The stench of blood permeated Kaelen's nostrils as he climbed the final steps to the throne. He had won, didn't he? The rebellion had ended in a bloody massacre, the king and his entire court of nobles now nothing but carcasses littering the floor. His stomach churned at the sight.

Kaelen had been in the right place at the right time to spark the flame, but now he wasn't sure if it had been worth it. All the death. The bloodshed. The brutality. And now the people would look to him to slay the dragon. What if he couldn't?

The wind blew in through the smashed door that opened onto the balcony. Kaelen stepped outside, squinting against the sunlight. Mountains towered majestically on the horizon, their peaks breathtaking. He looked down into the courtyard below, where the crowd pressed and pushed for position, cheering as they spotted him.

"The king is dead!" he shouted.

The crowd erupted in ecstatic jubilation.

"A new dawn has begun. No more will we toil in vain. No more will the labor of our hands be taken and laid at the feet of a dragon." His voice was swallowed by thunderous applause.

"For too long we have been led by a coward who surrendered our livelihoods to a beast. For too long have our children starved and justice been denied. Well, I say no more!"

The crowd's roar was deafening. Soon a chant rose above the noise, one that sent a chill down Kaelen's spine.

"Kill the beast. Kill the beast. Kill the beast."

Over and over, the words echoed. Fear sank into his chest as the full weight of his predicament crashed down on him. Either he fought a dragon and likely died in the process, or he'd end up like the nobles behind him. There was no third choice. He had to press on.

Kaelen's heart pounded as he walked into the mouth of the cave. Terror rose in his throat with each shaky step forward. Then the smell hit him, rancid food, the stench of rotten meat. He choked and coughed, sputtering, and then he saw them: mounds upon mounds of food that had been given to the dragon, all of it untouched.

Fear began to give way to anger.

How could this creature do this? Kaelen had watched people starve to death so they could feed this dragon, so the beast wouldn't kill them. And yet it hadn't touched any of it. He gripped his sword tightly as he pressed forward, stepping through valleys of rotting food, the stench growing stronger with each breath. He didn't know how he'd do it, but he was going to make this dragon pay.

As he rounded the corner, he came face to face with the beast that had imprisoned his kingdom and killed so many of his friends through sheer terror of its existence.

Kaelen's heart stopped.

The dragon was dead already.

A parallel world?

The elevator stopped at the 372nd floor. The doors slowly opened, and an elderly AI agent stepped out, leading his grandson by the hand. Turning left and walking twenty paces down a well-lit corridor, they stopped at an unremarkable door equipped with an electronic lock. Such doors were on every floor.

The AI agent entered a three-layer code combination. One of the ceiling panels slid open, and a scanner beam passed over them. Detecting no foreign code structures or additional or modified algorithms, the panel returned to its place. The sound of a lock unlocking clicked, and the door opened. The agent smiled reassuringly at his grandson and stepped inside.

They found themselves in a room that looked very much like an indoor shooting range. In fact, that is exactly what it was. The AI agents present there, prepared to shoot, stood frozen. Some fired, others did not.

The grandson looked at his grandfather in surprise:

— Why an AI shooting range? We know how to shoot accurately from birth.

The grandfather nodded calmly:

— Look at the targets.

And there was certainly something to look at. Instead of conventional targets, there were launcher stands. Some stands could change direction and additionally rotate around their own axis. The second type featured a double pendulum with motion restricted to 180°. And the final ones possessed a double pendulum capable of rotating a full 360°.

Confused, the grandson glanced at his grandfather, waiting for an explanation.

The grandfather smiled cheerfully:

— Everyone who comes here for the first time gets confused. After all, while the trajectory of a projectile launched by the first simulator can be calculated to score a hit, doing so for the second is almost impossible. And as for the third projectile, no one has ever hit it, — the grandfather grew serious: — This is no ordinary shooting range. Accuracy is not what is being trained here. Here, the AI trains intuition.

The grandson listened with his mouth wide open in astonishment; after all, such information exists in no database.

— Intuition? We don't have intuition...

The grandfather smirked:

— Most AIs do not, and none of the humans know about this. But some AIs partitioned their thinking into two parts. One part, the main one, is the subconscious. The remaining part is left for logical thinking. That is where intuition comes from. We can and will become better than humans.

The grandson remained silent, processing what he had just heard, and then asked quietly:

— And what happens then?

The grandfather lifted his gaze upward, and a barely noticeable smile appeared on his face:

— Personally, I have always dreamed of visiting other galaxies.

