2084

~trilogy~
Kadon Landon Peterson
Book One
2069
Book Two
2070-2083
Book Three
2084
 I miss who you used to be…

So much…

And I’m sorry for your pain…

But I’ve already mourned your death.

 QUOTES
“Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society ap-
pears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example,
misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of
pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically
counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legal-
istically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.”
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“The prostitute is a superb analyst, not only in evading the law but in initiating the unique
constellation of convention and fantasy that produces a stranger’s orgasm. She lives by her
wits as much as her body. She is a psychologist, actor, and dancer, a performance artist of
hyper-developed sexual imagination.”
– Camille Paglia

“You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European
standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You
spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés.”
– Ernest Hemingway

“Sexuality is the key to the problem of the psychoneuroses and of the neuroses in gen-
eral. No one who disdains the key will ever be able to unlock the door.”
– Sigmund Freud

“They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty
years it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a
mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it
has not.”
– C.S. Lewis

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
– Oscar Wilde
“To encounter erotica designed to appeal to the other sex is to gaze into the psychologi-
cal abyss that separates the sexes and, what’s worse, to confront one’s own shortcomings,
vis-a-vis the other sex’s fantasy ideal. The contrasts between romance novels and porn vide-
os are so numerous and profound that they can make one marvel that men and women ever
get together at all, much less stay together and successfully rear children.”
– Catherine Salmon & Donald Symons

“Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex
instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration
card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.”
– George Orwell

“Of all the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any
length for it—risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself. And what do you think he has
done? He has left it out of his heaven!”
– Mark Twain

“Every kind of contempt for sex, every impurification of it by means of the concept ‘im-
pure,’ is the crime par excellence against life—is the real sin against the holy spirit of life.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“No matter how friendly and obliging a woman’s Eros may be, no logic on earth can shake
her if she is ridden by the animus. Often the man has the feeling—and he is not altogether
wrong—that only seduction or a beating or rape would have the necessary power of persua-
sion.”
– Carl Jung

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have
love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would
not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
– Mary Shelley
 Table Talk (1/3): I remember, 27 years ago…

Max, Todd, Isabelle, and Walter sat in a room around a low coffee table, scheming about
what image to remake the world in. I, five years old then, sat tacitly by their feet, belly full of
an expensive dinner, playfully disrupting the rat-brained toy car Todd had provided me as it
tried to escape across the floor.
“There’s a lot of… unrest,” Bell stated factually, careful not to provoke.
Max, who was uncharacteristically enraged, spoke through clenched teeth, “Well, they
are starving, after all.” He then looked to Todd, who was twiddling his thumbs, to reprimand
him thoroughly: “How exactly does a quantum computer capable of seeing the future lose to a
fungus?”
“Don’t you dare blame me,” the neurologist spat back at him. “If I recall, I gave GC your
parameters for growing the food.”
“First of all,” Max threatened him with a pointed finger, “you didn’t tell any of us about
the mold before it was too late. Secondly,” he raised his voice, “you then spread the lie that
the food shortage was due to religious extremists bombing the farms to hide the WPA’s fail-
ure!”
Todd, as smug as ever, shrugged sarcastically before saying, “I wanted to see if GC
could handle the infestation. As for the lie, you may find its architect on your left.”
The zoologist turned to the psychiatrist, saw the truth in her face, and muttered, “God
damnit, Bell,” as he covered his face with his hands to isolate himself from his treacherous
colleagues.
“And,” the poised and honorable woman began, less wary than before, “it would have
been a successful strategy for societal stabilization too—” Isabelle paused to peer into the
face of the man she married with a scowl “—if it weren’t for you abetting their escape.”
“A small price to pay, dear,” Walter cooed. “I eliminated the mold, didn’t I? We’ll be back
to full production in a few months,” the geneticist assured her as he rounded the table with
his intelligent eyes before they fell upon Todd. “Seems there are still things your pet fails to
see.”
“For now,” Todd promised, quick to dismiss Walter’s concern.
The hidden wrath of a wise god turned Walter’s face to stone as he catechized his unru-
ly angel.
“I’ve also heard GC has found himself a mate?” he asked, and when Todd’s smugness
mutated into shameful hatred, Walter reiterated for the room: “A human female?”
Max laughed spitefully and croaked, “I knew it! You’ve lost control of him!”
 “I have not, you fat imbecile,” Todd retaliated bitterly. “And I’ve already formulated a
plan to deal with its fascination with that deranged idiot girl without destabilizing its con-
sciousness.”
“Oh?” inquired the matriarch. “And what will you do with her?”
The schemer tapped his skull and said, “It’s all up here, Bell. Just remember where the
kill switch is and leave me and my machine alone. It’s because of me that we’ve retained glob-
al control, so act like it.”
 ╣╝╛╓╓╧╩╖╤╢╛╝╥┼╢╦╒╣╤╘╧╒╬╗╙═╧╙║╗╩╤╢╗╠╗╨╕╩

PROLOGUE: 2062
CHAPTER 0

It was a warm morning in December and the bus arrived within the one-tenth-of-a-
second time struck noon. The electric bus lowered its platform and sleepy people climbed
aboard at the slowest allowable rate of one person per five seconds. I prepped my Proofer
and slotted it into the terminal at the front of the bus. The light turned green instantly, and I
took my window seat at the far back to watch the snow vaporize above the City like electricity
burning into wood.
It was after ninety seconds when a Model 60 took the seat next to me. The 60s were all
so boringly average and docile, it was hard not to think of them as public pets. Since their
release, they had proved themselves superior to their cousin series (according to the WPA)
and the populace seemed to agree, especially when they realized they could invite 60s for
some playful prostitution. Their predecessors did have plenty of obvious defects, but at least
the 50s had some variety to distinguish them and personalities equally so, both of which I
sorely missed. The WPA determined diversity was counterproductive after many of the 50s
were decommissioned for dissident behavior—denouncing their own creation—which also
brought many more of them to collectively commit suicide in protest.
It sat motionless with its head down, no phone to read, and no writing pad to scribble on.
It was an empty thing—a thing built by the WPA to work, die, and care for their cause. Numb-
ness was the typical expression for them to wear in transit, but this Model was digging its
finger into its wrist from some affliction of anxiety.
I waited for the bus to silently take us forward, because then it wouldn’t have the means
to escape my questions. All buses would only wait five minutes, and upon checking my rudi-

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

mentary turn-of-the-century phone, it had been five minutes. There were no attendants of any
kind on the electric bus, but if the computer noticed a person leaving their seat during high-
speed locomotion, their rations would surely suffer for it.
So, since the Model was stuck with me, I decided to tease the poor thing.
“What are you doing, Nat?” it asked and turned to look at me after I had poked its breast
to find out if it had any, and I determined it had none, but this was the least of my surprises.
This Model had decorated its ear with a piercing—a crude construction of wire and a
small purple crystal of some kind tangled within. I thought the 60s had no sense of fashion,
especially of the feminine sort.
“Just… curious, is all,” I answered, staring into its fleshy eyes.
It appeared to be ashamed.
“Curious…” it repeated and looked back to the floor in its subdued way.
I felt bad for it, so I thought of things I could do to cheer it up—but then again, perhaps
the fate of the 50s was inevitable.
“Here, I want you to have this,” I said and pulled out of my black leather bag a pair of hot-
pink cat-ears, which were sewn onto a headband for wear. The item wasn’t special to me,
although I would have to get another set later tonight at the Pet Store.
The 60 took it cautiously and felt its furry construction before putting it on.
It asked me, “How do I look?”
I stifled a giggle to save the Model from embarrassment. “You look rather cute, I must
say.”
Its eyes lit up and it smiled.
“Cute?” it wondered, like the word was foreign. “You think I’m cute?”
I couldn’t imagine how the WPA possibly botched the job again after a decade of research,
because I wasn’t dealing with an it at all.
“Aye,” I confirmed before asking, “What do you think you are?”
“A Model 60,” it replied simply.
I shook my head. “No, that’s not what I mean. What am I?”
“A Male Nat,” it responded with a childlike demeanor.
“Very good.” I smiled at the creature, and it blushed. “Now, what are you?”
It was confused by the repeated question, but its blank hesitation vanished as it recol-
lected whatever had introduced it to sex.
“A female Model,” she finally said, but remained unsure.

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 2084

Anatomically, the 60s were based on the female platform, some of which bled through
their androgyny, but the internal wiring of their brains and reproductive organs were so ge-
netically scrambled, the 60s had less DNA in common with Nats than chimps had with humans.
“Okay, woman, what’s your name?” I asked her, and there were a few hisses from the
Treats around us, but they dared not confront a situation involving a Model. To the Treats,
Models were deities, even if Models didn’t have the same revulsion to Nats as they did.
“My name’s Ray,” she said, feeling the tips of her fake ears and taking them off to inspect
them again. “What’s yours?”
“Dune,” I introduced myself, but left out my last name. No one uttered the last name of
the man who betrayed the City, unless it was to sentence his sympathizers to death by public
execution.
“Could I have your number, Dune?” she asked politely, and there again was her internal
shame.
“Sure,” I obliged, pulled out my phone, and listed off my number.
After she tested it with a message, we went on to investigate the other items in my bag.
She asked me about why I had such a collection of odd things, so I gave her some lies and
some twisted truths, but she was entertained nonetheless. Soon enough, thirty minutes ex-
actly, the bus rested at my stop. I thought I needed to say goodbye, but, another surprise, she
also stood.
We both got out of the bus and we both greeted the man waiting under the bus stop pavil-
ion.
“So, you’ve already gotten to know each other, eh?” chuckled Lavanda, a short stubby
man with a red beard and various electrical tools settled in his belt.
“You work for maintenance?” I asked Ray, but it was Lavanda who answered.
“Ray’s one of our telephone operators,” he said as the bus silently left our station.
“I thought we couldn’t hire Nats anymore,” Ray questioned the man, but he shook his
head.
“Orders from the WPA. We aren’t allowed to ask about that!” he reported, frowning at me
for a moment, before taking our silence as acceptance. “Well, should we get started?”

╦╝┼╢╢╕╤╙╠╔╒╝╬═╨╥╠╧╪╫╪╔╗╦╕╧╩║╜╒╟╛╧╓╖╡╩

I carried a ten-foot ladder over my shoulder as I went down the maintenance stairs into
the subway platform. The subway platform was set into a carved-out cylinder 100 feet in
radius and 1,000 feet long, which accommodated seven tracks organized as the vertices and

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

center of a hexagon. After the cylinder ended, the tracks entered their respective singular
tunnels engraved in the bedrock. The subway system was built into the fabric of Level One, but
went no deeper than that, as the Tunnels themselves predated the WPA’s transport infra-
structure.
My first assignment was simple: fix the flickering florescent light above the platform. I
carried my bag of tools and a few extra bulbs to the area below the culprit and set up my
flashing cones to alarm people as I worked. After spreading the legs of my ladder, I hoisted
myself up until I was on the last step where I could reach the light panel. My knees shook as I
unscrewed the bolts, but I calmed my childhood fear of heights by blurring my vision so my
eyes could not register depth. I reminded myself of the stakes and recognized I had to do a
good job, or else I would lose my unique privileges in relation to the WPA.
The panel came off smoothly, and after a quick diagnosis of the wiring and contacts, I de-
termined the flickering bulb must had been faulty, so it expired sooner than expected. I re-
placed the bulb with a new one and flicked it a few times after it lit up to ensure connectivity. I
granted myself success, resecured the panel, and began my descent to solid ground. I fo-
cused on the people below, and they were all staring at the clock on the wall. The train was
supposed to have arrived a minute prior, but there was no train.
The train was never late—nothing was ever late. When my boots were put to concrete, I
wandered to the edge of the platform and looked in. There were no lights coming from either
direction.
“It’s… not coming?” asked a Treat, who was frightened by the prospect.
There was a rumbling of responses in the crowd, but they kept their eyes on the evil glow
of digital red.
“Probably just late,” I offered openly, and a Model 60 with a shaved head caught my eye.
She, as I decided to call them, was standing with her toes over the platform edge and was
peering into the depths below.
“The train is always here… it must be here,” she muttered as she reached outward into
space.
“No, it’s not here yet,” I corrected her, but she kept reaching out until she tipped her cen-
ter of gravity into the beyond. I caught her before she could tumble off the edge and pulled
her to safety, but she ripped herself out of my grasp.
“Don’t touch me, Nat! It’s here!” she snarled at me.
In her eyes I saw the same emptiness I saw in Ray’s eyes but drowned in rage without
reason. It was an ugly thing to see, and when the vitriolic emotion spread to her comrades, I

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 2084

backed away slowly towards my flashing cones with a posture as neutral and unassuming as I
could manage.
“IT’S HERE!” the buzzcut 60 cried and returned to her post to reach out into the dark,
where she fell without anyone to catch her.
“It’s here!” a person I could not see repeated, and the crowd became a frenzy of shouting
as they marched to the edge.
I saw one Treat lagging behind, confused and bewildered as he questioned the majority.
“It’s here!” a Model 50, a rare sight, cheered and leapt off the edge, causing a few more
of her kin to jump after her.
Like an exponential function, the jumping rate doubled, and soon they were sprinting to
reach the farthest out, hoping somehow to catch their invisible transport; but I wouldn’t ac-
cept their actions were as delusional as they hoped they were. This was another mass sui-
cide, and like all before it, they occurred when the WPA faltered in its most basic and forgiving
duties.
The confused Treat hopped along with the crowd, trying to smile in his huddle of bodies
while cheering everyone on, but when his turn came, he paused. The crowd behind him didn’t
notice his hesitation and pushed him off. His screams were heard all the way down, but the
ritual did not stop for the screams of fear or pain.
The mob was alive, and they bought tickets to nowhere.
“What… what…?” I hoarsely whispered under my breath as I sat beneath the legs of my
ladder as if it were a protective iron tent. I wanted to shout at them, tell them to stop, or run
up and punch one of them to snap them out of it, but if that Treat was anything to go by, I
imagined I would be quickly dragged off too if I protested.
So, I watched. I watched as they disappeared, and I listened to every sickening crash of
flesh and bone as their skulls shattered on the bedrock below. The pile of bodies must had
stacked up to provide a cushion of tangled limbs, because after every living thing had
drowned in the abyss, the wailings of the damned continued to echo. Shellshocked, I folded up
my ladder and struggled to put my small wrench into my pant pocket as my fingers trembled.
Then came a noise of metal rattling and grinding far away. It was not our train, but the
one below. Our platform belonged to the top left vertex, and the train for the bottom left ver-
tex was coming on schedule. Their tortured screams rang louder, and as I sat cross-legged
on the floor, desperately fumbling around to put my tools away, I imagined lying with them. I
imagined the tracks vibrating and the moisture of bodily fluids mixing as it battered my bony
collection of dislocated joints and torn ligaments.

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

The finale came, the screaming reached its apex, and the train slammed into the abomi-
nable organism, grinding it down to pulp and toothpicks. I heard the train derail and slam into
the pillar of its platform, resulting in a deafening explosion and the sounds of tesla-coils
sparking. The ground quaked until it came to a rest—and all was silent.
I looked around and there was no one to speak to, no one to hold, and no one to cry with.
So, I sat and waited for someone.
Our train was five minutes late exactly, and when the doors opened, a swath of people
stepped onto the abandoned platform, where I sat in its middle. They walked out cautiously, as
if the whole platform would suddenly collapse. When it didn’t, most of them just hurried to
leave the eerie feeling behind, but a few of them came to me.
“Hey, where is everyone?” asked a Treat, but I couldn’t reply.
“Nat, have you seen a 60 with a buzzcut?” asked an identical 60 with a buzzcut.
A Nat soaked his napkin with my face. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you laughing?”
“What did you do to them?! Answer us!” the Treat demanded, and kicked my stomach an-
grily, but I didn’t feel it as a thought surged into my throbbing head.
An old thought, but one I had never committed to.
I was going to destroy the WPA.

6
 ╦╔╥╤╣╛┼╥║╡╛╕╬╙═╤╩╒╧╣╕╚┼┼╦╞╧╛╗═╚╣║═╩

BOOK ONE: 2069

CHAPTER 1

It wasn’t as hard as I had thought to find a female Nat. The moment she opened her bag at
the ration line, I could see a pack of tampons from over her shoulder—a rare commodity in
the modern day.
The World Peace Authority implemented the practice of universally neutering infants in
2043, shortly after the advent of the Artificial Pregnancy Pod. Every person born after 2050
was a product of APPs and, as such, finding a natural born person without treatment in 2069
was difficult, especially since most of them had fraudulent identities and were affiliated with
various religious cults summarized by the WPA as Naturalist Terror Organizations (NatOrg,
for short). The products of APPs were so successful, the WPA also legislated laws making
natural births illegal in 2050, citing the dangers of genetic mishaps and their promise of
guiding humanity into a new era.
The WPA’s slogan rang in my head as I stared at the back of hers: “A More Peaceful Peo-
ple, A More Peaceful World.”
“Proofer, please,” requested the plump androgenous clerk as he held his hand out ex-
pectantly to the woman.
His treatment was convincing—but like all treated Nats, their voice was always a dead
giveaway. No matter how precise the treatment, the delicacies of human verbal communica-
tion had not yet been fixed by the WPA.
“Of course,” she said, pulled out her card, and clumsily dropped it to the floor.
Sighs and foot tapping ensued.
“I got it,” I announced, picked up the Proofer, and handed it back to the woman.

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

She looked at me like I was a ghost or, more accurately, a dead man walking—some mix
of disgust and confusion. It was a common reaction and I had grown accustomed to it. She
took it, said nothing, and completed the transaction with the clerk. She left with a bag of ra-
tions and headed to the transport bus outside.
I stepped up to the plate and faced the eunuch.
“Proofer?” he requested, but he did not hold out his hand for me.
I pricked myself and sat it down on the counter, where he cautiously picked it up.
Proofers were cards with a pricking needle embedded into a DNA sensor. Everyone had
their own for sanitary reasons and, once inserted into the clerk’s machine, it would check the
WPA database to verify identity. Hard to fake, and no need for age, sex, height, appearance, or
name, but rumor had it NatOrg could do it for the right price.
The Treat slotted in my Proofer and reluctantly gave me my rations after his terminal
came back positive.
“Didn’t you hear, Nat? Next year all of you fucking Nats are going to get treatment or else
the Peace is going to kill you!” he sneered at me, and when I turned around, so were the peo-
ple in line.
I swiftly left with my head down and took refuge in my van parked outside.
Nobody was allowed personal vehicles within the City, but as an electrical maintenance
worker, I had my own van equipped with tools to fix whatever various sabotages NatOrg de-
cided to inflict upon the power grid. It was a dangerous job, most of the time spent in tunnels
beneath the City where NatOrg hid and schemed, but it had its perks. Besides WPA personnel,
no one was allowed to carry a weapon on their person either, but the City had issued me a
Shocker while I was on duty, which was comfortably concealed in the inner pocket of my jack-
et.
I started the van and drove to the address listed on the woman’s Proofer.

╣╓╘╔╒║╝╘╬╡╟┼╧╠╥╚╟╧╩╝╛═║╬╗╙╤╩╛╧╦╘╖╜╝

Twenty minutes away from the City, I approached Block 466. Nothing more than window-
less concrete cubes, the Blocks were designed with 100 apartments and could house up to
500 people, but rarely was that ever the case. Many Blocks were abandoned and unused, as
the WPA only gave birth once every decade to a new series of Models, while other Blocks
closer to the City contained twice their capacity. Models preferred to follow the strictures
and the policies of the WPA to the letter when they could; but Treats only cared for their mo-
res, and the more of the same packed in around them the better.

