Beast's head, striking it in the centerof its mass of eyes. He struck again and again, raining the blowsdown upon its skull in such quick succession it could not recoverin time to defend itself. And suddenly, before the Beast even hadtime to consider escape, it dropped its mass to the desert floor and was still.

Waller stepped back, looking at the fallen Beast. He remained ready in case the Beast's stillness was a ruse, but after a long time, time enough for Waller to control his breathing, it did not stir. Then he set about binding his wounds,tying off the one on his leg with his loincloth. When he leaned against the cooling body of the Beast to reinsert his shoulder he nearly fainted with the pain.

He saw movement by one of the buildings and saw another three spiders racing generally toward him, but as they approachedhe could see they were interested less in him than mending the broken fence. He watched until they climbed onto the fence, theirlegs and mouths working to return it to whole, sparks flying fromtheir progress. He knew they would be finished by the time he returned with the treasure, and he would have to cut through the fence again. But then he would be beyond the fence where they refused to follow and heading home with the spirit of the gods.

The building that housed the treasure was clearly marked with the black and yellow triangles that formed a circle, like a pie alternating the color of its slices. He entered the building through a shattered window and searched for the flight of stairs.He went down and down so far that he thought he would reach the center of the world, so far down that the air was wintry cold against his naked flesh.

The stairs eventually stopped, and Waller searched some moreuntil he found the vault, also marked with the black and gold triangles. The small sign was beside the door, the one with the symbols he had memorized from childhood. But the symbols were different than the ones he had learned. They weren't completely different, such as the symbol that was one circle standing on another circle though this one looked more like it could be drawn with one continuous line. There were, however, some differences that he guessed at, such as the triangle with the two feet. He had memorized an open box with two feet, and since there were no other symbols with feet he assumed it was that one. So, too, withthe circle, for the one on the sign was taller than it was wide and was more like an egg than it was a circle. But he pressed it twice, as he should, then some other symbols, and when the glow beside the sign turned from red to green and the door opened, he smiled.

The boxes were everywhere, each face painted with the black and yellow triangles. They were also locked, and Waller couldn't open them. He bashed at one with his sword until he was exhausted, and on the final blow, the one that snapped the blade of his sword neatly in half, the lock crumbled. He opened the boxand saw with his own eyes the spirit of the gods that would provide his village with protection forever. He reached into the box and lifted out the spirit, but he had to put it down quickly for it burned. He found a cart against the far wall of the room and a tool that would lift the spirit without having to touch it.

He spent the rest of the day fighting the cart up the stairsand out of the building where he found two Watchers waiting for him. They cheered him and clapped him on the back and brought himfood and water thhat he much needed. One wrapped his cloak around Waller for the sun was setting and the desert was cold at night. Then all three of them ignored the call of sleep and walked back to the village, arriving just after sunrise.

One of the Watchers should have run back and reported on theslaying of the Beast, but in their excitement they had forgotten.The villagers prepared a feast as they shouted for joy and triumph and congratulated Waller on his well-won victory. His hands were badly burned; though they had shown little sign of theinjury at first, they became progressively worse, his palms blistering so badly that they needed to be pierced to let the pusout. He vomited frequently, unable to keep down food or water, and the teachers assumed the Beast carried poison in its bite. NoWarrior had ever returned so this was a subject strictly for conjecture.

The day and the night went quickly with feasting and dancingand celebrating. Waller did not recover from the poison, instead getting worse. His friends and his family came to him, for they all acknowledged, including Waller, that the bite of the Beast would kill him soon. Mari came to him and held him, and it was with his head in her lap, her fingers stroking his damp forehead that he died. But in his final moments he knew that his death was worth it, for his village would prosper in the glow of the spirit from Chernobyl.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert J. Santa has been writing speculative fiction for thirty years, with numerous works published in print and online markets. He lives in Rhode Island, USA, with his beautiful wife and two, equally beautiful daughters.

THRONE ROOM

D. Krauss

The Old Man, he sit out in that chair no matter what. Cold, he don't care. Snow, rain, he sittin'. Ain't no one deserve it more.

I see him, you know, like when it's snowing, so I go out and I say, "Sirrah, can I gets you something?" He makes us all say that "Sirrah," says it's a good word, an old word, from those days when there was respect. And he'll say, "Tony, no, I am quite fine as I am," or "Tony, yes, yes, I would like a blanket. The cold is a bit piercing today, don't you think?" And I'm all happy to run and get him a Hefty, the ends all tied together with old wiring and shit from off those poles and makes it real long and the old man starts telling me things about it. "This material is called plastic. It's chemical, measured and transformed in such a way that it's malleable. Quite an excellent insulator," and he snuggles in it and to hear those words, well, it's like music.

He could just stay inside. We'd all come over, sit out the front of his hut and sing him songs, mostly ones he taught us, like "Proud Mary" and "Everybody's Talkin' at Me," those, and if we're good, he'll teach us another. But he says that it's important to be seen, so he'll pull himself out the Heftys and shamble on over and the little uns will just like call out and say "Old Man's walkin'! Old Man's walkin'!" and we all just stop what we doin' and we all just go and see and I ask if he needs somethin'. I think I'm his favorite.

Well, there's others, like Linda Lou, she acts real sweet on him and stays in the hut with him but it ain't like he acts like she a wife or somethin' and it's just different with her. With me, it's all like, "Tony, you're a good man," or "Tony, I think you're going to do fine," and then, you know, I get respect. Some a others, you know, they give me the ole snake eye and make out some jabs at me but, you know, it ain't like I'm trying to get somethin' or steal their lives or anything and they know that, they know it, and they just make some faces and well, that about it. I do things because I love Sirrah. I do.

We all do. Ain't no old people around here, especially ones as smart as Sirrah. They all got killed in the War. All killed each other. You find one, you've got a king. You got one knows all the shit Sirrah does, you got a god.

Look at us. We've got a farm. An actual one, with crops and shit and we've got food most part of the winter because Sirrah had some kinda farm when he was a little un. Only because of that. Like he told us, like when the weather turned warm, "We need to break the ground," and we all just went, "What? Break the ground? You can't break the ground!" and Milly and Freddy all laughed but he said, "Yes, you can," and, by dogs, with big sticks, the point all cut down and a bunch of us pulling on it, and you can break the ground. It real hard to do, but we do it. And he showed us what seeds on the wild corn was and how to let the cobs dry and we got corn for most of the winter.

Most of it.

"If we could get some cannings, we'd be fine," Sirrah said the last snow, after we burn the ones didn't make it and put all the ash in a pile for the big Spring Spread on the Ground, like what Sirrah said the 'Native Americans' did.

"Can ends? Wassat?" I asked him.

He held up a sacred glassknife, "This," he said. "If it's all in one round piece, it's called a 'jar.' We could preserve the corn meal inside it. Think you can find some whole ones, Tony?"

I try. I went up the city, all glowy and scary and wearin' the funny suit Sirrah made me wear and then made me throw it away and wash myself in the freezing' river over and over and over and no ones 'lowed to drink from it below the wash point for 'nother year and some my hair and teeth fall out but I'm all right 'cause Sirrah made me drink that nasty red stuff. "Eye Oh Dine," he say, "Drink another." And I almost throw up but he say don't Tony we almos' out.

"Did you find any jars?" Sirrah look all hopeful.

I hang my head and feelin' shamed 'cause I didn't. "It's like they all big piles a sacred glass, Sirrah," and I cry 'cause I don't wanna disappoint him.

He just pats my hand. "It's okay, Tony. You're a good man for trying."

"Found this," and I pull out the round thing, all black and smooth and writing on it and Sirrah can read. He does and he laughs, "Spanky and Our Gang Live. My, my, haven't heard this since the 60's. Where'd you find it?"

"Sittin' on a pile of rocks like in the middle of the city."

He shakes his head, still laughing. "Odd. Like a tornado setting a baby's crib gently down." I dunno his meanin' but never do and he reads some more of the round thing and then goes, "Ah! Another song to teach you!" And we all come up and he does, calls it 'Waltzin' Matilda' and tells us what a waltz is and talks Ann and Barney through some kinda dance. "Close enough," he chuckles and we all try it and he tells us of a magical island called Aws trail ya and we all, we all just hypnotized.

It's good to have an Old One. It's why he has a throne.

I'd found it. I'd been near the city, too near Old Man said and said don't go near again, Tony, less I say so and less you dress up and wash 'cause you'll get more scars, Tony. I don't mind, they's like badges, like Old Man said soldiers all got for killin' the world.

"Why'd they do that?" Caramel ask him, she a real baby and we all as proud a' her as Old Man and Old Man takes real good care a' her and is even teaching her to read which means she all special and holy and we all watch out for her 'cause the others will snatch her if they can and try and breed her and they even try to get Old Man but he show'd us fight'in ranks, he called it. So they don't get him. Everyone wants their own Old Man.

"Stupid reasons, really," he bouncin' Caramel on a knee on the throne I got him and she all giggly and her momma all worried-like and Old Man laughin' sayin', "Caramel gotta be tough, Caramel is the future," and even pitchin' her up in the sky and she just crazy laughin' and we all too but momma, oh momma, no, she don't like that and she all try to get Caramel back but no, she belong to everyone and Old Man says so.

"What reasons?" Caramel all laughin'.

"Someone didn't like what someone else said, or didn't like how someone else looked, or wanted what someone else had," and we all confused 'cause we all in the world the same now, all brown and scarred and toofless, and none can talk to each other like in Old Man's time with magic, over mountains and oceans (I ain't seen no ocean, they all glowy and dead and Old Man said stay away. I wish I could see an ocean) so must be all about what someone else got, now.

'Cause them others want Caramel and Old Man and corn so they come at us from the woods but Old Man say they ain't go no displin and we do so we drive 'em all back and maybe steal life oudda one or two which a shame but got to, got to and they all go on the pile so it's like they renewin' and Harold say that's what we all do, renew, in clean places where ain't no glowy sick, all who we are comin' back later as the corn and some others agree and they all like sing it but Old Man laughs and says, "Blasphemy like that would have gotten you burned at the stake in medieval times."

"What's mid evil?" I ask and Old Man confuse me 'cause he pat my hand and say, "What we're in now."

The throne still in good shape. When I dragged it up from out the back of the city and Old Man saw it he laughed and laughed and laughed and said, "Tony! You have really found something there! We used to call that 'patio furniture.' And it's still got the cushion!" And I offer it to him but he say no, no Tony that's yours you did all the work put it in front of your hut but we all made us a platform outta the stones we dug from breakin' the ground and put the throne there and we all bowed and said, "Sirrah, you sit there," and he seemed to think like maybe it was a good idea and he does all the time now.

'Cause an Old Man's important. They ain't that many, anymore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: D. Krauss is a former USAF officer currently residing in the Shenandoah Valley. He has 30 other stories published in various Ezines, such as OG's Speculative Fiction and The Battered Suitcase. He also has a couple of story collections on Amazon and a novel, Partholon, out with Rebel E Press.

THE UNDEAD LEGACY

OF THE KING

Jeffrey Veregge

John Lennon once said, "Before Elvis, there was nothing." As you read the following interview and take in the scope of what seemingly may have transpired nearly 40 years ago, you will see the irony of his words. What originally was meant to be a routine interview with one of the last surviving members of Elvis Presley's notorious Memphis Mafia: James Caraway–instead became an inside look at a never-before-told Elvis story that, if true, will truly cement his name in the history books as the most world-altering person in the last 100 years.

Day 1: Project Methuselah

I arrive at the Moncrieff Army Community Hospital, in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, around one o'clock. It is a typical muggy, sticky southern kind of day that makes you want to find the living relatives of whoever invented air conditioning just to tell them, "Thank you." I am set to interview James Caraway, a longtime Presley friend and employee, who knew Elvis since their first days stationed together in Friedberg, Germany, and was one of the last people with him the day he died.

Caraway had reached out to me a couple of weeks ago in hopes that I could help him share one last Elvis tale before he passes on. In the later stages of a losing battle with cirrhosis of the liver, he stated the need for people to know what he deemed as the most important part of Elvis Presley's history. Feeling like a last request, I felt morally obligated to record this story.

I arrive to a room smelling of various medications and sterile disinfectants. Besides the slight hum of the forced air from the ventilation above and the muffled conversations from the nurse station down the hall, the room is relatively quiet. Mr. Caraway is lying in bed and appears to be sleeping. His body looking haggard, bloated and well-used. His skin has a grey pallor and the look of fine-grit sandpaper. A nurse gently wakes him up. As he sits up and gazes over at me for the first time, and as a seasoned journalist, I can see right away it's more than just the alcohol that has been killing him. His jaundiced eyes have the haunted look of one looking for resolution, a sinner's remorse that begs forgiveness and an unknown peace.

PS: Good afternoon Mr. Caraway. Do you prefer Mr. Caraway, James, Jimmy?

Jimmy: Jimmy is fine.

PS: So where would you like to start?

Jimmy: Well, the best place to start, I guess is from the beginning. My full name is James Everett Caraway or Jimmy Caraway, a retired lieutenant corpsman from the U.S. Army, member of the Memphis Mafia and close friend of Elvis Aron Presley. An only child, I was born to Robert and Martha Caraway back in 1935 in Aiken, South Carolina.

PS: So why am I here today Jimmy?

Jimmy: Mr. Sullivan, I'm dying, I am not going to sugar coat it or deny the fact that I slowly killed myself over the years with my lifestyle choice. I asked you to come here to hear the Elvis story of all Elvis stories, a secret that I have kept to myself for nearly sixty years. A secret that more or less helped lead me to this bed here today, but before I die, I want to do the right thing, and share the story that the world needs to hear.

PS: No disrespect, but a secret about Elvis Presley did this to you?

Jimmy: No, Mr. Sullivan, years of taking prescription drugs and washing them down with Jack Daniels did this to me. You think I simply invited you here because of your good looks? Listen, if you are here just to insult and question me, you can leave. I am not going to waste my last few breaths on a disrespectful prick that won't take me seriously.

James' tone at first was friendly, but as soon as I questioned him and his secret burden, he became quite agitated and angry. I did not mean to insult the man, but knowing that he is dying and realizing that I am helping him out in his last days, I decided to humor him and let it pass. I figured that at the very least that there would be a couple tabloids interested in printing this story. Little did I realize at that moment that all I knew about Elvis Presley, The U.S. Army and our current state of affairs would never be viewed the same ever again.

PS: Okay Jimmy. I am sorry, you're right, I am here to hear secrets. Elvis Presley was one of the biggest icons of American pop culture, he helped shape rock and roll, and built a lasting legacy that has prospered many decades after his death. I was only three when he died, and yet here we are talking about him nearly 40 years later. So, I apologize as I am just here hoping to add a bit of myself to Presley lore.

The look on James' face lightened; I gave him a moment of quiet victory before he got back to his story.

Jimmy: I met Elvis Presley on October 1, 1958, at the U.S. Army base: Ray Barracks, in Friedberg, Germany. I was stationed there a full year before he arrived, fully aware that he was to be placed there after his draft enlistment and boot camp training were completed.

PS: That seems a little odd, did everyone know back then where people were going to be stationed at that soon?

Jimmy: No, not at all, but this was no ordinary case, and I wasn't part of an ordinary outfit. I was an X3 corpsman in a highly classified operation. Our division was designated in the field as Alpha Research. My rank was that of a lieutenant and, being an officer, I was allowed insight into details that would otherwise be off limits to a normal soldier. We worked on many projects that were based on scientific experiments carried out by the Nazis back in World War II. As a matter of fact, one of the men I assisted directly was Doctor Otto Häussermann. You see, the good doctor was secretly pardoned for his war crimes and was considered part of the spoils of victory. * At the time, he specialized in what was thought to be a fairly new area of science and medicine known as Biogenetics. Back in his Nazi days, the old Kraut was part of a team that was working on developing Hitler's dream of the perfect German specimen. A super soldier, if you will. When we got our mitts on him, we decided to see if we could complete what they had started.

*Although I was mildly interested in his story about working with a former Nazi scientist on a super soldier serum, none of this was hardly anything unheard of. Back in 1945, the U.S. had brought over approximately 1,600 German scientists and technicians as part of a program called Operation Paperclip. It was a program littered with former Nazi war criminals that would be pardoned for their misdeeds – all for the greater good of the nation and its fight against Communism.

PS: That's all very interesting Jimmy, but the use of German scientists after the war is hardly anything new. So besides being a good distraction, what does any of this have to do with Elvis?

Jimmy: I was trying to get to that part, before you interrupted me...Like I said, Elvis was no ordinary case. I'm not talkin' about him being one of the biggest stars of that era, no sir, he was going to be crucial for the next phase of a very important project that I was a part of. This Project was designated: Methuselah.

Methuselah was the army's quest for the super soldier. I guess after years of War Game scenarios and figuring an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union would be a disaster on both fronts, somebody thought to start looking into every kind of advancement that would give our boy's an edge on the battlefield.

Technology would not be enough, as you would have to retrain each soldier as they were enrolled. But what if you had soldiers that were veterans in combat; years of knowledge with all the equipment yet maintain the strength and stamina of a man in his early 20s?

The goal of Project Methuselah was to slow down the aging process. Knowing we could not stop it all together, we tried to retard the genes or trick them into believing that they were aging in months, not years. Making a 40-year-old man feel and look like he was 21 years old. Having all the benefits of youth, yet wisdom, intelligence and experience of a seasoned veteran.

The Germans got greedy; really, I mean who could blame them? They had most of the world beating on their doorstep and needed results quickly. What they got in return was a lot of disfigured patients, and not one superman to show for it. The research was sound, the hypothesis was solid. They simply did not have the time to invest in developing their serum due to the desperate measures taken to speed up the process, as they were getting their asses handed to them.

When we got our hands on the initial data right after the war, it was deemed not cost-effective, and the return on investment looked slim. It was all about the atom and rockets. We needed bigger bombs and missiles capable of carrying these destructive payloads to the front door of the Kremlin. But we all knew the arms race would keep building up, each side would be adding more atomic weapons, and it became clear to many that we were never going to win the war on Communism this way.

Then, just after Thanksgiving weekend in 1955 – which was not long after the Soviets tested their first Hydrogen bomb – my commander Major Charles Neville approached certain unnamed officials from the Department of Defense, telling them of his vision for a stronger, smarter army. Major Neville, like myself, was an educated man; he was a biologist from Harvard whom the Army approached right before the Korean War in '49, as they saw potential in some of his work. Basically, the man was a bookworm with no active field duty under his belt. It was his job to research and prepare solutions for environmental problems that can arise when soldiers are deployed in unknown combat regions. Things like fallout radiation.

By chance, he came across the Nazi super soldier files one day. Reading them he was not only fascinated by what he read, but energized at the potential of what this meant: A super soldier. He was able to see the holes in the German's research and concluded he could make it all work with the right funding, equipment and staff.

Surprisingly, a few people thought he was right and gave him the funds and a team headed by the doctor who performed the initial set of Nazi experiments. I was assigned to him shortly thereafter.

Jimmy, looking tired, asked if he could have a minute, and if I wouldn't mind going and getting him a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I tried to remind him that we were in a hospital and public smoking was no longer allowed, but it had little effect and I was persuaded otherwise.

I gave him about an hour to rest and time for me to think about his story. Nazi doctors and super soldiers, wondering where in the hell does Elvis fit in to all this? As I was picking up his coffee and an electronic cigarette (as I did not want to get thrown out of the hospital), I thought that regardless of the validity of his story, my sense of curiosity and love for a good yarn wanted to see where this was all going.

I returned to the room and indulged the sick old man. Handed him a couple of legal stimulants and sat back for the rest of his tale.

PS: So Jimmy, you had just been assigned to the Alpha Research Division. What year was that?