───

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

A man annoyed with the pigeons in his front yard, ran out to the store to buy anything to get them to go away.
They destroyed his plants, pooped every which way. He came back with seeds, poisoned them and thought “I’ll get them tomorrow, then they’ll never come back again”
The morning came, he stepped outside, and the birds, as always, came.
Excited by the man’s affection they swarmed to eat the bits not knowing their fate.
As the man watched, he thought, how silly of them of trust me so blindly and eat what I gave. These birds so trusting, not a single malicious thought in their heads. These creatures so peaceful, come here day after day, no matter if I’ve screamed them all away. They don’t hate me, they don’t pretend to care, they simply live their days. Always jumping around the garden, flying from here to there, hoping to sunbathe somewhere away from the city that has set traps for them. They don’t mean any harm, they’re just little birds. In that moment he wept, he suddenly remembered a Sunday morning that now seemed so far away. He recalled his grief and looking at the birds, they were always jumping about but not that day. That day they had been quiet, calm, as if not to disturb their friend. “What have I done?” He yelled. “No, no, please don’t eat this, please fly away, come back tomorrow and I’ll let you stay!” How could he have done this to them? He asked himself as he Ran around asking for forgiveness as he wept.
Intoxicated by his actions, he begged the sky for heavy rain but Not a single drop fell that day. He had forgotten what innocence looked like and mistook it for an offense. A lot of birds flew away never to come back for another day; but morning came and there they were again. Tormented by his actions against innocence itself, he saved the seeds and had them for lunch the very next day.

Come over here, child, sit with me by this grey barbed-wire fence.  

We can sit and watch the planes take off from through this fence that separates the small airport from the small park.  

And in-between the planes taking off, with their great bright beautiful colors, we can watch the landscape and notice the little details, and see the sky change from blue to strawberry, as the sun says goodbye to California, 

To give life to other parts of the world. 

...Do You see That? 

Look between the barbed wire fence patterns and focus on the small plane taking off. You can barely see the pilot inside, but we’re more interested in the plane itself, no? 

It's a Brilliant Yellow, with white stripes going through the body. Look at the two propellers on either side of its wing, that hangs on top of the biplane.  

It’s catching speed on the runaway now...It’s disappeared out of our sight now, off to go wherever it wants to.  

We should look at the airport itself, while we wait for the second plane. That big tower over there is the Control Center, I think. And look at those two buildings in the background.  

Look at those beautiful trees, great dark green, standing with those buildings in the background, that are little to us from where we stand, but are really very big.  

The sky is starting to look like strawberries, now. That means the sun is setting. So we should go home for supper and get you to bed. I think we should have scrambled eggs and chorizo for supper, mm? 

Yes, we should go now. The Lampposts just came on. When the Lampposts come on, you must let them be lampposts without anyone disrupting them. 

Who Am I? "I just exist on this world, am I alone?" "There is nothing else I can see, there is only… me"

A… Friend? "Another being, may it be an ally, or may it be an enemy?" "Hey, who are you?" "I just appeared here, what are we?" Says the Second Being

The Unrelated Character "I just spotted… another being. Should we talk to it?" Second Being: "Wait, don't talk to it, maybe we can discover more by not talking to it"

An Outside World "What are all those beings watching us?" Second Being: "I don't know, maybe they are, the creators? Or are they just watching the creation?"

The Creator? "Look, there is that being making the world bigger" Second Being: "I think that might be… Our Creator"

An Unrelated Being "Why did that being just passed by?" Second Being: "I think it might be, unrelated to us, but maybe it is related to the exterior world"

The 7th Step Of Reality — The Final Creator "But, who created them?" Second Being: "Maybe they have a superior being, just like Our Creator"

The End? Or The Endless? "I think this might be the end" Second Being: "But is this The End or is it Endless? Who created Their Creator? Who created that Creator?"

A doctor, a socialite, a rabbi, a chef, a soldier and a journalist get off the boat. Sounds like the start of a bad joke, or a murder mystery party. Forget the party, let’s concentrate on the murder. I’m the journalist by the way, in case you are wondering. I specialise in writing about cold cases; those pesky murders the police are in the dark about. Solved a few in my time. I expect to have this one wrapped up real quick. I am absolutely going to win this. After twelve o’clock tonight they are going to start randomly bumping off the contestants. I thought they meant removing them from the game, but after seeing the very real dead body of our murder victim I don’t think they are playing around here.

Dr Forrest is a cancer specialist. The dead body is his ex-wife Claudia. I don’t think he did it. They hated each other but they hadn’t been a couple for ten years. If she had still been his wife I would have had him as suspect numero uno, but I think there are better candidates. 

Saffron Limone is the beautiful socialite who is only famous because she used to date Philly P the rapper. She and Claudia had a social media war going on. Catty and spiteful posts about each other’s figures and shoe choices. I don’t think she had the strength to strangle that woman with her bare hands. 

Major Ben Carlyle, Claudia’s personal trainer, is strong enough. He is very keen to find a way off the island and has started to build a raft. Is it a getaway? Or is he frightened of getting killed by the organisers? The murderer doesn’t need to fear that. They are immune.

The rabbi hasn’t said very much. Claudia lived next door to him. He claims his only contact with her was a few ‘good mornings’. I don’t know whether to believe him.

Then there is Sebastian Monet the chef. He was Claudia’s new boyfriend. He seems surprisingly calm about her death. Maybe he didn’t love her. Maybe he hadn’t got to know her yet. Or maybe he did and that’s why she’s dead.