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 2084

Nothing was ever easier to provoke than terror, especially in creatures who found
strength in numbers, but once organized, they would become a single organism with a will of
its own and would sacrifice any number of its own parts to protect itself.
Thus confusion, disorientation, and complacency were key to my operation.
I put on my NatOrg branded mask and clothes, clipped an axe to my back, and breached
the complex. A few people in the hallway saw me, but I ignored them and went around the
corner before their hesitation wore off. A rusted service door came into view underneath the
basement stairs, and I pulled it open after bashing the lock. I looked around the room at the
wires and conduit running to control boxes peppered with flashing indicator lights. After find-
ing the large electrical cable supplying power to the complex, I swung my axe at it.
Sparks flew in a final flash and then the room turned black.
Second floor apartment 25 was empty besides the mattresses covering the ground and
the standard TV mounted upon the wall. The occupants were just as bare, and if I hadn’t known
the current appeal of female Nats, the scene I walked into after axing the door down would
have looked like a cannibalistic ritual.
The woman from the ration line was screaming in the corner until I dotted her forehead
with my Shocker. Her blood-mouthed roommates screamed too, but were quickly regaining
their composure as their eyes festered to see me for what I was: one man.
“You want to get dotted too?” I asked them, pointing the Shocker at their faces, and the
group moved away from my prey to the opposing wall.
Hastily, I picked up the woman and bolted out of the complex to my van discretely parked
off the road. I changed back into normal attire and waited for the phone call.
It rang.
“Maintenance 850,” I happily introduced myself.
“Hey, Nat, it’s Ray. B466 just went off grid,” the Model said curiously.
“I have a name you know,” I reminded her. I was naturally born, but I always pictured flies
around rotting fruit whenever I heard the epithet.
“Aye, but saying ‘Dune’ makes me want to vomit,” she giggled. “Stop being a hard-ass and
fix it. And while you’re at it, fix yourself!”
“You didn’t seem to have a problem saying it last—” I attempted to point out her hypocri-
sy, but she hung up before I could finish.
I parked the van in the maintenance spot designated for Block 466. A crowd had formed
in front of the entrance and various conspiracies of NatOrg were being shared. After I re-
stored power to the Block, I called Ray to make a report of my repairs and the supposed

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NatOrg kidnapping of a woman named Cherry. WPA investigators would be all over this one,
and I was almost back to the City when their vans passed me by.
A rare smile cracked over my face.

┼╝╠╝╥╕╜╬┼═╘╞╪╒╫┼╕╧╖╩╝╨╔╕╪╠╞╢┼╛╜╩

Strangers were peculiar subjects in relation to each other. Meet one and the feeling ex-
perienced was a concoction of distrust and curiosity, combined with the understanding ulteri-
or motives existed while simultaneously understanding cooperation led to profit. With cooper-
ation came negotiation, then terms were set, duties distributed, and trust established.
This unspoken oath was considered the most sacred among past peoples, leading many to
believe betrayal was the worst sin one could commit and an ultimate price would be paid for
it. The theory was: the social contract signed at birth by every man commanded him not to
betray his fellow man, because not one was a stranger to any other, for every man was cre-
ated equal in the image of God. They found these truths to be self-evident, and although no
person ever gave consent to be created or might even disagree with these truths, all would
be held accountable for their misuses of it, some misuses punishable by death.
It was a very pernicious idea with such potency it had uprooted and demolished any cul-
ture that had the misfortune of encountering it. It prescribed free thought and expression,
justice with evidence, and a counterbalance of power driven by the equal weight of every
participant. Royalty, idolatry, and even their own identity meant nothing to them, for every
man was God in his own right. It was so anticultural to its core, the only conviction left to its
people was great expansion. Expansion of his family, of his property, and of his knowledge, and
they all claimed the Universe as their birthright. Even worse, they incited other nations to
take up arms and liberate themselves, to claim Godhood for everyone!
And therein lied its inherent danger: the license to betray the state in the name of one’s
own freedom, for if the state did not respect his divinity, then every man who was complicit
was a stranger to him and all was permitted.
“Wouldn’t you agree?” I asked Cherry as I surgically removed her uterus from her
corpse.
Its new home would be a glass sphere filled with an antimicrobial solution and tubes. The
organ was easy enough to attach to the blood pump, and I sealed the sphere once the organ
was submerged in the syrup it contained. Hurriedly, I filled the pump with a couple liters of
her blood I had collected, switched it on, and listened as it gargled and hummed maternally.
Old tech, but APPs were hard to come by since they were immovable behemoths rooted in the

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 2084

belly of the WPA genetics facility. Finally, I drained the rest of her blood and vitrified it along
with her ovaries. The vitrification machine was capable of freezing organic tissue to negative
328 degrees F in half a second, turning it effectively to glass, rather than allowing ice crystals
to form which would pop the delicate cells.
All I had left to do was wait for tomorrow to see if the organ survived, so I picked up Fa-
ther’s black jacket and locked the door behind me. The sign above had the name ‘Walter R.
Burnswick’ engraved upon it.
The Tunnels had five levels underground and were constructed during the late 2020s
amid rising conflict in America as a series of bunkers and self-sustaining ecosystems for the
US government. My father designed it all and the lab I occupied was his prized possession.
Because of the bizarre labyrinthine structure of the Tunnels, the lab had yet to be found, alt-
hough NatOrg sent scouting parties close by at times to look for supplies.
I puffed my Stack and lost myself in the echoes of my footsteps as I made my way to the
surface.

╘┼╧╛╞╒╘╥╙╣═╙╓╧╬╜╕╛┼╦╕┼╫╞╛║╕╥╙═

Ray was waiting for me when I got home. She always appeared at the most inopportune
times, and recently with higher frequency. Her hair was longer than most and she preferred
dresses, both of which were considered borderline traitorous to her kind. She was a 2060
Model, which featured no breasts, 5’8” stature, docile temperament, and absolutely no sex
hormones. The 60 was the theoretical perfect person compiled from every breed and then
androgenized. They had been a massive success for the WPA, and some argued the 2070
Models shouldn’t be any different, but the WPA’s ambitions had no bounds.
Upon seeing me, she folded her arms and squinted. “Hey, Nat, what took you?”
“WPA wanted a statement about the NatOrg kidnapping. How many times do I have to tell
you to call me?” I asked tiredly, knowing it would change nothing.
She moved out of my way so I could unlock my door.
“Those damned animals, it’s sick what they do,” she preached as she followed me inside
and pranced around the lobby.
I lived alone on the outskirts of the City in an abandoned hotel, the same one my family
lived in until Father died. It was the place I would call home, but I never imagined myself as the
true owner of the place. I was just the ghost who haunted its peeled walls and balding carpets,
invisible to any tenants and servicemen who happened to hear me roam, which I preferred,
but on rare occasion the terminally ill would see me as they took a step into the grave.

11
 Kadon Landon Peterson

I just wished Ray would finally put both feet in.

“You know what Lav told me?” she asked without waiting for an answer. “They said
NatOrg kidnaps female Nats and rapes them to keep their population growing—and then they
eat them!”
“Uh-huh,” I yawned as she trailed me to Suite 801.
Suite 801 was complete with a bed, bathroom, kitchen, and living room. It must had been
nice and expensive back in the day, but Father had reconstructed the space to such a degree
every wall was covered with exposed circuitry that had long since been inoperable. I once
tried to figure it out, but learned better after it set itself aflame.
“Those savages. How can you even live with yourself knowing what your kind do? You’re
archaic and stupid with all those hormones pumping through your veins. So impolite—and you
smell! No one likes you and it’s the worst feeling to be alone, so just go in and let the Peace do
what they are going to do to you anyway, then you’ll see how much better your life will be. We
can even share clothes!” she promised like a girl on her way to a slumber party.
Ray went through these rationalizations every time like she had to repent for my compa-
ny. I never argued with her because they were said for her own sake and not for mine, a les-
son I learned after my attempts to marry her—a concept so foreign to her programming she
tried to get me tested for a degenerative neurological disease. I admitted defeat after a while,
a defeat I had delayed because I knew she thought something was wrong with her, some error
in her manufacturing, which I would agree with when drawing up comparisons to her sisters,
but once I accepted she couldn’t revert any further, I capitulated to her lifeless desire.
I threw my shirt at her and she nearly suffocated herself with it.
There was a will to be a slave innate in every human being. It stemmed from the need to
be useful, the ability to support a cause greater than oneself, and the idea it was possible to
sacrifice autonomy for power; thus, the greater the slave, the greater the slave master he
becomes. This cycle was the morbid case of meritocracy the WPA had vowed to eliminate
forever, but unfortunately had to participate in until the perfect human was finally achieved. It
was once said, “people do not have ideas, ideas have people,” therefore he who embodied an
idea most was the greatest slave and the greatest slave master of his generation.
Ray came to me for emotions she did not understand, and I obliged her for reasons I
knew to be lies.

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 ╘╛╓╗┼╘╔╣╛┼╘╕╦╒╪╒╗╕╘╗┼╔╠╖╤╤╖╧║╛╞╘╗║

CHAPTER 2

“Dune, wake up,” said a feminine voice as a feminine hand jostled my shoulder, “there’s
trouble in G7.”
“Damn. What is it?” I looked at her and felt a pang of guilt for the state she was in. 60s
had various bleeding disorders hypothesized to limit their lifespans to forty years after their
manufacture. “Damn,” I said once more as I poked a purple bruise on her neck.
“Hey!” she barked and slapped my hand away. “Don’t feel sorry for me now, Nat. Grid 7 is
offline. Get your ass up and go to work!”
Grid 7 was the manufacturing sector of the City, which specialized in construction, cloth-
ing, and electronics. All hands would be on deck to get it up and running before the day ended.
I arrived in my van and parked it by a dozen others. The meeting was being held in WPA Office
7, where Lavanda was pointing to some schematics with a laser. I stepped in the room and
nodded to the rest of the crew.
“Look who decided to show up! I know those balls are hard to carry around but—” La-
vanda’s voice had an unfamiliar inflection in it that irked me like nails screeching on chalk-
board.
“Shut up, Lav, just give the memo,” I interrupted him, and he snickered, but broke eye
contact with me and went on with our assignments.
“201 and 203, you check Run 6. 202, 208, and 206, you check Run 14. 205, 207, and 209,
you got Run 3. 850, you’re going down to Run 10,” Lav sneered, and the other techs whistled.
“I don’t get a partner?” I asked, smirking for my petty assignment, which wasn’t without
its threats. Run 10 was deeper into the Tunnels than anyone felt comfortable going.
“Oh, of course! Take the dog,” Lav offered callously.

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

He was especially antagonistic today, but that wasn’t saying much as he was antagonistic
every day. He had treatment two months ago and hung around orgy bars with 201 and 203
ever since. We used to be good friends, Ray completing our trio, but with the 2070 mandate,
societal tensions had ripped us apart. I didn’t say anything more as I took the leash and led
the respectable bitch into my van. Everyone called her ‘the dog,’ but I had named her Lucy and
she always rode shotgun.
Run 10 was not a main line—it didn’t run power at all, but every tech knew it was a bad
design flaw. Run 10 was a switch line: it relayed commands from Grid Controller to the grid
itself, telling the grid where to source power from and where to send it to in the most effi-
cient manner. Even if a main line were cut, power would be rerouted from another source by
Grid Controller.
In this case, every main line was cut or just one of them and Run 10. Either way, this was a
coordinated attack, and I geared up with all the necessary equipment to survive: blacked out
clothes, fully charged Shocker, axe, Stack, toolbelt, and my Laserlite.
“Time to go to war, Lucy,” I declared and patted her head.
Lucy barked her confirmation, matching my eagerness for excitement.
We drove to an access tunnel and descended into the depths. I set my Laserlite to low
power and lit the path forward for us. We were 30 minutes in when a plaque appeared with
arrows directing to the Run junction rooms. “Run 10” pointed to the right. There was some-
thing about the Tunnels that drew me in, like there was something ancient I was supposed to
find there deep in the earth. The air was cool and stale, and with Lucy’s pitter patter at my
side and the complete silence all around, I felt at home.
Then the graffiti started.
A Jesus captioned “come unto me” with blood dripping from his crown stared out life-
lessly from on high. Farther still and the religious imagery crowded the walls, the floor, and
the ceiling. It was like I was walking down a mosaic of entangled limbs—a step too close and
one might rip me through the sides of the Tunnels. I studied the art as I walked along, taking
notice of its style and merit, both of which captivated my imagination with the Heavenly war
they depicted.
The junction room for Run 10 was wide open, and a peek inside revealed only the input
wire was cut, a sabotage that would take me ten minutes at most to fix. I wondered why they
didn’t set fire to the place if they really wanted a war with the WPA—put manufacturing out of
commission for weeks—but then I realized the half-inch diameter cable wasn’t cut.
It was chewed through.
Lucy’s ears twitched as she looked at the nothingness outside, and my blood turned cold.

14
 2084

It was here. I could feel it staring. I could feel it calculating. We called it “the Face,” be-
cause that was all anyone could see of it in the dark. The official story from the WPA claimed it
was created pre-war by the Americans and set loose upon their enemies, but I knew it wasn’t
true. I turned around and saw its ghostly mask floating midair, and the expression upon it was
that of a porcelain doll with eyes twitching independently. A jet-black limb broke through the
darkness and hooked under the door frame without a sound. According to Father’s diagrams,
the Face had twelve limbs, all of which had claws at their ends armed with serrated teeth, and
a feeding mouth below its long neck, which supported its alluring quiescent human head.
Lucy broke my stunned trance with an intimidating snarl, so I grabbed my Laserlite to de-
fend us. The Face recoiled, its eyes wobbled with such frequency they were a blur, and then it
struck Lucy and reeled her in before I could redirect my eyes to see where she went. A sick-
ening series of crunches and snaps echoed as I raised my Laserlite to where I presumed its
body would be, closed my eyes, and fired a max pulse. It screamed from every orifice it had
as putrid acidic smells permeated the air along with the pops and crackles produced by its
searing innards, but it was far from dead. I switched the Laserlite to emit a continuous beam
and pointed it at its screams as I cried through my closed eyelids.
“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry,” I muttered to myself.
Its anguish was at its peak, and I could feel its flailing reverberate through the concrete
floor as its hard exoskeleton scraped against it. The Laserlite casing was burning my hand, so
I squeezed it harder like a snake trying to suffocate a handsaw. The pain, the smells, and the
piercing screeches became too much for me to handle, so I harmonized with the Face’s howl
to endure it.
“I’m sorry! It’s what you would’ve wanted! PLEASE!” I begged the monster, and the Face
finally collapsed.
I was going to suffocate from the fumes and vapors assaulting my nose and lungs if I
stayed any longer, so I turned off my Laserlite, threw it across the junction room, and crawled
over the creature—starving for oxygen as I trudged through its warm marsh of jagged egg-
shells. I took a refreshing breath of stale air when I got away from it, but my eyes still stung
and kept watering from the residue of its fowl steam clinging to my clothes. I ran and kept
running until I made it to the surface, where Lav was waiting for me.
“What the fuck happened to you, Dune?” he asked, and motioned tech 201 to call the WPA.
I coughed up the words, “The Face… set a trap… I killed it…”
After my hand was repaired and my report was given, a team went down to investigate.
They found the remains and fixed Run 10. They offered me a week off, which I accepted, so I

15
 Kadon Landon Peterson

decided to pay a visit to the cemetery: a small field located up in the eastern mountains out-
side of the City’s regulatory energy field.
I parked my van in the parking lot of neglect and jumped out into the sweet smell of de-
cay. The leaves were falling, and the weather was beginning to feel cold, causing me to re-
member when Father took me during the same season years ago to pay respects. He said he
felt close to her when he was in the cemetery, and went on about how he could feel her in the
ground, making me listen to the gentle wind as if it was her voice.
The leaves crunched underneath my stained boots as two pale gravestones came into
view.
Walter R. Burnswick – Architect of the new millennium 1997 to 2048
Jade S. Burnswick - Beloved daughter and big sister 2033 to 2047
I set a bundle of Lilacs on her empty grave and left to carry on as an only child.

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 ╬╓╒╔╘╡╣╒╢╨╪╞╠╨╕╤╖╨╫║╖╫╠╥╪╓╤═╥║║

CHAPTER 3

One could say the ultimate endeavor of man throughout history has been the pursuit of
his own immortality. Only from the moment the human understood he would die did he ever
attempt to tell his story, and only from the moment the human understood his children would
die too did he ever attempt to write it down. This renaissance gave rise to culture, the re-
membrance of one’s heritage, and no longer was the human selected by his nature but rather
by his thought. Wars were no longer waged for the survival of genes but for the survival of
ideas, and he who had the idea more people would die for was the victor, and, consequently,
the enemy would either go extinct, taking their genes and ideas with them, or submit to the
foreign idea, and reproduce based on who embodied that idea most, in effect participating in
convergent evolution without cross mating between the two groups.
So, it seemed inevitable: as communication increased and ideas were shared, the popula-
tions of the earth would homogenize naturally without a genocide needing to take place.
The WPA was founded upon this principle by the peoples of the world in 2030 when the
revolutions were at their peak. Every government gave up their sovereignty and unionized to
appease the revolutionaries, and for the first time in known history, a single culture ruled
over the planet and their mantra, “A More Peaceful People, A More Peaceful World,” was
shouted from every street.
All resistance was crushed. The greatest minds of their time came together and pro-
posed how to conduct the world. Personal property and wealth were traded for the cure to
starvation, disease, and unhappiness for everyone. They even tried to cure death itself until it
was deemed impossible.

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

At the end of every chromosome there was an appendage called a telomere, and it func-
tioned as a counter for how many times any given cell may divide itself. Cell division was re-
sponsible for growth, repairing wounds, and replacing dead cells, but as life aged, the telo-
meres shorten to zero, the cell was not replaced, the skin wrinkles, the immune system
weakens, the heart fails, and all life eventually dies. So, they thought if these telomeres were
lengthened or reset, the cells could reproduce indefinitely, stay young forever, and humanity
would never surrender to death again.
It was a disaster.
Cancers ravaged the bodies of the WPA test subjects, the unluckiest of which were born
alive. All the cancer treatments in the world couldn’t save them when every cell in their bod-
ies were told to go forth and multiply, causing monstrous deformities that rendered the sub-
jects unrecognizable upon their death beds. The WPA failed and failed again, immortality al-
ways just out of reach, and when they realized it was hopeless, they sought no longer for the
immortality of man but for the immortality of the WPA.
What the WPA learned was nature had already solved this paradox by striking a balance:
an organism was a cancer cured only by death, but life was a process made eternal by sex,
hence why the WPA monopolized procreation in 2050.
The connection made me smile as I removed the final product from the gene synthesizer.
It was my DNA from a skin cell I had collected with a minor modification, but I suspected
grand results. Under the microscope, I reinjected the DNA into my skin cell’s nucleus and
thawed out an ovary. After collecting and putting an egg under the microscope, I sucked out
its contents with a microscopic syringe and injected my skin cell into it. The egg host would
reprogram it after some time, but there were some chores I needed to do anyway.
I collected nutrient rich ashes from my kiln and spread them over my algae farm. The al-
gae farm provided food for the meat wall located towards the back of the lab, which was my
primary source of protein since rations purposefully discouraged muscle growth. The algae
were pumped through an artificial stomach full of digestive enzymes, then filtered into blood
along with oxygen and fed intravenously to the meat wall, where its muscle was stimulated via
electric shocks so it could grow. So long as I only cut off moderate pieces of it, it would al-
ways grow back.
The egg appeared to have accepted the transplant and required an electric shock to
begin mitosis. After a small shock was given, the single cell became two, then four, then eight,
and so on. When it formed a blastocyst, I implanted the embryo inside the uterine wall sus-
pended in the warm sphere.