Jimmy: It was late October 1956. I had just got out of basic training. I was sent immediately to Ray Barracks, Germany and reported directly to Major Neville. He and Doc had been picking up where the Nazis left off, but with much more speed and progress. By the time I had arrived, the experiments were up and testing had already begun with chimpanzees. But before I go into the details on what I saw and where Elvis fits in, I feel I must give you some kind of warning. As you can see from my current physical state, my own conscience could not bear the guilt and responsibility of what I had taken part in. Please don't think I am being overly dramatic, but the crap I am about to share with you...there can be no going back to the same old, same old.

I thanked him for his concern, but I reminded him that in the current state of the world, nothing can really surprise me anymore. Clearly what he wanted me to hear was very personal and had weighed heavily upon his soul, as his eyes glassed over and a single tear trickled down his wrinkled face.

Jimmy: When I arrived in Germany, Methuselah was in full swing. Experiments were up and running, and each day brought what we all thought were solid prospects of slowing down the body's aging system. Dr. Häussermann and Major Neville had successfully developed a gene therapy that was derived from tortoise cells. They were able to isolate the chemical the average tortoise brain produced that allowed these creatures to live longer than 200 years. The initial testing was done on a group of chimpanzees. We had eight chimps all together. All were screened and of various ages, we injected series of doses of the serum over the matter of a few weeks. Then we sat back and watched. The first month, we noticed nothing unusual; they acted the same, slept the same, and ate the same, no changes whatsoever. The same for the second month, although we did notice that they seemed a little more agitated than they were the month before. We all came to the same conclusion, due to the confined space and limited stimuli, they were acting out. It wasn't until the third month we saw something.

PS: What did you see?

Jimmy: One morning, I went to do my routine checks on them, when one the apes appeared to be eating something. The smell was something awful in there. I am afraid to say their living conditions were not up to zoo standards. It could get quite foul in their living areas, as there was shit everywhere. But nothing seemed too unusual, as it had been a slow few months. Yet as I got closer, I noticed that the son of a bitch was eating one of the other apes. He had split the poor fella's head wide open and was eating his brains. The other apes weren't even phased – they were just watching with a quiet curiosity. He had taken part of the skull and was using it as a tool and scooping out chunks of grey matter.

As soon as I saw this, I got sick. I had never seen anything like it. My retching snapped the chimp out of his food daze and he looked over at me. He didn't make a move right away, just stared at me, trying to figure out what I was going to do. All I had with me was a pen and a clipboard, nothing that could be used to subdue an adult chimpanzee. Then in one quick motion, he ripped an arm off of the dead ape, lifted it high above his head and let the blood shower into his open mouth.

After getting his drink, he started toward me still clutching the severed arm. I froze, not wanting to make any motion that would be viewed as aggressive as he got face to face with me. I could feel the heat from his mouth and smelled the iron from the fluid all over his muzzle. Then, he very slowly took his finger and dipped it into the recess of the arm, and then took his bloodied digit and drew a single line down my face. After which, he walked back over to the body of the dead chimp and continued to eat on the mutilated carcass.

PS: What happened next? Did you end up putting the chimp down?

Jimmy: We couldn't put him down, he was important to the program. We were all upset and disgusted by what had happened, but we needed the bastard to see how the experiment was doing. After the episode, we started isolating each chimp in a separate cell. But not before we did a thorough examination of the cannibal chimp to make sure he had not been contagious and infected any other apes. It was here, where we had our first major victory for Methuselah.

We completed the exam on the cannibal chimp, which we had started calling Donner. His blood work showed nothing out of the ordinary as far as a rabies-like virus, and that made us all a little less anxious. Although what we did find was truly amazing. What his tests did indicate was early stages of what appeared to be abnormal cells stunting the death rate of Donner's older cells. An unexpected result – the gene therapy was behaving more like a parasite that was a keeping its host cells alive as long as possible to extract every ounce of nutrients without killing them and maximizing their potential intake by expanding the cell's life span. This action was forcing a mutation in the stem cells of the chimp, and in doing so, appeared to be slowing down the aging process. At the rate Major Neville and Dr. Häussermann projected from this most recent blood work, Donner may have just doubled his life span.

PS: What about his attack on the other ape?

Jimmy: That was a little trickier to figure out. I suppose that we were all so transfixed on the mutated stem cells, that we hoped that the incident was all a misunderstanding, so to speak. An outburst that would have been a result of the species' nature. Chimpanzees in captivity had been known for brutal attacks on humans as well as other apes. Dr. Häussermann suggested that his behavior was a demonstration to the other chimps, letting them know he was the alpha male. The marking my face with the dead ape's blood, was his way of showing both the apes and myself, I was his subject. None of us stopped to think that the cell changes might have affected other parts of the brain as well.

Major Neville was so damn eager to get moving forward on human testing, he bought that bullshit: hook, line and sinker. He had Häussermann type up the diagnosis for his report, and went back to DC with the latest test results proving that his work was a success. The bastard was so intent on making the history books, he started taking shortcuts, and making moves that would eventually lead to the SOB's own demise.

PS: What year was that?

Jimmy: When Neville died?

PS: No, the year in which Major Neville submitted his request for a human candidate?

Jimmy: Spring of '57. He got the green light a couple months later for the opportunity to take Methuselah to the next level. He was only given two stipulations, the first being: the human subject must be a volunteer; no soldier was to be experimented upon that was not asked. The second: one soldier at a time. In case anything went wrong, we would not be affecting the lives of multiple men at once. This way, we could learn from each mistake and apply it to the next candidate.

PS: You mentioned shortcuts were taken, what did you mean by that?

Jimmy: Normal testing like this would run years on chimps and animals in any other lab. Proper scientists would monitor the injected animals for longer than just a few months before making the move to human subjects. The Major was able to persuade his superiors by telling them that the original testing and research done by the Germans should be considered as part of this work. And that really, instead of a project that had its initial testing for only three months, it was more like three years.

Besides being a gifted scientist, Major Neville would have made a hell of a politician. He called in favors, exchanged promises and knew all the right players to talk with and all the right things to say in order to get what he wanted. He was a real smooth talker and for what many would consider an egghead, he had a cool charm about him that made him easy to like.

Some people wanted to beat the Russians so badly they did not realize that we were making the same mistakes as the Nazis in rushing what should have been a decade-long development. But then again, I was right there pushing just as hard. We all wanted to be part of history.

PS: So how long did it take to get your first volunteer?

Jimmy: One week, and how it happened is just as crazy as the project itself. You see, the whole time all of this was going on; teenage hearts across America were breaking. Elvis had been drafted. We didn't just get a candidate, we got THE candidate. We asked for a man, we got a king.

In 1956, Elvis had just turned twenty-one and just like most men in this country at the time, he was eligible for the draft. Shit, the poor guy was on top of the world, had everything he could ever want, and what the fuck happens? He gets picked to serve his country. The messed up part is he didn't have to if he hadn't had such a greedy-ass manager. Colonel Tom Parker was a lot of things to the world. But to those of us who worked really close with him, we would swear that his momma had been humpin' Satan himself, as he had inherited all the traits of a bona fide devil.

See, Elvis told me later on that the Colonel had been telling him all along that he needn't worry – that he wasn't going to have to serve even one day in the military. E believed that Parker could do anything. That he was smart enough and connected enough to get stuff done. That is why he was his manager. He was right to think that. The problem was that Parker could do almost anything, except that it had to benefit him first and foremost.

All of '56, Elvis thought that Parker was visiting with Pentagon brass to get him out of serving, when all along, he was taking in offers from the various branches. At first, he tried getting Elvis into special services, but that meant Uncle Sam would be making money off of his boy and he wasn't about to let that happen. When word got around up in DC that Elvis had been drafted, every branch wanted to be able to say Elvis Presley was one of them. One offer from the Navy was to put him up in Vegas and have his own show to entertain the troops. I'm guessing Parker liked the idea, but scoffed at the deal because we all know Elvis would eventually end up in Vegas performing regularly.

When it came down to it, Tom Parker wanted to line his pockets and protect his investment. What worried him the most was that Elvis would be out of the limelight for nearly three years and aging to a point where his younger audience could lose interest. Having made this known to the right people, it was here that Major Neville had approached Colonel Parker on what would be an agreement that both men found truly benefiting.

PS: Hold on, you're telling me that Elvis Presley was your candidate?

Jimmy: Yes, but not by his own choice. He had empowered Parker as his manager. Elvis was a hell of a nice guy, but he was too damn trusting and a bit naïve. The Major had managed to make a dinner date with the Colonel to propose a way that would address his concerns – and enlarge his bank account – in exchange for a patient who would be able to keep his mouth shut and never be wiser to what was going on with his body.

PS: Okay, why would Colonel Parker agree to let his client, one of the most famous people in the world, take part in a high-risk government experiment?

Jimmy: He didn't at first. He scoffed the whole damn thing. He thought the Pentagon was playing him for a fool and questioning his intelligence by fabricating some science-fiction hooey and seeing if he was the rube most people took him for.

He wasn't stupid, he knew he was fighting a system, and as a man who was used to finding a way for the system to work in his favor. He simply accepted that most people thought of him as a little more than a barker at the circus. What people took for weakness was actually the genius part of his business style. He always seemed to have the upper hand; he just let his opponent think otherwise.

What made this business deal different was that he thought the military was trying to make him look like a fool and embarrass him, on the account of his going AWOL after he enlisted a second time and was stationed in Florida back in '32. He knew they had all his service records, his official discharge due to poor mental health. Parker was sure they were trying to make him look crazy and discredit him.

PS: But he was wrong, I mean, if what you have said so far is true, he ended up believing someone.

Jimmy: That was Neville. Like I said, that man had the gift of gab. He took in all Parker's complaints, fears and anxiety about losing Elvis and not only got him to agree to the experiment, but damn if he had the man believing it was his own idea all along.

It was at this point in the conversation when I spied a little bit of a smile out of James. Coughing and chuckling a bit, he reached over and took a sip of water. Taking a small moment, then getting back to the story.

Jimmy: It took a couple of swanky dinners and a whole lot of talking, but what the Major did was convince Colonel Parker that Elvis was really the only candidate that made sense. He explained that with the photographic history of the man, visually tracking his age would be easier. He played on the man's fears by reminding him that the entertainment industry is fickle – as stars grow older, their lights grow dimmer. That after a few years in the service, young people would forget about Elvis, and they would find a new face to identify with. After the dinners, the talks, explanations of the process in lay terms, all with the intent of persuading the Colonel, Neville pulled the move that I feel sealed the deal.

He told Parker that he had to call it an early night, as he had a flight first thing in the morning to meet with another candidate on the West Coast. Thanked him for his time, and then asked if he had any good recommendations for restaurants in Hollywood? The Major shook the man's meaty paw and asked me to get the car. As we were leaving, I could see the look on Parker's face. It was like he was getting the best hand job of his life, only to have it end before he could finish. Major Neville, however, was all smiles.

As we were driving away, the Major simply said, "Done deal." I remember asking him how he knew. He went on to explain his reasoning, but to make a long story short, it was because he knew that Colonel Parker was above all else an opportunist. That a man with a little more than circus promoting experience does not get to the position he now has simply because he was lucky. He get's there by taking chances and looking for the diamonds in the rough, that and you wave a $750,000 signing fee and a 2 million dollar insurance clause deposited into a secret bank account...he's probably already picked the pen he'll sign with.

By the time we arrived back at the hotel, we had a message waiting for us at the lobby. It was from the Colonel, the note simply said, "Windy Van Hooten's."

PS: Who was Windy Van Hooten?

Jimmy: That's what I asked the Major. He simply smiled and said it was an old circus term, which basically means everyone gets what they hoped and wished for. Parker was in, Elvis was ours. History was waiting for us.

We stopped there for the day. Jimmy looked tired and where he was at in his story, it felt like a natural place to pause. As I left the hospital, a lot of things were going through my mind. Here I was getting a story that if written five years earlier, would have been front news everywhere. Elvis Presley, Nazis, genetic testing, government payouts, it had it all. Sadly, today's world is not that place.

At the present, we are living in a world that has been overrun with a biological hurricane that has those infected with this strange disease eating and destroying everything in their paths. I knew just going to a hospital was raising the stakes for me to contract the affliction. But I also knew that I needed the work and being a military installation, I was left with a little more comfort that they wouldn't take any chances.

With those thoughts swirling through my mind, I went straight to my hotel room, locked the door and tried to get some sleep in a room that felt like a sticky locker room.

Day 2: A bump in the night

I arrive at the Moncrieff Army Community Hospital around 10. The lobby of the hospital is all a flutter. It appears that early in the morning, another city had been overrun with the plague everyone is calling The Winchester Virus. This time it was Atlanta.

Twenty-two cities in 19 weeks had succumbed to destruction at the hands of the infected people and the military that was tasked with trying to contain them. If a city appeared to be beyond saving, the United Nations along with the World Health Organization had determined to level it. To avoid nuclear fallout, they started using Thermobaric Bombs, conventional weapons developed by the Russians whose payloads are nearly as effective as atomic weapons without the residual radiation.

Seeing the twenty-second city, the largest one since Philadelphia, taken out created a new stirring of fear and panic. Atlanta being only a little more than 200 miles away, is close enough to get myself a little concerned and I have decided to get the rest of this story and get home as soon as possible.

Walking into the room, Jimmy is up watching TV. He too looks to be consumed by the latest news.

Jimmy: Terrible...Fucking terrible. If we had known then what we know now...Fuck.

PS: You okay Jimmy?

Jimmy: I'm still dying...inside and out. No, I am not fucking all right.

I gave him a few minutes before I asked him to continue. He decided he wanted to discuss Atlanta.

Jimmy: How many cities now? Twenty-one...twenty-two...what's the global count?

PS: The last I heard, officially 74, but that's not counting villages and small towns that aren't on the maps. It seems to be everywhere and no one seems to know what to do.

Jimmy: Fucking tragic.

It was here that Jimmy looking at the muted images on the television, somberly recited the Bible, a passage from the Book of Revelation. His words at that the moment, were more haunting than any report I had heard since the outbreaks had begun.

Jimmy: And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

The tone in the room became dark and bleak. Part of me wanted to give the guy a few more minutes to decompress, but I also knew that I wanted to get this story and get going, as the Hurricane Winchester could hit at anytime.

PS: So yesterday you had finished with Colonel Parker and Major Neville agreeing on Elvis being the first official candidate. My question starting off: when did Elvis start receiving the injections?

Jimmy: Elvis reported to duty on October 1, 1958. I met him as part of the welcoming committee along with Captain John Mawn, who helped supervise Elvis at any official army meetings. When he first arrived he was really out of it. Charlie Hodge, who later became a member of the Memphis Mafia, had bunked with Elvis on his journey across the Atlantic and did his best to keep him in good spirits. I personally don't think anything would have cheered him up, as his mother had just passed away less than a month before he arrived. The kid was still very much grieving.

I thought that we should give him a few days to get acquainted with his new home. I felt it would be best to get Elvis settled in and semi-comfortable before starting.* The Colonel and Major both thought differently. They both agreed we should take advantage of the situation, and to bring him in right away.

*Due to Elvis Presley's unique celebrity and conditions arranged by his manager Colonel Tom Parker, the army had him live in separate quarters just off the base with his father Vernon and his grandmother Minnie May in the town of Bad Nauheim.

PS: What was your first real encounter, impression with Elvis like?

Jimmy: When I first met E, I had gone to his house off-base to pick him up for what we had told him was the first series of inoculations to reduce any chance of him picking up any remnant German illnesses left over from the war.

I went by myself as we felt it might be good for me to bond with the guy. I was a bit nervous since the first time I had met him I was part of a delegation of sorts and felt no real pressure -- as I knew there would be little chance for me to have to make conversation with the man. But the night before this meeting I was like a child on Christmas Eve, I was going to sit and spend time alone with one of the biggest stars in the United States, with the slight chance to become friends.

PS: Friends, even though you knew he was an unwilling participate in your experiment?

Jimmy: Hell yes friends. You have to remember, up to that point I had no reason to believe he was in any mortal danger. In fact I felt like I was helping him. `

PS: I guess that makes sense...

I got one of those looks from Jimmy like I had received the day before. He was slightly annoyed by my question as well as my response and with the stiff stare I got from him, I knew not to press my luck.

PS: So what was he like?

Jimmy: The man was a genuine gentleman. When I arrived at his house, it was Vernon who met me at the door. He was welcoming but not too warm. Elvis on the other hand had just been finishing his breakfast and was in the kitchen with his grandmother Minnie Mae, both were great examples of southern hospitality. Elvis got up and introduced himself and his family, and then he did his best to get me to sit down and have some biscuits and gravy with them. Here the guy was a huge star, and he made me feel like I was the special one. Even though I had eaten some chow at the mess hall, I felt like I could not say no. I tell you what, I am glad I didn't too. Being in Germany so long, I had forgotten how much I had missed a home-cooked meal.

After we finished our breakfast, we made our way back to the base. Elvis was a little quiet at first, as I think the idea of being in the army had finally settled in. I wasn't put off or worried that I may have offended him. I realized that he was taking it all in and doing his best to process it all. I just left him be.

PS: Could you tell me more about your relationship during the early phases of Project Methuselah?

Jimmy: Well, we became sort of friends right away. We had started talking more and I let him know I was from Aiken and was a southern boy raised in similar circumstances. We both loved Gospel music and a good cheeseburger. He made it very easy to like him. The man had seemingly everything and always felt like he wanted to share it. It was at this time though that Charlie Hodge had started questioning my motives.

PS: What do you mean?

Jimmy: I was with Elvis quite a bit; but I was not part of their division, nor was I a field officer. I couldn't tell if he thought I was attracted to Elvis's fame or if he was suspicious of Elvis always having to visit the infirmary. I honestly don't think the man ever trusted me – even later on in our mafia days.

Charlie asked me a number of times why Elvis had to go with me for the inoculations, when none of the other troops seemed to need it. At first, I thought he may have thought that Elvis was getting out of duty by sitting in some warm, cozy doctor's office. But the reality was the man genuinely cared about him and wanted to make sure no one was taking advantage of him, especially since he was still grieving over his mother.

PS: What did Elvis make of all the trips, shots and blood work?

Jimmy: Actually, he was pretty cool about it all. I think that the fear of contracting any kind of illness outweighed the inconvenience of any shots and testing. He knew he was valuable property, and was fairly sure that the U.S. Army did not want to be the ones who let America's biggest star get sick, or worse. The only thing he would complain to me about was that I wasn't as pretty as most nurses.

PS: Did He ever meet Major Neville and Dr. Häussermann?

Jimmy: He did and became familiar with them both. They were a part of the process from his first visit. I may have been his contact point and monitor, but they still were very close at every step. They were friendly to the man, but made sure that they set me up as his confidant through all this, so they could remain pretty clinical and subjective.

It was Dr. Häussermann who sat him down and fabricated the stories of secret Nazi germ testing that went unaccounted for after the Allies had invaded Berlin. He spun such fantastic yarns about local farm animals mutating, babies born without limbs, and people dying mysteriously overnight that Elvis could not wait to get the shots. It was Major Neville who confirmed Elvis's thoughts that the army was doing everything they could to protect its most valuable soldier.

PS: What were the Major's and Häussermann opinions of the man?

Jimmy: I think they liked him. He was so damn charismatic. He had a contagious way of drawing you in. I believe they, like myself, thought we were doing something great for a pretty nice guy who deserved it.

They tried to keep it straight, not be affected by his celebrity, but it was pretty hard at times. Especially early on, they did things normal doctors would never do.

PS: Like what?

Jimmy: Drugs. E had been complaining that he had a hard time sleeping, so they started giving him pills that would help him sleep. He then comes back and says he's now having a hard time staying awake, so they started issuing him pills for that, too. Never once asking what the real problem was, or stopping to think that any of the gene therapy was having an affect on his system. They just wanted to keep him happy. We all did.

PS: So what about the experiment? Were you seeing any results?

Jimmy: At first, no. Much like with the chimps, there was no activity that would indicate any change in Elvis' cellular decay. For months, it was business as usual. Each week, I would pick him up, draw blood and Dr. Häussermann would administer the new dose of what he and Major Neville were now simply calling: Endal, as in the end of aging man.

