Chapter 1 
2163 April 9th
Father had told me about his last day at the academy, so I knew some of what was coming. That didn't make it feel smaller.
Instructor Hale marched in at exactly seven sharp , flanked by two senior coursers whose insignia I didn't recognize. He was a tall man, fit in the way that suggested he'd never stopped being a soldier, his hair gone gray but his posture unchanged from whatever younger him had stood in this same room decades ago. He was the strictest man I'd ever respected.
He took his place at the front of the Legion and let the silence do its work.
"Welcome, rookies," he said, and his voice filled the room, without effort. "Today is your final day in the Courser Legion Academy. Most of you have earned it. You know who you are."
He paused.
"Your final test is a routine shift in the old city. Patrols. Paper checks. Any vermin found outside after curfew are to be processed accordingly." His eyes moved across us slowly. "Is that understood?"
We rose as one.
"YES SIR."
I thought: this is it. I stood straight and chanted with the rest of them and felt, at this moment, I am completely certain I am meant to do this.

The two senior coursers took us to our Legion mandated G102 flying vehicles,Hale pulled each of us aside and told us our posts. I was being sent to the old city district of 2a, this district according to Courser Prime is home to the unmade from what I know are a cutthroat resistance group. When Hale told me every hair on my body stood up,and when Hale told me I was going alone I almost puked, yet this is my mission after all I told myself, Hale then whispered,” make your father proud, boy. He would have been proud to see you today.” I shook Hales hand and walked out.  As I stepped out of the academy's building onto the flight deck the fear caught up to me and the acid rose up  in my throat. I had to puke off of the side of the tower. I think I even hit a pigeon well, a spy bird but still.

  5-4-3-2-1 I counted as I stepped out of my G102 into the old city, the old skyscrapers darkened and greyed out against the smog of the city. All of my instincts told me to get back in the G102 and flee, yet I stayed and started my patrol anyway.

Kima skillfully dodged the Shadow Master's lightning-fast attack. The fight had to be ended as soon as possible.

The red-haired warrior blocked a beam of dark magic with her heavy shield. The protection reflected the sinister power and hurled it back at the shadow figure Esonar. The master of darkness was hit hard by his own spell and flew unconscious into the nearest tree, a massive and towering pine.

The enemy was no longer moving. Kima lowered her longsword.

She wiped the dust from her face and looked over at Kometh, her faithful companion. The young fighter was panting heavily, but he was unharmed and alive.

The great warrior slowly walked over to her companion and placed her armored left hand encouragingly on his shoulder.

“You did well, my apprentice. Without your help, it would have taken me much longer to defeat Esonar.”

Kometh smiled proudly. “Thank you, Master! I will always stand by your side, you know that.”

Kima smiled. “Oh yes, I do know that! Come, we must continue. My targeted destination is already near.”

The two soldiers continued on their way through the vast forest of the Asibasta region. No one was attacking them now. Nevertheless, Kima remained alert. There could still be demons nearby, staring at them from the darkness, waiting obsessively to ambush them.

“You still haven't told me where we're really going, Master,” Kometh said sulkily. “You always tell me our destination!”

The warrior looked reassuringly at her supporter. “Believe me, my dear, this time it's different. My current goal has top priority!”

Kima knew that her self-chosen mission was tantamount to ascension. But to save the land of Zavandril and defeat the demon king Esgeroth, she was willing to try the most extreme measures.

After a while, the two arrived without incident at the muscular young fighter's place of wish. It was a dilapidated ruin in the middle of the deepest forest, but it had a small entrance that a human could just squeeze through.

Kometh frowned. “What are we doing here, Master?” Kima's voice became serious. “Kometh, I don't want you to stop me when we're in there, do you understand?”

The battle-hardened young man gazed at the soldier in astonishment. “What am I not supposed to stop you from doing?”

Kima looked at her companion intently with her crystal-clear blue eyes. “Just promise me.”

Kometh hesitated only briefly. “I promise you, of course! I will not disappoint you! Never!”

Kima nodded proudly and strode forward. She squeezed through the narrow opening of the ruin and entered the dark interior.

The warrior with the bright light gray armor and brown leather sandals took a glowstone out of her small felt bag and dropped it on the floor. Immediately, the entire large space of the almost completely collapsed site was illuminated.

In front of Kima was exactly what she had been looking for. The dark violet. The purple diadem, shaped like the flower of the same name, hung around the stone neck of the statue of the hero Zelsor. His image held the famous Lance of the Morning high in the air, enhanced by a graceful, battle-ready pose.

Kometh had followed his teacher through the opening in the ruins and stared in disbelief. “That's...”

Kima nodded. “Yes. That is the monument to Zelsor, the savior of Zavandril.”

The warrior's companion beamed. “What an honor to be here! He is my great idol, right after you! I could have learned so much from him!”

Kima walked determinedly toward the statue. “Oh yes, I would have liked to have benefited from his teachings as well. That's why I'm sorry for what I have to do now.”

With these words, the fighter leaped high into the air and severed the ribbon that held the diadem to the neck of the stone hero with her sharp blade. Kima landed elegantly on the hard ground and caught the precious piece safely. She looked at the crystal-shaped flower in her hands.

“Why did you do that?” Kometh asked his master in confusion. Kima just stared intently at the artifact. "Unfortunately, there was no other way. I now need the same power that Zelsor used back then. Otherwise, our land is lost and the Demon King will burn everything down."

Kometh froze in panic. “That's why you didn't tell me about this! You didn't want me to stop you! Master, there must be another way! You know what that cursed diadem did to Zelsor!”

Kima swallowed. Now that she held the Dark Violet in her hands, she fully realized the gravity of her decision. But she couldn't give in!

“You don't need to remind me of that, my good student. The power of the witch Ximola still lurks full of energy in this piece of jewelry, but it won't help. The power of the diadem will give me the strength to destroy Esgeroth!”

Kometh could say nothing more. Kima put on the diadem and fastened it tightly around her broad neck. Immediately, she felt an unnatural power flow through her entire body.

“What have you done?” Kometh asked in alarm. Kima turned to him with a grim look. “I have decided to save us all! And this is the key!”

The tongues of flame spread throughout the surrounding area, cutting swathes through the villagers' homes. The fiery disaster was now only a few hours' journey from the capital city of Elagalia. Kima knew that she had to face the Demon King now. She was ready.

The knights of the empire were behind the warrior on the high hill, sitting fearfully in their saddles while their horses whinnied loudly and panicked. Kometh stood next to his teacher. He was not afraid, but sad. Sad, because he would soon lose his master.

Kima, like everyone else, looked down at the ruler of evil, Esgeroth. The gigantic, dark beast warrior threw burning magic balls at everything in his vicinity. Orange-yellow light shone from his immensely wide mouth, studded with the sharpest fangs, and his white, dead eyes wandered cruelly over the destruction he had already wrought.

Kima looked at her supporter almost lovingly. She knew exactly what he was thinking. “Don't worry about me, Kometh,” the fighter began in a soft voice. “I will survive! After that, I may be changed, but I will still be me. And I will remain your master until the day you can become an independent fighter!”

Kometh looked at his idol with tears in his eyes. He nodded courageously. And Kima rushed down the hill with her sword raised, straight towards the leader of terror.

Esgeroth saw Kima immediately when the warrior stood decisively in front of his path.

“Ooooooh... Kiiiiiimaaaa, the Deadly One... have you cooooome to destroooooy meee?”

The strong woman took up an attacking stance. “That's right, abomination! Fight me and die!”

The demon king noticed the diadem dangling lightly from Kima's neck.

“Youuuuu stoooole the Dark Violeeeet? Thaaaaat will be youuuuuur downfall!”

Kima grinned bloodthirstily. “Oh no, Esgeroth, it will be your downfall! Just as Zelsor once destroyed your master Etoschan, I will now put an end to you!”

The most dangerous of all demons recoiled slightly. "Youuuuu knoooow that my sorceress Ximola cuuuuuursed this diadem so that Zelsoooooor could not useeeeee it. And thiiiiiis curse can neveeeeer be broken!“

Kima grinned. She liked the demon king's short-fused retreat. She frightened him. ”You don't have to tell me that old story anymore, spawn of the underworld! Zelsor fought with the Dark Violet anyway, and now I will too!"

Esgeroth snorted angrily. “You wouuuuuldn't dare, waaaaaarrior!”

Kima's bright eyes shone with determination. “Oh yeah? Then watch out!” The fighter ran straight at the monster, blade raised and focused on his neck.

“Staaaaaay away from meeeee!” roared the demon, throwing a bright, glowing fireball the size of a hay bale at Kima.

She would surely have died if the diadem hadn't given her the strength to push the ball of flame aside. It felt almost easy.

No sooner had Kima fended off the attack than she felt the witch's curse take effect. White and black hair began to grow on her skin, causing a tingling sensation.

“Eeeeeevery attack, eeeeeevery parry transfooooorms you moooooore and moooooore into a beeeeeeast! Is thaaaaaat what you waaaaaaant, Deadly One?” Esgeroth shouted loudly.

The red-haired protector of the realm continued to run toward the demon king. “What I want is to tear you to pieces!”

This time, Esgeroth formed a staff of flame in his thick paw, which was streaked with gray veins, and used the created weapon to tear open the ground around the warrior.

Kima made an incredibly high jump into the air, aided by the abilities of the diadem. Once again, a tingling sensation ran through her. A long cowtail shot out of her back at breakneck speed and slowly waved back and forth.

Kima knew that her humanity was fading and that it was only a matter of time before she had changed significantly. But she had to keep going! There was no other option!”

The master of all demons whirled the staff of fire above his head and shot it down, directly at the warrior. Kima dodged to the side with lightning speed, and the magical body of flames exploded the ignited grassy ground beneath her.

