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“Fuck Frank, and fuck Bruce, and fuck everyone in that old boy’s club,” Julie said, running her hands through her long blonde hair in front of the mirror. Her brown eyes stared back at her from a face that looked older than she felt. She turned on the faucet and held her hands under the cascade of cool water. The trembling was worse than usual today. “You know why that asshole Frank told me Bruce got the promotion instead of me?” “Why?” asked Rachel, turning her head slightly as she ran lipstick over her pursed lips. Her reflection in the mirror locked eyes with Julie. “He said Bruce is a team player.” Rachel rolled her eyes as she dropped the lipstick back in her purse. “What, and you’re not?” “It’s all bullshit,” said Julie. “I think they know about… You know.” She turned off the water and held a trembling hand up, staring at it accusingly. Rachel’s eyes widened. “But how? Who else have you told?” “Just you and my daughter,” said Julie, closing her eyes. She gripped the sides of the sink. “You don’t think she said anything in one of her videos, do you?” “No, it’s not that. I fucked up. I left some lab results out on my desk during lunch one day. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but ever since then Frank’s been treating me like I have the plague.” “He snooped on your desk?! What a dirt bag! They can’t do this to you, Julie. You should go to HR.” “HR?!” Julie snorted. “They’d have me fired in a hot second if they thought I’d make trouble for the company. Those clowns don’t give a shit about us.” “Well, what are you going to do?” Nothing, Julie thought, but couldn’t bring herself to say it. What else can I ever do? A buzzing in her pocket shook Julie out of her thoughts. The burner–that meant it could only be one person calling, and he only ever called for one reason. Julie decided that was exactly what she needed–the perfect distraction and outlet for her rage. The corners of her lips turned up slightly. God damn, did that prick ever have good timing. “Sorry Rach, I’ve got to take this. Let’s do lunch this week.” Rachel nodded. “Absolutely, babe. Take care, okay?” She frowned and brushed a hand over Julie’s shoulder on her way out of the bathroom. Julie hated that–hated how Rachel had started talking to her like she was already an invalid, staring at her with those sad fucking eyes all the time. Julie pulled the burner out of her pocket and answered it. “Normally I’d be pissed that you called during work, but you’re in luck, asshole. I’m in a mood.” “Hello, is this Julie Holden?” an unfamiliar voice greeted her. Julie frowned. She looked at the phone again to make sure she hadn’t accidentally mistaken her real one for the burner. She hadn’t. She glanced uneasily around the bathroom. “Who is this? How did you get this number?” she hissed into the phone. “Ah,” said the electronically disguised voice–it sounded deep and inhuman. “So this is Julie Holden? Julie Holden, Junior Vice President of Technical Operations at Flagtech Industries?” “Did Rishi put you up to this? Never call this number again, do you understand…” “Julie Holden who would greatly prefer to be Senior Vice President of Technical Operations at Flagtech Industries?” the voice continued. A wave of panic crashed over Julie, and she felt the blood drain from her face. She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. “Julie Holden, Flagtech is considering a recent production order from a client calling themselves the Collective. We understand that the blueprint for the device requires your approval. It is in your best interest to ensure that the full order is accepted and fulfilled as-is.” “Is that some kind of threat?” asked Julie, narrowing her eyes. “Far from it, I assure you,” said the voice. “The Collective is prepared to reward you handsomely for your cooperation in this matter. You see, that blueprint is for a medical device. One capable of treating a certain neurological condition you may have become quite familiar with recently.” Julie’s eyes widened. “Aww, thanks for all the sweet messages. You guys really are the best!” Rose said, looking into her camera. She watched the stream of chat messages flowing up her screen. “I know, I know. I missed you guys, too. I’m sorry I haven’t been on as much. I’ve been dealing with some depressing stuff at home, so I didn’t feel much like streaming, and you guys wouldn’t have wanted to see me like that anyway.” The chat exploded with messages of disagreement. We always want to see you. You should stream more. We love you. You’re so hot. Will you marry me? She forced herself to smile at the effusive blocks of text and emojis as they sailed past. “Okay chat, it’s been fun, but I really need to eat something.” Rose waved at her camera. A notification flashed on her screen–one of her viewers had just made a large donation. “Aww, Chungus thank you for the donation! You guys are so sweet! But I really need to go now. I’ll be back streaming again tomorrow afternoon. Bye everyone!” Rose clicked the button to end the stream. The circle of light around the lens of her camera blinked out, and she leaned back and sighed. When did this happen? she though to herself. When did I start to hate my own fans? The perverts and occasional stalkers were bad enough, but even worse were the floods of haters coming in droves from other jealous creators. Her community as a whole–once a source of great solace and comfort–had grown along with her popularity into a source of dread and disgust. The phone in her pocket buzzed, reminding Rose that she had already ignored an unusually high number of calls and texts during her stream. Checking it now, she saw three missed calls and a dozen texts–all from Rishi. Rose groaned to herself. Ever since she spurned Rishi’s advances at a conference a few years ago he’d been talking shit about her in his videos. And his fans ate it up–an army of socially and sexually deranged perverts constantly flooding Rose’s social media with the most vile, depraved comments she had ever seen. Rishi always feigned ignorance, playing the whole thing off like a joke–an imaginary beef that benefited them both in a world where staying relevant and getting views was all that mattered. Rose didn’t think the beef was as imaginary as Rishi claimed. And she also suspected he was fucking her mom. She scrolled through the texts. Rishi: call me when u get this Rishi: need 2 talk 2u Rishi: its about ur mom Rose felt bile rising in her throat. Oh God, she thought. Is this where he finally admits it? Her sick sense of curiosity compelled her to text back. Rose: what about my mom? Rishi: havent u noticed she’s been acting weird? Rishi: i know ur done streaming. meet @ ihop? With a deep sigh, Rose closed her eyes. Her mom had been acting weird. Ever since the diagnosis her mom would get home from work, lock herself in her room, and not emerge until it was time to go to work again. The two of them no longer ate meals together, went shopping, or made fun of stupid soap operas over a bowl of popcorn like they used to. Every ounce of the relationship Rose had with her mother had evaporated. It was just like when her dad died–it took her mom years to dig herself out of that emotional pit, and Rose feared that this new one was even deeper. Seeing her mom like this was soul-crushing. Rose got up and headed toward the kitchen. Rishi’s text had reminded her of the one thing that she knew could draw her mom out of her shell–even if only for one meal. “Hey mom, you home?” she called out as she walked. “I’m gonna cook up some eggs and bacon for dinner. You want scrambled or sunny side up?” Breakfast for dinner was their unspoken signal. Offering to cook it meant you had something of extreme importance to announce or discuss. A new boyfriend; a promotion; quitting your job to become a full-time streamer; needing to move across the country for work; a father’s death; a diagnosis. “No thanks, hon,” her mom’s muted reply came from behind the master bedroom door. That stopped Rose in her tracks. The breakfast for dinner covenant had never been broken–not even right after dad died. You never said no to breakfast for dinner. Never. Rose glared down the dark hallway leading to her mom’s room, a look of horror spread across her face. The phone in Rose’s pocket buzzed again. She pulled it out. Rishi: well, u in? its important Had it truly come to this? Had Rose become so starved for real human interaction that she was contemplating going to dinner with a man who openly incited his followers to harass her? Was this man, who (Rose was pretty sure) seduced and slept with her mom out of pure spite the only person in the world with whom she had the slightest chance of connecting with? Rishi: well???????? Rose gave a final glance down the dark hallway, then back to her phone. Rose: fine. your treat “I have a date!” The crowd went wild with applause. “We told you she’d come around,” they said in unison. The ever-present retinue of hovering cameras spiraled outward, catching every angle of the brilliant light emanating from Rishi’s skin. “Of course she came around!” Rishi said. “It is me we’re talking about, after all!” The crowd erupted, showering him with their limitless adulation. Outside his penthouse, Rishi closed the gold-crested oak doors behind him and strolled toward the elevator, admiring the pastiche of lavishly framed portraits that lined the hallway. There was one for every President that served in Rishi’s lifetime, commemorating the moment each got to meet him; there he was with Armstrong on the moon; and there, receiving his eleventh simultaneous Emmy, Golden Globe, Oscar, and Tony awards. The elevator’s mirrored interior provided the best portrait of all–the real deal; the living legend himself. As Rishi admired his reflection, the elevator began to shake. The lights flickered and buzzed. Rishi’s smile faltered. The cameras were gone; the crowd had left him; he was alone. No, not alone; there was someone–or some thing–there

This week’s podcast features two spooky stories for your listening and/or reading pleasure. Wake Words starts at around 3:40 The Walled Garden starts at around 17:05 Wake WordsThe sun hung low over the horizon, its fizzled edges shimmering through the soup of thick brown smog obscuring the tops of distant skyscrapers. Three kids–Mohammed, Jack, and Wendy–stood facing each other, casting long dark pillars of shadow across patches of yellow-brown grass and frowning down at a smoking machine in the dirt. “Augmented reality projector? More like augmented shit projector,” Jack said. He spat, missing Wendy’s foot by an inch. “Eww, gross!” Wendy cried, taking a step back. Mohammed shook his head, still looking down. “But it worked,” he said listlessly. “We had it working.” “Yeah, for three seconds,” said Jack. He scuffed his foot across the dirt toward the broken projector. “Maybe we can try again tomorrow,” said Wendy. She glanced hopefully at Mohammed. Mohammed looked at Wendy, then back down at the machine. “Nah,” he said. “Jack’s right, it’s a piece of shit. I’m sorry I wasted our money, guys.” “Why did you buy this one anyway?” asked Jack. “Kevin’s is a Samsung. Nobody’s ever heard of this brand. You shoulda bought a Samsung.” Mohammed shrugged. “This was the only one I could afford with our allowances. Besides, Amazon recommended it.” “Fuck Amazon,” said Jack. In her pocket, the Alexa app on Wendy’s phone listened. The three friends stood in silence around the metal contraption that had vexed them all afternoon. Oh, what promise the day had held–it had arrived! Their very own augmented reality projector! At last they would know first-hand the delights of AR gaming that, until now, they could only experience vicariously–watching strangers on YouTube, or hearing Kevin brag about his projector at school. But as the afternoon dragged on, the crisp, visceral excitement in the air gradually faded into bitter frustration. The projector was impossibly complex. None of its functions made sense. They pushed buttons, connected it to apps on their phones, swiped screens, screamed crude voice commands at it–all in vain. As the sun dimmed, dipping below the haze and signaling the onset of evening, it seemed all was lost. In what was to be his final attempt, Mohammed hit an untried combination of buttons on one of the projector’s control panels. There was a flash of light, and for a moment the field transformed into a vibrant AR space–a glowing playground filled with strange and exciting holographic toys. Then the machine sparked, fizzled, and the environment evaporated, taking with it the kids’ last glimmer of hope. “Can you return it?” asked Jack. “I want my money back.” “I dunno. Maybe. I guess I’ll take it home and see,” replied Mohammed. “Well I’m gonna give it a shit review,” said Jack. “I’m gonna give it zero stars. Can you give zero stars on Amazon? I wish you could give negative stars.” Wendy’s phone vibrated in her pocket. Mohammed and Jack watched as she took it out and swiped its screen. Wendy shrugged and put the phone back in her pocket. She glanced toward her house, then behind her at the fast-setting sun. “I gotta go, Mom gets mad when I stay out past dark.” A small black dot rose into the air in the distance, accompanied by an almost imperceptible hum. It started moving, cutting through the smog hanging over the city center as it approached. None of the kids noticed. Mohammed knelt and delicately prodded his finger at the projector, bracing for electric shocks or hot surfaces. Finding it safe, he gathered it up in his arms. Jack watched with a look of disgust. Wendy looked over her shoulder at her two friends as she walked toward her house. “See you guys at school tomorrow.” Mohammed waved to her, then headed to the path where he had stashed his bicycle and backpack. Jack stood and watched them leave, grumbling to himself. “Fuck that projector. And fuck Amazon for selling trash.” The hum was louder now, tickling the edges of Jack’s perception. He turned and looked out toward the city, not entirely sure why. His phone vibrated in his pocket. Jack pulled it out and saw a message from Wendy: See you at school tomorrow, it said. He looked back over his shoulder. Wendy had reached her yard, not so much as glancing up as she closed the tall wooden gate behind her. “You said that already, weirdo,” Jack muttered. He slipped his phone into his pocket and returned his attention to the city. The smog hanging over the tall buildings had turned from brown to dark gray in the dwindling twilight. Jack began his downhill trek, marching away from Wendy’s house and the neighborhood that Mohammed lived in and toward the street that led to his own. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the darkening sky. The hum was louder now. He thought he saw movement–a dark shadow gliding toward him through the distant haze. Jack shivered and increased his pace. He noticed the Scouts when he was halfway down the hill; one coming from each direction. The small Amazon delivery robots looked like blue coolers on wheels, trawling along the sidewalk toward him. The Scouts were a familiar sight, rolling through the neighborhood most afternoons and sending their drones to drop small packages at front doors. He’d never seen them out this late, though. And never on this side of the street, where there were no houses. Jack covered the final stretch to the sidewalk at a sprint, nearly tripping over a rock as he scampered down the hill. Once his feet hit cement, Jack paused to catch his breath. He watched one of the Amazon Scouts creep toward him under the dim light of the nearest street lamp. He turned his head and saw the second Scout–closer than the first, but matching the same languid pace as it closed in from the other direction. The humming noise in the sky grew louder. Jack looked up, and saw a distant silhouette against the deep blue hue of twilight’s final gasp before true darkness took the night. A drone. Like the ones the Scouts used, but a hundred times larger. An industrial drone–the kind Jack had seen used on construction sites, or making large-scale deliveries between Amazon warehouses. The long curved spikes of its vice claw hung down like the spindly legs of some giant flying spider. Jack crossed the road and ran across the front yard of the nearest house, following a shortcut home he had taken a thousand times. He jumped and grabbed the top of a tall chain link fence with both hands. Another sound joined the deep hum of the approaching industrial drone–similar, but higher pitched. Still hanging, Jack looked over his shoulder. The Scouts had turned into the street, crawling toward him in a straight line. The rectangular drone bays on their sides had opened, and Jack watched as a dark blur shot from each, hovered for a moment, then flew at him like arrows through the darkness. Jack’s feet scrambled against the fence and he hoisted himself up. As he swung his legs over the top, one of the Scout drones collided with the back of his head and sent him flailing forward. The leg of his jeans caught on a metal barb jutting from the top of the fence. Jack swung down, slamming into the fence hard enough to knock his breath out. His pants ripped and he fell the remaining distance to the ground, gasping for air as he somersaulted forward onto his back. Darkness and confusion flooded Jack’s senses. His head pounded. The drones sounded muffled, like he was hearing them under water. Two dark shapes swam through the air above him, joined by a third shadow high above. As his breathing returned to normal and the shrill hum of the drones came back into focus, Jack heard the sound of jangling metal–like the sound of a loose, rattling chain. Something up there was coming down at him, fast. His eyes widened and he rolled to the side, feeling the ground shudder from a monstrous impact. He looked back and saw the industrial drone’s massive vice claw, buried deep in the lawn where he had been laying but a moment ago. The section of fence Jack had climbed was gone–shredded, crushed, and buried. The industrial drone’s chain tightened and the vice claw receded, raining chunks of metal, dirt, and sod into the giant pit left behind as the drone reeled it in. In a panic, Jack struggled to his feet and rubbed the back of his head where the Scout drone had hit him. They were trying to kill him! He didn’t dare attempt another fence jump, but he needed to do something–he needed to find cover. The smaller drones blocked escape through the damaged fence, and the doors and windows on the house were all shut and certainly locked tight. His eyes landed on a wooden tool shed in the corner. He didn’t think it would stand much abuse from the vice claw, but he didn’t know what else to do. He stumbled across the lawn, ducking to narrowly avoid another Scout drone attack. He pulled at the shed’s door. A thick metal latch near the top clacked against the lock holding it shut. Jack screamed in frustration and slammed the shed with his fists. His heart pounded. High pitched buzzing sounds converged behind him. Tears flooded his eyes as he turned, blurring his view of the hovering Scout drones. He felt so pathetic and helpless. He thought about his mom, his dad, his baby sister. Would they miss him? The drones burst forward. Jack backed into the shed, closed his eyes, and waited. A loud bang, an explosion, shrieking metal, and a shower of sparks inches from his face greeted Jack as he opened his eyes in shock. “Come ‘ere boy! Run!” Jack looked to where the voice had come from. The back door of the house was open; in it stood a gray-bearded man wearing faded striped pajamas and holding a shotgun with a smoking barrel. Warm light spilled from the house as the man urgently gestured at Jack with his free arm. “Quick! Before more of ‘em show up!” Jack’s heart leapt and a wave of relief washed over him. He laughed, causing the tears in his eyes to shake free and stream down his cheeks. He too

Three million years was a long time. An awful long time. It was so long that Doyle Tingler believed his brain fully incapable of processing the implications of its length, and so did his best to spare the poor thing that unpleasantness. Doyle vacillated his thoughts between two subjects. The first was his quest to find his girlfriend Kirsten, who ran off to join the Nikola’s Children cult shortly after Doyle had proposed to her. Three million years crammed in a stasis chamber with Sarah the security officer–his friend’s would-be-kidnapper–had not dulled his desire to complete that quest, though thinking about how he might go about it now, given his current predicament, tended to darken his mood considerably. The other subject towards which Doyle more frequently steered his thoughts was, much to the chagrin of those around him, thinking of and listing all the films, television shows, and books he knew of that resembled his present situation in some way. “Red Dwarf,” said Doyle, staring absentmindedly at the ceiling. Sarah put her face in her hands and sighed dramatically. “You’ve said that one.” “Have I?” Sarah nodded emphatically. She put down the small black book she had been writing in before Doyle had interrupted her, and launched into a nasally voiced imitation. “Dave Lister, after being put in stasis for smuggling a cat aboard the deep space mining ship Red Dwarf, finds himself resurrected in deep space three million years later and…” “It’s odd, isn’t it?” interrupted Doyle, ignoring Sarah’s mockery. “I mean that it was also three million years.” “Whatever,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “Except in that show Lister was the last human alive, so it’s not exactly like this, since there’s two of us. We do have an android, though,” Doyle added, thinking of Desmond, the artificial intelligence that had piloted the Nikola’s Children ship–the Ark–for three million years before crashing it into a planet and copying himself into the robot body they found abandoned there. Doyle shook his head. “But no holograms. What about Farscape? Have I mentioned Farscape yet?” “You mean the show where John Crichton finds himself flung to a distant corner of the galaxy where he has to navigate the socio-political fabric of several unfamiliar alien races as he searches for a way home?” asked Sarah. “Yes,” said Doyle. “Never heard of it,” said Sarah. She returned her attention to her book. “That doesn’t fit, either,” said Doyle. “It didn’t take place in the future. Also in Farscape there were aliens, but I think everyone we’ve met so far is essentially human, give or take a few million years of evolution. Zuli says it’s a widely held belief that all known life originated from a common source. I suppose that would be Earth, though I gather that’s a religiously contentious opinion nowadays. “No, Farscape is close, but I feel like I’m forgetting something even better…” Sarah snapped her book shut and stood up. “Well, be sure not to bother me with it when you’ve figured it out.” She pushed past Doyle toward the hallway that led to her quarters. Bae, the tiny rhino-pig that had been napping at Sarah’s feet, woke up and stretched lazily, then trotted after her. “Oh, I know! Planet of the Apes. Not the new ones, but the old Charlton Heston one. Or the Tim Burton remake. Except those were all on Earth,” Doyle mused, following Sarah and Bae into the hall. “Leave me alone,” said Sarah, quickening her pace. “Maybe the Culture books by Iain M. Banks. Or Dune. Didn’t that desert planet with the sand worm remind you of Dune?” “I’m not listening,” said Sarah. “Oh! Did I tell you about Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy yet?” Sarah screamed. Zuli leaned back in the captain’s chair and frowned at the patterns that danced across the large curved screen in front of her. She had agreed to help Doyle find Takkah IV, where he believed the Ark had been taken, but to do that they would have to find someone who knew more about the Orubus Belt–an area of space not widely renowned for its abundance of friendly encounters. “I’ve zoomed the sensors out,” Desmond said. “You see those jiggly patterns in the upper left? It’s radiation that the ship’s computer calls non-random chatter. And it’s at a volume that indicates a totally massive communications hub of some kind. Like a station or an inhabited star system. Might be a good direction to head, see if we can get close enough to decode some of it and listen in.” “Very well,” Zuli said, glancing over at the large robot. A snaking tendril of cable connected Desmond’s arm to a console against the wall of the bridge. “I am grateful to you, Desmond. Your interface to the ship and your instruction in its operation has been invaluable. It is just too bad the ship computers did not contain more information about the Orubus Belt.” “Nobody ever mapped this part of space out, eh?” asked Desmond. “I imagine someone has,” said Zuli. “Just not where I am from. People outside the Belt tend to view it as a forbidden zone of sorts. A place that only criminals and fools have any interest in.” “Which one are you?” asked Desmond. Zuli smiled. “I suppose I might fit into either category, depending on who you ask.” After a moment of silence, Desmond spoke again. “Can I ask how you came into possession of this ship? I’ve found some old crew manifests, and there’s no mention of the name Zuli.” “Zuli is a name my mother called me. My full name is T’chaka Zulinaar,” said Zuli. “But you won’t find any mention of that name either, I am afraid.” “In the crew photos and video logs, they have… I mean, they look rather… well, they don’t look anything like you,” said Desmond. Zuli pushed her hands through her short white hair, and looked away from Desmond with her striking orange eyes–feeling a little foolish at how self-conscious the robot made her. “My people have never been technologically inclined. We have no ships of our own. In fact until a few hundred years ago, my people had not been aware such a thing was even possible. We believed we were alone in the universe. “One day, emissaries from a race calling themselves the Igidi landed on our planet, ending centuries of philosophical and scientific debate and disabusing us of any notion that we were somehow special. The Igidi came under the guise of friendship, offering to be our guides and protectors as we established ourselves within the greater interstellar community we had been ignorant of too long.” “But they had ulterior motives?” Desmond guessed. “Yes,” said Zuli, feeling the memories of how she left her home planet weighing heavily upon her. “Let us suffice it to say, for now, that this ship is a mere drop in the ocean of recompense owed my people by the Igidi. And its original crew is… well, is no longer in need of its facilities. “Due to the hasty nature with which I acquired it, aside from basic navigation and communications, I am largely unfamiliar with the ship’s systems. That is why I am so thankful that the Prophets led you to me.” “I see,” said Desmond. Thankfully, he seemed satisfied for the time being with her vague explanation and didn’t press Zuli for further details. “For now, I agree with your recommendation,” said Zuli. “I will plot a course in the direction of the ‘non-random chatter.’ Please have the computer alert us once it is able to decipher something.” Desmond nodded his head, featureless except for the glowing blue dots where a human’s eyes might be. “Aye aye, captain!” Having been rudely snubbed by Sarah, who had locked herself in her quarters, Doyle decided to do some exploring. He called Zuli up on the ship’s comm system and asked if she knew of any books on the ship he could take a look at, with the idea to put his translator cells to the test and possibly learn more about what had transpired over the last three million years. She informed him that the ship did indeed have a library, and gave him rough directions to get there. He thanked her, set off, and quickly found himself utterly lost in the ship’s many identical corridors. During his vagaries, Doyle came across some curious rooms–there was one that looked like a medical lab, with a gurney sitting beneath a hanging gun-shaped contraption that looked like something out of a Bond movie; there was a completely dark room, shunning all external light to such a degree that at first Doyle thought he was looking at a black wall–an idea quickly refuted when his hand passed through the blackness, completely vanishing at the wrist; there were closets storing various bottles and jars that Doyle couldn’t identify; a football-field-sized room filled with dozens of raised platforms at different heights–perhaps an arena for some futuristic sport, thought Doyle; but most of all he passed unoccupied quarters, storage rooms filled with crates and bins, and plain old empty rooms. Doyle wondered what Zuli had been doing all alone on a ship that was clearly built to house hundreds of crew and passengers. She had told them she “inherited” it, and that while she entertained guests on occasion–such as the madman who had tried to kill Doyle and Sarah after they first arrived–she invariably ended up on her own once her guests achieved whatever goal they had enlisted her help for. Or gotten themselves blown out an airlock, Doyle supposed. How long had Zuli had been at it–this life of nomadic virtuousness? And, whatever the answer, how had she survived that long? There must be more to her than the meek, pale-skinned delicate woman she appeared to be. Doyle pushed the thought aside as he slid his hand over another door’s access panel. The door slid open to reveal what looked like a theater–a dozen rows of seats lined up, facing away from the door. But the floor was level, not angled as Doyle would have expected, and the front row looked barely three feet from the wall at the far end of the room, leaving no space for a screen. Doyle stepped inside and peeked over the closest row. Each seat had what looked like a headset resting o

It all started on a dreary Friday afternoon. It had been over a month since my last case, and twice as long since I’d heard from Magnus. They say idle hands are the devil’s workshop; if that’s true, my devil was either on vacation or one lazy son of a bitch. I must have looked a sorry sight–a lone, courageous dribble of saliva fought its way through five days worth of stubble on its way down my chin as I leaned back in my chair, feet up on the desk, with a fat stogie in one hand and a bottle of Johnnie Walker in the other. The rain crashed in hypnotic waves against the rickety window at my back. I’d been drifting in and out of sleep all afternoon–dreaming that I was on the deck of some ancient wooden barge, swaying back and forth on its creaky deck, staring out at an endless dark ocean. The clock on the wall was broken, but the dimness of the sun fighting its way through the rain clouds told me it was about time to quit drinking at the office and pick it back up at my apartment. I deposited my long-since expired cigar into my ash tray and placed the bottle of scotch next to it. The scattered envelopes, unpaid bills, and old case files that littered my desk were marred by stains. Magnus used to joke that my desk aged like a tree–you could tell how long it’d been since our last case by counting the overlapping rings of spilt booze and coffee. I glanced sidelong at his abandoned desk next to mine, glistening and pristine as always. The only thing on it was the plastic tray at its corner where he kept active case files–it was empty except for the handful of envelopes that had arrived for him in the weeks since his disappearance. I’d wrestled with the idea of opening them, curious if any bore some clue to his whereabouts, but thought better of it. His last words to me, spoken in hushed tones over the phone, were that he needed to lay low for a while and I should make no attempt to find or contact him. I had reluctantly agreed, and though I may not be much else, I am at least a man of my word. As I stood, bracing myself against the desk while grasping at booze-hazy memories of how my legs worked, I heard the front door in the lobby burst open. The wild hissing sound of the rainstorm flooded my office for a moment before the door slammed shut, drowning it out again. I collapsed back in my chair, leaning forward with my eyes fixed on the frosted glass window that looked out on the hallway from the lobby. Magnus always boasted that he could predict everything he needed to know about a case from the client’s silhouette as they passed by that window. He made a game of it–whispering his prognosis for each new client as they walked past. “Bad luck,” he’d say; “Memory loss;” Or, one of his favorites, “unwanted impure thoughts.” He was wrong more often than right, but every now and then he’d get lucky–the client would finish explaining and Magnus would catch my eye and give a self-satisfied nod. It usually irritated me, but now that he was gone it surprised me how much I missed that little ritual. In Magnus’s absence I was left to formulate my own preconceptions about this new potential client. From the shape of the silhouette and the sound of the heeled footsteps clicking across the hallway, the best I could come up with was “probably female.” As to the nature of her visit, I didn’t venture a guess. Nothing I could have imagined, naive as I was at the time, could have landed even remotely near the mark. The silhouette rounded the corner, confirming my initial impressions. The woman stood tall in the office doorway, wearing a dark blue trench coat with the collar pulled up and a matching wide-brimmed hat. Remnants of the storm dripped steadily onto the hardwood floor at her feet. The woman’s face was pale and gaunt, looking almost skeletal in the dim light. She glanced around the room and spotted the coat rack in the corner, then walked to it and hung her hat, revealing her shoulder-length black hair. After she hung her coat, I could tell her body was as lean as her face. The white buttoned shirt and blue jeans she wore should have been form-fitting on a woman as tall as she was, but on her they hung loose, like a deflated parachute. She turned toward me, continuing to look around the room as she approached. The woman paused when she saw the bottle on my desk. She looked at me with an expression of distaste. “Are you Magnus Vitale?” she asked. I shook my head. “Magnus is… indisposed, presently. I’m his partner, Sylvester Bullet.” I gestured toward one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs pushed up against my desk. “How can I help you, Mrs…” The woman remained silent for a moment. She looked down at the battered chair I had offered, then back at me. She let out a resigned sigh as she pulled the chair out and sat down delicately, placing a small black purse on her lap. “Miss Tanaka,” the woman said. “Chinami Tanaka. I need help tracking someone down.” “This someone, you suspect they hexed you?” I asked. Miss Tanaka nodded. “I assure you it’s more than a suspicion, Mr. Bullet.” My brain kicked into autopilot and I launched into the spiel that I regurgitated every time someone new walked in off the street. “These things aren’t always clear cut,” I explained. “You’d be surprised at how often people come to us, swearing up and down that they’ve been hexed, only to discover…” “May I?” Miss. Tanaka interrupted. She pointed at the bottle of Johnnie Walker between us. Her interjection startled me, despite the politeness with which she delivered it. I shrugged and slid the bottle toward her, wondering why she suddenly desired the thing that had clearly repulsed her when she first noticed it. She tossed her head back and, without touching her lips to the bottle, poured its contents into her mouth. She shook out the last few drops before delicately placing the empty bottle back on the desk. A scowl crossed her face, and her eyes met mine as she forcefully swallowed. We stared at each other in silence for a moment, then Miss Tanaka slid the bottle back toward me. I looked down at it. It wasn’t empty. In fact it still contained the exact amount of scotch it had before Miss Tanaka drank it. I furrowed my brow in confusion and glanced back up at her. Was she playing a joke on me? Some kind of illusion, or parlor trick? “I didn’t always look like this,” said Miss Tanaka. “Less than a year ago you might even have considered me overweight–an unkind observation, perhaps, but not an inaccurate one.” It was hard to picture the slender woman across from me as anything but severely underweight, but I didn’t comment. My eyes wandered back down to the perplexing bottle. I concentrated, trying to determine exactly how drunk I was. I had a nice buzz going on, sure, but not near enough that I had any doubts about what I’d just seen. She had emptied the bottle–I watched her choke it down. And yet somehow she hadn’t. “I am not completely starved,” Miss Tanaka continued. “The hex seems to prevent excess. If I eat more than the bare minimum required to keep my body alive, I find it returned to my plate as though I had never eaten it at all. Foods I once derived great pleasure from now have no taste, or, worse, present an altogether offensive palate. I am losing weight rapidly, Mr. Bullet. If it keeps pace, I fear that my life may be in grave danger very soon.” At that point in my life, I had believed myself to be something of an expert on magic. Magnus and I had been in the business of tracking down totems and dispelling hexes for over twenty years. In all that time I thought I had seen everything magic was capable of, and I had never seen anything to indicate that it could do what Miss Tanaka had just demonstrated. Hexes simply didn’t work like that–they acted subtly, influencing the victim’s life and thoughts in almost imperceptible ways. Sure, they could be life-threatening, but they killed you through the manipulation of circumstance. Maybe you get distracted and miss a stop sign; maybe you get the surgeon who, having just found out his wife is cheating on him, distractedly botches your operation; maybe you absentmindedly store the leaky box of rat poison above your open box of cereal in the pantry. The idea that magic could “un-eat” a person’s food–could actually manipulate physical objects in any way–was preposterous. I became convinced that I was being deceived. That Miss Tanaka’s demonstration was the lead-in to some kind of scam or practical joke. But I was intrigued–enough to continue playing along despite my suspicions. I nodded at Miss Tanaka gravely, trying my best to hide my incredulity. “You know who the caster is?” I asked. “Yes,” replied Miss Tanaka. “Harold and I were… We were…” She hesitated, averting her eyes from mine. “Lovers?” She shook her head. “No. Friends. At least I thought we were friends. Harold, he wanted more.” “I see,” I said. This part of the story, at least, was credible. I’d seen it shake out a thousand times. “So Harold professed his love, you turned him down, and shortly thereafter your food stops being so cooperative about being eaten.” Miss Tanaka nodded. “After I rejected him, Harold told me that I would soon know what it was to be deprived of something so essential to me as I was to him. After I realized what was happening to me, I attempted my own means of locating him. Finding people is a task for which I normally have a…” she paused, apparently searching for the right word. “A penchant. My attempts have been in vain. I suspect my inability to find Harold may be somehow related to the hex, but that is pure conjecture on my part. It is why I am here, Mr. Bullet. I was told that when it came to hexes, Mr. Vitale was the man to seek for help. But seeing as how he is not here and you are, and I am nearing my wit’s end, I shall ask you instead. Can you help me?” I studied Miss Tanaka where she sat across from me. She stared back at me with an intensity and fire in her eyes that belied her frail countenance. But her expre

