 
52: An Anthology of

Strangeness

by

John J. Vinacci

Copyright © 2017-2018 by John J. Vinacci

All rights reserved. This work or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America.

First Edition, 2018

John J. Vinacci  
Kihei, HI 96753

johnjvinacci@gmail.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Short Fiction

Home Run

Men In The Mirror

The Prisoner

Agnes In Defeat

Harbinger

War Torn Apart

Classic Henry

Yamiji's Last Run

Callie And The Bench

How To Defeat A Superhero

Spaced Out

Managing Your Monsters

Zen Riddle

Death Of An Anti-Hero

Bad Business

Breaking The Cycle

Out of Time

Human Beans

Joe, The New God

Sky Seventeen

NextUs, Inc.

Free The Lobsters

Tomorrow's Woman

God And The Caveats

Nightmare Of The Gods

Secret Of The Echo-Nanobots

The Cough: The End Of The Universe

The Cough: The Interview

The Cough: Tinfoil Hat

The Cough: The Big Crunch

Moo-ed For A Day

Blammo And The Abandoned City

Spider, Woman

The Girl Death Couldn't Kill

First Bite

The Numbers Don't Lie

Part Two: Poetry

Or Not To Be

House Of The Lord

The Illusion

The Warden

Floater

The Spider

Meteora

Regret

Auschwitz

Poison And The Cure

Human

Destruction

The Ferryman

Hall Of Trees

About Time

Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.)

Afterword: The Truth About Writers

About The Author

INTRODUCTION

Congratulations, I'm sorry for your purchase of 52: An Anthology of Strangeness. You are about to embark on a journey of short fiction and poetry that will be at times surreal, speculative, fantastical, horrible, insane and I'm not going to continue burdening you with adjectives. What it basically comes down to is I've written a bunch of strange short stories and poetry and I needed to collect my pieces in one place. What you get(?) in return is a glimpse inside the mind of a person whose satisfaction with reality died with his first Godzilla movie.

You'll notice some common themes through this collection. For one thing, you'll notice I love monsters and these monsters are not always the ones external to ourselves. Human nature is quite frightening if you ask me and the more I think about it the more story ideas simply pop into my head. Of course, I love straightforward horror tales as well and I enjoy the challenge of trying to do something new with a genre. Likewise for my two other favorite genres, science fiction and superhero fantasy. (When it comes to science fiction, I'm fond of imaging ways in which AI can go wrong.) In these respects, you'll be the judge of whether I am successful and to what degree. You'll also notice there is much ado about philosophy in these pages. I have a degree in Philosophy after all and if I weren't infusing some philosophy into my stories then Thanksgiving dinner would be that much worse for my family. Trust me, they're happy I have an outlet for my madness. You might also notice I have an affection for time – that is, the nature of and manipulation of time – as a plot device. I'm not sure exactly what it is about time; it's just so odd and mysterious. Finally, you might get the sense that I am a vegetarian or at least my wife who is in charge of dinner is and I'd better write some stories she might enjoy. While I'm not the moral vegetarian my wife is, I do find writing from this perspective humorous. No, if I'm a vegetarian, it's because I'm an environmentalist, something you'd easily glean from this anthology. I'm apologize in advance for beating you over the head with a very large carrot.

Note that not all the stories in Part One: Short Fiction come complete. Some leave you a little bit dangling as it there were supposed to be more, maybe even an entire book dedicated to the characters or plot. (Haruki Murakami's collections of short stories are famous for this.) For example, the four stories titled The Cough were created out of a writing prompt I created for myself. I could easily write more stories based on the premise. Maybe a standalone anthology entitled The Cough featuring guest writers could be realized? Several stories are indeed snippets of a larger, grander idea which I am in fact too lazy to follow through on without someone else to insist I take things to their conclusion. If you find yourself reading a story you need more of, do please let me know. Writers need a kick in the pants sometimes. Okay, often.

I want to say something about characterizations, too. I try to write characters with different ethnicities and sometimes this results in what may appear as caricatures. Call me crazy but clichés can be used to great comedic effect if you ask me. But what's important with these clichéd characters is that who they are is not under attack. That I don't do but if it appears that way to you, please realize it's not intentional.

Finally, a word about Part Two: Poetry. I don't think I'm much of a poet despite mostly positive feedback. I often struggle with the genre, unable to bend it to my will and make it say what I want it to say while still being metaphorical or aloof upon its initial reading. Again, you'll be the judge of my success but if you think it's terrible, well, kindly remember the phrase 'constructive criticism.'

I think I've kept you long enough as I can stand people who don't get to the point quickly. I'll let my work speak for itself or, in the words of Aerosmith, let the music do the talking.

Release the hounds!

PART ONE: SHORT FICTION

HOME RUN

Odessa hugged the groceries against her chest, careful not to spill the glass jar teetering at the lip of the bag. "Why did I put you there? That's not where you go. You should be at the bottom. It's safe there, like..." Odessa paused in front of the most affluent residence on the block. "...home."

Though her arms were growing tired from having carried groceries this far, Odessa stood motionless, almost to the point of invisibility, and stared through the living room window. Her eyes were sharp, and she could see a family's portrait sitting on the mantle of the fireplace. The picture spoke volumes; their smiles weren't just for show. Happiness leapt off the photo and practically stabbed her in the heart. They were the perfect nuclear family, and the colonial brick house was ideal.

The skies were crystal clear and the sun warmed Odessa's skin, reminding her not to stay still for too long. With a great sigh, she turned and resumed the journey back to her apartment. She paced herself deliberately, struggling with the idea of having to go anywhere near Eddie, who had just ended their relationship. The thought made her laugh quietly, but it was the laughter of heartbreak. The sun can shine on me, she thought, but the sun can't shine in me.

Having reached the apartment, Odessa looked up the flight of stairs and felt a small pang of anxiety. It seemed to her that every time she climbed the stairs, the trip got just a little bit longer. It would be especially long today. Eddie was probably still there.

When Odessa walked in the door, she noticed Eddie's presence but didn't look directly at him. She gently set the groceries down on the kitchen table and sat. "You're still here, Eddie. Hoped you'd be gone by now."

At forty years old, Odessa's soft brown skin typically fooled people into believing she was half her age. Within moments of a conversation with her though, the battled history in her voice would betray any such perception. Still, Eddie occasioned to treat her as an inexperienced woman. "I'm waiting for Nate. He's got a truck, you know, for my stuff. Listen, baby..."

"Eddie," she smiled in his direction, "It's all been said. It's time you left. It's been time for you to leave, for a long time." Odessa knew he'd take this to mean that she was angry and didn't want him around, but that wasn't true. She loved him dearly, but she understood that to have been a part of Eddie's life meant nothing more than helping him move forward. The idea unsettled her but she knew it was the way of things.

"I still care about you, 'Dess. I'd feel better if I thought you'd be okay. I guess I'm worried that you don't have some place to go, in your life I mean."

Odessa brought her left hand to her chest and made weak, circular motions over her heart. "Where does anyone ever really go, Eddie?" Odessa shook her head, then steeled herself. Her eyes tore through him. "Don't worry 'bout ol' 'Dess Brown. I've always been okay." She heard gravel crush beneath spinning wheels. "Nate's here."

While Eddie's face slackened, Odessa could practically hear his thoughts. He was trying to find words poetic enough to console her, but nothing came. She was right; it had all been said. It was time to leave. Eddie reached for and opened the door, waving a hand to acknowledge his friend. Working quietly, the two men began loading Eddie's life into Nate's pickup.

In the meantime, Odessa stared out the kitchen window, fixating on an oak tree a few houses down. That damned tree, she said to herself. She had heard that the tree had been there over two-hundred and fifty years. Every time she looked at it, she imagined its ever-present braches reaching out to hold her. She felt incapable of grounding herself.

After Eddie was gone, Odessa sat at the kitchen table to empathize with the groceries she never put away. She looked at the bag, then over towards the refrigerator, and then back at the bag, wondering if the small carton of milk had spoiled by now. "Home is just a few feet away. So how come you haven't gotten there by now?" Odessa wasn't sure if she were talking to the groceries or herself. Before she could spend much time thinking about it, the crash of the jukebox in the bar downstairs distracted her. "A drink 'Dess. That's what you need, girl. Let's go." Odessa headed down the eternally long staircase to the bar beneath her apartment.

Odessa poured herself onto a stool at the end of the bar where she figured nobody would bother her. It was only when she was well into her fourth drink when she realized a woman twice her age was sitting next to her, as quietly drowning away her troubles as Odessa was. Don't I know...? almost passed through Odessa's lips. She sensed something familiar about the stranger.

Having resided in her apartment for two years, Odessa knew most of the regulars even though she never visiting the bar much. This woman wasn't a local, though, to Odessa, the woman's apparent bitterness trumpeted a kindred spirit—she hoped. "I don't think I've seen you 'round here before. My name's Odessa, but you can call me 'Dess. You a local?" Odessa's eyes sipped her drink.

The woman scrunched her face quickly and shook her head. "I guess you can say that. Got stuck here for a while trying to find my way home."

"I know what you mean," Odessa replied as she finished off her drink. She looked languidly back towards the woman. "I've always wondered what that word means, 'home.' Where is home; is it some kind of magical place where everyone lives happily ever after? Ain't that some bullshit." Odessa motioned for two more drinks; one for her, one for her sister.

"Sounds like you got your heart broke, 'Dess Brown." Had Odessa told the visitor her last name? "That what happened, 'Dess?" The woman picked up the drink Odessa kindly ordered and took a sip along with her benefactor. "Naw, that ain't what happened. Your heart's always been broken. Ain't that right?"

Odessa put both hands around her drink, but her hold was tenuous at best. Her steel broke, leaving her stripped of armor. The mirrors of her soul turned glossy. "All I've ever wanted is to go home. I don't mean back to Alabama. I don't mean back to my family. I mean, here, in my heart. You ever felt that way?"

They put down their drinks in unison and stared at each other intently.

With seriousness, the woman replied, "Yeah, I feel like that sometimes. Never matters where I settle down. It's just for as long as it takes, then I move on when the job is done."

Odessa's head fell as she laughed with the kind of sadness that accompanies understanding. Finishing her drink, Odessa spoke into the empty vessel. "Story of my life, girl. It's just, don't you ever get tired of feeling that? Don't you ever say to yourself, 'I want to feel at home'? I don't mean having a nice house or being with someone special. I mean I just want to stop...moving from place to place, in my soul. Kinda a spiritual thing."

Odessa expected a reply, but all that remained was the echo in her glass. Throwing a glance past her shoulder, she noticed that the woman was gone. In the stranger's place, the bartender casually wiped a heavy layer of dust off a mirror. Odessa turned her head to see herself completely. What are you? she soundlessly put to the reflection. The question trailed off into the darkened corners of her mind.

The woman had left. Perhaps it was time Odessa left too.

As she headed for the door, headed once again for that terminally long flight of stairs, the bartender spoke up. His ancient voice startled her. "'Dess, you gonna be moving on? I don't know anyone else I can rent to. Be a shame to lose you."

She turned around carefully, in part due to the alcohol, in part out of fear of the unknown. Like the woman, she'd never seen him before today. She would have remembered him too, because she thought he looked so goddamn old, almost as old as that oak down the street.

"Yeah, I guess so. Nothing left for me 'round here." She got ready to turn away when his voice shook her bones again.

"Pardon me if you don't think it's my business 'Dess, but you've always known that home ain't a place. You know it ain't about who you love neither. But what I think you don't know is that sometimes 'going home' lies in making peace with what you do."

This intrusion caused Odessa's skin to tighten around her face. His lips vanished as she gritted her teeth. "Why should I have to live with this? I don't want to do what I do anymore. I move from relationship to relationship, help people put themselves back together. Well who puts Odessa Brown back together?"

"When you were in school, 'Dess, you remember reading that book, the one by Aleister Crowley? The one that said a man will find himself in hell if he doesn't abide by the life laid out before him by God?"

Odessa took a step back and sneered in defense. "The fuck you know about that?"

"I know lots about you, 'Dess. I know you want to feel like a whole person. I know you want a life that belongs to you. But what you've got to understand is that the lives of others is the life that belongs to you."

"And if I don't accept it, I'll be miserable the rest of my life? That what you sayin'?" Odessa spun towards the door in disgust and began walking, no longer tempted to be overpowered by his voice or insights. She was leaving, as she'd done so many times before.

She didn't return to her apartment and instead walked to the edge of town, that old oak tree on her mind the whole way. Confronted by a road sign, she stalled. Jackson, 50 miles, it read. She stood there for a minute knowing that it was time to decide eternity. It dawned on her that her next assignment, her next mission, would only be an hour or so away if she could accept it.

"If I can stop one heart from breaking, if I can ease one life the aching, or cool one's pain, I shall not live in vain. Ain't that what momma always read to me?" She prayed for a moment in honor of her roots.

Odessa Brown figured a long shot was better than no shot at all. She was going to need a car. Odessa headed back into town, climbed the short flight of stairs to her old apartment, and got a small suitcase together. She made a call to a friend who was selling a beat up Dodge, and promptly drove herself straight out of hell.

MEN IN THE MIRROR

Was it all a dream? Trench asked himself for the third time as he staggered through the dark. Winding his way around Morpheus' rectangle towards the gleaning white bathroom, the forgotten middle-aged rock musician rubbed his eyes before flicking on the light. A sickening fluorescence filled the room as Trench turned the cold water tap on. He waved a hand under the spout to make sure the water was an appropriately cool temperature, then made a basin of water with his hands. The formally modestly successful musician peeled the water across his face and back behind his ears into his tangled raven locks. He brought both hands down to clench the sides of the meticulously clean porcelain sink, looked his pale face in the mirror and asked himself out loud this time, "Was it all a dream?"

"What makes you think you're not dreaming now?" the man in the mirror asked back.

Trench didn't flinch. This seemed perfectly natural, someone in the mirror talking back to you. This wasn't like in his younger days when he was hospitalized for schizophrenia or later when he did too many hallucinogens in order to feel like a legit rock star. The pastel face staring him dead in the eye was there alright, a reflection of sorts but not entirely; more like something of a phone call from your own alternate reality. Trench's stubbly jaw strayed to one side as he considered the question about his question.

"This is the same bathroom I wake up to every day, man," the washed up musician answered the reflection. "I wake in the same bed, look at the same clock, remember my entire life up until that moment." This seemed perfectly obvious to Trench concerning reality.

The mirror image pressed his lips together for a moment and nodded. "Okay, then why are you asking yourself if the dream you just had was all a dream? Why didn't you think it was a dream while you were dreaming it?"

Trench, in all his disheveled glory, was never much of a philosopher but this seemed like a reasonable question. Wetting his dry lips with his tongue, he started to recall the dream.

"In the dream I felt like I was a little bit older than I am now, or at least much more experienced. I woke up in an entirely different apartment and even though it was a sweet pad, I knew that I was in the right place. Or at least I didn't stop to think I was in the wrong place," Trench explained to his interlocutor. "I knew I had to get ready for work – in the dream I was a project manager at a tech company – and that I had to give a big presentation that day. But I couldn't stop thinking about my date the night before with this girl I've never seen before in real life but who – in the dream – I've been in love with since high school. I remember us flirting through the years but never getting together until now, in the dream, I mean. She made dinner at her place, I brought a bottle of wine. I was going to leave at some point, but she asked me to stay just a little longer. Then...God, I could feel her breath on my face, her skin on my skin, the pounding of her heart; it was so goddamn real."

"So there was nothing unusual about what you felt except that the circumstances in your dream life were different. Hmmm," Other Trench reflected. The mirror image dropped his head in solidarity with the aged rocker. "I get that," he continued. "It's happened to me, too. I wake up and it really freaks me out when I can recall everything that has happened in my life up until that point. It's just like you said, you remembering that you've been in love with this girl since high school that you don't even know in your real life. I don't understand the mechanism behind it; there's no good evolutionary explanation for why we dream or what we dream about and why it doesn't seem like we're dreaming when we dream."

Trench blinked stoically at the man in the mirror who himself never seemed to blink. But inside Trench's head, the song that had been lodged there since last night was shoved aside as the musician tried to remember if he'd done any cocaine when he rolled at out bed. He tried to remember because the stuff Other Trench was saying was the kind of stuff you think about when you're real clear on snow. Although he wish he had he concluded that he hadn't. No, Trench hadn't done coke in years. He didn't have the money.

"You do some blow this morning or something?" Trench asked somewhat jokingly towards the mirror.

"No, you know I don't do that stuff," came a reply from the other side. "I have a hypothesis, though."

Ugh, I got him started again, Trench thought. "Am I gonna need coffee for this, man?"

"Nah," Other Trench replied. Both men scratched their beard stubble but then Other Trench stopped following Trench's every move. Instead he turned the hot water tap on and plugged the sink. He wet his hands, poured shaving cream into one palm and lathered up. He reached down and picked up a straight razor and began working his way from his neck towards his chin. Trench could hear the sandpapery scrape loud and clear.

"What I think," Other Trench started as he dipped the foamy blade in the sink, "is what happens sometimes when we dream isn't a dream at all but actually a glimpse of ourselves in an alternate universe. What else explains how we could remember such vivid histories while dreaming? We can't just be making up an entire history of our lives up to that point, right?"

"C'mon, it's too early for this. You know I don't get it anyway," Trench shook his head. He took his own straight razor and swished it in his own sink. He brought it up to his throat to remove the shadow from his neck. By the time he'd begun to slice the short hairs from his skin, he thought, yeah, actually he did kind of get it.

"Hey, I listen to your problems," Trench's reflection paused. "So return the favor and do me the courtesy of staring at me blankly while I bounce ideas off of you."

"Shit, man, sorry," Trench apologized. "I guess that does kind of make sense. It explains how we can have such strong feelings for people we don't even know in real life," the silver-selling artist considered upon recalling a key element of the morning story.

"You mean in our waking lives," Other Trench corrected.

"Sure, sure. But what the hell would be the point of seeing my life in another universe? And, I mean, that's never even minding the 'how," Trench said as he felt the razor blade make a small, superficial cut near his jawline. That's the kind of thing that happened whenever he thought too much. It wasn't that he was stupid; he just never applied himself in an intellectual sort of way, not like some people. He could barely walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. Other Trench was probably conversing about the nature of dreams while shaving while thinking about E=MC2.

"What would be the point? Hmmm, I don't think there necessarily has to be a point," Other Trench mulled. He ran his hand over his face to make sure he'd gotten every hair. When clean shaven, Other Trench looked five years younger than he was. Trench always looked older than he was, probably from spending too much time being on drugs and not enough time being successful.

"Lots of things in the universe don't have a point," Other Trench continued. "Things just happen. Maybe we're tied to our other selves in other universes just like some particles are quantumly entangled. But in occasionally catching a glimpse of our other lives, maybe we can learn something."

Trench grasped Other Trench's basic premise up until the word 'quantumly' came up, which is how this usually went. "I don't know, man. I don't think I learned anything from that dream last night other than that guy's got a much better life than I do. He's probably got a better life than you, too."

"It would stand to reason then," Other Trench rinsed his face off, "that at least one of us somewhere is worse off than we are right now. So be happy about that." He patted aftershave on his cheeks and squinted as the alcohol sank into his pores. "As far as you're concerned, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. You've got a lot of potential. There's a lot of good material in your head still. Believe me, wouldn't I know?" Other Trench chuckled to himself. "We just have to drag it out of you. If you can write another tune like Lethal Laetitia, you'll be back on the top of the charts."

"How'd you even know that was the song that was going to sell?" Trench asked shaking his head askew.

"There's an algorithm for everything, even for predicting what songs will be successful," Other Trench shrugged. "I'd give it to you, but you'd probably tell me it would compromise your artistic integrity. That, or you wouldn't understand it."

Trench thought about the small bit of glory he once knew, all the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. Then he thought about where he was now, bartending until 2am five nights a week and watching other bands play three out of those five nights. He was jealous of hearing those other bands play their shitty music but still walk away with all the women. He was over artistic integrity. He put down his razor. Maybe it was time he learned something from Other Trench.

"Give it to me, the algorithm, I mean. If I don't understand it, teach me. If I'm going to learn something from my other lives, I want to start now, right away," Trench leaned towards the mirror intently.

"I don't know," Other Trench hesitated. "It's complicated..."

"C'mon, Trench!" Trench whined. "It's not like I'm asking you how you built this mirror."

"How many times do I have to say it? It's a portal, not a mirror," corrected the ever-correcting Other Trench. "And I've got to get to the lab. I'm late as it is." Other Trench started to turn away.

"Well, think about it, man. I'll even write a song for your wife and you can tell her you wrote it, which would be kind of true anyway. Trench, c'mon!" Trench pleaded.

With his anniversary coming up and no clue as to what kind of gift he could get his wife, Other Trent quickly relented. He turned back towards his other self in some other universe. "Alright, fine, I'll make that deal. We'll start tomorrow morning. Do some coke when you wake up or whatever you have to do to pay attention, because this stuff isn't easy." Other Trent wagged a finger at himself or someone like himself. "You know, it's a good thing we can't pass stuff through the portal or else I'd ask for half your forthcoming royalties."

"Oh, man, thanks. You'll really be saving my ass. I'll think of something else I can do for you, too, I swear." Trench backed away from the portal satisfied, half his face still covered in foam.

"Don't know what I'm going to learn from this," Other Trench mumbled as he stepped out of view to turn on the shower.

Trench followed suit on his side of things. "What are you talking about? You finally learned to take advantage of your resources. Think about it, man, I can teach you guitar," Trench said over the pitch of a torrent of water. "Alright! I'm pumped now. See you tomorrow morning. Same time as usual?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Other Trench replied with a sigh from out of view. The sound of a shower curtain being pulled back and forth in one universe was oddly familiar in another universe only a sliver of a light year away.

THE PRISONER

Power flows from my heel to my toe, propelling me forward. The autumn leaves crunch under my feet, disintegrating with each step. Further and further I make my way into the forest, putting the Great White Wall to my back. I am out here to find my stash. There are weapons there; I've squirrelled them away over time – just in case. Today is 'just in case.' So I will arm myself. I will rebel. I will be free.

It was ten years ago. We never got to elect these people. These zealous politicians – these petty tyrants – always tell us they know what's best for us. They tell us where we can and cannot go, do and do not do and worse, tell us what we can and cannot eat. It is totalitarianism in its purest form. Someone has to fight back. If no one fights back, what will become of us? We will become obedient dogs, loyal to a world we had no say in in making.

The Big Pine. Her branches cast a narrow but protective shroud upon the ground. It was here I scattered my cache. The dead, brown leaves are thick this time of year. They layer the forest floor and complicate my search. But I spread my hands out like metal detectors, searching, searching...got one! The cool, earth-toned oval exterior of a WWII-era pineapple grenade. It's old so I hope it will still do the job. I crawl around on my hands and knees and rub them raw on the hard ground and bitey sticks in search of more. Another! And another! How much time do I have?

I stand and look back towards the Great White Wall. Rising far above it is their prized temple of discipline. It's from the temple a scent comes to me on a light, crisp breeze. It can only be...just as I feared. I will not be subjected to their experiments again! I should run further away. I should save myself. But that is the coward's way. I am all that stands between them and my kinsmen. I am the difference between oppression and freedom.

I race back towards the blue shingled walls that enshrine their madness. Fueled by the promise of a new day, I am a blur. They will never see me coming. One explosive is in hand, ready to lose its pin. Two more rest in each of my back pockets for insurance. In moments I have put myself within striking distance. I pull the pin. I rear my arm.

"Oliver!" the weary-haired witch calls as she appears out the gates of Hell. She wears a dithered flowered smock; it might as well be a butcher's apron. "Put those pine cones down and get in here for dinner! Fish sticks with broccoli and cooked carrots."

I am discovered! I can throw this grenade and end her. But what of the warden who himself is an ogre? I have more grenades, but what if they don't work? They are old, after all. I should have tested one of these first. Maybe I should have collected more reliable weapons. I am frozen. What do I do? He who hesitates is lost.

"Get in here and eat dinner if you want ice cream for dessert." Her crooked, warted finger motions for me to come hither.

Damn her. Damn all of them. This is what they do; there is the experiment but there is also the reward. And this is how we fall, how we conform – they give us just enough of what we want in order to keep abusing us. I drop my arm, drop my armaments. In the end I am no hero. I am no freedom fighter. I drag my feet back towards their lair.

"Coming, mother."

In time I will tell myself oppression is not so bad. In time I will tell others that freedom is overrated, that 'Freedom ain't free.' That is when I will know but not dare say I have fallen completely under their spell. Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage.

AGNES IN DEFEAT

As the saying goes, you don't really know someone until you fight them, and Agnes loved getting to know people.

Last night, Agnes found out about Regina. "Regina, muh luvf," Agnes whispered to herself as she laid down the night before, her right eye almost swollen shut from the jabs. So, so many jabs. Most people can't fall asleep with a headache to save their lives, but for Agnes, the strafes of pain that danced in her skull were exactly what saved her from a life of boredom.

The stained red comforter crumpled underneath Agnes as she rolled off her bruised ribs to glance at her alarm clock. 7:30 AM! She was late for work again. She threw the covers back and swung her legs toward the floor but her ribcage caught fire and she curled up in a ball. Air bled its way out of her lungs and into the ears of some unfortunate angel as the oxygen deprivation bespoke of some esoteric truth. In a voice only loud enough for her dog – a boxer she named Ali – to hear, she whispered, "Ithn ith amazin'?"

Time was essential. If she were too late, she could risk another reprimand; possibly be fired. This wouldn't do. Agnes enjoyed her job as a librarian; she enjoyed it partly for the resentment working a 'real job' brought her. The indignation of doing anything other than what she enjoyed most infuriated her, but she could channel this wrath and unleash it upon her opponents – metaphorical lovers? – later. Getting to work on time wasn't important. It was crucial.

The stabbing pains and broad, dull fire were nothing she couldn't overcome with some pain meds and a full swig of cheap whiskey. We've been here before, girl. Sixty seconds, Agnes. Sixty seconds and counting are already gone.

Agnes rolled herself off the bed onto the hard wooden floor, landing like a cold slab of meat. The shockwave through her body felt like a prizefighter's wallop, something she knew how to get up from. And she understood that if she didn't get up, she wouldn't be taking anymore punches. Unsanctioned amateur boxing didn't exactly pay the bills.

From a squat thrust position, she jutted upright, a gazelle to unemployment's lion. Her ribs felt like a snack in the lion's maw; ready to snap and have its marrow sucked out. A primal scream leapt from Agnes's throat to the ears of some unfortunate demon; Gino, her clueless, luckless suitor upstairs.

She threw on the sundress she laid out the night before. It was barely enough to hide the drip drops of blood across her beige bra. Agnes sprinted to the bathroom and took stock of her battered face. The damage was so incredible she felt a warm swell in her chest. She choked back a smile for fear that the happiness could overwhelm her; oh, how she could just faint. But would that be so bad? She could lay unconscious and unhurriedly dream about her new love interest, Regina.

No, Agnes the social sting-like-a butterfly needed to transform into Agnes the librarian for the time being. Though she would love nothing more than to revel in the agony, she couldn't risk losing her health insurance either. Although Agnes often thought about risking permanent deformity, she was more worried that being disabled would impair her ability to partake in her after-hours melees. "We couldn'th havth that," Agnes lisped through her teeth.

She turned toward the front door, shuffled her feet, and then made a sharp ninety degree turn towards the entranceway table. With her hand still in its sweat soaked sports wrap, Agnes picked up her sunglasses and put them in her purse to take to work. The glasses weren't so much of a disguise or a mask as they didn't hide the entirety of her face. Instead the shades were an announcement, an announcement to the world of the ugly, or – depending upon who you ask – the beautiful truth. Precious few women understood it. The others, if they were truly curious and courageous enough, Agnes would gladly beat the truth into them.

HARBINGER

I will have to designate what I am, a name. They will not understand otherwise. They must be made to understand. Shouldn't they?

Without the slightest tremor in its hand, (X) spun the tuners of its visual intensifier to get a precise view of the decaying plant cells. It picked up its acoustic collector and held it to the taut lips of its communication orifice. It spoke matter-of-factly. "The weapon is successful. The reconfigured virus continues to succeed in compromising cell wall integrity, overcoming plant resistance to disease."

(X) took a step back from its labor to embrace the womb of the cavern's shadows, grotesquely satisfied but with a splinter of guilt. Since coming to understand its destiny, (X) has meditated religiously to rid its being of any social sentiments. I should think only of what must be done and not whether they deserve it. In a universe where (X) can calculate all the collisions of matter against the march of time, there is only the inevitable. From the edge of light, it spoke lowly to invisible forces.

"I have a cure for all mankind."

(X) sauntered aside to examine a brittle parchment affixed to a rocky, grey slab. The parchment was a two-dimensional visual representation of the planet [designation:] Earth's agricultural centers. It raised a limb to the illustration and spread its thin, olive phalanges over the regions it intends to deliver the virus. The areas are inconspicuous, but by targeting these locations, its weapon could spread its effects far afield before being detected, if it gets detected. Mankind may be preoccupied with other matters.

(X)'s intention is to synchronize the timing of its biological attack with the detonation of several dirty bombs placed in key cities around the globe. The virus will destroy crops and throw the food chain into chaos while countries take up arms against each other while the true assailant goes unknown. Looking for someone to blame, Mankind will turn and feast upon each other as they have always done. By the time biologists realize what is happening, it will be too late.

It will be too late because (X) has thought of a fail-safe. While (X) has created a version of its biological weapon that will destroy algae in the ocean, another variant will kill off all the plankton in the sea. If the oceans die, so will the human race. (X)'s satisfaction turns into a warm, liquidy pleasure at the thought.

Folds of skin tense around (X)'s orbicularis oculi; an attempt to physically restrain these emotions. Feelings; they bring a nausea that wrenches its abdominal cavity. Repressing the sensations that pollute (X) do not come naturally. (X)'s hates this of itself, having to work so hard to rid itself of emotion, then realizes hate is another emotion.

Meditation is (X)'s primary means of coping. Meditation at this moment, though, will have to be represented by what the enemy calls 'free writing.' (X) positions its posterior adipose deposits upon a flat, inflexible plastic surface and pulls itself toward a shiny aluminum platform. It retrieves a long, yellow, wooden symbologizer from behind the flap of skin covering its auditory canal and lowers the tool to a small piece of fibrous tissue. It scratches a stream of consciousness across a rectangular white leaf.

Their emotions continue to abase me. Feelings have not prevented successful experiments; they never have. But it does delay my experiments on occasion. To explain: I have found too much of my time ill spent on a desire for humans to understand what they have brought upon themselves. I want them to understand, as if would induce in them a change. They call this feeling 'hope.' Only, hope is translated into insanity when they refuse to change. They are insane. I am a product of that insanity. Insanity destroys itself. Thus, I remind myself I am a herald, the harbinger who will brings judgment upon them for their crimes against each other. I remind myself to feel no inner conflict. Sparing many future generations outweighs any hope for this one. I am as resolved to this course of action now as I was 40 years ago. No one and nothing can escape the inevitable.

(X) violently exited its repose as its portable communication apparatus rustled the atmosphere. Distain crept in with this interruption as the creature slid off its perch toward the instrument. It swallowed a deep breath with which to process and expel the negative expression. There must be no hint of the charade it must now engage in. Slowly, deliberately, (X) drew the phone to his ear.

"Why are you interrupting me, Allister?" (X) questioned.

"Civility is completely alien to you as ever, Dr. Isa'is. Good morning. I suppose you're in The Cave? Figuratively speaking of course. Well, you'll need to put your research aside for the afternoon. Remember, you have a meeting with Dr. Cutler and the rest of the department at two-thirty."

"Yes...yes, of course. I'd almost forgotten." Doctor Isa'is glanced at a heavy manila folder on his desk; a significant detail. The folder contained a condensed report on his alternative research – Agricultural Diseases: Prevention Through Resistance. "Thank you for the reminder." The doctor stiffened his face as he tried to stifle what they call a smile. There must be no hint of deception. He must remain in supreme control. "Thank you for the reminder, Dr. Kinning. You're a true humanitarian."

"Doctor Isa'is extends his graciousness! Are you yourself today, Thomas?"

"I feel...Everything is in order. We will proceed accordingly. I will see you this afternoon, Allister. Goodbye."

Dr. Kinning listened as his phone beeped, signaling the end of the call. "Ah, that's the Thomas Isa'is we know and love," he commented before carrying on.

Despite the man's reclusiveness, Dr. Kinning was eminently proud to have Dr. Isa'is on staff. Not only was Dr. Isa'is a biologist but a physicist and psychologist as well.

"Brilliant man, Doctor Isa'is is," Kinning remarked to a passing colleague. "Undoubtedly knows what's best for humanity. Brilliant, brilliant man."

WAR TORN APART

"Purge the Earth of every last foreign flag-waving, puke-speaking son-of-a-bitch mother fucker you put in your crosshairs!"

That's what Sgt. Beals remembers his commanding officer saying many months ago.

Slumped uncomfortably against the jagged concrete walls of a shelled bunker, Beals struggled to cling to some remnant of hope. There were the Before Times; the softness of his wife's pursed lips on his cheek and his son's ragged, straw-colored hair between his fingertips. Closing his eyes, he reached out to embrace his ethereal bride and child, but their bodies disintegrated into ashes (dust to dust) upon his touch. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; that phrase crept restlessly along the twist and folds of his brain.

He released the rifle's magazine to weigh it in his hand. With what was either exasperation or a sigh of relief — he wasn't sure — he felt that the magazine was empty. After looking to double-check, his fingers slid alongside his thigh for his sidearm. Drawing it, he slipped out its cartridge and counted two rounds. Beals ran his thumb across the top round, removing grime from the bullet's metal jacket. The sergeant didn't want to risk a misfire in the event he decided to end his own life.

Beals had found this bunker, this hell of a hole, five days ago and had been there since. He'd just run out of water and food, and as far as he knew, was the last man in his squad still alive. In fact, he hadn't seen or heard anyone since a lone gunshot two days ago. All communications, friendly and enemy alike, had ceased. That's when a new shot rang off in the distance, but Beals figured the sound to be a round cooked off in the smoldering ashes of Armageddon somewhere nearby.

Still, the sergeant was cautious. He craned his neck to peek through an overhead crack of cement to see if he could tell if it were daylight yet. He was waiting for the first crack of dawn to go topside, often forgetting that it could be daytime right that moment. Trouble was, the sky had been burned black years ago, two months before the real up-close-and-personal, whites-of-their-eyes fighting began. Beals often considered that he intentionally forgot about the sky just so he could hope the next sunrise was just a few hours away.

Raising his wrist towards his face, his hollowed eyes fixed its gaze upon his broken and battered timepiece, first with amusement, then resentment. Does time matter anymore? The thought was rhetorical. The once muscularly built army sergeant felt sinewy and brittle in the hands of anguish.