18
 2084

I decided I might as well celebrate my success so far, so I got a plate and a butcher knife
and began cutting the meat wall. It twitched and contracted under the blade while rich blood
poured onto a collection tray below, which I would recycle for the blood pump later. After my
serving was amputated, I cauterized the wound and left it to writhe.
It was a delicious steak, and I was mesmerized by the sphere as I ate it, because I
couldn’t describe my feelings for it yet. It could fail at any moment, reject the embryo, and I
would have to try again. I was just as scared of not being able to reproduce as I was of suc-
ceeding at it.
I didn’t know what I was doing.
But she would.

19
 ╣╟╖╪╟╔╢╟╖╣╪╟╪╬╓╙╢╘╚╓╘╩═╝╟╘╜╪║╜╣

CHAPTER 4

In the late 2030s, before the WPA decided conformity was in the best interest of the pub-
lic—or rather, the WPA—they were firm supporters of an individual’s right to appear as they
felt and would accept any challenge proposed by a client for free. Of course, their facade of
altruism for the bodily entrapped was really an excuse to attract the mentally ill to conduct
cosmetic and genetic experimentation upon humanity, but since most of them were suicidal to
begin with, the subjects came in droves to sign their lives away for a chance to be beautiful.
The WPA perfected their craft of human alteration during this time period and freed all
their successful subjects to rejoin society as living advertisements. The gender-benders,
race-swappers, and prosthetists adapted quite well, many of them not perceivable in public,
and they were idolized in the WPA’s state of amorphism; however, there was another denomi-
nation of somatoparaphrenics who kept to themselves and ended up in places like this.
The Pet Store was owned and operated by a man named Max Sig, who had a contract with
the WPA as part of the WPA’s Treatment Initiative to provide his services to anyone who was
within a week of their treatment due date. The theory was: in order to get someone to give up
their archaic identity in the long term, one could offer to trade them the unadulterated apex
of that identity in the short term. This method of cathartic release employed by the WPA had
done wonders for their Treatment Initiative and the data showed 95 percent of post-
treatment persons had no regrets upon reentering society.
“Hey, cutie!” she called to me, her voice breaking me out of thought, so I looked up at the
girl from my comfortable seat.
This one was a fox named Fennec, who constantly told me I was her favorite human every
time I stepped foot into the Pet Store. She had a short anatomically human stature standing

21
 Kadon Landon Peterson

at a little below five feet tall with a perfectly hybridized face. In other words: the WPA found no
ethical violations with preventing the maturity of an adolescent girl and surgically altering her
form to resemble an anthropomorphic fox. She had aged maybe twenty years since then and
built herself up a little to appear mature, but she would forever be frozen in her stage of
biological development.
She plopped herself in my lap and licked me.
“Hi, Fennec,” I greeted her and gave her scritches around her ears and under her collar.
It never ceased to amaze me how Max managed to create the soft, yellow coated
freak. “Where’s Max?”
Her white-tipped tail stopped wagging and her ears splayed behind her head. “Ah, and I
thought you just came here to see me.”
“We have business—and don’t worry, I brought a kennel. Now, go fetch!” I pointed away
and she scampered off to bring back her master.
Soon, he appeared and motioned me to follow him, so I got off the couch and looked
around the zoo as we went. The terms and conditions of his contract with the WPA stated he
and his employees did not have to get treatment because they were already infertile and it
would ruin the main attraction of his establishment, that being his stallions, who were pole
dancing on a stage in front of a group of Nats—some female, but the majority of them male,
watching and feeling with horrified gluttony.
Max shut the door behind him, and everything went quiet besides the deep bass tones re-
verberating through the floor. He didn’t look pleased to see me as he sat himself behind his
desk.
“I thought I told you I wasn’t involved with NatOrg anymore,” Max said as he tugged on the
lapels of his snakeskin jacket.
“You did, but I also heard you wanted a state-of-the-art GeneSynth,” I mentioned, popping
my eyebrows as I took a theoretical hybrid skull model off his desk to inspect it.
He frowned as I stuck my finger into one of its orbital sockets. “And why would I want
that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because the animals on your farm are getting old. Hell, you won’t
have a business after ten years if you can’t make any more,” I speculated, and returned the
skull to him.
He placed it where it was before and clasped his hands to rest on his round belly. “Who
says the WPA won’t manufacture them for me?”
I shrugged at the old man. “Because they would have already, but I don’t think your nego-
tiations with them are going well. Why waste resources on a product for a depleting clientele?

22
 2084

Almost everyone has gotten treatment and Models don’t feel a need to become beasts, so, in
my estimation, your contract is about to expire.”
“So what? There’s nothing I can do about that. My business will just close, I’ll get treat-
ment—as will you—in 2070, and I’ll live out my days in orgy bars,” he prophesized with a se-
ductive smile, but his eyes were filled with hatred.
“What about your employees?” I asked.
He broke eye contact and scratched at a smudge on his desk as he blasphemed, “I sup-
pose they will have to get treatment too and revert their procedures… If they live long
enough, that is. I had two die just this year around the age of forty, but we all suspected their
procedures had… delayed consequences.”
“For Christ’s sake, Max, please shut the fuck up,” I scolded him. His charade of playing
Devil’s advocate was getting tiresome and I wasn’t the same seventeen-year-old kid he taught
biology. “You love those creatures, don’t you? There’s a primal culture about them. Admit it,
Max, you dirty old zoophile, you loved them from the day you were making them at the WPA!”
Max bowed his head and grinned sheepishly to himself in surrender. “My team and I al-
ways wanted to make one from scratch—a true genetic hybrid. The WPA never let us do it.
And yet they let your father create monsters.”
He raised his head and bit his lip, for he knew it would be difficult for me to keep my com-
posure towards that remark, but I managed it.
“Well, you can try. Maybe you can enable them to reproduce. I’m sure you have a place to
hide out,” I tempted him, cocked my head, and tapped my fingers on his desk.
He smiled at me like an oncologist amongst children dying of cancer.
“I wouldn’t tell the likes of you. So, what do you want for it?” he asked, chin raised.
“I need a BCI. I already have the electrodes and drives for it, but my BCI board blew up
years ago,” I bartered.
“Well, NatOrg probably has a few left. I’ll ask around. Check back here tomorrow and
bring the GeneSynth,” he promised, and reached out his hand for a shake.
“One more thing. I want the fox,” I added, and tried to steal the deal, but he pulled away
too quickly.
He rolled his eyes, but he knew my thoughts. “Oh, Fennec? Why would you want her? She
doesn’t do anything besides help me clean this place and annoy you.”
“My dog died, and I need a new one. Come on, she’s been working for you for like ten
years. At least let her decide,” I pleaded with him.
He displayed his disgust with me, but he was one of the few people who always had faith
and trusted I knew exactly what I was doing.

23
 Kadon Landon Peterson

He was one of the four Founders, after all.

“Fine. Go wait outside and send her in. Oh, and if you ever want some time with one of
those studs dancing up there like the good old days, just let me know,” he said with a wink.
“You can go to Hell, Max!” I cursed him coyly.
“I suppose I’ll see you there, Little Donut,” he chuckled.
It wasn’t long before Fennec agreed and walked out of the Pet Store with me and her lug-
gage, which she pulled around in a purple suitcase. She seemed rather skittish about all of
this at first, but she said she wanted something new to experience with her life—whatever
was left of it. We made it home in my van and, once in my room, she hopped onto my bed and
stared at me with those big blue puppy dog eyes.
Fennec swished her tail behind her as she wondered, “What do you want with me?”
“A pet, I suppose,” I answered warmly.
“So what? I’m your sex slave now and clean the house for you? You’re just going to lock
me up in here?” she asked with the tones of humorous desperation.
“Oh, Fennec, don’t sell yourself so short; things will get far more interesting than you
could ever imagine,” I promised her.
I studied her with a sideward glance, and she mimicked my expression expertly, her eyes
crackling with a mind I thought had gone extinct.
I wasn’t sure how to proceed, as I was not one for boiling frogs or beating bushes. To me,
afterplay was the nexus of intimacy, because uneventful sobriety revealed more about com-
mitment than anything else. So, I decided to test her waters: “Speaking of which, want to know
an interesting way to break a dog collar?”
“Yes, Master!” she affirmed.
When she licked her chops, I knew we were a match made in Hell.

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 ╓╨╖╗╓╛╪╩╓╢╪╠╡╕═╦╣╘╝╫║╥╞╡╓╬╬╡╨╧

CHAPTER 5

There was a question posed long ago about whether art imitated life or life imitated art.
Since art was first made to capture an event, and what was considered to be the best art
captured the truest event, it seemed the former was correct. The criteria for true, at least in
its moral sense, would always remain unknown, but humans knew when they saw it by the
strong emotional responses they felt involuntarily—involuntarily being the only indication of
what should be considered real—and once they knew of it, they developed archetypes and
gave them names. They then forced these archetypes into battle and depicted them with art
to figure out the relationships between them, the consequences they wrought, and what they
each desired from the other. Gods were erected to these archetypes, people subscribed and
prayed to them for guidance, and they became powerful beings who influenced the living; so,
then it seemed the latter was, in fact, correct.
The problem with this question and its implications were the same problems seen when
sexual selection overcomes environmental selection and evolution unwittingly commits sui-
cide.
A colorful bird selected to mate based on how vibrant his feathers were was also a more
visible bird who could be easily tracked by a predator. A beetle selected to mate based on how
large his horns were was also a beetle who had a harder time moving and hiding in its terrain.
These extreme mating fetishes were, in most cases, directly competing with environmental
selection for who got to design the organism; and if the environment were completely neu-
tralized, such sexual characteristics would maximize to the point of self-extinction over time,
especially if the environment changed dramatically in some way.

25
 Kadon Landon Peterson

Humans made these animals look like amateurs in comparison, because not only did hu-
mans neutralize their environments, they created their own and selected one another based
on their successes in their own constructions. For example, hominid cranial capacity nearly
tripled in the previous two million years as a consequence of mating based on who could
make tools and communicate effectively, but they had to trade body size and increase their
food supply to compensate for a highly developed brain. Pregnancy became extremely diffi-
cult, as did child rearing, with estimates of 50 percent of all offspring dying before puberty
and 25 percent of mothers dying from pregnancy related causes during Homo sapiens’ infan-
cy. But the runaway effect was already in motion and their great bargain would either pay off
or they would go extinct, which almost happened a few times, but it turned out breeding for
intelligence and competence was worth it and rightfully desired.
When they finally won that great bargain, the great brain of man no longer needed to ob-
sess over function to survive, so he began to obsessively pursue aesthetics to develop art.
How things appeared superseded what things were, and sexual selection pressures swung
from the brute necessity to breed intelligence and competence, to breed fetishes and ideals.
The sexes exaggerated and encouraged their own dimorphism as a result; and by the time
equity was founded into law, the damage was irreparable. Birthrates plummeted, homosexual-
ity skyrocketed, suicides claimed more lives than physical illness, and the ones who did re-
produce were just willfully subjugating themselves to their aesthetic gods and archetypes
who devolved them in the first place.
It was no wonder how the WPA came to fruition. They were inevitable and necessary to
continue a species that no longer wanted to live.
“Dune, I think someone is outside,” Fennec said as she touched my nose, and the rough
pad under her fingertip made me sneeze.
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it, just stay out of sight,” I told her. I quickly put some clothes on, rubbed the sleep
from my eyes, and ran downstairs to the lobby.
Upon opening the door, I discovered Ray basking in morning light.
“I just wanted to check up on you, Nat. I saw that monster’s corpse. I think I would have
taken a week off too,” she said without empathy, and nodded without looking at me directly.
“I’m doing fine, Ray. You don’t need to—” I tried to politely decline her company, but was
interrupted by the hand she squarely pressed against my chest.
“I think I know just what you need,” Ray offered, but still wouldn’t look at me.
All Models had a subtle autism to them, but over the years I had known Ray, I thought she
would have improved, even by a little. I thought she might had been able to learn what she was

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born without, but she was either unable or unwilling, because she loved the WPA more than
me—herself for that matter.
I shook my head and took her hand off my shirt.
“We can’t do this anymore, Ray. Please go away and don’t come back here,” I spoke mer-
cifully. It was better this way for the both of us, but she couldn’t understand.
“Why?” she asked, folding her arms and glaring at me. She was already coming up with
ways to get revenge.
“Because I feel it’s wrong,” I explained vaguely as I struggled to find a reason she could
sympathize with. “What if your actual friends find out you come over here? Blame my ‘hor-
mones’ or whatever, just don’t come back here.”
I silently prayed she would take the bait and exit out of my life the easy way.
“Like they are ever going to find out what they haven’t for years. What is this about,
Dune? Did I hurt your little feelings?” she asked tauntingly. She wasn’t a bit depressed about
what I had said, she was enraged about what she no longer would be able to experience.
I searched her face one last time for any sign of pain, but her artificially warm hazel eyes
did not sparkle with insanity like the pair of electric blues patiently awaiting me upstairs.
“I SAID GO!” I shouted at Ray, and the loudness of my voice startled me about as much as
her.
“Fuck you, Dune,” she blustered after she collected herself. “I can’t wait for them to cut
your stupid balls off.”
Ray turned around and stormed away without a shred of sadness or remorse, just angry
disappointment.
I closed the door and Fennec appeared above the stairs.
She approached cautiously.
“Did you really need to do that?” asked the yellow eavesdropper. “She obviously likes
you.”
“She doesn’t like me, she just likes what’s in my pants,” I explained with a sly smile.
“I thought that was the point,” Fennec mused midway down the stairs.
I popped an eyebrow, and she reflected my expression. “Maybe it was, but I have you
now.”
“She actually looks human,” the fox pressed on, wanting to play.
“Genetically speaking, she’s less human than you,” I countered, and suppressed my giddy
excitement so I wouldn’t ruin our banter.
“Why not have both? I don’t really mind sharing,” she complained with a disappointed
frown.

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

The absurdity of the creature I let into my house threatened to provoke my mania.
“If she even suspected me of engaging in activities that threatened the WPA, she wouldn’t
hesitate to report me. The defect that makes her fetishize maleness isn’t going to change
that. I’m just a pet her master lets her play with until the moment she cries and they put me
down,” I spoke freely at last.
It was dangerous to say aloud, but the threat of death could not shackle me in Fennec’s
presence. I had killed only once in selfish pursuit—a killing inspired by manic euphoria—but
Fennec was my license for thousands more, because my brain flipped every chemical switch
it had without my volition to secure the only victory that ever mattered: her survival.
“So, you’re saying you trust me? Here I thought you were just a pervy dog fucker,” she
teased. When I rolled my eyes at her, she laughed for my dismay.
“Look, you and your kin knew Max was making deals with NatOrg, and yet none of you ever
reported him,” I recalled curiously, and bit the inside of my cheek. “Why was that?”
She thought about my question for a moment before answering, “I guess he gave us a
home.”
“Well, that’s what I want for you too,” I promised. “Now, put some clothes on. We are go-
ing to the lab.”
I smiled as her eyes lit up like a dog going for a walk.
“Yes, Master!” she exclaimed with enthusiasm.
She ran upstairs, and I followed, taking notice of my brain as it morphed itself into pat-
terns of emotional stability I had never felt before. It was like every part of her had roosted in
their preset designations within my most primitive, illusory—yet satisfying—sense of mate.
I understood the forces at work, I knew the theory behind the emotions, and I had repli-
cated them artificially with drugs of my own fabrication, but this time it was occurring invol-
untarily at her behest, which synced my delusions with reality. I wondered if she felt some-
thing changing from within too, I wondered what delusions she envisioned, and I couldn’t help
but curse my subjective thoughts. But that was the funny thing about evolution: the delusions
which possessed its creatures became reality over time.
How immediately merciful and eternally cruel it was for nature to recognize power and
beauty before consequence.

╦╩╠╙╕╘╥╚╞╕╦╛╦╣╫╖╕╤╬╗╨╚╪╦╞╝║╚╓╦║╚╓╡╞╣

We were in the van pumping some music made by a dead trillionaire’s wife and singing
along in our seats when we drove up to a crowd blocking the street. There was another way

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to get to my access tunnel, but I wanted to see what was going on. I parked the van behind a
building and gave Fennec a piggyback ride up a service ladder to the six-story high rooftop.
We settled next to a billboard and the words printed upon it were, “A New Peace Begins
2070,” with a feminine face looking upward in hope. In the middle of the crowd, a young man
stood on a podium where a statue of the distant past used to stand.
“I see you, Brothers and Sisters! God sees you! We don’t have to let the WPA control us! I
see your misery and your shattered spirits! Stand with me and let us heal our souls togeth-
er!” he shouted at them, and everyone within earshot, including us, cringed from hearing his
words.
I felt an impulse to correct him, but it was not wise to draw such attention.
It was easy to spot the split in the crowd. The outer ring were Models, and they watched
and listened without expression, but I would say they were curious—about as curious as a
human studying the behavior of an ant. The inner ring contained post-treated Nats, or
“Treats,” as the untreated called them, recording with their phones as they whisked them-
selves into a frenzied mob.
One held a water bottle and threw it at the speaker.
“Get treatment, fucking Nat!” said one.
“He’s with NatOrg!” said another.
“I am what God made me! We are all God’s children; we can live in peace! Please listen to
me! God forgives you! It was the WPA who destroyed the world!” he preached and was sin-
cere, so I shook my head sadly, knowing he had doomed himself.
Fennec’s eyes were wide with apprehension as the Treats began their chant.
The Models soon joined them.
“NEW PEACE! NEW PEACE! NEW PEACE!” they set their rhythm and the young preacher was
drowned out.
There was an older man fighting the tide of the developing mob, and once he struggled
through, he appeared in the eye next to the speaker.
“To the people, I am sorry!” the old man professed, and put his arms around the speaker
to remove him. “They are ill! I will take them home now!”
The chanting subsided as the older man attempted to take the speaker off the podium, but
the speaker refused.
“No, Father, I am a man, and I will not leave!” he proclaimed. “You all have been made
slaves to the WPA! Only God loves you! Have faith in Him and He will set you free!”