Months turned into a year. It was during this year, Elvis and I became close friends. I was a regular at his place when off duty, and even went looking for girls in town with him, Charlie and a couple other GIs. I really liked the guy and felt like we could have been friends, regardless of the fact that we were forced together as a result of Methuselah.

What this friendship did was create a bit of a conflict for me, as I did some things that I am not proud of. Remember me telling you about the pills? Well, being a corpsman, I had access to an entire pharmacy. And when Elvis started making requests for more medicine, I did all I could to accommodate.

PS: Did anyone else from the project know about this?

Jimmy: No. Elvis was my friend, I felt like part of me owed it to him to save him any embarrassment of what this kind of information could do. How was I suppose to know that I would be getting myself involved with a what looked like serious addiction as his lifelong enabler?

Can I have a minute?

I gave Jimmy the minute he asked for and left the room to grab a soda. I knew none of this was easy for him, reliving his part in a shady past that most Americans know led to Elvis Presley's early demise. I tried to put myself in his shoes and ask "what would I have done in the same situation with someone as charismatic as Elvis?"

I came back five minutes later; James was ready to begin again.

PS: Jimmy it felt like where you left off that you were about to say something significant. Can you continue where you left off?

Jimmy: It had been a year, Elvis was still getting poked and prodded. He was okay with all of it as he thought he was being kept safe, and I was keeping him supplied with plenty of pills. Around Thanksgiving in '59, we saw our first indication that Endal was working.

The boys in Elvis's unit decided to play a football game against the MPs and the gents from the Motor Pool. During the game, Elvis got hit pretty hard and when he went down, he banged his head on a tree root. Since he was prized army property, he had to go get checked out. It was as a result of this exam that we saw that his body was changing.

PS: Changing? What kind of changes?

Jimmy: Corpsman Romero was on duty that weekend. During the exam, Romero noticed what he thought were odd readings from Elvis. After he released E to go home, the corpsman had decided to make the call to me, as he knew I had been assigned to him, but did not know the details of what my role was entirely.

First thing Romero had noticed was the unusually high oxygen readings in E's blood, and that his white count was also high, but did not appear to be behaving as though he was ill. But the strangest part that was described to me was the elasticity and the color of his skin. The swelling on his head that he had sustained, as a result of the game, was extremely mobile under the skin. When Romero went to touch the wound, the pressure from his fingers had forced the goose egg to move. Corpsman Romero said the movement was like pushing an air pocket underneath plastic. It had really freaked him out.

As soon as I heard this, I raced down to the infirmary to verify Romero's results in person. The first thing I did, though, was play it off and erase any cause for suspicion. I let him know that I was the part of the army's insurance policy to Elvis's manager Tom Parker – that he would be well taken care of. That the weird blood work was a result of a new powdered Haitian vitamin regime that Major Neville had been administering to Presley to help combat depression. To make it feel normal, I stuck around for a while, smoked a couple of cigarettes with the guy, and talked about the need for more of the local girls to volunteer as nurses at the base. I then asked for the file and left. I conducted myself very calmly and causally as if nothing was out of the ordinary. As a result, Romero was never again suspicious about any of the readings.

PS: How did Major Neville and Dr. Häussermann respond?

Jimmy: I didn't go to the Doc or Major just yet. I needed to make sure what Corpsman Romero had seen was real, so I went to Elvis's house to see for myself if what he had documented was true.

When I arrived at his home, Minnie Mae came to greet me. She had a grandmother's look of concern when she hugged me at the door. She thanked me for dropping by, as both she and Vernon were quite worried about Elvis because he had been behaving so strangely since he'd gotten home. They felt it was a result of him hitting his head from the football game.

Minnie said that when Elvis came home from the infirmary, he had asked her for a raw steak. She had thought it was going to be used for the swelling on his head. But when she went into his bedroom to check on him, she got was what she called a God-fearing fright.

What she described was not the typical behavior for Elvis, or any normal human being. When she went into the room, the lights were out, but she heard an uneasy shuffling sound that filled the room. Thinking there may have been a critter in the room, she turned on the lights. To her surprise, the noise was coming from her grandson. Elvis was facing the corner of the room and was bobbing his head up and down. He wouldn't respond to her efforts to get him to turn around, he just stood there. He stopped moving, but wouldn't turn. She rushed over to get him to turn and look at her, and noticed how pale his skin had gotten. But what really scared her was that the steak she thought he wanted for his head had been eaten off of and looked like the blood had been sucked dry out of it. She said Elvis was in a daze; his eyes were as large as saucers and had an empty look about them. Minnie Mae started hollering for Vernon, which must have set off Elvis, as he swiftly grabbed her by the arm – staring blankly at her, all while not letting her go.

She started to cry as she told me this. Never had Elvis laid a hand on her or done anything that would cause her any harm. Apparently shortly after this happened, Vernon came to the room and got her free from his grip and remained with his son until he was able to get him back into bed. He was still in there with E when I arrived.

PS: What did you see?

Jimmy: Elvis was sleeping when I went into the room. Vernon was sitting in a chair by the window just staring out. Without looking at me he simply said, "He licked that son of bitch dry." I responded, "Excuse me?" "That steak, he damn near licked a hole into it."

The meat in question was on a plate on E's dresser. It indeed looked like it had been licked upon and had a faded discolored look to it as a result of the blood being drained from it.

After seeing and hearing all that had gone on, I had decided to stay the night and slept on their living room couch. I awoke to the smell of fried bacon and eggs, and the sound of an elderly woman gently humming a hymn. Elvis had slept through the night with no more strange behavior or further symptoms of anything seriously wrong. In fact, he was awake before I was.

PS: Was there anything different about him?

Jimmy: Not at first. He was his usual polite self. He kidded me a little for my bed head and drooling on his couch while I slept. But nothing that was out of the ordinary.

It wasn't till he went into the kitchen and grabbed himself a piece of bacon, that I noticed the first indication that he had had a bad night.

When he bit into the strip of bacon, he hollered and spit it out. Said his tongue felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper. I went over to take a look, and as I got him under direct light, I could see the lacerations from the previous night's licking on the steak. He had managed to rub off the external layer on his tongue and now it appeared to be blistering. The whole time I was looking him over, he kept saying, "What the hell is going on Jimmy?"

I also noticed that the goose egg on his head from the night before was still acting mysteriously. When Elvis moved his head in a certain direction, the bump would appear, and then it would slide and hide when he moved his head back. His coloring, too, was a little off. He was not as pasty as the night before, but he was still a little pale. I guess I hadn't noticed some of these right away, as I was still groggy from a poor night's rest on a stiff sofa.

PS: What was your first response?

Jimmy: To try and not look too alarmed. I knew Minnie Mae and Vernon were still upset from the night before, and I did not want to give them more to worry about. I decided to keep my observations to myself, thinking I did not want them asking any questions that I could not answer. But between you and me...I was pretty scared.

Again, like with Corpsman Romero, I had to play it cool. I teased Elvis about eating a raw steak and how, if he took any more blows to the head, he would really end up acting like a Hound Dog instead of just singing about them. I ate breakfast with them, explained how trauma to the head is a serious matter and can cause all kinds of strange behavior. I wanted to give them a reason to feel better and was hoping that I could talk myself into believing that that was all it really was. The whole time Minnie was God blessing me, and saying what a good southern gentleman I was for spending the night with them.

I must have done a pretty good job of convincing them that E was all right. When I left, they were all looking more relaxed and back to their normal selves. I told Elvis I would notify his commanding officer that he would be out for a few days until his tongue healed and be back later to check on him. After that I stuck around for a few more minutes and then left.

PS: I am guessing that you went to Neville after you left the Presley house. What did he think of all that had transpired?

Jimmy: It was still fairly early, but I went straight to his house. When I got there, I raced into his house like a runaway freight train. It was the Major's house servant that met me inside and asked me if I wanted to wait for the Major in the study. I had been waiting for a few minutes when he walked in to see what had happened. He brought me a cup of coffee and asked me what was wrong. Starting from the beginning with the football game, I recreated the last 24 hours. When I finished the tale, I expected shock or some look of real concern. Instead, what I got was a puff of his smoke and a simple nodding of his head.

Here I was almost in a panic. Elvis was not only my friend and the biggest star in the world, but also the prize of our top-secret project that we had all been dedicated to for the past year and a half. I had just shared with the Major an incredible story that could jeopardize all of that, and how does he respond? Like I had just read him an interesting letter from Dear Abby. Lounging around in his pajamas and bathrobe, he walked over to his bureau drawer, offered me a cigarette and asked me to sit down. It was only then that he looked me in the eyes and said, "We have to talk."

Jimmy really lost it at this point in his story. He started to weep. I tried comforting him the best I could, but even when I offered a gesture of kindness, it was met with more of his belligerent behavior. He did not want my pity, but he did not feel the need to contain his grief either. I decided that this was probably a good place to stop for the day. It was getting late and I still had not eaten anything and Jimmy clearly needed some time alone.

As I was leaving and walking past one of the nurse's stations, all eyes were transfixed on the television screen – one more city had fallen. Tallahassee was now the twenty-third victim of this global serial killer. Where were the answers? When were the best and the brightest going to stand up and stop this pandemic? Then a realization hit me. I am not the most religious man, and I don't even know if I believe in God, but at that moment the only thing I felt like I could do was pray. Dinner was no longer an option that night. I had just lost my appetite.

Day 3: Misguided redemption

Getting up has never been harder.

The world is spinning out of control. People are dying at the hands of other people and the only way we seem to know how to stop it is to kill even more of them. Watching two more cities reduced to ash and dust in 24 hours are hard realizations to swallow. Candlelight vigils and colored ribbons are all becoming hopeless symbols of failure – reminders of an ongoing defeat in a war that seems to bringing on the end. I said a prayer last night as I lay in bed, hoping for some of the same kind of miracles from the same God who parted the Red Sea for Charlton Heston when he was being pursued by Yul Brynner in The 10 Commandments. But in their place, I awoke to the mixture of sirens, aroma of orange citrus and the noises of fornicating couples in the rooms next to mine.

Getting up has never been harder.

When I finally make it to Moncrieff Army Community Hospital, it is around 11 o'clock. The entire building is quiet. The typical sounds and automated noises that are part of the daily routine are watered down by the anticipation of a looming death. Everyone: doctors, nurses, staff, patients and their families, all seem to be just going through the motions and hoping to avoid the world that waits outside the doors at the end of the day.

For myself the only thing that seems to help me these days are the stories like Jimmy's. Tales that – even if unpleasant – allow me the opportunity to forget the reality of today. As a journalist, it is my hope that when completed, they help my readers to do the same.

I arrive at Jimmy's room and am greeted with a healthy dose of his brand of sickly curmudgeon that has been our only companion the past three days.

Jimmy: Glad you finally decided to get your ass out of bed.

PS: Sorry Jimmy, tough night.

Jimmy: I am sorry to hear that. You dying of cirrhosis of the liver, too?

I decided to ignore him the best I could, as I was in no mood to do this that day. I also tried to remember where he was at in life; lying in bed in a hospital with only a few weeks left at best. But then, as I looked out at the world around, maybe at best that's all any of us really had.

PS: Yesterday, we left off with the Major sitting you down. You were clearly upset about this both then and now. Do you think you are ready to finish your story?

Jimmy: I am sorry you had to witness that spectacle. I normally can keep it together as it is not a habit of mine to cry like a baby in front of other men. But to answer your question: yes, I am ready to finish, as I cannot stand the thought of one more day of packing this shit around in my conscience.

Yesterday, I told you that the Major had sat me down and told me everything. He had been holding out on me. Both the Major and Doctor Häussermann had been seeing results from the experiment for the past eight months. Before Neville went into the details, he tried reasoning with me, justifying why he had chosen not to share with me this information sooner. Both of them had seen how close I had been getting with Elvis, and they also knew I was supplying him with pills. They were worried that I would have a conflict of interest, a crisis of conscience, and would jeopardize the project.

I was fairly angry, but I did hear the validity of his words. I did feel like a member of Elvis's family. Besides Charlie Hodge, I was E's closest friend in Germany. Feeling sheepish, I decided I needed to hear him out and find out what the hell was going on.

PS: It does make sense...Neville's logic for excluding you. From what you have revealed to me at this point, you can easily see the bond you shared was strong.

Jimmy: You're right. It was strong. My personal pride, wanting to feel like I was adding something to a great cause for our country, making history, all while maintaining my relationship with Elvis...it was confusing, maybe even frustrating. It may have been why I started giving him pills to begin with, a way of dealing with the conflicting guilt.

It made me wonder though, the fact that they left me in the dark for so long. If Elvis had not had the bad night, how long would they have let this go on?

I don't know...

Jimmy still looked like he didn't quite know how to feel about what he was about to share. I could see the anger and the hurt, but I could also see glimmers of a deeper confusion or the wish to remain behind the veil of deceit that Major Neville had so carefully placed them under all those years ago.

PS: Can you tell me what followed?

Jimmy: The Major went into the details of the most recent findings of Methuselah. However he did not start with what they had observed from Elvis's blood work. He went back to the initial experiment with the chimps. Specifically with Donner.

PS: Donner? The cannibal chimp?

Jimmy: Yes. As I stated earlier, I had been out of the picture for quite a while at the lab. Working with Elvis and monitoring him took up most of my time. So what he shared with me was a real shock.

Apparently about a month after Elvis started receiving his doses of Endal, Donner had been exhibiting more strange behavior and changes in his physical condition. The gene therapy was working, but working too well. To start with, all his hair follicles lost all pigment. He went white overnight according to the Major. The chimp's skin had taken on a purple-grey hue and the overall appearance of it had a tight, viscous-like quality. Neville had best described it as being reminiscent of sausage casing, like it was only there holding in its contents. That his complexion was nearly translucent and the purple hue to his skin was the processed dead matter.

Endal was a success; it did as we all had hoped. It had the ability to stop aging, but in the process of mutating the host's cells, it nearly stopped everything else as well.

But it did not end there. Donner's craving for blood had only increased. He became violent in his wanting to eat all the time. They were feeding him raw, fresh meat around the clock. He had this newly acquired elastic skin, and he was taking in the nutrients, but not processing them like a normal creature. Simply put, he stopped shitting. He started to bloat, hence the Major's Jimmy Dean reference to Donner's skin condition.

PS: Why Blood? Your story makes two very distinct references to both Donner and Elvis wanting fresh meat and blood.

Jimmy: Okay, in real lay terms: the mutated tortoise cells transform the host's stem cells into a parasite body. Each cell now feeds off of the other cells until it runs out of fresh ones. The human body produces billions of new cells each day, but when we introduced a new player into the blood stream, we had halted the body's need to replace the dying cells that were being kept alive by the attached new ones.

We had successfully tricked the body into believing it did not need to create more new cells. The thing is over a prolonged period of time, when the body does not replicate or produce the needed cells, the host starts to slowly die. This is the result of the DNA being corrupted and no longer remembering how to replicate. This is where the parts of the brain that give us that sense of self-preservation kicks in. It is here where they get that craving for fresh meat, blood and the nutrients needed to survive, and the only way to get the needed cells is to collect them from others. What you see is the primal instincts of the mind taking over. Judgment and rational thought go right out the door.

PS: Wait a minute...Do you know what you just said? If I did not know any better, I would swear what you just described is almost exactly what we are witnessing in the world today. Are you telling me you are the ones responsible for the hell we are currently seeing?

Hearing his words instantly brought me from curiosity to righteous anger. Their misguided attempts to play God had led to the decay we were all experiencing that day. The blood of millions of lives was now on their hands. I wanted to kill the old bastard. I wanted to take a pillow and smother him to death. I had to leave –if I didn't – who knows what I might do to him. I needed a drink, so I left the room, the hospital and went to the nearest bar. I did not come back for a few hours.

After several rum and cokes, I decided to head back. I needed to hear the rest of the tale. I owed it to myself and the rest of the globe to find the silver lining. When I arrived back in the room, I had a definite buzz going on. And it allowed me to muster up the courage to tell Jimmy exactly how I felt. I did not mince words. What you read may not be the most professional story, but it is the reality of a man who is simply tired of living in a real-life horror film.

PS: Look, Jimmy, I need to say something and you need to listen...In my entire life I have never hated anyone as much as I hate you at this moment. Knowing that you have had a huge hand in creating hell on earth, that fact is forcing me to fight my every impulse not to hurt you in some way. If you weren't dying a slow, painful death, I would wish you were. I am angry, and I want answers.

So here's the deal: You are going to finish your story and you are going to give me and the rest of the world reason to have hope again. Also, if I hear any more sarcasm or any sort of indigent tone come out of your mouth like I have had to hear and put up with the past three days, I am simply going to smack the shit out of you...

Now please continue.

The look on Jimmy's face said it all. He knew I was angry and that I was serious on my threat to harm him. However, he did not appear surprised by any of it. I am almost positive that he was even expecting it once he shared with me that part of his story.

Jimmy: Now do you understand why I asked you here? The world, the refugees of this plague that is devouring the cities and towns at the hands of people we once knew and loved...I believe had its start with Project Methuselah and the injections of Endal into Elvis Presley.

But I need you to hear the rest of the story. If I end it here, it will sound as if the men who created this did nothing to stop it, and that is far from the truth.

I could see the validity of Jimmy's words through the windows of his eyes. It was as if his soul had leapt out screaming the truth that kept his conscience prisoner over all those years. Immediately, Jimmy's appearance had the look of less weight upon him, as if just admitting that part of the story had turned the pressure valve that had building up to that moment of his life.

Although I could see he felt better, it brought me no pleasure. My anger had prevented me from enjoying the moment that I had helped provide.

Jimmy: The Major realized that what we had created was far from the hope of creating an ageless soldier. In its place, we had created a science experiment gone wrong from the likes of the Saturday afternoon matinees. Donner had become a monster, but he was not the only one. The rest of the chimps had started displaying the various symptoms in different stages that he had seen in Donner.

He did have hope though. He and Dr. Häussermann had some ideas on where they went wrong. They both felt it was using the reptilian cells that had caused the change. Apparently, according to the Major, some reptiles have the ability to change their DNA structure over time to adapt to their environment, an evolutionary process that takes millions of years to develop. What they think they did was inadvertently trigger this ability in the host's cells when they injected them with Endal.

According to Major Neville, both he and the Doc believed they could reverse engineer this process and create a proper antidote. In fact, they were already doing the blood work to start this. They both thought that even though they could see the same changes developing in Elvis, they had more than enough time to create a vaccine that could cure E of the same thing that was happening to the chimps.

Then trying to lighten the mood and make me feel better, he joked that the Doc had been bit by Donner a couple of days ago – that he tried tricking him with a leg of lamb, so he could take his blood while he was distracted eating. Apparently, it didn't work. He laughed and said, "I guess he had a craving for German." Still chuckling, he said that he had never seen the old Kraut move so fast.

Major Neville kept saying everything was going to be all right; that Elvis was going to be okay. As he explained this and reassured me, I started to realize he was right. We did have all we needed to fix this problem. But the Major, sensing that I was still a little uptight, really wanted me to relax. He gave me another cigarette, had me use his shower and loaned me a clean set of clothes, all while his servant prepared a bite for us to eat. During our meal, he explained that once we were done, we were going to go to the lab and meet Häussermann, and get started right away on the solution. One thing he did stress, above all else, was that he wanted me to keep this quiet, to not give Elvis any impression under any circumstances that he was in danger. The less people knew the better, as we did not want this to fall into the wrong hands.

After we had finished our meal, we hopped into my jeep and drove down to the lab. As I proceeded to step inside the building, I could not help but smell the awful odor that inhabited the walls surrounding me. It reeked to high heaven. Smelling like ape shit, vomit and stale air, I was thinking how in the hell did they ever manage to work in these types of conditions? But the smell had been a surprise to the Major as well. Nauseated, he puked up the plate of food that he had eaten nearly 30 minutes before. The smell – it was terrible – it stunk so bad that when the major got sick, his fresh vomit actually made it smell a little better in there. It was that bad.