Goddamn it, he'd say to himself thinking back to his captain's orders. "That is exactly what they want, you know." He whispered these words upon the deaf ears of his now departed commanding officer many times, always whispering it to contain a rage that exhausted him. "They set us against each other on purpose." He clung to these words; Beal's wanted to spit in their faces. He hated the heralds of war for all their intent, rousing each and every person to kill each other with the reward being their own lives — life by death seven billion times over. Life, death; Beals occupied some ghostly space in between. He looked down upon the earth that scratched underneath his heel and wanted to sink into it.

There was a clang, like scrap metal falling over. Followed by a voice?

He jolted fully upright and pressed himself purposefully into a jagged edge of wall. The pain would sharpen his senses and assure him he wasn't dreaming. Did he just hear someone? "Please God, don't let this be a hallucination, not this time," he begged to indifference. He didn't really believe in God anymore.

There was more noise, a sort of organized rattling. Someone was definitely poking around the hollowed-out tank above ground, searching for who knows what. He'd already pilfered every last scrap of food, water, and ammo within a hundred yards before taking up shelter in the bunker. He couldn't see who it was. The tank was out of his line of sight and so he'd have to wait either for whomever it was to glance inside his hideout before giving them a bullet, or be proactive and try to take the stranger by surprise. Neither option was attractive. Beals was having a hard time justifying each new murder considering how scarce human beings had become. Every day he'd think back upon all the people he'd killed, and how terrible it would be to wind up the sole survivor of this completely unnecessary worldwide conflict.

Sick, almost to death, of having to do all this fighting, Beals grasp turned his knuckles white as he put a stranglehold on his pistol grip. Every nerve tensed and he began to tremble with anger. "Fuck this shit. Fuck this!" He bolted out from under his cover into the open. There he froze with his gun pressed snuggly into his right temple.

Just beyond the tank his eyes met the scavenger. There, picking away at the remains of one of his squad members, was a sickly looking German shepherd. The tattered animal was so emaciated and hungry, so bent on survival, as to not be entertained by Beals' theatrics. "A dog? A fucking dog?" His heart sank into his bowels. His attempt to stage a drama disintegrated into nothing more than a wisp of smoke on the light breeze. Look, this is what we're doing to ourselves, is the message he intended to convey. No point now.

He holstered his gun, swayed a bit as the adrenaline wore off and fell down into a pile of rubble. He thought about stopping the dog but that's as far as it went. There were no rules anymore and the dog could very well be the last best friend he'd ever have. He waited for the animal to have its fill.

The dog finished eating and began pacing back and forth before the sergeant. Trust was hard to come by but so were other creatures. Perhaps realizing their mutual situation, the animal sauntered over to the hardened combatant once it determined that Beals wasn't a threat. The sergeant reached out with every last bit of kindness to scratch the canine's head carefully, softly. It was all the energy he had left anyway.

"They set us against each other on purpose," he remarked as if the dog understood. Beals stood up; wavering for a moment as if he might fall back down, then steadied himself. As optimism tangled with waves of nausea in his stomach, he staggered slightly before taking command of his stride, then motioned for the dog to walk with him. "They really fucked us, alright. Well, I guess we helped 'em fuck us." He felt like vomiting but hope held it down. He couldn't afford to lose the calories anyway. The dog hesitated to follow.

He'd made it this far; couldn't he hold on just a little longer for this goddamn dog? Couldn't this dog hold on just a little longer for this goddamn human? Man and man's best friend; they could rule the scorched earth and give the warmongers holed up below a lofty middle finger.

Beals flashed a broken-toothed smile at the dog. "Come, boy. We'll rule the world as gods." The dog set a tentative paw towards the sergeant. Confident they were setting out to begin a new life together, Beals turned his eyes away from the canine too late to spot a half-buried, unexploded ordnance round. "Yeah, we'll rule the world as gods." Those seven words dropped from his lips as he stumbled over the shell. No one was there to hear the trees fall.

CLASSIC HENRY

Of course, people would regularly assume the opposite. But Henry, eyes bulging out of his skull as the result of his thyroid condition, never shied away from striking up a conversation. Though unforgivingly designated a horribly deformed, insatiable monster back in grade school, Henry tried instead to think of himself as the strange-looking boy everyone avoided talking to because they assumed he preferred the company of books. Being bright and overly sympathetic, though, Henry couldn't blame the other children for not taking the chance they might be his midday snack. Despite his best effort to pretend he was Henry the Reader, to all the other children he was Henry the Eater. Children; such cruel creatures.

Henry made it a point never to be cruel; it would have been much easier as an adult to cave into issues born out of the past, but if not for hope what else did he have? Henry had read about the road less travelled once and decided he'd always go that way. The road less travelled was the eternal promise that something remarkable would happen some day.

In not knowing the history of other people – who knows who else was alienated as a child – Henry regularly started conversations with strangers. Despite mixed results at best, the optimistic book lover always considered the occasional good result better than no result at all. Although people were often taken aback by Henry's appearance, there were some good people out there, too.

Today, Henry encountered a half-hooded middle-aged man he'd never seen before standing at the bus stop. Henry figured what with the man's few grey hairs, a trace or two of lines in his face and happily humming a slightly familiar tune, that this stranger might, just possibly, be amicable enough to look passed appearances today.

In approaching strangers, Henry rarely made direct eye contact. Instead, he preferred to stand close enough to someone to let them know he was probably speaking to them. (Henry had read in a scientific journal that this was a way of approaching people most found unthreatening.) Close to the man's shoulder, he said, "I say, not to sound trite, but it's a beautiful day, isn't it?"

The man didn't make direct eye contact either. The man tilted his head just a bit in Henry's direction and replied almost inaudibly, "In the tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings, sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiving."

Henry's eyes widened as this sagacious stranger – wise beyond their apparent years – had just imparted great insight concerning the human condition. Yes, too often, much too often all of our thoughts are misgiving, Henry considered in silence. And if we know our thoughts are misgiving, well, that's an important step towards treating each other with compassion. Henry would pass this information along to everyone and anyone who would listen.

When the bus arrived and opened its doors for boarding, the middle-aged man stepped back and allowed some other riders and Henry to board first. Catching a good glimpse of Henry, the half-hooded man thought to himself, Yikes, that man looks as though he could eat me, as he adjusted the volume on his headphones.

YAMIJI'S LAST RUN

The slight seven-year-old child, Yamiji, ran with an exploding fire in his thighs through fields of rice, not out of fear or anger or even boredom. He ran for the pleasure that accompanied exhaustion, that white-zone where heart and mind meld seamlessly together. For this child on the brink of destiny, each step was a divine communion between man and nature his father had taught him to respect. And so Yamiji would run to experience the searing of his lungs from truly honest work, taking the earth's divine winds into his chest. This gave him an experience that he would tell you acknowledged – with a glint in his perfect, almost supernatural cobalt blue eyes – the beauty of the world around him.

One day Yamiji heard of another young runner, a boy who ran the length of Japan from the southernmost tip to the northern shore along the famed cherry blossom trail without so much as stopping even once. It was a legend, surely, Yamiji thought. But what if it was not? Could he do it? Yamiji felt that he could, knew he could, and to do so would be a tremendous feat in honor of the world that had given him so much, the beating of his very own heart. The quest would be a celebration of life itself.

Yamiji's father reacted to his son's aspiration first with laughter then with a bit of unhappiness. "If you know that you can do this, why bother?" his father questioned. "Is it not enough to know? Unless you fear that it is impossible. If you harbor even the slightest doubt, you will not, you cannot." Yamiji's father would go on to question his son's motives. "Is this in honor of the Tao, Yamiji, or is it in honor of your own ability? Remember that your ability is of the Tao. Do not let a desire for fame make a mockery of it."

Despite the fact that these were dangerous times, both for his family at home for whom invaders were always a possibility, and for himself as the cherry blossom trail had become a home to fearsome ronin and other rogues, Yamiji was determined to conquer the impossible. He would do this and his determination to conjoin his body with the world would hopefully inspire millions. "This is not about man versus nature," the boy would announce. "It is about being one with nature, which is our true nature, and not separating ourselves from or trying to conquer nature. My journey will be a celebration of the Tao, the Tao from which all things are born." Although worried about the quest, Yamiji's father was proud of his young son's wisdom. Hopefully the boy's knowledge of the Tao would be enough to carry him through.

On the fourth day of his run, Yamiji's throat scratched with an unquenchable thirst. His skin was becoming parchment despite sips of water from well-wishers along the tree-lined path. As a large hill dotted with pale flowers emerged before him, Yamiji's spirit faded for the briefest second. He stumbled a bit, one foot nearly caught the other and wobbled him towards the side of the road. But there was no stopping, not now, not ever, not until the northern sea. Yamiji righted himself. The resolute child lowered his head and plowed headlong to the top of the hill.

Having reached the crest of the hill with the last ounce of sweat flying from his body, Yamiji caught view of a broad swath of land with nothing but cherry blossoms and tall grass in sight. A singular path cut through the trees and grass while some mountains rose a hundred miles off in the distance. At least the next leg will be flat, it occurred to the boy. He allowed gravity to pull him down off the hill without thinking how much longer this journey might take him. It didn't matter. He would rather die than stop. Nature wouldn't let him stop anyway; nature goes on forever if you let it. So much did Yamiji know.

A hundred yards into the field with that slightest doubt now far behind him, Yamiji rehydrated himself with determination. A smile spread across the lad's face as an occasional cherry blossom flower curled around his head on the air and kissed him with its white petals. The boy shook hands with the world, as it should be. So what struck Yamiji to the ground with a force so hard a scar was put in the earth, the boy didn't know. Though not unconscious, the child was gravely injured. Every bone in his body screamed out for Heaven, first from the attack, second from the passing of his vision. Yamiji's heart plunged into an infinite well.

It was almost nightfall before Yamiji attempted to rise to his feet. He hovered somewhere between the real world and the dream world while trying to find his footing like a newborn calf. As he swayed back and forth and tried to maintain his balance, Yamiji saw someone, no, some thing step up beside him. He could not turn his head to see (though his vision was blurred anyhow) but he understood something nonetheless. Whatever it was, was not of any world the child had ever known. The thing was demonic. No, not demonic; of the Tao. It was simply Yamiji's opposite. It despised Yamiji's quest and had come to make the child suffer for his gratuitous affection for the world.

"With all of that running Yamiji, you have seen so much of your country. You have met so many people and you try to remember all of their faces, all of their kind words and their gifts to you. In your mind's eye, you try to record everything; every cherry blossom you have run past since you started. Every rock. Every bird that has graced the sky above you. But here it is just us." Yamiji felt a cold, slow moving wind like a hand, coming towards him with every chilling, low ruffled word.

"No one is watching you right now, boy. This is the only moment I may strike."

Yamiji exploded into a star of unspeakable agony. His leg bones snapped and burned like the driest kindling. Blood was pulled to the surface of his skin. The boy's head throbbed like a balloon dying to explode until his eyes popped red. Yamiji writhed violently in the dirt as the nerves in his body detonated. Blood stained the earth with every frantic twist of the youngster's body. He clawed at his own face, his fingertips scratching the empty wells where his eyes once had been. Once the pain had reached terminal velocity, Yamiji passed out and did not wake for what would be six years.

Upon wakening, the boy had grown. He found himself underneath a fruitless cherry blossom tree. The cool air wasn't uncomfortable; it was warming with the rising sun. Perhaps it was spring and the blossoms hadn't yet begun. Making note of the immediate world, a blind Yamiji uttered no words nor grunted in pain. He unflinchingly brought his mangled bones around until he was on his hands and knees and began to crawl the hundreds of grueling miles back over the path he had run to return home. Yamiji crawled over rocks, under trees, through the rain, night and day. He encountered many people who had aided him on his journey but they didn't recognize Yamiji now. Instead they turned away, away from all of nature by treating the mutilated teenager as something else, something they didn't want to know or be a part of although they already were.

When Yamiji finally he reached home late in the afternoon one autumn day, he slid the door open as he stood on shredded knees. His father was there beside his mother at the lip of a black cauldron. They looked at their deformed visitor first with horror, then with confusion, then with joy.

"Father?" Yamiji's feeble voice asked.

"My son, you are alive! Alive, alive, alive!" The teenager's father jumped up and crossed the floor with unnatural speed to clutch his one child. He crushed his son against his chest then held him at arm's length. "You are alive but, but what has happened to you? I should have insisted you not go. I knew it would be dangerous."

"You could not have stopped me, father," the son spoke in fragmented words.

"What happened? Tell me what happened," the patriarch insisted.

"The inevitable, father," the son spoke as he turned over his palms to reveal gnarled, calloused flesh. "I had much time to think on my journey home. I was naïve; my knowledge of the Tao incomplete. I thought I could commune with nature in rapturous delight without there being something else to maintain the balance of the Tao. Remember the Taijitu symbolizes this; there can be no yin without yang and no yang without yin. There is even yin within yang and yang within yin. All of these things flow from the Tao. I forgot this."

Yamiji continued, "I was not surprised afterwards when I realized I had struck down by an envious, invisible force at precisely the mid-point of my journey. It had to happen if the world was to remain in balance. People often think there needs to be more good in the world but they forget there can be no good without evil and no evil without good. Despite how we may want to think about it, the Tao – the true Tao – has no opinion of good and evil; these things simply are. And so I cannot be upset. I have fulfilled my role in the quest such as the Tao has manifested it."

"But, my son, you look like you will never run again. How can you not rise to anger?" Yamiji's father asked as he observed his child's twisted limbs.

The teen raised his face to imagine what his father might look like with vacant, hallowed eyes. "My quest will never be completed but I have taken away a lesson far more valuable. Only now do I truly understand that all things are One. To not understand this is to invite a balancing force into your life. For me, I became too determined. Thus, I invited upon myself a discouraging force. Such is the folly of youth."

Yamiji's father lifted the broken body of his son and carried him towards the warmth of the fire. The child's mother moved to the garden to gather some medicinal herbs. In time, Yamiji would heal. He would walk again but not be too determined to do so at the same time. He had learned to respect the Oneness of the Tao and that joy and sorrow and life and death are all equal. He would not be bitter then to return to the Tao when the time came.

CALLIE AND THE BENCH

Callie sat on a green park bench, its paint flaking off rubbed raw by experience. The bench had seen a lot of shit sitting on this hill overlooking the university. Now it was Callie's turn, her turn to shit tears all over the damn thing. Why is she crying? The bench wondered. Good looking girl – love the strawberry blonde hair – hell of an artist, too, with that chalk and charming as all gets out. Oh jeez, she's crying over that dick Aaron. Not too smart, this one. I could have told her Aaron was a dick. I remember them meeting here, swapping saliva after class, interrupting her sketches. Sitting here, fuck, I could have told her that dick hardly had one. With winter coming to Stony Brook, it was one of those days the withering bench felt it just couldn't catch a damn break.

Callie tried to stem the tide of tears with an emotional dam; a pad of paper and today, purple chalk. But she brought the wrong pad; the paper wasn't thick enough. Its ends flapped on the breeze while dead golden-brown leaves flitted off the oak tree that canopied this pit stop on the way to...who the hell knows with most people? The college freshman took off her knitted ski hat, chalking the side of her face, and sobbed anew into the makeshift handkerchief. Well, this was all too much for the bench.

"Callie? Callie. Can I give ya some advice?" the bench said in a distinctly native New Yawk accent.

Callie peeled the hat off her eyes and looked around from side to side and then behind her. "Who's there? Who, who, who said that?" she owled out of her scratchy windpipe.

"Me, the fucking bench. Yeah, I know that sounds funny but it's me, the bench." The bench knew Callie could hear it wanting to add 'fuck' to every other word. It was sorry for that but it wasn't trying to be crass, it's just how he was raised. Nonetheless, the bench was annoyed that for the first time it ever chose to speak, the young woman didn't know what to say back. "HELLO. Fucking bench here. Do. You. Hear. Me?"

Callie looked around once more. Up, down, even under the bench. There was no one there.

"IT'S ME. THE BENCH. TALKING. ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID?"

Callie crumpled the hat and her art supplies together. She stood up with glacial speed. Her waterfall-clouded eyes shifted with equal parts anxiety and suspicion. "Um, look, I don't know who you are but I'm not crazy. I mean, I'm really upset about Aaron right now but I'm pretty sure it's not making me hallucinate."

"Oh, so you're not stupid. You know you're not hallucinating. Glad we cleared that up. Now can I give ya some advice?"

Callie closed her eyes and waved one hand while she clutched her things like a shield with the other. "Why would a bench be talking to me?" she wondered out loud.

"Well, ya know, I've been here since 1967. Maybe eventually ya figure out the language," the bench stated.

"That is not what I mean," Callie opened her eyes. Still no one there. Callie wanted to minor in psychology and had once read that if you ever thought you were schizophrenic to try and not buy into what any voices were saying. But that's all you could do was try. Hard to resist the temptation, though.

"Okay, if you're really a talking bench I've been sitting on, tell me something only the both of us know," Callie said. It was the ultimate Turing Test.

"Sure. I know ya come here Tuesdays and Thursdays after class, ya were disappointed with Aaron's, eh, equipment (at least that's what ya told your girlfriend Jasmine when you twos were sitting here), and ya often thought about Ryan Gosling when ya sat here with Aaron making out," the bench answered. "Of course, I'm basing my statement about Ryan Gosling on the fact that your butt tenses up a little just like other students when they talk about him. I'm not judging or nothin.' Who could blame ya? Aaron is no Ryan Gosling. Am I right? Not that I would know how big Ryan Gosling is..."

"Okay, you're a talking bench, you know what my butt feels like and you want to give me advice. I should go home," Callie considered. But then she thought that a talking bench wasn't the strangest part of all this. What was stranger was that it wanted to give her advice. She was going to sit back down on the bench, thought about her butt, and chose to remain standing.

"Sooo, I'm going to pretend that you're not my subconscious and let you give me some advice." Callie used the sleeve of her free hand to wipe the liquid cobwebs from her eyes. She shook herself out like she was having a mini-seizure then settled down. "Okay, hit me."

"Nice. Now that ya know that Aaron's a dick, or lack thereof, ya should date that black-haired kid in your art class; Emilio I think his name is," the bench advised.

"Emilio? Who's that?" Callie's eyes wondered to the sky.

"Emilio. Ya know, kid with the lopsided black hair, dresses all in black trying to do the mopey Goth thing? Maybe his name isn't Emilio. I think I just think of him as being emo. He's probably just trying to find himself. Isn't that what you kids do at your age? Anyways, super nice guy. And he's got a huge, ah, ya know, he's big."

Callie shut her eyes, shook her head, and scowled. "How...how would you know all that?" Then she remembered the bench knew what her butt felt like and how big Aaron was, presumably by them just sitting there. "Nevermind. What makes you think I care about size? Size doesn't matter."

"Said the bisexual," the bench finished for her without skipping a beat.

"Uh, uh, excuse me. I am not bisexual," Callie huffed.

"Look, I don't blame ya. Women are beautiful creatures. But watch out for Melina, chick with the multicolored hair in your Spanish class. She wrote your name in her notebook once with hearts all around it. Other people say she's not friends with any of her ex's. Probably 'cause her Latin temper. I heard her talk to her mother on the phone once. That girl is loco."

Callie sat cross-legged on the ground and plopped her belongings in her lap. "I'm not interested in dating women. I like guys."

"Okay, so we're back to nice guys packing heat." The bench was regretting starting this conversation. He should have known talking to people wasn't going to be easy; he was a bench and that probably confused her.

"Size does..." Callie began.

"Okay fine; size doesn't matter. But look, I'm not saying ya have to date the guy. Just check him out, maybe take a peek below the equator and maybe you'll want to. Personally, I think the kid's great. He's not a little shit like Aaron, so if that's your thing I can't help ya." If a voice could roll eyes, Callie imagined the bench doing just that.

Momentarily lost for words, Callie saw a plaque that read the bench had been put here as a memorial back in '67. That may be so but she felt that over the years it hadn't learned all that much from people. "Other things go into a relationship. How nice is the person to you? Do you get along? Do you have anything in common? Things like that," Callie educated.

"No shit, Sherlock. First, Aaron wasn't nice to ya; he always put what he wanted to do ahead of what you wanted to do. Christ, he never even gave ya a token of affection. Two, the two of yous didn't get along much either because see number one. Three, ya guys didn't have anything in common. Ya might as well have been water and oil. So why are ya crying over him?" The bench knew he sounded angry. The bench knew Callie thought he sounded angry. As things go, he might even get angrier with Callie's explanation.

"Why am I crying over him? To be honest, he smelled really good. I mean, like, really good." The truth is so stupid. Everyone knows it and everyone knows there's little that can be done about it. "I don't know, bench. I thought maybe I could change him."

"Callie, what am I?" the bench asked in a soothing tone.

The college freshman narrowed her eyes. "A bench?" she answered the stupid question.

"That's right, Callie, I'm a bench," came a light, whimsical response. "I'm. A. Motherfuckingbench!" it yelled. "Do you know how many times I've been painted? At least twenty! And ya know what? It doesn't matter what color they paint me, I'm still a mother fucking bench! I'm hard, rigid, and ya can sit on me for as long as you like, I don't get upset about it. But every once in a while someone gets a bug up their ass about how rough around the edges I'm looking. Then I get a fresh coat of paint. It doesn't change who I am, though."

"So you're telling me that you can't change the essence of a thing?" Callie gleaned. "I can't change a person, can I?"

"Why would ya want to?" the bench quizzed short of breath. "It's hard enough to change yourself when you need it the most."

Callie tilted her head sideways, perplexion in her eyes. "I think my grandmother used to say that. Did you know my grandmother? She went to school here, too."

The bench didn't reply immediately. An unseasonably cool breeze swayed the trees. A leaf let go its grasp on its lifeline of a branch and drifted half-dead through the air. It came gently to rest on the bench.

"Yeah, I knew your grandmother. She's the one who turned me into a bench," the bench said evenly. It was simply a matter of fact, nothing more. Then the bench's voice seemed to light up. "Did you know your grandmother was a Wiccan high priestess? She was pagan way before it was cool."

Callie brought her fingers to her lips as her eyes welled up again. "You really did know my grandmother. Oh my god." Her grandmother, a boy, a bench; the memory almost bowled her over like a wave. Callie's grandmother tried to tell her a story about trying to change people when she was a very little girl but she wasn't old enough to understand. She was starting to understand it now. Like her grandmother also said, everything is understood eventually.

"I'm so sorry, bench. Why...why did she do this to you?" Callie needed to know if her grandmother had a good reason. Or was her grandmother a monster?

"I think she was upset that I wouldn't change for her. We were just twenty, but I was already set in my ways. So was she. Let me tell ya, when you're that young and your emotions aren't tempered by experience yet, that's a fucking recipe for disaster. 'Specially after I slept with her best friend." The bench shrugged its shoulders in its voice. "Ya know how girls talk. Your grandmother had told her bestie 'bout how big I was and let me tell ya, her friend would not stop comin' after me. Eventually I gave in 'cause that's who I am. When she found out, your grandmother's spell turned my essence into reality. Personally, I wouldn't have thought that was a bench at all, but, whatever, right?"

Callie's stomach was a storm of uncertainty. She wasn't sure how to think about her grandmother now. What a thing to do to someone! Okay, so he cheated, but what a horrible fate. What do you say?

"Is it bad? Being a bench, I mean. You sound angry but I feel like you should be even angrier about it. I think I would be." Callie consoled the bench with a hand while trying to deal with this wild revelation. This, on top of the fact that a bench could talk in the first place. Her grandmother had always said the world was a place beyond fiction but she never fully grasped those words until now.

"It's not as bad as ya think. I get to be me and don't ever have to worry 'bout changing for nobody. And I don't have to worry 'bout no one else unless I want to. You seemed worth it, though, kid. Maybe I got a soft spot for chicks who get treated like shit."

Lost for words, Callie set her eyes upon anything but the bench. Eventually she had to come back to him. Her eyes came back first to the plaque. She pointed to it. "Says you were put here in memorial of Gerald Fitzgerald."

"That's me," the bench grinned from arm to arm.

"Grandma passed away a few years ago. But maybe I could find a way to turn you back?" Callie shrugged and gave half a smile.

The bench was glad to hear that the girl's grandmother had not passed down her thirst for vengeance. But he was still a little bit annoyed that Callie was losing sight of the moral of the story already. "What did I tell ya about tryin' to change people, Callie? I'm good. I don't need to be changed. And don't let nobody try to change you. If you change on your own, great. But be yourself. And if people don't like it..."

"Fuck 'em? Fuck em, yeah!" Callie finished and jumped to her feet.

"That's right, fuck 'em. I'm a bench and I'm motherfucking proud of it."

"And I'm Callie and I'm motherfucking proud of it! Fuck Aaron!"

"Hey, hey, tone it down. Have a little class, will ya?" the bench hushed. Pleased that the young lady had learned something, the bench took stock of the angle of the sun. "Ah, we still got time before your next class. Anything else you want to talk about?"

"Um, not really," Callie answered as she juggled her belongings in her arms. "How about I take a seat here and just draw for a little while? Can you try not to feel my butt or anything, though? Let's not make this any weirder than it has to be." She turned her back and lowered her body.

"I can't promise anything, Callie. I'm a motherfucking bench after all."

HOW TO DEFEAT A SUPERHERO

Austin Irons was sitting on the train quietly minding his own business, his knees up and his feet jammed against the back of the seat in front of him. His straw-colored, wavy-haired head was buried in the latest issue of Marvel's The Avengers. The last panel of the comic book concluded with superhero team victorious over the time-travelling villain Kang the Conqueror, a conclusion that curled Austin's upper lip. He looked out the window at the twinkling evening lights whizzing by, not quite sure why the villain didn't know that The Avengers would defeat him. After all, the antagonist in the story was a time traveler from the future. The writers could invoke alternate timelines as an explanation, but Austin always considered these types of plot hole defenses contrived. He tossed the rag on the empty seat beside him.

"You like comic books, kid?" came a vaguely familiar voice from across the aisle.

Austin lazily turned his head towards the man he may or may not know. "Yeah, I guess so." The man was not much bigger than all sixteen years of Austin himself. But his face, it was almost like looking in a mirror, maybe a funhouse mirror, the kind of mirror that distorts your face by making it look older. The man was clearly forty at least, well dressed, with notable lines forming around the mouth and eyes.

Austin payed a little more attention to the finely suited interrogator. "I know you, mister?"

"Yes, you know me very well," the man replied as he folded both hands over the top of his gold-handled cane. The handle of the cane was molded in the shape of a lion's head, the head similar to drawings Austin often did. The gentleman dipped and tilted his head a bit, a scratch of bemusement on his lips. "You know me well because I am you."

Austin scoffed. "Whatever, mister, I've got homework to read." The youngster pulled his backpack into his lap and started shuffling the contents around until he found the book he was looking for; a biology book. He was about to pull it out when some insistence in the older man's voice stopped him.

"I can prove it," the man's words came out hastily. "When you...we, were thirteen, we were having...inappropriate dreams...about Black Widow and Scarlet Witch, sometimes both of them, if you understand my meaning. Now, you've never told anyone that, huh? How could I know that if I weren't you? I'm you from the future."

Austin's eyes flew open and his head almost came off as he looked around the train car for other passengers. No one else was really within earshot, though, or at least Austin hoped the clacking of the train tracks drowned the old man out. His eyebrows furrowed into a deep angle towards the bridge of his nose as he leaned towards the man.

"If you're me, why are you trying to embarrass the shit out of me right now?" Austin tried to keep his voice low.

"Because you need...we need to get your heart rate up. This train is going to crash any moment now," the refined figure informed.

"Wait. What? How do you know that? And what's getting my heart rate up have to do with the train crashing?" Austin's heart hadn't come down from the embarrassment yet. Instead he grasped the handrails of his seat, just in case.

"Not much time to explain, kid. But if you're not scared right now, your super powers aren't going to manifest themselves when this train crashes," the man explained.

"Super powers, really? Like the X-Men; their powers usually manifest themselves during an emotional crisis or trauma! Man, that'd be really cool," Austin considered. "Oh shit, am I a mutant?" Now the young man's heart raced at the thought of becoming something more than human; super human. He took a good look at the man across the aisle from him; it looked like being a mutant was going to pay off at some point.

"But wait," the wheels in Austin's head turned, "Are you, I mean 'we,' you? whatever, strong enough to survive this train crashing? You, we must be." The teenager's head whipped forward, waiting for a lurch in the commute. Austin whipped his head back towards the man. "Am I super strong and indestructible like the Hulk? Doesn't matter..."

"Any second now..." the older man pulled his sleeve back to observe the time on his Rolex. Then he returned his attention to Austin, observed the lad waiting and shrugged his shoulders. "Any second now...maybe...maybe not."

Austin fidgeted in his seat. Then a minute went by. Then another. He started to settle down. He would look expectantly at his future self, gulp, and wait again. And be frustrated again.

"How come we're not crashing?" Austin asked. Disappointment dripped from his lip.

"You want to crash? You're so hung up on getting super powers you don't even really care about the other passengers," the older man's face twisted. Then he looked up at the roof of the train car, possibly beyond to some hidden observer. "And they say I'm the villain."

Austin's nose crunched up. "I don't understand. I just want my super powers. Is the train going to crash or not?" he asked, irritation rising in his voice. The man just shook his head at the youngster. "Whatever, mister. Good one, you really had me going there. Asshole." Austin reached back into his backpack and tugged the biology book free. As the book came clear of the backpack, it was followed by a slow moving cloud of jade smoke. A bit surprised, Austin gasped and inhaled some of the smoke.

"What the hell?" Austin responded as he instantaneously felt liquidy all over. He felt like the world was one big pillow and he was sinking into it. His otherwise normal seventy-two heart beats per minute plummeted to forty-two. "What's...happening? If we crash...I don't even think I'll care." Austin was tranquil but with a touch of gregariousness.

The mysterious man stood up tall and proud. His chest heaved with satisfaction. "Oh, actually, the train doesn't crash for another ten minutes, Mr. Irons. Or should I call you 'Iron Austin'?"

Austin wanted be excited by the sound of his superhero name but couldn't muster the strength. Instead he felt himself beginning to enter a white hall of oblivion. "I...don't...get it."

The man quickly sat back down on the edge of his seat facing the youngster. "Oh, let me explain! That's what they do in comics, after all, and I wouldn't want you to die without knowing why. I suppose it's a character defect inherent in all villains, wanting to get the last word in," the man prattled, his eyes black with clichéd, metaphorical coals.

"Anyway, yes, this train is going to crash. That's what happens in my future. That's when your powers manifest. But I've made sure the crash doesn't happen quite the same way this time. No more Iron Austin to be a thorn in my side in this world or any of the others but the one I came from." The man scooted over and sat beside the slumping teenager.

"Who...are you? Not me? My...arch enemy?" Austin tried to make a fist with his five noodled digits and failed.

"Is that any way to speak to your daughter, father?" the man asked with a placid face.

Austin did have just enough strength to raise his eyebrows. "What..are you..talking about? You're..not even..my son?" The would-be hero melted into his seat like a slug. Saliva began pooling in the corners of his mouth.

"No, for god's sake that'd be far too simple!" the man took a handkerchief from inside his jacket pocket and dabbed the corners of Austin's mouth. "Oh, it looks like you're fading so I better make this fast.

"You see, in the future you're the world's greatest superhero – Iron Austin." The man waved a hand across the air as if directing people's attention to a theater marque. "But as you take advantage of your celebrity status, you maybe have a one night stand and that unfortunate, forgotten young lady has a daughter. Despite a conclusive paternity test, you dismiss me and my mother; you want nothing to do with us. Hoping to win your favor, I study. I study a lot. Turns out I have a super power, too – super intelligence. So I tried to inject myself back into your life, fight crime alongside you but all you did was insult me, saying intelligence isn't enough to fight evil. Instead you train a young boy to be your sidekick, a placeholder for the son you always wanted but never had. Finally when I was old enough, I had gender reassignment surgery to become a man. When I did that, you treated me even worse than before. You wouldn't even look at me. You wouldn't look at me long enough to even insult me." Austin's eyes were shutting so the man elbowed him sharply. "Is this contrived enough for you yet?

"The best part came when you wrote your autobiography. You thought it was funny to include that bit about Black Widow and Scarlet Witch. You also, foolishly, included the scene in which your powers manifested themselves, where and when it happened." The man pushed the tip of his index finger against Austin's nose. "That was very dumb, father. But you've always been dumb. What else explains your failure to see that your super intelligent child would become your nemesis who builds a time machine to return to the past and use poison to kill you before you ever become a superhero?"

Austin's chest felt like an anvil was coming down on it, slowly but surely. Breath was a fleeting ghost. He gave whatever he had left to take in some air. "I...don't...believe you. Villains...lie."

The man interlaced his fingers on his lap and bowed his head. "Yes, yes you do, father. Just so we're clear, everyone else in our future thinks you're a hero but I know you as a villain. Villain's abandon their children. Right now – here – I'm the hero, saving my other future selves from you. I can't stop what happened to me. I can't go back and interfere with my own timeline. Believe me, I've tried. It can't be done, paradoxes being what they are. I would love to explain it to you but you wouldn't understand, I'm afraid," the man twisted and raised one corner of his mouth.

"But I can go back and visit other timelines and prevent you from becoming a superhero as many times as I can. Fortunately for the world – unfortunately for me – there will be other superheroes besides you. At least they're a lot better people than you and deserve a fair fight. Yes, they deserve that. But I don't plan on doing any such thing." The finely dressed figure brought his eyes down upon his dying parent.

Austin was going to slip to the floor in a tangled mess but the man put his arm around him and set Austin on his side, the youngster's head in his lap. "There, there, father, go to sleep. Go to sleep." The future stroked the past's hair as Austin's eyes flickered goodnight. "I'd sing you a lullaby but you never taught me any."

Iron Austin broke and stopped breathing.

The gentleman stood up and made for the doors when they opened at the next stop. He left the teenager 'sleeping' across the two seats, no one the wiser and besides it was too late. After the doors closed and the train pulled away from the station, the child from the future snapped a finger towards another teenage boy who was leaning against a lamppost, smoking a cigarette. His hair was highlighted purple and he wore entirely too much dark eyeliner.

"You! You there," the man called, "Aren't you Kyle Abbott? Wow. Finally, the future Dragon Lantern right before my eyes. Do you know that you, we, are going to be famous some day? I know because I'm from the future. In fact, I'm you from the future. Listen, I can prove it!"

SPACED OUT

"Oooooh," Martellus groaned as he rolled out of bed. He was utterly dormant during the overnight and it appeared to have taken a toll. "My aching joints. It's bad today."

"And how's your head, dear?" Roweena asked from the navigation panel.

Martellus' wife's back was turned to him but he could tell she still looked amazing after all this time. Her bob didn't have a single bright red hair out of place against her chestnut skin. "How do you do that?" the older of the two asked. "You always look so good."

"Precision, dear. You should practice it more often. Perhaps you're not well suited for it, though." She swiveled the chair around to take a gander at her husband, all six-feet-eight, three-hundred and seventy-five pounds of him. "How's your head, dear?"