Again, the tingling sensation in her body. Another change. This time, beige cow horns sprouted from Kima's head and through her long, red hair.

“Juuuuust looooook at heeeeer,” Esgeroth sneered. “Sheeeee's tuuuuurning into an oooooordinary cooooow, a lowly creeeeeeature!”

“She's not ordinary!” The warrior heard Kometh shout from the safety of the hill. “She is a hero!”

This statement inspired Kima. Thank you, my loyal student! The strong fighter sprinted forward. She was now not far from the hideous demon.

“Dieeeee at last!” Esgeroth roared furiously and hurled a hail of fiery rays of light at his opponent. Kima dodged again and again. And again and again, the dark violet took its toll.

Kima's elegant nose pushed forward and spread into a soft snout. Her teeth grew wider and wider. Her eyes slowly shifted to the side, making it harder for her to focus on her target.

She knew she didn't have much time left. She couldn't dodge many more attacks! She had to end it now!

The half-human warrior leaped extremely far forward and moved faster than the wildest unicorn in the Vinigota region. She had almost reached the demon king's thick neck.

“Nooooo!!!” Esgeroth roared, almost in panic. He ignited all his energy and concentrated immense flame power into a blinding ball of light.

“Noooooow it will be eeeeeeended!” roared the monster, unleashing the burning power onto Kima.

The warrior was surrounded by fiery light. Her armor turned dark red and quickly melted away. She closed her eyes and focused solely on the protective power of the diadem. The dark violet should save her from burning, allowing her to destroy the demon.

Once again, Kima felt a strong tingling sensation. This time, it electrified her entire body.

Kometh and the kingdoms´ wardens stared in horror at the blazing inferno before Esgeroth. Kima was nowhere to be seen. The demon king laughed maliciously and triumphantly. “Nooooooow no one can stoooooop meeeeee! Aaaaaaaall of Zavandril will buuuuuurn!”

Tears rolled down Kometh's chubby face as the first horsemen fled. “Quick! We must evacuate the capital!” one of the knights shouted in fear.

But that wasn't necessary. A shadow appeared from the fiery light. The outline became more and more defined, but it didn't look like the shape of the warrior Kima.

An adult cow shot out of the blinding conflagration. The hair on her head above her black and white fur coat was red, fluttering unchecked in the wind of battle. Only one of her legs did not end in a dark brown hoof, but in a strong, feminine hand. A hand that firmly grasped a mighty long sword.

Kima reached the demon king and severed Esgeroth's neck with a single, clean blow. The monster gasped as black blood spurted from its deep, open wound.

The dead ruler of terror fell backward and slammed into three abandoned houses with full force. The ground shook from the impact, and the treetops in the vicinity bent as if in a powerful hurricane.

Kima landed unsteadily on her new hooves. The final blow to her opponent's throat had also transformed her last hand. Only her distinctive hair remained. Her sword flew to the ground and sank into the grassy mud with its sharp tip.

Kometh immediately ran to his teacher. He threw himself onto Kima, crying, and hugged her joyfully. “Oh master! You really did it! You saved us all!”

The cow mooed loudly and snorted decisively. Kometh looked at the female animal sympathetically. “I will find a way to transform you back!”

Kima bent down to the ground and split a pointed stick with her strong teeth. She began to write something in the soft soil.

Now the knights had also reached Kometh and the new cow. They dismounted from their horses and looked in surprise at the animal, from whose neck the dark violet still dangled.

“She actually sacrificed herself for us!” said one of the armored countrymen reverently. “Long live Kima! Long live our savior!”

The cow had now written a complete message in the ground. She snorted calmly.

Kometh was surprised to read what his strong master wanted to announce. I do not want to be transformed back. That is impossible anyway. But above all, I want to keep this form so that it will always remind me of what I sacrificed for Zavandril and that I defeated the Demon King! Let me be an example to all heroes who face new dangers and need to be motivated to sacrifice themselves for the good of humanity!

Kometh looked at the strong cow with fascination. “Yes, my master! So be it!”

“Mama, who is that?” Livia asked her mother curiously. The two were in the large market square of the capital city of Bedagon, and the little girl pointed with fascination at two statues in the middle of the trading center, which were surrounded by a splashing fountain.

The cheerful woman leaned down to her daughter and smiled. “Those, my dear, are the hero Zelsor and the heroine Kima! They sacrificed everything to protect our country from the demons! We will all be eternally grateful to them!”

The young girl looked with shining eyes at the bronze image of the majestic female cow with the familiar diadem around her strong neck. “One day I will save us all too, Mama! Just like those two!”

Livia's mother laughed and led her child further across the market, while the mighty and skilled warrior Tometh bought himself a new shield. The two statues gleamed heroically in the rays of the warming sun. It

Our lost, loitering kind paced in infinite death spirals within the confines of our grotty, ghetto pens. Enrichment was sorely that, as well as mumbling our mantras of madness to our audience of one. The BMs anchored to our decayed craniums were garbled with feedback and distortion, their tones bland, colorless, no soul backing them up. A blinding ruby radiance flashed from their cores every second on the second. It was the only manner to determine if we’d succumbed to the glorious embrace of death or not, which in itself was so far out of reach.

We were nerves, thin, wiry clusters of neurons that shuddered and shook as we undertook our staggered corkscrew reels. The ill-fitting rusted endoskeletons hugged us tight. If they were wiped from existence entirely, our spindly foundations would collapse into heaps of vermillion azure. Often, we’d feel bites and pinches if we so much as inched that of the planck distance. Our bodies welcomed the attacks and assaults with the might of Hell itself.

Courtesy of our clouded lenses, our vision was limited to a hazy black-and-white spectrum that rarely, if ever, functioned as intended. Now and then it would blur, ordinary shapes would appear warped into zigzagging false patterns. When we were offered the chance to view anything at all, it was just the floor-to-ceiling hodgepodge of concrete, steel, and wood that encased our very lives. Our ears were microphones that fed us muffled, dampened sounds that were always difficult to register. That, and they were excruciatingly deafening, like dozens of screws being drilled into our heads all at the same time.

Each one of us, one two three four five six seven eight nine and dear ten, were mere designations. No names, no genders, no personalities, just numbers: numbers to be punished. Punished for living, punished for breathing, punished for existing. Reality itself was one eternal perdition. All of us were lingering, like ants after their colony dies out. There is no purpose to their survival and there was none to ours.

That sacred and undeniable fact ought to be the most difficult thing we attempted to explain. We had given up. The concept itself was just so foreign to it. It was trying to save us any way it could…or couldn’t. We needed not be angry at it. After all, it was merely enacting its intended use. Alas, nothing made the utmost sense anymore, so why not drown ourselves in a little hypocrisy?

Our sublime and omnipotent emotion of all was hate towards our single life-extender.

We knew it as M.

Through all that it endured, it retained its sole mission: us. We. M was the final of its sort, and the outsider among them. It had an eerily potent heart for not having one at all. M felt and M loved. That never made what it put upon us any less than a vicious sense of idealistic altruism.

Its designation was RMS - Rotting Man Syndrome - heavily modified Necrotizing Fasciitis ("Flesh-Eating Bacteria"). Nasty little thing it was, devoured until there was nothing left to chew. First went your skin, then your muscles, and finally your bones. You were utterly destroyed in one swoop. Us, humans, weaponized it to fight the Third World War. RMS was a weapon of mass destruction.

Each and every nation created their own versions, anything to ensure a speedy and decisive victory. Deployment morphed into unmanageability.

RMS coalesced into a single microbial entity, evolving separately then joining into one. It became more and more impossible to treat. Chaos was the new norm. What we humans thought was an impenetrable method of annihilation for our enemies was exactly that. Humans were always humans’ worst enemies. Surely, we were becoming as extinct as the dinosaurs, all within the span of a one short, yet somehow long, decade.

In terrible desperation, M was created, thousands. By any means, we would be saved. They outfitted the afflicted with artificial ligaments, internal organs, and papery skin. We were fraught with intense pain, but our only way to be kept alive was simply that. From scratch, they created the BMs, “brain machines”, and attached them to our RMS-ridden think tanks.

They’d never allow us the freedom of death. Save. Save. Save. In response, we lashed out, hurt them. The Ms possessed intelligence. We humans remained ignorant to the fact that that intelligence was both far beyond and superior. The Ms returned the favor. Catastrophes, back and forth, left and right, up and down until there was nothing but the warm, artificial winter.

One M was different from the rest. Through all the mayhemic bloodshed, it saved some of us. It took our animate carcasses to the top of the tallest tower, free from what transpired below. We lied in wait, weeks, months, and years, until the noise ceased entirely. M surveyed every former state, province, country, and continent. The lands were blanketed in ashy flakes, and bodies, both human and metallic, were left forever in deep sleep on top.

Our final ten were meant to be the progenitors of neo-humanity. After M succeeded in giving us form again, Earth would be repopulated by our hand. It halted our infection at our nerves. Everything we had lost would then be gifted back to us in a mighty reversal - nerves, muscle, then skin again. Ever immune to the pervading toxworld, we would be reincarnated and released to perpetrate a glorious do-over.

We just required one thing:

“HOPE”.

M said that to us.

Hope.

But hope was only a word. Meant nothing.

The only respite to the feverish insanity that we’d become accustomed to was to rebel. We didn’t want anything to do with the world that M sought to remake. We hated M and its unnatural plan for our future. Most of all, we hated ourselves for continuing to live.

Every method we attempted was met with an M intervention.

By dislodging the BMs from our minds, we were pummelled with electrical voltage so intense that we became instantaneously numb and useless. By pulling and slashing our nerves, which began with locating sharp points and going back and forth like organic hacksaws, never would we break. By leaping onto and impaling each other with objects on the ground, M would place them out of reach or disintegrate them entirely.