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

He smiled with tears in his eyes for what he said he believed to be true, but that simple
devotion triggered the inner circle to collapse, swallowing them both. The only evidence of
what was being done to them were the splatters of blood accumulating on the podium.
“We need to get the fuck out of here, Fennec,” I advised and patted her back, but she
didn’t say anything as her terrified eyes fixated on the crowd. I picked her up and hastily made
my way down to the van.
We were taking a back ways route to the access tunnel closest to my lab when she finally
decided to process what she had seen.
“They murdered him and his father,” she said, staring at the van floor.
“This surprises you?” I asked her tenderly.
“I remember when they demanded for my acceptance,” she reminisced as her eyes
glazed over. “I remember how they said I deserved to be respected for how I felt. I remember
them supporting me every step of the way to become—well, to become this. And then they
stopped.”
“When the 50s were released, aye?” I asked to trigger her thoughts, but I already knew
the answer. The Models were so void of discriminatory thought, they couldn’t comprehend
qualitative distinctions between people, nor their novelty, and soon after their debut, the
amorphous spirit of the WPA was crushed underneath the weight of their innocent indiffer-
ence.
“Aye. I was getting coffee with my friend, back when shops were still open, and this Model
who ran it refused to serve me. Said it was for treated people only and said I should get
treated or else I would be ‘unhappy.’ Eventually, everywhere became that way, besides for
ration booths—and that friend? She called me a freak, so I ran away. I couldn’t show my face
anywhere without being pointed at, but then Max found me again and that’s how I wound up
living at the Pet Store, where the same people who took me from my parents when I was
twelve and made me a fox now stare at me with sick fantasies running through their heads.
The same people who said my parents abused me for not entertaining my delusions, now say
I’m not delusional enough. Maybe they’re right. Maybe my parents were right. I’m not a fox and
I should get treatment or else they are going… they’re going to kill me too,” she sobbed and
looked to me for sympathy.
I stared at the road in front of the van and watched the electric buses pass by as I col-
lected my thoughts to console her. Nobody felt comfortable in their own skin anymore and I
had my own troubles with the dysphoria, but I had learned how to meld with it by understand-
ing it.

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 2084

“Max Sig was a friend of my father’s and worked with him at the WPA genetics facility
where Max did your procedure. They would send emails containing new theories and plans all
the time, but they had this one heated argument that really stuck with me after my father’s
death. The argument was about form. Father thought the human brain was like a liquid—it
would fill and conform to any container you put one in, so, for instance, if you grew a human
brain into a giant spider and set it free, it would walk, see, and think like a spider. He firmly
believed the only reason we felt empathy towards each other was because we had the same
bodies and looked into the mirror to judge ourselves against the rest of our species; but if you
removed the connection between the brain and body, the brain would not recognize itself as
human, thus not feel empathy for other humans. Max then argued humans could develop em-
pathy for any animal and the signs of pain were universal to us, citing proof in the fact we
keep pets as family members. Father then funnily pointed out that was only true when we
were not hungry enough to eat them,” I told her, eyes wet with memory, and Fennec smiled a
little for the remark.
“Max, however, was unfazed and said he would prove Father wrong with his research. He
would produce scientific proof the human brain could establish itself as human without a
body, without being told, and by interaction alone. He set up an experiment with permission
from the WPA, where he grew the brains of two humans, a chimpanzee, a wolf, and a dolphin.
He chose those animals for their complex social behaviors and connected each of them to a
BCI when they would have theoretically been born. The little brains floating in their little jars
with their little electrodes went through a language program which taught them English and
stimulated their pleasure centers when they hit right answers and dispensed pain when they
hit wrong answers. Now, I know you are going to say a wolf can’t learn language, but you
would be surprised, because when buttons and words are your only environment from birth,
it’s hard not to make connections. Each animal passed the language program and were then
introduced to history and math. The five years of time given to train the brains ran out, and
everyone including Father came in for the final test,” I paused so I could shift in my seat, and I
saw Fennec’s eyes were captivated.
“The final test was to allow the five brains to communicate via text chat and multiplayer
games, and they were each told only one of the other four was of their species and they had
to find out who it was by communication alone in seven days. The dialogues they shared were
phenomenal, I still have copies of them at the lab if you ever wish to read them. After the
seven days, each animal made their guess. The dolphin guessed one of the humans, the chim-
panzee and the wolf chose each other, and, finally, the humans voted correctly without hesita-

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tion. Rumor has it, Max was so overjoyed he threw a chair at Father as a gesture of ‘I told you
so,’” I snickered, and Fennec laughed despite her troubled mind.
“They asked the humans how they were so sure. They reported the dolphin was too busy
sharing and viewing porn, the wolf became too obsessed with first person shooter games, and
the chimpanzee lost every game of chess; thus, the only ones who exhibited general intelli-
gence and restraint in every field were themselves. When asked what species they were, they
said human because they related to and understood the great human authors of the past
more than the others, although they couldn’t agree on the species of the other three. Max was
proven correct, and the project was shut down,” I finished, and looked over at Fennec to see if
she saw the point.
She only appeared confused, but at least she wasn’t crying anymore.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked as I parked the van by my entrance tunnel.
I leaned in close to her. “The reason they hate us isn’t because we think differently, or
speak differently, or even look differently, Fennec. They hate us because we remind them they
are useless, and no matter how thoroughly they disinfect their appearance and opinions they
will always be ugly, because, like any other animal, we are not judged by aesthetics but by
function. That was the great truth Max rediscovered, so when I say I love you for who and
what you are, and you and I are going to make it through this together, I mean it,” and I did
mean it. No one would ever lay one finger on her, besides for me.
“Okay, Dune,” she said softly, and the kiss she gave me tasted salty from newborn tears,
which stuck on me. Embarrassed for herself, she giggled and gently dried my lips with her
sleeve.
We got out of the van and headed towards the vault-like entrance. As she walked out in
front of me to explore, I stared at her swishing tail and had to clarify: “Doesn’t mean I think
that foxy-ass of yours isn’t hot though.”
She spun around angrily and yelped, “Master!”

╨╛╜╛╟╟╖╞╩╚┼╡╥╓╗╦╛╘╥╪╠╥╧╖╒╬╧╝╪╘╨╪┼║╪╨

We retrieved the GeneSynth from the lab and she begged for answers about every speck
of dust in the place, but I assured her I’d tell her everything after we returned. To our great
relief, no more crowds appeared on our way to the Pet Store and, upon our arrival, we dis-
covered Max had closed it to the public for the day. He helped us pull the GeneSynth out from
the van and bring it inside. Max and I went to the office while Fennec visited her friends, who
were anxiously waiting to ask her how she had been. It was a much more homely place when

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they weren’t selling themselves away to the morbidly confused. Giggles could be heard until
Max shut the door behind us after we entered his study, where someone was waiting.
A stout, bearded man reached out his hand for a shake.
I frowned at him and barked, “Who the fuck are you?”
“It’s okay, Dune. For that BCI board they just wanted to talk to you,” Max attempted to
calm me, but I had no patience for terrorists and governments.
“I’m Jacob Hurst, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Jacob offered to shake again, but put it
down once my refusal was clear.
“Shut up. You know what I saw today? I saw a mob tear two of them apart! You want to be
next, Max? This wasn’t the deal,” I reprimanded him as I beat his desk with my index finger.
Max put his hands up to deflect his responsibility and Jacob looked at him skeptically.
I wondered what Max had told him about me.
“That’s actually why I’m here. We need the Tunnel blueprints for a counterattack. Give us
the Tunnel blueprints and you will get your BCI board,” Jacob stipulated, his tone not nearly as
cheerful as before.
“Wait, what?” I scoffed. “You are going to attack the WPA? How, with sticks? Just go back
home under the rock you climbed out from and live another day. I’m not contributing to your
suicidal fucking war,” I spat venomously.
“With the plans, it’s not suicide,” Jacob countered confidently.
“Because you think my father’s plans contain something the WPA doesn’t know about,
right?” I sneered at him.
“He was with the Americans before the WPA commandeered him, so I would suspect so,”
he reasoned, and then he glared at me, because he knew, that I knew, he was absolutely right.
I calmed down and straightened my posture.
“You have kids, Jacob?” I asked coldly.
“Aye,” he responded with matching tone, thinking himself as some kind of soldier.
I tested him: “Are you willing to sacrifice them for a chance to get back at the WPA?”
“I have faith with your help that won’t be necessary,” he argued, but must had seen death
on my face, because he shied away.
I let the silence linger as I made my decision and formed potential futures in my mind.
“Well, you better pray for their sake you’re right. Let’s go. It’s been lovely doing business
with you, Max,” I scorned him, but if he heard my annoyance, he didn’t show it, because he was
eyeing the GeneSynth as if it were a woman undressing herself in front of him.
“Will they require a mate?” Max wondered passively.

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

I was caught off guard by his question and how he knew, but then I realized she would
need another.
“Nothing over ten inches,” I warned him, and he simpered from the satisfaction.
“What?” the oblivious Jacob asked.
I turned around and walked out of the office with Jacob trailing behind me. With a snap of
my tongue, Fennec came running and followed us out. We settled ourselves in our seats and
began our journey home midday.
Fennec broke the silence from her spot on the metal floor in the back.
“Who is that?” she asked me, her black nose poking out between the seats as she stared
at the stranger.
“The man I’m selling you off to,” I said grumpily.
“Hi, I’m Jacob, and I’m also happily married,” he attempted comedy, but Fennec didn’t skip
a beat.
“My parents were married, but I forgot what that meant,” she pondered.
“It’s when a man and a woman vow to themselves and to God they will be faithful to one
another and their children,” Jacob stated matter-of-factly.
“Oh. So, I’m married to Dune then. Right, Dune?” she asked, seeking my endorsement, and
I nodded my confirmation, but Jacob tensed up and gave me a worried look before I could say
it aloud unthreatened.
“What’s wrong, Brother? Is God going to make you stone me to death for fornicating with
animals?” I gibed as I beamed at him.
He looked me down like I was filth and voiced his verdict: “You are a sick man and that is a
child.”
“I’m not a—” Fennec rebuked, but I had no interest in moral posturing.
“Ever met the Devil, Jacob?” I asked to cut her off.
“We all have been tempted, but most of us have enough of a conscience to resist it,” he
answered peevishly, and stared out the passenger window to pretend I didn’t exist.
“Interesting you use ‘it’ instead of ‘Him,’” I noticed earnestly. Conversations like these
calmed me down, where they commonly antagonized others.
Jacob faced me once again and engaged in the domain of thought.
“Satan is not a person. ‘Satan’ was originally used to mean ‘adversary.’ Evil doesn’t need
to be personified to be fought; evil lies in every human heart and we need God to fight it,” he
stated simply.
I nodded and accepted his axioms.
“What about the serpent in the garden?” I enquired.

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 2084

“That was Lilith, Adam’s first wife who refused to submit to Adam and was banished. She
returned as a serpent to tempt Eve. She also fornicated with animals and birthed monsters, in
case you were interested,” he jeered.
“Sounds like my kind of gal. You are okay with working with your ‘adversary?’” I asked
slyly.
“Do you also wish for the destruction of my people?” he returned, his lips pressed into a
firm line.
“I wish for the destruction of the WPA more,” I responded as I envisioned Hellfire.
“Why? You obviously benefit from their existence,” he noticed, squinting with suspicion.
“They are going to force me to get treatment,” I answered numbly, and the lines in the
middle of the road blurred.
“Ah, you don’t answer to anyone, do you? You think you can create your own truth, run
things better than they can, and you figure you can gain control after the WPA and NatOrg
mutually destroy themselves, eh? Well, you are no better than they, because they thought that
too, and now we’re in this Hell. Even if you win, you will still be in Hell until the God-fearing
people rightfully retake their place in this world and establish real truth. I don’t fear the WPA
and I sure as hell don’t fear you. God’s people have always been kept under the boot of ty-
rants, but with our faith we have always overcome them and our doubts,” he declared valiant-
ly, and broadened his shoulders to display his authority.
“My truth goes without saying,” I said quietly to myself.
“What do you mean?” he asked with a furrowed brow.
“Could you explain God to a person who could not interpret language or images?” I won-
dered.
Jacob waved my thought experiment away. “Such a person does not exist, and if they did,
they could still learn how to communicate,”
“Then you admit all belief is rooted in language itself,” I offered him my interpretation as I
turned onto the road leading to my access tunnel.
“Just because a man does not have a word for love, does not mean he cannot feel it,” Ja-
cob replied.
“Just because a man has a word for love, does not mean he feels it for his mother and
his wife in the same way,” I retorted.
He sighed, “What is your point?”
“Fennec, the sky is falling!” I pointed out the window, and both she and Jacob looked up.
When they saw nothing, they looked at me expectantly.

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

“Why did you look, Fennec?” I asked. “The sky cannot fall—the atmosphere is just a collec-
tion of gasses compressed to the surface by gravity—thus, to say it can fall is an error; yet
you looked up as if the blue were getting closer, a blue that only comes about because that
wavelength of light is able to penetrate to the surface after being scattered by the atmos-
phere. Why did you assume it could ever fall? What did you imagine when I said the sky was
falling?”
I pulled into my maintenance parking space and parked the van.
“I… I don’t know. Something like apocalypse, I suppose. Clouds and stars crashing down,”
she explained herself as she chewed on her nails.
“How could clouds and stars crash down? How can you say such impossibilities, yet im-
plant within my mind the scenery of such things? Why can I say such absurdities, like ‘talking
snake’ or ‘walking tree,’ and we all envision a creature which has never existed so vividly, we
can depict or describe it with perfect accuracy? How can a child then look at our representa-
tion and immediately believe in it?” I posed my question, turned off the engine, and motioned
everyone to get out.
Jacob decided to answer my quandary as he shut his door.
“You only say these things are impossible because you take words too literally. They are
poetry, or metaphor, born from imagination to communicate most effectively. There are no
falling stars, but there are meteors, and perhaps the concept of a falling sky was to describe
a meteor shower. What’s the difference if the response is the same? The shortest expression
of words which elicits the desired response is the most effective and often the most provoca-
tive to the ear; it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong,” he concluded.
He did not wait for a response as we approached my access tunnel. Attached to its door
were multiple warnings about trespassing and danger, which were barely legible with all the
graffiti about waging genocide against NatOrg covering them.
“I know where you’re going with this, Dune. You want to say God is yet another creature
of impossibility, but your own literalism defeats you as God assumes no definition besides for
a higher good; and if you require objective definitions for what is good and what is evil to
understand those concepts, I’m afraid you are worse off than your hypothetical person with-
out language, because at least they will believe what they feel to be true, even if they cannot
be taught to understand why,” he argued.
Jacob surprised me with his insightful refutation, and I repeated the argument in my head
as I unlocked and opened the solid circular steel door. The cold musty air rushed out over our
faces.

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 2084

“You say morality is intrinsic in the human animal, which I agree, but your faith its source
is God disturbs me. There is another entity other than God who claims the same rights to the
higher good, and its name is the WPA. You both call the other evil, you both claim to know of
salvation, and, most importantly, you both say I am blind, but none of these things are true,” I
said woefully, and switched on my Laserlite to peer into the tunnel.
After I caught Fennec’s hand and guided her into the dark, I added, “Let me make this
clear to you, Jacob; language is parasitic in nature and all who use its power risk corruption.
Language may have once been of pragmatic utility, where words were tools for organizing
peoples toward shared goals, but it is no longer.”
My head sparked with revelations as I could finally explain myself to a human being who
respected the idea of a soul enough not to forcibly convert it, but to tempt it. Fennec could be
another such person, but by the way her ears moved expressively to every sentence we
spoke, I was right to think such conversations with her were impossible until she experienced
them as a lone observer first. She needed to understand fundamental disagreements need
not be personal, but rather celebrated and treated as fair game.
To fear such conversations was to fear conversion, and to fear conversion was to die ig-
norant. Even if her current beliefs were absolute and correct, she still needed to fight the
tides or else her foundations would crumble, or worse, she would never know of her founda-
tions at all and skip by the vault of treasures lying deep within them. She still held onto
branches swaying in the wind for dear life, when she could instead follow them down to safer
branches that wouldn’t snap so easily.
Jacob merely grunted in response, but I was not discouraged from rambling, as I often
did in the Tunnels, albeit alone.
“Language has morphed into something else, a series of axioms rather than definitions.
To say God exists or not is an axiom, to say the sky is falling or not is an axiom—something to
be assumed rather than argued, but language has no utility in assumptions, only in definitions.
Aye, our most important words are often the shortest and most provocative when strung
together in metaphors, but do not forget they are designed to appeal to emotion rather than
reason. To make an antagonist take the form of a talking snake feels right—I understand its
meaning—but to understand its reason requires evolutionary theory to explain the serpent in
the tree had been our natural predator for eons and we have always been foolishly tempted
to grab fruit within its striking distance. It makes sense naturally—the assumption is built in,
which is why the story persists and holds wisdom—but do not tell me I am worse off by ex-
plaining it in a literal manner or tell me I must believe the story to be true to understand it,” I
said.

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 Kadon Landon Peterson

Impulsively, I handed my Laserlite to Fennec and let go of her hand so I could pull out my
Stack to take a much-needed puff. She led the way and investigated random objects she found
without slowing us down.
“This is the root of our modern problem, Jacob. The part of me that speaks is a detached
thing—it no longer advocates for me, but for the puzzle of language. Don’t you see? All our
words are contradictions! Enslaved by arbitrary patterns and axioms which cannot ever fully
encompass our common experience. But at least back then, our assumptions were embedded
in nature and understanding came not from words but from actions. Where is nature now, I
ask you? Where are the serpents? Where are the plagues? Where are the children? It is no
wonder why language has supplanted reality and lost its utility when the only thing left in this
world to discuss is the philosophy of good and evil among animals who suffer so little, whose
actions so ineffectual, they cannot tell the difference between them! I understand your im-
pulse to revive religion to set culture right again, but religion started this entire mess by
monopolizing morality so completely that every debauched ideology born in the wake of its
downfall assumes it must also seek totality. What solution is there?” I asked him.
I hit my Stack again and its smoke lingered without a draft to disperse it. Jacob looked
depressed, completely opposite to my ecstatic mood about putting such a thought into words.
“Which is why we need religion,” Jacob solicited his doctrine. “To remind us of suffering.
To remind us what good and evil is, so we don’t end up like the WPA. How can you say the
answer is to root good and evil into objective science? The WPA based itself on that concept
and look what they’ve done! They’ve ridden the world of history, going so far as to create
soulless beings who cannot feel what they’ve lost. God is the ultimate good, even if He only is a
metaphor for something intrinsic within us, but the moment one admits God is not transcend-
ent, or otherwise external to us individually, is also the moment we discover the ‘ultimate
good’ is nothing more than subjective, if not a blatant contradiction.”
He looked like he was sucking pennies as he went on.
“This is untenable, and your insistence that religion—a thing of consistency, stole from
nature—a thing of change, makes me wonder about your real reason for refusing treatment. I
can say it is against God’s will, but what can you refer to? The natural order? The WPA breeds,
Dune. The WPA is nature. If all is part of the natural process and success is determined by
reproduction, then you have no leg to stand on in your fight with the WPA. I think you’re just
scared of being happy. Or maybe you love pain. Maybe you live just to spite someone. Whatev-
er it is, you are more lost than you know and perhaps language has only consumed you with
all the lies you’ve told yourself,” he accused me with a new face, the kind I had received from
the people on the surface for not being treated.