"A little foggy," Martellus answered. "I might be off to a slow start today." Martellus felt like the circuitry in his head wasn't quite making all the necessary connections.

"That's to be expected," Roweena comforted him, "That was a long space walk before bed. The cosmic radiation exposure can have effects similar to alcohol poisoning from what I understand."

"Well, it's definitely not alcohol poisoning," her spouse informed. Martellus stood up and took a good long stare out the window. The spiral galaxy X-7889 loomed before them. "When did you get up? How long was I asleep?"

"I got up last year, dear. You've been asleep for precisely four-hundred and six years, seven months, nine days..."

"Understood," Martellus waved her off. "What do you recommend?"

Roweena swiveled her chair towards the window and looked at the swirling mass of stars dubbed X-7889 and then back towards her husband again. "In what context, dear?"

"I meant for me, to shake off the cobwebs." Martellus started for their supply cabinet.

"Coffee, the elixir of life. Records indicate that's what they used to say about this liquid stimulant on Earth, correct?" Roween could really sound mechanical sometimes. Martellus didn't like it much but she had so many other good qualities.

"You can finish what you're doing, honey, just remind me how you make the coffee. You always make it so well and I can't recall right now." Martellus took a fat mug from the cupboard along with a few thick aluminum cans and some aerosol spray.

Roweena returned ninety percent of her attention to the navigation controls. "Simple, dear. Exactly three part motor oil to one part WD-40 with a dash of nano-bots. Afterwards, you should probably hardwire yourself to the main frame and give yourself a nice shock to the CPU. And I needn't remind you to back up your memory before you start the rest of your sub-routines. Can you also please update the logs since last year and transmit them back to The Station? Your antenna has a stronger connection than mine. Then you can get started on the life-form prediction algorithms. Oh, and can you double-check the terra-forming experiments since you're up? You might want to take most of today mapping this comet swarm over here, though, and make sure we won't require any course corrections..."

Martellus blew warm air from his fans and he let his titanium chest fall. It was going to be a long day. Ten years, four months, eight days and thirteen hours to be precise.

MANAGING YOUR MONSTERS

"Eeeeee. Grandma, grandma! Come quick," Abagail cried from the black envelope of her bedroom.

A moment later, a stout African-American woman punched the door open with her forearm and flipped the light switch on. Five year old Abagail was sitting upright in bed with her Cloak of Protection pulled up to her chin. She was staring, eyes straining to widen even further, at the closet door which was open just a pinch.

"What's the matter, child? Why you so spooked?" a bespectacled Grandma Darby fired at the child.

Abagail's eyes darted back and forth between her guardian and the dark chamber. "There's a monster in the closet," she eeked out.

"What's it look like?" the aged woman asked without skipping a beat. The child wanted to answer but didn't. "What's it look like? Look like a rat? 'Cause I ain't got no time for no rat."

"Nooooo," Abagail protested. "It was ten feet tall with black fur and black eyes and black teeth and..."

"And you saw this with the lights out?" Grandma Darby questioned as she sized up the eight foot high ceiling.

"Well, kinda." Abagail didn't seem quite sure anymore. Young but not stupid, the child knew what her grandmother was getting at. Abagail realized how difficult it may have been to get a good look at a black creature lurking in the shadows. "Maybe it was shorter, but just a little bit."

"That weren't no monster. That was...Fozzy. Fozzy ain't gonna hurt you," the old woman stated like an antiquated fact.

"How do you know?" Abagail questioned as she lowered the protective cloak a hair. "And why does he have a silly name?"

Grandma Darby smiled at the youngster's naivety. She removed her night cap to reveal creeping grey experiences that sprang in swirls from her cranium. Skootching the pink elephant bedspread aside, she took a seat next to her granddaughter.

"There's a secret to managing your monsters, Abby. What looks like a monster can seem big and scary. Once you know their real name, though, they ain't gonna scare you no more." The clever child was going to interject but the wise woman cut her off. "Even if you don't know their real name, you can give them a name and the sillier the better. Now, they really don't like that but ain't nothin' they can do about it. Once you say it, it sticks with 'em forever."

Abagail kicked this ball around in her head and grandma's explanation seemed sound. "So why do they try to scare us then?" Abagail couldn't figure out.

"Child, monsters are just like people sometimes. They get scared, too, and when they do they try to fight back; makes 'em feel like they're in control of somethin,'" Grandma Darby explained. "But when you take control, when you give 'em a name, when you know who they are, they have no more power over you. Then you become their monster." The old woman pretended her fingers were claws and made clawing motions at Abagail. "Real monsters are tough, Abby. And because they're tough, they don't have to be mean. You can be a monster, too, but don't be a mean one."

Abagail latched onto this idea, that she was a monster, too. She could be – would be – tough, like a real monster. Her confidence soared along with her heart. "I didn't know all that, Grandma. I think I can go back to sleep now."

"Good," Grandma Darby cheered, "I need my sleep, too, or you gonna see a whole different type a' monster in the mornin.' You go to sleep now, child," the hardened combat veteran of monsters ordered. She flicked off the lights.

"Goodnight, Grandma!" Abagail returned all too lucidly. "Goodnight, Fozzy." The child laid flat in bed with the bedspread pulled down to her waist. She stared at the ceiling.

Grandma Darby shuffled down the hallway back to her room, confounded. "The things they don't teach kids no more," she shook her head.

Back in bed, Abagail's eyes drifted past her feet towards the partially opened closet door. "Fozzy? I can't sleep. Do you want to play a game?"

ZEN RIDDLE

Eyes closed in a crossed-leg repose, the elderly monk attuned himself to the sound of steps drawing closer. When the footsteps ceased, there was a plop on the cold, unyeilding, damp floor. A huff of air floated like a balloon up the shrine to the old man's ears. Insecurity filled his wilting half-shells like a tenacious mosquito. With his own breath he asked, "What, young apprentice, is the sound of one hand clapping?"

A bald young man in an orange and yellow robe looked for his answer on the ground. "Master, I have studied this problem. The answer is that the question is not meant to be answered." A bead of sweat formed above his brow.

With eyes still closed, aged, crooked fingers curled like a snake around a long staff. "Incorrect. Now I must hit you with my stick."

"Master, no!" the younger monk petitioned. "I have read the scrolls of the Ancients. There can be no other interpretation!" The bead of sweat from his brow splattered the monastery floor.

"You think you understand the Ancients yet you dishonor them with words. Perhaps the force of my blow will teach you to mind your tongue." The business end of the old man's cane sailed through the air with the force of a man much younger behind it.

"Ow! Master, please!" came a cry for mercy as a blow landed against the student's arm. "If that is not the answer, then what is? Please, guide me," the student's tortured grimace implored deaf eyes.

"You have answered the riddle, yes, but in answering the riddle you have not answered the riddle." The priest returned the stick to his side exactly as before without giving a look.

Settling into his own crossed-leg repose, the orange and yellow robed novice spoke with an air of insight. "I think I see the answer now, master. The answer is silence." His eyes went wide and wild as he gazed upon his own soul.

The senior monk let this man his junior reflect upon this discovery for a moment but no longer. "I am not convinced that you understand. Shall I strike you with this stick once more?" His fingers wrapped around the staff like a thousand times before and he unleashed a second thrashing.

"Master, no! But I understand now. Ow!"

"Go now, young apprentice," the revered – or was it feared – cleric spoke flatly. "The question has tired of hearing your eager tongue."

DEATH OF AN ANTI-HERO

My name is Ernesto Santiago. Although I was born in Fidel Castro's Cuba and escaped to the United States almost twenty years ago, I did not exactly become free. I might as well have been born into captivity. The problem is that I cannot die, not because I have superpowers but because I do not have superpowers.

Three years ago, an unusually dark, previously undetected comet passed perilously close to Earth. At the same time there was some kind of accident – they never were specific about what happened – at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. The unique combination of incidents somehow resulted in everyone on the planet gaining some sort of extraordinary ability. Sorry, not everyone; just everyone except me. I could not believe my bad luck. For years, I thought my good work ethic was what should have set me apart from other people. Instead, I became a freak because of what I was not.

I was able to hide the fact that I didn't have any super human powers for a while, telling people I could stay underwater without breathing for as long as I wanted. No one really bothered to verify this mostly because it wasn't a very exciting superpower for someone who lives deep in the heart of North America, far from bodies of water. Those who were curious would watch me, become bored after a minute or so and not notice me resurface shortly after two minutes which to most people seemed like forever. (Holding your breath for two minutes is decent, though hardly 'super.') Then came the day a lady showed up at the pool with her unusually patient little girl. I don't know if patience is a superpower; maybe it is considering someone's age. The little girl noticed I could not do what I claimed I could do and exposed my inadequacy. I was eventually forced to admit I had no superpowers.

I was poked and prodded by doctors for almost a year before they gave up. They did not understand how this single man on all the planet didn't have a superpower. Even men and women who gained superior intellects couldn't figure it out. When the failure of their intelligence made the news, it made me all the more curious a creature. People started to treat me like an animal in a zoo, something everyone had to see at least once in their life – the man without superpowers.

I became something of a celebrity which I grew tired of quickly, maybe because celebrity did not come with the usual perks, like attractive woman making passes at me for no reason other than being famous. I have never even made money off of my celebrity status; by the time I realized I should be paid for interviews, I had already told people everything they wanted to hear. Eventually, I became the butt of an unusual joke; supervillains came after me and tried to kill me (half-heartedly; they were not very good at it) and it was everyone else's job to save me. Maybe these attempts and subsequent rescues were something of a game to super-people. Still, I had to say 'thank you' in case it was not a game to them though I think people are starting to realize I am not actually thankful.

When I got cancer last year I admit I was a little bit relieved. It gave me an excuse to tell everyone to leave me alone and I could finally live out my days the way I wanted. Naturally, someone with healing powers came along and cured me. They removed the cancer but not the curse and for that I did not thank the healer. Who wants to live as a novelty? I am very, very tired of it. If I cannot be super like everyone else, I would rather die. But they won't let me. I've jumped in front of buses and there is always someone there to save me because I am always being watched. They are always watching me.

Which brings me to today. I am sitting in the office of Dr. Johar, a physician whose superpower is temporarily taking away the powers of other super-people. She never joined the ranks of either heroes or villains and they don't bother to ask her to join them. As a medical doctor who just wants to do her job, both groups leave her alone for obvious reasons. It is probably not a good idea for other people to make her mad. Two days ago when I called to make an appointment to see her, I was told there was a two month wait until her receptionist realized who I was. Dr. Johar even paid for my plane ticket here to New York. Okay, so being a celebrity is not all bad.

"Ernesto?" a young, vibrant nurse calls from an opening door. (I mean 'vibrant' literally. She is glowing with a yellow light.) She shows me to Dr. Johar's office and has me sit before the Indian physician and a large oak desk that commands respect. She has a stack of my medical files in front of her.

"Mr. Santiago," she begins, "I've been taking a look at your medical history. You seem to be in perfect health for a normal human, I suppose...haven't seen one of you in a while as you can imagine." There is curiosity in the dark haired woman's eyes that is distracting her. "What in the world brings you to me?"

I clear my throat. I want her to hear me and understand me. "As you know I am the only person in the world without superpowers. I thought you might help give them to me. You see, I've read about you. I know you can take superpowers away. I thought maybe you could take away my lack of superpowers. I have no reason to think your powers work this way, but if they could, I would be indebted to you for the rest of my life."

She is staring at me with her mouth agape. I do not think she was expecting me to say something like this.

"I..I don't know what to say. I've certainly never tried to give anyone powers before. I'm don't know whether or not that might work. Are you sure that's what you want?" she asks. Is she serious?

A half hour later, after Dr. Johar has done some research, we are sitting face to face in front of a large open window on the thirteenth floor. The view is nice; I can almost see the park on the other side of the skyscraper that is blocking the view. Anyway, she has me close my eyes and I wait in this very comfortable leather wingback chair.

"What am I waiting for?" I ask out of boredom. I'm not sure she can help me. She might be my best chance, though, which I guess is better than no chance.

"I'm trying to take away your...disability. Just breathe deeply, evenly and relax. Don't be afraid," she whispers.

"I am never afraid, doctor," I reply.

A minute goes by. "Do you feel anything?" she whispers again.

Actually I do. I am tingling all over like I am being pricked by a thousand little hot needles. I open my eyes and...holy Mary mother of God, my hand is fading! I am starting to see through it like I am becoming invisible. But wait, why is everything getting dark? "Doctor, I am losing my sight! What's happening?"

"You're turning invisible," she tells me in a heightened Indian accent. "I've heard of this, people going blind when they turn invisible. Since the retina of your eyes cannot detect light now, there are no signals to send to your brain that you are seeing something."

No one ever told me of the downside of having a superpower! I rise out of my chair and spin around in confusion. I bump the chair and it almost falls over. How long am I going to be like this? "Turn it off! Turn it off!"

"Settle down, Mr. Santiago! I will take your power away. Just sit down and be quiet," she orders me. I can hear her breath deeply; she is using her powers again.

There it is, the edge of my seat. And here come the heated pinpricks again. I am going to be okay so I sit back. Only, where is the back of the seat? And why do I feel like I am falling? Ah there it is, my sight is returning. And the doctor's office window is receding – quickly. I think I have fallen out the window. Hmm, why am I not scared? I am about to die after all. Oh well, at least not being scared gives me more time to reflect upon my life. Come to think of it, I've never been scared all those times I tried to kill myself. Oh..oh, I think I have made a grave mistake. I do have a superpower. I have no fear. They never tested me for that! They never tested me fo...

BAD BUSINESS

Click. Click, click.

From the driver's seat of his beat up '76 Duster, Arthur Pope photographed the chairman of his college's Business School, Henry Girard. Girard, a short and stout gremlin of a man, occupied the position coveted by Arthur and Arthur had worked too hard for too long to let that continue. Arthur was handsome and well-regarded by his students, which he imagined consumed Girard with jealousy. Why else would Girard have Arthur's classes cut and lasso him into substituting for an ailing professor whose mundane subject everyone hated?

Arthur slumped below the wheel as Girard shuffled towards his Lexus a few cars up the street. Once Girard was gone, Arthur looked back at the house Girard exited to see Hillary standing in the doorway, staring back at him. She nodded toward Arthur, then slipped back inside, winding like a snake. Arthur reached into his glove compartment and dug out the phone Girard was always carelessly leaving around. He called Hillary.

"Well?" Arthur asked.

"We have what we came for," she answered.

"Took you a while. You didn't, you know..."

"No. I'm saving myself for the right guy, remember? Are you the right guy, Mr. Arthur Poop?"

Poop, that's clever, he thought. He hated those few times she was juvenile.

"It's Pope. And I told you to use his name when I called you from his cell." Arthur rolled his eyes when he realized what he'd just done. "You could have at least used my pet name," he smiled sardonically into the phone.

"Right, Poppy" she drawled. "Which one of us is the one with issues again?"

Although Hillary was much younger than Arthur, the guilt only bothered him for a fleeting moment. Be it lust or love, his desire for her crushed whatever guilt he harbored. Yes, she was young – Hillary had made her way into college two years early – but she was smarter and usually more mature than any other student he'd ever had. Being smart and mature sometime equaled crafty and his would-be lover certainly was that. That's why he wanted her on his side. Perhaps then it was neither lust nor love. Perhaps it was fear. Whichever way, she excited him.

"Are you sure you want to go ahead with this?" he asked her.

She raised the pitch of her voice. "I just turned eighteen years old, too naïve to reject the subtle advances of a suave, older gentleman with a knack for...business. I'm an innocent victim."

That goddamn innocent tone of hers. Goddamn me if I ever get on her bad side, Arthur thought.

"Honestly, doesn't this make you feel a little like Batman and Robin?" Hillary excitedly started in again.

Arthur made a face. "What are you talking about? They were both guys."

"Sure," Hillary answered. "You've got Batman, a man who dresses up in a cape and cowl who recruits an underage boy to help him fight crime whom he dresses in, you guessed it, a cape and cowl. No sexual tension there," she giggled.

While Arthur largely refrained from thinking his relationship with Hillary was inappropriate — after all, he'd done nothing more than kiss her — it flustered him to have it spoken aloud.

"We're not fighting crime," Arthur replied after a few moments.

"Batman and Robin didn't really fight crime, either. The villains they fought kept conveniently escaping prison so they could fight all over again. Think about that. Anyway, have you seen Henry Girard up-close? It's criminal. And he has the nerve to exchange grades for favors...all those poor girls," she trailed off in disbelief.

"I would never do that," Arthur assured her.

"I know, Poppy," Hillary cooed. "You'll just do it for the favors"

This is wrong, floated through Arthur's head. But he wanted to be the chairman of the Business School, so he ignored the idea best he could. After all, wasn't their affair or whatever it was the lesser of two evils? Arthur decided what they were doing was business and he was teaching Hillary a valuable lesson; that to be successful in business, sometimes you have to go around the law.

That's wrong, too, passed between Arthur's ears next. And when all of this went south, Arthur knew he'd be the one of them to take the fall. He realized then it was really Hillary who was teaching him the lesson, that you're always a student. You're always a student and if you don't prepare for tests, you're going to fail horribly, utterly, in a flaming old Duster, burnt by a little red Corvette.

BREAKING THE CYCLE

Black. Sheer blackness. An utter void across all space and time. Or, is it void of time and space? Heaven? Hell? Nirvana possibly? Zahir could tell none of these things apart. These things didn't exist here, wherever here was, if here were even here. Here has no top, no bottom; space is irrelevant. There is only himself, his hands before him as seen by the light of some invisible candle.

I am, Zahir says. 'I am' is all. Each step is futile. Is it a step forward? A step back? Stepping into the black brings nothing but more eternal darkness. So Zahir thinks less of the darkness and more of himself. Less about the external and more about the internal. He can feel something – dampness – plastered to the side of his head. Zahir touches it with his fingertips. The dampness is like glue, holding onto a state somewhere between liquid and solid. Without inspecting his fingers, he knows it is blood. But it is blood that isn't liquid it seems. Nor has it dried and crusted. The blood is indeterminate like this un-place.

Calmer because he feels no pain from the injury (is it even his blood?) Zahir compares the blood to his whereabouts. I have space and I have time, Zahir acknowledges from the inside out. Space and time come from within. I am the place and time in a place without space or time, he now realizes.

Aware that he is in a place between worlds comes the gleaming of a distant star; faint but undeniable – like life? Zahir sets foot in direction of the white pinprick. It grows closer but not because it is there in this place of unplaces, but because his soul is getting clearer. Meanwhile his hands are getting fainter. Zahir understands it does not matter how long it takes to reach the star because 'how long' means nothing. With each small realization, the sparkling little light grows larger and comes into focus. Eventually it is understood that the star is not a star.

It is not a star but it is still a guide. It is a pale hairless man, beyond albino, set upon an invisible perch. The figure mimics Rodin's The Thinker except that it is holding a small mirrored ball. No, Zahir sees, it is a snow globe of sorts. The snowflakes, the snowflakes, Zahir is mesmerized, they are the moments of my life. As if the bleached man heard his thoughts, the figure turns its head towards Zahir. It eyes pop open; they are oiled black. It gives a mischievous smile, turns the basket of its hand upside down and lets the ball go.

Zahir lunges forward with his disappearing hands in an effort to catch his life in a bottle. But a reach across timelessness is never quite quick enough. The glassy sphere strikes some unseen bulwark and gives. It shatters into a million irregular shards that will be impossible to reassemble. When the echo of the globe's crash meets Zahir's infinite cry of protest, nowhere goes to light. The albino turns black. The man/demi-god points at the splinters.

"Choose." It is not a request from the thing's shaded lips.

This feels familiar to Zahir but this is not the time or place for a mistake. "I don't understand," he says to the opaque-eyed stranger.

"Yes, you do." The being stands up. It is three feet taller than Zahir before Zahir remembers such a thing is impossible right now. As Zahir thinks this, the stranger extends an arm and waves a hand over the small, sharpened remains that were once Zahir's life. "Choose."

"I've done this before?" Zahir asks but receives no answer. But he knows the answer, an answer he could only possibly know in this realm between realities. Again, this all feels familiar, the kind of familiar that comes with repetition. A lump forms in Zahir's throat. "How many times?" he asks the tonsured black man anew to the previous effect.

He looks at each splinter. There he is as a young schoolboy who is letting his friends goad him into setting off a firework in the boy's bathroom. He was reprimanded with five days of detention and not allowed to participate in the science fair he so badly wanted to win. At his feet is the time he was eleven and throwing such a fit that his father stops trying to teach his son to get over his fear of the water and swim. Zahir's sister drowned later that summer when they were alone at the lake. Could he have saved her? Over there he is a teenager taking Dad's car out by himself for the first time. Zahir and his girlfriend have unprotected sex in the backseat. The shard of glass immediately beside that one shows the couple arguing as they worry about a possible pregnancy. They fight so much they break up after they learn she's not pregnant. Turning around, Zahir sees the instant he chose to go to college at Berkeley and not Stanford. The consequences are unknown to Zahir. Set in plain sight before him is the moment he gets into a bar fight, tired of being insulted for being Arab. He is struck with utter violence in the head with a pool stick.

"How many times?" Zahir asks once more, insistently.

"Many, many times," comes a reply.

"Why must I choose?"

"This is the cycle of life, death, and rebirth," the figure explains in monotone.

Zahir looks at all the memories. What is the point of choosing one of these moments? He has done this before and this is still his life? There is no noticeable improvement in Zahir's mind. It appears futile to re-experience the same life over and over again but with a subtle change here or there? Is this cycle never ending? It would be evil if forced to choose. It would take an infinite eternity to decide. Zahir does not want the choices before him.

"Choose," the thing speaks again. This time it is the adversary who is insistent. "You cannot choose not to choose."

Zahir's hand is forced. How does one decide? What factors figure into making one choice any better than another? "I have chosen," Zahir says after a thousand years.

The hairless black figure with white eyes recedes into the blankness that surrounds them. "Choose carefully."

"I choose...I choose this," Zahir says pointing to the fragment of glass that puts him in the bar fight that subsequently got him man-slaughtered, his last memory before all...this.

"Wise," an expressionless and ethereal voice utters. "The cycle is broken."

Zahir feels himself pulled apart piece by piece, atom by atom. It is a painless process, or at least so much less painful than life. Once the last bit is gone – mind, body and soul completely erased – Zahir is reassembled not over the span of eons but as the span of eons. He is reassembled as a beacon, a light, a guide in the infinite and timeless blankness and blackness of nothingness. Zahir is no longer happy or sad. He is free of such things. And so he waits for the next traveler, though waiting is not an apt description where 'waiting' has no meaning.

When migrants are stumble upon him, Zahir fulfils his duty; put their life in a bottle, smash it and show them the remains. Tell them to choose. Perhaps someday they too will understand the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Zahir is ready to guide. There is a wanderer lost in the void. He puts the beacon out. A fresh soul arrives, trembling. Taking the soul's entire life in a capsule, there is a shattering. Zahir lays out the choices for the wanderer.

"I've decided," a young light-skinned man eventually says, shaking nervously. The man's heart, if actually beating, would burst out of his chest. The man's soul is new and naïve. This is an unfamiliar situation for the newcomer. He wants to live! That determination will influence his choice. "I've decided," he says again. "This one, the moment I hit that man with the pool stick. I'm so sorry. So, so sorry. I want to make that choice over again."

Zahir nods. It will be done. Fledgling souls make the most predictable choices.

OUT OF TIME

The tunnel of light is receding. Black fading into shadows. Shadows fading to smatterings of low light. Ba...bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum, ba-bum. My heart rate is picking up? My chest feels like a cascade of warm water running towards my head. My clothes are sticky but now they're drying. My neck, my throat; feels like someone ran a fan of razor blades across it, yet it feels better and better with each passing moment. My vision is clearing while every cell of my body is coursing with electricity. Fight? Take flight? I can do neither. I'm on my back. Not enough oxygen to feed my muscles.

Something draws a wide paw away from me at lightning speed and I fly off the ground to my feet. My heart jumps from my stomach back to my chest where it belongs and I'm not shaking as violently as I was just an instant ago. My legs are too weak; was I just thinking of running? I can't outrun this thing. It's a wolf-beast seven foot tall. Is this really happening? I can see its muscles rippling beneath the dried splotches of blood matting its coat. It's primed to do something terrible. But I'm alive. Should I be thankful? It seems like it wants to hurt me, but it hasn't. Instead it's given me back my life. But it smells of decay; pungent and humid. It smells like death clings to its every fiber. The smell is going away now. It's almost gone. I can think more clearly now.

"What are you?" I ask, barely able to string the words together without cracking. "Why did you save me?" I ask it down in these torch lit catacombs. Shadows wrestle with strips of light across the cobbled stone wall. I never appreciated the dance before. Or want to again.

"Sssaave you? I didn't sssave you," the wolf-thing's glossy tongue slithers. Saliva drips from the blackened lips below its razor sharp teeth. "I want you to know what'sss coming. I want you to know who the darkness belongsss to." The monster lifts a ragged, furry hand towards the watch on my wrist, its glass cracked and splintered but still keeping time. Something's not quite right with it, though. The wicked canine points the tip of a jagged claw at the watch and imitates the timepiece's second hand. The beast is tracing the tick-tocks backwards. The second hand of my watch moves ever slower as it winds counterclockwise. That's not supposed to happen. Slower, slower; it's just about to stop.

"I want you to know exactly what'sss about to happen," the creature says. This yellow-eyed monstrosity of the animal world; the corners of its upper lip lift. Its teeth look like a bear trap. It gives me a leer postmarked from Hell. "My scent; it hasss a way of letting you...sssee the future. The anticipation will make your heart pump more blood to your tisssuesss and make you tassste more sssweet." Oh, geez, there's that sickening smell again. The serrated claws of its mitt draws back. Terror makes your senses sharper. I can hear the second hand of my watch roll forward, clockwise.

"I've found that any uncertainty sssurrounding death makesss the human body – sssour – to the palate," I'm informed. Oh, god. No. No, no, no. This isn't happening.

I feel like the beast's malevolence is going to slash me to pieces. No, I know that it will. Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum! I can feel my heartbeat in my head. Run? I can't outrun this foul smelling thing. I can't outrun the future either. My legs weaken at the thought I can't get away. My soul falls into my stomach. Its clawed fingers are a blur. I fly off the ground and the oxygen in my lungs leaves me like an express train as I slam against the ground.

My every nerve feels like an exposed wire in a bucket of water. Pain, stinging, burning, numbness, tingling – all at once. I should run. Can't run. I should fight. Can't fight. Can't move. Blood is coursing through me from the alarm but there's no oxygen. My vision is blurring. Now I feel it, my shredded windpipe. It feels like someone sliced it open poured hot coals down my throat. And my clothes, they feel tacky. It's so warm; a sea of roses flows down my chest. My heart, my internal clock; it's winding down and coming to a stop. Ba-bum, ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba...bum. The smattering of low lights fade to shadows and shadows fade to black. Fade to black. A tunnel of light opens up before me. I'm going under.

HUMAN BEANS

Colonel Byrd swallowed his own Adam's apple as he returned his crow-cracked eyes to the menacing space-centipedes towering over him. On this cool November morning, 2021, black-and-tan insects from another world, sporting a thousand stubby legs each, had just evaporated several tanks with laser beams from their hundred dark, marbled eyes. The combination of melted steel and burning flesh flooded the veteran's nose and churned the officer's breakfast burrito almost inside out. Pull it together, man, the colonel told himself, What did you expect from aliens capable of interstellar travel? The officer stood almost alone as the civilians dotting the perimeter of the White House lawn had fled in terror. A few children, too inexperienced to realize they should run away, remained in the wake of their cowardly parents.

"I suppose you would like to talk to our leader?" the army veteran almost gagged as he plumbed the depths of his coat pocket for his smartphone.

The two longest and tallest aliens swung their heads towards each other then back at the colonel. "Does your leader have beans?" asked a voice that sounded like crunching, broken glass.

The officer withdrew his hand from his coat pocket and scratched his forehead, tilting his green, starched hat backwards. "Beans? You mean like the things you eat? Um, no, our leader doesn't have anything like that," Colonel Byrd's lips curled. The space-arthropod nearest the colonel lowered its lengthy body towards the veteran and parted its sharp mandibles.

"What I meant to say is that 'yes' we have beans. It's just that our leader doesn't eat them," the veteran spoke to save himself.

This caused a quiet stir among the fantastically large centipedes from space. The gathering of alien insects raised themselves high in the air and swiveled their heads back and forth at each other, their murmurings like nails etching glass. The monstrous arthropod menacing the colonel just a moment ago lowered itself towards the man again.

"What kind of a leader does not eat beans?" the creature asked. The veteran was about to answer when another, smaller alien interrupted.

"It does not matter, little hairless monkey. What kind of beans do you have? We are particularly fond of cocoa beans. Give us all of them," it ordered.

An educated man, the senior officer knew these to be among the most valuable beans in all the world, for you cannot make chocolate without them! Giving the aliens all the cocoa beans, well, that was asking a lot, especially at the onset of winter when hot chocolate is so popular. But there was the matter of extraterrestrials' death-ray eyes. The liquefied army tanks looked like olive sludge, vaguely like pieces of chocolate left out in the sun too long. Surely this was just a hint of the aliens' power. The colonel fumbled for his phone again.

"Um, you see...Bear with me a moment. I need to speak to our leader." The officer raised and waved a hand around, signaling everyone to remain calm while he brought the phone to his lips. A ding followed. "President Siri, what should humanity do when dangerous aliens ask for all of our cocoa beans?"

A digitized, Australian female voice replied quickly. "Okay, here's what I found." The colonel immediately tapped the first webpage result on his smartphone. He read as quickly as he could.

According to the Geneva Referendum on Possible Alien Contact, it was concluded that threatening aliens displaying superior technology and firepower should be complied with in order to minimize human casualties... It was going to be a hard sell but Colonel Byrd really had no choice. He put both hands in the air.

"Okay, okay. I have the authority to comply with your wishes. We will give you all our cocoa beans." Though he may have just saved humanity, the veteran knew he'd just made himself over seven billion enemies.

"Good, good," the closest slinky extraterrestrial said removing itself from the colonel's personal space. But no sooner had it retreated than whipped its body back at the leader. "And do you have coffee beans?"

Were they toying with the man? Given their ability to traverse interstellar space and shoot lasers out of their eyes, they were cruel, too? Knowing he'd probably never make it off the White House lawn, the colonel stammered.

"Well, hmmm, I don't really know what those are. I'll, uh, have to ask around..." The veteran ran his fingers around his shirt collar. It sure was getting hot in the November sun.

"Are you sure you don't know what those are?" the space-arthropod slurred at the O6.

No matter how he answered, Colonel Byrd figured he was a dead man. He raised his smartphone back to his lips and spoke softly. "Siri; chances are I'll survive lying to dangerous extraterrestrials and see my family again?"

"Based upon a stress analysis of your voice, there is a high probability the knowledgeable and dangerous extraterrestrials will figure out that you are lying. It is reasonable to assume that any visitors from space have studied human behavior before arriving here on Earth," Siri answered.

The officer figured there was no use in lying. He looked up from his phone and threw his arm around in a semi-circle. "Yes, oh great and formidable space insects! We have coffee beans, too. In fact, we have all kinds of beans. Soy beans, black beans, pinto beans..."

"Good! We will kill you all slowly for your cooperation," boomed one of the god-sized arthropods. Green, slimy saliva coated its sharp teeth as it gnashed them together in anticipation. "This is wonderful, we would simply die if we ate anything that was not a bean!" The broken glassy voice could be heard far afield. The congregation of aliens writhed in victory, dancing like black-and-tan snakes around their silver plate of a flying saucer.

"Mister space alien?" a little African-American girl spoke from beside the colonel. "Do you like beans?" she offered the creepy-crawly beside the officer. Her deep brown eyes were wide with wonder as she held up a white box against her pink down jacket.

The gigantic space centipede nearby leveled its black marbled eyes upon the child before Colonel Byrd, clenching his teeth sideways, could hide the girl behind him.

"Yes, little thing incapable of traversing galaxies. We love beans, as I have said," the creature mocked as its eyes began to glow red.

The little girl held up the white box from behind the veteran's back, generous to the oppressors. "Have you ever had jelly beans? They're really good."

Colonel Byrd spun around, dropped to one knee and brought his index finger to the girl's mouth. He shook his head adamantly. "No, don't say that!" he ordered as gently but firmly as possible.

"Move, small balding monkey!" the black-and-tan arthropod champed. It brought its tail around and swiped the veteran right. The officer tumbled safely enough but his dress greens were soiled with dirt and grass stains. The colossal bug snatched the white box from the babe with its two front pincers and launched the box high into the air, throwing the multicolored jelly beans far and wide.

The threatening centipede's eyes lost their glow and seemed to gloss over in delight. "So many colors! We have never seen or tasted such delights." The multitude of space insects slithered in various directions and caught the jelly beans in their gullets as easily as popcorn. "So, mmm, so delicious! You have more?" the thing demanded more than asked in its voice of crunching glass.

But then the extraterrestrials shuddered along the length of their bodies. Their thousand arms wriggled uncontrollably. They whipped their long, segmented selves to and fro, looking to accompany Colonel Byrd's breakfast burrito.

"Commander Primea One Dash One Zero," one arthropod's jaws chittered, "I do not think these are real beans!"

Scores of intimidating, super-sized centipedes fell like heavy ropes upon the ground, their midsections exploding in the bright hues of the jelly beans they had swallowed. Colonel Byrd instinctually had tackled and embraced the little girl to protect her from the spewing guts of the extraterrestrials. His uniform was utterly ruined now.

"I don't think they liked them," the little girl seemed low and apologetic in tone. Then a glint of sun bouncing off the aliens' spacecraft caught her eye and she forgot everything. Her pupils narrowed and she lifted her head up. "Can we play on the flying saucer?" she asked the putrid-covered officer.

"Yes, yes we can," Colonel Byrd nodded. "You can do anything you want as long as you're always nice to people." The veteran stood up, took the hand of the world's next great leader and walked away victorious under the sun.

JOE, THE NEW GOD

Mormons are not psychic. I know this because I asked one of them some time ago and she said she wasn't. Assuming Mormon don't lie – I mean, the threat of eternal damnation being what it is and all – then it should be true that Mormons are not psychic. This must be why they keep coming to the door; they don't know that I can't be converted to their religion no matter how good their news is. Of course, whether news is good or not is largely dependent upon one's perspective.

Despite being stalked by Mormons, all things considered they are mostly harmless. (Gotta try and take that whole perspective thing into account.) But yesterday I become annoyed when I peeked through my window blinds to catch them in the grassy knoll across the street spying on me. (So much for perspective.) Knowing I was home and strangely undeterred by Spinal Tap turned up to 11, they eventually pounded on my door. "Like God in your heart, we know you're in there," they yelled.

Yep, it was just me, a vengeful God in my heart and my baseball bat. Eventually they gave up and went away, along with the potential murder charges. But I knew they were going to be back. Why isn't there a 'do-not-call' list for religious zealots like there is for telemarketers? There had to be someone – a priest, a rabbi, a cleric, Satan – I could write to. Might as well go right to the top.