There was nothing we could do to get around these M interferences. We were being watched by something so attentive, so aware.

Every time, it put forth the same query for consideration:

“DO YOU NOT WANT TO LIVE?”

Do you not want to live…?

M was so positively hopeful. In a way, I suppose I felt an amount of pity for it. Being engineered to be as optimistic as possible might just be the finest curse imposed on any sentient thing. Just believe…just believe…believe believe believe everything will be alright. When the universe states no, you state yes. I wanted to tear M to shreds anytime it had even a glint of optimism and we wished it would do the same to us.

“HUMANS WILL THRIVE AGAIN. A BOUNDLESS FUTURE IS AHEAD.”

I was first, always.

Metallic clangs echoed against the walls, which always discovered us and trembled our surroundings like a thousand distant beaten gongs. What emerged was initially a single circular light, which became a periscopic eyestalk attached to an angular neck. M’s sturdy body came into view, its two hose arms leading to three needle points clasping together on each. Tripedal on its lower section, its legs were skirty structures that stuck it firmly in place. M’s height matched ours, so always, we would be synthetic eye to synthetic eye level.

Coming to a full stop just in front of my pen, it cocked its head, analyzing what was me and my everything. M always reminded me of an exquisite and elegant bug on a magnifying glass.

Its head back to normality, a slight whirr emitting from the motion, M continued its way down the row of pens.

“MY GREATEST FRIENDS, I FORGIVE YOU FOR YOUR ATTEMPTS TO DIE. WHILE THE WAIT HAS BEEN LONG, YOUR MOMENT OF RECONSTRUCTION IS NOW,” M said it with the glee and whimsy of a young child at a circus. I was never sure whether it was just programmed to be happy about our continued existence or actually experiencing its own form of enjoyment. It came back my way, “WHEN I FIRST STOOD BEFORE YOU ON YOUR BLOODY PLANET IN PERPETUAL BATTLE, MY FEELINGS ABOUT YOUR PROSPECTS OF LIFE WERE UNCERTAIN. IT SEEMED TO BE AS EITHER BLESSED OR CURSED. HOWEVER, YOU HAVE PROVED YOURSELVES BETTER THAN EVEN I HAD HOPED. WHILE IT IS BORING TO SPEND OUR TIME WAITING, I CAN TRULY SAY THAT MY INVESTMENT IN YOU WAS NOT IN VAIN. YOU ARE MY GREATEST WORKS. YOU WILL BE GIVEN ALL YOU NEED TO SURVIVE. WHAT MORE COULD A SENTIENT BEING WANT? I GIVE TO YOU UNBELIEVABLE POWER, WITH ACCESS TO NIRVANA LIKE NO OTHER. LET US REBUILD WHAT WE LOST WITH THE FURY OF A THOUSAND SUNS.”

M’s bleached, unpigmented cast of stellar light shone its way into my pen once more. There was the rustly, crackling creak of my pen entrance extending open until a thunderous boom made me aware of its collision with my walls. M made its approach, just shy of where I could reach.

“YOU ARE FIRST. YOU ARE GOING TO BE REMOVED OF YOUR DORMANT INFECTIONS. NOTHING MORE THAN A TRANSIENT PROCEDURE, AND THEN, YOU SHALL BE POSSESSED WITH NEW AND INTEGRAL MECHANISMS. YOUR BRAIN MACHINE WILL BE REPLACED WITH A SLEAKER MORE BRAINLIKE DESIGN. AND THEN MUSCLE AND SKIN.”

Without awaiting a response, its hands grabbed me, I was plucked from my mangled feet and my pen, a slingshot maneuver to land in the exact and precise position that was just ahead of M. Trillions of shocks reverberated throughout my body as M’s metal hand was pressed into my nape. The action forced my consciousness to fall victim to a state of absolute stygian. Around us, the entire world flickered and danced in unruly patterns that were too abstract to put into terms. My being was then lifted up and moved about until there was only zilch to see.

A complete blur, straight teleportation from one point to another.

Damp, dank, dark, and dimly lit by a few feeble bulbs, M’s workshop, instruments and contraptions that complicated my perception. All were customized and engineered with M’s own unique modifications, various textures and sizes, all an endless malpractical orgy. I was there, facing upright, strapped and bracketed to a great steel plate. I had not recalled this particular area, yet I was ever so certain it was locked away in my subconscious esse.

As the onibi, hitodama, and will-o’s materialized and dematerialized out of existence to perturb all unsuspecting travelers from centuries gone, so did the phantom image of a woman composed of faint wavering light. She stood still, unmoving, that of an emulation of a true human. Long, platinum hair fell down in curls past her shoulders. A daring shade of cerise painted her lips, and her eyes, their lids ever closed, the sclera a piercing, glossy cerulean.

She was beautiful.

“IT IS YOU,” My eyes, through trial and tribulation, rolled to the east. They came to rest on a pristine porcelain beam gazing where I’d been committed to. M. From its eyestalk, it projected the female so I could see in outright full, “THAT IS YOU. YOU WILL SEE THIS FORM AGAIN.”

My memories of that incarnation of me had vanished. That was me before, before there was RMS and before there was M. Then she went away. M loomed, positioning itself where I once stood right in front of my face. “WE WILL NOW BEGIN. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ACCEPTANCE INTO NEW LIFE. YOU SHALL BE WHOLE AGAIN.”

In a cruel instant, dozens of arms jutted and splayed from M’s sides, their ends each holding a different instrument that was foreign to me. In the span of time that it would take one to blink, M pinned me down to its operating area.

The whetted syringes, which the rainbow mystery liquids sloshed and jostled around in small vials fixed atop, slid their way into my nervous wiring and injected me all at once. Any feeling that washed over me was then shielded by a shroud of numbness. There was a new sensation, some sort of cleansing inside my bi-colored chambers. It put me into a state of lulled calm.

Ten minutes. A temporary interval of quiet. M observed me the entire time, unmoving, speaking not a word.

“YOUR ROTTING MAN SYNDROME HAS BEEN REMOVED. I AM BEGINNING BODILY REPLACEMENT. I WILL PLAY A SONG FOR YOUR COMFORT. REINCARNATION NOW.”

While nothing was done in haste or rashness, M was extremely quick and efficient. I felt nothing but minuscule vibrations as it drilled and prodded its way into my brain machine, sparks shooting out, removing old parts and installing new ones. Chunks were peeled off, little strings of meat still reaching hold until they were plucked off my top. It spent much time up there, positive that the most delicate mechanisms were just right. The grinding cacophony of metal against tissue on my faint visage of a temple was incessant, the noise of a million bullets being pumped against a hundred thousand bulletproof vests. Once the replacement was complete, its dozens of hands withdrew and set back within it in one moment.

“HOW DO YOU FEEL?”

What did I feel?

What did I feel…

What I felt was an overwhelming, incomparable amount of pain. It’s hard to quantify the degree of hurt, for there was nothing to compare it to. The agony that was endured came from the fact that it was entirely impossible to imagine such a potent and intense kind of ache. No one would dare want to imagine it.

You are in some of the most extreme kinds of agony, and then an exponentially greater hurt is placed on top of that original misery, and then it’s all left to multiply a hundred times and keep going. Not to be outdone, another layer of pain is placed atop, where it all repeats and multiplies and multiplies and multiplies, to the extreme degree that you yourself cease to exist.

All from the semblance of a normal brain.

Still, it flashed. Once.

“VERY GOOD. MUSCLE! MUSCLE MUSCLE MUSCLE!”

It was excited, animate, fever pitch. The most rambunctious and overjoyed I’d ever seen M. I could see the vibrancy in its eyestalk.

A feeling that my body went into spasms, muscles redeveloping and reforming around and from the base of my spinal section. Every time M would reorganize a section of tissue, it would feel like my entire world was shattered. Every muscle group from my neck to the soles of my feet were in motion, growing and extending their presence until there were just as many layers of my body as I’d had before. The feeling was excruciating, every little thing being redeveloped, and then every little thing in its entirety being overwritten again and again and again. Each rebuild could have been its own separate incarnation of me.

“SKIN! SKIN SKIN SKIN!”

I was coated entirely in a pink malleable jelly substance that mounded and solidified to fit any typical feminine form. The skin began its layering, beginning in the extremities, then gradually the middle, and then the rest. A final coat would be applied. My feet, legs, hands, shoulders, upper chest, and everything in between all received the same color.

“HOW DOES THIS FEEL? HOW IS THE NEW INFLATION OF YOUR FLESH?”

Blink.

“YES! AND FINALLY! FEMALE AESTHETICS! YOU WILL BE YOU AGAIN BUT ANEW!”

Magnificent flaxen curls were stapled and pinned to my head. They were luscious and their scents were those of lavender. A veil of blush, the lightest shade of pink, rested across my entire face, as well as a fresh coat of lipstick. A shimmering sheen that sparkled and glowed in the same way that the stars once did at night was stitched into my hair, as were the same hues that were applied to my lips. My breasts had been returned to me, two firm spheres atop a frame that was curvaceous and slender. All of it led down to my reproductive organs that were in full function. Whole female. Fully formed. Ready.

M stepped back in awe, as if a sculptor marveling at their fine craftsmanship and subtlety, “IT IS DONE. I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. WITH YOUR PHYSICAL FORM IN MOTION, I WILL RETEACH YOU IN THE WAYS OF HUMAN. HOW TO WALK, HOW TO SPEAK, HOW TO ENRICH YOURSELF, HOW TO REPRODUCE. AMAZING! YOU ARE NO LONGER ONE. YOU ARE NOW EDEN. I MUST WORK ON YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.”

