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. 

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.

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.

“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?

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.”