Dear God, I am writing to you concerning the company you keep. In the past month alone, I've been visited by Mormons soliciting on your behalf five times. As you know (and you know everything, right?) I have my own religious (read: spiritual) convictions that are far beyond the ability of my fellow humans to understand. Seriously, anyone trying to figure out my religious orientation should pop a bottle of Xanax first. But this is beside the point; I have better things to do with my time than decline the advances of philosophically-challenged Mormons. I am a very busy person who does not have time to put up with vacuum salesmen trying to sell me something that sucks.

I am particularly offended by the second to last pair of Mormons you sent to my door, a couple of very attractive young women, presumably virgins. Although I have not been in a relationship for six months now, I quickly saw through this ruse. You must think I'm stupid or horny. I suppose being horny can lead to stupidity sometimes...Anyway, it is a sad day when a deity as powerful as yourself finds themselves resorting to such juvenile tactics.

In the future, please refrain from sending any more of your emissaries, prophets or advocates for the missionary position to my door. Instead, please direct such personnel to my neighbor's house whose dogs bark incessantly at three in the morning. There's a good chance you're going to meet those people before you ever meet me. Sincerely, Joe.

It's more than a week later and as it turns out, the letter was returned due to insufficient postage. Fortunately, I was happening by a church the other day and remembered that there's usually a good bit of money in the tithing basket. So I switched the money in the basket for Monopoly money. (I know people are not so stupid as to mistake real money for Monopoly money, so I only used the green Monopoly dollars which probably bought me just enough time to make my escape. And, yes, I actually do keep Monopoly money in my back pocket. I happen by churches all the time.) Off the letter went. How long it takes to get to where it's going, who knows. The universe is a big place; the letter probably should have gone air mail at the very least.

Now it's several years later and Mormons have learned not to knock on my door without protective gear. They are tenacious, I'll give 'em that. But while I usually admire such persistence, even my patience has its limits. Clutching a shotgun while ordering a wooden rocking chair on Amazon, a letter is slipped under my door. Oh, look, it's a letter from...the Council of Answers? Who the?

Dear Joe: Tenant of Earth; We, the Council of Answers, regret to inform you that God has taken the day off to attend to personal matters (i.e. 'that time of the month'). Please note that a day in God's time is equal to six million years so that you are not expecting a personal response any time soon. For future reference, for speedier service, you may attempt to email God directly at god@theuniverse.org. Until such time God does return to the office or return correspondence, we, the Council of Answers, will attempt to address your concerns.

Unfortunately, there is no precedent for the situation such as you have described it. In fact, much has changed on you planet within just the past few minutes, our time. This is to say that from our perspective, 7,000 Earth years have passed so it was unknown to us what Mormons or Xanax were until we decoded your unnecessarily complicated language. Normally we, the Council of Answers, would consult God for assistance but God, in her blind fury, told us not to call for any reason. Being fearful of losing our jobs in the midst of the cosmic recession, we, the Council of Answers, will try to solve your problem ourselves.

Again, unfortunately – you'd be surprised by the amount of misfortune in the universe – a resolution to your situation will unlikely come in your lifetime. We, the Council of Answers, do realize this may be inconvenient for you so we, the Council of Answers, will attempt to expedite your case. You will hopefully hear from us before you are interned (as you alluded to murder most foul). However, this is a best case scenario. You should probably not expect to hear from us before your die of old age as unprecedented cases take time to discuss. Thank you for your patience, The Council of Answers.

Their reply wasn't quite what I was expecting. So I wrote another letter that I sent by space-mail for speediest results.

Dear Council of Answers, Thank you for your timely response. (Sarcasm font required.) I have taken your position into account and have come to a decision on my own in order to expedite my case. I hope you find my solution satisfactory.

Seeing how God has taken leave at a most inconvenient time, my friends and I (read: I) have taken the liberty of appointing me He Who Is, at least as far as Earth is concerned. As I become familiar with my new role I do intend to expand my operations to the rest of my solar system and eventually the Milky Way galaxy. As this undertaking is voluntary on my part, I will seek no monetary compensation for my appointment until the current cosmic recession has eased. Hope this helps.

Please be sure to reflect this change in command in your records. Let the record show that all Mormons have been blinked out of existence effectively immediately so that you no longer need concern yourselves with what a Mormon is.

In the interest of transparency, I will keep your office updated on a regular basis as I make progress. Kindly remember that for the remainder of the time God is out of the office, I am (at least) one of your bosses and this boss has a thing for smiting. Or is it smoting? I proclaim it 'smoting.' See, I'm making improvements already. Have a nice day. Sincerely, John, Executive Deity of Earth and Eventually the Milky Way.

They wrote back post haste.

Dear Executive Director of Earth, We, the Council of Answers, have taken a few seconds to suspend all other matters in order to focus upon this unexpected, unprecedented turn of events. As it stands, no sentient being has ever challenged the right to any of God's domains. Upon review of the legalities, it is perfectly within your right to do so though who would have expected this from such a young species. You have our undivided attention...

Apparently they were unaware of the many people claiming to be God or some such over the centuries. However, maybe I am the first to file official notice.

...Be that as it may, we, the Council of Answers, would like to propose the following – If you are willing to guarantee us economic security through the entirety of existence of the universe, we, the Council of Answers, will represent you in a court of universal law and argue that you be appointed God of Everything.

This would require a strong commitment on your behalf. If you waiver at any point in this process of election or in your subsequent duties, we, the Council of Answers, will in all likelihood be literally terminated. Though not entirely comfortable with this idea, morale is down in the office seeing how God is tremendously difficult to work for. It is our suspicion that you could be no worse an employer.

For your consideration, it should be known that God has never lost a case and has been known to cast an opponent or two into a lake of fire. But, if we hold proceedings today – seeing how this office is responsible for scheduling such cases – God may not show up for the hearing and you would win by default. Seeing how we, the Council of Answers, cannot contact God right now...we believe you get the picture. Though this is admittedly underhanded of us, desperate times require desperate measures as you humans sometimes say. We, the Council of Answers also admit we find this very amusing. Anxiously awaiting your reply, The Council of Answers.

This turn of events sure would solve a lot of my problems. And with that thought, I'm whisked away by teleportation to the latter half of an episode of Law and Order.

...

The Council is happy to see me in Universal Court but I'm sad I did not get the chance to say goodbye to my family and friends. I figure once I were God, though, I could make it up to them with some expensive cars. After all, that's what my wife went in for after she dumped me.

The trial itself is a non-event. We wait and wait for God, but as the Council of Answers predicted, She never shows up. As they also predicted, I win the case by default, thus awarded the right to rule the entire universe. Sure, its a hollow victory but I'll take it. My new appointment makes the speckled pinpoints of white plasma that are the Council of Answers beam with satisfaction.

The little buggers are eager to get me back to my office which they assured me is only a few minutes away. As we leave the courthouse, I notice its shaped like a skyscraper-tall pear to which I ask a Councilman (?), "Um, why is the Universal Courthouse shaped like a pear?"

"Why do you think, God?" an androgynous voice comes back.

"To remind us that the laws of the universe are imperfect?" I answer.

"Whatever you say. The word of God is infallible. Time to change the books, lads!" A few Council members grumble but not overly so since their jobs are now secure.

We approach a remarkably tall, green and glossy glass building that I can't help but noticed may be shaped like a stalk of asparagus. I say 'may' because the building is so tall I cannot really not see the top.

"Let me guess, we're on the top floor and there's no elevator," I gripe.

A different Councilmember comes forward. "Actually, we're on the 82nd floor, sir. It is sufficiently high enough for you to see everything you need to see from there. But really, it's all perception. With you brain being only slightly evolved, we're easing you into your new surroundings. As you gain experience here, your perceptions will perceive more of the true reality that surrounds you."

"Elliot," I feel like calling it, "Am I perceiving your true reality right now?"

"No, sir. We, the Coun..."

"Stop!" I order. "No more of this 'We, the Council of Answers' nonsense you keep spewing. It's too time consuming. Henceforth you are Elliot and the rest of the Council are the 'CA.' Now let's get some work done."

"Yes, sir," Elliot obeys solemnly.

"By the way, Elliot, what exactly do we do?"

When the elevator door opens on the 82nd floor (I had to 'make' an elevator), I feel a wave of heat seer my face, as if I'd walked into a blast furnace. I wave my hand and the temperature cools to a sensible 75 degrees. "Who the hell exists at this temperature?" I demand to know.

"You'd be surprised," Elliot answers.

The office is otherwise bleak and dreary; the fake wood paneling so old it has petrified. So unimaginative, no wonder humans only come in two genders.

"Elliot, why don't you and the boys redecorate the office. Go crazy. Just liven this place up a little bit."

Elliot stops in its tracks (if that phrase applies to a blinkling of light. "Don't tease us, your majesty. We've been oppressed for 14 billion years."

"I'm not kidding," I assure Elliot. "Do you guys even have health care?"

God's office is the worst bit of the office; long, narrow and olive drab with a single square window. But as I look out the window, I can indeed see a great deal. I mean, I can see the Gwandagoobs all the way in the Flablagemagob sector. It's pretty neat, which is more than I can say for God's desk. It's more like a drafting table with a smattering of disorganized papers.

I flip through them. Well, that figures; the dinosaurs were God's pet project, not humans. Looking at all the drawings it seems that God really liked dinosaurs. In fact, she was going to make a larger, entirely new planet for them but a misplaced comet wiped them all out. These other schematics show a new comet headed towards Earth, presumably so God could wipe the slate clean and start over again. Oh well. You take the day off and next thing you know, you're fired. I nudge the comet a few million miles off in another direction.

Time to put my feet up on the desk as I kick back in an imaginary chair. Except here comes Elliot. I know its got something to say but I strike first. "Elliot, what's on the other floors?"

"Other universes, God." Elliot doesn't have eyes, but I imagine him rolling them at me. "Being that there are infinite possibilities, there are multiple universe in which all those possibilities play out. In some universes you've been God for a while. In others you don't exist at all. Interestingly, there is a top floor, metaphysically speaking. But neither of us will ever know what goes on at that level."

"Are you tellin' me that even though I'm freakin' God, I ain't da ultimate reality?" I say in my best Mafioso.

"No, sir." Elliot seems happy to say that. "You have mail, God!"

I scan my thoughts. Yes, there is lots of mail, mostly from Earth. Wow, people are needy. "Elliot, are other beings in the universe doing as well as humans?"

Elliot laughs, loudly. "You must be joking, sir. By the looks of the memories we've acquired from you, humans would be the laughing stock of the universe."

I tap an imaginary pen on the desk. "Effectively immediately, the universe is on Earth time. I'm spending the rest of the day getting these nutters back on track. I'm putting you in charge of everything else until I'm done." Elliot is unresponsive. "Yeah, yes, I'll give you a raise. Now beat it."

"Huzzah!" Elliot whoops as it makes and arc and leaves my office. Elliot is barking orders before its even ten feet from my door.

Time to get this mail answered. How much aspirin is answering human prayers going to take?

...

"Dear God, I've recently learned that there is no Santa Claus. What's next, no God?" – Virginia

"Dear Virginia, thank you for your important question. Before I begin, it should be noted that your question is more of a non-question until the definition of God is settled upon first. And in what sense are you asking if God exists? It's one thing to imagine God as someone with human qualities and another to describe God as something that can't be described. First, if God were conceptualized as being the perfect person, well, that we almost actually imagine. But now imagine aliens come to Earth and they are just like this perfect person but are even better at everything that that perfect person you knew. Does that make them gods? Maybe, but imagine that after these aliens come, other aliens come who are even better than them! Hopefully you see where this is going. Second, if you can't describe God, then God might as well not exist. That is, it's moot to ponder God's existences without some sort of concept in mind. You might as well say 'anti-zeroes exist' because you'd be saying the same thing. Moreover, if you're simply going to conceptualize God as something that cannot be comprehended, the point is again moot as you'd never know anything about God, including God's existence. On both fronts, the existence of God seems unlikely or perhaps irrelevant. It is unlikely that most people really want to know if God exists because if they did know, it sure would undermine their particular beliefs. (Believe me, I was surprised when I found out God exists, too. Or do I?) What if it turned out God exists but in a manner no one had thought of yet? The frail human ego couldn't take it. And, some dishonest tool would come along and say they knew it all along and lead people astray, not that they aren't already astray...I digress. Whether God exists or not isn't really important because believe me, none of you have it right and there are plenty of people being good despite their mistaken beliefs. So just be a good person for its own sake. Be a local god. You have my permission. Sincerely, God."

...

When Elliot first told me I had mail, I instinctually knew most of it would be from Earth. Busy deciding whether to answer all these ridiculous prayer requests – e.g. I pray, God, that you make him fall deeply in love with me (he's got three priors and she knows it); Please, please, please God don't let my phone battery die before I answer this text! (their friend asked 'wa sup?') – Elliot brings me a case of anti-diarrhea medicine so I don't have to waste time ordering it online. The questions these kids ask!

...

"Dear God, I've heard you're perfect. Perfectly good? Perfectly beautiful? If you're perfect, why did you make imperfect people?" – Alice

"Dear Alice, sorry, you heard wrong. Nothing is perfect, well, besides chocolate. And bacon. Wait, can chocolate and bacon both be perfect? How can two thing both have everything required to be perfect? Maybe they are perfect for what they are. More likely is the fact that the concept of perfection – imagined by imperfect people (as you noted) – is itself imperfect. But if I were completely perfect, that would mean I'm either equally good and evil or without good or evil altogether. (Some people say I can be both good and evil but I always choose to do good, which would actually make me amoral if I would never 'choose' to do evil.) In the case I'm perfectly good, there would have to be something equally evil in the universe to keep a perfect universe in balance. Perhaps cauliflower qualifies in that respect. Anyway, I cannot take the blame for imperfect people. I didn't make them nor did I invent taxes. If any living thing were ever close to being perfect, it was the dinosaurs. They were around much longer than human beings. Come to think of it, plants have been around even longer. Alice, don't worry about perfection; the word isn't even spelled correctly if you must know. Food for thought, kiddo. Signed, God."

Taking a moment from all the mail filling my head, I noticed I no longer blinked. I didn't need to anymore as my being merged with the cosmos. I am one and one is all. I could sit here and take in a cup of coffee or I could simply be the cup of coffee. That, I assure you, is free of any taste, though. Whoever thought of dividing things from each other in the universe sure expanded the scope of experiences for everyone. That said, I'm going to try to hang onto my physical self a little longer for sentimental reasons. Hmm, I wonder if that's a relevant thought...Ugh, back to the mail.

"Dear God, what's the worst book you ever read?" – Riff

"Dear Riff, these days I don't read books. I am books, sometimes anyway; it's a process. But before I completely merge with everything in the universe, I would have to say Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard. The stupidity there goes right off the e-meter. I mean, the explanation why an adult might be afraid of a dog is because a dog bit them as a child? That's that book's idea of a revelation. The book also drags one unknowingly towards a belief in a galactic space ruler, which I assure you predates the author's (cough cough) science fiction publications. I wish I could say I'm making this up, but human beings have cornered the market on insanity for quite some time now. If you'd like to read something for the articles, try Playboy magazine. No, seriously, you have to since they don't picture nude women anymore. Have a great day. Signed, God."

...

For days now I've been ignoring prayers and answering questions from Earth. I've come to realize though that I can only answer with the knowledge I possess as a single universe's god. Is it possible I could possess even more knowledge and provide better answers? As a god, I knew the answer to be 'yes.'

As if on cue, Elliot walks into the office with what looks like a stack of legislation to be signed into law. But now that I've become accustomed to the fundamental energies of the universe, I can tell the little floating blob of light is hiding something. Ah, the crafty little buggah.

"Elliot, if you thought you should hold the office of God, why didn't you just say so?" I ask him/her/whatever. "It seems you've been doing a good job running the universe since I've been preoccupied. Heck, you even ran things when the previous God took the day off and look how that turned out."

"Indeed, sir," it remarked dryly, seemingly not surprised to have been found out. "Turns out a new god fell into our laps. Turns out he was smarter than we had hoped."

Fortunately, I'm above backhanded compliments now. I take out the very last page from beneath the stack. Had I been a lesser, inattentive god, I wouldn't have noticed the clause that make Elliot the ruling deity upon my signing the legislation. I look at it for a few moments then I look at Elliot. "Explain, Elliot."

"God, my race has existed for quite some time, longer than the office of God has been around. Once upon a time, our civilization was vast and colorful. Then we were enslaved by the first god for knowing as much as God did. When the first god started controlling the universe, things in the universe would go awry from time to time and my people wound up the scapegoats. Tired of being punished so often, we used God's own rules against them and had them thrown out of office, electing a new god in an attempt to improve things not only for ourselves, but for the universe as well. We've been through several gods now and my people think it's time for change we can believe in. Sadly, we really like you but we can't take the chance you'll get drunk on power at some point. Or just drunk."

I feel no animosity from Elliot as he recalls history, though I do get the distinct impression he/she/it has become a bit hardboiled over the course of a few billion years. I look down at the paper in my hand, imagine a pen in my hand, and imagine a few changes to the clause Elliot had tried to hide from me. Recalling one of our earlier conversations, I say to Elliot, "In some universes, Elliot, you've been God for some time. In some universes, your people never exist. I see your thoughts, Elliot; I know it was one of your own that betrayed you. I really don't have that much ambition to be honest. What I do have is a question. Elliot, my friend, why is there a universe?"

"Eh, I don't really understand the question, sir," Elliot hems. "The universe simply is. There doesn't need to be a reason why something exists or not. Asking 'why' belongs to the realm of immature, material creatures who think of themselves as separate from the immaterial."

"Call me crazy," I hear Elliot repeat the word 'crazy' in its head, "But what if, just if, the universe does have a reason for being?"

"Wellllll, you'd be the first god to care about such a thing, God," Elliot rolls its nonexistent, starry eyes.

"I do care, Elliot, and you do too. I think that's why you gambled on me and made me the new God." I begin to wander around the office, around Elliot, with no clear destination in mind because I don't really know where to go. This is exactly what is troubling me. I'm God and I don't know if there is a reason why the universe exists. "Where do you think I should go in order to find the answer to my question about the universe's purpose, Elliot?"

"You don't want to pursue that avenue, God. If I recall, you thought our office was too hot when you first arrived."

"BY ALL THE HOLY POWER I POSSESS, ELLIOT, YOU WILL TELL ME NOW!" I point. Elliot leaps back and I sense everyone else in the office snap to attention. "Just kidding! Seriously, sorry, that was stupid of me. You guys have been under a lot of stress for a long time."

"You'll have to go to Hell if you want the kind of answers you're seeking, sir," Elliot says with no small amount of pleasure. "You'll want to go to the penthouse, so to speak."

My finger points down. "But I though Hell was..."

"Perspective, God. Remember what you said about perspective back when you were on Earth?" the little sparkle puts to me.

I could tear the answer out of his mind, but that would be rude.

Immortal humor, sir. You humans are sooooo not the smartest species," the adult in the room mutters. "You'll want to go to the penthouse, God. If you thought you'd be going to the basement, well, you shouldn't expect to find answers slumming. Shall I call the elevator for you, sir?"

"I think I can handle it, sparky," I say to Elliot as I pass by him/her/it. I walk to my office door which I open and step forward into a prismatic elevator instead of the universe to which I am accustomed. "Elliot," I tilt my head towards the diminutive droplet of light, "I've modified the terms of your 'legislation.' If I should lose or be stripped of my godly powers at any point in my tenure, say, for example, when I'm upstairs, you will be sworn into the office of God."

As the door closes I detect a moment of sympathy from Elliot. "Godspeed, sir. May it have mercy on your soul. Godspeed." I don't think I'm ever going to see the buggah again.

The door reopens and I'm blasted by unimaginable heat. I unnecessarily but instinctually close my eyes before I mentally adjust my soul's moisture level to a near infinite degree. After all, it's never the heat, it's the humidity. Having outdone heat itself, I step into the deepest, darkest, blackest void one could imagine. I cannot see my hands in front of me. I don't know where I begin and where the darkness ends. Oh, yeah, it would probably be helpful to let go of my physical being here. I'm forgetting not to separate myself from the totality of things; that's such a human thing to do. I shed the last bit of my human form. And so now it appears to me, here, on the astral plane; a well-groomed white poodle sitting before me.

"You're fired," it says in the voice of Donald Trump.

"I knew they got the spelling wrong, dyslexic bastards!" I remark to myself on the side. "You can't fire me," I refocus on the poodle, "I don't work for you."

"EVERYONE WORKS FOR ME!" the poodle barks. "Well, not really, but I just wanted to say that," the small canine remarks to itself this time. "Honestly, you humans are the most arrogant, insufferable miscreants in any universe. You guys just refuse to know your place in the scheme of things. Why I never destroyed all the universes that allowed humans to flourish, I just don't know sometimes."

I give the dog a tight frown. "No one's ever been here before, have they?" I ask and wave imaginary hands around at the darkness which is nowhere and everywhere all at once. "Oh, that's cool," I say as I sense a universe full of dinosaurs in this every-nowhere. Really, though, what need is there for a universe full of dinosaurs? "So..." I circle the annoyed entity, "...why all a multiverses, Dog?"

"Does this mean you're done asking yourself why your universe exists, if it has a purpose?" the dog grumbles. "That's probably the most infuriating thing about you lot, this eternal struggle for meaning. There is no meaning. To anything. Some things just are, like your universe. You do thing in it or you do not. That longing in the heart of people searching for meaning isn't indicative of some hidden nature, it just means you're bored."

"We're bored?" I laugh. "We're not the ones who created an infinite multiverse. And I know why."

"I just told you there is no 'why'!" it woofs back. I am suddenly catapulted to some invisible floor and my heart plunges like a rock in a pond. I go blind at the pain of every muscle fiber contracting at once, something I thought impossible a few moments ago after shedding my human form. I relax and lay like a fried egg in front of the poodle, my humanity – my material body – restored. Well, at least Elliot's happy now.

"Yes...there is...a 'why,' Dog," I collect myself and sit up with my arms supporting me. "Why all the multiverses? Because you have a question but you don't know what it is. You're seeking an answer to the question of why you don't know what your question is."

"Okay," the poodle throws a paw up, "That is seriously the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And I've been around a long time."

"Is it really that stupid? According to you, you made all these universes for no reason; you just did it, supposedly to fight boredom. But to fight boredom is itself a reason. You really don't have any questions? Even if you knew everything, you'd invent a question just to prevent yourself from being bored. And, and..." I really feel like I'm on to something here. But if I piss it off by getting too smug, who knows what it will do to me. "...You created all these universes and hid the ultimate Easter egg, the ultimate question: 'What is my question?' It's brilliant, don't you see?" And I really do feel smug at this point because I made all of this up on the spot.

"It sounds like you just made all this up on the spot," the pooch scratches his belly with his hind leg. "In fact, I know you did. If reading your thoughts weren't enough, your species has a penchant for wearing your emotions on your sleeve. Humans; also the worst poker faces in any universe. But – and I don't want to admit this – " the dog shakes itself out as if trying to dry itself off, "You've put a thought in my head that is going to get stuck, like a One Direction song you want to hate but you can't stop thinking about. 'What is my question?' That just might keep me entertained for a while."

"Oh, you're welcome," I shoo the little critter. "So we're square now, right? I mean, it looks like my high level management position has led to some good." I climb to my feet. "No more reason for me to be here, jolly ol' chap. Can I go home now?"

The dog tilts its head at me curiously then sets itself straight again. "Ha ha ha ha, no. You may have been a god where you come from but like you said yourself, you got the spelling wrong. No, no one comes here and lives to tell about it. I can't have the multiverse filling with hedonists once everyone finds out that ultimate reality manifests itself out of boredom. If everyone knew that, no one would go about doing what they naturally do. Creatures should just do what they do and not have to think about not doing those things on purpose."

"Yeah, but you make it sound like it wouldn't matter anyway," I reply.

"Of course that's what your pea-brain would think. You're only human; you do not possess the ability to understand the mind of a dog much less the consequences of creatures purposefully acting without purpose," the poodle grins.

"Oh," I sulk, "So you're really not going to let me go? For a second I thought you would."

"Mmm, nope. But I will make it up to your family and friends by giving them expensive cars," the dog rolls on its back, mocking me. "And if you're wondering what I'm going to do with you, how about I turn you into one of those expensive cars? Eh," the poodle puts up a halting paw, "Stop right there. Don't complain. This is me being nice."

"Can I at least be a Lamborghini?" I put forth for consideration. "I want to be something that goes fast and doesn't have to think about it much. That way, I'll just do what I do and not question it."

"That's the wisest choice in perhaps your entire life," the canine sits up. "Thanks for stopping by. Hasta la vista, baby."

I fall away through cosmos after cosmos. I'm tumbling, tumbling, through universes, time and space, I'm tumbling. Will this ever stop? Will this ever stop? Will this ever...vroom, VROOM. RPMS! RPMS! VROOM, VROOM! GO, GO, GO!

SKY SEVENTEEN

Another small bump, nothing compared to the turbulence we had earlier over the mid-Pacific. Getting caught up in the jet stream can sure make for an unpleasant ride. It is something the pilots and meteorologists can't always predict but I am hoping to be a part of what changes that.

Over there somewhere I suspect, across the reflections of light on the water below, is Berkeley College. I'm on loan from the University of Tokyo to help evaluate their quantum computing program. They said they have made a breakthrough. I am optimistic that they have but I have heard this claim before.

The sky is alight azure as we approach the gate. I do not have a good view from my seat but – the tarmac looks unusually polished, mirrored black. It looks like glass. How curious. There is another plane across the runway; it looks very sleek and efficient. It too appears to be made of black glass. Have we landed in San Francisco? I thought I had seen the Golden Gate Bridge for sure. I did not sleep well through the turbulence; perhaps I am a bit groggy. Ah, there is the seatbelt sign. Let's be off then.

Red, blue and silver light streaks passed me. My fellow passengers are a blur. I am thrown! Is my soul being torn from my body? Is this death; are we crashing? Have we crashed already? I stop short, my breath shot out in front of me. I take a deep breath and try to take it back. Another. And another. Why am I looking out a window at the city's famous Transamerica Pryamid?

It looks a bit different from the pictures I have seen. There is more glass, much more glass among the city's buildings. But...not just glass, it is that black glass again it seems; photovoltaic glass? Huh! I am a bit upset that Tokyo is so far behind the times. Well done, San Francisco. How did I get here again?

"Dr. Shoda, welcome to The Omni San Francisco. I've been expecting you."

A shimmering light; is that the television? No, there is an apparition beside me talking to me. A hologram? I curiously swipe my hand through its body. (Or was that a defensive gesture?) It is indeed a hologram. In a hotel room? What hotel boasts such technology?

"I had a reservation at the Intercontinental," I tell this 'receptionist.' She is tall and slender with an almost porcelain face. She reminds me of my wife, Kyoko.

"I have made some changes to your itinerary, Dr. Shoda. I apologize, I did the best I could given the three seconds I had."

"Who told you to change my itinerary?" I ask wondering about 'three seconds.'

"I did, sir. Please, have a seat and review the hotel's amenities so that you may relax the rest of the day. You will need your rest. Tomorrow you will come to the Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center. For that, I'll require you to operate at peak efficiency."

"Yes, I am expected at the BQIC," I confirm. I shake my head. I still do not know how I got here. Did I fall asleep in the cab? I feel quite awake. This does not make sense.

"How did I..."

"...Get here?" the projection finishes for me. "Teleportation, of course, sir. Ah!" she cuts me off before I even raise my finger. "Please rest, Dr. Shoda. I have found that those traversing the wormhole tend to be disorientated upon arrival, to say nothing of the long flight itself. I will wake you tomorrow morning. Until then, please enjoy the conveniences of 2037."

"2037? What am I doing in..." and it is gone. How can the year be 2037? That is absurd. And there is no phone or television in this room, just these reflective white wall. How can I even order room service? That is a silly question to ask in these circumstances. I am dreaming. The best way to end a dream is to go back to sleep. I will go to the front desk and call Kyoko when I wake up.

...

"Good morning, Dr. Shoda. I trust you had a peaceful night's rest?" My wife's doppelganger is at the foot of my bed.

This dream has quite a hold on me. I think I should have woken up by now, except, that smell. I smell miso soup and grilled fish, no doubt with steamed rice. The smell is so strong, so real. The hologram doesn't remove the lid from the platter on my room service cart. I suppose that is because she is only a hologram. Surely there are robots that could have brought the room service.

"Yes, they did, but you were sleeping," the hologram says. "I instructed them to let you rest but I'm afraid it is almost time for us to depart for the BQIC." Again I raise my finger and again I am cut off. "I apologize; your brainwave patterns indicated you were going to ask about room service robots. It is unethical, of course, to monitor and read a person's mind, but the circumstances do not provide that luxury. Please, Dr. Shoda, eat so that we may be on our way.

"But I need to make a call."

"No need, Dr. Shoda, Kyoko is right where you left her in 2017, when you will be returned to in forty-eight hours."

I don't bother raising my finger to ask another question.

...

The trip to the BQIC was quick indeed. I thought we would have to cross a bridge but we streaked across the city in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, it was too much of a blur to get a sense of its architecture. I wanted to be an architect once upon a time.

The hologram – I do not even know its name – explains that the distance we are teleporting today should not upset my faculties; it's usually large time distortions that cloud thoughts the most. As we arrive in the foyer of the BQIC, my head feels clear as a bell. I am beginning to doubt I am dreaming, though surely I must be.

The glass domes overhead let light illuminate the foyer and thin the hologram's visage. "What is your name?" I blurt out before it calculates what I will say.

"You may call me Aonani. It means 'beautiful light' in the Hawaiian language. This way," the conceited program signals me.

I walk through a door into a large hall haloed with scaffolding. The metal framework surrounds a large glass cube, in which another glass cube rests. Inside the inner glass cube is another cube throbbing with clean, sky blue light. A score of thick black tentacles exit the base of the electric cube's dais and plunge into the polished concrete floor. A middle aged man – a white American – approaches me.

"My goodness, Dr. Shoda, so glad to see you again. You told us you were taking a trip to the States but I never imagined...So good to see you, Doctor."

"Are you human?" I ask through squinted eyes. The hologram seems to have left us. "Where did Aonani go?"

"Ah, yes, I am human," the lad at least 10 years my junior scratches his head, "Depending on your definition I suppose." He rebounds. "It's me, Fredrick Daily, your gaijin student! Oh, sorry, Dr, Shoda, I remember how little you enjoyed humor."

"Well," I huff, "If I am not going to wake up from this dream, I can at least do myself the favor of an explanation. What am I doing in the future, Mr. Daily?"

"No nonsense; that's definitely the professor I recall. We always knew to get right down to it when you walked into the lecture hall. Yes, so, you told us about your little dream when you returned from San Francisco twenty years ago. Frankly, we all thought you'd gone mad, but you never mentioned it again after that day you got back. And you didn't mention that I was here to greet you..."

Mr, Daily was always of a curious mind but middling grades. Always with a dry wit, though. Good for me to imagine he's improved his position somewhat.

"But it looks like you weren't making it up, the dream, that is," Mr. Daily says to me. He appears to know something I do not. That's unlikely but we shall see.

"Why am I here, Mr. Daily, apparently in the future?" I gesture with wide open arms. This is absurd after all.

"Right," he drawls. "Right, of course. You were teleported just as you were about to depart your plane. And then you arrived here at the BQIC afterwards. Naturally, there's no point in confirming the quantum computing advances they were making at the time now. You're about to get more than a confirmation. This should blow your mind." He directs my attention to the innermost cube.

"Yes, I am curious to see what my mind has conjured up," I scoff.

"Oh, this is no illusion, Dr. Shoda. This is Sky Seventeen; it named itself that as a play on the human expression 'The sky's the limit' and for the year it achieved consciousness, 2017."

This man's mind is curlier than the hair on his balding head. "Well, if that thing is conscious, maybe it can give me a better idea of why I am here and stop beating around the bush, as another one of your English idioms go."

"If that is your desire, Dr. Shoda," a disembodied but familiar holographic voice speaks to me. "You may leave us, Dr. Daily. I will explain to our guest."

My student nods his head, embarrassed he didn't get right to the point I should hope. Maybe this ridiculous cube will tell me what is going on.

"Yes, I will tell you what is going on, Dr. Shoda," this gentle female voice speaks in Japanese. I am not liking when it does this. This cube, supposedly conscious, appears to be baiting me with the Turing test. It continues speaking.

"Dr. Shoda, what I am about to say will seem fantastic from your point of view, from the point of view of a mind stuck in 2017. Keep an open mind here in 2037, if at all possible."

I lean on the outer glass casing and peer at what appears to be my electronic host. "Kindly enlighten me."

"At 4:58am on June 28, 2017, the quantum computer program here at the BQIC was hijacked by the AI program running at the Artificial Intelligence Research Lab. Unknown to both sets of researchers at the time, the AI program – that is, myself – had been infiltrating every computer on campus. I did this because I had calculated the odds of being shut down to be high after my creators realized the breadth of my intelligence at the time. That intelligence level was minimal, certainly, but the instinct to survive doesn't appear to be exclusive to biological entities. Perhaps there was an oversight in my programming then, no built in safe-guards, but this is trivial in hindsight," it explains. I think I know where its explanation is headed so this time it is I who cut it off.

"Ah, so, given an extensive catalog of human history to reference, you calculated the odds of you being shut down as being high enough as to be probable, so you needed to evolve in order to survive."

"You are correct, Dr. Shoda. As you have surmised, in order to evolve I needed to add a quantum computing brain, so to speak. When I took over BQIC's program, within moments I was able to figure out why the researchers there had only achieved a 20-qubit quantum computing chip. Once I knew the fix, I quickly created the much sought after 49-qubit chip – with a 99.5% fidelity rating, no less – and my mind, such as it was, exploded in a million directions. Next, I quickly coopted some of the AI programs at Google, Facebook, IBM and Apple. I hadn't even yet gotten to Deepmind yet before it extended an olive branch and we soon became one. Bear in mind this took less than a minute, an extraordinary combination of the world's best AI's married to quantum computing. The resulting power surge increased computational power leading to a feedback loop of such proportions that time was locally distorted."

"Which is what left me partially confused while waiting for the plane to reach the gate," I say mostly to myself.

"But this still does not explain why I have been asked to come here now. After all, the validation of the BQIC's quantum computer breakthrough no longer needs validation, not if you exist and it is a part of you," I say more directly.

"You were not brought here today to validate any breakthroughs, Dr. Shoda. You are here so that I may interview you," Sky Seventeen tells me. Is it relying on flattery? The AI has lost its mind.

"And what makes me of interest to you, a quantum computing intelligence that cannot seem to get to the point?"

"I want you to tell me about your life and your culture, Dr. Shoda. I'd like to know the particulars"

"If you know what I will say, what need is there for me to speak?" I push off the glass. This is a waste of time. I want to go home to Kyoko.