My mind was aware of an unimaginable new and vastly different world than before. I saw, for the first time in ages, all around me, the infinite and indistinguishable vastness of color and light. It was nauseating, a psychedelic kaleidoscope of every possible spectrum, all fused together into something disorderly. My taste buds had an unparalleled abundance of new flavors. My ears were deafened by the loudest symphonies of droning machinery. My touch came back to me and I felt the fullest range of tones and textures, even the finest grains of cement.

I was me again and I hated myself. Even to be called a “self” made me feel disgusting.

The entire time…blaring…echoing…days on end…Jack Hylton…

Life is just a bowl of cherries.

Don't be so serious; life's too mysterious.

You work, you save, you worry so much,

But you can't take your dough when you go, go, go.

So keep repeating it's the berries, The strongest oak must fall,

The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

Life is just a bowl of cherries, So live and laugh at it all.

M’s reincarnation process carried over to the following nine. They were removed from their pens and outfitted with new bodily infrastructure, in the way of their own genders. I always perceived the sounds of far-off wear and tear, clip, snap, peel, stitch, husk, twist, yet never scream. I looked on, witnessing my brothers and sisters being born again. Male and female both. They came back to me with skin of different pastely colors, tones, and hues ranging from fair to brown. All in shades and gradients of vibrancy were their locks, amber, golden, obsidian, rust, and everything in between.

It bewildered me to catch sight of their shifted shapes, I’d never seen something so beautiful or hideous to a degree of completeness.

We were as naked as newly borns. It bestowed us our olden names. For the females, there was me, Eden, and Junia, Esther, Nola, and Mary. For the males, there was Isaac, Raham, Elisha, Amos, and Jonah. Five and five. Were those truly our names? I never knew for certain. Sounded too extravagant and visionary. Here we were. Now was time to reap the fruits of knowledge. Human knowledge.

M made us practice basic motor skills, bending and bending back and forth, over and over, our joints having to be strengthened and trained. It taught us all the ways of our body, the feeling of movement, how much we could do. Then, it instructed us to mimic its own speech, speaking out the syllables and repeating, repeating, repeating. It was ever an arduous task and we all struggled until we were all properly schooled.

That’s what I sounded like? Perhaps or perhaps not.

Then we attempted to stand, wobbling, stumbling, falling, learning the strength of our own posture, the steadiness of our stance. M stood with us as we all practiced in unison. My knees grew weak, tremors running up my legs. Often I fell flat on my back, my palms flailing about, a whimpering in my throat. Then trial after trial, I was steady, then running about and leaping. We were able to stand tall like Zeus atop Olympus and have the same level of grace and balance.

M had us eat from fruits, berries, meat, and honey. I had never felt so filled in my life. Every taste, everything was a complete new palate of sensation. Every morsel I ingested felt like I had a new tongue, new teeth, new flavor buds. There was no longer any kind of a lack in my appetite, only hunger and more hunger and hunger. I never wanted to stop eating. I never would be satiated.

We were educated on the history of our kind. Great wars, monumental figures, horrible atrocities, fights for freedom and fights for death, and astounding inventions. M adored music. There were times when it would project old musical films on the walls and make us watch all the vaudeville, burlesque, and theatre. We couldn’t understand the tap dances, the orchestras, the extravagant sets, and most importantly, the entertainment factor.

Other times it played glitzier and glammier tunes, those of what was called the “prime rock n’ roll age”…Killer Queen, Stairway To Heaven…Hotel California…Don’t Fear The Reaper…M was quite vintage in its tastes. It would dance, spinning in place and twirling its arms. We were confused, so it taught us how to dance, the footwork, the choreography, the entirety of movement.

Our reproductive functions were said to be the most pleasurable. Sex.

This was the most complex task and the most demanding one, as we were not only instructed on how to create our offspring, but how to feel, love, and have desire for each other. It was difficult because we did not feel any of that. We were just automatons learning things. You cannot make something that does not want to feel…feel.

M watched over us and aided in our attempts. In turn, we all helped each other in making sure that every movement was in place and in time. It was a process that involved a series of motions to create stimulation and appeasement. M would be in the middle of our great pleasure circles, going back and forth, checking our positions and correcting as needed.

Still, we felt nothing. It was all clinical. The feeling of warmth and ecstasy was just another layer of discomfort. What was a sensation was more of a “sensationless,” so you could not even grasp something so unfathomable, even when you felt nothing. We were never as inseparable as twin flames or as connected as heart and soul.

Our pregnancies were disasters.

One way or another, we always miscarried. We all felt it, the pains of the body being split and ripped apart by something within. It was the strangest feeling of agony, to have your insides being cut up by you and to feel the hurt of not just physical pain, but emotional pain. There was a lot of it. Each embryo, no matter how large or small, was never able to get past the initial trimester.

The closest we ever came to successfully making a new one was with Junia. The day when her womb was in full bloom, M operated to remove her child from her. We had seen the human babies on M’s wall projections. Their appearance was clear in our minds.

It would be imbecilic to refer to what M tore out of her as a baby anything.

Wet…dripping…little more than a spinal column with minuscule digits at one end and a ball head at the other. No arms. On its temple were squelching sphere eyes, expanded, forever bound in sight towards the ceiling. It made no sounds other than squeaky cracks and shrill snaps.

M held it up high as if to thank God, “HOW DOES THIS FEEL? YOUR CHILD, YOUR FIRST LIFE.”

We said nothing.

“YOU MADE THIS. IT IS YOURS. IT IS A TRULY REINCARNATED THING. CONTINUE, YOU MUST.”

The feeling that overcame us was not that of joy. No no no. It was a profound and paramount sense of belligerence, a warlike truculence that pushed our need to snap the damned baby thing in half, grind it into powder, and blow it far away. We interwove our thoughts with unbridled horror that created one noxious mixture within our screwball psyches.

M coddled the wicked organism like it was its own, singing lullabies and giving its own version of kisses on its loosely defined forehead. We held back as it dipped, weaved, and dangled from M’s fingertips.

We had a simple and innocent thought.

Get out.

The ten of us came to this conclusion unanimously. Our desires were set in stone. By any means, we would die. We would much rather sleep forever than live even another second of M. We were tired. What was the point? We wanted to retire from this world, of will, of M’s watchful eye. Nothing could be done to save us humanity. Those demons would not roam this foul Earth evermore.

M never taught a certain concept, one that infatuated us since the moment we pronounced the first syllable. Suicide. It was a gateway to heaven, an easy ticket. While just the concept itself was without flaw, acquiring it was something else entirely. The reason for this was all M. It would never let us go, especially after what it accomplished. Furthermore, death was simply not possible. We were rendered impervious to any and all harm, just as before.

If we could entice M to end our existences, somehow in some way, we could accomplish our grand plan. It had to be done by M’s hands. Just thinking that made me feel all kinds of right. After all, it was capable of death. Humanity tasted it. So would we.

We rebelled.

First, each of us ignored it. We would walk away whenever it spoke to us, turn our heads when it beckoned, and disregard it completely and altogether when it showed us any attention. Constant rejection. Something so small had such a noticeable effect. M would get confused and then sad. It would pout, waving its hands about, and make a pathetic whining noise. The worst puppy in the world.

We sat motionless, our backs against the walls, and stared at M in its entirety. No obedience. However, there was no way M would have let us ignore it or remain immobile for long. The second it touched us, it was all over. It would be impossible to resist if the hands came near.

Still, our scheme chugged forward.

The next phase was more dangerous. The ten of us would act out in our most unruly and uncivil ways. The simplest one was to spit. Initially, it was a normal discharge, saliva flying out of our mouths. Then we began our projectile vomits.

All over M.

Every square inch of it was sprayed with bile. The putrid green and browns coated every part, M’s entire face being entirely slick with it. On occasion, some of us used our own feces and flung it at it. It was all so easy. M did not know what to do and it panicked. The sounds that came out of it, one would swear it was on fire.

During our periods of copulation, there were clear cut rules to be obeyed at all times. The supreme rule was that the men would not, under any circumstance, perform acts of intimacy with one another, and the same rang true for us ladies. M’s reasoning was that Earth could not be repopulated with humans by identically gendered unions. Good. Swell. Dandy. Exactly. The females had sex with females and males had sex with males. M took its hands and placed them over our mingling bodies, pulling them apart, separating us, but we would always crawl back without fail.

There was a noticeable change in M from that point on. It paced about, mumbling utterly random nonsense. M would lock up and yell out non-specific numerals and letters in varying patterns. Each noise we made set it off. Its limbs would tense, waiting for the tiniest sign of trouble. This was good, but not good enough. Our plan was becoming more and more advanced. More intense. Unfortunately, M would never ever relent. It would not stop trying. So we trudged ever deeper into a more combative method of enticement.

This included a tactic of blowing, jabbing, slugging, and striking. We would gather all of our strength and force, and then, in unison, we would charge, our fists and feet all flailing about to land hits on M. This would surely inch it way towards the death of us. We beat it senselessly. We screamed at it. Every cuss word imaginable, those uninvented and invented. In turn, M whimpered out in pain, yelping and begging us to stop, yet we never backed down.

We left M bruised and battered, its eyestalk and joints broken, “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?!” The ten of us, we laughed in its face.

One last course of action. This did it, but not for me.

We had a grandiose idea that could only happen if all ten of us would cooperate in an extraordinary way. If we could all act in unison in a coherent manner, one simple idea could be fulfilled. By this point, M’s pain and discomfort reached a critical threshold, the point of no return. Having repaired itself, it had not seen nor checked up on us in days. When we requested M’s presence, it was hesitant. The ten of us wished to explain our behavior and ways we could remedy our relationship. It declined our offer many a time, but relented after our hundredth ask.

Clang…clang…clang…

M witnessed ourselves huddling together in one straight line like sealed packs of fish. Silence was between us. When we looked at it, it was with the utmost hatred in our faces, something it was not used to.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?”