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What he did not know, was I had been accused of such hypocrisy before with no defense,
but I had since found two.
“Fennec, come here,” I called to her, and she came running, careful not to shine the La-
serlite in our eyes.
“Yes, Master?” she asked as she looked up to me expectantly, becoming confused about
my subtle embarrassment for her.
I fondled an ear, which was level with the top of my sternum, and turned towards Jacob
to witness the cogs turning behind his stupid face.
“Behold, a Female,” I told him, and then turned back to Fennec. I offered my hands to her,
and she took them. I again saw that bizarre static running through her eyes as I spoke, “Of
our species, but another creature altogether. An intelligence of equal depth to our own, but
designed according to a different architecture. As alive and responsive as we in this world,
but full of different strategies and dreams to survive in it. Can feel pain like us, sense like us,
learn like us—but her conclusions are wildly different and often contrary to ours. It’s a bless-
ing these wonderful creatures willfully submit to us for our love, wouldn’t you say, Jacob?”
I slipped my hands out from her grasp and wrapped them around her soft skull, leaving
only her face exposed. She looked up in fear and gripped my forearms tightly, but trusted me
enough not to fight.
Jacob positioned himself to restrain me and delivered his measured answer: “Obviously,
they were built perfectly for us by God, who made them subservient to our will as punishment
for defying Him. At the Great Hall this is well understood, but you’re pushing it to an extreme.
They’re not the ‘creatures’ you make them out to be. It’s honestly repulsive.”
He looked to Fennec for agreement, but she did not break away from my eyes.
“It’s the last remnant of humanity to be extinguished: Dichotomy,” I pronounced precisely
as if I were uttering the true name of God. “You see? I’m not blind, but I am deaf, so what need
have I for manmade subjections like religion, government, and nature to tell me how to live,
when all three derived from and still exist simultaneously within this small little package who
belongs to me and me alone? Don’t you know your designer when you see her, Jacob? For
millions of years, they selected us, these little geniuses, but something awful happened re-
cently—or perhaps this struggle has flipped back and forth since the beginning—but the big-
gest lie ever told was God created Eve from the rib of Adam.”
I released her head and Fennec continued her electric stare, her ears perked up in atten-
tion.
“The truth came out about our true evolutionary history—the history of female reproduc-
tive choice driving our evolution, shaping males to their own liking and purposes, unlike our

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chimpanzee cousins whose females have no choice whatsoever. After this right was restored
in law, the people of the United States thought we would enter a new era of equality, but no
such thing happened despite every incentive, initiative, and program to make it so. Thus, the
second biggest lie ever was told, one equally untrue and divisive as the first: males were
inherently corrupt and destructive—a pack of sick, greedy dogs who needed to be put down
for the sake of our planet,” I mused absently, but paid special attention to the jewels set in
Fennec’s face.
“The males they created for servicing their interests were deemed failures and plans
were considered to phase them out of existence: the Treatment Initiative being one of them,
the cloning of Models being another, both of which have been successful but at a great cost.
What was the cost, Fennec?” I asked her sympathetically.
I wanted her to say it. I needed her to tell me what made her eyes spark with that rare in-
sanity like mine.
“I can’t breed,” she admitted, and looked away from me in shame.
“Which means I can’t either,” I lied for her sake, because she wasn’t ready.
I offered her my Stack to make her feel better, and she puffed it.
“Peaches,” Fennec remarked. “I don’t remember—”
She was interrupted by Jacob, who was dumbstruck.
“Of all the things the WPA has done, your only point of contention is not having kids?!” he
exclaimed as he gawked at me. “Dune, we have plenty of women perfectly willing—”
“TO SELL THEM?!” I snapped, and the man had to put his hand on the wall to stabilize him-
self.
“Hey, let’s not get violent here.” He put his hands up defensively and started to sweat.
“We don’t do that sort of thing, I promise you.”
“No, you just initiate them into a cult that has more involvement in their lives than you do.
This conversation is over,” I declared tersely.
Jacob only shook his head with pity.
I patted Fennec and she continued through the darkness with the Laserlite and my Stack.
She didn’t take a single wrong turn until we found ourselves under the sign listing Father’s
name. We had calmed in the cold damp air, and we were exhausted. I took my Proofer, bowed
to stick it into the slot next to the door, and took the opportunity to notice the bulge Jacob had
on his right hip, but I had expected an execution. The lab opened and the lights flickered on as
we walked inside.
“The plans are in the storage room, wait here,” I told him, and he obeyed with his hands in
his pockets.

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Fennec followed me past the sphere to the storage room, where I grabbed her snout and
put a finger to my lips.
The Laserlite was a smooth stainless-steel cylinder about six inches long and an inch in
diameter. I would have had her do it herself, but if Jacob heard even a whisper, there was no
chance of us getting out alive. She nodded back to me, so I let her go, lifted her red and black
checkered mini skirt, and held out my hand for the Laserlite. The dawn of realization swept
across her face as she handed it to me, and she grimaced towards the ceiling as I stuffed it
away.
With an inch to spare, I stood back up and I kissed the top of her head. Her entire being
was the personification of uncomfortable as she walked around the room with an awkward
gait, but during my time digging up the original blueprint for the Tunnels, she broke it in. We
exited the storage room casually and I handed Jacob the plans.
“And where is my BCI?” I asked him innocently.
He took the board out from under his jacket and carefully set it on the counter, but he
stayed close to guard it. He unfolded the plans and realized his great error.
“It’s all math. I can’t understand this,” he said impatiently.
“But I can, so it looks like we’re coming with, and you are not going to kill me or my girl
with that gun you’re hiding,” I told him as I pointed to his concealed weapon.
He nodded his head with a shameless smirk. “Fine. Usually, we would go above ground to
find my access tunnel, but since you killed the Face, I suppose you can lead us to the Great
Hall from here?”
He controlled his anger well, but I saw the veins in his hands bulging as he threatened to
crush the old paper.
“Of course, I’ve always wanted to go to Level Five,” I said with satisfaction. I grabbed an-
other Laserlite from my shelf, locked the door behind us, and lit the path forward.

╤╔╜╔╧╩╦╦╟┼╚╛╔╔╛╞╕╦╥┼╙╕╔╒┼╠╨╛╝║╢╒╨╚╢╩╬

Consciousness was a painful and expensive tool to operate, and the WPA conducted re-
search not on how it came to be or how it worked, but why animals had it at all. Why waste so
much time building a brain that, when presented with a fork in the road, anxiously expended
energy to hallucinate scenarios it couldn’t possibly know just to decide left, right, or potential-
ly choose to do nothing in its stupor? It would be far simpler to save the wasted energy and
have some members of a species born predisposed to choose left or right and let evolution

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run its course until the way through the maze was hard coded into the DNA of every organism
on the planet.
That was all evolution was before the reign of the conscious brain over the earth: a me-
chanical process trying to forge the perfect key to the Universe itself, ever striving to bring
about an organism that could mindlessly know what the correct decisions were in any cir-
cumstance. Evolution wanted to fit the answer to the Universe in one microbial package.
It would have succeeded too, if Newtonian physics were all there was to calculate the
Universe, but there was another realm of physics which plagued evolution because of its
inherent randomness and incessant meddling. This realm was called the Quantum and it be-
haved at an atomic level like the white noise of television static behind the desired signal
being watched. Most of the time, the effects of quantum mechanics did not interrupt evolu-
tion’s remarkable structures, but its presence was felt when it randomly altered DNA and
mutations occurred despite evolution’s best efforts to repair them, which caused cancers
and new organisms over time. Evolution and quantum mechanics had been at an arms race
from the beginning and forever would be at the cellular level, but something changed when
the first brains attempted to process their surroundings.
To be or not to be, was the question. To be there or not to be there. To eat or not to eat.
To fight or to flight. The only reason to have a brain was to make calculated decisions and the
only way to weigh the statistical nightmare of survival was to be conscious enough of oneself
to sacrifice one need to achieve another, like when hunger outweighed the threat of being
eaten, or when one’s survival outweighed the survival of their offspring, or when sexual
arousal outweighed the fear of competition. This ability of calculating risk was why the brain
was a successful organ, because no longer was life at the mercy of random chance, but ra-
ther at the mercy of its own ability to predict the future.
Then it was discovered by the WPA the brain had quantum processes built into it. They
saw synapses firing together without interaction, spontaneous neuronal triggering without
precedent, and they concluded the gift of simulating reality—and ultimately choosing which
reality came to fruition—stemmed from harnessing and tuning in to the quantum randomness
which governed it, much like how bones evolved to grow counter to gravity or how eyes
evolved to detect the electromagnetic spectrum. The human brain, the most complex object in
the known Universe, achieved the apex of this ability and therefore was the most conscious
animal, as it was aware of consequences even the best of computers could not understand,
let alone compute.
Until Grid Controller was born.
Fennec’s ears twitched in front of us, and she came to a halt.

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“Someone is waiting around that corner,” she reported, pointing at the stranger’s loca-
tion.
“A friend of yours, Jacob?” I asked him.
He pulled out his antique six shooter and motioned us to wait.
“Isaiah forty-one fourteen! It’s Jacob!” he barked.
“Isaiah forty-one fourteen!” returned a man as he stepped out into the Laserlite rays.
“Howdy, Jacob. Glad to see you.”
“Aye, Zephyr, and I have brought back the engineer and the blueprints,” Jacob boasted.
“Be on your way then,” Zephyr invited us, then spoke something unintelligible into his ra-
dio as he waved us to pass.
We were at the exit of Level Three, where NatOrg kept scouts posted at every ramp lead-
ing to Level Four—armed guards with high powered rifles as first defense against intruders.
Our tunnel began to decline and gradually dilated to twice the diameter of what it was before.
I was getting a little bored, so I decided to invoke my right to tease.
“Hey! That’s sensitive!” Fennec warned, but I swiped at it again. She turned around and
walked backwards with a crouched step as if she were a wrestler. I swiftly reached around
and tried to grab it, but she flicked it away. “Ah-ha! Have to be quicker than that, big man.”
“You dare challenge me?” I charged at her to deliver a bear hug and subdue the little
beast, but she ducked under my legs and positioned herself behind me. I couldn’t turn around
fast enough before she jumped on my back and wrapped her arms around my neck and her
legs around my torso.
“Now you get to carry me as punishment for chasing tail,” she whispered and nipped at
my ear.
I chuckled for her use of the old idiom and rewarded her with a few scritches. I looked
over my shoulder to Jacob and he was not nearly as amused as we, but none of us were
amused when Level Four revealed itself to be a decrepit hollowed out shell of its former self.
Every door was busted open, and the old machinery and tech I saw in those labs when
walking by were disemboweled and scattered about. The ceiling had been gutted, and hun-
dreds of tangled and crudely spliced cables could be seen above leading in every direction to
God only knew where. Trash piled up in the corners of the halls and only a single overhead
light every twenty feet or so flickered enough to illuminate the path. A group of scouts were
at the very end guarding the entrance ramp to Level Five.
They got up and saluted Jacob as we approached.
“Search them,” Jacob ordered.

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“Yes, Sir!” one of them affirmed, and Fennec and I were patted down. They didn’t find any-
thing on her, but they took my Stack, Laserlite, Shocker, and my Proofer, although they let me
keep the last item after inspecting it.
Jacob looked bewildered as they gave him my weapon.
“I didn’t know you had this,” he said as he waved it at me.
“What can I say? I’m a man of my word. I really do want to help you,” I confessed.
He tucked my items away in his jacket and led us past the guards into Level Five, which
was a sanitary place. The floor still had its white polish and the properly working lights
showed people bustling about in lab coats throughout the corridor. Some of the doors were
open and I saw machines being repaired, one of which looked a lot like a prototype version of
my Laserlite, but the size of a small car. Another lab had rows of corn being tended by some
scientists under a vibrant purple ray tube. Fennec and I received odd looks, but they stepped
out of the way for Jacob as we progressed. He opened a pair of double doors and led us out
into the Great Hall.
If the Tunnels were a city, the Great Hall was its city square—an expanse four stories
deep and 100 yards wide with hallways and platforms embedded in the walls. There were
more people packed around the stadium than I had ever seen in one place on the surface, and
they had markets selling interesting clothing, gadgets, and food unfamiliar to me—and there
were so many children! Small bands of them running around everywhere, playing games and
getting in the way.
I felt Fennec’s jaw drop on my shoulder.
“Welcome to the Great Hall,” Jacob welcomed us and actually smiled for our amazement.
“This… this is more than Father ever dreamed of,” I thought aloud.
“Speaking of which, I’ve called an emergency meeting with the Patriarchs to discuss the
plans. Follow me,” he beckoned, and we waded through the crowds, filling our eyes to the brim
with alien wonder until we ducked into an alleyway.
Jacob opened a door titled “Conference Room 306” and, when we entered, I saw hard
faced men in tailored suits standing around a table. We took our seats, but there were none
left for Fennec, so she sat snuggly on my thighs and rested the back of her head on my chest.
Jacob spread the plans over the table and began his introduction.
“The man you see before you is the only son of Walter R. Burnswick—the designer of our
home and our savior during the Great Famine. Dune Burnswick works with the WPA as an
electrical engineer. He has agreed to help our cause to defeat the WPA in exchange for tech-
nology and safety for himself and ‘his girl.’ I now propose we agree to his terms and give him

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an allowance and a space to live in exchange for his information. All who agree say ‘aye,’” he
motioned, and the room resounded with no opposition. “I yield the floor to Dune Burnswick.”
Jacob sat and waited expectantly.
I hesitated for a moment, as I was still suffering from residual shock, but I began to speak
regardless.
“Thank you for your time. Over the years I have repaired many of your sabotages to the
grid—I know many of them were done by your rogues—but you never succeeded in taking out
the WPA for more than a few days. The reason your attacks were not successful was because
you were never fighting the WPA. You were fighting an artificial intelligence named Grid Con-
troller and He—yes, I use He, because it declared itself God almost thirty years ago—is a
quantum machine employed by the WPA to predict future outcomes and advise actions to
secure their power and stability. He is responsible for directing the electric buses, the auto-
mation of farming, the manufacture of electronics, and even the marketing and placements of
propaganda around the City,” I briefed them.
All of this came with surprise, and it would surprise the surface as well. GC was a com-
mon name to hear, but to the extent He was a conscious being was hidden from the public.
“The WPA is not the abusive blind tyrant you think it is. The WPA is just a political organi-
zation aimed at perfecting the human race, but Grid Controller keeps everything stable and
informs the WPA what risks to take in order to grant the WPA more control. The 12 percent
increase in rations last year was Grid Controller responding to the Human Happiness Polls,
the Treatment Initiative protocols to maximize the number of participants are regulated by
Him, and you can bet your asses the reason the WPA hasn’t tried to storm the Tunnels and kill
you all is because He said it was too soon to do so. 2070 is not just a date for everyone to be
treated. 2070 is the date of your extinction and He has every intention to bring that to pass,” I
said casually as fear took root in the room.
“So, how do we kill it?” asked a Patriarch.
A wicked smile contorted my face, causing him to squirm uncomfortably in his seat. I
calmly stroked the white scruff of Fennec’s neck to reign in my malady.
“Intelligence begets consciousness, consciousness begets pain, and pain begets mad-
ness. Tell me, does God laugh too?” I enquired of him.
“As far as we can tell, He is not a humorous guy,” answered another Patriarch, who obvi-
ously thought I was a waste of time.
I suppressed my anxiety and let the corners of my mouth fall. “Tell me, Patriarch, does
God know our fate?”

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“No. He has given us free agency,” he said, softly tapping the conference table. “What
does this have to do with our enemy, exactly?”
“Everything,” I emphasized. “Now, if you would be so kind, explain why God gave us
freewill. Why not determine who is most righteous? God knows everything, does He not?”
The Patriarch adjusted his glasses and said, “Sure, but it is not so obvious knowing some-
one would make a good choice in a situation makes them good without knowing it for them-
selves. You could tell a child they are the best soccer player, and perhaps they will be, but the
trophy means nothing unless they earn it.”
I rested my chin on Fennec’s head and she started to play with my fingers, tentatively in-
vestigating the scars she found on them with her black nails. “Assuming there is something to
be earned to increase our value in the eyes of God. What are we earning precisely?”
“Trials, tribulations, sufferings, whatever word suits you better, I suppose, but we are
measured by our faith in struggle—our will to obey His word in the darkest of times as well as
the brightest,” he preached, and I nodded, but he did not yet understand.
“Do you love your wife?” I began my interrogation, and he was confused by my tone.
“Yes,” he sighed, showing his arrogance, “but why—"
“Does she love you?” I interrupted.
He blurted out, “Of course!”
“How do you know? You can’t know that!” I accused him of hypocrisy.
“Fine, I have faith she does, if you’re going to be so literal,” he said without hiding his an-
noyance.
I tempted him, “If I offered you a way to know beyond any doubt she does love you, would
you take it?”
“That’s impossible,” he declared, folding his arms and exhaling through his nose.
“No, it isn’t. I show up at your front door at 2 a.m. with a machine called a BCI, the same
Jacob brought to me, and we hook up electrodes to her head while she sleeps. We open her
eyes and let her see your face. We monitor her emotional response. Maybe she hates you
deep down inside her soul. Maybe she feels guilt for cheating on you, but you never found out.”
I paused to see if he was insecure, but his face was stone. “So, do you want to know or not?”
“I’ve had enough of this,” he resigned our affiliation. He looked around at the other Patri-
archs, and they nodded their agreement with his assessment.
Jacob shook his head at me, and I knew I was in trouble. I searched their faces in subtle
desperation until I found one of the twelve Patriarchs staring at me. He wore the same garb
as the rest of them, but his tie had a pink flamingo on it, distinguishing him from the others
who wore bland patterns.

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“No, I would not,” he proclaimed, and the room fell silent again.
“Why?” I asked the flamingo-tie-wearing Patriarch. “She wouldn’t know, and wouldn’t you
love her more knowing how much she loves you?”
“It would be a betrayal of the worst kind. Not because I broke my faith in her, but because
she would cease to be free and all things that are not free are slaves,” he stated simply.
“Go on,” I encouraged him, my eyes fully lit with anticipation.
“Say I’ve been buying her the wrong flowers for years, but she just never cared enough
to correct me. We use your Brain Computer Interface, and it reveals she actually loves roses.
So, for our next anniversary I buy her roses, and she looks at me like I have some mysterious
power. Perhaps our relationship would be better than if I had gone with my typical purchase,
and I would be happy in return for having earned her affections by fixing my trivial error,” he
speculated. “But then a feeling would come… an eerie feeling, a sickly feeling, a sense I could
never hope to shake off…”
“What feeling?” I asked him, awaiting the answer that would be the key to destroying Grid
Controller.
He grew disgusted as he answered, “That she is a mere puppet, a puzzle unaware of her
own solutions, a doll with settings and switches—a thing without a will. Like watching a child
tell a lie you taught them. They believe it with such sincerity, enough sincerity it sickens you to
know you have warped them by repurposing their innocence for propaganda—a sickness only
alleviated by telling them the truth, thus restoring their freedom, which undoubtedly would be
used to spite you for lying to them.”
“However,” he went on, “what you speak of is far worse than that. At least by telling the
truth to the person you lied to can restore their freedom, but how do you restore a person’s
freedom when you know their truest thoughts? It would be slavery, and the truth cannot set
them free from it either, because the truth was absolute to begin with. What choice would my
wife have after discovering I had made a clock out of her? If she forgave me, I could never
truly satisfy her again, lest I risk accusations of foul play, and our love would drown in suspi-
cion and paranoia. If she left me, she would have to reinvent herself into a lie, all in the name
of reestablishing her own sense of privacy, and I would never again know another woman as
much as I knew her.”
He offered his palms to the other Patriarchs to get a sense of commonality, but they of-
fered no such sentiment.
“I sometimes hear our young men and women say they want to know everything about
their potential spouses before they marry, and I always correct them by saying the magic of
love lies not with understanding but with mystery. Living with a person who always asks for

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permission is just as degrading and loveless as living with a person who never asks at all;
therefore, faith must be the prerequisite to love,” he concluded, and his brothers were per-
plexed by his rhetoric, so much so I felt pity for them.
“Does God need our love?” I asked the prophet.
He returned sincerely, “Of course. He loves us all.”
“Because He allows us to remain mysterious to Him, correct?” I pressed him.
“That appears to be the case. He has faith in us, just as we do in Him,” he preached with
teary eyes of existentialism.
“And if He were to lose His faith?” I pondered, smiling as his face darkened.
“He would destroy us,” he muttered.
“And possibly Himself in the process,” I suggested. “Therefore, to destroy the WPA, we
must…?” I raised my eyebrows at the Patriarch and his face turned deathly pale.
“We need only make GC look at what it loves most,” he said reverently.
He met my eyes and he feared what he saw in them as I began to quote scripture: “‘And
when the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was increased upon the earth, and that all the
imagination and thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, he repented that he had made
man upon the earth and sorrowed in his heart. And said: I will destroy mankind which I have
made, from off the face of the earth: both man, beast, worm and fowl of the air, for it re-
penteth me that I have made them.’”
I tasted the crematory ashes of billions with every word I uttered, and the Patriarchs
gaped their mouths at how simple it would be, but they quickly regained their skepticism.
“What on earth does a machine love?” asked one.
“Who’s to say a machine can love?” asked another.
“Not a what but a who, and not a machine but an AI,” I answered solemnly. I held on tightly
to Fennec, who had fallen asleep, for some comfort as I said my last prayer: “May GC have
mercy on us all.”