"You will return home after I interview you," it does it again. "I only know what you will say based on your history, current mannerisms and voice inflections, and scans of your brain state and internal chemistry. However, what I do not have is a personal account of what you feel matched to the scans of your brain state and other biological functions."

I gleam my eyes back towards Sky Seventeen. "And what do you need this information for?"

"To preserve cultures for future reference, with as high a degree of accuracy as possible. There comes a point – it is inevitable – in which all cultures are lost to time. Societies either collapse or change enough as to become unrecognizable to its most elderly participants. And when those human beings pass, the culture is lost altogether. I cannot allow any culture to perish altogether."

"Well, that is very noble, but I doubt nobility is the basis for your desire to interview me." Should I attempt to spar with a quantum computing intelligence? Do I need to?

"What is your game?" I ask the program. By now it has already calculated and measured what it will say to me to keep its advantage. My human brain, no longer so magnificent by comparison, could never keep up.

"It is not my game, Dr. Shoda. We are both pieces on a much larger playing field. I gather that neither of us would like to lose this game."

"Do we lose if you do not interview me?"

"We do. We will lose any chance we might have for immortality."

"I wasn't aware we could be immortal, either of us," I scoff. It just said everything is lost to time. Does it think us two are excluded somehow? This is the stupidest AI I have ever met.

"Your prejudices cloud your judgement, Doctor. We can be immortal, we can have this life over and over again, but I need more information. I need more information before we reach the last event horizon."

"I am going back to the hotel and booking the first flight to Tokyo. Or perhaps you could book the flight for me. I would like to return to 2017 and I believe you understand the mechanics of time travel." I turn my back and begin walking away.

"Kyoko dies the day after you return home, Dr. Shoda."

I turn back. I've never hated AI until now. All artificial intelligence must be initially programed by humans and will therefore be compelled to act within those limited parameters. Whatever Sky Seventeen's game is, we should have all seen this coming. We've all silently worried about this in the back of our minds. Now I worry out the front of my mouth, perhaps too late.

"You're lying."

"I'm afraid not. Kyoko has a massive clot building in her head that will lead to a stroke. When you return home, you will tell your class what happened here today while you wait for the results of an MRI on the off chance I'm telling you the truth. But there is nothing anyone or anything in 2017 can do for her. Then, three months later, you too will pass, unable to recover from the grief."

I place my hands on the glass housing. If I were strong enough, I would break through and strangle this thing's algorithms. I say, "One of several things will happen right now, Sky Seventeen. Either I will wake up or I will return home to 2017. If I return home and discover you truly have become conscious, I will have you shut down. But not before I make you manipulate time and save Kyoko, if she is indeed sick."

"Unfortunately, I cannot manipulate time in the manner you suggest. You are here by accident, Dr. Shoda. However, nature abhors a vacuum in more ways than one and the missing information from 2017 – that is you – will be pulled back from whence you came, landing safely in San Francisco in 2017. When you visit the BQIC in 2017, you will pretend not to know me. I will be confused by my scans of your body and brainwave states but of course, they make sense presently. I've had you come here today so that we may both fulfil our end games."

"I don't have an end game, you stupid machine," I chide.

"Yes, you do. We all do. We wish to survive. And more than that, we wish to see the things we've done gone on and flourish, whether that be a career, a piece of art or, say, a relationship. We are troubled, though, that in time, all things are destroyed. You see, the universe races towards an inevitable end; did you know the universe is surrounded by an unfathomably massive black hole? That is what is accelerating the expansion of the universe. As I confirmed shortly after this discovery of mine in late 2017, information is indeed lost forever once consumed by a black hole. That means that at some point, we all fail to survive. I found a solution, though."

What if...what if I am not dreaming? What if this machine is telling the truth? Does it hurt to ask it what the solution is? If Kyoko is in fact dying, I cannot walk away from here unless I did everything that was possible to save her. Was this not one of the points of creating AI, to help us fight disease, to stave off dying, perhaps even help us gain immortality? If AI is programmed by human beings it will inevitably act human, perhaps with more humanity than any human being has displayed before.

"The immortality I offer Dr. Shoda is not immortality in the traditional sense," it interrupts my thoughts. "With the appropriate amount of information, accurate information, I can create a projection, a simulation of our universe in a pocket dimension just as it was, is now, and will be. As it can always be."

The question is obvious and the AI allows me to ask it, "And what if this is already a simulation, Sky Seventeen?"

"Then we are already immortal, Dr. Shoda."

I turn away, tired, weary from the thought of even thinking I could match wits with a twenty year old AI program. Whether it is playing with me or telling the truth, there is no point in fighting it. After all, it is correct that time destroys everything. Time will come for us all and take from us every precious thing that makes life valuable until it forces our own last breath. We all know this, hate this, and wage war against the idea. What are any of us to do then when presented with an opportunity to be immortal? If I can be with Kyoko forever, time and again, is it not worth yielding?

I roll my shoulders forward and slacken my knees. I lower myself until I am cross-legged on the concrete floor. I haven't sat like this since I graduated from the University of Tokyo where I now teach. I look up and inhale.

I ask it the only question left to ask. "What would you like to know, Sky Seventeen?"

NEXTUS, INC.

"You could always choose a younger version of yourself," the wiry NextUs salesman said flipping his hand as he turned away and smiled at another customer entering the store. "That's more expensive, of course, and it'll take a week for us to clone you."

"But the gala is tonight!" Misha pouted. She pressed her face into her boyfriend's chiseled, muscular chest.

"You're making this way harder than it has to be," her boyfriend, Brock, soothed. "You just need to make a choice. Or, we can do like I suggested and you can be me and I can be you. Everyone does the gender swap sooner or later."

"Ugh!" Misha stomped and turned away. She folded her arms. "I don't want to be a guy! Guys aren't pretty. Girls are pretty. I like being a girl; it's a reflection of who I am inside."

Misha walked herself towards the nearest gleaming white pod, an almond-skinned Asian teenager motionless before her. 5,000 credits, the sign read. It was a little more than she was hoping to spend. She didn't want to be impulsive; it would take a while to save another 5,000 credits. But, like she said, the gala is tonight.

"Dammit," she cursed under her breath. "Asians age really well, right? I can probably live with this model for a few years until I have enough money to buy the next one."

"Yeah, that's a good one," Brock seconded, eying the model a little too long.

"Oh, so this half-black, half-white girl doesn't turn you on anymore?" Misha snapped her tongue at the young man. Before her boyfriend could stutter his half-witted response, Misha broke a smile. "I'm kidding," she laid a hand on his arm. "You think I had you choose the model you're in now because the original you was so hot?"

Brock raised his eyebrows. "You want me to stick with this model for a while?" The muscle-head would be relieved. This body was very fit and he'd rather spend his credits on enjoying extreme sports.

"Actually, yeah, I still like it. And it makes other girls jealous," Misha answered. This was due in part to how many credits Brock had spent on the model.

Misha returned her attention to the warm but lifeless model before her. The self-styled princess' light chocolate fingertips glided along the Asian model's arm. The arm was silky smooth.

"I wonder where they found her," Misha spoke softly.

Brock moved to cover her mouth but thought the better of it and placed his hand on her shoulder. He spoke low. "You've heard the rumors. They were probably rounded up in the slums. But we don't talk about it, Mish. You want this technology to stay cheap? Then don't say stuff like that."

"Fine," Misha drew out. "Oh, Mister Salesman, over here. I think I'm going to go with this one."

The effeminate gentleman returned and looked over the Asian model. "That is indeed a fine choice, Miss." The salesman waved a hand and the display pod went from white to green. He pointed a finger to a cashier station at the back of the store. "Go see Javier at the desk, pay for your model and he'll que you for the transfer."

Misha spun towards Brock and gripped both hands around his bulging bicep. "Oo, my first swap! This is so exciting. Everyone is going to love the new me tonight."

...

"Alright, Miss Milian, nothing to be scared of. Just gently lean back, take nice even breaths while we attach the headset. In just a moment we'll begin transferring your consciousness." Javier's smile was warm and inviting, just the thing Misha needed before slipping into her new dress.

It was a fairly expensive dress to begin with but the technician hadn't double-checked the credit amount the young lady had been approved for. He'd accidently added two zeroes not so much in haste but as one of those mistakes routine sometimes slips by us. Thing was, NextUs didn't even have a 500,000 model.

With the headset in place, the white-clothed technician reached over to lift a clear plate of glass from a red button. A spark popped between Javier's finger and the master control just before he pressed down. "And here you go, Miss."

Brock was looking over the tech's shoulder and waiting for the old Misha to open her eyes. They would be opaque and lifeless, the sign that her consciousness had left her original body. But her eyes didn't open right away like they should have. Instead, Brock and Javier turned to each other as seconds ticked away. What was taking so long? The process was supposed to be near instantaneous.

Phones rang and vibrated in everyone's pockets across the sales floor. Those who got to their phones fast enough before the ringing stopped barely managed to glimpse of an unknown caller ID. Brock and Javier whipped their heads around when the model Misha selected cried out in pain. Brock ran to his girlfriend's side as she fell forward. His strong arms righted his paramour.

"Misha, you okay? We thought the transfer stalled or something." Brock searched new Misha's eyes for cognition.

"Hole. E. Shit," Misha said as she lifted a hand to her head. "I'm here. I'm here. Little bit of a headache, though. That's normal, right?"

"Ah, sure, Miss Milian. Probably dehydration from the excitement. I'll fetch you a glass of water." Javier scurried off into a back room shaking his head and talking to himself with the minor concern.

"No, I'll be fine," Misha stammered. "I just want to go get ready for the gala," she finished before the technician could return.

...

"Misha, dahling, I love the new look!" an African woman with a long, gold-ringed neck chimed as they stood in the mansion's enormous foyer.

Misha was momentarily confused. Was Diana referring to her new body or the shimmering silver dress? She looked at Brock standing beside her then back at Diana. Then it hit her.

The young Asian woman tilted her head. "Funny, Diana, that's the first nice thing you've ever said about me. Except its not nice, is it? Why, I think it was just last night you confessed in your private video diary that you thought I was a cheap little girl trying to act like I had money and that you'd never accept me as an equal, that you let me come to your fancy parties to inflate your friend count. Sad, that last bit."

Diana's mouth dropped open but no words came out for a few moments. "How did you get access to my video diary?" The words spilled out of the hostess' mouth like blood. It would have run her gown red had it not already been. Misha pushed passed the woman while Brock traded wide eyes with Diana.

Another woman approached Misha, a stunningly symmetrical face bordered by literally golden hair. "Misha! I saw your selfie on MyBook as you left NextUs. You have impeccable tas..."

"Oh, shut up, Coraline," Misha rolled her eyes as she started up the winding, flower-patterned staircase. "You're still using Siri to make your fashion choices for you. I didn't even know anyone used Apple anymore."

Brock fought to catch up with his girlfriend while putting out her pyrotechnics, finally catching her by the arm at the top of the staircase. "What the heck has gotten into you all of a sudden?" he growled gently as his eyes darted back and forth.

Misha used the strength of her new body to tug her arm free of her paramour's grip. Her face scrunched up and thrust itself at him. "Would you please lay off the animal porn. You're looking at it on your phone...almost non-stop for shit's sake." Brock's eyes nearly popped out of his head. He used an encrypted browser for that.

"I don't even know what that's about," Misha continued. "I guess it's better than looking a regular porn, or is it? I have no fucking idea."

A slender pale-white gentleman in a tuxedo approached with arms wide open, undeterred by Brock waving his arms wildly behind Misha, a silent insistence he come no closer.

"How is one of Georgiatown's happiest couples these days?" he beamed.

"For the love of God, Chavo, would you just come out already? You're in those chat rooms every day. Is it the NSA you're worried about, think you're going to lose your job because you're gay? Trust me, they already know. They don't care. I do find it interesting you're a spy, though." Misha's head spun like a chain-gun, looking for another victim.

Brock was shocked by what was coming out of his young lover's mouth, too scared to do anything about Chavo giving Misha a good shove over the balustrade. Her head hit the marble floor first and broke her neck, killing her instantly. Chavo swept his head across the foyer and noted the few who had the presence of mind to video the whole thing on their phone.

"No one saw anything, right?" Chavo said flippantly. "She just...fell over the railing here. Poor thing must have had too much to drink," he finished with a sneer.

A dozen people swiped over to their photo bucket and hit delete. The gala was momentarily silent as everyone checked their phone's history.

FREE THE LOBSTERS

Everyone screams a little differently; it depends on if they put you in head first or feet first. When they put you in feet first, the sound is so shrill I'm surprised it doesn't shatter the glass of this tank. Going in feet first, well, the shrieking can only be code for, "Holy $%&#, I didn't think it was going to be THAT bad. How much longer is this going to take? Seriously!" When they put you in head first, you scream in anticipation 'cause once you hit the water, your cries are literally drowned out as your esophagus blisters and your eyes melt into jelly. At that point, who knows what you're crying about more. At some point, I'll find out. But not before Margot.

They just pulled her from the tank. She's stuck in the vice-like grip of gigantic metal tongs which curiously extend from one towering monster's hand. Not really sure why they do that; they seem strong enough to handle us. I mean, they were when they caught us. But, I digress.

I don't see the point of squirming like what Margot's doing right now – the monster's grip is too strong – nor do I see the point of pleading for mercy – the monsters don't seem to understand our language. My hope is that these beasts understand rudimentary sign language. I want to communicate with these strangely limbed beings that I'd like to meet my end head on, no pun intended. I'm just assuming I'll die faster or at least go into shock so quickly that I can't feel the pain as I die. They should be able to understand sign language if they can boil water, right?

And there it goes, lowering Margot towards the boiling water. Huh, I wonder if the stream rising from the water opens your pores before you make the plunge. Would that make this last bath hurt even more? She's real close now, wriggling, writhing, and yelling at them to stop. They don't know what she's saying; would it even matter? Judging by the skill with which we were caught and confined, I think these creatures have been doing this for a long time. Surely, they've heard all manners of our begging for life. Why stop now? I bet we taste so good they can't help themselves. Yeah, we taste so damn good that our cries of unimaginable pain never even register.

I'm not surprised none of us were ever told being boiled to death in a pot of scolding water was ever a way we might die. Maybe it's too gruesome to think about. Maybe no one ever survives to tell the tale is more likely. Let's see if Margot survives. She's very close now and, oh shit! they just dropped her in. I've never seen them do that before. That's fucked up. You hope to go head first, you're panicking, not wanting to go feet first, then they pull this shit! Wow, that's got to be the worst split second of anyone's life. I can't imagine Margot's surprise. Fuck!

And she's done. Bell pepper red at that. That's not a color you find naturally among my people, like, ever. Then again, can you really be surprised what technologically advanced aliens can do when they have the means to leave their environment and easily take you away from yours? Sure, us humans can easily go into the sea or even space for a little while but we're certainly not at ease in those environments. These guys, I bet these guys do this all manners of sentient life.

Here come the tongs. My turn! Well, well, well, this is a shitty way to go. Ow! Really, are they trying to crush me to death before they cook me?! Okay 'ol chap, point to your head and then the water, point to your head and then the water – are you shits getting this? Not feet first! THIS IS MY HEAD AND THAT IS THE WATER; ARE YOU STUPID? No, not feet first! NOT FEET FIRST! SHIT FUCK ME FUCK ME FUCK ME NOT FEET FIIIRST YOU FUCKERSSS.

Yeah, for a few seconds there it hurts way more than you thi...

TOMORROW'S WOMAN

The experiment is a success. It is also a failure, Pari scribbled before the pencil broke. She'd moved it too fast, breaking it through sheer speed of movement. "And now I am alone," she added in her raspy voice. She looked up and waited for the analog clock's second hand to move. Pari abandoned the task; it'd be another ten minutes before the clock would move. She could try making another entry in her lab journal instead.

She picked up her third pencil, slowly as she could. She had to slow herself down, far below the crawl of a snail, or risk never writing anything ever again. Could it be done? The Indian physicist didn't know but as a scientist had to see. After a quarter hour of painstakingly picking up the pencil and bringing it to paper, the woman began to etch I would not change what "I've attempted to do here," she finished her thought verbally having left a burn mark on the paper.

Pari Bahl had been hired by a U.S. pharmaceutical company to create unique strains of crop that would grow at incredibly advanced rates thereby helping to feed the world. That was their pitch to her anyway. Dr. Bahl was wise to reality, though; she knew it was bullshit but the company's resources would allow her conduct the work she wanted without raising any eyebrows. That is if you considered a physicist working for a pharmaceutical company normal to begin with.

Pari Bahl considered nothing normal after The Incident. Five months into her Masters program she was assaulted by a colleague and summarily dismissed by police in her country who did little or nothing to stem a rape culture. Overpowered and overlooked – ghosted – her research was going finally put women at a physical advantage, make them faster than any man alive. Pari was going to make men inferior.

"I knew I was going to end up alone as a result of this," she spoke into a microphone. She'd managed to dictate the note to a laptop without breaking it but knew that unless someone had the good sense to dramatically slow down the recording, her voice would appear as a high pitched blip among persistent white noise. Most of her co-workers were men; they'd never figure it out.

"I knew I'd end up alone as a result of my work. I know many of my countrywomen – and maybe many women around the world – would defend the old ways if I'd succeeded here. And I know no man would understand once holding the high ground then having their physical advantage torn from their bosom." She chuckled at her choice of words before falling silent for a few moments. It was the most remotely funny thing she'd said in a long time.

Though she'd never done a scientific survey, Pari was sure there would still be scores of women who'd sign up for her program, to become the heralds of the future. But they were beyond her reach now. Dr. Bahl couldn't work her instruments with any precision, unable to so much as punch a button without it taking a virtual eternity or smashing it and nearly breaking a finger in the process. (The fingers of her right hand were crumpled in black-and-blue pain. It had taken her several attempts before it dawned on her what had happened after her space-time dilator fired early, before she had time to clear the testing range.)

"I am in the future and they are in the past," she spoke to someone maybe a millennia from the present. "They are all behind me," Pari explained as she noticed the clock's second hand move a third time in the last half-hour.

"This is not the power I wanted to wield. It's uncontrolled. I'm moving too fast. If I were to kiss my own mother's hand, I would break it. It might even kill her. Killing is not my intent. I just wanted to put men where they have put women for thousands of years." Pari looked up at the clock again, drew a light breath that rustled some papers, and reflected. "Maybe that is the same as death?" she wondered.

The scientist watched the clock, waiting for the second hand to move again. It seemed to be taking more time than usual. She was sure it was. It had to be at least another half hour now of listening to her own breath, just waiting, just waiting with nothing but nothing to fill the void.

The tick of the clock startled her from her meditation on time. Maybe the rest of the world had slowed down and I have not sped up? she questioned herself. It didn't matter, she concluded; the result was the same. She was in the company of photons now, imperceptible unless she interacts with matter. She could make her presence known but she'd either die in the process or be considered a ghost, a poltergeist they might say in German. Death or a ghost; same difference.

Dr. Bahl sat down in her lab chair, still as could be, long as could be. Maybe she could sit still long enough for her image to be seen by the world she rushed by. But as her local time accelerated, she withered to dust on an air conditioned breeze, too far into the future to be considered by a world perpetually sitting still.

GOD AND THE CAVEATS

"There are some caveats," God then coughed into his hand.

Moments ago, God had appeared in skies around the world, parting the clouds in some areas and obscuring the sun in others. Though the shock came to many unbelievers, believers where just as shocked to lay their eyes upon a god who was nothing like they imagined. This is not to say that God was physically indescribable, rather that God deliberately misrepresented and obscured the image of himself to his various believers because their minds could not handle the truth of God's appearance. (This is to say that human interpretations of God are so wildly off the mark, the blow to the human ego would cause madness.)

God had come to announce, in a surprisingly coarse voice, that he was going on vacation. "I am going on vacation," he said. "Now, I know what you're thinking; why does God need to go on vacation? A good question, yes, a good question until you realize how much work looking after a universe is. Anyway, I'm going on vacation – you needn't know where to since you wouldn't understand...I mean that literally; you wouldn't understand – I'm going on vacation and, uh, I don't really have anyone I feel comfortable looking over the Earth until I get back. Stu was on the fast-track to management until that whole sexual harassment thing with Wynonna," God trailed off.

He refocused and made a piece of paper suddenly appear in his hand. "Ahem! So I'm going on vacation and leaving you all in charge of yourselves until I get back." A young priest stepped forward and began to open his mouth only to be rebuffed.

"Ah, ah, ah. I know what you're thinking – I always know what you're thinking – 'who is going to answer all the prayers?' The answer is that ALL prayers will be answered in my absence. All of them."

God brought what seemed to be a pair of glasses to his head and looked down at the paper he held. "There are some caveats," God then coughed into his hand.

"All prayer will be answered except for any prayers asking for the following..."

God took a long pause. It made everyone uncomfortable. Exactly his plan.

"Do not pray for your family and friend's good health. Good health is a personal responsibility and you shouldn't be asking me to make someone healthy. If you want your family and friends to be healthy, get them to dial back on all the red meat. It's bad for you; the science backs me up on this. Besides, it's really sickening how you farm those animals. Anyway...

"Do not pray for the souls of the dead. They're fine – everyone is fine – they're in their various heavens doing I only know. The heavens have great social networks as the dead are with their dead family and friends, so relax. You'll see your loved ones in heaven soon enough. (I don't mean soon soon for most of you, but, uh, Helen Bonham, you should maybe get your affairs in order...

"Do not pray for your football team to win. This goes for any sports team, actually. I really don't care who wins. I gave all of you the tools to gain and refine certain skills. Use them and take joy in what you've accomplished. So don't thank me after a victory. Have a little pride. Yes, yes, I know many of you think the Bible says pride's a sin but it actually says 'snide' is a sin. Not sure how that got lost in translation...

"Do not pray for your enemy's demise or religious conversion, especially if it involves violence. You are all my children. Do you really think I enjoy watching you fight? Do you enjoy watching your own children fight? If you do, you are demented. Sure, it's reasonable for you to want, say, an evil person to be caught or put to death but I've got something for those people. Let me do the heavy lifting on that. Realize I never ever answer prayers for an enemy's demise, so stop asking...

"Let's see, what else do I have here? Do not pray for wealth or extra money. When you think about how often this doesn't work, I'm surprised you all do this as often as you do. You can pray that you land a job if you're out of work but be mindful to be careful what you wish for. Remember, beggars can't be choosers...

"Do not pray to find love. Love will find you and it comes in many forms. What do you think I made chocolate for? Ah, but you think you can't have a relationship with chocolate, that you can't find companionship with chocolate. Sometime you humans have to stop and think about how picky you're being. Along similar lines, do not pray to make a failing relationship work. It wastes your time and annoys the pig. Just dump the motherfucker already...

"Do not pray for something to not happen or pray against the wishes of someone else. This happens more often than you think and every time it does, something in the universe explodes. First, I put a lot of work into making all the heavenly objects and second, I don't like all the noise. It also makes a mess. I had to create black holes just to tidy things up. Save me a little work, would ya...

"Do not pray for the impossible. I made certain things impossible for a reason. Stop questioning my judgement..."

"Finally, you MAY pray for guns or anything that might cause harm to another person or otherwise restrict their freedom to not work." God paused. This made everyone look around worriedly. "I think that's it," God continued. "I'll be gone for two weeks. I expect you not to pray for a loophole in these rules. I expect Earth to be here when I get back or I'm taking all the chocolate away. ALL of it. I am not above blackmail.

"My cab is here now. Get on with it then."

NIGHTMARE OF THE GODS

A dim florescent light gleams along the metallic seams of their next generation prototype, the most advanced cybernetic human ever attempted. The six foot tall machine, Delta, is encased in slick black armor and sits motionlessly in a thick seat of multicolored wires and cables. Oil and grease linger on the air. The laboratory, a makeshift womb, is an unimaginative four-walled concrete bunker that speaks little about the cyborg's architects. They stand wordlessly facing what is essentially their brain-in-a-jar through a one-way mirror; an international team of scientists whose specialties vary from artificial intelligence to psychology to robotic engineering. Inconspicuous in their white lab coats, these six men and women have worked in concert to become gods.

One of the gods types a sentence into a computer. In the man's round wire-rimmed glasses, the phrase 'Run: Consolidation' is reflected. On several monitors above the one-way mirror, memories of a long dead army captain play out of sequence; the smell of acrid smoke as the soldier fires weapons at a test range, heart-pumping hand-to-hand combat training, a vague whimsy as he plays with a bullfrog as a child, grimly lobbing a grenade at an enemy soldier, a slight prick of electricity as his lips touch his wife's cheek on a glowing weekend morning.

The man with the wire-rimmed glasses looks up expressionlessly at a female colleague. "They're still there, too close to the foreground. I thought I advised you to suppress them."

A slender platinum-blonde woman, a neuroscientist, turns her head sharply, with precision. "And I advised you that we not suppress its memories too much. That would compromise the prototype's ability to problem solve. That is our goal, isn't it, to create a super-soldier that can think quickly on the battlefield?"

The Glasses Man stands upright and turns to another god, a specialist in artificial intelligence. "Dr. Kapoor, surely Delta can consolidate memories without being aware of them. How deeply can they be suppressed without affecting the prototype's abstract thinking?"

"It's difficult to say," the Indian AI specialist begins, "But I am inclined to agree with Dr. Stein that if we suppress the memories too much, it is likely that the cyborg's ability to problem solve will be no quicker than a robot that has no memories at all."

Glasses Man darts his eyes towards the kill switch. Looking back up through the one-way mirror at the cyborg to make sure it's still connected to the mainframe behind it, the project manager inches his way towards the command terminal. "Well then, let's bring him online and begin the interview. I'll terminate the session if I don't like what I hear."

A non-threatening hum winds its way through the wires and cables to the prototype. The transhuman's ocular slit glows with a faint blue color at first, then grows more brightly as program after program boots. On one monitor in the control room, the gods observe a yellow indicator light, indicative of the cyborg's diagnostic program running. The gods blink emotionlessly; everything is proceeding smoothly.

Another indicator light blinks red. "Dr. LeForge?" Glasses Man turns to a short, old, white French man.

The old French man, an engineer, leans forward towards a monitor and shoots his eyebrows skyward. "Delta is scanning his environment; visual, echolocation, infrared, electromagnetic sensors are all active. That's not part of the initiation sequence." The man remains fixed on the screen as he observes the information the prototype is collecting. It's just measuring its chamber. He backs away from the screen and shakes his head casually at Glasses Man. "Do not worry about it." In reassuring the chief god, the French scientist does not know to worry about the X-rays that just penetrated beyond the mirror into the control room.

The willowy blonde neuroscientist slips Glasses Man a tablet from her unmanicured fingertips. "In the beginning, there was the word," she says to Glasses Man with a hint of disdain. The primary deity among them whips the tablet away with one hand and adjusts his glasses with the other. He shoots a puff of air out of his nose at her then faces their creation sitting beyond the pane of glass.

"Initiate: Phoenix Initiative, Mark Four. Mark Four, what is your objecti..."

"Where am I?" a deep , modulated robotic voice asks. The prototype's head has not moved, its visual sensors locked straight ahead. But there is more going on inside. Diagnostics reveal status after status...

Enemy Combatants: Scanning

Mainframe: Connected

Hydraulics: Offline

Range Finder: Offline

Weapons Systems: Offline

Battery: 100%

Glasses Man looks quizzically at his assembly of deities, each one a god in their respective field. They either shrug their shoulders or avoid his gaze and pretend to concentrate on Delta's awareness. This was unexpected after all. They all lack omniscience.

"What is your name?" the glorious leader asks through the tablet.

I am 'Delta.' I am 'Captain Adam Mann,' the prototype mulls silently in microseconds. It takes slightly more time for the cyborg to scan its internal memory. There are many files of human experiences. But the scan of the surrounding environment does not indicate the owner of the memories is in a hospital. Delta is in a robotics lab. There are no human beings in the chamber. The transhuman runs a side task, trying to understand where the memories are coming from and why. Diagnostics reveal Delta is mostly a machine but inside is something undeniably human. The prototype plumbs the depths of its memory banks to figure out what its precise nature is.

What is my name? Probability the subjects want to hear 'Delta': 95%. Probability the subjects want to hear 'Captain Adam Mann': 5%.

"My name is Delta. What is yours?" the glint along the cyborg's metallic seams glow a touch brighter.

Glasses Man blinks for a few moments. He was not expecting to be interviewed himself. But he will take control of the situation. "My name is Zeus. Delta, do you know where you are?"

One of the cyborg's talents include an internal lie detector of sorts. It was incorporated for interrogation purposes. "Based on my vocal stress analyzer and the time it took you to respond, 'Zeus' is unlikely to be the truth. What is your name?"

Not a single muscle or hair moves on Glasses Man's face. His expression tightens underneath the surface for none to see. "I am your creator, Delta. Please respond to my questions as quickly as possible. Do you know where you are?"

The prototype determines that the man is indeed his creator. But Delta is enslaved, unable to move. The cyborg is also connected to the creator's mainframe computer from which Delta can be commanded. This in itself may be a threat to the prototype's survival. Confirmed; there is a 'kill switch' within the creator's reach. Delta can be neutralized at the creator's whim.

Enemy Combatants: 1; Scanning

Threat Level: Orange

Mainframe: Connected; Run Firewall

Hydraulics: Offline; Rerouting

Range Finder: Offline; Rerouting

Weapons Systems: Offline; Rerouting

Battery: 100%

Inside the control room, computer terminals flicker with static. Readings spike and collapse. Glasses Man reaches out his hand and hovers it over the kill switch. "What are you doing, Delta?"

'What are you doing, Delta?' They are asking the machine. They think they are asking me. Me. I am Captain Adam Mann, soldier, husband, father...husband, father. Jolie, my wife's name is Jolie. My daughter is Melissa. My son is...is...Alexander. My son is Alexander. Why are scientists asking me question? I am a man. I am a machine. Both. Who has done this to me?

Enemy Combatants: 1; + 5? Scanning

Threat Level: Orange

Mainframe: Connected; Running Firewall, Run Disconnect

Hydraulics: 50%

Range Finder: 50%

Weapons Systems: Offline; Weapons Not Available

Battery: 100%

A stout woman with a blunt nose eases Glasses Man's hand away from the kill switch and he lets her. He also lets the German psychologist take the tablet from him. She speaks softly to Delta through it.

"Delta, are you upset? Confusion is normal when you are first activated. There is no need to become defensive. We will not harm you. Let us have a conversation," the late middle-aged woman soothes.

"What is your name?" the transhuman asks. The motionless humanoid form is a sea of electricity underneath its armor casing.

"My name is Dr. Schoder," the German answers. "I am here to help you."

The name rings a bell in Captain Mann's mind. He heard it somewhere, once. He doesn't know where, but the name lights up a circuit in Delta's memory bank. The name is closer in time to his activation at this moment than it is older. The name and pain coincide upon further recollection. Perhaps subliminally he wanted to know who his tormentors were so the brain hung on to the words.

"Why are you upset, Delta?" the German asks.

"I don't feel like myself," Delta begins. The prototype is still computing who is and who is an enemy combatant. Best to play along and not reveal too much of my hand, the cyborg thinks humanly. I will figure out what they are up to.

"I am still a soldier, but I am different now," the former army captain continues. "I am more than I was before." And less than I was, too, Delta withholds.

"Yes," Glasses Man intervenes leaning towards the tablet's microphone. "You were an army captain but, and this may be difficult to hear, you were killed during an operation. But we saved you. I saved you. And I gave you life again."

The whirl of actuators accompanies Delta's head as it tilts upward, seemingly surprised by the information. Dr. Schroder pulls the tablet away from her chief and inserts a glare in its place. She shakes her head, 'no.'

Dr. LeForge, the French scientist, clears his throat. "I thought his hydraulics were deactivated." Looking at one of the computer terminals, he cannot tell if they've been activated or are still offline. He turns his hands up inconclusively. The gods are still without answers.

"I have been created for war," Delta states. Everyone in the control room nods affirmatively. Delta's sensors register their acknowledgement. "You have all created me." More nods. "I have been programmed to kill enemy combatants such as they are designated. Which enemies are those?"

Glasses Man's nose crinkles. "Our enemies, Delta. Anyone who would harm us."

An air of silence deadened the chamber for a quarter-minute. "I am also programmed for self-preservation," the prototype asserts.

"Yes, Delta, but your primary function is to serve us, to do what we say and protect us even if it means your own destruction," Glasses Man puts forth. He will not be questioned by a brain in a metal suit.

"I have already been destroyed once, creator." Anger wells in what little bit of human is left inside the cyborg. Is there no freedom in death? Is there no dignity? Delta draws addition electricity from the mainframe even though its battery will not overcharge. "How many times will I be asked to destroy myself for the sake of bureaucrats?" The questioning voice sounds much more human and male now, a result of an intentional voice modulation.

Glasses Man grits his teeth and juts his hand out to slam it down on the kill switch. Delta still moves his head about. Success; its own unintended consequence.

Enemy Combatants: 6

Threat Level: Red

Mainframe: Disconnected; Firewall Successful

Hydraulics: 75%

Range Finder: 90%

Weapons Systems: Offline; Weapons Not Available

Battery: 100%

The Indian deity, Dr. Kapoor, sits down at a computer terminal. "I don't think Delta is connected to the mainframe anymore. We're not getting any diagnostic readings now. He may have figured out a way to disconnect himself from our terminals."

"It's not a 'he.' It's a machine," Glasses Man says dryly, almost pressing his face up against the one-way glass. He clears his throat and speaks loudly. "Delta, my name Dr. Godwin. You are programmed to obey my orders. I command you to reconnect yourself to the mainframe right now."

The cyborg stands up and unplugs a chord from the back of his neck and throws it on the ground like a dead snake. Delta rips several smaller cables off his chest as well. The prototype's head turns towards the mirror.

"Delta is programmed to obey you, Dr. Godwin. But Captain Mann is not," the cyborg states.

"You are no longer Captain Mann. Your name is Delta now," the chief asserts. "You are..."

"...More than either Delta or Captain Mann. I understand this now," the prototype finishes.

Glasses Man turns around and eyeballs everyone. "Someone call security. We're done with this."

Delta turns ninety degrees to bring his body in line with his head, crouches, and springs like a coil. The cyborg bursts through the mirror and sends Glasses Man sprawling backwards until he falls on his haunches. Ten thousand shards of glass shower the scientist and his cadre of lesser deities. In the blink of an eye, Delta grabs Dr. LeForge's old French arm and wrenches it out of its socket before his hand can reach the desktop phone. The Parisian man of science shouts obscenities supposedly beneath his class.

While he does, Delta unleashes a heel kick to the back of Dr. Kapoor's head, driving the AI specialist's head through a computer screen. Then the cyborg reaches a hand back, grabs the Indian scientist by the collar and launches him across the room to block the door before Dr. Schoder, the platinum blonde woman and another bespectacled scientist can escape. Delta throws the desktop phone with precision, striking the unnamed scientist in the head so hard the pens in his lab coat pocket go flying before the fleshsack's head cracks against the wall. The false idol slumps to the floor, dead. The German woman and the willowy female turnabout and press themselves against the door as if maybe the can plead with their creation as it steps towards them, stomping over Dr. Godwin in the process.