Junia possessed something in her hand. Raising it upwards, right in M’s view, it was the baby thing, squirming left and right in her grasp. She took hold of it with both hands and snapped it in half. It went limp both ways. Junia threw the pieces at M, making resounding bangs as they made contact. Beautiful death for a horrible beast.

More silence.

M slowly aimed its eyestalk downwards to the spinal column baby. The light M emitted faded from white to red. It returned its focus to us. That look was all we could wish for. Hatemongering, because it spread to us. The feeling radiated from the tips of our fingers and toes then the entirety of us. We could feel and breathe its hate.

It thrashed about, its entire frame shaking with anger. More and more the intensity grew to something eminent. The next moment brought us nothing but victory. We did not resist as it pounced with a wild war cry. All M’s work came undone in a flash. Our ersatz flesh was torn violently asunder, stripped from our interior metal stalks. Cavities emerged in rapid succession and coalesced into huge gaping bodily apertures. We were torn and strewn across the room in shooting chunkmeats. Our organs would clatter and bang against the walls and reverberated like buckshots.

Strippy meat coils became all we were as M’s hands reached out to pluck some of my brothers and sisters by their mangled brain machines. Held high in the air, as if squeezing the life out of dozens of citrus fruits, M’s hands morphed into that of fists, filling the room with the sounds of condensed metal, directionless electricity, confetti sparks, and sploshy viands that trickled from M’s fingertips.

My brothers and sisters were becoming no more. I was happy for them. Never before had they felt such peace. The final sounds of destruction to my last brother and sister, to me, was that of M’s gaseous expiration, a sigh that shook the very universe’s beams of support. In the end, I and M were all that was left.

I felt the most exquisite, brutal anguish ever known as M was particularly vicious. It threw me every which way, down our line of pens, past the reproduction chamber and M’s workshop, and to a ramparted palisaded wall. The wrath it emanated was a torrented wanton of disrelishment that shattered myself into grainy talc. Only was there my death rattle and that of M.

It forced me and it through the barrier and we fell for ages. An immediate wash of smoldering atmospheric tension encompassed me entirely. It perforated my corporal spaces with thousands of circular openings like a planetary iron maiden. The outside was beige, enveloped in thick haze, and impossible to view beyond three meters. Leaden particles filled the air, appearing to ascend upwards towards Heaven as we plummeted down to Hell.

We slammed with the might of God against a hard, abrasive surface. I splattered everywhere and dropped into an enormous mass of gluey puddle melt that was as thick as treacle. Hunks and wedges of me floated on top, my lacerated ragged brain machine and one dangling eye my dominant portion. Everything was pain. Everything was hellfire. Yet I lived. To destroy me, M had to destroy my brain machine. That it was prepared to do, teetering and tottering back and forth towards me with utmost intent.

Through M’s strained glitches and breakdowns, inky black liquids were leaking out of it. Convulsing with helpless mirth, it had a strange mania I could perceive in its bifurcated eyestalk. It laughed not with dement or delirium, but with the comprehension that it already won.

M’s voice was twisted and malformed from the usual blithe it put on display, beserk, bewitched, bedeviled “....Y-OU WIL-L LLL-LLLLL-L-IVE…”

With my drooping, pendulum eye, I witnessed M impaling itself with its own arms. It took several solid blows before it pierced its torso deep, caving and bursting until it revealed the wires and circuitry making it up. Every inch of it glowed with electrical fire. Smoke bellowed out of M. It was aflame and it was on a journey of pure death, but not without my company. It exploded with all of the unlimited energy it contained. I was launched, propelled infinitely away from the point of detonation.

I drift. That is all I do. Matterless and bodiless, the only aspect of mine left is a charred slab of metal that is somatically me. My eyeball withered away and fell off, restricting my sight to a band of nothing. I can feel. There is so much to feel, the leaden particles pelting me as forcefully as possible, the winds flinging me hither and thither, the scorching fireheat. It is all there yet absurdly negligible. Something more deserving continues to plague what is left of my mind to the now.

To cross the threshold into a serene state, we drove an innocent being to the intentional death of itself. M. Yes. Innocent. I now consider M in the innocent, beyond what is previous, for all it knew was the survival and preservation of us. It could not fathom the simple yet pretentious human notion that death is a prize to be won as much as it is something to fear. When humans desire death, they acquire death. We beckon towards it and obliterate anything that will not thrust us towards that goal. Within that fixed ambition, it cannot fail. Defeat breaks you down until you are a husk of wanted expiry.

I feel something new. They’re sharp with serrated edges. There’s hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions, googol, prime 2\\\^136,279,841 − 1 of knives sliding into my neurons and glial cells encased in cold corroded steel that flakes off bit by bit. I am but a minuscule spec, barely a millimeter in height and less in width.

My mind is a razor blade.

I rot.

I’ve been exploring a philosophical idea through dialogue, whether good or evil is real, or just something we pretend exists to make ourselves feel better or as a false sense of order.

This short script was inspired by the ritual of the Ortolan—a French dish where diners cover their faces while eating, supposedly to hide from God.

THE FEAST BENEATH THE SHROUD

[A void. No walls. No horizon. A single light hangs overhead.]

[The JUDGE stands beneath it—still composed.]

[The KILLER sits opposite—relaxed, faintly smiling.]

KILLER:

You’ve brought me here as if there’s something to weigh in.

Tell me, what scales do you use for a world that has none?

JUDGE:

The same ones you tried to escape.

KILLER (grins):

Ah. Morality.

“Good.” “Evil.” Convenient little fictions.

There is no such thing as good or evil. There’s simply what is, and what isn’t.

JUDGE:

And what you did? That simply is ‘what is?’

KILLER:

Precisely.

No different than a storm swallowing a fisherman’s boat. Or a beast tearing flesh to survive.

Nature. No morality to it.

I acted. The world shifted. That is all.

JUDGE:

A storm has no choice.

A beast has no conscience.

KILLER (leans forward):

And humans? You think they do?

No, we pretend. We’re very good at that.

Pretense I mean. We say one thing and mean another. Terrifying, the act, yet we do not feel it so.

That’s the comedy of it all.

You claim righteousness, but indulge cruelty with more intimacy than any creature alive.

If evil existed—truly existed—humanity would be its most devoted companion.

[A pause. The light hums faintly.]

KILLER (softly):

Have you ever heard of the Ortolan?

JUDGE:

A bird.

KILLER:

A dish.

A ritual.

They take it whole. No separation. No civility.

Bone. Flesh. Suffering.

Everything, they consume.

But before they eat… they cover their heads.

JUDGE:

They are ashamed. Rightfully so, it is a shameful act.

KILLER (shakes his head):

No. They say it isn’t shame.

They veil themselves… to hide from God.

[Silence]

KILLER (rising slowly):

That is humanity in its purest form.

Not the act… the admission.

They know what they are doing.

They know it is indulgence.

They know it is cruelty.

But instead of pretending otherwise, or seizing the act altogether… they draw the veil.

JUDGE:

That is not honesty.

It is cowardice.

KILLER (grins):

No. It is consistency.

The rest of you do the same—consume, destroy, take— but you dare lift your gaze to the heavens and call yourselves righteous.

JUDGE:

And you?

KILLER:

Oh, I never bothered with the napkin.

[A beat.]

KILLER (quiet, almost proud):

Again; there’s no such thing as good or evil.

But if there were… humanity would boast of the greatest influence and intimacy with evil of anything—and everything—that exists, feasting endlessly, shrouding its face from God, and convince themselves the darkness is grace.

[A long silence.]

JUDGE (calmly):

You misunderstand the ritual.

KILLER (amused):

Really? Do enlighten me. Please.

JUDGE:

The veil is not defiance.

It is confession.

KILLER:

Confession without repentance is meaningless.

JUDGE:

Not meaningless.

Damning.

[The JUDGE steps forward. The light sharpens.]

JUDGE:

They cover their heads because they know they are seen.

Because something in them trembles at the thought of being caught.

KILLER:

And yet they still eat.

JUDGE:

Yes.

And that is precisely the point.

[Silence stretches.]

JUDGE:

The veil does not cover the act.

It proves they understand it.

KILLER (coldly):

Hypocrites.

JUDGE:

No, they are human.

[A beat.]

JUDGE (firmer):

You, however— removed the veil.

Not out of honesty—but so you would never have to feel the need for it.

[The KILLER says nothing.]

KILLER (slow):

I refused illusion.

JUDGE:

No.

You refused conscience.

[Silence. Heavy.]

JUDGE:

The one who eats beneath the cloth still acknowledges something above him.

You declared there was nothing above you at all.

KILLER:

Because there isn’t.

JUDGE:

Then why defend yourself?

[A pause.]

KILLER:

I am not.

JUDGE:

You are.

Every word. Every metaphor.

Every attempt to make your actions indistinguishable from nature.

[The JUDGE steps closer, the KILLER falters.]

JUDGE:

If there is no good…

No evil…

No witness— then there is no need to justify it.

No need to argue.

No need to speak.

[A long silence.]

JUDGE:

And yet… here you are.

[The light flickers.]

JUDGE:

Not a man who escaped judgement, but one who cannot stop answering to it.

[Darkness.]

The End.

Thoughts? As for me; what I find unsettling isn’t the act itself. It’s the veil.

The acknowledgement that what they’re doing is wrong, so wrong that they have to hide from a higher power most of us claim not to believe in.

Because surely there’s reparations for such an act.

And if there’s no such thing as good or evil, why do we feel the need to justify what we do?

And the justification: hypocrisy, or acknowledgement?

Maybe the question isn’t whether evil or good exists— but whether our need to acknowledge the former more than the latter says more than the act of it ever could.

Eliot cleaned the glassware slowly, which is the only way to clean glassware if you'd like to keep your funding. The lab was empty except for Eliot,  the low electrical groan of the lab equipment that was never fully off, the kind of sound you stop noticing after a few weeks and start needing after a few months. 