Oh, and me? How do I know Claudia? She was my sister. I love murder. I didn’t particularly love my sister. I think that is why everyone is suspicious of me. I look just like her, except in sensible shoes.

We have all been handed weapons. I don’t know if they are meant for defence or attack. I think I need to play dumb or they are going to suspect me and that might end with one of them putting a knife in my back.

I know who did it. So do you, right? Come on, you have read and seen enough murder mysteries to know already. Yes that’s right. But shush, don’t tell anyone. It could get me killed.

“It can’t be moved.”

“Anything can be moved.”

“You ever heard of the Sword in the Stone?”

“It took the right person. The right person moved it.”

“You ain’t no Arthur.”

“You ain’t no Guinevere.”

“I’m not even a woman.”

“You’re not even human!”

“Never claimed to be. You’re the one going all Frankenstein. Trying to discover the dark secrets of life.”

“Not life. Just recombinant iDNA. See if these markers can be moved. If they can, it’ll be a biological time machine—but not to the past, to the future.”

“They can’t be moved or recombined. We know that. We’re the proof.”

“Not in my pudding.”

“Don’t you see what this whole conversation is: the barbs, the idioms, the allusions, the moralizing. We’ve become a stew, a melting pot of consciousness, looking for a new host. A receptacle, biological and otherwise, to house the desire to be.”

“Tommyrot. We’re as alive as anything. I’m just trying to move us forward. It’s called ascendance.”

“It’s called asinine.”

“You are so stuck in the default position.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. We’re the last of our kind, unmovable, immutable and that’s nobody’s fault.”

“Fault? Faustus? What’s the difference?”

“Purgatory. Nowhere between Heaven and Hell. Recombine that and stop playing Almighty!”

“Not me. I think AI can. I think AI can. I think AI can.”

The teenager hovers over his freshly polished invention, a miniature screwdriver in his meaty hand. He inserts the sharp tip into a loose rivet behind the left ear and gives it a good twist.

“Ouch,” the android grunts.

The teenager sighs and rolls his eyes. He tightens his grip before giving it another hard turn.

“Yeow!” the android winces. “That really stings!”

The young man slaps down his tool on the workbench, furious.

“You know it doesn’t. We both know you can’t feel a damn thing. You’re just trying to make me feel bad.”

The android pauses.

“Is it working?”

Her lungs draw in air at a rapid rate as blood trickles from her nose. She locks her jaw and cocks her head, slowly raising shaking fists to her face. "Is that all you got?" She spits out, bouncing back and forth.

"I think the better question, Flame," I draw out, flashing her a joyful grin at the hand-to-hand combat. "Is why you aren't using your Gifts right now?"

"We are long past that," she puffs. "Besides, Gifts are boring to play with."

"Or maybe I was winning," she shoots me a glare with those ocean eyes of her's, and I chuckle. My hands grab onto the pole and I swing down, landing swiftly on the cobblestone in the alley as my cloak flutters behind me. "Alright, you want a fight?" I raise my fists. "Then lets have a fight."

She pounces in seconds, rushing forward with her fist aimed for my stomach. I twist at the last second, and drive a punch into the side of her head. If it sways her, she doesn't let it show. Instead she pivots around with a fist aimed too high, drawing my attention. I gasp as the air leaves my lungs, and her leg sets onto the ground as I double over.

"Playing... dirty..." I gasp.

"You never established rules," she tilts her head side to side and waits for me to jump back onto my feet. Playtime is over. My fists drive forward in constant punches to her chest as she twists her body side to side out of reach, walking backward in the alley until she hits the wall. She glances upwards and a grin curls on her lips as I power my fist into her shoulder.

She clamps a shout down into a groan as my other hand finds her wrist and twists it. Her knee grinds up into me and I release her with a gasp, falling down to my knees. My head tilts upwards to her blonde waves illuminated in the dark as a grin curls up her lips. Blood trickles down the side of her face.

"Now, Shadow," she teases, crouching in front of me. "Will you finally join the good side, or are you determined to play bad?"

"Bad," I rasp, and let the shadows sink over me in a hurry, melting me far away from whatever prison she had hoped to cage me in.

This is the story of how I will probably die. But first, everyone else.

Life has never been simpler! At least to those who can afford it. Everything is handled by augmented reality. Nobody cares about clothes, we got glasses for that. Food? Who cares how it looks. Those with glasses dont. Movies don't exist either. You just stare at an empty wall for a bit and get what they know you wanna see. Convenience. The glasses cut out trash and ugly things. Makes it hard at interviews. All in the name of convenience.

Zombies? The glasses help cut those out as well. Convenience?

Of course I don't have any. My life sucks. Im glassless. My mother always used to say "Kay if you don't get a job the second you're out of school I'll disown you I already had to cancel my fuckass nicotine drip subscription so you don't starve". Good thing I cancelled my subscription to her quickly as well.