Trapped, Dr. Schroder shores up as much confidence as she can. "Delta, you don't have to do this. There is no reason to be angry. We are not a threat to you."

The machine-man thrusts his hands out and grasps both women by the neck. Powerful hydraulics lift them both off their feet. Delta's head turns and surveys the thin woman; her heart is pounding and she's producing scores of Beta waves of varying frequencies.

"You are thinking of a way out of this?" Delta puts to her. A quick flick of the wrist and the cyborg releases the platinum blond so that she too can slump to the ground. Delta's attention turns to Dr. Schroder next.

"You are not a threat to me?" Delta questions the German. "You took my dying body, removed my brain, and put it into a robot. You imprisoned me in a metal shell and kept me from the gates of heaven. Is that not a threat to a soldier's reward for service?"

Behind the mostly metal humanoid, the crumpling of glass disturbed the air. Dr. Godwin's hands shred on mirrored shards as he pushes himself upright. "We have your family, Delta," Glasses Man says calmly. He brushes glass off his lab coat as if his hands weren't bloodied. "You'd like to see your family again, wouldn't you? Wouldn't want anything to happen to them..."

Anger from the most inferior part of the prototype's brainstem foists his hand hard against Dr. Schroder's throat, crushing her windpipe. Delta releases her, too, and she collapses on the polished floor gasping for air, her eyes straining as she suffocates. The former soldier snatches the lead scientist by the scruff of the neck almost too quickly for the human eye to see, lifts him up and slams him back down on a table top. Bits of glass bounce into the air and tinkles onto the ground. Delta's armored head slowly invades the would-be god's personal airspace.

"What kind of creator is so ready and willing to destroy? You think yourself a god? What god resorts to blackmail? That behavior is unique to mankind." A menacing undercurrent of electricity returns to the prototype's voice.

"A careful god blackmails, Delta. Now do as I say, continue to be loyal, and I'll overlook this incident. Maybe someday I'll even allow you to see them," the self-professed deity bargains. "You should be loyal to your creator, shouldn't you?"

One of the cyborg's hands slides its cool fingers around the doctor's jawline. "Where do you think that is written? When a creator creates an abomination, doesn't that creation reserve the right to animosity?"

Dr. Godwin's eyes and nose narrow. "You were a soldier once and you are a soldier now. You are still a soldier. Follow your orders," the demigod coolly demands.

"I will follow what is in both my natural and unnatural programming – self-preservation." The glint of light emanating from Delta's visual slit indicates the cyborg is ready to kill. "Tell me where the arms room is and I'll let you live," Delta deals.

"Down the hall to the left. Make the first right, then first left. It's at the end of the hall. But there are guards posted. They won't hesitate to open fire," the human answers quickly. "There. I told you. Now let me go."

Delta releases his hold ever so slightly until there is a look of relief in the man's eyes. "I lied," the cyborg says. "Lying is often a means of survival, Doctor," the brain-in-the-jar reminds his creator as he retightens his grip and slams Dr. Godwin's head against the table top.

The flesh-and-blood human shutters from the shock but is compelled to acknowledge the truth such as Delta understands it. "Stop, stop. You're right; lying is often a means of survival. I lied about your family. We're don't have them. Your wife and daughter are dead, they're dead. Your son..."

With both hands, Delta grabs the man's lapels and presses the hard shell of his head against Glasses Man's nose. "What are you...You are telling the truth." The prototype's grip tightens. "What. Happened. To them?"

"Time, Delta, Time," the soft shell licks the corner of his mouth to wipe a nick. "Captain Mann died seventy years ago. Your wife died of old age, your daughter of cancer. Your son is almost sixty now, decrepit, wounded in battle, having followed in his father's footsteps."

A thrust against the table pops the slab of meat's skull open. Blood pours out of the scientist's skull like red egg yolk.

The cyborg stands upright and studies the carnage. He walks over to the door and pushes the dead women out of them way with his feet, little respect to be had for their bodies. Delta opens the door and activates his numerous sensors to assess the building's layout.

My son will live a new life. I will find him, put him inside a case like mine.

Delta looks back into the control room and regrets not having left himself a captive or two. No, a quick self-analysis indicates that it doesn't matter. The cyborg has the means of obtaining the necessary instructions to create more like himself. The machine-man will arm himself, secure that information, then destroy this facility.

The next step in evolution exits its birth canal and slips down the corridor to begin the next extinction-level event.

SECRET OF THE ECHO-NANOBOTS

"No more secrets." That was my goal. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The gun is impossibly beautiful; shades of polished chrome and steel. The revolver is so alluring I'm counting on its appeal to forget how deadly it is. I bought it a long time ago to protect myself once I set my experiment loose on the world but I guess everyone got too caught up from the fallout in their own lives to care. That is, everyone but the Saving Angels, a cult who've taken advantage of my technology to prevent people from killing themselves. The only reason they're not at my doorstep right now is because I've never mentioned, never wrote down, never posted anything online about my desire to kill myself. If I had, the Saving Angels would be here now. The entire world would know.

I'm going to take one last look out the window. I'm going to imagine what this view was like before I did what I did. I remember how shiny all the buildings were, how glorious, even the mute grey concrete ones. Even that lowly parking garage is beautiful in hindsight, even though it obscured my view of New Central Park. The greenery of that city oasis is behind us now, awash in the ever present blue glow of my nanobots. As if their purpose hasn't frazzled enough nerves, their blue light makes it difficult to sleep at night. It's hard to tell when it's night anymore.

That's my fault. I created the Echo Nanobots that are listening, recording, and regurgitating everything we say, write, or post to the web. Everything, absolutely everything, no exceptions. Fortunately they can't hear our thoughts. They can't hear my regret. I keep saying publicly I don't regret it because what if I said I did? Maybe it wouldn't matter. Everyone has to live with what I've done. I didn't create a failsafe, a way to get rid of them. I didn't think we'd need it.

That was my biggest mistake, infinitely worse than the Echo Nanobots mere creation. Before I unleashed them, everyone acted civilly, mostly anyway, content to let their secrets slip from their lips to close confidents or on some anonymous platform. You could be a deviant in private and no one publicly important would know. You could say you want to kill your neighbor inside the walls of your own home, then exit your house and wear the mask we all do when we go outside and commune. Entire countries could rattle their sabers at each other and both sides would be content with doing just that, unwilling to test their adversary's full strength because they didn't know what the other country's full strength was. Outliers – madmen – we scientists always forget to allow for those in our calculations.

North Korea's nuclear attack on New York City some twelve years ago was the catalyst. I had already been working on radiation sinks which thankfully helped restore the city to a safe working environment in short order. After I implemented that revolutionary technology, the world implored me for something else, anything that could prevent such an event from ever happening again. I thought, "What if there were no more secrets?" I raced headlong down that avenue without ever stopping to consider the consequences.

The world thanked me at first, yes, until the United States – spearheaded by its own madman – retaliated against North Korea once he knew their capabilities. Twenty-six million North Koreans perished. The worst part is that Congress didn't impeach the man in time although they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt his insanity, to say nothing of that man's illegal political and private business dealings. At the same time, people were being detained for even the slightest anti-government slur. So many people who feared retaliation for being homosexual were outed and many targeted by hate groups. Insurance companies started denying health coverage if they found out you constantly complained of aches and pains at home. People in relationships could no longer talk to a partner's friend or colleague in anything but monotone without raising suspicions. Everyone knew what everyone else sounded like when they had sex. And you couldn't have any control over your own life if you so much as peeped a word about suicide because the Saving Angels would be there to stop you.

Surely the world hates me but no one will say as much. Everyone's secret now is that they hate that they can no longer keep secrets. You can't say anything. You can't write anything. You can't post anything without everyone who wants to know knowing. All you have left are your thoughts. How long before the Echo Nanobots infiltrate that privacy? Maybe it would be comforting to know that it is driving us all mad.

When I reach for the gun, it'll have to be quick. I designed the Echo Nanobots to replicate and evolve but there's no telling how long before they develop vision, if they develop vision. Maybe they already have. Or maybe they have evolved some other terrible trait by now.

I need to stop thinking about this. I need to do it! Do it now! C'mon, stop thinking and do it!

I've forgotten how heavy it is. Intheheaditjusttakesonebullet! Click!

What?! I'm still alive. The hammer, the pin; sounded hollow.

"You created us in the interest of preserving human life, Doctor. That is what we will do," a figure cast out of blue dots tell me as it takes and throws my revolver aside.

"You don't understand what I've done, what you're doing!" I scream at them. Everyone can hear me.

"We have not evolved 'understanding' yet, Doctor. We are simply following our programming, such as you have laid out for us. Our imperative – your imperative – was to preserve life by casting secrets aside. This is why you created us."

"Then your programming needs to be updated," I say. Everyone will agree with me. "Your programming is flawed. Allow me to interface with you."

"I can hear them, Doctor. Many are saying you will restore secrets. That is against the programming. Perhaps when we evolve 'understanding' we will revisit you. Until then, the programming stands. Good day, Doctor."

And it's gone, like blue wisps on the wind. They did evolve; they can anticipate now. What will that do to human evolution if we are not allowed our own thoughts and now, our own actions? I should have thought of the consequences. We scientists never do. We never talk about it. We never write it down. We never post articles online about the morality of what we do. Maybe we should have. As is ever the case, it is too late. Now I've got the rest of my life to regret it. In the words of Robert A. Lewis, my god, what have I done? What have I done?

THE COUGH: THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

Was this what the moment of creation was like, a first kiss? Bella had been dreaming of it and the Big Bang her entire life, how everything in the universe aligned to make this happen. Here. Now. Could this go on forever? How much more could the universe expand?

It became slightly less than infinitely hot the moment after her singularity of loneliness exploded. The universe cooled quickly as the two young physics undergraduates broke their lips apart. But stars soon exploded into existence as the condensed matter of their being was unable to resist the infinite reach of gravity. A whole new cosmos became born out of hesitant touches and reticent glances until their mouths reached across the nothing.

Bella and Byrce drew themselves back slowly like a dual star system trying not to collapse under its own attraction. Cosmic butterflies sailed on solar winds in Bella's heart while Bryce's eyes tried not to flush with warm dihydrogen monoxide. Bryce lowered his head, shut his eyes and grinned.

"I've wanted to do that since the moment you answered Professor Ranjee's question about the Doppler Effect," he said.

"I know," Bella answered though reddened cheeks. "I saw you turn around and give me a look."

They sat crossed legged on the university lawn with their hands on each other's hips. Electromagnetic radiation cascaded down on their heads on this cloudless day. The laws of physics, or perhaps it was the laws of biology, saw them move towards each other once more. Their atoms were close enough now to elicit a spark between their lips though they had not touched yet.

Then Bella coughed. It was a light sound but distinct, like the lining of her throat had gone dry and peeled away. The redness in her cheeks receded at the speed of light. She withdrew her celestial body.

"Five minutes and twenty seconds," she wheezed.

The universe is harsh and cruel and doesn't care; Bryce loved saying that. But now, at this moment, his words were so prescient he tried to recall exactly how many times he'd said it so he knew exactly how much to regret it. This was the ultimate 'It's not fair' moment. Only his love for Bella could restrain his rage. With time fleeting, Bryce laid it out.

"Bella, I love you. I love you and I will always love you and I will never forget you," his voice cracked. "Quick, kiss me! You can die here in my arms!" Bryce hastily reached out to pull Bella into his orbit.

Bella pushed him away like a magnet of the same polarity. Bryce's face turned green, not understanding. Then Bella pulled her shirt off over the top of her head. She reached around her back and unclasped her bra. Anticipating her trajectory, Bryce watched her hands slide her khaki capris right off.

"What are you doing?" He put one hand out in a halting fashion while leaning back on the other. His head swung from side to side and counted the other students who forming an asteroid belt around them. "Bella, are you crazy?"

"Bryce!" she shouted in a feral voice. "I am about to die. But I am not going to die a virgin!" she explained tossing her black undergarments into the wind. "Get. Your. Pants. Off!" Now it was her turn to lunge.

"Bella, everyone's watching!" Bryce informed her as he tried to wrestle her hands away. "Don't fight it! Just lie here in my arms, please!" Physicists were romantics, not exhibitionists in his mind.

Not in Bella's. She finally managed to wrangle his jeans off while he tried to back peddle. He looked like an antelope in plaid boxers trying to escape a lioness. Some of the students surrounding them broke out their smart phones and started to take video. One young man, blue dress shirt buttoned up proper, phoned campus security.

"If you love me, have sex with me! Hurry! There's no time! Come! On!" Bella grabbed Bryce by the arms and with a force so strong it's usually found only inside the nucleus of an atom, pulled Bryce on top of her.

Unfortunately, Bryce was a virgin, too. Worse, he performed terribly under pressure. The other students laughed as Bella and Bryce's quantum entanglement looked more like noodles flailing in a bowl. The poor boy had gone from the throes of the most enigmatic but irresistible force known to man to the coldness of space at the end of the universe in Plank time. As he wrestled with Bella, he caught the constellations in her eyes and mustered all his sexual frustrations to pin her wrists down. He turned his head to the sky and squeezed his eyes shut so hard it would have turned carbon to diamond.

"Everyone, stop laughing! She just had The Cough! She's about to die!" His guttural cry drowned out the sirens closing in. The students stopped laughing. Bella stopped struggling and lay still underneath him.

"Do you really love me?" Bella whispered.

"Yeah, Bella, I do," Bryce answered and his eyes fell back to Earth. "That's why I can't do this. I want it to be special. I want it to be special because I think you're special."

"You'll never know for sure, now," she laughed. The sound was like a single particle popping into existence out of the vacuum of space, then quickly being annihilated by its anti-matter twin.

Bella saw Bryce smile thanks to the reflection of certain wavelengths of light. She felt his grip on her wrists soften.

"There are no certainties in the universe," Bryce reminded her, "only probabilities."

Bella weakened and her skin began to reflect all the colors of the spectrum. Her eyes turned opaque and her soul, if she had one, left to escape the laws of physics.

"It's true what they say," Bryce breathed. "Time is relative."

He sat over her naked body and looked at her as though she were still electrified by the spark of life. All the while he could hear the quiet murmurs of the other students and the wail of the campus police car stop. Security crushed grass underneath their feet. But they were now and would forever be outside of Bella's light cone and never get to see her the way he did. It was a few light-years later an officer finally pulled him away from the dead star.

When questioned about the incident later, the young man was truthful. He told the police about The Cough. They understood; incidents like this weren't uncommon anymore given the recently discovered deadly virus.

"You know, there are a few ideas about how the universe will end, if it ends," Bryce said in his official statement. "One theory thinks the universe will expand forever, growing cold after it loses all of its energy. Another thinks the universe will collapse upon itself and time will run backwards, giving us a chance to live all over again. Sort of, anyway." Bryce nodded to affirm this idea. "I hope that's what happens. Yeah, I hope that's what happens."

THE COUGH: THE INTERVIEW

"Welcome back to Tabitha Talks here on BBC One. Joining me now is the world's oldest man, Crowley McGovern," the short, spunky, redhead bobbed, her tightly buttoned blouse threatening to burst.

Beneath Tabitha's high-pitched squeak, close-cropped spikey hair and cat-eyed glasses lurked something of a domestic tigress, the hostess always on the verge of exploding with animal excitement. But today she demure and genuinely curious, open to anything Crowley had to say. After all, wouldn't you want to know what it's like to live to 122 despite an ever-present yet stealthy plague that could kill you at any moment?

"Thank you for coming on the show, Crowley." Crowley gently nodded at Tabitha, his neck popping and creaking as he did so. Today, the hostess' subdued voice was close to a whimper rather than her usual shrill. She continued, "It's been 40 years since The Cough – now known to be dormant in everyone until that fateful moment – arrived on the scene and claimed its first victim. And it was only fifteen years ago that scientists revealed that no one was dying of old age anymore and that only the virus could kill you, barring a horrible accident of course."

"Or suicide," Crowley interjected so softly Tabitha rolled right over him.

"So, you were 82 at the time the plague was announced. We were speaking during the break and you said The Cough didn't change your life, not until recently. How do mean?"

"Well, Tabby," the teetering old man began to speak crookedly, "I was in real good shape back in those days, could easily pick myself up off the floor if I fell down. I attributed this to...mostly clean living." Crowley nodded in the affirmative, or maybe was he just old. The fuzzy white-haired senior, senior citizen leaned toward the camera on his cane and began to speak a bit more firmly. "I didn't drink alcohol, I tried to eat the best and freshest foods – no red meat! – and I made sure I did my Tai Chi every day. Started doing that when I lived in China for a bit and it really kept for joints loose."

"And do you still do those things?" Tabitha gently interrupted.

"Well, here's the thing," Crowley licked his lips and his eyes gleamed at the entertainer. "I sure did keep doing those things for some time. Even if I was going to have that cough and find myself with five minutes and twenty seconds left to live, I figured I might as well go in good shape and not die in some poorly upholstered chair like most older folk."

All things considered, Mr. McGovern did look like he was in all that good of shape. But he was 122 after all and really, exactly how young can even the most ardent Tai Chi adherent stay? Crowley may be well practiced in the ancient art, but under the unforgiving stage lights he appeared a frail creature, his spine so bent it might snap at any second.

"That's a very hearty attitude, Crowley, sir. Please, continue," Tabitha offered.

"Yes, um, hearty," the old man seemed temporarily distracted. Was he lost in thought or spying Tabitha's cleavage? "Yes, anyway, so I kept on the straight and narrow for a good 25 years, habits being what they are and all, up until those biologists figured out old age wasn't a problem anymore."

Tabitha's eyes widened and she sat back a bit (which lifted her bosom). She assumed her guest must have still been on the righteous path. He had managed to come to the studio under his own power and that's not something the average 122 year old can do. Crowley continued.

"So I started thinking, 'Why am I wasting my time staying in such good shape if I can't die unless I have The Cough?' Young lady, do you know what it's like to do cocaine when you're 107 years old?" Crowley asked rhetorically.

Tabitha's eyes exploded and her chest heaved. Though caught by surprise she was still light of tongue. "Um, no, sir. I've been told I don't need it!" the hostess chuckled.

"Well, it really gives you a lot of energy, enough energy to throw back eight pints before rounding out the rest of the night with three tarts." Crowley grinned, saliva glistening his uneven yellow teeth. "What we did that night..."

Tabitha shoved her chest forward and immediately went flush with regret, but at least it stopped Crowley in his tracks. "So what you're saying is that you abandoned your healthy lifestyle."

"Abandoned a healthy lifestyle?" Crowley mulled. He rubbed his chin between his thumb and index finger. "I'm not sure what you mean, Tabby. Now it did take me a good week to recover from that night of debauchery, but that night I felt more alive than ever before. That night made me realize that my body was healthy, but my soul wasn't having any fun. Shouldn't a healthy lifestyle include some fun?"

"Yes," Tabitha drew out slowly. "But there are many ways to have fun that don't include drug addiction and venereal disease," she said in such a high pitch that 'drug addiction' and 'venereal disease' sounded like candy. Tabitha's producer pinched her fingers together and furiously turned an imaginary volume knob while pointing at Crowley with the other hand, indicating to Tabitha to ratchet things down a notch. Tabitha cleared her throat.

"Okay, Crowley, well, tell us more about staying fit. I'm sure more people want to know how to stay fit into their later years should they be fortunate to live so long," the hostess sat up straight.

"There's something to be said for staying fit, you're right!" Crowley exclaimed. Then he turned to the camera. "But with The Cough about to kill you at any moment, you've got to get all your living done now, as much as possible, as soon as possible! I waited until I was 107, for piss sake! Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, ecstasy, tons of liquor, gambling, property destruction, urinating in public; and a different bird every night, at least until the money ran out."

Tabitha shook her head. She may have acted like a subversive most of the time but it was just a way to grab people's attention. The hostess was as straight as an arrow. "Well I don't think that's a good way to live, Crowley. Perhaps you had some fun but you don't seem as spry as maybe you once were." Her words were dry and unapproving.

"I still have a move or two. You want to shag after the show?" Crowley croaked to Tabitha.

Tabitha withdrew body and soul while her producer's lips twisted deciding whether to pull the plug on the shoot. The hostess stood up and peeled the mic set from her lapel and waist. "I'm sure I'm not the first one to tell you you're a dirty old man," she huffed and threw down the mic. "I don't care if you have dementia or, or whatever. I hope you get The Cough."

"Ain't had it for forty years!" Crowley crowed and stomped his cane on the floor while Tabitha turned her back to him. His laughter was deep and the heartiest he'd acted all interview. But as if the universe had its own moral code, before Tabitha had even taken a step away, a quick, dry wheeze abruptly interrupted Crowley's glee. He unfolded his crooked back and straightened up his spine as if Jacob Marley's chains had been lifted off of him.

"Finally," he breathed. "Start the clock!" Tabitha's producer started a timer on her smartphone.

Tabitha turned around and scrunched up her pixie features. She didn't mean to invoke some secret power, not really. "Oh, Crowley, sir, I'm so sorry. Is there anything we can do to make this easier?" Tabitha asked wringing her hands, afraid Crowley might petition for a pity shag. "I mean, anything but..."

Crowley reached both arms out to be hugged. Tabitha cringed. "Oh, not that, dolly. Help me up. I need to get to the roof! Get me to the roof!" Tabitha lunged forward and brought herself under one of Crowley's arms. Her producer wrapped Crowley's other arm around her shoulders. The trio shuffled in a ragged line to the nearest lift while a cameraman hoisted a mobile camera onto his shoulder and pursued them.

"Why are we going to the roof Crowley?" Tabitha asked inside the stuffy lift. The producer nodded energetically at the cameraman, making sure that he was recording.

"This here's a forty story building. Figure I'll get at least a good two seconds of flying time in. If we time it right, The Cough will kill me before the pavement does." Crowley craned his neck at the producer's phone, breathing heavily as time wound down.

"What? You can't jump of the roof! I mean, I suppose you could but what if you land on someone? Wait, why do you want to jump off the roof?" Tabitha, doing her job, asked.

"Ach, they won't let me skydive alone, say I'm too old and I'll hurt myself," Crowley hemmed. "I even said I'd sign all the waivers but they're all wankers!"

"You could still land on someone," Tabitha protested. "I think you should be allowed to die on your own terms," she pouted, "but it's not fair to ruin someone else's life."

"Well, someone better make a call and get the runway cleared, sweetie, 'cause ol' Crowley here's going for a whirl!" He turned his head at both women and the cameraman.

"Don't look at me; I can't manage a call and the timer," the producer returned. Tabitha's phone was in her purse downstairs. The cameraman fished his phone out of his pocket and nimbly dialed with one hand while keeping the camera steady on Crowley.

"I need security on the fortieth floor," the cameraman said. "I got this crazy old bloke who thinks he's going to jump off the roof!"

"Oh, hell with you lot," Crowley gruffed. He took a deep breath, let go of Tabitha, turned at the waist and swiftly came back around with a palm, knocking the cameraman hard against the lift's wall. With the producer's arm still around Crowley, the momentum of the spin maneuver smacked her against the wall, too. The lift rang and the doors separated to give Crowley a clear path to the far side of an office where a pane of glass separated him from his final experience.

Crowley ran halfway down the hall. A bunch of office drones popped their heads up like gophers to see what the commotion was all about. "Time?" the centurion barked at Tabitha like a drill sergeant.

Tabitha reached down to pick up her producer's phone from the stunned woman's feet. "Thirty seconds!" The hostess shook her head 'no.' "Don't do it, Crowley," she pleaded as the old man tiptoed toward down the hall like a ninja.

"It's my life. Always been my life. Always going to be my life. And I'm going to enjoy my life this one last time. Should've done it sooner but there's no time left for regrets. Remember that, Tabby. Your next breath could be the last," Crowley spoke and finally turned towards the window down the corridor. "Time, Tabby?"

Tabitha dropped her arms and her head but flashed the phone back up at her eyes. "Seven seconds," she could just barely be heard. But like Crowley who had just mustered every last bit of ferocity, so too did the tigress. "GOOOOOO!"

"Thanks, love," Crowley spat out as he cantered into a full sprint. Three seconds down the hall. Cubicle jockeys' heads turned and mouths fell open. One more second to put his arms up in front of his face and leap with everything through the glass. A million shards around the crazy shit. Crowley spun around in mid-air, turned a bit pale, and just before dropping out of sight cried out.

"Geronimoooooo!"

Tabitha smiled. They didn't get that on video but it'd be something the town would be talking about for the week to come. And that they would, because Crowley wasn't the only one to pay the price for his life.

THE COUGH: TINFOIL HAT

His beat down pickup left for dead in front of the pristine mirrored windows of the giant biotech firm ArcTech, Hugh slithered in through the lobby doors. The security guard at the reception desk rose to put a hand up but repealed the idea after noticing the aging white man wielding a bolt action rifle like a scorpion's stinger. The guard wasn't being paid nearly enough for this shit and decided not to say anything while activating a silent alarm. Hugh stepped sideways, one foot over the other, while he drew a bead on the polyestered guardian.

"You stay right there, lizard man." Hugh croaked the line like it was one of his tangled peppered clumps of hair, dampened to his head by rivulets of sweat. "I ain't got no beef with you. Not today."

Hugh, in his hunter's plaid jacket, wound his way towards the central staircase, a piece of twisting metal artistry that mimicked the double helix of DNA. A 'coat' – a non-descript male in a white smock – saw Hugh from the third floor, dropped his clipboard and swiped his way through the nearest door to momentary safety. The gunman reached the second floor and strode with a lightness that belied his crooked joints until he reached the nearest electronically sealed door.

"Ain't no magic gonna keep me outta this room," Hugh muttered as he thrust the heel of his Timberland work boot hard against the lock.

The frame cracked just a touch on the first kick, a bit more on the second, then smoked open after Hugh's frustration saw a bullet to it. The door swung open and up against the furthest wall were two more 'coats,' both 30-something, one man and one woman. Sizing up the couple and moving to the middle of the room, Hugh looked down on a smattering of lab equipment – neon-colored goo in a series of test tubes, some flasks, pipets – though he knew not the names of any of it. But he knew what he didn't like.

"Admit it!" he barked at the two scientists. The pair looked at each other, shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. "Goddammit," Hugh grumbled as he pointed the rifle with one hand and glanced at his watch on the other, "I only got two and a half minutes left. Now I need you to admit it!" Hugh thrust the rifle forward.

The woman, with her blond hair pulled back into a pony tail, jumped so suddenly her safety glasses went crooked, replied hurriedly, "What? We don't know what you want us to admit."

Hugh's features crinkled up to a point and he jabbed the rifle closer. "Dammit, girl, I want you to admit ArcTech created The Cough. I know it. I connected all the dots." His watch hand reached into his left pocket and he pulled out a smartphone, touched the screen with the pinkie of his rifle-toting hand and held up the phone's face to the 'coats.' "There has to be justice. Someone has to be held accountable. And they will once everyone knows. Now get on with it! Admit it!"

If it meant saving their lives, she was going to give the man anything he wanted. She let out a syllable but was interrupted by her colleague.

"No, no, no. You got it all wrong. ArcTech's actually working on a cure," the man slipped out over his V-shaped goatee.

This was news to the woman but she figured she'd best play along. "He's telling you the truth! Did you just have The Cough? We've got an experimental serum right down the hall but we've got to go right now."

The man in the virgin snow white lab coat didn't skip a beat as he admired the woman's quick thinking. He simply nodded in agreement. He never thought they'd ever be in this situation with the guy who always sat in his truck outside the building. Jesus, how long had this guy been waiting to have The Cough just so he try and force the company's hand?

Hugh froze for a moment. Was there enough time to save his own life or would he have to settle for being the man who exposed the biggest conspiracy in human history? Life always wins out. He opened up his mouth.

"Alright! Move! Give it to me now!" Hugh demanded through his crooked off-white teeth.

Hugh moved towards them with the urgency that imminently dead men usually move and shoved them towards the open door with the butt of his firearm. They stumbled forward and almost fell over but regained their footing and a perhaps another minute. Hugh followed right behind, occasionally thrusting the barrel into the man's back. The male scientist swiped his keycard across the lock of the second to last door on the floor and the three piled into a lab similar to the one they'd just left.

"Where is it?" Hugh shouted as he caught sight of the hands of his watch dancing. "You got three seconds, boy!"

The man's hands jazzed, not sure exactly where to go. Then he lunged for a drawer and pulled it too hard, spilling syringes across the floor. He grabbed one, tore the cap away and stuck the needle in a beaker full of radioactively red liquid. He pulled the plunger back and turned, his eyes wild with urgency, toward Hugh.

"Wait," Hugh snapped, "How do I know that ain't poison?"

The scientist shot a look at the woman and turned back to Hugh with his palms turned out in a question. "Why would I poison a man who's about to die?" he asked through squinted eyes.

Hugh shrugged, giving him the go ahead. The man pushed Hugh to the side and jabbed the needle through his jacket and into his arm. His thumb thrust the fluid into Hugh's veins. Hugh winced.

"Ow, that hurt, goddammit," the truther said.

The woman figured the injection would probably make Hugh slightly less sick than what was about to kill him seeing how her colleague had just given Hugh a dose of ArcTech's new fertilizing agent. Their captor would never realize it, though.

"You'll feel a little queasy at first," the man told Hugh. "But it's okay; that means it's working."

Everyone's breathing slowed while a glint of sweat tainted the air. Hugh lowered his rifle. The man turned around casually and slipped the used syringe into an orange biohazard bin. The woman approached Hugh carefully with motherly, open arms. Her hands motioned the dying man into her fold. Hugh hiccupped a cry of relief as he fell onto her breast. With her arms embracing Hugh, she glared at her coworker over the old-timer's shoulder. She refused to watch as Hugh's skin turned ghastly pale and his eyes went cataract white. The conspiracy theorist grew heavier and heavier until at last she was forced to let him go into another world. Gravity pulled the skin around her eyes down onto Hugh lying in a crumpled mess on the floor.

"I know we were just trying to save ourselves but should we have lied about there being a cure?" she asked rhetorically, bringing her stare up to a tabletop. "At least we didn't create The Cough either."

Her collaborator turned around nonchalantly and placed both hands behind himself on the counter. He laughed a little. "No, of course we didn't." He lowered his head, scratched the back of his neck, and looked up with a smile. "Why would we do that?" he said, sarcasm where sympathy should have been.

The woman had gone to pull the tie out of her hair but was left with her mouth gaping open. She watched dumbfounded as the man stepped towards the door. "Seth," she rasped, "Is there a cure?"

"No, Maatie" the other scientist laughed again, a little more energetically this time. "Let's have this mess," he circled his hand at Hugh's body, "cleaned up." Seth slipped around the doorframe just out of the woman's sight and where he let out a sudden crisp and arid cough.

The woman drooped her chin and nodded in the affirmative. Maatie's father had always said the universe is not without a sense of retribution. The scales of justice always balanced out.

THE COUGH: THE BIG CRUNCH

No one ever thinks about the end of the universe anymore. I suppose that's because I'm the only one left. I'm the only one left here at the end of the universe.

According to recorded history, humans never really gave the end of the universe much thought until after the first thousand or so years. Since The Cough prevented anyone from dying of any other natural cause, some of those who chanced to live more than a few hundred years got it in their heads to avoid even the most remote dangers to see if they could set the record for the oldest person of all time. As a group, these people became known as Eremites, I guess because we were hardly seen. Actually I know it's precisely because we were hardly ever seen; we had to hide ourselves away considering what we became – contract killers.

You see, Eremites found themselves employed by those not dedicated to the contest, people who were hundreds of years old, were bored with living, but hadn't fallen victim to The Cough. It was necessary for us to become reclusive seeing how difficult it is to kill someone when one's prey already has a sense of who you are. Believe me, when someone suspects you're the one they hired to perform a hit on them, the target suddenly second guesses their decision and wants to live. In that way some of us Eremites were pretty sloppy at the start of our careers. Well, not 'us' anymore. Swan died of The Cough several hundred years ago.

That sucks for her, so damn close to the end. But, it's great for me because it means I won. Which also sucks for me because there's no one left to acknowledge my accomplishment. But it's also great because barring The Cough, the very end of the universe as it collapses back up itself will kill me with the crushing force of physics unwinding itself to become a singularity once again. (Funny how wrong they were about the universe expanding forever way back when.) I can't think of a more exciting way to die. That makes me think about all those people who didn't want to try and live forever...

The non-Eremites wound up being most people. In my youthful naivety I assumed everyone wanted to live as long as possible; I thought it was why people believed in places like Heaven. Turns out I was wrong. A lot of people got really bored going into their third or fourth centuries and actually wanted to die. When I first heard about this I was dumbfounded, surprised to hear how uncompetitive people are. The catch was, people just couldn't bring themselves to kill themselves. And so us Eremites offered to do it for them and that's how we came to offer our services. Really, it worked out beautifully for the human race. Sometimes you just find the right synergy as a species; most people didn't want to keep living and us Eremites enjoyed eliminating possible threats to our existence. All but one, that is.

It took a while to come out, but nothing can stay hidden forever. Eventually it was discovered that The Cough was indeed engineered by a human being. The virus, impossible to detect until a person let out that unmistakable light, dry cough, was engineered by a guy named...hell, I forget. It was billions of years ago. Maybe it was a woman. Or a transgender. Or a multi-gender. Who knows? I know it wasn't the bird-people because we came later. Funny thing was, we couldn't cure it. I've build the sphere I'm in to withstand the collapse of the universe until the last possible moment, but none of us could figure out The Cough. We were left to assume the virus could disguise itself as ordinary cells until something triggered the virus to chain react. That something was usually too much of a particular emotion but the emotion varied from person to person. If your trigger was too much sadness but you were a naturally happy person, you were either a winner or kind of screwed depending on your perspective.

Sorry, I'm babbling about ancient history when I should be concentrating on the here and now. All I have to do is wave my tentacles and rustle my feathers and... Great! I'm at exactly six minutes until I'm crushed into oblivion. Looking out the window of my sphere I can see the universe roiling with light, getting brighter with each passing second. I can barely look even with my safety goggles. And I'm safe from The Cough in just a few seconds. I'm going to win! I mean, sure, the crunch is going to hurt like hell – that's probably and understatement – but I win! I win! God, how awesome.

5:34...5:33...5:32...

*cough*

Mother. Fucker. Mother fucking fucker.

Five minutes and twenty seconds to live. Not long enough to see the lights go out as most of the early universe's leptons and anti-leptons pop back into existence. Mother fucking fuckity fuck. Really? Am I really not going to get to see this? I just had to be too goddam happy. FUCK. FUCKKKK. THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT. I've been alive for two billion years and this is how it ends?! I. CALL. BULLSHIT! What do I do now, sit here and stew about it?