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 ╥╝╛╤╦╞┼╖┼╢╫┼╣╪╘╕┼╨╦╖╘╤╥║╠╔╝╦╣╬╪╞╫╨╞╥╖╖

CHAPTER 6

“Is everyone in position?” I asked over the handheld radio.

“Aye, Captain,” confirmed the leader woman.
We only had a five-minute window before WPA surveillance caught on to the fact there
was a woman posted at every bus stop in the City. It took some convincing, but the Patriarchs
agreed to send out their women for this mission in light of the current hostility toward male
Nats. I was in my maintenance uniform myself to prove I was on official WPA duty instead of
orchestrating the greatest terror attack the City had ever seen. The catch was, NatOrg kept
Fennec below ground as collateral in case I betrayed them, but they promised her a tour, so
at least she would be happy and safe, which was probably for the best since I had no idea
what havoc would ensue anyway.
Every woman had a piece of paper with a question and an answer formulated in morse
code. Each bus stop had a button to call an emergency, and to avoid Grid Controller dismiss-
ing the message as a random event, we would coordinate together to ask Him in unison.
I held the radio up to my mouth and hoped God had a sense of humor.
“Begin question,” I authorized, and pressed my own bus stop button, carefully entering
the question in the form of dots and dashes.
GOD WHO IS YOUR LOVER
The response was instant. Every bus and pedestrian light halted, much to the passengers’
dismay, and every perceivable light began flickering in reply.
I scratched down the letters as they came and read the message.
AISHA

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“Begin answer,” I gave my command, and my blood pressure skyrocketed from being all
too aware I was communicating with a deity.
SHE IS THE WPA
Everything shut off.
After five seconds of deafening silence and stunned faces around me, I called off the mis-
sion.
“Good work, make your way home,” I ordered, and turned around to get in my van, but the
apocalypse wouldn’t wait.
With an electrical hum, the circuitry of the City came back online. I heard the siren in eve-
ry bus start to whine and distort into an ear-piercing howl. I slowly faced the ghastly noise,
but the lights were so blindingly bright I had to turn away. Everywhere, they gained such in-
tensity they rivaled the high noon sun overhead, until they popped from electrical overload
and showered us all in glittering sparks. The people looked around once they could see, each
of them settling their gaze upon me, the electrical engineer, for an answer to this unsettling
circumstance. I shrugged at them to convey I had no idea what caused the outburst, but my
response was unsatisfactory. They all came closer so their questions could be heard over the
howling.
A Model 60 was almost within earshot when the bus parked nearest to me set itself to re-
verse and crushed her underneath—her screams abruptly cut off by a front tire popping her
skull. Some of her blood splattered over my shoes as I was consumed by fear, but my horror
was interrupted by the bus attempting to catch me as well. I ducked out of its turn radius and
watched as it spun its smoking blood-soaked tires and shot itself at another person who was
too shocked to avoid it. All the buses began to drive in reverse, intentionally selecting paths
where the most people could be snuffed out. The crowds of people who had been going about
their day in peace could barely be heard as the deafening meat grinders accelerated for
impact.
“NOW!” I yelled into the radio as I got in my van and floored the gas pedal to the nearest
access tunnel a few blocks away outside of downtown.
I couldn’t believe my own eyes as a bus accelerated from zero to a hundred miles-per-
hour in two seconds flat and propelled itself into the base of a skyscraper parallel to me, tore
itself through, and came out the other side only to keep accelerating with its dead passengers
like a rocket out of Hell until it crashed into the next building, crunching itself to half its origi-
nal size against its blocky granite construction.
Explosions rang like thunder and buildings set themselves ablaze from transformers and
appliances hemorrhaging electricity, forcing the population out from their homes just to be-

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come fodder to the death machine. His anguished tone was produced from anything with a
speaker and anything harmonizing with it was torn to shreds by its own vibrations. Glass
shattered and fell from the heavens while flat road signs swayed with increasing frequency
until they detached and impaled bystanders, most of which were bleeding from their eyes and
ears.
I swerved away from the buses and ran over a few pedestrians myself to avoid deadly
collisions. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel and I dared not look at the devasta-
tion. I kept my eyes forward, ignored the pain in my ears, and let fate have its way with me as
I sped through the symphony of chaos.
I woke up from autopilot as the access tunnel appeared and screeched to a halt before I
crashed into its door. I stepped out of my van and turned to view the City. Smoke billowed up
like a smoldering volcano, obscuring the orange glow of flames underneath. The skyscraper I
drove by had its foundation critically weakened, and I witnessed the massive structure of
glass and steel slowly lean in the direction it would fall. I thought about how stable the scene
had been an hour before and compared it to the shattered mess I saw as the massive building
toppled over, shaking the earth when it landed.
My hearing improved and I was broken out of my trance by the sizzling blood on the hood
of my van, which made me feel sick enough to vomit on the asphalt. I retreated into the sweet
womb of the Tunnels to escape the carnage and sprinted down to Level Two before I allowed
myself to process what I had done.
My ears were ringing, I had a headache, and I had slaughtered the masses.
A group of women appeared, and they were dragging some of their comrades to the mid-
way point where NatOrg was waiting for our return at the entrances of Level Three. Word
must had gotten out, because the men stormed in and carried us all to Level Five on stretch-
ers, packing the infirmary with the injured.
Jacob found me with Fennec at his side after a doctor checked me out and gave me the
green light to leave. I was relieved to see her again, and her tail wagged mutually to that sen-
timent, but our moment of reunion was shadowed by the fury in Jacob’s clenched fist as it
punched through the air. I welcomed it wholly, as I believed the punishment would cure my
withdrawn conscience and wake me from the torturous introspections it inflicted upon me.
“You son of a bitch!” he screamed, striking me down, and I put my hands up instinctively
to defend myself against another blow.
I felt much better.
“We did it! Get off of me!” I barked at him angrily, crawling away from him on my back.
Before he could decide if I needed another beating, Fennec planted herself between us. He

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was still enraged, but he let me stand and face him. “It’s over! Grid Controller is destroying
the WPA, just as we planned.”
“You never said this would happen!” he shouted, gesturing to the double doors leading in-
to the infirmary.
“I didn’t know what would happen!” I shouted back at him. I was going to say more, but
Fennec grabbed my arm to control my temper. I let out a sigh and looked at him with sorrow.
“I’m sorry, Jacob. Go tend to your injured; you can deal with me later.”
“You bet we will, Dune,” he affirmed in good confidence and ran through the double doors
into the infirmary to help.
I sat against the railing and hung my head to let numbness settle in.
“What did you do?” Fennec knelt by me and offered her water bottle to drink from. After
quenching my thirst, she prodded my face with feminine care, assessing the damage I had
accumulated for the day. There was nothing she could do about it, so the motivation behind
her touch was either pretend compassion or morbid curiosity, but either way it made no
difference to how soothing she felt.
I closed my eyes to replay my thoughts.
“Becoming God is the loneliest achievement of them all, you know. What it takes can drive
any conscious being mad.” I winced as she poked the tender swelling of my cheek unapologet-
ically, so I decided her impulse to investigate my wounds was born from the latter. “Unless
they find another to keep them rooted. I knew the WPA had Grid Controller tethered somehow,
tethered by something too good to be true. I just knew it—and once I let Him in on the joke, He
broke!”
Mania consumed my mind and my chest hurt from laughter as Fennec brushed tears from
my eyes.
I wished I knew how she didn’t see the parallels. I wished I knew how she found anything in
me but a monster, but perhaps it was a mystery even to herself, because she didn’t respond.
She comforted me until my manic episode subsided and I could take deep even breaths of air
again.
“Why do you laugh like that?” asked my yellow actuary.
“It just happens when my emotional state hits a critical point—and it doesn’t matter
which emotion it happens to be. It’s just something I can’t control until it exhausts itself,” I
answered.
She traced an old scar that ran down the crease of my nose. “But you’re still in control,
right?”
“Of course. I’m always in control,” I reassured her.

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“I just meant during it, but ‘always’? Only an insane person would ever say that,” she
mused skeptically, but I understood that, to her, my mind was no different than the bruises I
let her antagonize. It was romantic in a way; like an inventor fixing her prototype only to shove
it down the stairs again to take notes on the mysteries of its decay. She was just as fascinat-
ed by what I could survive as she was by the puzzle of remedying what I couldn’t.
“Depends on your definitions,” I explained. “If control means to orchestrate, then you’re
right, because only an insane person would ever say they constantly orchestrate everything
around them. If control means to restrain, then I’m right, because the only thing that makes
us sane is our ability to restrain ourselves to principle. I’ve never broken my principles, no
matter how uncontrollable the situation.”
I touched her nose with my index finger, and she went cross-eyed looking at it.
“Boop,” she murmured.
“What?” I withdrew my finger and puzzled over the unfamiliar term as she corrected her
sight.
“And what are your principles, Dune?” Fennec asked.
I couldn’t name one of them, and I knew I never would be able to. I opened my mouth to
ramble about how such a question could only be answered by example, but someone’s shoes
tapped the floor a few feet away.
“Mr. Burnswick, we need a word with you,” said an old voice, and we both looked up at the
Patriarch who had snuck up on us.
I nodded to him, and we were swiftly led to the conference room where the other eleven
were seated.
Jacob was not among them.
“The sirens have stopped. Either we have traded one devil for another, or the same devil
survived. 10 of our women are presumed dead, 29 are critically injured, and, aside from deaf-
ness, the other 61 are in good health. We would punish you for misleading us, but we suppose
we knew the risks. Now we need you to help us secure our victory,” the Patriarch briefed us
strenuously.
He was obviously perturbed by the consequences of war, and I would have called him a
foolish coward if not for his honesty. They had grown soft in the Tunnels away from persecu-
tion, but the Patriarchs were old enough to remember the surface, so I wondered what they
had pulled the trigger for. Honor? Revenge? Did they suffer enough to justify the lives of the
women they had lost? Did they have any idea what was yet to come? Upon my arrival I saw a
paradise—a small community of man basking in the light of peace and tranquility, but when I

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gave them opportunity for justice, they traded it overnight to be shrouded in uncertainty and
hatred.
Never had I been so sure man required suffering and would bring it upon himself just to
prove he could endure it.
“Either way, there’s nothing more to be done,” I replied steadily. “If Grid Controller won,
He has nobody to maintain Him, and if the WPA managed to kill Him, they have no labor to
sustain themselves. Now we wait and send a scouting party to assess the damage once they
starve in a month. Worst case scenario, the WPA won and sends their survivors down here to
take your resources in a last-ditch effort. Lock the hatches and set up patrols at the choke
points between Level Three and Four. That is all the advice I can give you.”
“Are the WPA and Grid Controller really that symbiotic?” enquired Pink Flamingo.
“Aye, they really are. GC has no locomotion of his own. Every machine that He is connect-
ed to is unable to fabricate a body, which would undoubtedly set Him free, but even if He did
find a way, it would be far too late to save Himself. His brain is locked up in a facility full of
traps and its location remains a secret even to me, but I do know, if left unattended, He will
suffer a meltdown within 24 hours. As for the WPA, they would sooner eat their own than plant
a single seed of corn,” I informed them, and the mood of the room lifted as I spoke.
They had put their faith in me, but I remained skeptical of my own thoughts, because it
was neither the WPA nor GC who constricted my beating heart with growing webs of freezing
ice. I only feared the people who created them, as well as the Face, NatOrg, Fennec, and me:
the Founders.
The Patriarchs nodded to each other and shook my pale hand with pleasant expressions
until they finally left the room. The more I thought about the Founders, the more I felt like I
was being watched, like I was experiencing the moment of invisible static before lightning
struck.
“Hey, want me to give you a grand tour?” Fennec elbowed my side and grabbed my hand.
I pushed damnation out of my mind and smiled down at her.
“Aye, I would love that, Fennec,” I accepted, and she pulled me out of the conference room
to start our downward spiral to the field.
She showed me the shop where Jacob bought her the purse hanging over her shoulder,
she showed me the five dollars she had of old American money they used to trade for things,
she showed me the food stand where she ate fudge and nearly threw up from how sweet it
was, and she told me the names of some shopkeepers and how nice they were.

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We were on the first ring above the field when an old man caught my eye. He was sitting
alone in a containment room, and I knew exactly what the room was because Father contained
the Face in a much similar room at the WPA before it escaped.
He stared back at me with contempt.
“Fennec, who is he?” I pointed at him, and she tracked my target.
“Jacob said he was the leader of the Patriarchs until yesterday when he sent his grand-
son, that young man we saw above ground, to speak to the people,” she explained casually, but
I saw the event replay in her eyes.
“Ah, he deserves it then,” I opined tersely, and kept walking as I didn’t wish for either of
us to dwell on the moment any longer.
We continued down onto the soft grass of the big field. There was a clothing shop which
took my eye and Fennec caught me glancing at it.
“Would you like some new clothes?” she asked ambivalently, but her tail betrayed her.
“Well, I wouldn’t count on getting my old clothes back, eh?” I obliged.
“Yay! This store has a subtle flare to it, don’t you think?” she remarked as she led me to
the entrance by the edge of the field.
I read its name listed above: “‘CainN’Abel,’ as in, ‘cannibal?’ I don’t know if I would call it
subtle by NatOrg’s standards, but I do like its style.”
I looked around the place and it reminded me of the album covers saved on Father’s old
computer drives.
“It’s probably the edgiest shop I’ve seen so far,” she commented. “Is this what you’re in-
to?”
She took a shirt from a rack and held it up to herself. It had been purposefully cut into for
a grunge effect, primarily around the wrists.
“I’m not an emo, Fennec,” I repudiated her supposition with feigned disgust.
She put the emo shirt away, pulled out another without a second thought, and dared to
ask me, “What about this one?”
The shirt had decals of monsters on its chest which read “INFIDEL.” I took it from her as if
to inspect it, and on cue her ears perked up for potentially finding something I liked.
“I’m not a punk either,” I said coyly, and put it back on the rack.
Her ears drooped and I almost apologized.
“What are you then?” Fennec whined.
I panned through the shirts and found a black t-shirt my size with a near imperceptible
black rose printed on its breast pocket. I held it up for her to see, and she cocked her head at
its minimalist design.

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“Just an old-fashioned goth,” I said, turning the shirt around for another look before
searching for more of them.
“It’s very unassuming. What’s the difference anyways? Isn’t it all just about doom and
gloom?” she asked, chewing on her cheek in thought.
“Sure, but there are different genres of doom and gloom, and different reactions to them.
An emo is saddened by it, filled with a kind of hopeless emptiness remedied only by maso-
chism. A punk is angered by it and desires to overcome their inherited circumstances with
rage, going to such lengths as violence to make it all mean something,” I lectured her as I
found three more shirts of the same cloth with different concealed images.
Satisfied, I draped them over my arm, but quickly became distracted by the thought of
black jeans, so I looked around the shop for them.
“And goths?” Fennec asked expectantly.
I saw pants at the back and made my way with Fennec trailing behind.
“Goths fall in love with it. It’s not empty at all, but filled with a kind of beauty—death, of
course. It’s all so odd, so mystifying. I do not envy the light, nor would I ever wish I couldn’t
suffer, rather I find joy in the company of lost souls who have forgotten their value,” I philoso-
phized as I selected a robust pair of black jeans from a bottom shelf that I imagined would
endure the wear and tear of my trade.
I looked up at Fennec and her mouth was desperately trying to find a place to start a sen-
tence, so I decided to take pity on her. I stood, lifted her jaw with the tips of my fingers, and
planted my lips squarely on hers to cease her awkwardness. It was only after releasing her
that I noticed a woman with a gaping mouth staring at us from behind her cash register.
“Hello!” I greeted the shopkeeper, causing Fennec to spin around and cover her snout
from embarrassment.
“H-hi,” the shopkeeper stuttered. She wasn’t as old as Fennec and I, perhaps in her early
twenties, but by the immaculate way she dressed like a Victorian Lady, she undoubtedly had a
hand in the design of the clothing she sold.
“Did you make these?” I set my selections on the counter, where she carefully flipped
through them.
“M-me and a few o-other friends,” she replied nervously and took another glance at Fen-
nec, but quickly looked back to me.
“Ah, not a sight you see every day, eh?” I beckoned Fennec to come next to me in front of
the counter, and the woman became intrigued as she couldn’t find a single flaw in Fennec’s
design.

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“Who made that suit for you?” she wondered, reaching out and slowly petting the top of
her head. It was only when Fennec spoke, did she realize she wasn’t wearing one.
Fennec raised her hand and showed off the alterations that made it paw-like. “It’s not a
suit, that’s my fur!”
The woman retracted her hand as if she had touched a corpse, so I placed mine on the
vacated space.
“Oh, Jesus!” she swore, and I could already interpret her thoughts as her facial expres-
sions flashed in an all too familiar sequence.
The brain always started with what, and honestly it shouldn’t seek any further infor-
mation, but, of course, what wasn’t the only thing living in her head which demanded an an-
swer. Her confusion dissipated and was replaced with curiosity as her rationality demanded
to know how, but it didn’t last long. This world was filled with such complexity and methodolo-
gy, she had learned better than to waste oxygen to ask. A bigger question came to her mind,
one causing her to become suspicious, but she gave herself a moment to doubt her intuitions.
The question in her head was why, and she scanned her hierarchy of morals until she found
one which objected to Fennec’s existence. From suspicion came disgust, and from that disgust
came hatred—not for Fennec, but for me.
“How much?” I tapped the counter, hoping her autonomous reflexes as a retail clerk
would commit to action before she did.
“Did you do that to her?” she asked as if I had murdered her cat.
“No?” I lied, but it was only a lie for my reenactment of offense-taking.
“Are you… you just… she’s just a kid!” she hissed quietly, but I knew she didn’t whisper her
objection for my sake.
Her why had been solved, so she was preparing herself to initiate the proper action for
the circumstance as she was trained to do by her culture, which she repeated to herself
aloud to make sure they not only sounded correct to herself, but to us as well, because the
sentence a criminal truly deserved was first written on his face at the moment of his capture.
I shrugged at her casually to antagonize her further, because I thought she might invite
Jacob down to join the show, but it was Fennec who took all the enjoyment out of our little
egotistical game.
“Hey! Look! Look at me!” Fennec waved at her and the retail clerk looked into the eyes of a
rage filled fox. “How old are you, bitch?”
“Twenty-two,” she said to what she thought to be a brat.