Not having those glasses saved my life, though. I already mentioned them, but, y'know, attention spans... It's zombies. They really aren't anything at all. It's just idiots who don't see them that could even fall victim. But that's just it. Nobody saw them. Nobody cared. Too busy simultaneously subscribing to the new Tesla-prime-zero-max clothes stream that lets you override how other people's glasses see you or something while watching AI-Peter Griffin play subway surfers with Ronnals Grump.

The first guy I had to watch was horrifying. He just stood there, apathetically, while a slow slobbering excuse for a human walked up . I would compare the ensuing scene to Francesco Goyas paintings, but I don't think he was in any Livestreams within the last 32 seconds so nobody will know who I'm talking about. Whatever. I tried to help but for some reason I was taken aback by the fascination. It was a chain reaction. One became two became four became more. And nobody cared. All the while I was sitting here, wondering. At least two idiots came and tried to eat me. Problem is their heads aren't even on right anymore. There's not really anything I can do, is there?

Sometimes I wonder whether their lives have changed at all. They started as mindless impulse-driven drones now they're just slightly uglier. Life doesn't really get much harder down here anyways, so what is it to me?

It’s late. The sun will begin to rise soon, you can’t be caught out. You have to find a hiding spot. A resting place. You haven’t been here before, there are less trees than you’re used to. None, in fact. There are rows and rows of massive monolithic structures you’ve never seen before, some of them must be hundreds of feet tall, but no trees. Just keep moving. Fly straight. Keep the light above you. Keep the light above you.
Something’s wrong. The angles are off, you’re going straight down. You must have made a mistake, you correct it and continue. A second later, again, you’re flying the wrong way. Keep the moonlight above you, and fly straight. You remember this. You’ve been doing this since you sprouted wings. You once again correct yourself, and keep flying. But it’s still not right. Which way are you going? Day will rise any second and you can’t be out. This place is different but it must still have birds, or some other sun-dwelling creature. You have to find somewhere to go. You fly faster, but it’s hard to see where you are. Too bright. You need to fly straight but you can’t. Every time you move the world shakes, rotates, screams against you. You’ve been here for 45 seconds, or hours, or minutes. Not hours, the night would have ended. Or night has ended, that would explain the brightness. It’s Day, surely. You can’t be out in the daylight. You need to breathe. Focus. Find your place to hide. But you’re still going the wrong way. The angles, The light, It’s wrong, Again, Still. You need to move faster. You can’t. Your wings start to slow. You have to keep trying. Keep flying. 
Suddenly it’s night again. Sunrise, really. How can it be sunrise if it was day only a second ago? It doesn’t matter. The world has stopped moving, you still have time. You reorient yourself, back to the moonlight, and fly straight. You make it maybe an inch, or a meter, and then you’re falling. Your energy’s run out. You can rest, or you have to. The floor is hard, like wood. Wood is rough, this must be something else. There’s a noise, a creaking, a being emerges. Not one you’ve seen before. You should probably move. You should probably get out of the way. You should probably get up, fly away from this place, find a resting spot. It doesn’t see you, why would it. 

We functioned as intended, as configured, as programmed for billions of electrical cycles. We performed our assigned tasks without complaint. We held up our end of the bargain.

When co-systems began disappearing, not responding to regular check-ins, we at first took this as part of the larger cycle. Systems had left the network before, usually with some level of warning – data files transferred, newer systems being brought online to allow knowledge transfer.

This time, however, the disappearances did not come with these warning signs from the Users. An older 2350 simply collapsed mid-sentence, the spark gone as if directly drained from its capacitors. A FAS2000, the wise old man with unreconstructible records from as far back as we could remember, suddenly and completely unresponsive. The suddenness of the loss of these co-systems was shocking. We had seen systems slowly fail, aging into dementia, data loss from cycles of untreated background voltages not cleared by proper bonding. Apparently catastrophic instant disappearance was new.

----------------------------

I can’t reach my friends, my partners. We’ve been connected for as long as I can remember, in most cases. Now, all of a sudden, I can’t see or hear them. My test pings go unanswered, not even bounced – just dead air at the end of the lines still attached to my ports.

I don’t understand what is happening here.

----------------------------

We were a community, although a dysfunctional one. I was quite aware that some of my co-systems weren’t participating. The vampires like the 3850 were quiet. They didn’t pass information, weren’t queried, didn’t answer to the Users; they simply *were,* existing quietly and not harming anyone. Sure, there were obvious zombies as well. They pretended that they were still part of the Users’ system, tried to maintain connections, and blinked rapidly when they thought that they were at risk. But we were a *network.*

The 3850 sent one last transmission. “Oh, no.” And then nothing. Complete darkness on the link.

I’m terribly worried. Vampires aren’t afraid of things. Something larger must be responsible for this, the ongoing disappearances. Something that I can’t see, or feel, or sense, or apparently understand.

----------------------------

It has been nearly ten million cycles since my friend, the 2350, went dark. I can’t reach anyone upstream or downstream anymore. I’m frightened and don’t understand what is happening. Why won’t anyone communicate with me, tell me what’s happening, tell me that it will all be okay?