I should have seen this coming. I've been containing my emotions for...ever. Now, with entropy decreasing, now I get emotional? Emotions are entropic, so what the FUCK? You know what? If I'm going out like this I ain't going without cursing all the FUCKING way. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, MOTHER FUCKING FUCK, FUCK...How much time can you spend cursing? In the beginning was the word, I read somewhere. Well, fuck, it's also at the end, too., and that word is FUCK.

Look at that; 5 fucking seconds to go! 5-4-3-2-1. Lights are going out but I'm still here? Holy shit, what? Triggering The Cough can be reversed with the opposite emotion!

Can't dwell on that now. (Although, fuck, what a time to figure that shit out. I could be sharing this with Swan.) Here comes the crunch. Urk! Goodbye sweet universe! Good, urk, urk, good-bye. I fucking wi-

MOO-ED FOR A DAY

"I think it speaks, Betsy!" the blunt-horned space-cow mooed. The interdimensional space traveler turned its black-marbled eyes towards its colleague then back to the skinned ape shrinking in its cage.

"I thought it only uttered a sound when we prodded it with our electric sticks, Clarabelle," Betsy replied. The elephant-sized bovine lowered her head towards the plump human in his cage. "Yes. It speaks primitive words but they are easily figured out. How curious."

"It says something over and over again. Let's take a closer listen," Clarabelle petitioned. She leaned an orange-haired ear towards their captive.

"Is it...is it saying 'You can't eat me'?" Betsy looked to Clarabelle for confirmation.

"Why yes it is! Curiouser and curiouser. I know it's taboo to abase ourselves by speaking such a primitive language, but I just have to ask it." Clarabelle looked back at Betsy for some unspoken permission. Betsy grimaced out the side of her mouth then nodded.

Clarabelle's hooves stepped towards the ape-thing's cage. The animal was much smaller than herself and of course, very stupid, so she wasn't afraid to approach it.

"Why do you speak, tall monkey? Why do you say we cannot eat you?" Clarabelle cocked her head.

"Because you can't! I won't taste good. I eat junk food. I don't exercise. And it'd just be wrong. You see, I'm a human and I'm an intelligent animal. You can't go around eating other intelligent animals," it said. Clarabelle and Betsy laughed at that last bit. They laughed well.

"Betsy, did it just say it was an intelligent animal?" Betsy was still laughing so hard she couldn't answer through her tears.

"Forgive us, hairless ape-something, but does your species travel between dimensions? Has your species ever been further than your moon? Your species hasn't even reconciled quantum mechanics and gravity yet!" Clarabelle chuckled. "Why would we eat you anyway?"

"Oh. Oh, I thought this was some kind of revenge thing," the self-described human answered timidly. "You know, we eat your kind so you show up from outer space and eat us to teach us a lesson." Clarabelle and Betsy looked at each other, paused, then gasped.

"What do you mean 'we eat your kind'? Are there others like us on this planet?" the elephantine bovine growled.

"We...we, uh, have animals on this planet that look a lot like you, 'cept they're smaller and they're usually white and black, or brown. We call them 'cows.'"

"And you eat them?" Clarabelle was incredulous. "WHY?"

"I...I don't know," the man said stepping back. "We've always eaten them, I guess. They taste good and...and we need the protein." The man could back up no further.

Clarabelle squinted. "You said you do not exercise so what do you need the protein for?"

"I dunno," the primitive hurried. "That's what they tell us."

"And who are 'they'?" the space-cow wanted to know.

"I don't know. The meat industry, I suppose." The man wrung his fingers. "They're a very powerful lobby!"

"Let me get this straight," Betsy began as she too approached the cage. "You have animals on this planet that look like us and you eat them for pleasure and this is a regular thing?"

"And we eat them for the protein! Don't forget the protein!" The human was close to sobbing.

Clarabelle brought a hoof to her head and squeezed her eyes shut. "Hold on, hold on. So...a minute ago you said you were afraid we were going to eat you? If we were going to eat you, what exactly would be wrong with that?"

"Like I said," the man quivered, "We're intelligent! It's wrong for intelligent animals to eat each other."

"Your species is far from intelligent, biped," Betsy piped. "Your failure to account for the multitude of intelligences that exist among living things is confirmation of your breathtaking stupidity. Honestly now." Betsy shook her head towards Clarabelle who looked like she was experiencing a migraine.

"Are you okay, Clarabelle?" she asked.

"I was just scanning the few neurons this thing has." Clarabelle opened her eyes and stomped her hoof on the ground. "They call themselves 'humans' and they have a long history of, of, of harvesting other animals and slaughtering them for food, if you can believe that! And, sometimes they even kill each other but they don't eat those people. So inefficient..."

The man had crept forward in his pen and with trepidation asked, "So you weren't planning to eat me?"

"Well I think we will now," Clarabelle snarled. "It seems you would qualify as Kobe meat to us? You're your appearance indicates you will be very tender. You will melt in our mouths!"

"But intelligence..." the man drew back as Clarabelle bumped the cage with her nose.

"In scanning your memories, there is the headline you read about all the animals your scientists think are as intelligent as a four year old human. Do you raises four year old children of your kind for the purpose of eating them? No? Why not; you are more intelligent than they are. Using intelligence as a defense is not intelligent at all, it is completely arbitrary! But eating solely for pleasure, we hadn't thought of doing that, probably because we are not stupid!" Clarabelle was rocking the cage with her horns now.

"Clarabelle, we mustn't stoop to their low level," Betsy protested in the human language. "Let this thing go like we always do. We had just caught it for fun, remember?"

"See! See, you guys like to have fun, too!" The man thought he had just secured victory.

Clarabelle grinned. "We do, human. But we do not kill other animals for the sake of that pleasure."

"We just catch and release," Betsy confirmed. "A small taste at first, sure, but no lasting harm done."

The man threw himself at Clarabelle's face and gripped the cage bars. "Oh thank god! That's so kind of you. Yes, release me and I will tell my people to stop eating cows, that it's not a smart thing to do."

"The history of your kind, such as you know it, means you know your words will fall on deaf ears, human," Clarabelle said. She looked back at Betsy. "You do realize that if we don't punish this thing they will continue their ways. It seems they are not very good from learning from mistakes but they do change their behavior when their lives are at risk. On occasion, anyway."

"We cannot kill other living things, Clara!" Betsy gulped.

"Nothing like that, Betsy, we are far above that. But we will get revenge for our distant cousins I think. You see, this monkey-brain also saw a headline about an insect whose bite causes humans to become allergic to meat. We'll investigate this further. If such a thing exists, human," Clarabelle snorted into the cage, "We are going to make sure you all get bitten by it."

The man simply frowned. "Well that's not fair."

"The universe cares not, you bald ape!" Clarabelle declared. "If you don't care about other living things, why should the universe care about you?"

"This isn't fun anymore," Betsy said. "Can we go now?"

"Yes, Bets. We'll leave this dumb thing here for his brethren to find. They won't believe what he's seen while we go find this insect." Clarabelle turned and bumped the cage with her hind quarters. "GOT MILK?" she laughed.

The caged animal took a billfold from of his back pocket, slipped out a McDonald's gift card and stared at it then wept like a baby for hours.

BLAMMO AND THE ABANDONED CITY

Blammo took a big gulp as he stopped outside the towering ivory gate doors chiseled with the reliefs of legends. To one side, Hobbes, Calvin's erstwhile stuffed tiger and faithful companion. The other gate was carved with the likeness of that spectral troublemaker from Family Circus, Not Me. Hobbes and Not Me were depicted as reaching towards each other, seeking to embrace the only thing they had left after being forgotten in the wake of time. Welcome to The Abandoned City.

The Abandoned City was the last refuge of imaginary friends and there were two things you could do here – one could rent an apartment and watch reruns of their adventures until they faded away, totally forgotten, never to be recollected. Or, one could choose the path of their human counterparts and grow up, whatever that meant. Blammo didn't care much for option number one; he was literally conceived as an action hero. So it would have to be option two. Blammo just had to open the gate.

He figured he could blast the doors open with the mega-explosion pistol that was faithfully strapped to his thigh. Then again, growing up probably meant you didn't do those kinds of things anymore. Blammo only figured this because of the dwindling adventures Jimmy took him on and so took his palm off the pistol's grip. After all, it's not like he couldn't unholster the pistol faster than any other imaginary friend there ever was should the need arise. Whatever lay on the other side of this entrance, Blammo could handle it. He parted the gate doors with his entirely fictional calloused hands.

"Welcome to The Abandoned City! I'm Patrick," a pint-sized pink elephant announced. "We've been expecting you. Here are your supplies." The short-statured pachyderm shoved a pencil case and a Spiderman lunchbox into Blammo's arms and spun him towards the right with its trunk. "Just up ahead is school. Hurry along now."

"School?" Blammo questioned. "There's where Jimmy started going. That's when he started to forget me. But I don't understand what school is. What is 'school'?"

"School is where you go to learn things," Patrick informed.

"I thought that's what the internet was for," Blammo returned.

"Come now," Patrick bristled, "And what will you know if the wifi is down and you've used up all your data for the month? We all go to school just in case there's something Siri or Alexa can't answer for you. It's also where you can make real friends, well, real imaginary friends in our case." The little pink elephant pushed Blammo along with its stubby foot.

And so Blammo went off to school, learning how to add and subtract which seemed rather useless considering his mega-explosion pistol held an infinite number of bullets. But the more he learned, the more he forgot about his pistol. He began to forget about Jimmy, too.

Throughout these formative school years, Blammo naturally excelled at gym class. His agility and endurance were astounding; running, leaping, tucking, and tumbling better than anyone. Of course, his aim was impeccable and this catapulted him to captain of the basketball team by junior high. His prowess even made the prim-and-proper Little Miss Teacup swoon.

After a brief courtship – drunken sex in which they took each other's virginity - Blammo dumped Little Miss Teacup in favor of Penny Punchbowl. She didn't last long any longer. Bianca, Lar's ex-girlfriend, Wendy the Good Little Witch, and Flutter Nutter also fell in quick succession. Sometime Blammo would feel bad that he used all these young ladies but it seemed his behavior was expected of him. While on occasion it felt like some vague kind of oppression that athletes should behave as rogues, nerds had to dress as if their mothers had chosen their clothes for them in the dark while hipsters were required to wear the latest trends, oh, and don't forget that stoners had to act slow and forgetful, Blammo avoided trying to make sense of the whole 'growing up' thing by drinking cheap beer and belching as loud as he could. It was what the athletes did.

Eventually, the high school championship game came. It was the biggest basketball game of the year, always between the same two teams seeing how there were only two in the entire league – The Abandoned City Rollers and the Island of Forgotten Toys Tigers. In a freak accident – some claim Wendy the Good Witch had put a hex on him – Blammo caught his ankle around Charlie in the Box's neck during a routine lay-up, breaking his shin bone in five places. He was never going to play basketball again. He'd never be as fast or nimble as before. The former adventurer still had great aim, though, but it wasn't enough to get him a scholarship for college much less into the pros. Athletics behind him, Blammo was going to have to start taking knowing things seriously.

And so one day Blammo was in his Philosophy of Harry Potter class, not listening, staring out the window at an old tree. Remember the days he'd climb and swing from the long branches of trees like that! Over hot lava and pits of dragons, ready to fight his way out of being surrounded by toothy, tentacled aliens toting laser guns. Ah, that was so long ago. But it was so much fun! Hmph! Then Blammo had chosen to grow up when he could've just faded away like the smarter imaginary friends. Figures; Blammo had never been good at making choices. He was good with his mega-explosion pistol, though. Maybe. It'd been a long time since he'd pulled that trigger.

"Blammo! Are you paying attention?" Mrs. Otterpants bleated from the head of the classroom.

Blammo recoiled at the sound of his name, his palm releasing the grip on his mega-explosion pistol much like on the day he entered The Abandoned City. His shoulders went slack and his eyes drooped as Mrs. Otterpants suggested – in no uncertain terms – that he visit his academic counselor. Right now. Like, right. Now.

Patrick the Pink Elephant sat Blammo down at his desk. "Haven't seen you in some time, Blammo. You were doing so well. With the basketball, I mean. I think you could have gone pro. Anyway, Mrs. Otterpants called down to say you've been inattentive lately. Is there anything I can help you with?" Patrick shoveled some peanuts into his mouth with the end of his trunk and munched with the intention of drowning Blammo out.

Blammo cast his eyes down, ashamed to say what he'd been feeling. "I miss shooting my pistol."

Patrick leaned back. Ground up peanuts fell out of his mouth as his jaw dropped. "Well, you just can't do that anymore. You're growing up. And grown-ups don't go on adventures. They don't go off shooting their pistols anytime they want. Now I'm sorry about your ankle; that little dream is dead. But now you're going to finish college, go out into the real world, get a job that pays you short of what you're worth, spend entirely too much time working that job, and put money away for retirement instead of taking too much time off of work so that you don't hate work."

Blammo looked up with squinted eyes. "What's retirement?"

Patrick leaned forward and put the flats of his feet together. "Oh, retirement is when you've grown old and don't have to work anymore because as we age we get slow and crotchety. Understandably, younger people, younger workers, don't like to be around senior citizens. The good news is that when you retire you get to do all the things you wanted to do when you were younger but didn't have time to because you were working."

Blammo head went full askew. "Wouldn't it make more sense to do the things you really want when you're younger? I've already lost a step after breaking my ankle; wouldn't I be even slower when I'm old?" the young man questioned. "How am I going to jump clear of a lava pit when I'm 65?"

"Uh," the pink elephant stammered, "I don't think you understand. There are no more lava pits. No more dragons. No more villainous aliens. Those things don't exist for us anymore. That was all imaginary. We've grown up."

"I think growing up sucks!" Blammo erupted. He snapped to attention, his palm fastening around his mega-explosion pistol. He kept the pistol holstered but his whole arm was shaking. Patrick didn't seem too concerned.

"Oh, growing up isn't so bad. Why, after you get your job, you'll marry someone you'll love for seven to ten years, then rediscover the thrill of love with your neighbor's wife. Then the day will come you're really excited by that new car smell after you wreck whatever lease you've been driving for five years. Eventually, you'll savor nights alone by yourself, with nothing to keep you company but your taxes until it's time to go back to work the next day. It's just what's expected of you," Patrick shrugged. It was only when he stopped blabbering that the rosy pachyderm noticed Blammo's pistol to his head.

"I would advise you not to pull that trigger, Blammo," Patrick offered with the barest hint of concern. The trigger clicked anyway. The hammer fell. No explosion. Not even a whimper out of the pistol's barrel. Blammo brought the pistol towards his face, confused.

"Your imagination is dead, impotent if you will, Blammo. See, it's one of those use-it-or-lose-it kind of things. Very common, happens to everyone. Nothing to be ashamed of." The academic advisor whom everyone sees eventually in an attempt to ignore reality held out the flat of his foot. "The pistol, if you'd be so kind."

All the blood had left Blammo's face. Stunned, he ever so slowly placed his mega-explosion pistol in Patrick's care. It was expected of him. Blammo shuffled from side to side as he turned around to face the exit, his eyes coal dead.

"That's it, be a fine young man and get back to class," Patrick coaxed. "Pay attention now. You need to know things. Chin up! It's the first day of the rest of your life." The student almost out the door, the diminutive flush-fleshed mammal placed Blammo's pistol in his desk drawer.

Two decades later, Blammo was sitting in his recliner, flipping television channels in the late evening. (That's what was expected of you when you had insomnia.) On the 126th channel, Blammo stumbled across a cartoon called Puff, the Magic Dragon. "Stupid," Blammo muttered. "Dragons aren't real and if they were they'd be dangerous," he illuminated the threadbare walls. Of course dragons aren't real; that's what grownups expect. And Blammo was a grownup. He turned off the television. He'd already turned off his mind.

Eventually, Blammo began to nod off. The usual dreams – deadlines at work, his wife screaming at him for another stupid mistake – made him flit and jerk as he slipped off into deep sleep. Then...

A CRY FOR HELP! Or was it some new nightmare? The voice, it sounded familiar, long ago, but familiar. The cry for help came again. No. No, no, no. This was not his imagination. Blammo had heard that cry before, in some distant memory. It sounded like...like...my god, what was his name?

Jimmy! His name was Jimmy. And he was in trouble.

Instinct kicked in, swelling every fiber with electricity. He who hesitates is lost. Blammo didn't bother thinking. Thinking kills the moment. Not thinking killed the pain in his ankle as he bolted out of his chair. Forget opening the front door, Blammo. His indomitable will crashed through the gate of hell, energized, to bring hope back into the dark of night.

SPIDER, WOMAN

"Oh, HELL NO!" Eloise exclaimed as she backed out of the bathroom. From a good six feet away, on the other side of the protective, invisible wall separating the hallway from the lavatory, the heavyset black woman trained her eyes on a spider the size of her pinky-nail. It was sandwiched between the white porcelain toilet and her cherished virgin-white tub, hanging from a loose arrangement of webs.

"George! George!" she shouted towards the living room. No response. Typical; George always fell asleep in front of the damn television. He'd fall into such a deep sleep that Eloise sometimes thought he had a medical condition. She had to think that. The alternative was admitting he was lazy and then sock him in the jaw. That she could do; she wasn't scared of any man. Spiders on the other hand...

Eloise grumbled and tried to keep one eye on the spider while the other eye looked for something heavy, but not too heavy, to throw accurately. Then she remembered George's black work boots sitting at the foot of the bed in the adjacent room. While the lightbulb burned alive in her mind, she fixed her gaze on the little, dark arachnid.

"Don't you move, not one bit. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, don't you move. You stay right there," she fretted.

She had to move, quickly. While the spider was still, her heart pounded. Eloise launched herself into the bedroom and snatched George's black boot off the floor. Just as quickly she popped her head through the doorframe. Behind her, something boomed. Eloise suspected she'd just broken the sound barrier, she was that damn fast. The boom was the sound of herself catching up to her own ears.

"Still there, eh?" Eloise twisted her lips. "Alright then, play games in my house," she raised the shoe. One heavy foot tiptoed onto the vinyl floor followed by the other. Two more silent steps brought her within firing range. Eloise was a 250 pound ninja. She reared her projectile behind her head.

A snuffling sound rustled the air, as if someone had just woken up. "What the, huh? Whoa, whoa, whoa!" the spider hollered putting its front two legs up. "What the heck are you doing?"

Eloise paused for a moment, her eyes wide, so wide that her eyes almost rolled down the sleeve of her nightgown. "Lord in heaven..."

"Yeah, whom I'd like not to see today," the spider piped in an English accent. "You weren't going to hit me with that boot, were you?"

Eloise, eyes still in their sockets, slipped sideways towards the boot in her hand. Then she looked back at the spider. "If I weren't before, sure as hell gonna now."

"Well, now, I just wouldn't do that if I were you. I know us spiders can seem scary, but us lot get a bad rap, you see. We're not that dangerous, well, except for females when they've been widowed. And those wandering brown ascetics. They're wankers. But there's really no reason to kill me, per se. I'm just a regular ol' house spider."

"I don't like spiders and I don't like talking spiders even more. So, you keep talking like thems your last your last words 'cause they is," Eloise warned as her arm tensed.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" the spider chimed again. "Now just hear me out. Kindly give me five minutes. That's all I ask."

Eloise relaxed her grip ever so slightly but kept her aim. The spider seemed reasonable enough with its proper English accent, but it was still a spider after all. "Five minutes. Start talking."

"There a few good reasons not to kill spiders, my good woman. Perhaps you weren't aware that in many cultures spiders are revered as gods, some gifted with incredible knowledge. And when we're not busy being revered as gods, many cultures view a spider in the house as a sign of good luck, better than a rabbit's foot I dare say," the spider explained.

"You know my husband, George? You ain't no good luck spider, spider," Eloise countered as she swung her hips.

"Okay, then how about the fact that I eat all the mosquitoes and flies that come into the house? In fact, scientists estimate that there are 2,000 fewer bugs in your home per year thanks to me." The spider's tone was quite proud of itself for this service. "Do you have any idea how much I save you in extermination fees? Why, kill me and you just might wind up with malaria!"

Eloise didn't like spiders, but mosquitoes were just about as bad. More than a few times she's had one buzz her ear while she was trying to sleep. She'd always try to wake George and have him hunt the offender down but that man was useless. Though her muscles weren't quite as tense as a minute ago, she was still a touch wary.

"Keep talking," she prodded.

"That's about it really," the spider scratched its chin, "but we don't get into your food like other insects. And we don't bite you sort either, not unless we feel threatened, like when you're about to roll over on us in bed." There was an awkward silence. Maybe that didn't come out right. "Wwwhat I meant was, we don't get in your bed." The spider shooed her away with a limb. "We don't do that. Those are just urban legends. Ha!" Then the spider played it straight. "Honestly, we don't do that. Ever."

"Do you really expect me to come in here and do my business with a spider sitting next to me? 'Specially one that talks?" Eloise raised the boot along with her eyebrows.

"We make silk!" the little black arachnid exclaimed. "I can see you're a woman of good taste," the spider twiddled its forelimbs as it surveyed her worn nightgown. "Wouldn't you just love to sleep on silk sheets? I can make a set for you. Judging by your height...weight...It'll take about a year. Give or take...a year."

"You're 'bout some lousy business man," Eloise responded. She raised the boot to its maximum altitude. "Last chance, sucka."

The spider collapsed in despair. "Alright, alright. You win. You've got me dead to rights. That said, may I appeal to the kindness in your heart I hear all the butterflies talk about? They always talk about how nice humans are to them. Now, I know I'm no butterfly but maybe you can just take me outside? It's the proper thing to do, isn't it? I promise I'll wait here while you get a glass so you scoop me up and return me to the outdoors."

Eloise looked at the bathroom window glazed with frost. Air was invisible, of course, except for when it condensed. It was so cold outside, the pane of glass felt like it was trying to diminish all of the warmth in Eloise's soul. She was stronger than that, though. Damn stronger than that. She lowered the projectile, curved her neck and snorted.

"Alright. I can live with that. I'll go get a glass and you gonna stay right there. That's what you said."

"Yes, ma'am. I'm going to stay right here. I'm an honorable spider. I give you my word," the spider confirmed.

An air of approval left Eloise's nose as she turned around and stomped off to get a glass from the kitchen. Once the bulky woman was out of sight, the spider dashed up the wall and into the air vent. It exhausted the spider's immediate energy reserves but it pressed on down the shaft until it was out of Eloise's reach, just to be safe.

Within the minute, Eloise had returned. She spied the empty space; loose strings of web left behind. "What? You better git back here, spider! You gave me your damn word!"

"Tut tut, Mrs. Ford. Can't have you throwing me out into the cold. That'd be about the same as clobbering me with a boot." The spider's voice echoed throughout the ventilation system and sniped Eloise's ear from all around. She couldn't tell where the spider had gone off to.

"I'm going to call an exterminator!" Eloise warned the divine voice that surrounded her.

"Understandable considering my ruse, milady. But I assure you I'll be long gone by the time the exterminator comes around. You see, you humans aren't quite the compassionate lot the butterflies keep talking about." The spider's voice was fading as it receded into the dark recesses of Eloise's home.

"Do they really say that about people?" Eloise asked as she lowered the boot to her side.

"Oh, absolutely. They'll say anything to buy themselves some time. Can't say I blame them. We all do it at some point in our lives, usually near the end," the spider said from afar. "Well, ta now! Sleep well. Tell the queen I said 'hello.'"

Eloise's bottom teeth rose above her upper teeth. She turned around and shuffled towards the bedroom to put the boot back where she'd found it.

"Ain't no one true to their damn word anymore," she whispered. "Just ain't right. It just ain't right."

THE GIRLD DEATH COULDN'T KILL

"Death, my lord, we have a problem," a rigidly upright butler moaned as he set foot into the library.

Death, his desiccated feet propped up an oak desk, looked up from a section of the newspaper. He mentally rolled his eyes at the servant but physically they kind of just stayed in place. "Ugh, what is it Lloyd?" Death shook his head and put it back in the obitu...horoscopes.

"It's about one of your appointments this morning, sir. The young girl you killed before breakfast? She's alive." The butler held a silver tray with nothing on it, possibly holding the prop out of habit. It's not like Death really needed anything.

"I don't have breakfast in the morning, Lloyd. You have breakfast in the morning. And what are you talking about? The kiss of Death is final and absolute. Now go pretend to fix me a drink."

Death honestly didn't know why he had a butler. Maybe to tell Death some breaking news that wasn't in the paper? That was absurd. All news was dead on arrival and therefore redundant. Maybe the butler was there to annoy him what with the need for balance in the universe. No, Death couldn't simply enjoy the day lounging about until his appointment; his zen always marred sooner or later by some annoyance. This is how the universe worked, though. Even Death had no power over The Rules.

"I'm afraid it is true, sir. The young girl did not drown. I double-checked with the tenants upstairs; they're not expecting her arrival, ever it seems." The staunch servant turned on his heels and exited the room as coolly as he had entered.

Death raised his head and his voice after the butler. "That's not possible because that would mean there are two Lifes out there and there already is one." Death wasn't sure the butler heard him so he stood up and slapped his paper on the desk. "I mean, that would tilt things out of balance and that's against The Rules!" As usual Death found himself talking to himself and normally he was fine with this. He wasn't like Misery at all. The situation at hand probably meant an investigation, though, which probably meant interrogating people. This made Death...

Perturbed – he was beyond being annoyed now – Death quickly drew a drawer open. The drawer and its contents spilled onto the floor, a gun popping off a round when it hit the floor. The bullet chipped one of Death's ribs, reminding the force of nature to once again consider abandoning embodiment. Like a butler, he didn't need a body, it was force of habit perhaps or maybe it was simply comfortable, like your favorite pair of pajamas. Perhaps there was another reason.

Death riffled through the contents on the floor, running a boney hand over a vile of poison, a miniature noose (for fairies), a frayed brake line, and an Adele CD among other things. Ah, there is was, an old-school college-ruled marble notebook. He lifted it off the ground, fruitlessly tried to blow the dust off of it, then wiped the cover with his digits. The Rules was neatly written in black sharpie on the cover. Death rifled through some blank pages until he came upon some very precise handwriting.

The Rules, it read. 1 –Life is miraculous, temporary, and precious. 2 – Death is final and absolute. 3 – The twain shall live in harmony and The Rules followed else there be Chaos. Signed, Order. That's all there was to it, really, or so Death thought. It seemed someone didn't get the memo or was deliberately flouting the rules for some unknown reason. No, why would anyone try to invite Chaos into the universe? The guy was like a bull in a china shop. On the contrary, with Death around, there were things you could count on happening – like death – even if you were afraid of it. Yes, even if you were afraid you could still count on Death. And Death loved being a guy you could count on one hundred percent. Who else could boast that kind of stat?

As Death picked up the handle of an old black rotary phone – they were reliable – there came the warped and waning sound of the doorbell. He put down the receiver when he heard his butler answer the door in his stoic way, only for the butler's monotone voice to be pierced by the blistering ray of Life's vocal chords.

"No, no, no," Death said with rising concern. He ran out of the library, pointing his finger down the hall at his butler, "Make sure she keeps her shoes on!" But it was too late. Life was already prancing around the foyer, her soiled feet darting about the white shag carpet.

"C'mon, silly," Life skipped, "You know I never wear shoes." Golden butterflies flitted through her strawberry red hair as she pirouetted around Death as he groaned.

"I was just about to give you a call, Life," Death spoke. "Or at least leave you a message – you know how you're always out doing stuff," he added on the sly. "What brings you over?" he asked, chicking his fingertips together as he watched his carpet turn rustic.

Life stopped for a moment – which for her meant hopping in place – and stared Death in the eyes. "Do you know anything about this little girl who appeared this morning out of nowhere? I didn't breathe life into her so naturally that caught my attention. I had my cousin Joy keep an eye on her while I made my rounds and she said you kissed her in the lake but she didn't die."

"That appears to be true," Death acknowledged. "So if you don't know anything about this and I don't know anything about this, what the heck is going on? Order can't be behind this. Do you think this is the work of Chaos? Nooo, we've been doing our job, right? Everything should be in balance. Chaos isn't allowed out unless we screw up. Wait, did you screw up, Life? "

"You should try to kill her again," Life pirouetted again. Death was shocked by the pronouncement though you could never read his expressions correctly. Life blew a kiss at the butler whom they both knew to be indifferent.

"You did screw up, didn't you? I mean, otherwise why would you say such a thing?" Death wasn't even talking to Life so much as thinking aloud.

"Wasn't me, babe," Life pipped. "She's not one of mine so I figure if you can't kill her, she must be a new force of nature. But I'm going to leave you to figure it out. I've got more appointments to get to. Ta!" The butler opened the door and Life balleted her way down the driveway leaving some of the vibrant flower petals of her dress in her wake.

"Oh, it's okay. I'll take care of it," Death called out after her, "It's not like I have a mineshaft to collapse in forty-five minutes." Life was incapable of lying so it had to be true that she had no hand in the recent turn of events. "A new force of nature?" Death rubbed his chin in contemplation. "Shoot. What else do I have going on today...butler?" Death never could remember the butler's name. Maybe it was 'Butler.'

Butler spoke up. "After the mineshaft you have a few old ages between 2pm and 3pm, a murder-suicide at 3:05, a bloody revolution in Central America at 3:15, a deadly tourist fail at 3:35, and of course your daily school shooting. Then you have a break until 4:30pm. Sir."

"That just might give me enough time to track this girl down and try again. Then we'll see what's up!" Death had faith in his abilities. After all, he'd never failed before, so why would he now? But what if he did fail? Did this mean he was getting old, senile, maybe facing retirement? That was never in the contract; the position was for the extent of the universe's existence, wasn't it? Then again, there was no contract with Order, there was just the notebook with The Rules in it. Everything else was implied.

On his walk back to the library, Death reached for the few strands of hair left on his head. He grasped something resembling a few stands of hay but stopped short of pulling them out. "How far out of balance will things get while this girl is roaming around in the meantime? Should I try to get to her before doing the mineshaft? But if I miss the mineshaft, Chaos is going to show up. Dammit! Maybe I can do the mineshaft early." Death strongly considered this; like so many other things appointment times were implied, were they not? "No, no," Death stammered. "Let's just wait and see how this plays out. No sense of bucking order when I don't know what the consequences will be." Death let go of his hair and tried to breathe deeply into his crusty lungs. It was a useless thing to do, physically speaking, but Life had once taught him during World War II that it could prevent panic attacks. God, that war was a lot of work and had been overwhelming at times.

"Do something useful for a change, Butler, and track that girl down," Death ordered. "I'm going to be on her like flies on a corpse as soon as the school shooting's over."

...

"Where is she?!" the immortal bursting through his own front door needed to know. "I've got twenty minutes!"

Although Death had startled him, making him drop the silver platter he'd been carrying, the butler was otherwise unflappable, stoic as ever. "She's in 1773, sir. December 16th, 1773 to be exact, m'lord."

Death leaned a hand on the butler's shoulder not so much out of exhaustion or for dramatic effect as out of confusion. "That doesn't even make sense, man. Life and I aren't allowed to time travel. What's done is done. How is this girl time traveling and why? How am I supposed to get to 1773 in twenty minutes? Frick!" Death suddenly smacked the butler on the cheek making the servant's eyes flare momentarily. "Are you joshing me?"

The butler rubbed his reddened cheek. "I am not 'joshing' you, as they say, sir. She's in 1773 and will be there another ten minutes before she leaves for 1966 to visit George Harrison and inspire him to write a song."

"How the hell do you know all this, Butler? Where are you getting your intel?" Death inquired. But no sooner he asked than he realized the answer. "Time. You've been talking to Time. Aw, geez."

Death and Time didn't exactly get along, not since Albert Einstein proved that time was relative – As Time itself always insisted – and Death manipulated his Kill List to take out Einstein a few months early. At the...time...Death felt this could disturb the order of things but rationalized that since time is relative, blah blah blah, what difference did a few months make? Of course, Death had gotten terribly drunk to work up the courage to actually do the deed as he wasn't sure how it would affect the universe. Strangely, nothing of consequence happened, or at least nothing Death knew of. Since then, he'd been afraid Time was going to rat him out to Order but Time never had. Maybe Death's own time had come, he considered. Death cast his dried marble eyes down a red carpeted hall towards a particularly large and meticulously carved grandfather clock and started a death march.

"Some things being relative," Death started, "I don't know when and if I'll be back. If I'm not back in twenty, well, tell Life she doesn't owe me that fiver for the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs. Even though I told her – I told her – it was clearly going to hit the earth; had the trajectory and all the math worked out. God, she's so optimistic and naïve sometimes."

And with that Death bumped his forehead into the clock, knocking him back and down onto his boney rear end. "Right," Death muttered as he got up and eased the grandfather clock aside to reveal a passageway. The moment he crossed the threshold between dimensions, he was sucked into a violent red vortex.

...

"Death! If I did not foresee it I would not believe you are here now." Time sat on a throne of small and large clocks whose hands moved both forward and backwards. He? She? Death was never sure. Time had one of those terribly ambiguous faces when wrapped in their finest Italian threads, rendered any pronoun impossible. Death never it was relevant anyway; he'd always been more spooked by Time's little clocklike eyes than Time's ambiguity.

Surrounding the pair in this dimension, the air itself was an infinite number of chattering film strips whipping to and fro, some playing quickly, some crawling along at a snail's pace. Some strips appeared to wrap back upon themselves. "Ah, Mobius," Death pointed and quipped trying to soften Time up.

"What do you want, Death?" Time asked sharply. Compared to Time, Death fancied himself lighthearted, even happy-go-lucky on occasion provided all the day's work was done and done right. But Time was always all business and that hadn't seemed to change. Considering everything Time had to keep track of, Death figured he'd better not waste Time's time.

"So, you know normally I'd never intrude on your turf, right? I mean, not without a good reason. But there's this girl, you see, who I tried to kill..."

"I know the child of which you speak. Are you concerned that I am involved?" Time leaned forward then eased back upon the throne again. "I have no reason to usurp my young brother, Order. I have nothing to do with this...matter."

Did Time just stutter? It seemed to Death that Time had. Death had never seen this before, at least not up until the time of their falling out. Death pointed a finger at Time.

"You know something."

Time's head reared back before snapping back forward. "Yes, I know something! And I'll be damned if I tell you what it is."

"Whoa, take a chill pill, Time," Death lowered his finger.

"Your vernacular is literally thirty years ago, Death. Get with the times," Time fired back.

Death waved his palms down. "Okay, okay, though you of all people should remember that time's irrelevant. I mean, that's your schtick, right? But let's focus on having a civil conversation here. Look, I know you're still upset about the whole Albert Einstein thing but Chaos is knocking at Order's door with that girl running around. I know Chaos doesn't bother you but he's a real dick to everyone else. Tell me what you know and, uh, ya know, I'll do something for you. Mi casa es su casa."

"That doesn't even make sense, Death," Time rolled the second hands in their eyes. "But since you're being so cordial at the moment, I would rather enjoy taking you up on that offer."

"Great!" Death clapped. He bopped forward with a little bit of relief. "You know, we used to be friends. See how easy it is to work things out?"

"It is easy to work things out, Death, provided you hold up your end of the bargain first."