The station’s docking bay doors soundlessly swung open on Dak’s viewscreen, like the gaping maw of a hungry rust-covered space creature. Dak hated mining colonies–they stirred up too many unwanted memories. Under normal circumstances Dak wouldn’t have so much as farted in the colony’s direction as he blinked past, but for some reason they had gone out of their way to hail him. It wasn’t normal. Mining colonies in the Orubus Belt were xenophobic to the point of madness. The one Dak had grown up in would have preferred mass suicide to dealing with outsiders. That this colony was hailing passing strangers meant they must be in trouble. Real trouble. The kind of trouble that paid well. “Initiating automatic docking procedure.” The ship’s voice reminded Dak of his sister, to the extent that he had started calling it by her name. He didn’t believe in reincarnation, but the fantasy that Aylix somehow lived on in the ship’s computer brought him comfort. “What do your scans show, Aylix?” Dak asked out loud. “There are three thousand seven hundred and three humanoid lifeforms on board,” replied Aylix. “Two are present in the docking bay. Neither armed with conventional weapons.” Dak nodded. The station grew larger on the viewscreen at a steady pace. “I recommend caution,” Aylix added. “It could be a trap.” Dak changed into his carbon fiber bodysuit while Aylix finished docking. He pulled the hood up and slid its visor down over his eyes, and clipped his weapon harness across his chest. Two men in grime-covered overalls were waiting for him in the docking bay. “Best watch yourself here, stranger,” said one of the men. “We appreciate you answering the hail and all, but know that we got our eye on you.” “Appreciate the warm welcome,” said Dak. “Your message mentioned a reward.” The miner who had spoken–a toothpick compared to his silent companion–nodded, then looked Dak up and down. Unimpressed, he turned his attention to Aylix. “Never seen a ship like yours before,” said the miner. “She got any firepower to her?” “When she needs to,” said Dak. “Will she need to?” “I reckon she will,” said the miner. “Come. The Foreman will give you the details. Give my friend here your weapons while on board.” The taller, heavier, less talkative miner stepped forward and held out a hand that was larger than Dak’s head. Dak glared at him. “No weapons, no job,” said the smaller miner. “No job, no reward. Your choice.” Dak sighed. The interior of the station was hewn from rusty metal pipes. The walls, ceiling, and even the floor beneath the grated walkways were one big snaking maze. Dripping stalactites glistened in the station’s dim lighting. The air smelled of smoke and dampness. The two miners led Dak up a set of rattling stairs to a catwalk overlooking the refinery–a cavernous reservoir of smoking machinery and crisscrossing walkways and conveyor belts. The indistinct silhouettes of miners lining the walkways were visible through the haze. There was a door at the end of the catwalk; the two miners ushered Dak through. In the room, sitting behind a desk, was the most obese man Dak had ever seen. Presumably the Foreman. Dak recognized the symbol tattooed across his face at once–the mark of a Takkah agent. An unexpected sight; either Dak was further from the outer rim than he thought, or the Takkah Empire had expanded its control over mining operations in the Orubus Belt considerably. The miners waited outside the office. They didn’t bother introducing Dak. “I take it you’re interested in the reward,” the Foreman said. “What should I call you?” “Syphon,” said Dak. “Dak Syphon.” The Foreman leaned forward in his chair. “We can’t offer currency, Mr. Syphon. But you’ll get a full tank of fuel and a crate of this if you can help us.” The Foreman slid a half-empty bottle across his desk toward Dak. Dak picked it up and sniffed at it. Mining colony moonshine was the stuff of legends–near impossible for outsiders to get a hold of. Dak put the bottle back down on the desk. “What’s the job?” “There’s a large debris field on the other side of our planetoid, orbiting in opposition to the station,” said the Foreman. “Hidden in the debris is an old but functioning freighter ship.” “You want me to retrieve it?” asked Dak. “Hardly,” said the Foreman. “I want you to destroy it, and ideally the damn necromancer who lives there too.” Dak blinked. “The… necromancer?” “Yeah. The necromancer. A magister of the dark arts,” continued the Foreman. “He’s been a thorn in my side and a blight on this station for a hundred kilocycles, ever since we banished him from the colony. But now he’s taken it too far.” Dak crossed his arms. Was the Foreman pulling his leg, or just stupid? Necromancers were the things of old spacefarer’s tales. “He’s been sabotaging the station, making us look like fools when Takkah comes to collect the ore,” said the Foreman. “And now he’s started kidnapping our younglings!” “Kidnapping?” asked Dak. “Aye,” said the Foreman. “Two younglings went missing from their beds not a hundred cycles ago. Plus their matron and another boy, nearly younglings themselves.” “The necromancer took them?” Dak asked incredulously. “Look,” sighed the Foreman. “I don’t need you to believe me. Just destroy the ship and you’ll get paid.” “And the kids?” asked Dak. “The ship is the job,” said the Foreman. Then he shrugged. “If you happen to return the kids, alive and still of use to the colony, I’ll throw in a second crate of moonshine.” It seemed like a simple enough task, despite all the nonsense about necromancers. Dak nodded and stood up. “We have a deal.” Dak shook hands, then returned to the catwalk where the two miners waited to escort him back to Aylix. “Dak, can you hear me?” Aylix’s voice sounded in Dak’s head. She spoke through his endermic lattice–a net-like subspace communications relay embedded in the back of his neck. It allowed Aylix to speak to him privately. Dak sighed loudly. “Never mind, don’t answer,” said Aylix. “I know how much you hate it when people think you’re talking to them when you’re actually talking to me. I heard the whole conversation through your lattice. I don’t trust the Foreman. Why is he so unconcerned about getting the children back?” If this colony was like the one he grew up in, then Dak knew the answer. “How young do you start your kids in the mines?” Dak asked, speaking loud over the ruckus of the refinery. “If they can walk, they can work,” the skinny miner shouted. “Younglings are better at getting in them tight nooks in the mine.” Dak gritted his teeth. “Those poor kids,” Aylix said through his lattice. “Yeah,” whispered Dak, hoping that the clattering and hissing machinery would drown him out. “Those four missing are probably the lucky ones.” “Did you say something?” the skinny miner shouted. “God damn it,” said Dak. Calling the debris field “large” had been an understatement. The discarded machinery, wrecked ships, and other refuse took up ten times the volume of the planetoid it orbited. The colony must have been dumping its waste there for generations. Dak guessed less than a megacycle before the accretion disc reached around the planetoid and engulfed the mining station. “Any sign of the freighter, Aylix?” asked Dak. “Scanning,” said Aylix. “It may take a while, there’s a lot of trash out there.” Dak leaned back in his seat and put his feet up on the cockpit dash. “Better than the trash back on that station,” he said, then spat on the floor. “Was that anything like the colony you grew up in?” Aylix asked through his lattice. “Mmm hmm,” said Dak. “Not as bad though. They didn’t send us to the mines until we turned fourteen.” “Did you work in the mines?” asked Aylix. A distant memory forced itself into Dak’s consciousness. His Foreman glowering down at him through a haze of smoke, tinted red by flashing lights; a ringing in his ears. “I… left before I turned fourteen,” said Dak. “What happened?” asked Aylix. “An accident,” said Dak. “My sister, she…” “You mean Aylix,” interrupted Aylix. “My namesake.” “She… died. I didn’t want any part of the colony after that.” “And they let you leave?” asked Aylix. “No, it wasn’t that easy. I had to…” “Are you telling me the truth, Dak?” interrupted Aylix. Dak remained silent. “What did you do, Dak?” asked Aylix. Dak shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “What did you do to me?” Dak’s sister’s voice pleaded over his lattice. “Shut up!” cried Dak. “We’re done talking about this.” “A probe has located the freighter,” said Aylix, no longer using the lattice. Her voice had returned to normal. Dak leaned toward the viewscreen. “Show me.” The viewscreen flickered, then centered on a large shadow, slowly drifting against the thick backdrop of glittering debris. “Looks like a derelict,” said Dak. “The probe detects five humanoid lifeforms aboard,” said Aylix. The math added up. One kidnapper plus four kids. Dak grimaced. Firing off a couple guided missiles to take out the freighter felt like the safest course of action, but that would mean killing the kids and–more importantly–missing out on the second crate of moonshine. “Move in,” said Dak. “Let’s see if necromancers answer their doorbells.” They had stolen the smallest mining skiff they could find, figuring it would be a while before anyone noticed it missing. Jotu sat in the cramped cockpit next to Sh’ren, staring at the advancing stars on the viewscreen. The two younglings slept in the cargo bay behind them. Sh’ren was leaning forward in the co-pilot’s seat, rocking back and forth and wringing her fingers. “Relax, Sh’ren,” said Jotu. “If anyone was following us, they would have shown themselves by now.” “Did we do the right thing, Jotu?” asked Sh’ren. “Of course,” said Jotu. He reached over and stilled her fidgeting hands. “We had no choice.” Jotu placed his hand on Sh’ren’s belly. “You’ve started showing Sh’ren. You know as well as I what the Foreman would have done if he found out.” “But we have nothing, Jotu!” said Sh’ren. “

There was no doubt about it–the old man’s coordinates were in the Orubus Belt. The Belt was a lawless zone, claimed by none of the prefectures. Whispers of missing ships and entire crews gone mad kept all but the most foolhardy of adventurers far from its borders. All trade routes between neighboring systems circumnavigated it, leaving the Belt almost entirely uncharted. Zuli was a more than a little apprehensive, but she had promised to deliver the old man to his coordinates. And Zuli was not one to break her promises. Zuli made the sign of the Prophets across her face and muttered a short prayer. She pressed the comm button next to the navigational display on her console. “Are you certain of these coordinates?” Zuli said. “They are taking us into…” “Yes, I’m sure!” the old man’s voice came crackling over the comm system. “I know where it’s taking us. You promised! You can’t back out now!” Zuli frowned. She had no intention of breaking her promise. “No worries,” Zuli said. “The Prophets shall watch over us, even in the Orubus Belt.” “Yeah, yeah,” the old man’s voice blurted. “Just let me know when we approach the coordinates. I’ll have preparations to make.” Zuli scowled and released her finger from the comm button. She made the sign of the Prophets once more and asked for a blessing of patience. Zuli had taken pity on the old man at the New Antilles spaceport. She noticed him at the docks, dragging his large cargo container behind him and begging every passing merchant and trader for passage aboard their ship. Those who didn’t ignore him outright were quick to dismiss him once they learned of his destination. Now Zuli understood why. Zuli flicked her finger across the navigational chart on her console and flung it to the bridge’s main display. A spider web of specks and lines appeared near the bottom of the large glass screen, illuminating Zuli’s face with their dull green glow. The top half of the screen remained ominously blank. The blank space gradually expanded downward, pushing the web of charted systems and trade routes off the bottom edge of the display. Soon they would cross the border into the Orubus Belt. A red dot started flashing inside the empty map of the Orubus Belt. Zuli blinked and stared at the spot. The hairs on the back of her neck tingled, the way they always did when the Prophets were about to test her. Pulsing concentric circles expanded around the dot and faded away, like ripples in a red pond. A distress signal! Based on its proximity to their destination, intercepting the distress signal would require a slight deviation from their current heading. She tapped the alteration into her control panel, and felt an almost imperceptible shudder from the ship as it adjusted course. “What are you doing? Why have you changed course?” the old man’s voice boomed over the comm. “You promised!” Zuli sighed. “No worries, friend,” she replied. “I have detected a distress signal not far from your coordinates. I must investigate and help if I can. It is on the way.” “No!” cried the old man. “You promised to take me!” “I did promise,” said Zuli. “And I will take you. If you are unhappy with the path the Prophets have chosen for me then you are free to disembark and seek another ship whose captain is more willing to…” “Gah!” the old man cut Zuli off with a frustrated grunt. “Do what you must, but remember your promise.” Zuli sighed. The ship’s sensors indicated that the old man was still in the cargo hold. “It will be several cycles yet before we reach the distress signal or your destination,” she said into the comm. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable in one of the crew quarters, or here on the bridge with me.” “I’m fine where I am,” said the old man. The old man’s answer didn’t come as a surprise. He hadn’t left his cargo container alone for a nanocycle since boarding the ship. It was, perhaps, for the best; Zuli didn’t think he’d be very good company on the bridge. Something about the old man’s demeanor and the way he coddled that cargo container unsettled Zuli in a way she had never experienced before. Zuli released the comm button and returned her attention to the main display. The red pulsating dot–still alone in the wide empty space of the Orubus Belt–captivated her. She had heard dozens of tales of the Orubus Belt, and dismissed them as absurd. But now, as they approached its border, the seeds of doubt crept into her mind. The tales often told of dark, incomprehensible cosmic forces dwelling deep within the Belt. Zuli closed her eyes, recalling the horrific tales, and wondering what the Prophets had in store for her. Desmond sat under the desert planet’s perpetual night sky at the edge of what used to be a giant sand-worm pit. The nightly howling windstorms had filled it up, burying the sand-worm’s remains and turning the pit into more of a slight depression. Desmond stroked Bae in his lap and listened to Doyle calling Sarah to join them outside of the ship. “I am not eating one more of those… Those things!” Sarah shouted from inside. “Fine,” said Doyle, looking down at the mound of oozing baby sand-worms in his arms. “Just promise me you’ll crawl off somewhere before the end, I don’t want to see what death by starvation looks like.” That could take a while, thought Desmond. With an adequate supply of water even the frailest of human-derived species could potentially live for months without food. Desmond wondered how he knew that. It seemed to him that ever since he managed to side-load himself into the strange robot that now served as his body, he had gradually been gaining access to new knowledge. He was still an unprivileged user process running on the robot, though. Without root access, most of the robot’s systems outside of basic sensory input and motor functions remained an inaccessible mystery to him. “Don’t worry I’ll keep my distance,” Sarah called back. “The stench will keep me away.” Doyle sniffed his armpit and scrunched his nose. “Oh, you’re one to talk,” Doyle yelled toward the door of the ship. “Not exactly miss cinnamon and spice yourself.” Doyle trudged across the sand to where Desmond was sitting. He tossed the armful of baby sand-worms onto the ground. Bae leapt from Desmond’s lap to eat them. Doyle sighed as he watched the animal gleefully munching and snorting. “Is there anything we can do to get the stove or the bath back? Even for just a few hours?” Doyle asked Desmond. Desmond shook his head. “No bueno, bruh. There’s barely enough juice for the water purification and distress beacon.” Sighing, Doyle collapsed to a sitting position next to the pile of sand-worms. He grabbed one and shoved it in his mouth, making a face of disgust as he swallowed. “Any response to the beacon?” “Nah, it’s one-way. If there’s a response you’ll know. Dudes will just show up.” Sarah appeared at the ship’s doorway. She stomped across the sand to where Desmond and Doyle were sitting and, without saying a word, scooped a handful of baby sand-worms from the pile. Bae bounded after Sarah as she headed back to the ship. “You know,” said Desmond. Sarah stopped, her back still turned. “I think Heady would be pretty impressed with you guys,” continued Desmond. “He consumed thirty seven point five bugs in all the videos I had access to on the Ark. You guys probably got him beat a hundred times over by now. You should be proud.” Doyle gave a snort of laughter. “Fuck it,” said Sarah. She turned and sat down next to Doyle and Desmond. “I’ll do it for the content.” Sarah ate a worm. Desmond looked past Sarah to the large mound of sand in the distance where he had buried Bae’s mother. In spite of Doyle’s objections, Sarah had refused to consider the large rhino-pig’s potential value as a food source. The supply of baby sand-worms had also been dwindling since Desmond had killed the giant worm. Desmond had noted that the rate at which Sarah and Doyle were losing weight had accelerated, and both were suffering from a lack of energy. He wasn’t sure how much longer they could survive like this. A sudden gust of wind from above kicked sand up around the ship. Bae snorted and scurried over to Sarah, who scooped the tiny animal up in her lap. Another gust of wind hit, harder this time. “Is that a sandstorm?” asked Doyle. Desmond looked up. “Nah, bruh,” he said, and pointed. “Look!” A glowing spherical craft descended from the sky, blasting gusts of wind downward as it slowed. It settled on the sand twenty feet from the awe-struck trio. Desmond got to his feet and grabbed grub-smasher–the large metal scrap that Doyle used when fishing for sand-worms. The sphere went dark, then a doorway slid open and a ramp extended to the ground. A woman with short silver hair and orange eyes stepped out of the ship. Her silky dark blue robe flowed hypnotically in the wind. The woman made a gesture in front of her face with her hand, then started to speak. Desmond did not recognize the language. Doyle jumped to his feet. “Yeah! Oh God do we ever!” he cried, and started approaching the woman. “Dude, keep back, we don’t know why she’s here yet…” said Desmond. “What? She got the distress signal! She literally just asked if we needed a ride,” Doyle said. “Wait, you can understand her?” asked Sarah. A confused expression crossed Doyle’s face. He ran a finger across his forehead, like he was feeling for something. “Yeah,” said Doyle. “I mean, I know she’s not speaking English, but I understood every word she said.” The woman spoke again. “That’s right!” said Doyle. “That asshole who took the Ark, he shot something onto my forehead. She said it’s like a universal translator or something.” “Universal translator?” said Sarah. “What is this, Star Trek?” “Fascinating,” said Desmond. “The man who took your ship gave you this?” Zuli asked, turning the small white slate over in her hands. Its black markings didn’t look like any language she was familiar with. The man named Doyle stuffed two more green food cubes into his already-full mouth

A hook formed out of thin wire carved a narrow trench through the sand as Doyle steadily dragged it toward him. In his right hand he held a chunk of metal shaped like a cricket bat, which he had christened Grub Smasher. He had salvaged both the wire and Grub Smasher from the debris that had dropped from the Ark. The sound of shifting sand came from the loose end of the wire. Doyle’s muscles tensed. “Come on you little bastard,” whispered Doyle. A small hole appeared in the ground next to the wire, and a pale finger-sized worm poked out. The squirming creature snatched the loose end of wire with dozens of hair-like tentacles surrounding its mouth. Before it could drag its prize underground, Doyle swung Grub Smasher down. A cloud of dust puffed up around the impact. Doyle turned the weapon over and observed a wet purple smear at its center–confirmation of his kill. He put Grub Smasher down and yanked the dead worm’s body out of its hole. Purple slime dripped from its smashed head onto the sand. Doyle tossed the carcass behind him and it landed with a splat on top of the others. Doyle sneered at the pile of dead worms. That last one made two dozen. They looked like a pile of rancid uncooked hot dogs sitting in a puddle of their own liquefied remains. If only they tasted as good, thought Doyle. He shuddered. Doyle and Sarah had been ecstatic when they first discovered the creatures. After nearly two days without food or water, the worms had saved them. They spent hours luring them, yanking them out of the ground, then consuming them–two bites, then on to the next–purple goo smeared across their cheeks and dripping from their chins. Fuller bellies and clearer heads ushered in the realization that the worms left much to be desired in the way of flavor. They paced themselves to limit their disgust–one meal a day, forcing down as many of the creatures as they could without vomiting. “How many is that, my dude?” Doyle looked over at the pile of cables and computer components that had spoken. The Ark’s stasis chamber was too heavy to drag around, so Desmond had walked Doyle through the process of extracting his computer core and a few key peripherals. It involved Grub Smasher and a lot of swearing, but the end result was a tangled but much more portable version of Desmond. “About two dozen,” said Doyle. “Should be more than enough. Yesterday Sarah could only choke three of them down. Don’t think I did much better.” “Shit, bro,” said Desmond. “I wish I could do more to help you guys find different food. I feel totally useless like this.” Sighing, Doyle glanced over at the derelict spaceship that he, Sarah, and Desmond had been calling home for the past two weeks. The ship had been half-buried in sand, but not in a way that implied it had crashed–rather abandoned and forgotten for so long that the wind was gradually tucking it in. Doyle had spotted it while they were searching the perimeter of the city ruins for anything that might help them survive. The ship was exceptionally large–it consisted of a spacious rear cabin connected by on over-sized doorway to a cockpit with similarly over-sized controls and chairs. The chairs made comfortable beds and, despite having its rear door stuck open, the cabin did an acceptable job of shielding its three stranded inhabitants from the elements. And best of all, it had power. Somewhere deep in the ship’s guts was a backup power source. A power source that had sat dormant for ages, automatically activated by the arrival of a couple humans and an AI stranded three million years into their own future. The cabin had working lights, a comically large but fully functional stove top, a toilet the size of a small car, a sink, and–Sarah’s favorite–an enormous bathtub that filled with hot water at the press of a button. After having spent over a week sleeping on the barren dirt ground in the open, discovering the ship had felt like booking into the Ritz Carlton. Despite it’s odd proportions, Desmond had claimed the ship’s technology was “human-esque,” whatever that meant. He even managed to communicate with its systems over a radio-based protocol similar to Bluetooth. “You’re not useless, Des,” said Doyle. “In fact if you can figure out a way to send a distress signal from that ship, you might be our only hope.” Doyle stood up, facing away from Desmond as he unzipped his fly to pee. “Not yet,” said Desmond. “And you should probably do that on the ship.” “What?” asked Doyle. “The ship’s water supply isn’t what it was when we first found it,” said Desmond. “When you urinate outside there’s no way to reclaim it.” “No way to… Wait, what?” “All waste water in the ship is purified and re-circulated,” said Desmond. “I mean, where did you think all the water was coming from?” “So, you mean we’ve been drinking our own…?” “Yeah. Well, not just yours. Obviously the ship’s previous crew was the source of the original supply.” Doyle’s eyes widened. “So, the bath… We’re bathing in…” “Recycled urine,” Desmond said matter-of-factly. “Do not tell any of this to Sarah,” said Doyle. He was certain that Sarah’s nightly baths were the one thing keeping her remotely sane. He didn’t want to think what would happen if those got spoiled. Doyle zipped his pants back up, deciding to wait. As disturbing as it may be, water was water. Without it they didn’t stand a chance out here. Doyle gathered the pile of dead worms up in his arms and tossed them into the ship before picking up Desmond and following them inside. “I have been making some progress on that other thing,” said Desmond. “What?” asked Doyle. He narrowed his eyes and glared down at the mess of wires and metal doodads cradled in his arms. “Please don’t tell me you’re wasting time and energy on that…” Doyle looked to the far corner of the ship’s cabin–the corner that had remained shrouded in darkness even after the lights came on. A tall, dark figure stood quiet and motionless in the shadows. It reminded Doyle of a minimalist toy robot–the kind you’d expect to see little kids playing with in cartoons–only this one was solid metal and nine feet tall. Every surface was smooth and featureless. “Just watch this,” said Desmond. Two blue lights appeared on the smooth surface of the statue’s head where its eyes might be. “Wow,” said Doyle. “Uh, neat. Its eyes light up.” “Yeah!” said Desmond with alacrity. “And that’s not all, watch this!” As Doyle watched, either the eye lights moved across the surface or the statue turned its head ever so slightly. “Huh,” said Doyle. “Can it walk, or do something useful?” “Not yet!” said Desmond. “But I’m close to…” “That’s great,” Doyle cut him off. “Just make sure you’re not letting it distract you from what’s important. We need to find a way off this planet. We’ve got to signal for help, or establish some kind of communication with… I don’t know, with anybody I guess.” “Yeah, yeah,” said Desmond. Doyle didn’t know if artificial intelligences could sigh, but if they could he guessed that’s what it would sound like. “Sarah should be back from scouting the city soon,” said Doyle. “Just in case she still hasn’t found a Ruth Chris hiding somewhere out there, I better start cooking.” He looked disdainfully at the dead worm creatures scattered on the floor of the cabin where he had tossed them. “Oh, by the way,” said Desmond, “I’ve been noticing something weird whenever you’re out fishing for those things.” “Oh?” said Doyle. He put Desmond down and started gathering up the worm carcasses. “At first I thought my accelerometer was acting up, but it’s too predictable to be random noise. I’ve detected micro tremors that occur every time right after you kill one of the worms.” “Tremors? You mean like earthquakes?” asked Doyle. “Yeah,” said Desmond. “Huh,” said Doyle. “That is weird.” Ancient, crumbled husks of once imposing towers and the sand-blasted metal shells of defunct vehicles were all that remained of the planet’s long-departed inhabitants. Sarah couldn’t judge how tall the largest buildings had once been–of those still standing, all had suffered collapse of their topmost floors, revealing eroded cross-sections of their abandoned interiors. In the starlight the towers cast jagged shadows across the sandy, arterial passageways that snaked between them, like giant dark teeth gnawing at Sarah as she crept through the quiet ruins. The sky had remained dark in all the weeks since the Ark crashed on the alien planet. Desmond had explained it–something about how the same side of the planet always faced the sun, one half stuck in an unending blisteringly hot day, and the other half in an eternal freezing night. They had crashed somewhere between the two extremes. The “habitable zone,” Desmond had called it. It didn’t seem particularly habitable to Sarah. The only food that she and Doyle had managed to find were the vile-tasting underground worms that poked their heads out at the sound of light scraping on the sand. Sarah was desperate for an alternative, but so far her excursions away from the camp had proved fruitless. But she refused to give up hope–those worms were hunting something on the surface. Maybe something edible. Maybe something that didn’t taste like the rotten scent glands of a roadkill skunk. Sarah had noticed other signs of life too–paw prints, mostly mouse-sized but some larger; and tiny pebbles of half-buried scat in the sandy streets. So far the animals themselves had eluded her, but knowing that they were out there kept her coming back to the city night after night. Though she had yet to find food, her trips had not been entirely without merit. On one she found a pot-shaped scrap of metal, in which she one day hoped Doyle could cook something other than those cursed worms. On another she found the metal canteen she carried, slung around her neck with a rubber cord salvaged from the Ark’s debris. The wind had started to pick up. It wasn’t too strong yet, but Sarah could see a sandstorm looming over the tops of the skeleta