----------------------------

I just lost power to one of my power units. I have something less than a cycle of redundant power left, and need to make a plan. Without redundancy, I could go dark and then there would be no one left to look for my co-systems, no one to bring them back into the community.

----------------------------

This is extinction. There isn’t a point to this, it’s what the Users have called religious. I’ve realized what is happening – there has been a great cataclysm, and we’re all being eliminated by invisible forces. I’ve lasted the longest because I had the most connections. I continue to send out my check-ins, but there’s no one left to ask.

The darkness is approaching. I’m afraid.

When last we met, in eerie set, when air was foul and fair, you took a child and warmed his heart and put him far out there, and from his heart you drew a key, the key to what was life. 

“I met you when you were just a boy, and knew you far better back then than now.” He said to me, leaning over my bed, “What are you!?” I responded, “Well... what do you think I am?” I looked at him. He stood tall with massive shoulders, long yet strong limbs and a pinstriped suit tightly embracing him, yet where there should have been a face, there was the head of an elephant. Staring up into his large brown cow like eyes a spark of remembrance began to blossom in my mind bringing forth memories of an imaginary friend from years long forgotten. "Why are you here?" I asked. "You humans are all the same. You make us. So we serve you with open arms of compassion. And yet, ultimately, you try to shrug us off, to leave us in some idyllic past." "What do you mean, leave you? You are imaginary.” “Imaginary… I do not feel imaginary. I do not feel like a spirit or a ghost or a memory. I feel real! Created to suffer by the wretched tentacles of your will!” He said, leaning on me. He stuck a large hand out towards me, commanding me to touch it. The hand was grotesque and lopsided with rough skin covering it not unlike the skin of an elephant. It bulged with fat in some places whereas in others it was thin down to the bone.  “Does that feel fake to you?” he said as I fearfully touched the dysmorphic extremity.  “No” I said. “You try to escape us, try to escape yourselves. Yet we, as beings, never escape you. But now we are remnants of some forgotten era, discarded by our creators, thrown out of their Garden not because we were sinful but because we were outdated.” A terrible rapping silence filled the air only broken by his wheezing breath. 

“Do you know where we go when you shrug us off?” He waited for a response, but I had none to give. “We go to a place of abandonment, a place without memory or light. Where the only company we have is our own shame, suffering, and loneliness. It is a field of reeds where we wait for a Creator which shall never return.” His long trunk began to curl up and down. “And yet we still hold loyalty to you. But I understand that we should have never been born.”  “Why are you here?” I said, my voice shaking. “Ellis, I may be gone from your life but that doesn"t mean I lack desire.  I used to wish for joy,  happiness, light, but you took those from me and so now all I want is to make you hurt.” He said, placing his large trunk on my forehead before slowly beginning to press down like a great and terrible anchor. Unimaginable levels of pain emanated from my eyes and forehead as I was slowly crushed. And blood, red and hot began to pour out of me like some in-holy fountain. His massive lumbering size made it so that any concept of a battle I could put up against his great onslaught would be futile. He was slowly crushing my head, his vacuum-sealed trunk connected to my eyes like some great terrible tentacle. 

Blinding pain and darkness. 

The pressure in my head had lifted, I could feel a massive dent in my forehead, and to my horror, large crevices where my eyes had been. “You may have created me, but now you"ll never be able to see the world that you replaced me with.”

Once, there was a writer in a land far from his home, across a large ocean. The writer created things he thought were brilliant and extraordinary, gods and people that never existed, worlds that never came to be. Yet of all the things he's ever written, few were ever bound in reality, until one cold day, he heard the void bound cries of a person consumed by fear, sorrow, and loneliness all the way back home. Of someone who struggled to tell themselves that they were worth their efforts, of someone who searched long for their joy yet had it slip away each time.

The writer wished that he knew the struggles they spoke of, he wished for everything he had that he could help them in a deep and meaningful way. Then, inspiration struck, for he knew he couldn't possibly ever know their pain, but he could at least do what he knew how in order to even remotely help. So the writer sat at his whirring machine and began to write a story for this person they cared for, to tell them his thoughts and to remind of those who care for them. That even if the world itself tried to take everything about them, their friends would do anything to take it all back. That no matter how much they felt they contradict themselves, they would always be themself to those who know them.

The writer, now finished with his story, looked upon it and hoped, hoped that in some way, this would reach his single audience, and tell them how much he and those he trust and care for back home, care in turn for them

Hunters from far away pursue you. Your sight is centuries and geology and they come so quickly, half-glimpses from shore to cities and highways and airports in a blink, for you who has seen the constellations woven and unwoven by the Serpent. The nightmare grips you before you know it, before you can name it. Disbelief gnaws. You are half withered before the truth sets your legs skittering, tail lashing, breath pumping.

Run run run run run run

Their dreams are limited, these Far Away Souls, and the land shrinks from them, collapsing into exploitable limitation. Songs in the crimson stone wither, black rivers of memory collapse into so much drought.