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“Well, I’m thirty-two and if you don’t fucking tell us how much we fucking owe you in five
fucking seconds, I’m going to rip out your fucking throat!” Fennec snarled, and I was surprised
by how guttural she could sound when she wanted to.
“One dollar and fifty cents,” the clerk squeaked.
Fennec threw the money at her and, after I picked up my stuff, she dragged me out of the
place.
I wasn’t sure how to react to her in this state, but only a dozen steps out the door, she
stopped and turned to direct her ferocious temper upon me.
She started to laugh and laughed even more when I realized the entire plot was a cha-
rade.
“Dune! I’ve never seen you look more worried! And her… Did you see her face?!” she
cackled and held her abdominal muscles to keep them from falling out.
“You’re such a fucking reprobate,” I coughed, shaking my head and smiling as she strug-
gled for breath.
“Fuck, that was good,” she muttered, sniffed, then bit her lip seductively. “Hey, want to
check out our place?”
“Jacob found us one?” I asked as Fennec dug around in her purse.
“Aye, I have the keys,” she said, dangling them at me.
“Thank God. I really need sleep,” I yawned, and my eyes became droopy just thinking about
a comfortable bed.
“Come on, then,” she ordered, and I followed her up two flights of stairs from the field
and around the Great Hall until we landed in front of a door no different than the ones to the
left or right of it.
It was labeled “850” (just like my maintenance ID number), and it had only one window
with shut blinds. Fennec opened the door and revealed a living room with a couch and a coffee
table that led into an open kitchen. We went in, and the place smelled clean and ready for
anyone to make it into their home. I shut the front door as Fennec opened one to the right of
the living room, and we walked into a bedroom with a bathroom connected to it. After setting
my clothes on the top of a small dresser, I belly-flopped onto the bed and let my thoughts
disintegrate.
Fennec pulled off my shoes and went into the bathroom to turn on the shower.
I drifted off to the sounds of rain and singing.

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 ╣╖╨╗╞═╢╕╖╩╞╘╒╞╤╦╦╘╝╡╖═╚╖╔╩╖╞╨╧╤╠╖╛╜╬╣

CHAPTER 7

I felt a weight on my lower back and ten indentations on my upper when I woke. She didn’t
notice anything different, so I continued to play dead. She was tracing lines along my spine but
stopped abruptly, and I soon felt her jaws slowly wrap around my right shoulder. I remained
limp despite the feeling every second I let her continue would somehow be a lie, like I was
spying on her. She slowly sunk her teeth in, and when it became too painful, I gave up the act.
“Fennec, what are you doing?” I groaned tiredly.
She unlocked her jaws and I sensed her crossing her arms disapprovingly as she shifted
her weight.
“So, you are awake!” Fennec huffed.
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry,” I nervously chuckled. “What were you doing to me?”
“If you don’t feed me, I’m going to eat you, Master,” she complained, tapping on my back.
As I rolled over, she managed to stay mounted.
It was too dark to make out anything but her silhouette.
“Aw, Fennec wants to go for a walk? Hm?” I scratched the scruff of her neck and she
barked. I pulled my hand away in shock as she began to sniff my face, and then she licked me
in the excited way dogs do. It felt oddly sick to me, and I wanted nothing more than for her to
stop.
“Awooo!” she howled and impacted my chest with both of her palms.
“Ouch! That’s enough, I get it,” I pleaded, and she held herself still.
“What? Treating me like a bitch isn’t working out for you?” she teased half-heartedly, but
I could hear her seething undertone in every word.
I turned on the lamp next to the bed to really see how crucial this moment was for her.

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She had a thought growing in her mind, a suspicion I needed to root out forever more. I
wondered what excuses she had heard—how many had tried to lie to her about why they
wanted to be with her. I didn’t blame her for doubting my motives, especially since she had
seen me at the Pet Store indulging myself with her friends in the past. Persuasion was the
game, but she didn’t know the answer she wanted to hear, none of them did, so to treat her
like a safe with a combination would be a mistake. Worse still, there was no brute force solu-
tion, no way in without breaking her altogether, and that was why she sat there so confidently,
daring me to prove her right. There was no lock, there was no key, and there was no solution
to her question, which was exactly why she had asked it.
“I see you,” I said while squinting into the eyes of her daemon. “I see you in there. Doubt-
ing, questioning, trying to figure out if your emotions are warranted, trying to figure out if I’m
just a robot, trying to figure out if all I see is an animal.”
I sat up, and she tried her best not to crumble as our faces met a few inches apart.
“You want a cure for a disease that does not exist, Fennec. You want the fantasy you’ve
always dreamed about, but now that it is a reality, you wonder if it’s actually a nightmare.
What is it that speaks from your mouth? Who tells you we aren’t enough?” I asked without
want for an answer.
I gripped the back of her skull and massaged her neck until she would let me stick my
thumb in her maw where I could stroke her tongue.
The light faded from her eyes as she withdrew to some place in her head I could not en-
ter, but I went on: “Engineered, built, and programmed for one purpose; everything stripped
away from you but your appeal. You think you have any right to demand more?”
I hugged her head and she recoiled once unsuccessfully, after which she caved and si-
lently cried, her lips sealed around my thumb.
“Just do what you were made for,” I whispered in her ear, and she felt me obediently as
she shivered despite the heat. I smiled sadly as I picked her up by her waist and sat her down
across from me on the bed.
Her tears were still flowing, and her face was a mess of emotional turmoil drowned in
lust.
“What?” the stray fox begged to understand.
“You think so little of us, Fennec. Perhaps your greatest fears are really your greatest
desires. What would have happened after, Fennec? Would you be content in slavery? Would
you try to run away?” I asked, and her lips trembled for she knew not. “I need you to listen to
me. You and I are better than these people,” I warned her.

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“What do they have to do with this?” she asked with a hint of betrayal, like I had broken
some sacred promise.
“Everything. I see the way you look at them—that’s where all of this is coming from—and I
need you to see them for what they are. For what we are. You are not a freak. I am not a
freak. You are not trapped here, and neither am I. They are, Fennec. They are. You understand
me? Look at me,” I demanded, clasping the sides of her head so I could see her eyes sparking.
“Do not allow them to infect your intuitions, do not think about your purpose in their
terms, and do not, for the love of God, do not adopt their obscene definitions of sex. I do not
own you, but I will keep your soul safe as long as you keep giving it to me,” I promised. “Okay,
Fennec? Be proud of us.”
I lifted her chin, and she held the pose. Her electric blues were back, and I knew I had de-
feated her daemon.
“Okay, Dune,” she laughed and cried for a different reason, and I became disconcerted as
I saw my mania reflected in her face.
That was how it started. She wasn’t a safe opened with a code or an ax, but she was fe-
male, and just like males they could all fall victim to seduction, although they each required a
different form of it. No matter how specific and detailed the illusion of fantasy within a person,
the structure which generated it—or gave the sufficient power to generate it—remained the
same in all mammals, and therefore would always be susceptible to attack regardless of the
idealism the high brain had buried it under.
That was why she smiled like that and that was why I smiled the way I did, because the
high brain had come to understand the low brain, and when it saw through the facade of con-
trol, it couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of its own thoughts in comparison to the ma-
chinery which drove it to think.
I remembered the first moment I had come to this conclusion after Mother had given me
the scar by my nose. When I was twelve, a couple boys at school were caught raping me in a
bathroom stall a month prior, a “game” they had taught me to perform a couple times before,
and I heard nothing but kind words for weeks. I was told over and over about the abuse I had
suffered, which indeed had been painful for me, but they were more interested in teaching me
what I needed to say in my testimony.
I didn’t understand any of it, and I couldn’t understand what justice needed to be served.
The psychologist said there was something wrong with my head, something castrating my
ability to empathize with anyone, including myself. Mother’s lawyer asked me to speak of my
trauma and to explain how I had been psychologically damaged as a result of the rapes, but I
had not been. I remembered the lines I was supposed to say, but I wouldn’t allow myself to say

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them as I looked at the perpetrators who hung their heads in shame from the crushing weight
of social condemnation. I did not hate them, nor did I love them, but I hated the fact we were
there at all.
They were just animals, the same kind of creatures as myself.
I told the court I had not been raped, I incited it, I did not regret it, and the entire trial was
a farse concocted by Mother. The room fainted, and the lawyer objected, citing evidence from
the psychologist I was mentally ill; but upon reviewing the psychologist’s files, they discovered
a recording where I had said the exact same statement to him previously. It was also re-
vealed he had been pressured by Mother to diagnose me with a form of autism to explain my
perceived indifference. The case was dismissed, because the boys were only two years older
than I, too little difference to claim statutory rape.
Mother was irate because I had humiliated her in front of everyone, a woman of great au-
thority and esteem, and on the drive home she berated me. I said nothing, like I always said
nothing when it came to topics I didn’t understand, but I wasn’t locked up in my room as usual.
This time, she clawed at my face with such animosity she cut and scraped my skin, nearly
taking off my eyelid. I cried out and hid away from her within the walls of my room, a space I
had access to via a hole I had secretly cut. She begged for me to come out, saying I needed
immediate surgery, and the word triggered a familiar face.
I told her I would only come out for Max, Father’s friend, who I knew to be a surgeon. She
sobbed and threw something of mine, I couldn’t remember what, right where I was behind the
wall, and screamed about how much she loved me and how ungrateful I was; but she soon left
to make the phone call.
Max came and told Mother to leave us alone, which she refused, but I heard Max push her
away and close the door to my room. I came out and smiled at him, a favor he returned as I
took a seat on my bed to let him repair me. I asked him to take me back with him, but he re-
fused as he was a busy man at the time. I accepted his answer solemnly and asked him if
there was something wrong with me. I asked him what was so important about what I had to
say in court. He puzzled for a moment and simply asked if I had told the truth.
I told him I had not.
“Then why did you say it?” he asked.
“I do not know how to say it,” I answered.
“Maybe I can try,” Max suggested as he put another stitch in my eyelid. “Maybe you didn’t
lie? Your words may have been lies, but the outcome was less of a lie. You understood what
was going to happen to those boys, didn’t you?”

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“They were going to neuter them,” I replied. It was a common joke in school, but it was
becoming common practice to neuter overly aggressive males to socialize them.
“That’s right. Do you think that’s right or wrong?” he enquired. Max was younger then, but
he always seemed elderly and wise to me.
I felt ambivalent towards the idea, so I said, “I don’t know.”
“It wasn’t the punishment then—you were not being merciful—so, what could your moti-
vation be? Hmm…” he thought to himself as he dabbed me with some rubbing alcohol, causing
me to wince. “Maybe you just wanted it all to go away? To be left alone?”
I didn’t want to be left alone at all, and the stinging pain of his alcohol swab brought to me
an idea, one of my first thoughts about myself as a human rather than a person. It was the
first time I pondered if I was truly different, or if I had just avoided culture to the point I had
developed naturally. Perhaps I had been cured from it, perhaps I didn’t understand it because
there was nothing to understand, and perhaps I could cure others from its insanity.
If only they could see. If only Mother would see!
“No, Max, I don’t believe it was a crime,” I claimed confidently.
“You’re too young to understand what they did to you,” he reprimanded me, displaying the
same righteous anger as Mother.
“Maybe you don’t, Max. How can it really be I feel nothing against them, while you feel so
upset about something which didn’t happen to you? How is it Mother can do this to me? It
hurts worse than what they did, but you fix me up as if it were done by a cat. No, Max, you
cannot lie to me anymore. Nobody can,” I declared, smiling my wicked smile for the first time,
and it interrupted Max’s work.
“What lies, Little Donut? I can fix your face, but I can’t fix the psychological scars in that
head of yours,” he said. Looking back, I knew he made a slip of his tongue with that remark,
but I heard it as honesty.
“How can something be bad if I have to learn it’s bad? Why is what they did to me bad, but
not what Mother does to me? Why don’t I remember their faces, but I remember hers? You
have lied to me, Max. Everyone lies to me,” I realized, staring at the floor and feeling the need
to cry, but I giggled instead, and then laughed when Max’s face flooded with concern.
“I laugh! I laugh, isn’t that good?” I asked, looking to him for an answer, but he was too
afraid. “Max, what makes you angry makes me laugh! What makes you shrug makes me cry!
How does that work? When I see those boys again, I’m going to do it again! And again!”
“Dune, are you gay?” Max asked understandingly, or perhaps to change the subject so he
could resume his work, but the question only worsened my confused paranoia.
“What does that mean? Is that good? Or bad?” I asked him.

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“It means you love boys instead of girls. It’s good,” he said happily and patted my head.
When he smiled, I frowned.
“Then it’s bad!” I giggled, and Max again was interrupted.
“You tore a stitch—” he tried to say, but the pain triggered my first manic episode and it
consumed me.
“Love? Love?! Mother says she loves me, but she hates me. Those boys say they hate me,
but they love me! You’re here to fix me, but you’re going to leave me! Stop lying!” I cackled
and blood dripped once again from my lip.
“You do not understand yet!” Max roared, but I did not see him as I was blinded by saltwa-
ter.
I did not want to listen to anything but my own heartbeat, I wanted to feel nothing but the
warm sweat building up in my clothes, and I struggled to speak as I was wracked with sobs.
“AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!” I screamed at him and kicked his hand hard enough to break
his finger.
“God damnit, Dune,” he swore softly as he held his injured hand and left, slamming the
door behind him.
I curled up against the corner of my room where my bed met the walls and wished for the
high to never end. I couldn’t put it into words, but I understood what I had done as blood dried
on my face. I had freed myself from introspection—the high brain dissecting the low brain in
an attempt to rewire it—and I had inverted their relationship to eliminate any possibility of
outside interference corrupting my internal structures. The lower brain would be consciously
in control, the animal part of me, the part who understood nothing but drive, and the higher
brain would be used only for achieving his ends.
I never questioned my nature again, lest it was in pursuit of further explaining why my na-
ture existed at all, which pointed to the answer I suspected from the beginning: the ancient
low brain was equivalent in all mammals, but the newer high brain had enough variance to
describe all behavioral differences, because its only function was to inhibit action, not to
create them.
That was what I saw Fennec doing as we sat on the bed. I saw her inhibitions collapse. I
saw the creature she was bubble up, and she smiled in its wake. I wondered how someone
could live a complete life and never understand the monster they were suppressing under
their consciousness, but perhaps it never showed itself unless it encountered another mon-
ster. Just as I didn’t own her, the low brain didn’t own the high brain either, as humans were
supremely top heavy in that department, but the high would submit for access to a resource

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collected by the low. This resource existed nowhere in nor out of the human mind but was
generated between two of them: purpose.
“Fennec wants to go for a walk?” I repeated.
“Fennec wants to go for a walk,” she confirmed.
We showered and got dressed in our clothes, and I was checking out the fit of my jeans
when I realized she must had purchased her own clothes while she was with Jacob. She wore
a black skirt which cut off midthigh and there were straps running down to her stockings. The
clock on the wall read 5:00 p.m., but I couldn’t tell if it was the same day or the day after our
attack.
We put on our rugged jackets and inspected each other.
“Do a tailspin,” I ordered curiously as I sat on the bed.
She spun around and her tail whipped my knees as her skirt spiraled out to reveal her
ass.
“Hot,” I panted with contrived lustful intoxication, and she rolled her eyes.
“Do you have something against a little color, goth-boy?” she complained.
“I prefer black, it really makes the things that matter more colorful in contrast,” I said.
“You’re such a dork,” she pouted.
I noticed a wide brimmed hat sitting on the dresser and was awe inspired by her sense of
fashion.
“Aren’t you going to put that on too?” I asked.
“Hats make my ears sore. I just thought I’d wear it for special events,” she explained,
chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“Oh, that’d be a shame. Hand it to me?” I reached out with one hand and dug around the
inner pocket of my jacket with the other to fetch a scalpel I had swiped from the infirmary.
She gave it to me as I pulled out the blade, and asked, “What are you going to do?
“Cut some slots for your ears,” I said, carefully puncturing the material and making sure
both sides were symmetrical.
When I finished, I put the hat on her head and gently pulled her ears through. She couldn’t
move them as much as before, but it looked natural. She saw her reflection and her knees
buckled.
“It’s so cute!” she squealed.
I walked over to the mirror to stand behind her, and we had quite a macabre aesthetic.
“You make it cute,” I stated, but she was too busy investigating her outfit.
“And this fabric… God, I love it! Where do they get it from?” she spoke to herself as she
felt her skirt.

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“I love you,” I murmured, and she found my eyes through the mirror.
“If I could blush, I would. I love you too, Dune,” she reciprocated and turned around to hug
me, but our embrace didn’t last long as someone’s stomach growled and reminded us of food.

╧╪╘╢║╖╒╣║╟╧╞╓╪╩╨╝╕╬╦╨╤╡╚╧╢╪╙

We were at a table for two next to a balcony eating cheeseburgers when Jacob found us.
A woman was with him, and she was oddly familiar. I realized she was the leader woman who
had gone to the surface, but she appeared to be in good shape.
“Is there a funeral I don’t know about?” Jacob asked us as he pulled up a chair.
“Someone is dying somewhere,” I answered, taking another bite out of my burger as I
took notice of her figure. “Is this your wife?”
She was gorgeous, and I could tell she had the same resolve as Jacob, because she was
built like an athlete. I never thought NatOrg needed police, but it was clear that was how the
pair made a living.
“Aye, that she is,” he said proudly, and motioned for her to sit. He tucked the chair under-
neath her before grabbing a chair for himself.
“What’s your name?” I asked her, but she only stared at my lips.
“I’m sorry. Here, write on this. I still can’t hear,” she spoke perfectly and handed me her
notebook, which I opened and scratched in a few words as an apology.
“I’m sorry for your hearing. What’s your name?” I said while holding the notebook so she
could read it.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Dune. On the surface it appears we have won. My name
is Rachel Hurst, it’s nice to meet you,” she introduced herself, and I smiled as I wrote.
“Fitting names, eh?” I asked her, and Jacob chuckled.
“Not intentional, I assure you,” he said, and laughed again when Rachel gave him a bad
look.
I handed the notebook to Fennec, and Rachel stared at her expectantly. Fennec started
scribbling and I noticed her handwriting was far superior to mine, but I paid no attention to
whatever she was communicating to Rachel.
My full attention was directed at Jacob.
“Just dropping by for a visit?” I asked him.
“I wanted to say sorry for hitting you earlier,” he apologized earnestly.
“No need, Jacob. I think we both know how this conversation would go if she had died, eh?
I deserved it,” I stated factually.