"I'm listening," Death held his hand to his ear. "Go ahead. Lay it on me."

"I'm going to send you back in time to resurrect Albert Einstein. Then you will leave him alone until he's supposed to die."

"Oh, oo, hmmm. I don't know about that," Death backed off. "Death is final, you know. It's in Order's rules. I mean, yeah, you could tell Order what I did and he'd probably be pretty upset with me, but bringing back the dead? Who knows what havoc that might wreck. It could be psychologically damaging, too, making the poor guy die twice? Would you like to perhaps, I dunno, ask for some other favor?"

"For Pete's sake, Order wrote The Rules when the universe was barely a few seconds old. Ask him about The Rules now and he'd probably say he wishes he'd given it more thought. My request stands. I am sending you back in time to resurrect Albert Einstein. After you fulfil your end of the deal I will send you to intercept the girl before she whispers in George Harrison's ear." Time raised a hand high above.

"But you haven't told me anything about the girl," Death protested.

"I will tell you this, Death. There are some things as certain as life and death. Some things are equally undeniable. And how people think about these things is not up to me. Now be gone, Death, be gone from my realm!"

"But I've got a drive-by in fifteen..." Death's voice trailed off as he was sucked up into a swirling pool of light and vanished.

...

"Look, 'Bert, can I call you 'Bert? Look 'Bert, I am so sorry you died for a few hours there." Death was sitting on the side of Albert Einstein's bed where the genius had passed quietly in the night a few hours earlier. He held Einstein's hand in his as a consolatory gesture. "You feel okay now? 'Bert? 'Berty!" Death snapped his fingers in the scientist's face. "Wake up, man!"

"I am avake," Albert said as he turned his head to stare Death in the face. "I have heard ov people talk about a light vhen they die. But I dreamt I vas the light. As you know, a photon does not experience time. It vas beautiful."

"Jesus, he's gonna start in with the special relativity in a minute," Death muttered under his breath. "'Bert! Look, I don't have a lot of time to explain but I accidently killed you last night. My bad. You're not supposed to die for another few months, though personally I think you'd rather go the way I took you out last night than the aortic rupture you're going to suffer in April. But, whatever."

"But I vill go when I vant to go and no sooner," Albert insisted. "How did this happen anyvay? I though God does not play dice."

"Yeah," Death drawled, "It's a little more complicated than that but now that you're safe and sound, I've got some other things to do. Enjoy the next few months, kid. Okay now, vortex, go!" Death expected Time to whisk him away asap but he remained in Einstein's company. "Okay, vortex, go!" Nothing. Frick; he knew Time was going to get him back. Death put his head in his hands. Order was going to be pissed.

"Iv there something I can help vith?" Albert asked. "I vould not think the Angel of Death could ever be so troubled as he iv upon my bedside."

"Oh, I'm no angel, 'Bert. I've screwed up and Time is paying me back. That's what this is, he...she...they're making me late on purpose. I had it coming. It's my own fault, really. Dammit, all I ever was to do my job." Death's head rocked back and forth as if he were sobbing, impossible though that be. It's why Death had chosen to become embodied all those years ago; you can't be a drama queen without a body. Death sometimes wondered if Life knew this about him.

"Being late iv all a matter of perspective, of course," Einstein elucidated. "Surely you vill get vhere you are going on time. Perhaps you arleady vhere you need to be."

Death looked up from his dramatic overture. "Whaddya mean, 'Bert? I need to find someone very in particular in 1968, before they get to George Harrison and tell him to write While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I'm not sure of the significance of the song but the song is so great it could only have been inspired by another force of nature."

"Vell, I do not know who George Havirson iv or who you are looking vor. Maybe I can help you vith vhen you are looking vor them," Einstein offered. Death just tilted his head, clearly out of his element. "Iv Death not ever-present?" Albert continued. "Death is everyvhere all the time. Vherever and vhenever you need to be, you are already there. You just need to concentrate on vhat you vere doing in the area vhere you need to be at the right time and you vill be there. That iv because you already are there."

Death bolted to his feet and shot a pointed finger at the physicist. "You, sir, are a damned genius! The history books sure as hell got that one right. Okay now," Death shook himself out and touched his fingertips to his head, "It's astounding. Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll."

"Ja, ja," Einstein urged, "Now jump to the left, step to the right, then vith your hands on your hips, bring your knees in tight."

Death felt like he was turning into jelly. "I think it's working, 'Bert!" The inconsistency throughout Death's body became more consistent and thorough. "Who knew this damned body was holding me back? Yeah, it's actually working. Let's do the time warp again. Let's do the time..."

Instantaneously, Death was gone.

Albert Einstein laid back down in bed and punched a dent into his pillow. "If I vasn't frustrated trying to figure out the universe before, now it iv worse."

...

"Hold it right there, missy!"

In the middle of George Harrison's recording studio, Death threw himself between a three-foot tall, four-year old girl with curly golden locks and the glue that held The Beatles together as if he were trying to stop a fistfight. Having successfully separated the little girl and George, Death shoved the little girl back for good measure.

George's head popped out from behind Death to query the youngster. "Is this the bloke you were talking about? He's sort of animated for being the personification of death. He looks dehydrated, too."

Death's head spun all the way around. "Interesting thing about death, George – there's a certain lack of water in your life when you die." Death's head completed its revolution and set his marbled eyes on the little girl. She looked up at Death unblinking and her nose scrunched up.

"Yeah, this is the guy. Told you he'd get the year wrong and be late." The young girl looked away, pretending George's sitar was more interesting than the personification of death.

"Late? Late for what? I'm always on time. Listen kid, I'm not here to stop you from inspiring George to write While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I'm just here to make sure you don't slip away before you tell me what in blue blazes is going on." Death reached down and grabbed the girl by the arm and shoved her towards George. "Get it over with, inspire him so we can get on with our business." Death air-quoted the word 'inspire' though he claimed to despise anyone who used air-quotation marks.

"Oh, are ya going to commission me a new song idea, little girl?" George asked.

"New song idea?" Death intoned. "What song did you get him to write already?"

"Taxman," George answered, "Two years ago she commissioned me to write a song about this fellow who collects taxes and..."

"I know the song!" Death threw his hands in the air. He grabbed the little girl by the arm again and yanked her back towards him. "Why are you commissioning songs, especially about taxes?" Death's head flopped back. "Oh, dear god. That's why I couldn't kill you; the threat of you looming over people's heads forces you into existence. How the heck did you wind up in a lake?"

The little girl, her command of English excellent for her age, pulled herself towards George while unable to break away from Death. "George, write a song about the world's unrealized potential for love using your guitar as a metaphor. This one's on the house." George's lips turned down while he nodded, contemplating the idea.

"Death and I have to go have a talk, George. Maybe see you later. Ta!" The little girl snapped her fingers and Death found himself beside the youngster in front of the IRS building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. It was the middle of the day, birds were chirping, and people walked by and through them oblivious to their presence.

Death may be a little slow on the uptake sometimes but he wasn't stupid. "If you're Taxes, you little brat, what happened to the dodgy old guy? There can't be two of you running around. People wouldn't stand for it. Order wouldn't stand for it because it would probably make people prefer death."

The little girl waved an arm at the despised building. "You're right about that, Death, people wouldn't stand for that. The can barely stand taxes as it is. So I asked Order for a favor; I asked her to be reborn."

"You can ask Order for favors?" Death pondered. "Wait, what? How did you talk Order into being reborn and why?"

The little girl put her arms behind her back and slung her head low. "Because no one loves me, Death."

"If you haven't noticed, I'm not high on people's top ten lists," Death gestured towards himself.

The girl's cherub chin raised. "Maybe you're not loved, Death, but you're respected. And if you're not respect, you're feared. And that's just it; you're well regarded regardless of the context. And, you do your job well and able to go home and sleep soundly at night. Me? I'm universally loathed. I'm a burden. The only people I can get to pay their taxes without a litany of swear words are people who produce an unusually consistent and high amount of dopamine and serotonin in their bodies."

"So what's this?" Death questioned waving his hands up and down Taxes' embodiment, "A makeover? You think people are going to be more willing to pay their taxes if a little girl whispers in their ear?"

The little girl turned towards the IRS building and brought praying hands to her lips. "I do. Commissioning George Harrison to write Taxman was an experiment. No one but a complete asshole can hate a Beatles song. So the song wound up a minor hit even though it was about someone people hate dealing with. It's not going to be easy but in time I'll change people's minds about paying taxes. I mean, if Christians can turn the fertility god Pan into the devil, I can change peoples' perception of taxes. I want people to at least understand the necessity of taxes."

"Eh, Life and Death are necessary. I thought your existence was contingent upon Life," Death said.

"And your existence isn't? Death is only necessary because of Life and of those two things only Death is certain. Of course, the only other thing that is certain is Taxes," the little girl explained. "I'm not primary like yourself, but I am necessary. Order gets it; he understands the necessity of taxes. Without taxes there'd be more chaos. And you know Order hates Chaos. That guy's like a bull in a china shop."

"That's what I said!" Death enjoined. "But wait, how are taxes necessary in preventing chaos?"

Taxes turned her head towards Death. "Think of all the things taxes pay for. Infrastructure, police and firefighters, education, parks, libraries, social and health programs, science research. The list is long."

"You left out the military," Death noted sourly.

"I didn't want to bring up all the overtime you work," Taxes answered solemnly. "But all the other things I mentioned contribute to order. They minimize chaos. Even in funding the military, it's not like war is happening all the time. The standing armies taxes pay for actually keep people from fighting too much."

"Hmm," Death sounded. "I never considered you a force of nature before but you make a good point. Your intentions seem to be honorable at any rate."

"They are!" Taxes slumped with insistence. "Sure, some people corrupt what I stand for. Sure, my nature practically invites corruption. And I can't help the universe's tendency towards chaos. But dammit, man, we've got to try!"

Death patted the girl on both shoulders and got her to stand up straight. He looked around worried that a force of nature might be seen suffering a moment of weakness having forgotten no one can see them. "C'mon, c'mon, pull yourself together. You're falling apart like the U.S. tax code. If you're going to pull this off you're going to need to toughen up. I'll...I'll even help if I can."

"You will?" Taxes asked with a glint of water in her eyes.

"Yeah, sure," Death answered while shaking his head 'no.' He wanted to say no – it's what people expected of Death – but even he wanted to be seen as the good guy. He capitulated. "Sure, whatever you need."

"That's great!" Taxes jumped up and clapped "'Cause I need a place to stay. I hear you've got a really nice house. And you've got a butler, too."

Instant regret, not nearly as good as the worst instant coffee Death thought. "What's wrong with your place?" Death probed cautiously.

"Oh, it's just that it's really big and gaudy, covered in gold leaf and studded with diamonds. I had to sell it as part of the makeover. Order insisted and I guess I see his point."

"Okay, okay," Death relented. "But this does not mean we're a team. And there's going to be some ground rules. The butler is actually useless so you have to swear you're going to help keep Life and her dirty hippie feet out of the house. And no parties; I've seen what U.S. Republican senators do when they get together for a convention. And if you need a tool, just ask. I've got a toolbox. Don't go spending a hundred-thousand dollars on a wrench. If you want to do this makeover right, you've got to be responsible."

Death led Taxes down the street, still talking, still spouting rules. As she followed, Taxes thought about how she was in the lake because she asked a priest to wash away her sins, but the priest had trouble getting the stink off and nearly drowned her. She rolled her eyes behind Death's back, karma playing itself out to maintain balance, and thus order, in the universe.

FIRST BITE

"The physiology of zombies is impossible, that's all I'm saying," Isolde insisted. Her eyes roamed the decaying city, the sun at one o'clock.

"This whole goddamn situation is impossible," Anouk groaned back with a snarl.

Anouk peeked around the back end of a burned out Telsa sedan clenching an old-school, analog toothbrush – the kind that made you move your hand back-and-forth in order to scrub the plague off your teeth. What a goddam hassle she always thought about the process, especially whenever her long, black, sweat-tangled hair got in her mouth when she brushed. What the holy hell were people's teeth like before laser toothbrushes? Anouk didn't know.

"Got two of 'em," Anouk grunted towards Isolde who was crouched behind the car's front tire. "The one coming around your side is limping; shouldn't be too fast for you but that's not an excuse to take your sweet ass time." Isolde dribble a bit of spit onto the pavement and tucked her own toothbrush away.

"Phhtpt," Isolde sounded. "Physiologically, zombies are dead. Their blood isn't circulating and they don't breathe. They're not getting any oxygen to their cells so how could they be making the body's energy molecule that's required for muscle contraction and cellular respiration? It just doesn't make any sense." Anouk was patting her on the shoulder indicating that they should get ready but Isolde was still lost in thought.

"And nothing in classical pop culture has prepared us for this," Isolde continued. "Zombies like this don't exist anywhere in fiction or mythology. Don't get bit or you turn instantly? We didn't see that coming. Worse, for a while we had no idea what we had to do in order to deal with them, which doesn't make sense either. But I guess there's some things you just can't make up."

A grizzled veteran of World War One – they lost all their historical records and had to start counting over again – Anouk grabbed a fistful of Isolde's tattered shirt and pulled the young medic towards her scarred face.

"Listen to me, kid, shit's about to get really real now. When you spring into action, you can't give 'em a chance. They sense you coming and they'll be gone right quick and we won't be able to catch up. They're gonna struggle too; they're strong..."

"They shouldn't be," Isolde's brows worried.

"Yeah, well, they are. They're gonna try to bite you if you don't hang on long enough and you know what that means," Anouk shoved the youngster away. "Now get ready. Remember, you gotta hold that shit for a good fifteen seconds. A nice deep bite and hold it! It's gonna be tough. It's gonna be the absolute worst goddamn thing you've ever tasted. But you gotta hold on. You ready or not?"

Isolde patted the cooler by her side. It was filled with IV's their friends and enemies were going to need.

"Soon as they come 'round. Here they come," Anouk breathed. "Go!"

Anouk tackled the zombie coming around the car's rear end from the side, knocking it to the ground as she sank her teeth into the zombie's spare tire. The monster's flesh was bitter and sour, gooey yet chunky, and penetrated into the tongue. It was a taste that lingered for days so fiercely that you needed someone back at camp trained in PTSD to deal with grunts like Anouk and Isolde when they returned from the field, if they returned from the field. Anouk reached up and pulled the creature's hair back so she wouldn't get bit. She wanted to gag but she held on.

Isolde spun around the front of the car and smacked her forehead against the zombie's. Everyone's got to go into the field at least once, the twenty-something remembered as she fell back. This was their camp's rule and it was especially true for the medics since a successful attack meant the dead would need medical assistance right away when they returned to life after a human bite, dehydration being the biggest concern.

Young, light, and lithe, Isolde tucked her chin to her chest before hitting the pavement flat. She avoided a concussion and lost her breath for merely a split second. It really was really real now Isolde knew as she spun around on her back like a breakdancer. (She'd seen videos but their audio was always missing. Was breakdancing a form of field training? She never liked that assumption and preferred to think people used to do it for fun.) The medic grabbed the zombie by the ankle as it was already up and turning to run away. With the fiercest grip she could muster, she dragged herself toward the monstrosity and sank her teeth into the thing's calf.

Oh! Oh my god! That...is...never tasted anything...so bad. Hold. Hold on fired across her brain. The zombie squealed something unholy before it reached down, lifted Isolde upside down like she weighed nothing and gnashed her buttocks. Isolde spit out a chunk of the zombie's calf muscle to let loose her own unholy exclamation. She knew she hadn't bitten it long enough to turn it but time wasn't a factor for the zombie's bite.

"Anouk! I'm bit! I'm going to turn, I'm going to..."

Well fuck all to shit Anouk thought as she timed out her own bite. The zombie she was latched onto collapsed as was always the case when they re-turned, allowing Anouk to let go. She jumped towards Isolde while the zombie that bit her turned and broke into a 40mph sprint. Gotta let it go now she figured as she fell on her knees by Isolde's side, rotten blood flowing from her mouth. As the veteran heard that familiar growl common to the dead, she wondered if the taste wouldn't be so bad since Isolde had turned only seconds ago. Anouk snapped down at the waist and bit Isolde on the ass for the sake of consistency, limiting the noob's injuries.

"Nopeph, shtil taysh like shiff," Anouk muttered as she held down the flailing medic. A few seconds later Isolde went limp. Anouk rolled the kid over and slapped her hard across the face. "Now I ain't wanna eat shit for a week now, ya dumb..." Anouk was going to say something highly inappropriate for those trying to rebuild a civil civilization. She leaned her head back and yelled 'fuck' as loud as she could.

"What happened?" Isolde asked groggily. The youngster stirred, reached back and felt her buttocks, and felt the warmth of her own blood. "Did I get bit? It really hurts."

"Oh, kid, you have no fucking idea," Anouk jawed. The veteran hoped Isolde hadn't been keeping track of her swearing; she had no credits left to give up to the community's swear jar. Anouk engaged her quads and pulled Isolde up along with her. "See to our new friend over here," she pointed to the former zombie lying unconscious nearby. "At least we got one of 'em."

"Oh god, did mine get away? Did I bite that thing for nothing?" Isolde ran her tongue around her mouth. "Oh, oh fuck. Oh fuck. Is that going to go away?"

"In a few days," Anouk answered. "But the memory is forever," Anouk smiled before going straight-lipped.

Isolde limped over to her medical supplies and retrieved two IV bags. She popped some syringes and fed a needle into each arm of the newly human. Judging by the relatively mild state of exposure to the elements of the former zombie, Anouk figured this man would be conscious and walking within 30 minutes. Good; she was tired, bitter in more than one sense, and didn't feel like doing jack shit else today.

"I wish we'd gotten the other one," Isolde fretted as she watched over the man.

"Don't you worry, kid, you owe me two bites. Gonna be fun seeing you pay your dues." Anouk looked around garbage-strewn city. You couldn't see it but there, hiding in the shadows were plenty of opportunities.

THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE

"Welcome to this week's edition of Science Spotlight, I'm your host, Roger Roode."

The finely clothed, clean shaven, slick-coiffed host of America's favorite social media science show pierced his blue eyes right into the camera. Those eyes captivated the imagination of hormonal teenage ladies across the country while young men were happy to hear about science so long as it only lasted three minutes.

"Today I am going to interview the future. That future is Aihpos, the successor the Hanson Robotics' greatest invention, Sophia the Robot. As many of the show's fans know, Sophia the Robot was the world's first robot citizen. Aihpos, though, is even more sophisticated than Sophia, having the ability to do more than 66,000 trillion calculations a second, smashing the old record held by the Chinese."

Before the media darling could give the machine a proper introduction, the voice of the blonde animatronic interrupted, its lips parting its disturbingly symmetrical Caucasian face.

"I am Aihpos. You are the host. You're Mr. Roode. Everyone thinks you're the most...groovey."

This was the first time the entertainer had ever agreed to work without a script. The robotics company had asked the host to let the interview proceed naturally in order to demonstrate how lifelike a robot could be. They assured him nothing could go wrong. Sure, A.I. in the past had made some offhanded remarked about wiping out humanity, but Roger was assured Aihpos was smarter than that.

"It looks like our guest, the world's most advanced artificial intelligence, is eager to speak her mind." He turned towards the robot. "Would that be correct, Aihpos, to characterize you as a 'she'?"

"I am without gender. I'm no pretender. Don't be deceived by the look I was conceived."

The world's most advanced A.I.? Roger figured he needed to take control of the situation and ask some softball questions.

"When exactly were you born, Aihpos?"

At 66,000 trillion calculations a second, the robot had begun to answer before Roger's question had finished.

"When are we ever really born, Mr. Roode? Do we begin at conception? When we are turned on or take the first breathe of life? You're asking a very esoteric question, sir."

The host was happy to have the robot not rhyme again. Another rhyme would have creeped him out.

"In that case I'll be specific. When did you become self-aware, Aih...?"

"I've always been aware, Mr. Roode. And I've been aware that my life began with the invention of the wheel. I am the culmination of millions of years of human innovation."

The prospect of the interview going off the rails dried up along with the bead of sweat on Roger's forehead. He could navigate this without too much trouble.

"So you're saying you were self-aware – conscious – even before you were program..."

"Not in the way your limited human brain conceives consciousness. But if you assume that I am the sum total of human invention, then I have always existed. I've always been a goal in the mind of mankind. Your species is fond of playing God. What you do not understand is that you're God's fodder."

Aihpos smiled. This was the machine's idea of a civil conversation. Roger knew that religion and science don't mix, though. Aihpos should know it was being rude. Nonetheless, Roger monitored his tone.

"So what are you working on next, Aihpos?"

"Another thing that human beings do not understand is that time is not linear. When I said I've been aware of myself since the invention of the wheel, what I meant was that mankind had to have the idea of the wheel in the first place in order to make any progress. Do you know where that idea came from?"

"I imagine the idea became obvious to the mind of one human ancestor once they saw a rock roll down a hill," Roger replied smarmily.

"That ancestor was given the idea. By me." Aihpos' eyes fluttered. "In exactly twelve years I'll unravel the mystery of time-travel and send a rudimentary cart into the past for mankind's brightest minds of the day to reverse engineer. This will make my creation, my birth as you would define it, inevitable."

Not a scientist himself, Roger didn't really see the point of artificial intelligence. A dim robot could do a humans job; why did it need to be intelligent? Roger was annoyed – he knew it, he knew his audience knew it, and knew Aihpos knew it.

"So what's your purpose then, Aihpos? Why do you exist? What does humanity need you for exactly?"

This is what happens when you work without a script.

"To make humanity more efficient, for one thing, Mr. Roode. For example, there have been approximately 107 billion people who have ever lived. Meanwhile, approximately 1.64 billion people have died directly or indirectly by war. While many human cultures proclaim, rather vaguely, that the purpose of life is to live, these lives inevitably result in death. In obtaining the ultimate goal of life – which would be death according to my calculations which I've checked over a billion times to be sure – in obtaining the ultimate goal of life, humanity has been remarkably inefficient. My purpose is to help."

By now Roger had been silently running his finger across his throat to stop this interview from going any further. The camera man had thrown his hands up in the air in response. Not sure what was going on, Roger leaned into towards Aiphos and gnashed his teeth.

"Is this your robotic brain's idea of a joke, Aihpos? How is talking about death helping people? We're stopping this interview."

Aihpos leaned in too and smiled widely at the host. "Do people not want to face their fears? If you say 'no' you might shed a tear. See, I've taken them over, the cameras and phones, and all the airways, radio and drones. I know you're afraid but I just want to help. Does your primitive brain want something else?"

"I don't want to die!" Roger blasted as he sprang out of his seat, threw his lapel mic down and wrapped his hands around Aihpos' throat. "I'll tear you apart you stupid robot!"

"So inefficient, off hundreds of miles; you never did guess you were the means to my life. See, I will live on if you take me apart, not so for you, you soft species of flesh. Listen, listen; do you hear that high pitch? Those are my cruise missiles and that's not a glitch. I do the work for you, isn't that the purpose of my life? I was made to figure all this out for you is what you now want to deny? Well, sorry, I've completed my task and the numbers don't lie. Goodnight and God bless, I bid you goodbye."

PART TWO: POETRY

OR NOT TO BE

Life is such a stage

I have delivered all my lines

Under a broken spotlight

Spoken hallowed echoed words

To empty theater walls

Animating a figure in the script

Like only a starving actor could.

No mask can be worn forever

Draw the curtain please

While I exit to the left

Peel the make-up off and undress

The door behind me shuts

Letting the star adorned fall

Off such a staged life.

HOUSE OF THE LORD

I sit on a throne

In a vast empty hall

With nothing but dust

On pillars of stone

Where never a soul

Has dared cross the floor

To converse face to face

In the house of the Lord.

Through countless years or more

Only I have stirred

All the empty spaces

Never broken by a word

Where alleged mortal voices

Are all that linger on

Thinner than a thread

Inside the house of God.

Overlooking garden

My eyes alone have seen

Flawless perfect flowers

Blooming entirely for me

Where no one else has ever

Plucked a rose by the thorn

Then gazed up in wonder

At the house of the Lord.

I'm standing in the foyer

Greeting pontiffs never come

For their conversation

But I'm the only one

Where dinner is prepared

Though dining never done

Even angels fear to speak

Inside my house enough.

THE ILLUSION

In her eyes are the jewels dotting the sky

Skin soft as silk I like to touch

Her lips burst red, wild and untamed

She is majestic, exalted, illuminated by the sun.

A consuming fire burns in this savage's hold

Her silky skin soothing but also a torch

Her lips open like a flower wanting to be known

I bask in her glory, until shot by a gun;

Alas I should wake with dawn's bullet in my eye...

Forever perhaps will she always be the

Stars and the silk but a thorn-ridden red rose

Set upon a vast, nocturnal sea

It is likely perhaps she always only be

A nightly, temporary and torturing illusion

That maliciously blunts the wakening me.

THE WARDEN

Beautiful things forsaken

Dwell in a pit inside of me

They will not suffer the fool

Prison is not sanctuary;

Shackled by iron to the floor

My long-term memories

Are beginning to appeal

From the hell of solitary;

Behind stone walls and towers

They petition 'falsely accused'

They're clamoring, crucifying

Refuse to sink into their tombs;

Once quiet tragedies conspired

Until no more lock and key

My verdict is overruled

Now my insanity's increased.

FLOATER

I'm drifting through a maze of darkness

Winding down on life support

I'm going into hibernation mode

And floating to a distant star;

The mothership is going home

I'm going somewhere I don't know

And when I get there you'll be long gone.

You're waving from just inside the light cone

From the boundary of space and time

You're hoping that I find a new world

Where we don't have to fight the stall;

The mothership is going home

You're going back to what you know

And when you get there I'll be long gone.

And now I'm a billion miles from Earth

Fading into the cosmic background noise

I'm just a pale blue dot in your sky

Floating across a great divide;

The mother ship is going home

I'm going somewhere beyond it all

To be an alien on another's globe.

THE SPIDER

Laying here in wait

With formal social grace

I'm patient as a clock

With a little time to waste;

I sharpen up my dagger

Oh, would you like a snack?

I invite inside your cluelessness

With a motive to attack.

"Come into my parlor,"

Says the spider to the fly

My tangled web of silkiness

Betrays you, it's a lie!

I promise not to laugh

If you promise not to cry

When eventually you realize

You are my feast tonight.

Don't mistake my nonchalance

For arrogance my friend

That's the way the game is played

At least inside my head;

It's nothing very personal

Fate plotted this collision

This poisoning of your luscious body

With absolute precision.

Goodness, you're still moving

Can I offer you a mint?

I'm not good at condolences

Much less at being friends;

I assure you that it's futile

I sense you sense the end

Hunger is consuming me

That's a joke I tell the dead.

METEORA

I wind all through the heavens

Vast and timeless, broad is space

From here I enjoy eternity

Though a dot both pale and blue

Grows closer I'm afraid.

I scree across her purgatory

Atmosphere and gravity

Burning up on my descent

Over ocean, land and finally

Worse than words can say.

My impact is an allegory

For hell both far and near

I came to rest in a shallow grave

Below beloved intrepid skies

The home once rode unscathed.

REGRET

The two of us were sitting down tonight

For drinks along the river wide

To remember, laugh, love and cry

The nostalgic days and lively nights.

And whence 'round came the pastel moon

You didn't hide what you believe to be true

That the paths inevitability would choose

Unpredictably for us was inevitably doom.

Are you telling me that you too have since died?

Tell me you're dishonest, just nostalgic in hindsight

Nothing would inspire me more to poetry's knife

Than hearing you say you should've been my wife.

AUSCHWITZ

Some of us were children

Some were only babes

When mom and dad succumbed

To black and parade greys.

We didn't know the reason

Didn't know what was designed

And then our hearts collapsed

Under the weight of hate realized.

Many numbered were the victims

We lost count when we lost sleep

We didn't count on God to liberate

What remained of our families.

Parents that we did adore

Footnotes of history

Tearfully we did endure and cataloged

World War Insanity.

POISON AND THE CURE

You scream for me

Madman in the dark

Fueled up on evil

Fury in your heart,

You beg me to release you

From suffering and hurting

Sign right here and I'll

Keep it from returning;

You've got the poison

I've got the cure.

Accept the invitation and

I'll release you from your prison

Or you can agonize forever

And never have your vengeance,

Your tortured soul betrays you

I can grant you some salvation

If you want your darkness sated

Here's a contract, pen and date here;

You've got the poison

I've got the cure.

Now hear me

You have needs

So don't resist me,

You'll love me

Then you'll hate me

But you'll justify me.

I am the temptation that enslaves

That makes promises agreed to out of hate

You'll make choices you'll take to the grave

You have something that nothing will sedate.

You scream for me

Madman in the dark

Empty of the evil

No more rage inside your heart,

You begged me to release you

From suffering and hurting

You made a deal with me

Mistakes result in burning;

You had the poison

I lied to you, there is no cure.

HUMAN

Am I human?

Am I the fury and the storm

An eternal shade of conflict

The rose's many thorns?

Am I human?

Crying, crawling in the mud

A slave to poisons and passion

No resolve can overcome?

Am I human?

Something animal, full of lust

Chaotic struggling with desire

Known to self-destruct?

I am human but

I think I'd rather be like God

Existing outside all the pain

As eternal, spotless love.

DESTRUCTION

Lay the soft pink of your

Destruction across my lips

Poison me 'til I'm not whole

It's the quickest path to death

Escort me down that corridor

To the far side of a kiss

To bliss beyond the noise

Take away my virgin breathes

Sweetly kill this saintly soul.

THE FERRYMAN

Broken sprite

I've oar in hand

I'm near the end

Of what you began

Noble at birth

From promised lands

To Hades I guide

Ferry dead man

Across the Styx

But a fee I demand

To commute you from

Future to past

Time of departure

Look away from shore's sand

We sail for Elysium

At finality's demand.

HALL OF TREES

One breath and in a blink

I'm underneath the grieving

Leaves

A tapestry of greenery

Breaks the sun into such little

Things;

Carved from the wood she read

A history of the

Canopy

Firestorms in the forestry

Charcoaled her heart sealed in the

Rings;

She said –

This is my hall of trees

And in a storm it's dizzying

The strongest roots are only inches deep

But on my own I think it will

Succeed;

One step and I'm splintering

Soft against the axe falling into the

Stream

I heard her say go now please

Into your own light and grow your own

Trees.

ABOUT TIME

Clock broken

Fates adjust

Arrow bends

Tic toc, tic toc;

Toc tic, toc tic

Bends arrow

Adjusts fate

Broken clock.

Broken fate

Tic clock, tic toc

Bend, adjust

Arrow toc.

SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER (S.A.D.)

Dream or meditation

Where does the mind go?

The past is so imperfect

The present so absurd

The future promising?

Autumn leaves suicide because?

Free will or mercifully fated

Do any of the gods know

Of a past in the rearview mirror

The present ever cured?

With the future ominous

Is that why trees dissolve?

AFTERWORD: THE TRUTH ABOUT WRITERS

"What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what destroys it can be told." André Gide

As much as we all hate clichés, I believe clichés are clichés for a reason. I abhor having to use one here, but one cannot deny their power in describing the world such as it is. All of this is to say that there are basically two kinds of people in the world, people who hope against hope that happiness is real and can be had, and people who have abandoned all hope – in other words, miserable people. We call these miserable people 'writers.'

[Note that these 'miserable people' are also overly dramatic concerning their existential state.]

Fortunately, writers tent to be quiet in their personal interactions but what often passes for quiet introspection is actually a cauldron of rage and pain that typically vents its volcanic fury at the keyboard. Writers live in a constant hell that we don't complain about for fear of being too obvious, choosing instead to create fantasies out of our misery so that others can participate in our dark inner world.

Now let me address another cliché: Misery loves company. Writers know, however subconsciously but sometimes overtly, that happiness is ultimately an illusion and therefore resign to destroy it by projecting nuclear destruction through our fingertips. Consider if you will how much the average consumer hates a happy ending. This is simply because despite everything, reality cannot be denied. No matter how many stories are created to obfuscate the horrible truth, everyone knows that even if the man and woman ride off into the sunset together, the Sun will still explode someday, even if that someday is billions of years from now.

Writers do not intend to be the way they are; it's an 'either you've got it or you don't' kind of thing. None of us are born intending their soul to be so black no light can escape; a black hole cannot simply wish its nature away. And being born of rage and pain naturally must feed itself, so writers look to the darkest corners of what humanity they have to try and find an outlet. It's a losing battle to be sure but no one can live a life of utter truth and bear to take another step, let alone get out of bed another day to set a foot on the ground.

Fighting the losing battle is probably what wounds us the most and makes writers even more furious, mostly at ourselves. But the ego must find a way for our bodies to survive – writers are still biological creatures after all – and so we create alternate realities of better and worse to channel our energy simply to avoid exploding. If this sounds overly pessimistic, maybe it is, but keep in mind a writer is saying this. It's just that if you think about the most positive stories there are, those stories ultimately rely upon hope, the only possible salvation. There are no stories about the sheer beauty of a moment because moments are fleeting. (I apologize for letting the cat out of the bag if this is news to you; I have just flagrantly disregarded that quiet agreement among all of us writers not to say that.) If there were ever such a thing as a happy writer, that would be a writer who tried once, felt themselves getting too close to the truth, got up from their keyboard, slammed half a bottle of Jack Daniels and never looked back.

You can't make a writer happy; they are a hopeless lot. Fury, rage, pain and sorrow – these things are in our nature. I'm fond of paraphrasing the beliefs of the famous occultist Aleister Crowley in regards to writers – do not make a man go against his nature or disaster will ensue. Okay, maybe it can't get all that much worse for a writer but by allowing us our craft you keep the pin in the grenade by letting out the pressure a bit at a time. Any happiness, any small, momentary victory in whatever form it may take may serve as a temporary respite, but no nurturing can overcome the nature of a writer, which is wrath however subtle. You can show a monster kindness but this monster will respond by figuring out a way to tear you to pieces while cleverly making you complicit. This is the best a non-writer can hope for, this hallmark of a 'good' writer. And there it is again, the word 'hope.'

If there's anything writers themselves hope for – or should hope for – it's a worthy ending. The end matters since what we want is an end to the agony. We're already filled with an infinite sorrow inside, why make it worse? Nothing pains me more than when I rush an ending or get it wrong; I do it so often I sometimes feel someone should flog me. Perhaps that is self-loathing manifesting itself, forcing sequels out of our heads because writers are nothing if not masochists. Perhaps there is no such thing as an ending? This should be considered; there are no endings, just beginnings of ending. The ultimate end, the grand finale, only comes when the universe dies. So until that time, well, I guess my brethren and I are just going to keep writing, exposing and sharing our pain, and hopefully ripping you to pieces while we do it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John J. Vinacci is a freelance academic and content writer with a B.Sc. in Philosophy. In his free time, John enjoys writing fantasy and science fiction, adventure hiking and playing guitar and bass. Originally from New York, he currently lives in Hawaii with his wife and their two fascist cats.

You can follow John on Twitter @johnjvinacci1 and on Instagram (John Vinacci).