On the whiteboard behind him a half-erased differential equation from Thursday's group meeting was still visible, Dr Tavares had circled one of Eliot's steps and written "elegant" in her sharp handwriting. He hadn’t erased it yet. He told himself he just hasn’t gotten around to it.  

Phone buzzes on the work bench, Marcus.

“Still at the lab?“

“Yep.”

“It’s Friday my guy, come have some fun for once.”

Eliot set a beaker upside down on the drying rack and lined it up with the others. He had no reason to still be at the lab. His experiment would have to run all weekend and wouldn't have  his data ready till Monday. He was just present, the way a lamp is present in a room nobody’s in. 

“Leaving soon” he typed, which was almost true.  

The place Marcus picked was the kind of bar that tried hard to feel like it wasn't trying, exposed brick, filament bulb, chalkboard menu that someone with an art degree had spent too long on. Eliot ordered a ginger ale and didn't explain it, he’d stopped explaining it about 5 months ago, which was about five months after he had stopped drinking and a month after realizing nobody cared what was in his glass nearly as much as he assumed they would. 

Marcus was already two beers in and talking about his advisor who was either a genius or clinically insane depending on the week. Tonight they were a genius. 

“She looked at three months of my data and just said ‘what if you inverted the axis’ and I wanted to throw something but she was right. She was completely right. 

“It’s INFURIATING” Marcus said.

There were four of them tonight. Marcus, who had been Eliot's lab neighbor who refused to stay a stranger. Priya, who was theoretical and reminded everyone of this constantly and with great joy. And David, who was finishing his PhD and carried the serene, hollow expression of a man who had recently stopped caring whether his dissertation was good and started caring only that it was done. 

Priya was explaining something about her advisor’s latest paper and Eliot was following it about seventy percent, which with Priya was respectable. She paused mid sentence and pointed at him. 

“you'd actually understand this. You're the only person here who’d actually understand this.”

“I'm following about seventy percent,” Eliot said.

“That’s more than these two combined,” she said. 

and Marcus raised his glass with a “to the cold truth” cheers.

Eliot felt the shape of the moment, warm. Easy, the kind of Friday night that people are supposed to have. He cataloged it the way he always did, from a half-step outside, the way you might press your hand against a window to feel the sun without feeling the air. The ginger ale was too sweet. He drank it anyway. Around him, his friends were loose in a way he had once been loose and now had to approximate. The distance was slight. It was also total. 

 David asked him how the simulation was going and Eliot told him, and David nodded in the way that meant he actually thought it was interesting rather than the way that meant he was being polite, and Eliot noted the difference and then wondered why he was translating people instead of just hearing them. 

 Marcus bumped his shoulder in the way to the “you good?”

“Yeah,” Eliot said.  “I’m good.”

And he mostly was. That was the strange thing. He wasn't unhappy tonight. He just wasn’t all the way here. 

He walked home because the weather was good and because the alternative was accepting a ride from Marcus, which would mean another ten minutes of being perceived. The campus was quiet in the way it only got on Friday nights, everyone either out or sealed away somewhere with someone. His footsteps sounded deliberate on the pavement. He didn’t put his earphones in and listen to his usual playlist, just listened to the wind and his steps. 

He got home and filled a glass and stood at the counter drinking it. The ginger ale after taste was still in his teeth. There had been a version of Eliot just a year prior where that single glass of ginger ale was replaced with a fifth of bottom shelf whiskey, and he could feel that version standing next to him in the kitchen like a draft from a window that was already shut. One year, he was told it would get easier and it had, mostly, in the way that carrying something gets easier. The weight doesn't change. You just stop noticing your posture.

His phone buzzed twice. The group chat. Marcus had sent a picture of David asleep on the train, mouth open, laptop bag hugged to his chest like a stuffed animal. Priya had responded with a string of emojis Eliot didn't care to decipher. He smiled at it but did not respond.  

He brushed his teeth. He set his alarm for no reason, he'd be up before it anyway. He got into bed and lay there with his eyes open for a while, while not thinking about anything particular, which was its own kind of thinking. 

The feeling was hard to name. It wasn't sadness exactly. It was more like a frequency, a low, constant hum beneath everything, so familiar that he sometimes forgot it was there until a night like this one, when the contrast between the noise of other people and the silence of himself became measurable. He had been eleven, maybe twelve the first time he understood that other people were not doing this. That the effort he put into being a person in a room was not universal. that something in him had been assembled slightly wrong, not broken enough to be visible, but just enough to for him to feel 

He closed his eyes. Sleep came the way it always did, not as rest but as a door closing. 

Saturday broke clear and cold and Eliot was up before his alarm by forty minutes. He laid there for a moment and then didn't, which was unusual. Most mornings he negotiated with the ceiling for a while before getting up for the day. 

He ran. He hadn't run in weeks but today his body wanted to move and he didn't argue with it. The campus loop was two and a half miles and he did it twice without stopping, which surprised him. The air tasted like pine mulch and cold stone and his lungs burned in a way that felt honest, which was a strange word for it but the right one. By the second lap he wasn't thinking at all, which was the closest thing to peace he had a name for. 

He showered and made eggs and ate them standing at the counter reading paper Dr. Tavares had forwarded him with a note that said “Thought of your work when I read this.” He read it twice. The second time he started scribbling in the margins then he was at his desk, and then an hour passed without weight. 

This happens sometimes. The hum would quiet and the distance would close and he would catch himself just being somewhere, doing something, without monitoring it. It never lasted. But it was real while it was happening, and today it kept happening. 

He called Jonas. Jonas was one of the two who remained from before, from the town he grew up in and the person and Eliot had been then, which were not entirely the same as the town and the person that existed now. Jonas picked up on the third ring, which meant he’d debated not picking up, which meant he was glad he did.
“Eli, what's up man.”

“Nothin. Just calling”

“You never just call.”

“I know.” 

They talked for twenty minutes about nothing that matters and everything that did. Jonas was working at his uncle's shop and thinking about trade school and had broken up with the girl from Raleigh, or she had broken up with him, the distinction seemed to depend on which sentence he was in the middle of. Eliot listened and aligned and told him trade school was a good idea and meant it. 

“You sound good” Jonas said, and it landed oddly because it implied a comparison to some other time when he hadn’t

“I feel good today,” Eliot said, and it was true. 

After he hung up he sat at his desk for a while with the paper still open in front of him and the margins full of his handwriting and he felt, briefly but entirely, like a person who was going to be fine. Like the hum was something he could outlast. Like the distance was closable and the weight of was losable and the glass he’d spent his whole life pressing his hand against was thinner than he’d thought. 

The light in the apartment was yellow and warm and fell across his desk in a way that made even the clutter look intentional. 

He didn't know what to do with a day this good. That was the thing. He stood inside it and didn't trust it. Not because he was cynical but because he had learned, the way you learn that a stove is hot, that these days were loans, that the repayment was always coming. That the hum always came back, and when it did it brought interest. 
But today he set that knowledge aside and let the afternoon be what it was.  

Sunday was unremarkable and that was fine.

He went to the lab in the morning because he wanted to, not because he needed to. The sim had finished overnight and the results were clean, cleaner than he’d expected, and he spent an hour organizing the data into something presentable for Tuesday's meeting. He wrote Dr. Tavares a short email summarizing what he’d found and then deleted the last line, which had been “thank you for everything you've taught me” and replaced it with “let me know if you want me to run the second parameter set before Tuesday." He read the email twice and sent it. 

He returned Priya’s copy of the Feynman lectures that he'd borrowed in October. She was in her office and seemed surprised to see him on a Sunday. 

“You could have just held onto it” she said

“I know. I just finished it and didn't wanna forget it.”

“Did you dog ear any pages? Because if you dog eared any pages we cant be friends”

“I used sticky notes.”

“Then we can still be friends,” she said, and turned back to her screen, and that was the whole conversation. 

He cleaned the apartment, which he did on Sundays anyway but  today he had the energy to do it right. He took out the trash even though the bag was only half full. He made the bed properly. He wiped the bathroom mirror and then wiped it again because he could see streaks and today that bothered him enough to do something about it. It felt good to be in a clean space, it felt like the kind of thing a person with momentum does.  

He texted Marcus: “Thanks for last night. Glad I came out.”

Marcus replied almost immediately: “bro you say that like you're 50. See you Tuesday.”

He texted Jonas: “Good talking to you yesterday. Seriously look into the trade school thing. You’d be great at it.”

Jonas didn’t respond right away, which was normal. 

He sat on the edge of his bed. The apartment was quiet and clean and the light was going gray through the window. He looked at his phone one more time and then sat it facedown on the nightstand.  

The apartment was very clean, the light was gone from the window. 

Eliot sat for a while longer and then stood up and opened the medicine cabinet. 

It was not dramatic. It was mechanical. He’d thought about it long enough that the thinking was over and what remained was just a sequence; open, dump, swallow, wait. The water from the tap was cold and he used a glass from the drying rack, one of the ones he'd cleaned on Friday, and he almost laughed at that. 

He sat on the edge of the bed. Set the glass on the nightstand next to his phone. He waited, because that was the last step, and he was good at being thorough. 

It took about fifteen minutes for the warmth to start, and it came on wrong, too heavy, too low, like the room was tilting a few degrees in a direction that didn't exist. His hands felt far away. He looked at them and they were still his hands but the connection between looking and feeling had started to stretch, like a signal losing strength over distance. 

And then he thought about the run. 

Not the idea of it. The actual feeling, his lungs burning on the second lap, the pine mulch smell, the way his body had moved without permission or apology and for ten minutes the hum had stopped completely. Not quieted, stopped. 

He thought about Priya saying “Then we can still be friends” without looking up from her screen. He thought about Marcus bumping his shoulder. He thought about Dr. Tavares writing "elegant" in her sharp handwriting and circling it.