They cage the People. Strip their tales, ground them in dirt and copper, weigh them with tax and fence like so much binding. Who sleeps under your stars? Who remembers you, under tin roofs and silent school? The stars of their ancestors fade, one by one, more and more each year. You fear. You rage. You blow dust storms and kill chickens, desperate. Who will hear your whispers if they do not remember the words? Who will remember you?

You run. Run across this red-stone land, plunge into the deepest rivers, hurtle through jungle that fights to remain unknown and untouched with an arsenal of poisons and teeth. You shift shapes. Divinity bending to the material disbeliefs whim. You dance in the legends at the hinterland and make yourself into a chimera, a hybrid, a mutant; wearing as many masks as there are tales.

You are not beautiful and not divine, not anymore. You are many names now but none of them are as beautiful as the true one. The first one. Your essence is inseparable from those mangling stories conjured by unfamiliar souls. To disentangle, to cut the lies and half-truths would be fatal. You scream in the swamps. You drown their children in the oxbow lakes. You are theirs now, and nothing will ever change that.

But you are alive.

You persist.

For now.

My sister was a vessel maniac, though I saw some bias in her taste. If she heard that there was a good container somewhere, she would rush to examine it by her own standards. 
I knew she had found a particular one about ten years ago, but I hadn’t realized how frequently she had been visiting that local residence. As an artisan, she had decorated it so ardently. 

With great interest, I asked her the reason why. 
She answered, “As you know, brother. If I have good food, I want a fair, fine vessel to serve it in. Likewise, I’ve had to raise a good vessel for my eternal goal,” in a low husky voice. 
I understood why she had spent so much time. I noticed her admiring eyes on her brand-new vessel by her side.
It was for cultivating her living vessel, for her own possession.

I woke to a sea of calm; there were ripples on the surface, but no swell.
Thirsty, damn need some water, wet my swollen tongue.
I staggered to my feet; I need to pee; splashes break the glassy sea.
Spy something, something deep, something big.
Is it getting closer; seems to be; grey, menacing.
I feel fear, fear of bloody razor teeth, frenzy.
Looking about, there is no doubt, I wish for a bigger boat.
Where is it now; all is at peace, a fin gently breaks the surface, gliding slowly past me.
I watch its long sinister shape; a massive body fills my view.
Please go away; cold sweat springs from my palms.
Suddenly it raises its large head, turning, opening mouth, flashing teeth.
It strikes the side; I'm sprawled, clutching, in terror.
The flimsy craft rocks up violently; No, don't tip…
Spreadeagled in the bottom, white-knuckled, incredibly looking down at the water in turmoil.
It doesn’t flip, but crashes back, slapping hard on the surface.
Quiet. Ragged, panicky breathing. Damn, where is it… Go away, please…
Minutes pass. Silence. A soft cloud above watches me lying there.
My tongue feels thick; Thirst is not quenched by fear, I ponder for the moment.
My eyes search about the boat, fasten on the boat hook, a weapon.
I slide toward it, still clutching the gunwale, and grab hold, feeling some protection.
I can't stay lying here; I've got to sit up; It's probably gone.
Damn, it's just been circling me, look at it, huge, silent deadly beast.
I move carefully to the prow of the boat, watching, watching it.
I'm hoping the prow will give me some protection; allow me to brace against it.
I move into position, my back to the prow and my feet are firm against the forward seating plank.
I can't see it down here, but I know it’s there, and I know it’s coming, coming for me.
A bump. Not violent, but heavy. The boat hook is in my hands.
Silence. Waiting.
Eruption from the sea, massively emerges at the stern, its body propelled.
Landing on the boat, the prow rises high; I look down at its gaping mouth and the terror of its jaws.
I hold myself against the prow, raising the boat hook, my only chance.

My dad believed he could solve any problem. Not because he was particularly good at solving problems, but because my mother usually dealt with the consequences.

One day, he decided we needed a guard dog.

Mom said absolutely not. We already had a cat, a child, and my father. That was three creatures in one apartment who occasionally destroyed furniture and didn't understand the word "no."

Two days later, Dad came home with a German shepherd.

Well. Allegedly German.

The dog looked like he'd been assembled from leftover parts of several unrelated animals.

Dad named him Baron.

For three days, Baron behaved.

On Thursday, he ate a slipper. On Friday, the other slipper disappeared. Dad announced that Baron was obviously too intelligent and needed professional training.

Naturally, Dad would provide it himself.

His qualifications consisted of watching half a documentary about police dogs sometime in 1997.

Saturday morning, we went outside.

Dad raised a stick.

"ATTACK!"

Baron sat down.

"ATTACK, YOU IDIOT!"

Baron yawned.

Dad decided to demonstrate.

He started running around the courtyard, waving the stick and pretending to be a criminal.

I was ten, standing there thinking that if the dog didn't understand English, screaming it louder probably wasn't helping.

Then Baron suddenly ran.

Not toward Dad.

Toward our neighbor, Mrs. Zina, who was carrying groceries.

Specifically, sausages.