When the Major was finished hurling and wiping himself off, he started calling out for Dr. Häussermann. As he did this, he walked through the lab and opened as many windows as possible as he went. I, on the other hand, had begun to look around at the chimps. I wanted to see if what I had been told was true. When I saw them, they all had a slightly dazed look about them. I noticed that each one had started looking like hairy, white sausage links. Matching exactly what the Major had told me earlier. I then spotted all the food dishes, full and untouched, and I knew right away that was not a good sign. If they were this far into the stages of devolving, what did Donner look like? I had started making my way to his cage when I heard the most chilling scream I could ever have imagined, and the thing that fucked me up worse...the sound seemed to have come from Major Neville.

Shaking his head, Jimmy began to shake. His arms had gotten goose bumps all over them and his tone in which he was telling the tale became flat and emotionless.

I ran into the Major's private office. At first I didn't know what was wrong. His back turned, he was sitting in his chair looking out the window. "Shit, Robert," I said, "You damn near had me crappin' my pants!" I let out a nervous laugh and went over to him. It was there that I witnessed the worse thing I had ever laid my eyes upon. The Major was dead; almost his entire neck had been chewed off. He looked like a hollowed-out log, and the only things keeping his head attached to his body was the back of his chair and what was left of his exposed spinal column. Blood had flowed generously down onto his lap and collected into a puddle between his legs on the seat of the chair. It was at that moment that I had the second worse fright of my life...Down on his knees; Doctor Häussermann was lapping up the pool blood like a dog drinking from a water dish. So consumed with feeding, he never noticed me standing there.

I was lost for a moment. I didn't know what to do...the major was dead...the Doc was clearly sick...I froze with a Godly panic. It wasn't until Häussermann, seeing that I was standing there in shock, began making his way toward me that I snapped out of it.

PS: What was Häussermann's appearance like?

Jimmy: First thing I noticed was the blood. It was everywhere on him. Like he had bathed in it. But I didn't get too good a look at him right away because he was coming straight at me. So I did the only thing I could do, I drew my 38 Special and fired all six rounds into him. The monster took every bullet in the chest, but it did not faze the bastard. He just kept coming. Frantic, I looked around the office to see if I could grab anything and use as a weapon, that's when I spotted the Major's old Harvard Hockey stick sticking out of his umbrella can by the entry. I ran over, grabbed it, and in a single motion, turned around and brought it down on Häussermann's head like I was trying to split a piece of wood. Then, with a loud snap and a broken stick from my efforts, the doctor finally went down and did not get back up.

Only when I had finally regained my composure, was I able to get a good look at the Doc. Like the chimps, his skin had taken on a translucent quality. But there were some differences. On the body parts that didn't have the Major's blood on them, Häussermann had a slightly glazed coating all over him; an amber-colored, bile-like substance was being pushed out from his pores. It looked like a lacquer coating on a piece of stained furniture. His eyes and ears had been bleeding at some point, as the color of his own blood had had enough time to darken and harden on his face. He looked like a monster.

I knew right away that, somehow, whatever Donner's system had changed into, the cells had adapted and became transferable, communicable. The symptoms had commonalities of what Major Neville had described, but somehow had evolved again, with the results laying face up in front of me. This was bad. Real fucking bad. I needed to do something, so I went to the Major's liquor cabinet grabbed his scotch, grabbed some of the Goofballs* from his desk and tried to numb the reality of what just occurred.

I wish I had felt a little more remorse at the time. Jimmy was clearly sharing a part of his life that he wished he could have forgotten. As painful as it was for him, the world needed me to continue to press him for details.

*Goofballs were Barbiturates that were popular during the 1940s. During WWII, some soldiers were prescribed these while they were in the field to help them manage daily working conditions. Because many soldiers returned with addictions that required rehabilitation, other less-addictive drugs replaced Goofballs later on. It is noted, however, that some military officials kept personal supplies on hand to help them get through the day.

PS: After you had a chance to down a couple drinks and take a few pills, what was your course of action?

Jimmy: I was going to call headquarters, and report what had just happened. But that changed when Major Neville got up out of his chair and started to come toward me. If I had not witnessed all that I had in those past 24 hours, I probably would have shit myself. But none of it caught me off guard. I mean, sure, I was surprised to see a man walking around with his head hanging there off his body like a piece of meat on a line of waxed dental floss. I didn't even look at his face. Remembering how I had stopped Häussermann, I grabbed what remained of the hockey stick and jabbed it into his head with such quick force that it resulted in him looking like a pimento olive on top of ham and Swiss sandwich. The only movement he made was his fall to the floor.

Seeing this, I realized what we had done. We were modern-day Frankensteins: Major Neville, Doctor Häussermann and myself. Defying the rules of nature and the laws of God, we created something so ugly, so awful, my only thoughts were how can I help Elvis? And how does it end here?

PS: Clearly it did not. What did you do or what didn't you do that could have stopped what we are all seeing today?

Jimmy: I am not a dumb man, Mr. Sullivan, nor was I then. But I was drunk and high, and not thinking as clearly as I should have. If I had to do over again, thinking with a clear head, I would have destroyed everything and, God forgive me as this probably sounds bad...Elvis.

I could have ended all right there. Everything needed to stop it was all at my fingertips, but I was not in the proper frame of mind. I believed that if I grabbed the Major's diary and Häussermann's notes, I could fix Elvis. That if I grabbed Donner's blood work analysis and kept a vigilant eye on Elvis's health, I could still save my friend...So that's exactly what I did.

I took all I could that would go unnoticed by the army, hid it in my vehicle and then I called the authorities.

You can imagine the look of horror on their faces when they arrived. I had never seen so many grown men look so scared and sick at the same time. They puked up so much that you could have painted a house with their vomit. When the Major's contact arrived at the scene, he brought with him two other suits that looked like doctors. For nearly four days straight, they gathered everything they could, and took turns questioning me.

What happened next, I am not sure? I mean I realize now that they had seen the potential in this work for a biological weapon. Who wouldn't? A disease that could turn an entire population onto itself, without a bullet fired from our side of the fence? The problem with their line of thinking was that they could contain it. It's a living plague with a will of its own for crying out loud. Look around; clearly they decided to use it, as we are all seeing the fruit of that harvest.

PS: A harvest from the seeds you helped provide.

Jimmy started crying and broke into an angry sob.

Jimmy: Yeeessss, I fucking know that! Do you think it has been easy seeing the world tear itself apart, knowing I had a hand in all that? That I could have seen to it that it never took place? Knowing that I ruined millions of lives and destroyed one of my best friends – all for personal glory? I am fucking dying here, today, because I have lived with these facts for over fifty years! I have suffered more than anyone shall ever know, and I go to my grave knowing I deserve every moment of this pain I have carried.

It was bad enough that I did what I did. But what I did to Elvis...that I didn't just sentence the man to death. I ruined his reputation. That as a result of the symptoms of the Endal disease taking its toll on his body and appearance, he became a joke later in life. That people thought he was weak with a drug problem, when he was doing exactly what I asked him to. All in my efforts to keep him from changing into a monster.

I am not as smart as Neville or Häussermann. I thought I was, but the fact I could not save my good friend Elvis proved that I was not.

PS: Your weren't dumb Jimmy, you did manage to keep him from changing for all those years after you both left Germany. How did you manage that?

Jimmy: Pills. The disease was smart. The cells were adapting at such a high rate, I had to prescribe Elvis various drug cocktails, not unlike the method HIV patients use, in order to keep his body from adjusting. I also had him on a high-protein diet and made sure he was eating as much as possible to help keep his cells' desire for nutrients at bay. And it did work for a little while, but around '74, he started to show the symptoms that I had been working years at trying to avoid.

During that year, Elvis' weight ballooned. It was quite noticeable. His tour schedule had to be altered. His jumpsuits that he was so famous for during that era, were a suggestion of mine to make sure his skin was well protected and contained. That keeping him covered ensured that no one saw that his complexion was changing. We had been dying his hair for years, it was the first sign I had seen of the disease. He told people he wanted to look like Tony Curtis, but really he was hiding the fact that he was silver haired before he was 25. I also had him start doing more things at night, avoiding direct sunlight. When we were traveling, he would have his windows lined with tinfoil to keep the light off of him. I thought that if the sun's rays could damage a normal person's skin, what would happen to someone like Elvis, who was starting to show more evidence of the changes Donner had gone through nearly 15 years before.

PS: Did Elvis Or the Colonel ever know the truth?

Jimmy: No. No one besides me knew the truth. Not even the army. When they requested the paperwork on Elvis after the massacre at the lab, I gave them my notes on him, and then gave them blood I had taken from Vernon a couple weeks before when I did him a favor and gave him a physical. No, everyone thought that Elvis was in good health and I let them believe it...And up until today, it was a secret that no one else ever knew.

PS: The night Elvis died, do you believe the effects of Endal caused it?

Jimmy: I am not sure. He did not display the madness I had seen in Häussermann in the days leading to his death. He was bloating, as he was starting to retain the dead processed matter from the foods he was eating and was not going to the bathroom. I think, in the end, it was everything: the disease, the drug therapy and his lagging career that led him to die in his bathroom that August afternoon.

Honestly I know I would like to think that I had nothing to do with it, but that would be a lie. I know that, indeed, I had a direct hand in that young man's death and that it was a direct result of Endal.

Jimmy cried some more. This time I let him cry for a while and got up to stretch my legs a bit. As I was walking around the hall, I asked myself, would I have done the same as him for one of my friends? Could I have kept a secret like the one Jimmy carried for as long as he did? Then my thoughts were interrupted by the latest TV report from the nurse's station discussing the final death toll at Tallahassee. I needed to finish this, even though I was not sure how I would have responded in the same situation, I did know that I needed to get an answer. I needed to get the clue that Jimmy had been sitting on this whole time. The one clue that could possibly turn the tide on the insidious Winchester Pandemic.

PS: When Elvis died, did he reanimate?

Jimmy: Not at first. No. I was hurting. We all were hurting. But I had to keep my grief in check long enough to make sure that he did not rise from the dead and start eating people. I sat with him at both the coroners and the funeral home. It was at Memphis Funeral Home where I saw his body come back to life. There he was being prepped to be embalmed and his head popped up. He had a blank expression in his eyes, yet, you could see the yearning for sustenance that his cells demanded. It was then that I took a scalpel off the table, came up and slipped it into his ear canal. The whole time, I was crying and apologizing. I must have cradled his head for what felt like hours. When I set him back down, I realized that they would be opening him back up. Which could expose the mortician and anyone else that may come in contact with Elvis's body. I did the only thing I could do. I put the body into the crematory oven and burned the remains. I needed to make sure I ended it. That I couldn't make the same mistake again.

PS: How do you think that Major Neville, Doctor Häussermann and Elvis Presley were able to come back to life?

Jimmy: I have thought a lot about that over the years and from my own research and what Major Neville and Dr. Häussermann had written in their journals; it has to do with the mutated cells and their ability to survive on minimal amounts of oxygen. When the heart stops beating in the infected host, the cells go into super survival mode and take over certain bodily functions that will allow them to live. The look of life returning to its victims is merely the illusion of it.

PS: What about Elvis's body? It was now missing. How did you deal with this?

Jimmy: I am sure you heard some of the conspiracy rumors, that it wasn't Elvis in the coffin the day of his funeral. That it looked like a wax dummy. Well, it was a wax dummy. The Colonel was not sure what to do, as he and the family had made arrangements to have a huge funeral service and needed a body. So he called in a favor to a special effects artist he knew and had a wax life-like Elvis created, so they could have an open casket. The coffin was so damn heavy because they had to put a refrigeration unit in there to keep the wax from melting.

PS: What about the family? I mean they didn't have the body of their son, their father and their friend.

Jimmy: That was particularly hard for me. Seeing them grieve and then having to find out that the body went missing. They had no idea what I had done. They all thought that someone stole his body. Being that he was the biggest star in the world, it did make sense. Vernon, however, was not happy with any of the arrangements – he hated not having the body, he hated the Colonel's solution and he said he would be damned if he was going to take part in that lie. So what he did was, when he signed Elvis's death certificate and had his headstone created, he purposely misspelled his middle name. He wrote Aaron instead of Aron. I guess that was part of his way of dealing with it all.

I knew that we were at a sensitive part in the story, but I needed to get to the point of all this. So I asked the hard question.

PS: Thank you for sharing this awful and amazing story. I realize that it must be tough for you, but I need to ask: Is this all? Not that I don't think that the world needs to hear this tale, but is there hope here?

You have seen the stories on TV; I know you have seen the photos in the papers and online Jimmy. You know what's at stake. Please tell me there is more to all this.

Jimmy was anticipating this question. He reached over to his bedstand and opened the drawer. Struggling, he pulled out some old notebooks and folders bound together with twine.

Jimmy: Here is the hope you are looking for. It is all of what I took from Major Neville and Dr. Häussermann the day of their deaths. It has all the original findings and theories of the tortoise cell therapy, the refinement of Endal and the early findings of Donner's blood work. I know I should have handed these over when I saw the first major outbreak, but I was not prepared to deal with an angry world. Now that I am dying, I know I will not have to live with that for much longer. Take these to the CDC; they will know what to do. Hopefully once they get the notes and data from the patient zero, they can create a cure.

Please let the world know I am sorry, that we only did what we thought was right. Let the people know there was not a day that went by that I did not live with extreme regret and heartache. And if I had to do it all over again, I know we all would have made wiser decisions.

Also, make sure Elvis Presley's family, friends and fans know the truth. Restore his reputation. Make right what I took away.

As I reached over and grabbed them, Jimmy looked away. I took it as his way of saying goodbye. Not quite knowing what I should do, I got up, thanked him and walked out of the room with what could be the first ray of hope the world may have seen in many years.

Jimmy Caraway passed away the next day, never having a chance to see this article.

Somehow, I think that's how he wanted it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeffrey Veregge is an Award Winning Native American artist and writer who specializes in what people dub "Salish Geek". His geek art has won numerous awards and is in notable collections such Yale University and been featured on such websites as io9, Comicbookmovie.com, The Mary Sue and others. He dwells in the worlds of aliens, heroes, robots and monsters and speaks fluent geek and nerd. When not creating art, he is the contributing columnist for Indian Country Today media known as NDN Geek.

PORTRAIT OF A GIRL

Jennifer Courtney

The paper bird fluttered on its perch, high in the stone oak. Abbey had painted its twelve foot leafy home over the last several weeks, using a paste made of rendered fat and a few handfuls of night soil swiped from Mom's garden. The mixture was lumped on, shiny from the cooking grease, but it firmed up a bit towards the higher, older branches.

Her creation sprawled across the rough stone tunnel in impressionistic glops and whirls. Stepping back, surveying the texture, she thought it must look like bark had.

Fertile, this end product of her Mom's prized composting toilet, and redolent with an eye-watering rankness. Yet even after a sneezing fit from the vitamin and poop fumes, she couldn't resist stepping close again. To put a hand against the painting. To dream.

Smelly, but a tree. At least, it was the closest thing to a tree Abbey had ever seen.

Staring at it enrapt, bright snippets of the catechism she'd been working on during her morning lessons tickled through her mind.

Word chased word, silver moths whose young could eat a garden down to bare stalk.

Sargasso Sea...Sargasso Sea...Sargasso Sea.

A mantra, like the Ramones meditatives learned in Firsting School. A work chant. With a grin she crouched in the harvesting position, as they'd taught her when she was small. In that bright long ago, when she'd first studied proper form, back in the caves where the clothing plant-stuffs grew.

"Gabba gabba, we accept you, we accept you, one of us."

Her voice a feathery drone, she moved effortlessly into the picking exercises. The repetitious exercises worked up a sweat, and her mind dove into the liquid timelessness of meditation and movement. She was lost in the comfort of the familiar, a pattern known since toddlerhood. Precise and measured motion, created to teach the proper forms for planting and harvest.

Spontaneously, she began incorporating new movements, made-up ones. Adding in snatches of Elder Pound's catechism as she did, "Sargasso Sea...you are our Sargasso Sea." Turning smooth routine into a halting, ragged dance.

Heresy, sacrilege. Profaning the elders was a stoning offense.

She stopped, gasping and sweat glazed. The tree stretched upwards, towards a sun she'd never seen. A sun that might not even exist.

She gave a sudden skip forward and hugged the wall, nuzzling her face against cool stone and the shit based paint that decorated it. The lardy mix slimed her cheek.

Abbey swayed. The tree danced along in her head. She gazed upwards, at the tiny paper bird brought to life by the soft output of the air reclaimers. In her mind there was sunlight, a smell of green, the sticky kiss of spider's lace. There were high, high places and Elder Tennyson's fairy echoes.

Eyes narrowed, she willed away the thick stink. Squinted into existence fresh air, freedom, and Elder Frost's wooded paths. She stroked the wall, blurring whorls, griming her hand.

Her hands. The stuff was caked under her nails and such filth was a danger. Easily noticed. Getting caught stealing night soil usually meant a public beating. Yet, the tree before her was a heady thing. Freedom. Hard not to paint a forest despite the danger. She could do it, and she could people these deciduous branches with other feathered bodies, now dead a century.

Easy enough to schedule a trip to the repository, evade the librarians, and snip a dozen or so pictures from random books. If she didn't get caught, she could have a lost world. Here, in the old tunnel. Something quite her own.

The bird shivered, a bright paper semblance of life. A public beating for stealing the dirt was painful and humiliating. A harsh lesson. But books, they were irreplaceable. The authorities would kill her if they found she'd damaged one.

Abbey had been sitting on the hewn stone floor long enough for her sweat to dry. Cleaning her hands up using some lard, a dollop, purposely left separate from the paint mixture, and an old rag destined for the recycler. As she scrubbed, trying to get all the grime from underneath her nails, the little communication light on her suit begin to flash. She gave her hands one last wipe down, and then dashed towards home.

Scampering through the maze of surplus housing tunnels and into the inhabited portions of the underground town at dead run, she crashed into an Enforcer.

"Slow down, child."

He was menacing in the inherent way of well-armed authority. Dressed in brown, white, and gray, he blended with the granite and metal corridors. On his chest, eye level to Abbey, an embroidered nametape stated rank and title; Enforcer Weir.

"Enforcer, yes, enforcer."

Despite the assault, he hadn't really focused on her, not even to take in her nametag and rank. He was busy scribing something. Likely a report. Rumor was, the enforcers didn't end a shift until all their paperwork was cleared; paperwork being one of the funny holdover terms from centuries past. Apparently, he was trying complete his as he patrolled.

A little breathless from her run, Abbey waited to be dismissed. He had addressed her, and good manners dictated that she standby for his parting benediction and release.

He continued making his notations, so she snuck a glance at her com-unit. Still flashing. Looked back at him, then down at the floor.

One, two, three, four...five...

Counting calm, breathing in stillness, she willed herself not to fidget.

Finally, he began, "The day is done and darkness, falls from the wings of -"

His unusual pause stretched out, and she glanced up in confusion.

"Child, what is that on your face?" he glanced down the tunnel she'd come running from, "Where've you been?"

"Enforcer, I was in housing. The old, closed tunnels. Pulling scrap...Enforcer."

His eyes narrowed, "Oh?" he glanced at the last name embroidered on her chest, "Private Rhoades, how were you planning on bringing it back?"

"Enforcer, I must have dropped my carryall. I was rushing. My com-unit..."

He stared hard at the blinking light on her chest, then looked once more at her filthy, smeared cheek.

Just as she was starting to panic, he completed the benediction and dismissed her. She could feel his eyes, a crawly tingle on her bare scalp, as she scurried for home.

That night she sat in the kitchen unit studying, her Mom straightening up after their late-day meal.

"Mom, what's ambergris?"

"What's...? What underearth are you reading?"

"Portrait d'une Femme."

"Oh." Her Mom said, "Elder Pound, I didn't realize you'd gotten that deep into the catechisms."

She turned, putting cups into their cubby, "Ambergris is whale poop. They wore it as perfume."