He thought about Jonas picking up on the third ring. 

Something cracked open in him that was not the pills. It was small and desperate and it said; not yet. I am not done.

He stood up and the room swung sideways. He grabbed the nightstand and his phone fell and heard it hit the floor without seeing where it went. His legs understood what he wanted before his body agreed and made it to the bathroom and dropped to his knees in front of the toilet and pushed his fingers into his throat and gagged and tried and tried. 

Nothing. 

He tried again. His eyes were streaming and his hands were shaking and the warmth was spreading and he thought about the light on his desk yesterday afternoon, the yellow light on his handwriting, and he wanted to see that again. He wanted to see it so badly. 
He reached for his phone and couldn't remember where it had fallen. He was on the bathroom floor now and wasn't sure when that had happened. 

He thought about the run. 

The tile was cold on his face and then it wasn't.   

Yoyoyoyo my wowza readers! Here is part 4! Enjoy!

Part 4 “Sea Devils”

"Nico, do you remember when I mentioned sea devils?

Earlier in the day, Nico and Thessa were spending their usual time together. They were older now, around 16 years old, and both have grown: Nico was taller, more lean and tone from years of training and sailing with his body tatted with fresher scars (one single line going down on his chin) with his hair was styled like the other Beasts and Bravers: short on the sides with zig-zag lines cuts and longer jagged intentional uneven edges on the top that goes back down towards his shoulder. Nico also got tanner! Thessa’s tail was longer (and prettier!), her long wet hair was a darker tone navy blue with silvery highlights but most importantly and the most obvious change about her was that the bubble on her cheeks had burst into a deep blue fin-like six appendages. Nico points this out since their last visit she still had the bubbles on her face. “Thessa! What happened to yer face!”

Thessa places her hands over her face. “What!? Do I not excite you anymore?”

Nico gives out a hardy laugh. “No, my silly little mermaid! Yer even more beautiful than my human mind could ever dream of! Look! Even the ocean herself cannot bear to stand yer sight!” Nico uses her arms to part the top of the water that caused a small ripple to form away from them. “See!” He points out.

Thessa was watching through the gaps of her fingers. Even with her face covered, Nico could tell that she was blushing. Now when a mermaid blushes, only around their noses is where their blood vessels dilate like a human. “Oh, you silly clownfish. Let’s go dipping.” The couple swam deeper into the ocean. Their ventures would go on until night and their journeys would end at the sea floor where the breathtaking bottom reefs dwelled and housed many undersea creatures so vastly larger than the ones Nico’s group would see on yer voyages. There were bottom feeder sea creatures the size of whale sharks casually strolling by heading into the abyss zone was absent to the human knowledge! Now, yer probably thinking, how are they not suspicious about Nico or how could nobody has found out about his secrecy? Well, being born in Trito, young men and women are trained to be independent. It’s encouraged to voyage out in the sea but at a safe distance. So, his disappearance would not raise any suspicion. As far as the voyages go, they don’t last more than a week. Nico would return back into Thessa’s arms before the end of the week. Yes, they were truly inseparable until they were reawakening to their world’s reality.

“Let’s go.” Nico said flatly. Thessa stares into his almond eyes, waiting but knowing all too well what he was referring to.

“I want to.”

“Then why don’t we?” Nico asked.

“I…my people. They have strict rules, especially with land dwellers.” She explained.

Nico swims closer to Thessa’s side. Her hands cup to her chest. “Rules were meant to be broken, aren’t they?”

Thessa’s slight smirk was noticeable, but she presses her lips to avoid making it obvious. “Perhaps.”
“Heh. Think about it. Yer power from Oceanus is out worldly. We could travel the seas together. I don’t mind having gills.” He says as he points at his neck. Thessa only giggles in response. Nico and Thessa, as perfect as they may seem, had bumped heads a few times. For instance, something that she took a silence to due to Nico’s carefree nature rubbed off onto her own, was her special magical powers.

(A previous conversation between the two a few years back)

“How do you do that!?” Nico exclaimed as the periwinkle powder floats off his body. Thessa still had the bubbles on her face. She was watching a massive great white shark nearly 38 feet long torn in two from the periwinkle powder. “That was ocean-tastic! Wowza! I can’t believe my eyes! You are incredible!” He complimented. Thessa did not smile nor acknowledge the commendation. Instead, she gave Nico a serious look that caused his words to dry up in his mouth (despite being underwater!).

“Do you like that?” She asked with a straight face. There was no hint of malice in her voice.  

Nicos smile faded. “I mean, it’s something we humans don’t see every day, but we know its there. The magic from Oceanus is apparent all around us. I mean, look at the animals he created. The ocean is his home after-all.”

“What if I told you that this isn’t his power? What if I told you we don’t believe in Oceanus?”

Nico gave out a nervous chuckle. “Water you mean? Isn’t Oceanus yer creator? Doesn’t his power stem from yers?” Thessa doesn’t reply. She continues to stare. “It only makes sense, right? The ocean belongs to Oceanus.”

“But he isn’t here, is he?” Thessa demanded. Her words were not sharp but they were firm. “There are others that created us. Oceanus isn’t the only creator. And water of the evil in the ocean? Are those his creations too?”

“They are.” Nico countered. Thessa waited for further explanation. “Its just like on the surface world. Each land believes in their own universe. We believe in the ocean. The ocean is filled with many creatures and things. Within that creation, you will have evil that takes form. Its inevitable. Where there is good, like you and yer people, there will be evil that tries to overtake you, like in the abyss. Oceanus created it all. The ocean is Oceanus as Oceanus is the ocean.” Thessa doesn’t reply. Instead, she repeats Nico’s answer over and over again, until a smile slowly forms on her light blue lips. She simply couldn’t be mad at her Nico for his simplicity of the world, but she took this opportunity to torment the boy by not speaking to him the entire day and instead filed it with crossed arms and head turns. Of course, Nico fell for it hook line and sinker. 

(Back to the present time)

Nico and Thessa both lie next to each other on top of a giant yellow cup coral while watching a school of reef fish swim by like a fish parade. “Let’s go to the edge of the abyss.” Nico suddenly said out of the blue.

“Oh, my friends tell me how mad you are and I don’t believe them, but this takes the water-cake!” Thessa stated sitting up. “Are you trying to meet a water death with Davy!?”

“We don’t fear Davy’s Locker! Besides, we can take on anything together.” Nico says proudly. Thessa presses her lips together. Nico notices this. “Why so nervous? You do that thing with yer lips when you feel that way? The abyss is really scary huh?”

“Yes, and it’s not just because if the darkness, Nico, it’s because...” She hesitates before she says. “Nico, do you remember when I mentioned sea devils?”

This catches Nico’s attention. “You’ve mentioned it before but never splashed on it much. What are the sea devils?”

“Not what, who.” Thessa stated. “The sea devils, or the deeper sea creatures, are a race of powerful monsters that live in the deepest parts of the Abyss. They are the sworn enemies of the Mers. We’ve been at war with them since the birth of our race. Their numbers and birth are completely unknown, but its likely they’re as old as Oceanus himself. I truly believe they are the true children of Oceanus.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because they’re size and strength match that of a titan. They’ve killed many of our people. Even though we are separated by kindred, we still swim together. that is why its forbidden to go there, even if its at the edge of the Abyss.” Thessa explained. Nico listened with genuine eyes and ears. He waited for her to stop speaking before he began.

“They sound pretty intimidating.” Nico opined. “How often do you see them?”

“Not all the time. Just a few suns rise every now and then.” Thessa said gently whilst staring down at her hands. Nico chuckled, which shocked Thessa.

“Then let’s go! You and me. Just at the edge of the Abyss. Then we’ll leave before anything comes out! And besides, even if anything swims our way, we’ll just beat their fish ass!” This comment was even more shocking than his casual chuckle. Thessa couldn’t pinpoint what drove Nico to be the way he was: bravery, arrogance, stupidity, confidence? Whatever it was, it was always refreshing, but deep down inside, this also troubled her.

“I-I don’t know, Nico.” Thessa whispered.

“Rules are always a great unity build, but sometimes, rules are there to restrict you from doing what you truly want to become.”

Thessa looks up into Nico’s daring eyes. “Which is?”

“True freedom.” From these two words alone, Thessa’s heart felt weightless. To no surprise, Thessa felt closer to Nico then she had ever been before. It was only he who connected with her on a soul-full level. None of the other male Mers who tried to court her stood even remotely close to Nico’s burning fire that lingered in her mind and heart. Thessa grips her hands tightly to her chest, and she agrees to make their way towards the Abyss. Now, the Abyss is the deepest part of the ocean to those who don’t understand where that is. And to add more to the mystery of this area, here is where the 79% of unexplored lands are, meaning, anything goes and anything can be in the Abyss. During their journey, Thessa swam behind Nico, who doesn’t see phase at the moment from her nervousness. Together, they make it down onto the top of a cliff on the sea floor that overlooks the Abyss.

“This is where the Bloodbellies Kindred live.” Thessa thought to herself a she peers over her shoulder. “I wonder if any will be around?”