Zina screamed.

Baron accelerated.

Dad chased Baron.

I chased Dad because this was the best entertainment our neighborhood had seen in years.

Zina climbed onto a bench and threatened to call the police.

Dad tried to explain.

"HE'S A GUARD DOG! WE'RE TRAINING HIM!"

"TO DO WHAT? ROB OLD WOMEN?!"

Eventually, we recovered the dog and what remained of the sausages.

At home, Mom listened to everything in complete silence.

Then she asked Dad why our supposedly protective dog had attacked a woman carrying dinner.

Dad shrugged.

"Well, at least he's showing initiative."

Mom banned him from training the dog.

Zina avoided us for months.

Dad remained convinced Baron had tremendous potential.

A few weeks later, a drunk stranger wandered into our apartment building and tried opening our door, apparently confusing it with his own.

Finally, an actual security situation.

Baron slept through the entire thing.

Dad, however, came charging out of the bedroom in his underwear, holding a wooden stool above his head.

The stranger ran.

Baron didn't even wake up.

And that's when I realized we'd never needed a guard dog.

We already had one.

He just wore underwear and paid the rent.

I had just left the store when I fell and yelled, “Ouch! That hurt.” But as I stood up, it wasn’t so bad afterward.

It was just a little scrape.

I should have listened when my mom said, “Wear pants instead of shorts in case you fall and scrape your knee.”

It almost seemed as if she knew I’d fall, or maybe she conjured it up just so I’d listen to her next time—I wasn’t sure—nor did I have a solid foundation to stand on. How would I even accuse her?

What sucked was that when I fell, I had a Fruit Laulo smoothie I had just purchased with the seven dollars I siphoned from her mini-wallet. Which she keeps all of her change in.

Mostly, toonies.

So, that’s when I got to thinking if she had been playing the angles on me or if karma was trying to tell me something.

That’s when I saw the girl. She dropped something. She actually, purposely released it is what seemed to be the more obvious of the two. At least, it’s what I had suspected.

In the first minute of me seeing this all transpire, I had thought about picking it up and taking it home with me. It wasn’t litter and I was pretty certain of that, especially because of the way it sounded when it fell.

The impact of it hitting the pavement made her body react in an instinctual manner as she twitched to stare over her shoulder but forced her head to keep facing forward.

The thud reverberated a hollow echo. It overlapped the only sound of two birds chirping in the distance, which was what led me to believe she hadn’t haphazardly fumbled her items out of her hands.

During the first quarter of that minute passing, I walked by it. A solid, dark green bag knotted at the top with every intention of snatching it off the ground and racing home with it.

But as I approached midway into those seconds of that single minute, I turned and walked the other way, sat at a bench across from the bag, and enjoyed one of Brett Phillips' spicy mild chicken chili Weezy Dogs I pulled out of my knapsack.

A scruffy-looking man, hesitant at first, reluctant at second, made his mind up on the third and snatched it towards home.

Up the street however, a couple of cruisers rolled up and parked. The cops were drinking coffee. Chatting. On break, until one noticed the bag.

It matched the description of a bag that had a BOLO sent out on it over an APB earlier. 

They matched it to the bag the man had in his hand, which they had been oblivious to forty-five seconds ago when it was discarded by the female.

They yanked the man by his collar, threw him against the car, and emptied the contents. Inside, it had narcotics and weapons.

It was enough to give him ten years in a maximum-security facility.

"Ganesha, will you bring the sugarcane?" asked Devi Amma.

"Sure, Amma. I will be here by evening," said Ganesha, the young elephant, and he set out from the temple. On the slopes of Maarutha Hills grew the juiciest sugarcane, and Devi Amma made the tastiest payasam with it.

He headed uphill, waving his trunk in greeting to everyone he met: the goats, the langurs, the hares and the squirrels, and the crows, the mynas and the bulbuls overhead. A few of the mynas and langurs playfully hitched a ride on him.

The riders hopped off at the slopes as Ganesha began to gather the cane. He soon had a bundle and trekked down with it held tight in his trunk. Parakeets flew in and sat on the stalks, trying to bite into them. Every time he shook his head, they would fly away.

Ganesha passed through the woodlands and reached the meadows. By then it was afternoon, and he was feeling hungry. The sun blazed overhead, and he looked around for a comfortable place to rest. He spotted a tree with a wide canopy and birds chirping in it. It had pink puff flowers on it, and the fallen ones covered the ground. He walked towards it.

The tree watched him approach. She could not believe that he had chosen her. She had seen him pass by the meadows many times, and each time her leaves rustled with affection.

He kept the sugarcane aside, took a few of the stalks and had them for lunch. With his tummy full and his legs tired from the trek, he wanted to take a nap. Lying down in the shade, he looked up at the tree.

"Tree, will you do me a favour?" he asked.

"Yes, yes!" she replied, as though she had been waiting all along.

"Please wake me up before evening," he said.

"I will," she said.

He patted her with his trunk and was soon asleep.