"The elders wore poop as perfume?"

"Sacrilege to question, Abbey."

With a sigh Abbey grabbed her reader and escaped to the family sleeping pallet. With the stomping of someone spoiling for a fight, her mom followed. For a few minutes, a stormy silence threatened in the low ceilinged room, broken by occasional clicks as Abbey read, or by her mom's domestic shuffling as laundry was gathered, blankets straightened.

"Why can't we question? Who made the rules?"

"Are we really going to do this again, Abbey?" gathered laundry fell into a despondent heap on the floor.

"Why do we have to respect them?" Abbey said, "They put us here."

Her Mom frowned, for a long moment stood immobile. Then she spun. Her back to Abbey, she bustled around the room with fresh vigor. The laundry she'd gathered moments before, lay in a forlorn tumble.

Abby sat and waited for the screaming to start, but the moment stretched. Her Mom flitted here and there, back turned.

Finally, with a sigh at the dramatics, Abbey picked up the pile of lonely clothes, and carried them over.

Her mom stiffened at the sound of her approach.

"We had a visit from an enforcer today", her mom turned around, voice a whisper, mouth trembling into a grimace, "said you nearly took him off his feet."

The low ceilinged sleeping quarters seemed to grow darker. Through a blackness and hum that slowly started building in her ears, Abbey said, "How?"

"He looked us up, we're the only Rhoades family in the substation hub."

Abbey bent, put the clothes on the floor. With a deep breath, she stood back up to face her mom.

"That endless torture loop the Master's had. What's it called? The one that forced people to run? That's me. Stuck."

"A treadmill?" her mom's hands were shaking, "There's nothing outside, nothing left. If they hadn't solved the food crisis we'd all be...Abbey, this isn't a game. They'll kill you."

Kicking the laundry pile out of the way Abbey walked out of the room. Her Mom's voice trailed after.

Crossing over to the entryway of their home, flinging the privacy curtain aside, she suddenly leaped into a sprint. Her mother's last words were lost to the clamor of pounding feet. She was still running, heading towards the surplus tunnels, when a familiar voice called out.

It was Sheppard, a boy she'd shared classes with since Meditations and Harvest in their wee years. She'd seem him daily at school, since before they could talk. Sheppard was a constant, but he wasn't anymore hers than the network of tunnels that flowed through the cave system, or the communal family bed.

She just barely made out his hesitant, "Abbey...?" as she sprinted past him.

Gasping in time to her pounding feet, whooshing out, sobbing in. Through it all a broken cadence in her head, Sargasso Sea...Sargasso sea...She was through the labyrinth of surplus housing and staring at her tree before she realized Sheppard had followed.

"What is that?" he was sucking air, hair tousled. The expression on his face both vulnerable and elated. The same look he'd shared after their Sex Ed and Productivity class. The moment stretched out, a twin to the past, except now he was clothed and standing.

Then he stepped towards her, ran a finger along her jawline, "Do you need to get outside?"

The path he led her down was unfamiliar.

They stood before a door at a twisting of the ways. Unused tunnels led off into dark and forgetfulness. The long lasting cave glows used throughout the inhabited sections of the complex had expired, perhaps decades past.

The simple door was made of metal, shaped identically to those on the oldest of the housing entrances. These were the portals that had been used in home dwellings throughout the caverns, back in the earliest days.

This door was covered over in a sealant film, painted in peeling yellow and black. The only thing marking it as unique. She'd been taught since the cradle these colors marked a door that led to nowhere.

Abbey broke the seal.

"Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price, more Elder Pound,” the benediction or plea issuing from Sheppard as she opened the door.

Alarms wailed in protest at the flow of unfamiliar air and blowing grit.

There was a growing rumble, moments later resolving into footsteps. The Enforcers, a squad, closing in. Of course they would monitor this place.

Still, she hesitated, standing in the entryway, blinking into the haze.

"What if this is all that's out there?" she gestured at the whirling dust and gloom.

Shepherd tossed a jerky glance over his shoulder, eyes wide at the trample of the Enforcers. "If it is, you're dead."

He turned back to look at her, "Come with me. Come home. It's not too late."

"But what if I just let the bad stuff in? What if it hurts you or Mom?" she said.

He turned back to look at her, anger brightening his eyes, "A little late for that, Abbey. Come on, we still have time to hide."

Something in his tone made her turn away from the murk outside and look at him. The stare he returned was calculating.

"How long have you been planning to bring me here Shep?" Abbey paused, "You thought I'd be too scared. That I'd give up, go back."

Sheppard frowned, "I thought seeing it would put an end to your stupid fancies. I'm trying to help you."

"But, I lose either way..."

When Abbey turned back from the swirling dust, Sheppard was backing away from her, nearly lost to the shadows.

The wind moaned, a weird croon that set panic fluttering in some animal part of her. She peered back out, looking for the source of the noise, the dust making her scalp itch and her eyes tear up. The Enforcers were close enough now that she could feel them through her thin cloth shoes.

"Shep, I don't want to be Elder Pound's caricature, I don't want to be tragical...", but Sheppard was gone.

Abbey stood alone wreathed in dust. An entirely unique but pointless thing. A bridge spanning worlds, ending in nothingness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Courtney is the aging mother of two toddlers, and currently in her last year as an English Lit Major at the University of Maryland University College. She earned a spot as one of the six finalists in the Postcards Poems and Prose Fiction4ADay contest, available online in late November.

SOLVING HOLLY

Damien Krsteski

Descartes reads me the names of the dead.

I place my porcelain mug on a stack of old documents, a brownish ring of dried coffee over the scribbles indicates exactly where.

"Samantha Foley: blunt force trauma to the head." The projector regurgitates a round face covered by blond shoulder-length hair. Saggy eyes look right through me. The movement of my finger is followed by three successive optometric blasts. Three stills of the corpse and a 2D map of the crime scene pop up on both sides of the sullen face. My workroom briefly takes the grim form of a commemorative mural for Sam Foley while I study her case.

Nothing interesting, I say to myself. Solvable by anyone with half a brain.

I cast the projections to digital oblivion with a finger swipe. "Next."

Descartes obeys.

"Rashida Rains: apparent drug overdose," he says. I sip bitter black coffee while Rashida's dead face cuts through the room's darkness, phasing into view.

Above my head the AC hums a low-pitched tune as it sucks out stale air. I'm feeling somewhat jittery and jumpy. To remedy that I hasten to rearrange the space before me. A towering pile of books is consigned to the ground. I shove a bulky green folder with case file printouts in the desk drawer. The plastic case of microchips cracks slightly as I try to squeeze it in there too, so I give up, and throw it to the ground. A swipe of the arm over the desk and all pencils, pill bottles, scribbles and batteries rattle down to the floor.

That's better. Only my coffee mug and projection gear sit between the holographic portrait and me. I take a deep breath.

I lean forward. Blue eyes bulge out of the sad face shaped like a crescent. A pale complexion. Dark hair tied in a bun. For a brief moment I wonder how such a pretty girl ended up sad and dead but then I remember my last drug-related case and flick Rashida's photo and info out of view with a shudder. I better notify the Agency to keep me off junkies for a while. Darkness swallows me whole.

I get up, pick my mug up. "Next."

Descartes senses me leaving my desk, relays the projections over to the walls of the hallway. His voice in my head says the radiant face and mussed up hair belong to a certain Tarik Bosich, casualty of the Strasbourg protests. Doesn't sound familiar so I request further info. As I enter the tiny kitchen an anchorman's voice is buffering to be streamed to my cochlea. In the kitchen, a stainless-steel sink cradles a leaning tower of unwashed plates and an aluminium table with rounded edges sits between two straight-backed chairs. Light falls in shafts from an overhead neon, pale and fragile, refracting off the table in random directions. I drain the mug, pour myself more coffee from the machine on the counter.

"Disaster in the Alsatian capital: a mob of five thousand protestors have gathered here before the European Court of Human Rights demanding the repeal of the controversial Universal Afterlife bill, guaranteeing any recently deceased person a free brain scan and transfer to Paradise City–" A trail of disturbing images follows me back to my workroom. One of the protestors pulls out a bomb and the police freak out. Alphanumerics inform me that in total four people have died: one from police bullets, the other three in the resulting stampede. The video from the event plays out on my unkempt walls, ochre blemishes of dead pixels in places of cracks. Cameras zoom in on the suspected terrorist who pulls a flare out of a jacket pocket. The police chief apologizes, his face crooked and bent on the wall's edge.

Back in my swivelling chair now. A bunch of images are scattered over thin air, one of which is a gaunt face with dishevelled hair. His floating head seems familiar but in a very subway advertisement way. The inscription beneath it says it belongs to Peter F. Casey, Paradise City's main engineer. Can't really say I've heard much about his work, but then again being buried in a murder case for eight fucking months with hardly any sleep will make anyone lose track of who's who in day to day politics. Besides, I've cancelled my subscriptions to NewsNet feeds years ago.

My thumb and forefinger from a circle and Descartes zooms in on the man's face which now takes half the space above my desk.

"Peter Fredericks Casey," he speaks in a pitchy vibrato, "born in Rockville, Maryland on April 5th 2008 is a computer engineer, neurophysiologist and humanitarian..." I listen to him drone on about the man's background, education and the string of successive events that have led him to his current position. I slurp more black coffee while Descartes' harmonizing voice updates me on the Paradise City situation. Last I heard it was ridiculed and described as the rich nerd's wettest dream but apparently in the last few months the project's picked up steam due to government funding in Europe. It even appears they're trying to finance post mortem migration for the poor, which critics sense could be a stepping stone to making digital immortality mandatory – a blasphemous intrusion into people's lives, they claim. I read up on it a bit, then clench my hand in a fist and all floating pixels shrivel up and die, leaving me once more bereft of light.

Humming from above.

"Next." I lean back, rock myself back and forth.

"Miranda Holly: suicide."

I cough, choking on my coffee. A hazy portrait hangs mid-air. Through watering eyes I gape at the data next to the face to make sure I didn't mishear. Why the hell would Agency route a suicide case my way? Thumb to middle then to forefinger and the official police report appears. My eyes dart across the room, absorbing all available information.

I take in the rapid flickering of lights, let it flow straight to my subconscious engines of understanding. The pieces of the puzzle arrange themselves with great ease in those far-flung corners of my mind. I don't interfere, just scan with the eyes. When I finish taking it all in the structured end product is passed along to my frontal cortex, and realization dawns on me.

I understand why Agency gave me Miranda Holly.

Suicides are easy. Solvable with simple mathematics. But this corpse hanging brightly lit before me is no ordinary suicide.

Two taps of the thumbs and it's just her head now. The quality is bad, scarce pixilation at the edges, but I can make out her half-closed eyes. Gooseflesh all up my back. It's the strangest pair of dead eyes. No sadness. No fear. I gaze with deader eyes than hers, spellbound.

My finger twitches to notify Agency. Moments later, a conformational balloon is projected on the air: the case is officially mine. I wait out the streaming of additional information.

"I've updated your schedule," Descartes says. "You have a funeral to attend tomorrow at 5:30AM."

I gulp down my second cup of coffee while reading the newly received package.

Descartes bleeps. It's late and I have to get some sleep. I get up, wave my hand to Descartes, hear him shut all systems down, and drag myself to my bedroom.

In the empty room a single bed with ruffled sheets waits for me. I fish out a melatonin tab from my back pocket and put it under my tongue.

I sling myself over the bed like a wrung-out towel, not bothering to undress. The metallic legs creak under my weight. I bury my head in the pillow but all I find there are Miranda Holly's dead eyes. Eyes looking happier than I've ever been in my entire life.

The robot's legs trudge along the cracked tarmac, shifting weight through micro actuators to compensate for the road's slight sloping. The robot's eyes are mine too, and I use them to gaze across the stretching garden of gray stones. Heaps of flowers rot away next to names in marble.

We are a thin line of mourners following a hearse, the gloom of the unborn day all around us.

Behind the humming vehicle walks the immediate family. Her father's eyes are nested in a craggy worn out face, his hands clasped before him. He brushes his handlebar moustache every few steps. Miranda's mother walks next to him, her head wrapped in a black scarf. Both look older than I'd imagined them.

Second in line is Miranda's sister, Flora, the person who first suspected the conclusions of the police department. The suicide part she agrees with but from what I read in the addendum to the case, she senses something deliberately led her sister astray. She's the submitter of the case to the Agency. Technically, she's my employer. She wears a black gown and a tilted wide-brimmed felt hat with a single gray feather on its side.

Right behind her is Miranda's cousin. He's a young, sullen boy, hugging a wooden cross almost as big as his torso. The original spelling of Miranda Holly's name is written on the cross in big Cyrillic letters. I notice additional letters. Her parents must've altered her name when the Holly family emigrated from Eastern Europe.

Behind the cross-bearer is the shuffling crowd, walking two by two, murmuring prayers or looking abstractedly across the graveyard, their contours outlined by the paleness of dawn.

I walk last in line, behind the entirety of Miranda Holly's family, observing everything.

Pine trees of human height flank the road which is to lead us to her grave. We walk in silence, slowly.

I look down and notice the robot's body is appropriately dressed. Even my arms are painted matte black to avoid the usual metallic sheen some might find incongruous at a funeral. A white rose is lodged in my right hand. It comes with each rented body. The agreement's to observe the proceedings from the side so as not to disturb the family, so I don't think I'll manage to get close to the grave. I slow my pace and toss the rose over the pines. Out of a corner of the robot's eye I see it land and break in two on a tombstone.

Earlier in the morning Flora slipped into the barn where my body was charging up. She grabbed my wrist, her face near mine.

"Pay attention to everything," she whispered, eyes shifting left and right to the rows of powered down telepresence robots. "I want you to learn as much as you can about her."

The hearse turns right and the slope evens out. We follow it for a few more minutes until it stops right before the narrow asphalt road gives way to a gravel path.

The driver walks out and whispers to the mother and father. I zoom in on his lips but don't bother to interpret what he's saying. I'll leave that for the hours of detailed footage analysis. The parents nod. The father pulls out a handkerchief, blows his nose and sticks it back in his front pocket.

A loud crash. Startled, the cousin almost lets the large cross slip through his hands. The family shuffles about, looking around at what ruptured the silence.

A claw rises with a grinding sound from the hearse like an abomination. It clicks into place. A grapple descends over the coffin, its prying fingers latch onto little hooks on the lid's side. The gears shift loudly as the winch begins pulling.

The family parts before the airborne coffin. They gasp as it sways precariously and Miranda's father nervously blows his nose again. The grapple manoeuvres it towards an open grave and gingerly places it on the mound next to the hole.

The parents approach. A priest draped in black cloth steps out of the vehicle now, clutching the bible.

He walks to the grave, his robe swaying sideways. The family pulls closer and everyone gathers their shoulders to make room. The priest makes the sign of the cross and a moment later so does everyone else.

He has a long wavy beard and wears a cylinder hat. He begins to speak in a language I don't understand. Some of the family members cry, others nod silently.

I steal a glance up at the clear sky. A black wave soars through the dark blue. The bird circles above our heads, wondering. A little bitterness trickles down my throat – bits of the antidepressant pills I took this morning.

Two flaps of its wings and the majestic bird dives out of sight into the deciduous forest uphill. The sun's soon about to claw out of the horizon, ready to burn.

While the priest speaks and sings the grappling hook hangs over their heads like the devil's hand. Behind the robot's face I smile.

When the priest's sermon is done, the gears kick into motion again. People take a step back. The hook's fingers stretch out. It descends on the coffin, picks it up from the mound then gently lowers it into its hole – Miranda Holly's eternal resting place.

The mechanism retreats back into the hearse and the driver walks in and drives off, leaving the entire family to mourn in peace. The father picks up a rock from the pile, casts it in the hole. One by one, they all line up, throw a piece of dirt over the coffin, cross themselves then file out.

Two old ladies wait for them on the side, treys in hand, serving a strong alcoholic beverage along with lumps of wheat. The mourning family drinks, toasts, chews on the wheat. The sun's fierceness is starting to make a presence. Everyone's forehead is sprinkled with sweat but mine. Miranda's father goes from person to person to receive condolences. Shuffling about, he dabs his face with the handkerchief and sometimes blows his nose.

Only her mother is silent. She sits slouched on the marble of a neighboring grave as she watches the workers bury her daughter one indifferent swing of the shovel at a time.

Flora's gaze meets mine from out the crowd. She nods at me. I nod back. I've seen enough. The robot's body switches to autopilot on my command then turns around and heads back for the barn to be recharged.

I remove my helmet. Moiré patterns flicker on its display. One by one I yank out the thimbles. My eyes struggle to adjust to the sudden shift of lightning. The dimness and lifelessness of my workroom make me wish I was back at the funeral. A bolt of pain sears through my temples. The goddamn display resolution. It's too low for prolonged VR.

I stand up, stretch my legs. A few visual gestures for Descartes so he makes a backup of the recording to the external storage device and I stroll out of the room.

The overhead light brightens with a ping when I enter the kitchen. Stooped over the Fabber, I click about, looking for a decent pill. I rub my forehead with two fingers while I scour the menus. I click the brand I always take. Red flashes over the screen. Shit. My license has expired two weeks ago.

"Descartes," I groan, "find me some free head pills."

He chirps in acknowledgment.

A brief moment later, he says, "OpenNSAID, developed by HackPharm, an open-sourced Non Steroid–"

"Download it."

Descartes relays the downloaded code to the machine and the Fabber hums into motion. It starts whistling like a kettle. Gradually, the noise dies down, and the machine spits out a white pill.

Without thinking I pop it in my mouth and wash it down with cold water.

I sit my ass back in my working chair, prodding a finger through the icon of the video recording. In a corner of the room the entire funeral plays back. I swipe my hand diagonally, dragging the video towards my customized analysis software.

It boots up, shifts the video feed to the background. The software's to scour it for faces, sounds and actions which it then catalogues in a neat database. Rectangular notifications pop up to inform me of new data that it finds. The software translates speech and gestures too and cross-references them in the database to specific faces and sounds.

I'm not entirely sure what Flora wants me to find or learn from all this. Somehow, I think she just wanted me there. The person investigating her death should pay respects, too.

While the software goes through the footage, I decide to dredge the networks for any trace of Miranda's online activity.

First stop's the Streamer, a life streaming and socializing service everyone's using nowadays. I know she has an account. The username and password came with the documents. Her account has been shut down when the company received the death certificate but the data's still in their data banks. We have about a week before the company wipes it all clean.

I connect to the service.

"You don't seem to have a Streamer account." A wide toothy grin spreads across my room.

"Fuck you." I don't need a shitty Streamer account. I'm chained to my devices enough as is.

The Cheshire grin withers away. A nondescript form strolls into view and I feed it the user/pass combo. The system recognizes the special case so it sends me straight to the data files where an ominous counter in the upper corner counts out the days to deletion. The system offers to transmit them to my machine and I accept. A fluorescent snail pops up, blazing a trail of green slime from one wall to another. Upon the transfer's completion the snail dives in the wall, never to be seen again.

I flick through her events, moments of the day she'd deemed important enough to share with the world.

There's the usual night out with the girls hyperlinked to a bar's address. I click on it. Photos of the event spring out. She's drinking cocktails with friends. Toasting. Drinking. Two girls, one blonde, the other of Indian descent. I recognize them from this morning. I make a circle with my hand, select their photos, drag them to my secure case folder. The footage analyzer pings – it's correlated the two girls with faces from the recording. I extract their names from the photos and store that in my folder, too. In the information gathering phase one knows nothing and everything's important.

A swipe of the hand brings me back to her lifestream. Scrolling down, I see several similar events, and I go through them, too, saving all new data.

Next I check the messages. Privacy safeguards prevent me from accessing certain messages she'd flagged as secret, but I notice those are few and far between.

My eyes dart across the message list, skimming those that seem trivial. Most are between her and her two friends, colleagues from Vertex Software – the company where she worked as a programmer – on the subject of that night's bar location or the previous night's nasty looking guys.