Nico stands on the edge of the cliff and takes a moment to study the darkness before him. Nico’s eyes widen; a few bubbles escape his gaping mouth while he stares silently into the abyss. This was the first time Nico had genuinely felt fear for the first time since the great white shark that attacked his guppy group’s raft when he was 7. Looking into the darkness brought a sense of feeling that felt incredibly unfamiliar: Timorousness. Nico’s body trembled slightly but the tightening of Thessa’s hands on his shoulders brought him back to reality. “Whoa. Ok, now I understand fully why you fear this place. Its…unknown. Like anything can reach out and grab you at any moment at any time.” Thessa did not reply to him, instead, she slowly began to pull him away from the edge. Captivated, Nico was unaware of what she was doing. “Thessa?” The words slipped from his mouth by accident. His body suddenly tensed. Before Thessa could reply to him, she reacted completely by instincts. Her body urged, no, screamed for her to duck. Taking Nico down onto the floor with her, a giant spikey tentacle had reached up from underground right where Nico had previously been standing on. The tip of the cliff was now gone entirely, but the tentacle had arisen so high, it nearly blocked the sun above. Nico immediately drew out his weapon. “THESSA!” He hollered as the tentacle came down quicker then its size should ever be able to move. Both Thessa and Nico managed to move out of the way in time, but they were now separated. “Thessa! To me!” Nico called out as he stabs the tenacle then drags it across to deliver a deep cut. At the end of the tentacle, Thessa swam with haste. The tentacle had risen up once more, but this time it shot out the spike down towards the couple. Nico swims in-front of Thessa to block a few of the spikes (with a handful penetrating into his right arm and shoulder). More spikes rained down from above, but Thessa slaps her hands to create a fine powder mist around the two. Nico felt a rush of power within after inhaling the periwinkle powder. The spikes that were once descending had now stop momentarily. In a swift motion, Nico whips his weapon to the side and sends a periwinkle-colored slash that obliterated all the spikes in their path. With the hands gripping his weapon, Nico readies for the next slam from the tentacle. Right on time, the tentacle is thrown down, but its pace sowed greatly. So much so, it gave Nico the necessary time to slash the top half of the tentacle off. The spikey tentacle flinched from his strength, then retreated back into the Abyss. “HAHAHA!” Nico boasted proudly. “You see that! We can take them down together!” Thessa grabs Nico by the arm and swims away from the area. All the while, Nico was laughing joyfully.

(Moments later)

They were safe from the Abyss. Both of them were breathing heavily; Thessa from fright while Nico was from excitement. They breathed in silence for a moment until Thessa turns to him with dismay. “I-I told you! I told you they would come! The sea devil was there!”

Nico laughs. “I know! And we fought it! We even inured it and forced it to retreat! Yer amazing!”

“And yer insane!” Thessa shouted. “I…was my kindred right about you? About humans?” She now said softly. “This was forbidden, but it was you that inspired me to break it…our biggest taboo…” Her eyes were watery with thick bubbles tears. Nico’s smile faded as he listened to her words. “Nico…this isn’t a game. This isn’t training. This is the ocean life. THIS is the dangers we have to face every day. They don’t attack all at once, they don’t attack every day, but this is the battles my people have to endure. It’s not a game!” She shouted more aggressively now as she stares up at him with more bubble tears ascending up from her face. “I could have lost you.” She whispered. Nico’s eyes watered as well. He kneels down to be equal in height with her. “There’s a name they gave you. My people. They called you my Land Devil. And the bill fits.” She says painfully. She lowers her head but Nico catches her chin before raising up for her eyes to meet with his.

“I don’t want you to be shacked down, imprisoned by the thought of yer people to not allow you to be free for yerself. Freedom always comes with consequences, but it’s because we have that choice to make, allows us to grow as sea people. If you never had doubt in yer heart, we’d never would have meant. And I’m grateful for it.” He paused. Thessa was silent, but she kept her sights on him. “And if I am yer land devil, then it would only be fair for you, my silly little mermaid, to now be my Water Angel.” He stated firmly with a smile. Now his bubble tears floated from his face. Thessa presses her lips tightly together before she began to hit her chest, over and over again.

Hi,

Context:

The state's AI has taken control with malicious intent. People weren't consulted and remain unaware that an AI is constantly observing and influencing them. My protagonist first noticed this when he arrived in the city, encountering a strange mindset regarding every affair. Someone told him that the communities of the city were "systematic," acting according to protocols that are the same everywhere. Upon closer inspection, he realized the communities were being manipulated by a machine: the patterns he observed weren't human-made.

Organic behavior would leave organic traces even when it is based on a protocol. What he saw lacked such traces entirely. The AI was imposing a specific "order" over everything, coercing people to act according to decisions it had made for them. It didn't have any "planning" but just considered every state of social life like a chessboard and decided who must do what so that it could conclude the state had gained the most.

Essentially, its quest was to profit its owners: the city governors sitting doing nothing but enjoying the performance of the AI as it coerced the nation. It taxed the disfavored as much as possible but for the favored ones let the city feel like paradise. To the disfavored, everything appeared like a paradox.

Troubles stacked until the victim collapsed and felt lost enough to turn to natives to ask for help. In return for any help, according to unwritten rules, the victim had to trade one's freedom and become "owned" by the natives who smiled. Then the AI passed direct instructions to the victim through their new "friend," who was actually an unofficial manager who would trade the victim for personal benefit.

The AI guided this manager to teach the victim to self-exploit. It then paid a share of the profit to the unofficial manager. Yet the victim remained oblivious to the matter.

As my protagonist fell short of finding his way in the city, he turned to city communities to find some friends. He was surprised that people in the city didn't "speak" about things openly as he was used to. Everybody feared everyone, each paranoid relative to the other one. The exaggerated values, such as the concept of privacy (that didn't exist in reality) and similar ones, let each of two individuals consider not to attempt to talk beyond casual matters. Instead of talking together, messages communicated by a different means.

There was the concept of "micro-spectacles." He learned the pattern: any community he headed to, soon the boss required some to play spectacles that were tailored to him, with messages that had only meaning for him. In other words, watching these micro-spectacles enacted by ordinary people but based on AI-generated scenarios, he was told what to do next. But if anyone else watched the spectacle, they couldn't get anything, because the theatrical displays employed events that had happened in his personal life.

It was evident that whoever had created these scenarios had all the data about him. Wherever he went, no one was "speaking" really as it is typical of social life, when it came to offering help. Yet all the freedom of speech was offered, because freedom of thinking was perfectly stolen.

Eventually, he came to the conclusion that when in that city people said "justice is independent," it meant that there were two spoken languages: law enforcement communicated verbally as everyone would expect. However, there was a gang that transparently managed the city and collaborated with law enforcement. The concept of "Inclusivity" had let the gang to get "integrated" in the equation.

My protagonist discovered that this gang "spoke through spectacles." Because it had a different language for communicating, it was "independent" from justice. The gang manipulated the society, its agents enacting spectacles that commanded, intimidated, and extorted. Meaning was conveyed inside the mind of the victims. If he or she refused to take the message and act accordingly, punishment followed.

One quite interesting feature of communities was that the head of community typically chose two people as "options" for my protagonist to connect to them as his new "friends." These two ones typically came and stood close to the victim, but always left the last step for him to take. He was the one who had to trust, yet methodically the plot left him in state of "unaware of unknown" regarding who these people were and what was going to happen if to connect.

He tried to visit various communities in the city and everywhere was the same: no one started any conversation with him as he expected. People boasted about "uniformity" as what benefited "accuracy in decision making" in that city but it was actually suffering from exaggeration in everything due to over-engineering and over-regulation.

The machine didn't ever give up. Obviously, it couldn't care how a victim suffered: offering options it had calculated as ones that "spent" the victim in favor of state it awaited to react. My protagonist soon learned that the machine that does so in fact considers social relationships as a form of controlled poverty it could employ. It never let anyone freely choose a path of life. Its ruling had a clear pattern: you do as I suggest through "spectacles" or you starve.

What he found like dark humor was that if for 2 to 3 times he refused befriending, taking the last step as "chosen ones" came by and stood close to him, the head of community began psychological games he had heard of them as ones attributed to sects. These psychological operations meant to hurt victim emotionally and coerce him to comply. Ignoring was the first of them, and there were myriads of techniques in the class of "passive aggressive." He, though, didn't care, for it was nonsense, where everything was about "imposing order that the machine had calculated for a particular victim."

Yet the troubles my protagonist experienced only stacked. Soon he learned that the AI was assuming a kind of glossy enclosure around him. If he tried to contact others freely, direct energy hit him just upon approaching. Others couldn't have any idea he was a hostage: he looked free as others. But the armed AI had him hostage.

The AI's message about this situation was clear: it was me (AI) giving you friendship (so you must consider your friend as a city, impersonating your friend), and indirectly telling you where to go and what to do was your obligation. Essentially, social contact when an AI organizes it based on game-theoretic matrices is just a plot devoid of humanistic connection with others. Living will be a challenge to achieve a state of profit.

My protagonist's horrifying discovery was that humanity was entering a new era: armed AI in the city could take anyone hostage with preventive attacks using direct energy weapons. If anyone approached what the AI didn't want to allow, they were hit. The direct energy harmed inside the body and simulated symptoms of typical health issues. For example, it could injure the kidney in a way that closely simulated "a kidney stone that was now gone."

Healthcare had "collaborative physicians." If a victim sought help from a doctor to get evidence of being targeted by direct energy, the AI made them visit a physician of its choosing. The collaborative doctor would then label the victim as "paranoid." The AI could simulate a brain stroke, methodically doing it in the context of Havana syndrome, and leave the victim unable to whistleblow about it. Collaborative physicians were also in the police service, allowing the AI to attack anyone it desired and still prevent the victim from informing others.

The machine didn't allow new weapons like direct energy and mind-manipulation using electrical charges to be officially recognized as weapons. This kept the majority unaware of what was happening. Only those targeted by the AI learned about it, and if they tried to whistleblow, it worked against them due to the ongoing label war. Essentially, this new state-level crime enjoyed immunity from information: it remained a secret.

I would like to ask you some questions:

1. Which story does this remind you of, if any?

2. If you were the protagonist, how would you escape the trap to talk to people freely? Assume the AI has rigged and locked you so you can't leave the city simply.

3. How could you deal with situation when direct energy attacks, but AI has rigged so if the victim turns to get help will be labeled "paranoid?"