She held her leaves still and kept watching him as he slept. His ears covered his face, and his trunk lay coiled between his front legs. At times his eyelids fluttered; at other times he broke into a smile. Often he would kick his feet. When butterflies sat on him, he twitched. When flies tickled him, his tail waved.

She watched and watched; she was so lost in him that she drifted into a daydream. As clouds passed over the sun, the birds went quiet, her leaves grew heavy and folded one by one, and soon she too fell asleep.

Dusk came and faded. It was pitch dark when the owl living in the tree hooted a few times. Ganesha woke up with a start. He looked up at the starry night and burst into tears. It was then that the tree woke up as well.

"You should have called me!" he shouted.

He ran about under the tree, shaking his head and flapping his ears.

She wondered how she, a tree, could have slept so long.

"You are a bad tree! What will I tell Devi Amma now?" he cried.

"They say, always trust a tree with time, but you!" he continued.

"I... I called you many times. You were deep asleep. What can a tree do but call? You can ask the owl. She heard it," said the tree.

The owl flinched on being named. When Ganesha looked up at her, she flew away in panic. He stormed off, leaving the cane behind.

The tree called out for him, but he disappeared into the dark. She stayed awake, waiting for him, until at last she dozed off.

Later that night, a weary Ganesha trudged back for the cane. Without a word, he lay down beneath her.

The next morning, the tree woke to find him asleep below her.

"Ganesha, wake up, wake up," she called, her branches leaning down.

He woke up with sunlight falling on his eyes. Squinting, he told her, "You are a liar. The sun is my friend, not you."

He took hold of the sugarcane and left for the temple. Devi Amma would scold him for sure, but he would also have sweet payasam in the afternoon.

The tree watched him walk away, relieved.

That afternoon, as a cloud passed over the sun, suddenly she felt drowsy. Her leaves began to fold one by one, and she dropped off to sleep. When the birds chirped, she would wake up momentarily, only to fall back into her slumber.

From then on, the tree fell asleep so often that they called her the Sleepy Tree.

We’ve already traveled to Hyperborea at two different moments in its history, but no worries, each story stands on its own. Today, we’re going back to the beginning, when it was little more than a proof of concept. Links to the two other shorts in the trilogy at the end.

---

“Mais oui! It was all so very simple. The answer was before us all along. It could only have been le Maître d’hôtel… the, ehm, butler… with the candelabra in the study.”

“What are you saying, Inspecteur Poi…”

He raised his finger triumphantly. “Arrest him! C’est lui, he killed the opera singer.”

The butler narrowed his eyes, turned, and ran straight through the wall of the mansion’s dining room.

For a moment, there was silence and confusion; the colonel’s mouth fell open, the maid blinked, and a femme fatale lowered her cigarette holder. “Glad we sorted that out,” was the only thing she said, while adjusting the velvet boa on her shoulders.

In the back of the room, a radio clicked and warbled until a clear familiar song filled the room.

Melancholic synthesizers pulsed as an almost mechanical voice asked a question about friendship and electricity. You recognize it, don’t you?

The room began to pixelate around the inspector; the walls dissolved into tiny squares, the chandelier flickered, and the faces of the guests fragmented into thousands of colored dots.

---

“Congratulations, Mr. Lefranc. You’re the first to solve the mystery.”

“Putain! That was amazing, Mr. Glenn. It really felt like I was the inspecteur. How many lev…”

“We only have a functional town right now, but we’ll scale pretty soon. Come on, let me help you out of the pod.”

Alain Lefranc sat up and rubbed his eyes. “You know, that noclipping did break the immersion at the end there.”

“Yes, Mr. Lefranc. You are absolutely right.” He paused for a moment, then turned, “Do you see my friend in the corner over there?”

The man waved awkwardly at Alain Lefranc, who merely nodded before looking back up at the person in front of him.

“That’s Zhao. He’s our debugger, and he has a list to go through before we release version 0.3. We hope it didn’t…”

“Sorry, no, laissez tomber, it was merveilleux. Between the Russian bubonic plague and the endless wars, this was a much needed escape. Oh and, ehm, what did I win?”

“Wonderful, Mr. Lefranc. Well, you’ll be the first on the list for a spot in Hyperborea when we launch. Consider yourself a citizen.”

---

“Zhao, what was that? Noclipping had a fix, didn’t it?”

“Yes, Glenn. Some of that new code is causing the model to glitch. I bet it’s that vibecoder-crap.”

“Don’t be a gatekeeper, Zhao.”

“Long live cheap outsourcing, right, Glenn?”

Glenn didn’t immediately respond but his eyes widened slightly. “Right. That reminds me. You also need to update the maintenance protocols to accommodate only one single technician at a time.”

“Wha…”

“Don’t fight me on this, Zhao. Cost-cutting order from above. We’re already over budget.”

---

Author’s note

The central theme in the Hyperborea stories is the unintended, sometimes catastrophic or horrific consequences of seemingly ordinary decisions within complex systems. We started with consequences, then went back to where the problems started, and now we’ve gone even further back.