I stop at a message from three days before her suicide. The letters shine like fireflies in the dim room.

Monday, 8:43PM: Mimi, are you gonna go out with us or what? Are you avoiding us? Will you please just let that bullshit go and come with us and have a drink or some K and just loosen up!

The content of the next few messages is in the same vein.

Tuesday, 7:33PM: Jesus Mimi, why aren't you returning my calls? I've been pinging you all day. Even called your desk they said you aren't there but I know you're avoiding me.

Tuesday, 10:34PM: Just so you know I'm with Jess and we're having a great time at Dexter's. We don't know what's gotten into you but if you feel like coming over, please do. Jess says she won't be sorry if there isn't a pop of K for you if you do though.

There are no more messages from her two friends after that. There's one last item in the messages section, this time in the sent folder.

Thursday, 3:21AM: Sorry I've been a bad friend, guys. I'm a bit sad and a bit angry now. Seriously. I don't want to be defined by voyeuristic assholes. Anyways, sorry for being such a mess lately, everything's been kind of chaotic. I'll miss you and I know you'll miss me too, but I have to set myself free. Love you.

Miranda Holly's last words scroll before my eyes as I drag them to my case folder. The message reads 3:21 AM so this is minutes before she injected that shit into her veins and turned her brain to soup. The coroner's report stated that not a single synaptic connection had remained intact. There wasn't even a way to save her mind. The police reports state that shooting Mush is a very unconventional way to off oneself but that it's gotten somewhat popular recently.

I summon an agent to comb through the nets for voyeur and suicide and define and all permutations of the words, in case there's a new cult on the block I haven't heard about but it quickly returns empty handed.

Her two friends' faces float before me. Jessica Bates and Vera Abburi. It's very clear that talking to them is my next move.

I stretch my arms. It's coffee time.

But something's weird. I cock my head to the side, furrow my brows. There's an eerie silence. It's been like this for some time now. Maybe the last half hour or so. It shouldn't be silent. My palms on the desk, I look around, trying to pinpoint the change that's making me so uncomfortable. All looks the same. A wave of hot air wafts over my head and shoulders, my neck, back, and the rest of my body. I shiver.

The goddamned AC. The ubiquitous humming is gone.

I look up at the ceiling grille. Climbing on my chair, I wave a hand back and forth to see if there's any circulation. Nothing.

My chest constricts. Invisible hands gently wrap themselves around my neck, their grip tightening with every breath. Yellow blemishes appear before my eyes.

I prance out of the room, see if it's any better in the kitchen. It isn't. My bedroom's the same. Hot stale stifling air everywhere.

Shit.

Okay. Calm down.

I take a few tentative breaths. Breathe in. I should notify maintenance. Breathe out. They'll send that David or Darren or whatever like they always do. Breathe in.

"Descartes." Breathe out. "Get me maintenance on the line."

Breathe in.

No biggie. Breathe out.

The line chirps and I sense someone on the other end. Breathe in. I tell them about the AC.

Breathe out.

They'll send a guy in twenty minutes. Breathe in. A minor malfunction.

Nothing to do but wait it out. Breathe out.

The guy they sent isn't David or Darren. Some new worker barely above twenty's checking out the circuit boards in my condo while I draw in slow hot breaths, slumped over the aluminium kitchen table.

The main circuitry is buried in the kitchen walls behind the cabinets, and he's on his knees, one hand probing its way up to the elbow. The cabinets are set aside and I'm a bit ashamed of the mould and dirt they revealed. His cheeks are puffed, his face red as he's straining to find the right cable. I watch, listless.

His hand wriggles some more and then pulls out a rainbow ribbon cable attached to a rectangular connector. He licks his lips eagerly, disconnecting the two. Gaze drifting across my kitchen he counts out the seconds in silence, then sticks the rainbow cable back into the connector.

He gets up, wiping sweat off his glistening forehead with a sleeve. "It's done," he says. "Reboot the software."

He stands in the doorframe, replacing his network analyzer in the belt loop around his olive overalls.

"Descartes, reboot the AC," I say.

We hear the system power down, then, a moment later the humming returns. I close my eyes, tilt my head back in the cool breeze.

"Oh, man, thank you."

He grins, showing incredibly white teeth. Little dimples appear in his cheeks.

I escort him to the door of my condo.

"Let me get my card."

He waves me off. "Oh, no need, it was completely our fault. Everyone above floor hundred and two had it."

"Lucky us."

He smiles again then leaves. A grin like that must've cost him his last six paychecks.

Only Jessica Bates responded to the courier Descartes had sent to both of Miranda's friends. She agreed to meet me in a private VR environment. I'm strapping tight the sensor sleeves. Attaching the thimbles one by one. The clock says it's four minutes till our rendezvous. I slid on the helmet, its faceplate the color of dirt. Three minutes to go. The questions I've planned for her tumble through my head. Two minutes.

A flick of a switch and the faceplate comes to life, fractals flickering while the image stabilizes. In an instant I'm transported to the address she'd sent me via her courier.

It's an empty room. White walls. White furniture. Only the chairs' legs are of a different color. It's the kind of place they stick you in to drive you nuts.

I sift through the network traffic to figure out my location but I'm shit out of luck. Spoofers placed on connections both in-coming and out-going distort the packets I receive. The ones I'm transmitting hop from router to router on a path impossible to trace in real time. Descartes tries cracking the algorithm but fails miserably. I'm probably being scattered, too, meaning parts of the environment's code are computed in differing physical locations. This level of paranoia catches me off guard but I'm also pretty damn impressed.

I realize the environment's simplicity is due to efficiency. As the code of the program grows, so does the difficulty of keeping it a secret.

A door materializes on one of the walls. She steps through it and the contours melt back into the walls.

We shake hands; our network protocols exchange authentication codes so we know who we're talking to.

She's dressed in white jeans and pink stilettos, has a collared beige shirt with sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her blonde hair is combed fashionably to one side, a golden earring dangling from her one visible ear. She curves her thin lips into a smile, sits down on her chair, legs crossed.

"Listen," I say, "I know this is hard for you, so I'll be as respectful and brief as poss–"

"No you listen," she cuts me off. "We're only here because Flora practically begged me to be cooperative and help in her so called investigation. Frankly I never liked Flora and what she's doing here with you borders being disrespectful and is of very bad taste."

Mouth agape, I gaze at her from top to bottom. After a moment I manage to say, "What do you mean?"

Her face closes up like an umbrella. "My best friend committed suicide for cryin' out loud. Her sister's paying PIs to look for aliens or some such bullshit to cope with the pain." The one earring dangles as she shakes her head. "That's unfair to Mimi's memory."

I regain my composure. I best be prudent and handle this interview with utmost care or she might just go on another rant, or worse, disconnect without providing any information.

"I understand," I say, my tone avuncular. "Why don't you tell me your side of the story, then?"

Okay, she doesn't believe anything external had an influence on Holly's suicide, a conclusion I'm this close to accepting myself, but her perspective on things might be refreshing and bring something new to the table.

"That would be nice," she says. Her blue eyes sparkle in the room's whiteness and she eases back into her chair.

"Describe her to me." I cross my fingers mentally.

One corner of her mouth curves into a half-smile. I breathe a sigh of relief.

"She is...was unique." Her eyes scour the white ceiling. "She could be your best friend and the biggest bitch at the same time." She laughs. "I mean I love her but her mood swings...oh, her goddamned mood swings."

There's a footnote or two in the reports stored on my hard drive about my subject's precarious mental state – no concrete diagnosis since she never went to a doctor, just anecdotal evidence offered by her sister. Violent forms of bipolar disorder are treatable and the less severe variants even curable, but Miranda Holly never admitted to having a problem.

"That bad, huh?" I ask.

She gives it a moment's thought. "Maybe not on the outside. You had to know her and be close to her to notice the difference."

"Why didn't she see a professional?"

Jessica shrugs. "Dunno. She described herself as emotional and too empathetic or something. And maybe that's true. I guess we'll never know."

I ask about Miranda's last days.

Her mood shifts and I can sense it even in this mediated virtual madhouse we're in. She gazes abstractedly at where the wall swallowed the door and I get the impression she just wants to sneak out of here as fast as possible.

"All I remember is she broke all contact with us," she says, her eyes fixated on the wall.

"Do you know why?" I try not to push too hard.

Dangling of the gold earring again as she shakes her head. Be gentle, I tell myself.

"Did anything happen out of the ordinary around the time of her death?"

She shakes it again, only slower.

To get meaningful answers I need to change tactic. Try a different angle. "What did you do the days prior to her death?"

She's taken aback. "Why?"

"Trying to get a better picture of what went on then," I say, and it seems she's pleased with my answer.

With her forefinger she rubs her earlobe, around and above the golden jewellery. "Vera and I went out almost every night to unwind from work and all that. We hit the local bars."

"What did you do at work?"

"I'm not allowed to discuss that," she says sharply.

It's not entirely true, though. Their contracts forbid them from going into specifics, but she's allowed to divulge general bits and pieces. But I'm not here to drill her and it's becoming obvious she just wants this to end.

"You don't have to go into the details."

She sighs. "I was a programmer. Same as Vera and Mimi."

Vertex Software's public database no longer holds any record of a Miranda Holly, but I'd accessed a cached copy which left me none the wiser about the specifics of her job there.

"What exactly did she do at the company?"

Jessica cocks an eyebrow and her face is saying don't push it friend. Nonetheless, she answers, "Same thing we all did. Wait for the managing software to allocate work for you, which meant testing code for other companies most of the time."

"Do you remember what she worked on around the time of her suicide?"

Her face freezes. I can swear it looks like the VR software's glitching out on us. Within a moment the resolution's smoothed out and she's back the way she was.

"Something about image recognition for an Australian firm." She's terse. Laconic.

I bring up the last message on Streamer. Her face jerks in that glitchy way again. She frowns, crossing her arms.

I ask again but she's silent.

Her patience is obviously up and I don't mean to overstay my welcome. Besides, I can tell she's not going to provide any new information. It could be a defence mechanism; after all we are talking about her dead best friend days after the funeral. I've seen this reaction time and time again with frail interviewees. Her answers will be plain as paper, boring, useless. Might as well continue this conversation with my virtual assistant.

"Listen, thanks for your time." I stand up. She does too and saunters over to the wall. The doorframe reappears. She holds the door open for me.

We say goodbye and I step out to be disconnected.

It takes three days of labouring over the same data before I finally throw my hands up and admit I'm stuck. There's a limit to the amount of useful information one can extract out of old recordings. So far, every piece of data has led me to a dead end. Even the always resourceful internet can't satisfy the infovore inside me, and it's gotten unbearable. I'm reduced to checking my inbox for a message from Vera every five minutes, on the off chance Descartes has missed it and failed to report it out loud.

Not being able to get a decent thread is beginning to get on my nerves, but I'm not yet ready to give up on this case and admit the police were right all along. I can't just write Miranda off as a nutcase, but Flora's assertion that something bigger is behind her sister's suicide is getting less plausible by the minute.

My job's not to ask why I'm doing what I'm paid to do, and contractors aren't obliged to provide explanations, but Jessica Bates' description of my subject's frail mental state left a sour taste in my mouth.

One thing's still nagging me, though. Flora's original case request ended with a sentence I can't get out of my head. My sister's been happy her entire life and if it weren't for the mind parasites they'd fed her, I'm sure that would've meant more than twenty eight years.

For a moment it sounds like she's the paranoid one but those words prove to be a great source of unease. Miranda was surrounded by friends and people who loved her and her lifestream indicates she'd loved them back, but what of the sudden drop, the anomaly, three days before she decided to liquefy her brain? Did she just snap? If the swings were half as bad as Jessica described them why not just go to a doctor? Even if there's more to it, she did kill herself, so what's Flora aiming at here? Whom does she want caught and unmasked?

All this running around in circles is making me anxious and for the first time in months I feel like going outside.

I check my inbox. Nothing. My finger hangs limp before the projector and I start making the inbox checking motion again. I catch myself just in time.

That's it. This'll drive me crazy.

With both hands I wave at my projector. All systems switch to hibernation.

I grab my coat, head for the door.

"Going outside?" says Descartes.

"I need some fresh air."

Pause. Then, "Do you want company?"

I haven't left my apartment in months. Sure, they say the sun's bad for you, but that's not to real reason. Even though I hate to admit it, doing what I do is starting to affect the little that's left of my personal life. It's starting to scare me off from living.

"Definitely," I say.

He copies himself from my home system straight to my body LAN.

"Let's go out, then," he whispers in my ear.

I shuffle out of the apartment. The door beeps twice behind me to indicate that it's locked.

The narrow hall is flanked by apartments. My head spins and my legs buckle. Abject terror seizes me, pleading me to step back into the safety of my apartment. I take a deep breath, steady myself against the wall.

I whisper to myself, "I can do this."

I realize I know none of my neighbors. What if one of them decides to peer into the hallway now. I don't even know their names. That's okay, I reassure myself. Nobody knows anybody today.

I bump my fist against the elevator button and it flashes green. With deep breaths I count out the moments to its arrival. The number one hundred and fifty blinks above my head as the doors slide open.

Into the elevator. "Know where we're going?" I subvocalize.

"Vera Abburi's place. I have the address," says Descartes.

The numbers on the elevator screen start counting down. I smile.

Descartes. He knows me all too well.

A fury of sounds welcomes us outside. It's night, and everyone is out. As if the city's buildings have been squeezed out like wounds and the entire puss flowed out to the streets. People jostle about, shoulder their way through the crowd.

It's overwhelming. I want to turn round, back into my building, up the elevator and inside my air-conditioned apartment. I can use a robot like I always do.

But I remain rooted to the spot. The surge of adrenaline keeps me in place.

My building stretches over me like a shadow in a nightmare. A step forward and I tear myself off it to join the torrent of people. We go where the sidewalk takes us. Like being picked up by the shoulders and carried, feet inching off the ground. Beside us cars whistle about at great speeds in the street's six lanes, traffic lights conducting them like an orchestra on fast-forward. Neon lights flash on and off in a rainbow of colors spelling out names for liquor stores, drug stores or strip clubs.

The faces in the crowd are diverse. I don't let my gaze linger on any of them for too long – in a big city it's best to err on the side of caution – but the sheer number of faces makes even the slightest glimpse feel like I'm missing out on the others. My stomach's turning over itself but I ignore it. All those geeks from online chatrooms were right – going out is a rush, alright. There's a very raw edge to it, really. Knowing I could get stabbed, or mugged, despite the very low chance of that happening turns a simple walk as exciting as a rollercoaster ride.

A pair of blue eyes meets my gaze and I look down immediately. My heart beats harder. I quicken my pace for a few steps, but then I realize I'm acting childish and slow back down into the rhythm of the throng.

Occasionally a cheap robot would show its face in the crowd. The slow facial expressions are the giveaway, otherwise, most expensive models look and talk like us.

I arrive at a crossing. From its four corners rise the legs of a skyscraper. The glass towers go up and up into the thick smog, and I can barely make out the bridge where all four connect.

Descartes lays out a map of the city before my eyes. Vera Abburi lives in a house in an affluent neighborhood some fifteen kilometers from here.

"I hailed a cab a minute ago," he says in my ear.

We wait at the curb.

A yellow blemish wheezes from the distance. It switches lanes, tires screeching, and stops right before us.

Back door pops open. We get in.

Out of the cab and into the blue light of the boulevard. Descartes relays payment information to the onboard computer of the car. The transaction's confirmed. It drives off along a downward slope back into the belly of the city.

Around us not a living soul, yet there are houses everywhere. Small houses with little windows and backyards for barbecue, mailboxes and porches. A piece of suburbia hidden like a secret, undevoured by the towering goliaths of glass and metal in the distance.

The sidewalk's lined up with candelabras, scattering a pale blue on the tarmac.

"You can see the stars from here," says Descartes in my ear.

He's right. White dots sparkle in the sky like jewels.

"Take a picture."

He snaps a screenshot through my eyes, stores it in memory.

Vera Abburi's house is two blocks down. I didn't want us stopping right before it so we can scout out the area first, get some sense of our surroundings. I saunter over to it, observing along the way.

Her house is exactly like the one next to it, and the one after, and all others. Seems as if a giant Fabber shat them out, one after the other, all alike, so the inhabitants feel included and belonging to a community or something. Much the same as in my building complex, or all building complexes in the city, except I don't have to wave at my neighbors, smile, or pretend I like them. Shit, I can't even recall their faces.

A gravel driveway leads up to a wood porch. Up the stairs, then I ring the doorbell.

I can feel her eyes on me through the camera in the upper corner. I try to look as affable as I can. A moment later her voice hisses from a speaker, laced with a tiny buzz of static.

"Who is this?"

I lean closer to the door. "I'm hired by Flora Holly, Miranda's sister...Can we please speak in private?"

A pause. I take out my card from the wallet and hold it before the camera. A simple database query by its pattern-matching software should confirm my identity.

The door buzzes. "Come in," she says.

I step in, the door clicks shut behind me.

Inside it's different. The house has goddamn character. It's cosy. So much warmth emanating from the place. I haven't felt anything like this.

The walls are coated with Venetian plaster in all shades of red. Subtle stencil design on the bottom that takes a moment to notice.

"You want tea?" A voice from behind a corner. I hear the clanking of kettles.

"Sure."

Out of the hall and into the living room. It's large. Or maybe it's regular. How would I know? My apartment doesn't have one.

Two beige sofas are placed at a right angle. I sit down, look around. There's a framed Indian textile on one wall. Two rustic bookshelves hold a bunch of books. At first glance they seem divided. Technology books go in the right one, horror titles in the left.

Vera Abburi strolls in the room, trey in hand. On it, two cups on saucers and a steaming pot. She sets it on the table.

"I took the liberty of adding milk, hope you don't mind."

"Not at all, thank you."

She sets the cup before me, pours tea. She sits on an ottoman opposite me, pours tea in her cup, too.

Her head on one hand, elbow on knee, she looks at me, dark bags under her eyes. She picks the cup up by its handle that looks like one half of a heart. Brings it to her mouth.

"So," she says, "aren't you going to ask me questions?"

I snap out of my reverie and check if Descartes is recording. He is.

Before I get to speak the doorbell chimes. She's just as surprised as me. Her eyes acquire that glassy distance – her digital assistant's piping the cam footage directly to her optical nerve.

Up and down her epiglottis moves. She's subvocalizing with her guests.

Back into focus again, she looks at me.

"It's for you," she says.

Startled, I ask, "Who is it?"

"Two men in suits. They said they know you are here."

Who the hell could know I'm here?

"Don't open the door."

She's deliberating, then subvocalizes some more. She gets up but I stand in her way.

"Do you have a back exit?"

She frowns. "I don't want to get involved. Why don't you wait here while I open..."

I shake my head. "You won't get involved. Say I ran out. Stall them. Find out as much as you can about who they are then contact me via my assistant."

Reluctantly, she nods, and points at her bathroom. I slide inside as she goes to open the door.

In an upper corner of the bathroom is a small window. I pop it open, put one foot on the tub to try to climb out of it. Somehow I squeeze out and stumble down into the backyard. I hear voices from inside the house. Perched against the outer wall I hear one of them entering the bathroom.

Footsteps come closer to the window. Before he can get a chance to peek out, I start running.

"There," he yells out.

I run down the slope leading to the city. A quick glance back reveals two black shapes getting out of Vera's house and into a black car. The engine revs.

"Get a cab to meet us somewhere," I gasp through ragged breath. Descartes acknowledges.

Over a hedge fence and into someone else's backyard. I hear the car swerve in the street.

"Scratch that," I say. "We're going by subway. Crowds. Witnesses."

Descartes maps out the fastest route to a subway station, slaps it in a corner of my eye.

I rush through the backyard, careful not to wake anybody up. Past the garage, over the driveway and out on the street on the other side. Two yellow circles sweep the ground then the car surges out the corner, turning my way.