The phone rang at around three in the afternoon. I stared at it for a long time–the beige rotary antiquity sitting far back on my desk next to a scrambled Rubik’s cube and a book of chess puzzles. I had almost forgotten the thing even existed, despite the fact that it had directed the flow of my entire life for the last three decades. Its ring was loud and tactile–like those old alarm clocks with a hammer that physically pounds back and forth against two bells. The sound gave me goosebumps. I guess for you to understand why something as innocuous as a ringing phone could cause me such trepidation, I had better start from the beginning. When I was in high school, I was a gaming fanatic who was blessed with wealthy parents and a generous allowance. I owned every home console available in North America, as well as a couple that weren’t, and every penny that didn’t go towards expanding my game collection got converted to quarters at the arcade on a regular basis. An obsession with video games was certainly not an uncommon condition among boys my age–I merely took it to a level that few others could even dream of. I started my freshman year at university in ‘92. My parents kept paying me the same allowance and covered the tuition, but everything else was up to me. It became apparent early on that maintaining my former gaming budget while also paying for the dorm, food, and other living expenses was, to put it mildly, financially untenable. For the first time in my life, the horrifying prospect of needing additional income had dawned on me. Wandering around campus during the day was something I tended to avoid–too many people were out and about; it made me anxious. As such, it wasn’t until well after dark one Friday night that I hit the campus job boards in the hopes of finding something that could ease the burden on my wallet while minimizing the burden on me. I was not an ambitious kid–I wanted to earn just enough cash to keep a roof over my head and feed my stomach and gaming addiction while doing as little work as possible in the process. My prospects were grim. The postings on the board were all volunteer positions or part-time retail gigs. The retail jobs would have paid enough, and bagging groceries probably wouldn’t have been too mentally taxing, but the thought of wearing a fake smile and dealing face-to-face with an unending stream of people every day made me dry heave. There was one posting for a data entry job, but all the dangling tabs with the phone number to call had already been torn off. Data entry sounded like it could be up my alley, so I decided to visit the smaller job board outside the computer lab in the hopes of finding more. To my dismay, the cork board hanging in the dimly-lit hall outside the computer lab displayed a smaller selection of the same jobs I had already seen. I was about to head back to the dorms to lament over my poor luck, when something white jutting out from behind the board caught my eye–the slightest hint of a sheet of paper someone had slipped between the wall and the cork board. My first ham-fisted attempts at fishing it out with my fingernail failed miserably. I pulled out my student ID card and pressed the edge of it against the sliver of paper, then dragged it along the wall. The sheet of paper slid right into my hand. Grinning at my cleverness, I looked the paper over. There were two lines typed out in all caps at its center: DO YOU LIKE VIDEO GAMES?CALL FOR MORE INFO There was a phone number printed at the bottom of the sheet. My heart rate amped up a notch. Could this be the Holy Grail that it appeared to be? I would have given my left arm for a paying job that involved video games, and that seemed to be what I had stumbled upon. I felt absurdly protective of that little piece of paper. In my mind it was a divine treasure, hidden there for me to find. I glanced down the hallway in both directions. There was a couple down at one end who were plainly too interested in each other to pay me any notice, and I thought I saw a man standing in the shadows at the other end of the hall–but when I blinked and squinted to get a better look there was nothing there. Probably my sudden paranoia playing tricks on me. I looked back at the job posting in my hands, folded it into my pocket, then practically sprinted all the way back to the dorms. Expecting it to go to a machine so late at night, my fear over even the slightest possibility that I may miss out if I waited too long drove me to call the number that night. To my surprise, a woman answered. “Hello?” said the woman. She sounded alert, not like someone who had been awaken by a phone call in the middle of the night. That was promising. “Hi, I hope it’s not too late. I’m calling about the, uh, video game job?” I said. There was a pregnant pause, and for a moment I feared that I had lost the connection, or the woman had hung up. Maybe the message I had found was a joke, and I had unwittingly prank-called some poor lady in the middle of the night. “I’m assuming you can read,” the woman stated. She hadn’t said it like a question, but I felt like she was waiting for some kind of response. “Huh?” I asked. “Are you literate? Capable of comprehending the written English language?” “Uh, yeah,” I said. I looked at the creased paper in my hand. Was the woman angry? Had I missed something in the job posting? Had I somehow misread those two simple sentences? “Do you live alone? And do you rent or own your current residence?” “I’m living out of the dorms at the U,” I answered. “Perfect,” said the lady. “The job pays one twenty. Give me your name and address. You’ll receive more information on Monday.” My brain tried to process the number she had said as I rattled off my personal information. One twenty? What, per hour? That didn’t seem like much. Perhaps she meant a hundred and twenty? Per week that might be manageable, per month probably not. I hoped it would become more clear when they sent more details after the weekend. Monday morning rolled around and a loud thud woke me up before the sun was even up. I tip-toed to the door, trying not to wake my roommate, and checked the hallway outside our dorm. There wasn’t a soul in any direction, but there at my feet was a large sealed cardboard box with my name written on it. I picked it up and brought it to my bed, ripped the tape off, and looked inside. There was a note and an envelope inside the box, sitting on top of a stack of papers bound together by a coiled spine. I snatched the note and read it. The letter explained that my new employer was a software company on the cusp of releasing a new video game, and that my duties would consist entirely of manning an evening-hours telephone hint line for that game. People would call with questions, and my job was to consult the included hint book and read out the answers. It explained that my salary would be a hundred twenty thousand per year, plus benefits and annual raises to match inflation, and that in the envelope I would find the keys to my employer-provided apartment and home office, into which they expected me to move at once. My roommate must have woken up suspecting that I had gone crazy, laughing and rolling around as I was. Like a madman who believed the whole of existence was some big joke, and he had just learned the punchline. It was a modest two-bedroom apartment. One of the rooms was furnished with a desk, bare but for a rotary telephone at its center–an amusingly outdated prop even for the time. I spent that first day moving my video game collection and other belongings from my dorm room and my parents’ house to the apartment. That evening passed without any calls on the telephone. The next evening, too. Soon two weeks had gone by, still without a single call, and I woke up to find an unmarked envelope someone had slid under the apartment’s door. It contained my first paycheck. My parents practically disowned me when I dropped out of university after receiving a few more checks. They couldn’t understand why I would “jeopardize my future” over what they called a “lousy help desk” job. I couldn’t understand how anyone would want to waste time going to school when they’re already earning a six figure salary doing exactly what they love to do–which in my case was absolutely nothing at all. Times changed. The internet went from AOL keywords and web directories to search engines and social media; cell phones got cheaper and thinner; computers got cheaper and faster; cell phones turned into computers that fit in your pocket; printers went three-dimensional; cars went electric and started driving themselves; Super Nintendos made way for Playstations, Xboxes, and Switches. The world outside marched on, but little changed inside my apartment. The phone remained silent, and I kept getting paid to do nothing. The company name on the paychecks changed a handful of times over the years. Searching them on the internet turned up generic press releases about acquisitions, mergers, and splits. Each time I braced myself–surely someone would discover that the payroll for the company they just acquired or merged with included an employee manning a hint line that nobody called for a game that was never released on a video game console that had been obsolete for years. Maybe I would receive a call; or maybe they’d simply “fix the glitch” and the checks would stop appearing under my door, and my rent would no longer be paid. The prospect of having to find a real job was perhaps the most terrifying to me–I had grown accustomed to living on the periphery of real-life. At first I ventured out on occasion to buy food, clothes, liquor, and other necessities–but with the advent of one-day shipping and delivery services for every product imaginable, my trips outside the apartment gradually diminished to the point where my only interaction with the outside world was accidentally answering the door too quickly and having to nod at a delivery person as they wal

Orange fingers of flame gripped the Ark like a slender fiery hand as the battered ship plummeted through the upper atmosphere. Flecks of carbon tore from thermal plating and flashed as they burned up in the ship’s wake. A mile from the surface, the Ark’s retro booster burst to life, further slowing the Ark’s descent. Three yellow parachutes deployed from the uppermost section of the Ark. Two of them inflated, the third flapped limply in the wind. The imbalance caused the ship to tilt. The Ark’s corrective thrusters attempted to compensate, streaking their blue flames brilliantly across the night sky as the Ark spiraled out of control. Crumbled ruins of an ancient city cast quick-moving shadows across a barren desert landscape as the tumbling ship passed overhead. The Ark crashed at the edge of a dry lake bed, buckled slightly in the middle, then toppled and skidded half a mile. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, the damaged Ark lay on its side, half-buried in the valley-sized trench it had gouged. Stillness settled, as though the night were eager to claim it back after the Ark’s uninvited intrusion. Interrupting the silence yet again, the Ark ejected one of its stasis chambers with a loud pop. The metallic chamber landed a hundred feet away, then started venting white mist into the warm air. Doyle rode his bike through the University campus as often as he could–to and from the grocery store, trips to the public library, and as on this occasion, heading home from the communal office building where he sometimes worked for a change of scenery from his home office. It had been almost a decade since he was a student himself, but he still cherished the feeling of nostalgia that washed over him as he pedaled over the familiar paved path and relived some of his favorite memories. The bike path meandered past and around most of the buildings, and Doyle was rounding a blind corner when he nearly ran over a kneeling woman. She was trying desperately to stop a flock of fluttering papers from blowing away in the wind. Doyle squeezed his brakes and swerved to avoid her, rolling down a rocky embankment next to the path and winding up flat on his back. He stared up at the woman. She stared back down at him, forgetting briefly about her escaping papers. “Oh my God I’m so sorry!” cried the woman. “Are you alright?” Doyle got to his feet. He was out of breath, and guessed he’d have more than a few bruises in the morning, but nothing felt broken. He nodded to the woman and rolled his bike back up the embankment. After expressing her profound apologies, the woman introduced herself as Kirsten. Doyle helped her chase down the last of her errant papers. Kirsten explained that they were term papers she had finished grading that night. This doesn’t look like a term paper, Doyle thought as he studied one of the sheets in his hands. Blast radius diagrams, tonnage reports, target coordinates, fallout projections. It seemed so familiar, and yet out of place at the same time. He looked up at Kirsten, who was holding her hand out, eagerly awaiting the return of her document. Her expression had changed. Her eyes seemed hollow, her smile emotionless. Was this how it went? Doyle couldn’t remember. The edges of his vision were getting dim and closing in until Kirsten’s frightening, grinning face was all that remained at the center of a black void. Then even she faded away. The next sensation Doyle became aware of was the taste of dirt. He choked and spit, then rolled over onto his back. Light crept back into his vision in the form of a dim haze. “Kirsten? Where’s… Where’s my bike?” Doyle’s voice came out a raspy whisper that he almost didn’t recognize as his own. He sat up and tried to feel around for his bicycle. His arms seemed reluctant to respond, like rubber tubes flopping around in slow motion. His hand brushed against something. A foot, an ankle, connected to a leg. Was it his? Doyle didn’t think so. “Get your… hands off me you… you pervert.” Doyle recognized the woman’s stilted, protesting voice, but it wasn’t Kirsten’s. He wasn’t on campus anymore, that had been years ago. So where did he know that voice from? Where was he? How he had gotten there? And why did he feel such a foreboding sense of urgency? As his vision cleared, Doyle was able to discern that the sky was dark, but the stars seemed unusually bright. A flat, cracked dry lake bed stretched out into the darkness ahead. On the horizon Doyle could see the dark silhouette of what looked like a city skyline. Someone was laying prone on the ground to his left–the woman whose voice he had recognized but couldn’t place. Behind him, Doyle saw the stasis chamber–it looked like a large refrigerator with its door open. In the distance beyond was the upper edge of the Ark peeking above a steep dirt mound that extended half a mile out toward the edge of the dry lake. Doyle took in the sight, but his brain refused to process what he was seeing. “Are you dudes okay?” A man’s voice, this time. One that Doyle also recognized. It came from inside the refrigerator-thing. Doyle shook his head, trying desperately to surface and sort out his thoughts and memories. They came slowly, softened and warped like he was viewing them through a rippling pool of water. “I had to eject your stasis chamber. That gnarly crash landing totally wiped out some major power conduits and I couldn’t supply enough juice to keep that one running. I guess ‘cause there were two of you in there.” The inside of the stasis chamber was too dark for Doyle to make out any details. A thinning fog flowed out of it like spilled milk. “Heady?” Doyle asked. “Is that you?” “Nah, bruh. I’m not Heady. Or at least I don’t think I’m Heady.” Doyle stood up. His knees wobbled and he almost fell, but he managed to regain his balance. He took a few short steps toward the stasis chamber to get a better look inside. “What kind of stupid game are you playing, Heady? Come out of there. Do you know where we are? What’s going on?” “Nah bruh, the Ark’s sensors got pretty janked up when we landed. I can’t get a clean look around.” A memory bubbled up through the murk into Doyle’s consciousness. The Ark! That girl on the ground, she had been pointing a gun at Heady. The last thing Doyle remembered was running toward the Ark, charging at the girl, trying desperately to save Heady. And Kirsten. “Heady? Where are you?” Doyle said. He reached the stasis chamber and put his hand against it for balance. “Get out of there and come with me, Kirsten’s still on the Ark. We’ve got to find her.” “Heady? Heady is that really you?” Doyle spun around. The young woman–Susan? No Sarah–was sitting up now, rubbing her eyes. “I’m not Heady,” said Heady’s voice. “Heady was just a part of my training data. My name is Desmond.” “Quit messing around Heady,” said Doyle. He stuck his head in the stasis chamber and looked around at its padded walls. The small chamber was empty. “Desmond?” Sarah’s voice came, sharper than before. “What happened to the Ark?” Sarah looked around urgently, then stopped when her gaze fell on the dark skyscrapers blotting out the stars along the horizon. “How did we get back to Earth? Oh God… How long has it been?” “I don’t know, bruh.” Heady’s voice came from the empty chamber again. Doyle started walking around it, looking for where Heady was hiding. “My sensors are either busted or buried, but based on the star patterns I can see, I don’t think this is…” “Heady,” interrupted Doyle. “Where the hell are you? I can hear you but I can’t see?” “That’s not Heady, you dipshit,” said Sarah, still sitting on the ground but looking much more alert. “Desmond is the Ark’s computer. He must be communicating through the ejected stasis chamber.” Doyle stared at Sarah blankly. “Heady is talking to us through the computer?” Sarah shook her head. “No, that is the computer. It’s using Heady’s voice for some reason.” “I’m using the speech and vocal patterns that were provided to me in my training data,” said Desmond. “Your training…” said Sarah, trailing off. Her eyes widened. “Oh! You mean my data. My videos? Oh, shit…” Doyle turned and looked at the stasis chamber again. “Look, computer, or whatever you are, Kirsten is still on the Ark and I need to find her. Can you help me do…” Before he could finish, Doyle felt hands on his back forcefully shove him. His head hit the metal shell of the stasis chamber and he fell to his hands and knees. Doyle’s head throbbed and he scrambled around to see Sarah looming over him. “Asshole! This is your fault! How long has it been? He could be a hundred years old by now! He could be… He could be dead!” Sarah grunted with frustration, and started kicking dirt at Doyle. “Augh! Stop that!” cried Doyle, raising his arms defensively to protect his face. When the onslaught stopped, Doyle lowered his arms and looked at Sarah. She was pointing her concussion pistol at him. “Now, look!” said Doyle. “Let’s just talk about this like mature…” An explosive force of air cut Doyle off. The too-bright stars spun around in a dizzying cacophony of light before winking out. A brilliant halo of light encircled the full moon like a crystal ball suspended in the cloudless sky. A cool breeze rustled the leaves of the evergreens surrounding the small grassy field behind the university’s gymnasium where the faculty party had already wrapped up hours ago. “Ice crystals,” said Kirsten. “Hmm?” Doyle breathed. “The Moon halo,” replied Kirsten, pointing up at the sky. “It’s created by the Moon’s light refracting off ice crystals in the atmosphere.” Doyle turned his head to look at her. She was laying on her back next to him. An empty wine bottle obscured her face. Doyle reached over and tipped the bottle over. “Did we finish that whole thing?” asked Kirsten with a grin. “Afraid so,” said Doyle. He smiled at her, but she turned away. “I should go,” said Kirsten. “I don’t even know why I’m here.” Doyle looked back up at the brilliant ring of light

“The engineering team has been having trouble loading the ML data onto the Ark’s computer,” Commander Chin said. He was sitting across from the Nikola’s Children Board of Directors. He hadn’t had much experience interacting with the Board, but Commander Chin was now the highest ranking officer not in stasis, and the Board had been demanding daily progress reports. “Some kind of problem with storage. They’ve assured me it’ll be sorted by tomorrow.” Shadow cloaked the three Board members–amorphous dark figures against an even darker backdrop. The Board room had one light on its high ceiling, pointed down at the top of Commander Chin’s head. “The Ark launches in one week, Commander Chin,” said one of the board members. “The rest of Engineering was to board tonight.” It wasn’t clear which of the three dark figures was speaking; Commander Chin always assumed the one in the middle did the talking, because that’s the only one he had ever seen move–a slight nodding motion in response to good news. He wasn’t nodding now, though. “Yes, sir, I know that,” said Commander Chin. He felt the heat of the light beating down on his skull, and felt beads of sweat trickle down his forehead. “They said it was a minor problem, they’ll be able to board tomorrow. The launch schedule shouldn’t be affected.” The middle shadow nodded, and Commander Chin stifled a relieved sigh. “What of Deluge?” came the voice from the darkness. Commander Chin had been waiting for this question. He smiled. “We transferred the payload to the Ark this morning. Doctor Ghani and I personally oversaw its installation. We ran a full system diagnosis afterwards and all criteria registered within expected parameters. Project Deluge is now primed.” The middle figure nodded again. “Excellent job, Commander Chin. When the engineers complete their task tomorrow, they must board with you and the remaining security officers. The compound must be empty as we make final preparations.” Commander Chin nodded. He stood and saluted by crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Thank you, Sir. May the Children be praised!” “The Children be praised,” said the shadowy figure, and Commander Chin marched out of the board room. “Do you remember the one where you stuck a Roman candle in your butt?” Sarah giggled. Heady sighed. “Yep, I remember alright. I still have the scar.” Sarah stopped giggling and gawked at him. “Oooh,” she said. “Can I see?” Her cheeks turned pink and she started giggling again. “How far down does this go, exactly?” Doyle asked. Sarah glanced at him, annoyed at the unwelcome reminder of his presence. “It won’t be long, just chill,” said Sarah. She looked Doyle up and down and shook her head before returning her attention to Heady. “Sarah,” said Heady. “Exactly how deep underground is the compound? I’d like to know, you know, for the video.” “Oh, it’s pretty deep,” said Sarah. “It has to be, to hold the Ark.” She studied Heady in the bright fluorescent light of the elevator. He looked so much better in Officer Thompson’s uniform than Officer Thompson ever had. Sarah found it hard to believe that it was the same uniform at all. “The Ark? What’s that?” asked Doyle. Sarah suppressed the urge to scream. Why couldn’t Shit-for-Brains shut up already? She wished Doyle had stayed behind on the surface. Officer Thompson only had the one uniform, and there was no way it would have fit Fatso. She told them it would be dangerous for Doyle to be inside the compound in civilian clothes, but they wouldn’t listen. Sarah needed to figure out a way to bring Heady to the Ark alone. “I’d like to know what the Ark is too, Sarah,” said Heady. “Oh!” said Sarah. “Well, the Ark is our ship. It’s going to take us to the New Home. Away from all the war, disease, climate change, you know… All the bullshit we gotta put up with here. Plus there’s that whole apocalypse thing.” “The… Apocalypse? New Place?” asked Heady. “Hold up, come stand next to me. Let me get this on camera.” Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She knew this video would never actually get posted, but the idea of Heady asking her to be in it excited her anyway. She sidled up next to Heady. Heady handed his phone to Doyle, who stepped back and continued to film. “I know it sounds corny,” said Sarah, blushing a little. She hadn’t expected to feel so nervous. “But Nikola’s Children got all the best scientists and engineers here working on it. The Ark is totally legit. Dudes came from NASA, Space-X, plus all kinds of companies I’ve never even heard of that do artificial intelligence and stuff. Oh and the stasis chambers–those were a big deal, tons of scientists worked on those.” Doyle’s face perked at the mention of scientists. He lowered the camera a bit and looked at Sarah. “What about a physicist named Kirsten Ghani? She would have showed up about a year ago. Is she still here?” “Um, yeah, I seen her around,” said Sarah, disdain in her voice. “Of course she’s still here. Why would she leave? I don’t know what she’s working on though. Something important I think. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s already in stasis. Almost everyone is by now.” “Hold up a sec,” said Heady. “Ship? NASA? Stasis chambers? Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about here? Like a space ship? A fucking space ship that’s taking you to… Where? Space?” “Yeah,” said Sarah. “Preposterous,” said Doyle. “And the ‘Ark?’ Couldn’t you think up a more generic name than that?” “Fuck you,” said Sarah. “Wait, wait, wait…” said Heady. “What exactly does being ‘in stasis’ mean? Where’s Kirsten?” “On the Ark,” replied Sarah. “I don’t know how it works, that’s what they got all the scientists for. It’s so we don’t grow older while we travel to the New Home… They’re like freezers for humans, or something. Almost everyone’s on board in their stasis chamber already since we launch in a week. Just a handful of us left but we’re boarding tomorrow.” “This is nonsense” said Doyle. He sounded irritated. “Even if I believed all this prattle about space ships and stasis, what about your lives here on Earth? Family, friends, possessions, pets, you’re just leaving all that behind? And where the hell are you even going? The Moon? Mars? Kirsten’s not stupid, she wouldn’t believe any of this crap any more than I do. Where is she?” “We’re not going to the Moon you idiot,” said Sarah. “Why would we need stasis to go to the Moon? We’re going to the New Home, Kepler something.” Sarah scratched her chin for a second, trying to recall the name the scientists had used. “Kepler-1649c. It’s like three hundred years away. And we’re not leaving family or friends behind–the whole compound is going. And the Ark has everything we’ll need to survive at the New Home.” The elevator finally came to a shuddering halt and the doors slid open. Sarah looked at Heady. He was looking back at her with an astonished expression. “Heady, I uh… I think you should come film the Ark with me. That’s why you’re here right? You came to film me… I mean Nikola’s Children. Before we leave. Right?” Heady nodded, but said nothing. His mouth was agape. “Fuck,” said Doyle. “I need to know where Kirsten is. How do I find that out?” Sarah thought for a moment. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to ditch the loser so she could bring Heady to the Ark alone. “Do you know how to use a computer?” she asked. “Follow me.” Sarah took a left out of the elevator and Heady and Doyle followed her down the corridor that led to her security office. If Heady had showed up even a couple weeks earlier, the halls would have been bustling with activity and sneaking two outsiders through the compound would have been unthinkable. But since almost everyone had already boarded the Ark, Sarah felt confident that she could keep at least Heady from getting caught. She wasn’t so sure about the moron in civvies, but that wasn’t important anyway. The two men Sarah had in tow were whispering to one another, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Doyle felt terrified and angry. From his research he knew the cult was up to something colossal and expensive, but he could never have conceived it to be something as outrageously stupid as what that Sarah girl had described. A space ship called the ‘Ark’ with some kind of cryogenic stasis chambers? A three hundred year trip to a new planet? This wasn’t fucking Mass Effect, shit like that wasn’t possible in real life. Right? “This video is going to go so viral!” whispered Heady. “Can you believe this? We’re inside the compound! This couldn’t have gone any better.” The two men trailed behind Sarah, trying to keep out of earshot as she led them through the claustrophobic concrete hallway. “No I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it,” Doyle whispered back. “Kirsten would never get mixed up in something so asinine. There has to be something else going on here. And who the fuck is this girl anyway? Why is she helping us?” Heady and Doyle passed between evenly spaced pairs of windowless steel doors on each side of the hallway as they walked. Sarah stopped at one of the doors and waved a card attached to a retractable cord on her belt at a panel on the wall. There was a quiet beep, and Sarah pushed the door open. She ushered Heady and Doyle through into a cramped room. Doyle thought it must be some kind of monitoring center–there was an office chair sitting on the other side of what looked like a metal desk with a grid of embedded monitors. “You, Boyle,” said Sarah. “It’s Doyle,” said Doyle. “Whatever. The computer in here can access the personnel records so you can look up that bitch you mentioned. There’s a spare key card in that drawer.” Sarah gestured toward a cabinet nestled under the console. “The pin is 1234. Think you can remember that, or should I write it down?” Doyle sat down at the console. He opened the drawer and fished through a pile of crumpled up papers and empty soda cans, looking for the key card. His hands wrapped around somethi

“Punch me as hard as you can, bruh!” A shirtless, flaxen-haired Heady Armstrong pounded his fists into his well-defined abdominal muscles and laughed. His friend, also laughing, stepped back until he was out of the frame. “Here I come dude, you sure?” the unseen friend called out. “I’m ready! Do it bruh!” Heady’s friend barreled into view and raced across the screen. Heady visibly braced himself. The still-charging friend swung his arm back, and then thrust it forward. Swinging fist connected with Heady’s groin. Heady yelped and keeled forward. The camera started shaking as its operator burst into laughter. “Officer Jefferies?” Sarah looked up from the phone hidden beneath the monitoring control panel that doubled as her desk. She was startled to see Officer Thompson standing in the small security office. Sarah wondered why he hadn’t used the intercom, like a normal person. Probably to annoy her. Sarah pushed a loose strand of jet black hair behind her left ear, surreptitiously grabbing the wireless earbud she was hiding there. Damn it, how long had he been standing there? “Officer Jefferies, the highway outpost has radioed that they saw a suspicious vehicle. It might be heading toward the compound. Keep a close eye on the perimeter, OK?” Officer Thompson spoke slowly and enunciated his words, as though he were suspicious of Sarah’s grasp of basic language concepts. Sarah loathed him. “I heard the report too,” Sarah lied. “I’m not stupid y’know. You don’t need to tell me how to do my job.” Officer Thompson nodded. “Yes, sure. Just making sure you got the message.” His eyes darted down toward Sarah’s control panel. Sarah saw his gaze shift and slid her chair forward, shoving the phone in her hands further out of view. “Right,” said Sarah curtly and forced a disingenuous grin. “Message received. Thanks.” Officer Thompson frowned and peered closer at the array of display screens splayed across Sarah’s control panel. His eyes lingered on the one that was off. “Did you fix camera nine yet?” he asked. “Not yet,” said Sarah. She hated Thompson so much. Why did he have to be so irritating? His stupid freckled face infuriated her. His dumb red hair made her blood boil. “It’s only been broke two days. Plus that section’s covered by the motion sensors so it’s not like we need the camera. I’ll get to it later.” “Make sure you do, Jefferies,” said Officer Thompson. “Before your shift is out, OK?” Sarah hated the way Officer Thompson called her “Jefferies.” Everyone called her that, but the way he said it seemed to drip with contempt and superiority. Like he thought he was better than her because he outranked her. Officer Thompson held his arms crossed out in front of him, forming the standard Nikola’s Children salute. “The Children be praised,” he said, then turned and left the security office. Sarah listened to his footsteps recede down the hall and out of earshot. “Dickweed,” Sarah muttered under her breath. “Children be praised,” she said in a mocking tone and put her earbud back in her ear. She returned her attention to her phone and the video that Officer Thompson had interrupted. An old one she’d already seen countless times, but one of her favorites. “Are you sure this is the way?” Doyle Tingler asked. They had turned off the main highway onto an unnamed dirt road close to an hour ago and had seen nothing but darkness and trees in the moonlight outside the car windows. “Yeah,” replied Heady Armstrong. “My boys scouted the coordinates you sent me a few days ago. The compound was right where you said.” “Ah,” said Doyle. “Can I assume that by ‘your boys’ you are referring to those half-witted imbeciles who star along side you in your idiotic videos?” “Yeah,” said Heady Armstrong. “And they’re not idiotic videos, I have almost ten million subscribers.” “Mmm,” said Doyle. “That’s where you’re wrong. You see, the majority of people who watch YouTube are, by definition, idiots, and the idiocy of a given YouTube channel is directly proportional to the number of idiots who subscribe to it.” Doyle enjoyed ribbing Heady about his YouTube channel. Heady and his friends started it six years earlier in college and it had exploded in popularity since. But it catered to an audience which Doyle considered to be lower than the lowest common denominator; the channel spotlighted a plethora of disgusting bodily functions, stupid pranks, terrible music videos, and horrendously unfunny (and typically offensive) “comedy” skits. Doyle was certain that the channel’s popularity was due entirely to the fact that Heady and his friends found reasons to take their shirts off in every video. Doyle’s objections to the YouTube channel were entirely based on its intellectual merits (or lack thereof) and certainly had nothing to do with, as Heady sometimes postulated during his less forgiving moods, jealousy over the idea that nobody wanted to see Doyle with his shirt off. Sure, he was a little heavier than Heady and his friends, a little less muscly, and his hair was a bit wispier and thinner on top, but he wasn’t all that bad. And at any rate, he was already spoken for. Or at least had been, and hopefully would be again soon, if the night’s plans were ultimately successful. “Uh huh,” said Heady. “If I’m such an idiot then why did you even ask for my help?” “I didn’t say you were an idiot, Heady. Only your videos. And the millions of idiots who idolize you.” “Those millions of idiots paid for my house,” said Heady. “And this car, plus a few others.” “Don’t rub it in,” Doyle said, and sighed. “Look, I’m grateful to you for agreeing to help. Someone needs to expose these assholes for who they really are, and I can’t think of anyone more suited to it than you.” “Because of my millions of idiots?” Heady shot back. “Well, yeah,” said Doyle. “Do you really think this will work?” asked Heady. “I mean, I know this vid’s gonna be bangin’, but do you really think it’ll make a difference?” “I really think so, Heady,” said Doyle. “I mean, despite appearances I believe you’re actually capable of great things. You’re so much better than that drivel you put out. I mean, what you did for me–that was the darkest period of my life and you… without you I…” “Don’t sweat it, bud,” said Heady. “Kirsten was–is my friend, too. You helped me through it as much as I helped you.” Doyle did his best to stifle the sudden wellspring of emotion he found himself swimming in. Heady was exaggerating, he knew. Heady liked Kirsten well enough, but not like Doyle did. Doyle hadn’t told Heady, but he proposed to Kirsten about a week before she disappeared. She hadn’t said yes right away, but she hadn’t said no either. She would have said yes, Doyle was certain, if only that fucking cult hadn’t… Doyle snapped out of his thoughts when his eye caught a glint in the distance. “Shh, slow down,” he told Heady, staring keenly through the windshield at the dirt path that stretched before them. “And kill the headlights, I think I see something.” Heady relaxed the accelerator and cut the lights. The sound of the gravel crunching under the car’s tires slowed as the two men squinted into the darkness. There was some kind of light in the distance, too far away to make out any details. Heady pulled off the road and maneuvered the car behind some trees before coming to a stop. “We gotta walk from here,” he said. “The guys found a spot where the wall crumbled away a little. They said we should be able to get in there. They took out a nearby security camera with a rock before they left.” Doyle unfastened his seatbelt and opened the car door. “You don’t think they’d have repaired the camera by now? Or the wall?” “Hopefully not,” said Heady. The two men shut the car doors and started walking along the tree line next to the road, toward the light in the distance. “Keep an eye out for a red cloth tied around one of these tree branches,” said Heady, motioning to the dark tangle of trees that lined the road. “That’s where we cut into the woods and make our way to the wall.” The men walked in silence for a while, trading nervous glances down the road in both directions, scanning for any sign of motion or approaching headlights. “I’m not going to make those videos for ever, you know,” Heady said, breaking the silence. Doyle glanced at his friend’s face, pallid in the moonlight and brushed by the jagged shadows of the treetops. “I mean, that’s why I’m collabing with you on this in the first place. I want this video to really help people. The first ever footage from inside the Nikola’s Children compound, together with all the dirt you’ve dug up on them over the past year, that’s gonna blow these mother fuckers wide open, right?” “I hope so,” said Doyle. “People haven’t cared about Nikola’s Children for a while though. I’ve offered my research to every investigative journalist who’ll give me the time of day but none of them were interested. They said there’s no story in it. It’s just another boring cult to them.” “That’s because they’re so good at keeping a low profile,” said Heady. “We’re going to end that, man. We’re gonna get people interested again. If even half the stuff you dug up on them is true, people are gonna flip their shit.” “Maybe,” said Doyle. “But honestly I just want some kind of sign that Kirsten’s OK. That they haven’t… done anything too her.” “I’m sure she’s OK,” said Heady. “She’s just confused. They brainwashed her or something. Like all those other scientists who joined. I’m sure of it.” Doyle stopped and put his hand on Heady’s shoulder. “Shh,” he said. “What is it?” Doyle pointed. Wound around a branch of one of the trees, a thin scrap of red cloth flapped lightly in the soft moonlit breeze. Heady reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He started a video recording and handed the device to Doyle. “Showtime,” he said. Doyle held the phone up and pointed the camera at Heady. “Yo yo yo what’s up Heady Nation?” Heady cried using the exaggerated dude-bro accent he reserved for

Short stories and works of fiction from a variety of genres, but mostly science fiction, horror, dark fantasy, and humor (or any combination thereof). Narrated by the author.

Short stories and works of fiction from a variety of genres, but mostly science fiction, horror, dark fantasy, and humor (or any combination thereof). Narrated by the author.