Sunny Hills station is two blocks north, near a public school. I run across the street. My left foot catches on the curb and I trip. Flat on my face. The car edges closer. I push myself up, break into a run. I can feel light on my back.

My elbows are skinned. God how it burns. Warm blood drips down my chin.

I take a sharp right turn, jump over another house's fence. My predator drives further down then makes a right, too. The engine's too silent. It whispers. Nobody will be awake to hear the car run me over.

This yard has a pool. It's empty now. An open mouth. I circle round it, then over the fence and into another row of streetlamp blue.

"One row to go," Descartes says.

I remember to take deep breaths. Haven't used my muscles in so long it feels like tendon will rip from bone any minute now. Each step hurts, but I run, adrenaline numbing the pain away.

Again the lights, followed by the car. It comes from my left.

I burn with strength. Across the street, I swing myself over another fence, through a yard. A dog growls, barks out loud, but I'm out of there before it leaves the kennel.

There it is. To my right the ground opens up, stairs leading down to Sunny Hills station. I take five steps at a time down into the stale air of the subway tunnels.

I hear the car pull over. Two doors open and are quickly slammed shut.

The station's pristine. I guess the rich never take the train so there's nobody to filthy up the place.

A booming voice announces a train's about the leave. I go through the turnstile, Descartes exchanges bank account info and it charges me for the ride. Down some more stairs. A pocket of hot air hits me right in the face.

The train's slick silver doors are closing.

"Hold it," I yell out to a middle-aged woman inside the train.

She springs up, waves her hand before the door's sensor. Two big steps and I slide in just in time. I can't believe my luck.

The train starts rolling. A soft voice announces the name of the station next in line.

My heart's about to spring out of my chest.

Two black suits run down the stairs, but then the train picks up speed and Sunny Hills station becomes a blur.

All I see through the windows now is my bloodied reflection and corny ads on the tunnel walls.

Scratching a Save the Planet decal off the pole absent-mindedly, I try to put things in perspective. Could the ones chasing me be responsible for Miranda Holly's death? If so, how are they responsible for it?

The motherly voice from the speaker says the name of the station in different languages. It's my stop.

People on handles lean sideways as the train decelerates. It grinds to a halt and they straighten up. The doors swing open. A big portion shuffles out. I remain inside.

It's no stretch to assume the assholes know my address. It'd be wiser to stay away awhile. Lay low someplace until I figure out what's what.

I ride almost to the end of the route. On the penultimate station I get off. It looks desolate, depressing. Paper bags strewn over the floor, walls graffitied, thrash cans full to the brim. I climb up the stairs, hoping for fresh air.

The neighborhood is rough but I have a friend here. More of an acquaintance really. I've helped him out of deep shit once and I know he knows he owes me.

Blood has caked in my nostrils, its metallic smell going wherever I go.

Up the stairs and onto the street. There's no blue street light here. No houses, no backyards, no pools either. Only brown, bricked buildings row after row in a grid of poverty.

I walk the sidewalk in silence. I'm tired, muscles burning, in dire need for sleep.

The sun's about to come out. In the distance I can see its first rays glimmer on skyscrapers.

Miranda wasn't insane. She didn't suffer a worse than usual bout of depression and melted her brain. Something drove her to suicide. Perhaps those two assholes might know more about that.

I turn into a bleak side street. There's a Styrofoam cup with a grinning rooster giving the thumbs up discarded on the tarmac, one side of it melted away by scorching daylight. I kick it and it rolls in a semicircle.

A grip on my shoulder from behind. I'm spun around.

"Hello." Black suit and tie. Neatly trimmed beard. A perfect smile, dimples in his cheeks.

"You," I gasp.

He lifts his other arm, sprays my face.

I stagger, fall back. Someone catches me from behind.

I lie on the ground, gazing at the blue black sky. Two blurry faces lean over me.

Everything goes dark.

Two smears appear, quickly coming into focus. The shapes move. One approaches me. Blinding light flashes from my left, then from my right side. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to remember where I am.

"This'll wake you up."

A little prick on my shoulder. A cold sensation spreads from it to the rest of my body. Excitement runs through my veins, my heart pumps harder, jolting me out of stupor.

I'm tilted back in a comfortable padded recliner. My legs are stretched out but tied at the feet with plastic straps. My arms are velcroed to the armrests. A brown seatbelt is fastened around my torso and the chair's back to insure complete immobility.

"The fuck is this?"

One of the two men is leaning against a cabinet, arms crossed, his face showing unmistakable signs of fatigue.

"It's for our protection," he says.

The other is going through a box of stuff and I see him replacing a flashlight and putting the box in the lowest drawer of the cabinet.

"You bugged my system," I tell him.

"We had to. Sorry." He's not smiling anymore. Nor is he in grimy olive overalls.

The room is small and sterile. Feels like they emptied someone's office on a short notice to make space for me.

"What you gonna do now, torture me?"

Both of them cringe.

"Nobody's gonna torture anybody," says the bastard who corrupted my systems. Well at least this explains how he paid for that dentist.

They both seem unwilling to talk much, as if they're waiting for something. Or someone. Maybe an order for how to dispense with me.

I realize now why I haven't been able to dig out any new info all this time. Ever since that fake repair job the networks were turned against me, preventing me from finding clues. I remember the VR glitches with Jessica Bates. They must've tampered with the interview. Filtered her answers.

"What the hell is going on here?" I holler out. Waiting is driving me insane. I jerk my hands up and down. The straps hold out.

My repairman leans over me, looks me in the eyes.

"This is not what you think. You're not a hostage." There's genuine regret in his eyes.

"Oh sorry, I suppose I must've sprayed myself with narcotics, dragged my own ass over here and strapped myself to this chair. Yeah, I'm no hostage."

I spit in his face. "You can shove that condescending tone up your ass."

He wipes it, straightens up and goes back to his friend with arms crossed.

The door swings open and a much shorter and plumper man walks in. He nods at my two kidnappers. He places a briefcase on the table next to me, opens it with a click.

"We'll need to examine you for dangerous technology," he says. "We don't want you to go ballistic on our asses." He laughs, the tufts of hair that still remain on his balding head bob up and down.

He pulls a lamp out of the briefcase, puts it on one of the armrests. A bunch of cables go out of it and into his briefcase, which I now realize has an embedded computer.

"You couldn't do this while I was out?"

The one leaning on the cabinet says, "That would be illegal. We wanted you awake for everything so you couldn't claim before a judge that your well-being was in any way endangered."

The lamp shoots squares of light at different parts of my body and its operator mumbles to himself, peering in his briefcase.

"Trust me, if I go before a judge I think I might mention the kidnapping first." I tug at the restrains again.

"That's for your and the public's safety. Besides, we wanted to politely invite you in but you ran away. We though you'd developed some crazy conspiracy crap."

The lamp stops flashing. Shorty tells them I'm clean, folds his lamp, replaces it, shuts his briefcase and strolls out the door.

"Okay then," says my fake repairman, "let's untie you and take you to him. He'll explain everything."

We're walking along a small corridor. Both men accompany me. There are no restraints. No handcuffs. They know I can't run away. They know I no longer want to. My curiosity piqued, I'm not even considering escape.

The corridor's crooked, gently sloping downwards.

There's no echo. Our footsteps sound muffled. We don't talk. I cast occasional sidelong glances at them but their faces are blank, telling me nothing.

The corridor ends with an elevator. The chromium doors part, revealing two soldiers inside.

We step in.

My stomach turns over itself. I try to count out the seconds to gauge how deep underground we're going but I quickly lose track.

We step out into a carpeted hallway flanked by office doors. Ferns grow out of pots. The walls are painted white. There's a water dispenser, too.

One of my captors knocks on a door.

"Come in." A faint voice from inside.

A carousel of holographs swirls in the center of the room. He's standing in the middle of it, orchestrating their movement. He punches the air and a smoky string of numbers disappears. Drags his hand across and two separate sets of decimals merge. The halo of numbers shines bright; they permutate, tumble through the air like moths.

I realize I've seen this man before. Not in the flesh but in my workroom. I've seen his narrow face and messy hair hanging there like his own projections do now.

He drops his hands. Obeying his movement, the holograms die down.

He walks up to me, hand outstretched.

"Hi," he says. "Peter Casey. Welcome to Paradise City headquarters."

He gestures at a swivelling chair. Reluctantly, I sit down.

"You may leave us alone," he says, and my captors obey, filing out of the room.

His face is like an inverted triangle, prominent forehead but barely any room for his mouth. He's thin, frail, hair in desperate need of a comb. Unlike his employees he's not wearing a suit or tie or any formal attire whatsoever, but a black and white checkered wool vest and a plain white shit underneath it, its open collar slightly askew.

He looks like a cartoon character.

"Coffee?"

"Please."

He puts a plastic cup under the espresso machine's nozzle, switches it on.

"I suppose you'd like to learn what's happed to Mrs. Holly?"

"It's what I'm paid for," I say.

He chuckles, sits down on a chair a bit taller than mine.

The machine hums for a moment, then fills my cup up with delicious black coffee, drop by drop.

"You think there's foul play here, don't you? I can see it in your eyes." He leans over his desk, peers into my face. "Afraid you'll be disappointed when you learn the truth."

He scoops up my cup, puts it on the desk before me and places another one under the nozzle.

"Let me be the judge of that," I say, breathing in the beautiful aroma. I take a sip, burning the roof of my mouth. The bitter taste loosens me up and I make myself comfortable in my chair.

He gets his cup. Takes a sip.

His fingers form a steeple. A few dots pop out of nowhere. More numbers. He follows their dance with his gaze. We sit in silence a while and I get the impression he's waiting for me to start asking questions.

"So tell me," I say, "what did Miranda Holly do for this company exactly?"

He snaps his fingers and the numbers blink out of existence.

"She was a programmer." He's absent-minded. I can't shake off the feeling that I'm conversing with someone who isn't exactly here.

"I know that," I say. "But she stumbled onto something here, didn't she?"

He claps his hands. A bunch of documents materialize before us.

"You see, when I first began work on Paradise City I got all sorts of lunatics on the phone demanding they be let in. To be the first of the Immortals would be a privilege and a middle finger to the other rich bastards that didn't make the first cut. In effect, that's how we financed the project in the first place. Upfront investment by twenty rich businessmen with a fear of death to make you wonder about the kind of lives they've led," he says, watching the floating images.

"One of the preconditions on my part was that they sign a waver allowing me to conduct scientific research with their uploaded minds. Nothing compromising, obviously, but research nonetheless, with the goal of furthering the field."

He pushes his palm and the documents float my way. I ping Descartes to read them to me but he's not responding – they must've switched him off. My eyes glaze over the contract, and despite the thick legalese I see that what Peter Casey's saying is true.

"Okay, but what has this to do with Miranda Holly?"

He snaps his fingers again and the documents are replaced by rectangular floating screens, windows into other worlds.

In one a person's lounging in a hammock, drinking cocktails. The one next to it opens up to a bright blue sky and a man riding a dragon amidst clouds. Yet another shows a family, chatting idly over dinner.

"This is Paradise City," I gasp as I realize I'm spying on the first human minds residing entirely inside computers.

"Paradise Cities," he corrects me calmly. "The original software has been bought and is currently running on other supercomputers too: two in Europe, two in China, one in Japan."

He takes another sip of his coffee. "What Miranda Holly worked on was an update of the graphics engine. What she discovered were functions in the code pertaining to my research. She figured the program was malicious, that the poor residents aren't safe. She contacted her supervisor who in turn contacted us. We then brought her in for a chat."

He rubs his forehead with two fingers.

"I showed her the contracts and documents to prove what we're doing is legal, but she wanted to know more. She swore she'd go public unless I explain the experiments behind what she referred to as 'mind-mangling program code'," he says. "So I did. I showed her my experiments."

He pokes the air with his fingers and the Paradise City windows collect to one side, making room for an emergent fog of numbers.

"When we dealt with the first upload we applied a compression algorithm to groups of neurons, effectively porting them to computer chips. We're not simulating every single neuron and glial cell separately but abstracting the way they behave through simple mathematics. Action potential, chemical build-up within the cytoplasm, synaptic firings and all that biology is turned to numbers which represent it."

I try to follow his words, nodding apprehensively.

"There's nothing more obvious that this," he says, and pauses to drain the last drops of coffee into his mouth.

A swing of the arm and a cloud of numbers forms between the two of us. All windows to the different instances of Paradise City dissolve but one – a couple frolicking in the grass beneath an oak tree.

"What you see here," he says, pointing at the cloud, "is what you see here." He points at the window depicting the couple at sunset.

Buzzing like flies, the numbers are a constant blur of ones and zeros, changing according to the actions of the simulation they represent.

I ask, naively, "Is that...the code to Paradise City?"

His thin lips stretch into a smile. "It's a numeric representation, yes."

Taking a deep breath, he says, "Now, I've always wanted to hold the world in my hands, test out a few hypotheses I've held since childhood. And the Paradise City framework is built with that in mind – a perfect simulation of our world down to the quantum level, to be manipulated as desired."

"What hypotheses?" His words and manner of speaking do nothing to abate my first impression of him as a deranged person draped in a lab coat.

"Observe," he says.

Peter does a weird finger gesture and the numbers come into focus. Over the rim of my paper cup I see they're no longer in motion. The screen into Paradise City is now a picture.

"Let's review the last five minutes of simulation." Like with an old videotape he rewinds the movements of the two residents, and I see them get up from the grass, the man sit back down on a stool, pick his paint-brush up, the woman peer at the canvas he's painting on, rub his shoulders, then depart from the scene altogether, leaving him all alone with the landscape.

The numbers are also changing, I suspect backtracking into the previous states of the simulation.

This makes me uncomfortable. I fidget in my seat. "Can they feel that?"

He ignores my question.

"Understand that I can't rewind too far back – keeping all passed states in memory would require a storage device the size of the Earth. Instead, Paradise City's been programmed to keep a finite number of states in memory, something which would translate to roughly five minutes of our own time."

He brings his hands together. At his signal the window showing the numbers is split in two identical windows of equal size.

"What I can do, though, is copy this state of simulation, and run it in another instance."

A snap of his fingers and that's exactly what happens. Before me float four translucent screens, each pair showing the exact same thing: a woman appearing into a landscape, rubbing her partner's shoulders, admiring his painting, then lying into the grass as the sun sets. The other two windows – the second part of each pair – shows the numbers representing the simulated worlds.

The avatars spring back to life.

"What happened?" I ask. "Did you just make a copy of them?"

He nods fervently. "I did. Don't you find this strange?"

I scour the scenes for a moment, looking for an imperfection, a glitch. "There's nothing strange. Both are identical."

He's beaming. "Exactly."

"Why is that strange?"

He looks taken aback as if my inability to comprehend is meant as an insult. He regains composure quickly. "Because what I've done is taken their whole world – let's call it Paradise City 1 – at time t and made a copy – Paradise City 2 – of it, and ran it on a completely different set of processors. What happened? PC2 behaves exactly like PC1, goes through the exact same states, and ends up at the exact same spot."

I frown. "So?"

He bangs a fist on his desk. "This means their world is deterministic. Despite all its complexity, if you take the world at time t and observe it until t+n, regardless of how many times you rewind and restart the simulation, every virtual atom will go through the same motions from t to t+n. Every person will perform the same action regardless of how many times you attempt to start over. Their future will always be unchangeable."

Peter strokes his oily hair as I digest his words.

"Can you predict their future?"

"No. If I wanted to figure out where a resident of Paradise City will end up in a year's time, I'll have to calculate and take into account so many things that I'll end up simulating an entire year. That is no different than just letting the simulation run its course."

He smiles, his eyes following a newly spawned swarm of fireflies from the projector.

I'm lost, unable to see the big picture, if there is one at all, but I remember something.

"Who are the Voyeurs?" I ask him.

He chuckles.

"When a person's fate is sealed, and if you put them in the same position they always make the same choice, how can they be different from characters in a cartoon? What gives them the right to be called alive?"

He gets up, refills his cup with coffee. I'm not sure if he's waiting for me to answer his question.

"It's us," he says, thumping his chest. "Make ten copies of the same five minute interval and put ten different people in front of ten different screens and I'll guarantee you'll get ten interpretations of the events shown."

The Voyeurs. "Imparting identity through observation," I say. Their nickname is well-deserved and the irony of the situation's making me laugh. Hoping to escape death and overcome physical limits to be free, the residents of Paradise City signed up to be sock puppets in a panoptical charade that's not really living up to its name.

I swallow, try to calm my nerves down a bit. "You're saying those rich uploads somehow don't have an identity of their own? That they need us for that? How...uh, how did this drive someone to suicide?"

He leans over his desk, grabs my wrists. He's out of his fucking mind, I realize.

"Didn't you listen?" His eyes gleam with delight. He licks the corner of his mouth and leaves a bit of white spittle there. "PC was designed to model the real world down to the deepest physical level. If their world is deterministic then so is ours."

Sweat's glistening on his forehead. His eyes bulge out. He takes a deep breath, lets go of my hands and relaxes back into his chair.

"I don't see the connection," I admit. "Why would that depress her?"

"It would depress a lot of people."

"But it changes nothing about our daily lives," I protest. "And why would she worry about your Voyeurs? There's no one looking down on us."

"We have no way of knowing that." He nods solemnly, eyes closed. "The mathematical probability of us being in a simulation is very, very high."

The hair on the back of my neck stands up and my stomach seems to want to squeeze its contents up and out. I've heard this idea discussed before on VR forums I used to frequent. Once a civilization reaches a certain technological threshold it will no doubt create a simulation of evolution, which will then yield one or many civilizations, who when the time comes would themselves fashion simulations and the chain would continue into infinity. The probability of us being the first to simulate life is close to zero. Or so the theory goes.

But I never bought it, and I can't believe Miranda Holly, a reasonable software engineer in a respectable firm, accepted all this bullshit. This guy is bat-shit insane and she should've seen that. She should've told her friends. They would've seen it and explained or helped her. I hate this lunatic and want to take a swing at him.

A sudden coldness writhes in the pit of my gut. I'm getting emotional about a case subject, I realize. Without a word I stand up. His eyes are closed and he's drawing deep, slow breaths.

"I'd like to leave now." My tone's a pitch higher than usual.

He nods, puts his fist inside his hand.

The door swings open and my two captors stride in. It's weird but I'm sort of glad to see them again.

There's one more thing I need to know.

"Why did you tell me this? Why did you tell her?"

"Soon, the whole world will learn of this, my life's work, and I wish to reveal my discoveries myself." He spreads his arms wide. "In the meanwhile, I can't afford to have the public receive distorted versions of my work by a suicidal bitch and her death investigator."

"Take me home," I say to the two henchmen, and prance out the room without looking at the lunatic or saying anything.

Blindfolded and in a jeep's backseat. The first few minutes I try to visualize and etch into memory the route we take but I quickly lose focus and let my head drop and lull from side to side.

My stomach's contents slime their way up my oesophagus and I swallow, desperately trying to prevent myself from vomiting. That fucking car freshener.

I force my mind to go through the conversation just so I don't puke last night's veggie soup.

So one crazy asshole says our fate is sealed – our lives written out – and we have to accept it or end up as someone's suicide case. People might take offence and clutch at vague notions of free will or liberty to their very last breath, and yet others might take solace that a heavy weight's been lifted off their shoulders – no more worrying where you end up, just keep moving and follow the footprints. It's all bullshit but I have this nagging feeling that I need to take a side.

But then there's the third, most probable, option – Peter Casey's wrong.

Regardless of his little theories, one person's already dead, and if he goes public with them many might follow suit. But hasn't that always existed? If I go after everyone depressed by these findings to convince them suicide isn't a solution, shouldn't I do the same for every other gullible cultist on Earth?

Resigned, I let my head drop, and let it lull with the car's motion.

I explained to Flora everything, and my bank balance is slightly above zero again. She appeared disappointed when we met. Her hunch was true but I doubt the mind parasites she had suspected were armchair philosophy arguments. In the end they might've played a part, but I name Miranda Holly's emotional wobbles as the decisive factor.

I'm sitting before my desk. Descartes, restored and backed-up, stays silent, waiting for my commands.

I wonder if I should get another case. There really isn't much to do and three days of rest is long enough – if sleeplessness and obsessing over a dead person can qualify as rest. Or maybe I need a bigger break. Something more substantial. It's not just Holly, but Peter Casey's crazed ramblings, too.

I get up, stroll over to the kitchen and have my Fabber churn out my dose of serotonin reuptake inhibitors. It hums for a moment then two purple pills pop out. I clench my fist, squeezing them.

Is my choice written out on tape somewhere? Could my next move be observed – precipitated even – by a Voyeur?

I smile, tossing the pills in the trash. A burst of adrenaline makes my legs wobble and I break into fits of laughter. Walking over to my bedroom I throw myself over the bed.

A thought is stretching over me until it has me overpowered. That crazy bastard.

I roll in my bed, unable to stop laughing.

Nothing's changed. I'm not saying that now I believe Peter Casey, or that I believe that you exist.

To be honest, I'm not sure I want you to be real. Because if you are, I can't say I'm pleased with your work. But then there's the flip side. A simple test to be made. A request, if you will.

One Voyeur sees the numbers, the data, reads the tape, and interprets my world into existence. But we can't be alone out here, just you and I. It would be ironic if that's the case, me being all special, when my whole life I've felt anything but. No, there have to be many observers. Many Voyeurs.

And then there's the tape. The string of numbers. The data. The words.

I wonder how I appear through it, with my identity shaped by the lens of your own thoughts and emotions. Do you see me as I see myself?

Well I don't care because now I'd like you to let me be seen by someone else. I have a sack full of regrets and shit I should've done differently. I'm not asking for the impossible here, I know my actions are immutable and there's no changing the story. But someone else might see them differently. Make sense of them in a way you couldn't. Maybe a different Voyeur will see blonde chick where you see grumpy old man. A decent person surrounded by loved ones instead of a lonely misanthrope.

Give me a second chance. Rewind me and pass me around so I start all over.

Look away.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Damien Krsteski is a science-fiction author from Skopje, Macedonia. His work has appeared in various publications, links to which can be found at http://monochromewish.blogspot.com.

THE UNMAKER

N.S. Mariner

"Acceptance. That's the final stage of grief, but it's the moment everyone needs to reach finally to begin the healing process."

I toy lazily at a pile of empty granola wrappers with my loosely laced boot, remembering the conversation I had with the young girl. Probably a year ago. It felt like a decade. Someone other person's life, really. What was her name? Melissa? Megan? Her parents died in a fire, and the State tasked me with convincing the child that life would move on. Life did move on, more or less. It moved right on into a nightmare more terrible and more debilitating than losing two loved ones, even two reasonably caring and compassionate parents. But I did my job. I kept her sane and alive long enough for front row seats to The End. That'll be two grand, kid.

What the hell was her name? Cassie? Courtney? I give one of the wrappers a sharp kick upward. It lifts higher and higher then outward and beyond, at once directionless and intentional, and I wonder if the now nameless memory was still alive somewhere. I wonder if she had accepted it yet.

I lean back against an abandoned car and curse myself for thinking of the world so simply. Acceptance, as if it was something easily reached. Movies and television always made it look so simple. Within a scene, people accepted that they were stranded in a gas station surrounded by evil, autonomous eighteen-wheelers, accepted that aliens had stationed their mega-ships above the Empire State Building and meant to misbehave, accepted that a once-dead psychopath had come back to skewer all their friends with pikes and machetes and speed-boat engines.

I remember feeling all of the other stages profoundly. I felt sadness and anger that my friends and neighbors disappeared into the night without explanation. I politicked endlessly with local police forces and neighborhood watch groups to do something, anything to prove their resources weren't stagnant and useless against the Unknown. Like everyone else in town, I denied all of it. The mutilated corpse of Mrs. Walker's kitten was a coyote or maybe some twisted teens looking for a drug-addled knock-around. The lost children would be found and they'd catch the son of bitch who did it. Religion would provide answers. The sickness would end, medicine would work, and this would all pass with sadness. But ultimately, it would come to pass.

But as I throw a mostly empty knapsack over my shoulder and lump sluggishly into the woods, I grasp at apparitions and lazy recollections. Everyone I know is dead. I could be, from what I have seen, the last living thing on Earth, unless Megan or Molly or Cassandra was wandering around somewhere, cursing her government-issue shrink's hapless advice. And I am on my way to an invited conversation with whatever force brought this madness to be. No. No, no, no. Whatever comes next, acceptance is never going to fucking happen.

I casually flip the knapsack around on my shoulder, reach in, and pull out the loose piece of paper, unfolding it as I drop the pack in the trail and leave it for all eternity. Whatever is left in it, I couldn't imagine needing it next. I look down from the path and read the note in my hand:

Martin,

Please meet me this evening at your convenience. You pick the time and place. I'll be there.

Warm regards,

The Unmaker

I received the note this morning. I could not understand how entirely. Baking in the mid-day sun, an awful, rotten goddamn sun, relentless and inconsiderate, I reached into my pocket for a rosary I pulled off the body of a decaying nun in a Catholic school I burrowed into for a week's shelter. The beaded links had become a sort of lucky totem for me, The Pilgrim of the Strange Days. Not a totem of Faith. Maybe of Possibility. Happenstance. Materiality. But reaching into my pocket to rub the connected orbs with my forefinger, as had become habit, I found the rosary gone, replaced with a small scrap of paper with the note written in near type-writer perfection. Dammit, I thought. One more religion not worth the wooden-bead necklace it's printed on. I had no idea how to communicate back to the sender what time and place I picked for our meeting, so I headed to whatever spot made sense (something close and good for a nap should things take a while) and figured he or she or it would be there. It didn't strike me as the most efficient or accurate way of coordinating plans, but who was I to second-guess a supernatural presence that killed an entire planet in the matter of three weeks?

He make my way through a darkening wood, knowing that my host is waiting. I forget worrying about how I know. I gave up concern for the how of the world when my neighbors, the Blackwoods, a lovely, septuagenarian couple, melted before my very eyes. Ernest Blackwood never stopped watering his lawn. He just stood there, skin pouring from his bones as fluidly as the water pouring from the spout of his hose to his carefully manicured azaleas. He gave me one final smile and wave, pausing in his decomposition long enough to say "so long, neighbor." God, they were polite. Why don't I miss them?

Just as I knew it would, at the exact moment I knew it would, the wood opens to a clearing. There, by a lack-luster campfire light – note to self, explain to whatever this monster is the meaning of the word cliché – I find The Unmaker, the writer of the note, the destroyer of my world.

Surprise comes in different shapes and sizes, as it turns out. It comes in small doses when you discover your holiday bonus was for a few hundred more than what you expected or when you realize their actually was one beer left behind the spaghetti sauce and uneaten broccoli. It comes a bit sharper and slightly more uninvited when your shin bone miraculously finds the corner of the ottoman in your bedroom you moved six feet to the left in a failed attempt at feng shui when you get up to go to the bathroom at three o' clock in the morning. And it comes again in nearly irreconcilable doses when you wake up to discover that all life as you knew it was dead, dying or very rudely unaccounted for. Nothing really stings worse, though, than a surprise that comes exactly in the moment when you decide nothing left in the world could surprise you. Sitting at the fire, poking it thoughtlessly with a long branch, sits an eight-year-old girl, the flicker of the flame dancing silhouettes of the unthinkable across her bottomless expression. I sit safely apart from what should not, could not possibly be there.

"Welcome, Martin," the girl says plainly. Too damn plainly. I stare at it, wordless, allowing impossible grief and more impossible anger to battle for the next twitch of my brow. It speaks again. "I thought you might be more comfortable speaking to me in this form."

"I'm not," I bite, choosing to stare toward the fire until my pupils sting rather than reconnect with the beast.

"Well, it's all the same, I guess," the Unmaker says. "Your daughter was very beautiful. Why let such a thing go to waste?" I glance up at my Meggie. No, not my Meggie. The stringy blond hair is there. The relaxed, crooked smile is there. But the eyes, once full of wonder and grace, her inquisitive and quixotic eyes, are absent. Now eldritch. Foreign. Unnatural.

"I will allow you three questions to start," the daughter-creature demands. It is not a request.

"Are you God?" I ask. I know the answer, but I figure I should check. Just in case.

The Unmaker curls its lips hypnotically into a seductive sneer. "Hardly."

"Are you the Devil?"

"Jesus, Martin," it exhales. "I can answer any question you ask. Ask me about the rotation of the planets. The purpose of human life. Where your socks go in the laundry. Three questions. Three forsaken questions, and you waste your first two on thoughts of the human divine?" Fake-Meggie lets out a condescending chuckle that chilled the marrow in my bones. "Well, one more. Get it over with, however perfunctory it might be, so we can move on with our night. I have all eternity, actually, but that doesn't mean I give you permission to take up all of it."

I think only momentarily about my last question, knowing that the first two were cautionary warm-ups to the singular question I have carried in my mind for months as I watched my entire life collapse, the entire world collapse, and as I emerged as its only survivor.

"Why me?" I ask.

"Why the hell not?" the girl retorts, now a tad more playfully.

And that is that.

I entertained myself some nights with flights of grandeur, imagining that my solitude in the end times was only an indication of my own exceptionalism. That I was in fact left behind for a purpose and after a life of unremarkable banality, I would discover myself to be the final piece in a cosmic jigsaw puzzle. But with four words, cackled at me sardonically from my own dead daughter, I know those dreams to be just that. Dreams. And silly dreams, now that I take more time to reflect on them. Too many Charlton Heston movies. My shoulders slump almost imperceptibly. I hope not to give my host the satisfaction of witnessing my disappointment.

I fail at that, too, of course. Sensing the unmaking of my pride, The Unmaker cocks its head back at an inhuman angle and howls with delight. It has done its job again, and done it well. When the Meggie-creature finishes bellowing its victory into the night, the woods return to silence. It is in that moment that I perceive the silence for the first time. Not just quiet, where all of those things that go bump and twitter lie dormant, where those things that could be making noise are simply choosing to remain still. But silence. Silence that sucks me in and swallows me whole and forces me to understand that not a single thing that could make a sound is left in the world to make it. Not a cricket. Not a passing plane. Not a falling tree or burning bush or singing wind. There is just nothing.

We sit in silence for what could have been a moment or what could have been an eternity. Finally, The Unmaker sighs in exasperation and breaks the neverending nothingness. "Fine. This is the way it always happens. You people always need an explanation." I manage a furtive glance toward the monster, enough to see it has aged, changed, now a shadow of my daughter and a shadow of too many others. Some possibly not human. It is a thing becoming everything and becoming everyone, settling gradually on a pale, shapeless visage shrouded by darkness impossible. Each shadow stops just as another begins, revealing only hints and glimmers of what looks like five feet of skin stretched over seven feet of skeleton. As it speaks, its mouth area twists and splits.

"You, Martin, are the last to bear witness to part of the eternal process. The Unmaking. The very act of taking down what has been built in order to rebuild anew. What once has come will come again."

"So, all of creation, everything you made, you built just to destroy?"

"I never said I made any of this!" the creature shrieks, thrusting its arms out and looking quickly at the dead forest. "I am called The Unmaker, child. What kind of Unmaker would I be if I went around making things?"

"Then who made this, any of it? Who put you here or me here?" I begin finding something that looked like confidence. As my confusion builds, so does my temper. And as my temper grows, I typically forget to give a shit about being mistaken, judgmental or eviscerated by an omnipotent shadow monster. If I was only here to witness my own undoing, I at least wanted to know why.

"How should I know who made all of this?" it replies, returning to its insouciance. "These matters are no concern of mine. I arrive when I am called and I do as I must."

"I'm hearing you say that you're responsible for all of this," I say plainly. No matter how close to the end of the world I came, I couldn't seem to shake the habits of a psychologists reflective listening. If nothing else, it was restoring a modicum of stability to my rapidly unraveling psyche. "The draughts and starvation. Floods and fires. Disease, mutilation, war and destruction. That's your handiwork."

"Yes," it replies nonchalantly.

"The disappearances. Broken hearts, broken families, broken lives. My neighbors goddamn melting."

"I'm actually sort of proud of that last one. Something new I've been working on."

"You took my Meggie."

"Yes," The Unmaker says again, as forthright as if it was just asked "do you like it when it rains?"

"Well, then, you're an asshole," I spit.

"Pardon?"

"I said you're an asshole," I repeat, this time much more calmly. "You might be omnipotent, I don't know. Your power might have some limit, but clearly it's enough to take apart everything I knew as existence. But instead of doing it quickly, mercifully, you made each of us experience suffering. Each of us suffered unnecessarily for your sadistic musings. And for that, you are an asshole."

The shadowy figure did not move. For an instant, I think it might not move forever. Then quicker than I anticipate, it swings a clawed, foot-like appendage toward the fire and topples the burning logs. Fresh embers scatter in each direction before vanishing like the rest of the world.

"Do you see what I see, child?" the creature hisses.

I really did not care what he saw or it saw. I stared into the face of my destroyer and spoke ill. The simple fact that I am not currently disintegrated into a million particles following that poorly advised display of chutzpah is a minor victory. Anything that comes next I considered bonus time.

"All is matter, all is energy," the thing goes on. "None of it can be created, none of it can be destroyed. Your scientists of this iteration at least had that much right. But your Newtons and your Einsteins and your Hawkings all gave up eventually on that line of logic, because I assure you they didn't like how it ended."

"Nonsense," I demand. "You're destroying an entire world."

"I never said I was destroying it, my dear. I said I was unmaking it. Think of this fire. These logs made of wood are ablaze, eventually turning to ash and fading away. But in that process, they become heat. They become light. Become energy. They remain in the whole, but their life as wood logs becomes something else entirely."

"Basic science class from high school, I guess. The Law of Conciliation, or something like that. Honestly, I slept through most of physics. What does that have to do with the rest of the world?

"Look at how much heat comes from the unmaking of a log. Ask the people of Japan what happens when an atom is unmade. Now think about what happens if you unmake every atom of every thing all at the same time. The process takes time, Martin. I wouldn't want to be reckless."

"You could have just unmade it then. One part at a time. You didn't need to create pain. You didn't need to prolong our misery. We shouldn't have had our souls crushed first." It is admittedly a bold move, criticizing an ever-powerful force on its execution. I couldn't even keep kudzu out of my garden, for Christ's sake. And here I am, editorializing the end of the world.

The contorted monstrosity on the front of the creature's head that I assume is a face gives something that looks like a wry smile. "Well, when you enjoy your job," it says, "there's nothing wrong with a little panache."

Just like I said, I think. Total asshole.

"Look, Martin," the creature's tone becomes frank. "If it's any consolation, you'll be remade again. Your energy won't go anywhere. It will remain in the whole and come back when The Maker pieces it back together. Don't think of it as death so much as rearranging. I've lost count of how many Unmakings I've done now, but I always know it will be my turn again eventually. I usually keep some piece of the whole around to explain this to, in the way you sometimes feel obligated to explain to your dog why you're making him go outside in the rain so it doesn't piss on your carpet. You know it won't understand, but you go through the charade anyway because it makes you feel a little less barbaric. I guess this time, the explanation found its way to you, although don't think that makes you special. Just the last one in line."

"Does it ever do any good?" I ask, not really sure what else to say.

"That's really none of my business. It's not like you could do anything to stop me when the time comes anyway. Sometimes the piece of energy I enlighten reforms to become a prophet, the Messiah for all mankind. Sometimes it comes back as a rock at the bottom of the ocean. To-may-toe, to-mah-toe.

"Look, child, I think we're about done here. I have other matters to which I must attend. I will see you again after a spell, I assume. Although I'm sure you won't remember."

I can feel myself lightening. No, not lightening. Evaporating. At its basest level, my body is letting go. Then it occurs to me. Acceptance was never the end-goal of emotion and loss. You could accept anything really. You could accept that your dog died. You could accept that your house burned down or your wife ran away with her podiatrist or that one day, everyone you know is simply gone. Acceptance actually comes easier than most people ever intend because it is usually right there in front of them and there aren't ever really any other options. No. What comes next is even more important than acceptance but infinitely more impossible. What comes next is letting go.

I raise my eyes to the empty sky, taking one last look at a dead world. I am the only thing left in this world, really. Gazing out into nothing, I decide that I am the world. And this world draws in its final breath.

Then I let go.

The Unmaker looks toward the empty spot that only moments ago held the last stitch of living energy in existence. Its job is done. All that had been built is now taken down.

A single spider crawls up the creature's arm and onto its bony, white hand. The chitter of its tiny legs against the never-living flesh seemed deafening, as it was the only sound across all eternity. The Unmaker raises its hand to eye level the fire to look crossly at the tiny insect.

"Well," it speaks after careful inspection, "I guess it's your turn again, old friend."

And the spider descends down from the sleeve of the monster that unmade. Lowering down slowly with a silken tether, it weaves its complex web.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: N.S. Mariner is an educator and writer of several stories of the fantastic and weird. A Midwestern boy with a Southeastern zip code, he spends the majority of his day wondering why the world around him never seems as wonderful as the one in his head. When there are good friends, he laughs. When there is good beer, he drinks. And when there is good music, he dances. Follow him on Twitter at @TheGoodMariner.

Table of Contents

- NUCLEAR TOWN USA
- Produced For Kindle
- CONTENTS
- THE NUCLEUS NOTE
- Adam Millard
- DRUTHERS
- Eryk Pruitt
- THE FORTY-SEVEN
- Jesse Harlin
- COHERENCE
- Eric R. Schiller
- ASSIGNMENT SEVEN
- Richard Smith
- UNORTHODOX
- Nick Johnson
- I WILL WATCH
- Trak E. Sumisu
- Goldacre 14 – Residual Confinement Facility

- A Subsidiary of the Denton State Medical Corporation

- THE LAST
- Edd Howarth
- RITE OF PASSAGE
- Robert J. Santa
- THRONE ROOM
- D. Krauss
- THE UNDEAD LEGACY
- Jeffrey Veregge
- Day 1: Project Methuselah
- PS: So where would you like to start?
- PS: So why am I here today Jimmy?

- PS: No disrespect, but a secret about Elvis Presley did this to you?

- PS: What did you see?

- PS: What about his attack on the other ape?

- PS: What year was that?

- PS: No, the year in which Major Neville submitted his request for a human candidate?

- PS: You mentioned shortcuts were taken, what did you mean by that?

- PS: So how long did it take to get your first volunteer?

- PS: Hold on, you're telling me that Elvis Presley was your candidate?

- PS: Who was Windy Van Hooten?

- Day 2: A bump in the night

- PS: You okay Jimmy?

- PS: What was your first real encounter, impression with Elvis like?

- PS: Friends, even though you knew he was an unwilling participate in your experiment?

- PS: I guess that makes sense...

- PS: So what was he like?

- PS: Could you tell me more about your relationship during the early phases of Project Methuselah?

- PS: What do you mean?

- PS: What did Elvis make of all the trips, shots and blood work?

- PS: What were the Major's and Häussermann opinions of the man?

- PS: Like what?

- PS: Did anyone else from the project know about this?

- PS: What did you see?

- PS: Was there anything different about him?

- PS: What was your first response?

- Day 3: Misguided redemption

- PS: Sorry Jimmy, tough night.

- PS: Can you tell me what followed?

- Now please continue.

- PS: What was Häussermann's appearance like?

- PS: After you had a chance to down a couple drinks and take a few pills, what was your course of action?

- PS: A harvest from the seeds you helped provide.

- PS: Did Elvis Or the Colonel ever know the truth?

- PS: When Elvis died, did he reanimate?

- PS: How do you think that Major Neville, Doctor Häussermann and Elvis Presley were able to come back to life?

- PORTRAIT OF A GIRL
- Jennifer Courtney
- SOLVING HOLLY
- Damien Krsteski
- THE UNMAKER
- N.S. Mariner