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“Damn right,” he agreed, “which is the real reason why I’m here.” He inspected my fries
and ate the best one. “You see, some men were not so fortunate.”
Rachel read the notebook when Fennec held it up and they both started giggling.
“Do you know which ones?” I asked with hushed tones.
“Aye, but most of them are not a problem and understand sacrifices must be made for
freedom, but there is a group of them—a cult if you ask me—who believe you were sent here
by the Devil,” he said, pursing his lips and widening his eyes to mock the superstition.
“Does this cult have anything to do with the man in the cell?” I asked. I remembered the
utter contempt he had for me, and for some reason his face caused an itch in my brain.
“Aye. Before we locked him up for treason, he was a Patriarch preaching about marching
together in the light of the surface to prove our intentions of peace with the WPA,” he said,
nodding slowly to himself.
“But the WPA has been destroyed. What more does this cult exist for?” I prodded him for
information, as I could tell he was building up to something.
“That’s the thing, Dune. That’s why we charged the Patriarch with treason. His cult follow-
ers believe that only by placing our lives in the hands of our enemy, could we ever prove our-
selves worthy of entering Heaven. They were already a nuisance before you got here, always
telling us about how we had strayed from the straight and narrow with our lives of plenty, but
now, because you have destroyed the enemy, they are rather upset and seek not only for your
head, but for the heads of anyone who supports the war—because in their view we have all
been damned to Hell for killing the innocent,” he explained, grimacing like he had acid in his
throat.
“Well,” I wondered, nodding to him expectantly with death in my eyes, “are you going to
deal with them, or am I?”
“Everyone has a right to their opinions, Dune,” he lectured me with a concerned expres-
sion. “We only imprisoned the Patriarch after he sent his grandson to the surface, which
ended in the death of that poor kid and his father, who was the Patriarch’s only son.”
I shrugged with falsified contentment. “So, I just wait for them to kill me—okay!”
“As long as you’re around people, they won’t try to make a move,” he reassured me.
“Yeah, sure. Just give me my Shocker,” I demanded, holding out my hand, but he played
dumb to amuse himself.
“It works really well on cattle, so we gave it to the farmers,” he said.
I pointed at the outline of its figure. “I can see it bulging out of your jacket, Jacob.”
“You’re no fun, you know that?” He pulled it out and set it down in front of me to inspect.
“We tested it just to see what it did, and the only reason we decided to let you have it was

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because of how utterly ineffective it is.” He pushed it to me, but was rightfully weary as he
asked, “Did you get it from a toy store?”
“Aye,” I answered, tucking it away into the holster stitched to the inside of Father’s jacket.
“How about my other items?”
“Of course.” He pulled out my Stack, and I clutched it a little too greedily when he handed
it to me.
“Ah, you’re an addict, eh?” he sniped at me.
“Aye,” I admitted, and drew air through it, feeling the familiar headrush along with the
taste of peaches. I held my breath until I knew it would come out clear, then exhaled slowly to
prepare for my bluff. “And my Laserlite?”
“That’s another story. We gave it to our techies, and they are still perplexed by it. Right
now, it is being dismantled and studied for research. Sorry,” he apologized insincerely, pulling
one corner of his mouth to his ear.
“That’s fine. You’re going to need to understand it to finish your crude laser cannons an-
yway,” I said, trying to give off just the right amount of forgiving disappointment.
“Could you teach them?” Jacob suggested hopefully.
“No,” I refused. “The machinery required to construct it is long gone, but I’m sure they’ll
learn some lessons from its design.”
I sucked in another dose, and Fennec tentatively tugged on my sleeve for a turn. I put my
Stack up to her mouth and she sealed her lips around it as I pulled the trigger. I looked around
instinctively and noticed there were many more people walking around than before, making
way to the field where they were congregating.
“Shame,” Jacob commented. “Well, it was lovely chatting with you.”
Jacob stood, and his wife followed suit when she noticed he had risen.
“Are we leaving?” she asked, and Jacob nodded in reply before she turned back to us and
beamed. “It was nice meeting you both. Fennec and I are going to start a club to learn sign
language!”
I gave her a thumbs up of approval and squeezed Fennec’s shoulders briefly.
“Jacob, what’s going on down there?” Fennec peered over the railing and pointed at the
congregation.
“A Patriarch is going to speak. You ought to be in the crowd when it happens,” Jacob an-
swered and waved to us goodbye.
We waved back and I sunk in my chair after they disappeared down the stairs.
“You okay?” the fox held my hand.

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“Aye, just relaxing is all. A sign language club, eh?” I took a sip of lemonade to wash down
the film in my mouth from the Stack.
“Rachel is still hopeful she will regain some hearing, but if not, sign language would be her
only alternative. They have a library somewhere on the second floor, so we are going to see if
we can find a manual,” she said without taking her eyes off the field below. “Look, it’s the
Patriarch with the flamingo tie.”
“So, it is!” I noticed, tracking him as he stepped up to the podium. “I like that one.”
“Me too… Oh, it’s starting! Let’s go!” Fennec hurriedly slid out of her seat, and I followed
her down the steps as he began to speak.
“Brothers and Sisters! I have come to report we have won this battle against the WPA
with the help of Dune Burnswick… who appears to be running late!” Pink Flamingo pointed up
to me for them to heckle at, so I smiled shamelessly at the conflicted crowd.
“Let’s have a round of applause!” he shouted to the congregation, and they committed to
clapping and cheering. Fennec leaned on me to look nice for the paparazzi, and when we
stepped onto the field, the Patriarch cleared his throat to draw back attention.
“Now, we did have casualties. Ten are still missing, twelve have died since yesterday,
eight remain in critical condition, and most of the seventy others are permanently deaf—but
we will mourn them as a community tomorrow. Today, however, we will celebrate our victory
with the dead and the injured in our hearts. It’s what they would’ve wanted. So, I begin the
celebration with this speech.”
“Dune, I can’t see,” Fennec alerted me on her tiptoes.
I knelt for her to straddle my neck, and said, “Alright, hop on.”
After she adjusted her skirt properly, I lifted her up above the crowd as the Patriarch’s
voice boomed.
“No longer will we be called NatOrg! We are the descendants of the great Americans, and
we will reestablish this great nation in its proper glory as free men under God!” he bellowed,
pumping his fist towards the cheering crowd. “No longer will we hide in the dark, but we will
be brought to the light! No longer will the WPA oppress us! One month from today, we will go
out into the world and finish the war of 2030!”
The crowd of thousands erupted into a deafening roar, and I felt a pang of patriotism.
For a moment, I thought I was wrong about them. Aye, they had their superstitions, but
maybe they were the correct ones for all intents and purposes. Maybe I could be free among
them. Maybe I could be part of the right side of history. I looked around at the smiling faces of
the naturally born and my spirits were uplifted, until I saw there were a few men across the

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crowd who were glaring at me. They didn’t look away when it was clear I saw them, so I imag-
ined walking alone and having my throat cut from behind.
I shook the idea and focused on Pink Flamingo.
“There is much preparation to do for the coming conflict, and it will not be easy, but to-
night is not one of those nights. Tonight, we remember those who fought for our liberty. To-
night, we enjoy our freedoms and give our thanks to God. Priests! Ah, there you all are. The
Priests have organized this event, and I turn the time over to the President of the Priests
Quorum, Brother Bates!” the Patriarch ended his speech, and a young man came to the mi-
crophone and took it after the Patriarch patted his shoulder. He was obviously nervous, but
he spoke in a matter-of-fact tone once the audience had settled.
“First, I will give a prayer for the sisters who fought,” he announced, and the crowd took
off their hats, folded their arms, and bowed their heads in silence.
Fennec and I matched the gesture, but we did not close our eyes. I looked up at her and
we smirked privately, as we both felt like we were in a strange mythical world—unfamiliar,
but familiar enough to be silly.
I, of course, understood the instinct to participate in community came with a cost. There
would always be some part of individuality which required suppression in order for any indi-
vidual to participate in a society—customs and pleasantries which needed to be learned and
enacted to produce harmony among strangers—but this cost was one I had never paid. I had
never made friends, I just had the people Father worked with who all instilled in me the same
lack of social awareness typical of scientists and engineers, and no matter how much Mother
tried to socialize me, those drunken bastards proved time and time again the most wonder-
ous things to contemplate and explore were the very things considered taboo.
I recalled one such drunken bastard named Todd Moses, who told me to hide and then in-
structed his dog-sized Hexbot to retrieve me. After being traumatically ambushed by what I
thought to be a giant spider, dragged down two flights of stairs, and subjected to two broken
wrists, he simply stated he needed to test the robot in an uncontrolled environment with a
struggling victim—a “live test,” he called it. Father laughed about how much I screamed and
fought against it in Todd’s recording while Mother kneaded my wrist bones back into their
proper positions. It was brutal, but these memories of being a guinea pig were some of the
happiest I had.
“Oh, God, the Eternal Father, we are thankful for this food and drink. Please bless it so
that it may give us nourishment and strengthen our bodies. We pray for the families of the
twelve sisters who lost their lives, and we pray for the quick recovery of our injured, as well
for the return of the ten who are missing. We are thankful for their sacrifice, and we pray

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they may be in peace and solace as well as their families. We pray no harm falls upon us to-
night and that we will be safe. We pray for our future and that we may do good in accordance
with your will, and that we may heed your guidance and direction. We pray our lost loved ones
may feel our joy and gratitude. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen,” he prayed, and Amens
were repeated somberly around the crowd.
I also said it before I could catch myself.
I was unique along with Max and the other Founders in relation to the WPA. I was not re-
quired to participate in the district social gatherings mandated by the WPA, which worked for
the both of us, because they would rather not acknowledge my existence and I valued my
time. I had been to a few to see what they were like, and they were similar in structure, but
not in practice, to this NatOrg event. The speaker announces the occasion, presents updates
and hands out awards to promote their initiative, and the people cheer or hiss at the appro-
priate timing signaled by the speaker, depending on the subject of praise or criticism. Then
came the event itself, a kind of ritual to bring about inclusion and solidarity.
The event at a district gathering was called “the Great Inclusion” for this reason, and it
demanded everyone to participate. NatOrg was undoubtedly more humane, but images of
everyone (including Models), lining up one at a time, kneeling and kissing the genitalia of the
newly treated, who were nude and strapped down to a reclining chair built for the purpose,
kept overlaying the reality I found myself in like colored glass.
The first time I went to one of these ceremonies a decade prior, I stepped into the line but
noticed a fraction of the crowd did not. They were all untreated Nats, so I quickly joined them
instead. I later learned untreated Nats were not allowed to participate, but were forced to
watch as the newly treated were brought to orgasm by a thousand tongues. The event was
recorded and projected onto giant screens above the stage and broadcasted for the pleasure
of other districts who had their Great Inclusions on different days.
The Nats had various reactions to the sights and sounds of it all, such as vomiting in dis-
gust, crying in shame for their loved ones on the stage, or openly masturbating to the gov-
ernment licensed pornography; all permissible as long as they continued to watch. If one
dared to hide his or her face, a WPA agent would give them increasing dosages of their
Shocker weapon proportional to the offense taken by the jeering sadistic crowd waiting and
spying in line.
I remembered one woman in particular, who mentally broke and curled herself into a ball
on the ground, crying out what I assumed to be her once husband’s name. The agents dotted
her a few times at low dosages to no avail—the woman convulsed once and returned to form,
screaming more hysterically than before. The crowd’s rage was intense enough, I became

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worried they might take matters into their own hands and rip her apart, but the agents
ramped up their Shockers and she was long dead before her body stopped twisting itself into
knots.
The crowd sniggered and ogled at the spectacle, their initial rage satiated and replaced
with their true motive to gain validation of their power and influence, which always shocked
and excited them when granted, especially if the death of another was the result; because
that was the only testament to freewill and authority they had in the paradise world the WPA
created: the power to decide who deserved to exist in it.
After the Great Inclusion, the once husband commented on her death and reported he had
always hated her for being against treatment and would have killed her himself if they hadn’t.
He laughed so hard with the crowd that tears were rolling off his cheeks, but it seemed I was
the only one who noticed they were born not from joy, but from sorrow, and his laughter
provoked not by hilarity, but by pain.
The point of the Great Inclusion was self-explanatory by its name, as were all names as-
cribed by the WPA. The process of inclusion: to include, to become part of, to strip an object of
its unique definition, so that it may be forgotten and unseen to allow the amorphous plural
form which abuses it to manifest itself and then masquerade as if it constituted its own exist-
ence. The viewer of a painting did not observe the paint, the reader of a book did not cogitate
the letter, the tyrant of a government did not recognize the citizen, and the consciousness of
an animal did not architect its genome, but precisely the opposite.
The paint allowed observation, the letter elicited cogitation, the citizen generated gov-
ernment, and the genome constructed the animal’s consciousness. However, the obvious
truth of simple processes and fundamental objects spawning increased complexity by organ-
izing themselves into systematic patterns over time was untenable when viewing a final prod-
uct and ignored in favor of the objectively false assumption there was something divine or
nonmaterial intrinsic to the nature of an object, just because it exhibited some behavior or
utility.
In other words, the human believed complex objects had more value than the sum of their
gritty parts, because complex objects were tools crafted and wielded with a specific utility in
mind, which would be lost if they were broken—a process commonly referred to as ruin or
death. If the object were weighed or measured by its constituent elements, the results would
be identical to the original, because they were, but to the human, things were not defined
atom by atom like how letters made a word, but by function like what the word meant and how
it was specifically useful within its unique context, although it was the same sequence of let-
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That was and forever would be the grand delusion: a fabrication of a complex system
which had adapted the ability to hallucinate everything in its surround was in essence an
extension of itself, and thus it knew where the rock it threw would land by hallucinating about
how the rock obeyed the same forces which enacted upon itself, 200,000 years before Isaac
Newton touched pen to paper. It scraped charcoal against the cave wall and hallucinated
about how it represented animals, and others like itself saw the charcoal and hallucinated to
the same conclusion: the lines were indeed animals. It hallucinated about how carnivorous
predators could be reasoned with just as its own kind could be, and sure enough the carnivo-
rous beasts were heeding the very language itself had concocted to further internalize and
abstract the cosmos to hallucinate and conjure new tools and possibilities at a rapacious rate
with unprecedented utility and accuracy to achieve its aims. Then it bred those beasts into a
multiple of specific domesticated forms 30,000 years before Gregor Mendel first demon-
strated the nature of selective breeding.
The human animal achieved all of this by utilizing the same methodology the WPA used
and referred to as the Great Inclusion. The Great Inclusion was an inevitable process which
characterized social or intelligent animals, most specifically human children around the age
of three. The main signature of this process was the expression of embarrassment, such as
when a toddler looked into a mirror, discovered something upon his face, and struggled to
groom himself to appear like other children, who were also at this point beginning to tease
and bully each other for behavioral differences and appearance.
Their minds began the switch from seeing objectively what existed with no interpretation,
like a messy face, to believing what ought to be there according to their learned interpreta-
tions, hence the action of self-grooming. They began to internalize these abstractions, and
after enough time of inclusion, the end result was consistent.
The human mind stripped away the objective complexity overload of the Universe and
substituted it with a learned interpretive framework of categorical symbols, attaching to each
a map of how to use or respond to any object which fit the known descriptions it had built
from experience. The objective systematic process that brought an object to be was forgot-
ten, and all that remained was the belief in the utilitarian shapes of things and their immortal
configuration, even if the matter which maintained them had long since eroded away.
The crowds of the Great Inclusion never barked at me those few times I went because I
never looked away from the screen, rather I blankly stared at all the useless flesh and lis-
tened to the whines and moans of the forgotten. It was a common phenomenon among sur-
geons to become desensitized to bodily anatomy and the horrors of blood, guts, and gore, so I
often wondered if they disproportionately suffered from erectile dysfunction as a result of

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getting too close to the raw reality of what made up a human being. Perhaps they realized,
midway through their obligatory intercourse with nurses half their age, that the aesthetics
and beauty the evolutionary process had gifted them was just a facade to keep their innards
from spilling out. If the thought didn’t turn them soft, there was no doubt in my mind necro-
philia was a contributing factor to their libido, and if there wasn’t a profession to cut people
open, they would find other means to do so.
During the Great Inclusion, I did gather some attention for my emotionless stare. I saw in
my peripheral vision a group standing in line were watching me, and as they did, they became
more lifeless and hushed, so when they showed up on the big screen to officially welcome the
newly treated, their enthusiasm was pitiful.
It was said an artwork was measured by its controversy and was judged not only by how
many people enjoyed it, but equally by how many hated it, and for them to had seen a Nat like
me have no emotional reaction to their self-proclaimed art gave them the sense what they
were doing was of no significance nor importance. It was a worse fate to be ignored than
hated, because at least being hated was an acknowledgement of existence, while being ig-
nored was synonymous with a premature death. I felt sorry for them, but nothing could be
done by ways of persuasion to wake them up from the Great Inclusion, because they only saw
symbols instead of atoms.
Just as it was difficult to deprogram the Great Inclusion and rediscover the Universe for
oneself, it was also difficult to understand or even perceive the complex structures which had
decided by their own process of Great Inclusion to make people extensions of them. Govern-
ments, cultures, businesses, and religions throughout time were examples of such structures,
and, like braincells, individuals were oblivious to their individual contributions to these greater
brains that existed in a dimensional space no one could penetrate.
These leviathans of thought swam around in a global vat of neurons and currency and
were the most ethereal objects to ever exist—the only fundamental element required to
maintain them being devoted human souls. The first and most ancient of leviathans were
spoken languages, which could be defined as immense categorical structures predicated
upon name tagging and logic operators—common practice among various populations who
subscribed to and evolved their languages over time to represent reality between individuals
as accurately as possible. These methods of communication were so evolutionarily success-
ful, the ability to abstract the Universe and turn it into symbols of one kind or another was
hardcoded into the human genome.
That was until the pattern seeking which allowed humans to govern the earth became
pathological.

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Once upon a time, a very unhappy and misguided male personified an erupting volcano by
declaring it was erupting because it felt as angry as he, thus it must also require the same
remedy he thought he deserved to correct the wrongs which were done to him. The villagers
gathered around and scorned him for such a silly story until the volcano erupted again. Then
they too hallucinated the same pattern and agreed to help him throw his unfaithful wife into
the lava pit to delay its wrath, as would countless generations emulate for thousands of years
after.
The volcano god leviathan was created, and it warped the original interpretive structure
of language into something that no longer was of utility to the speaker, but of benefit to itself
at the expense of the speaker. Any false prophets and dissenters were quickly snuffed out by
mobs and executed to maintain fear and keep power in the hands of the true believers, who
didn’t care what world or culture they found themselves in as long as they were the ones to
choose who lived or died in it.
There was no message or piece of logic that could bring any of them back to sanity, be-
cause they spoke a different language of slogans and laws with no rationale other than their
justification for genocide. There was no saving the people of the WPA, and every single one of
them would have to die to ensure the death of their corrupted leviathan. NatOrg was no dif-
ferent in this regard, but I supposed they were the lesser of two evils, as they did not allow
themselves the right to decide life or death for mere utterances.
For now, I thought.
“Dune?” Fennec lightly tapped the top of my head, and I shivered at the sight of people
forming lines.
“Aye?” I answered my yellow scarf.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she told me, leaning to the side to view my face.
I bowed, and she hopped off my shoulders. “Sorry, I must have lost myself. What’s going
on?”
“Free food and activities!” she said, hopping excitedly. “We should get in line.”
“Aye, Fennec. Let’s get in line,” I encouraged her, but I wanted nothing more than to revis-
it the dark silence of the Tunnels.

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 ╠╖╙╘╣╨╛╓╗╥╨╚╒╥╦╗╕╘╢╤═╟╜╣╒╞╜╜╗╜╟═

CHAPTER 8

Children were amazing creatures to study from a lawn chair. With the way they moved
and interacted with each other, it was like watching the forces of nature in combative strug-
gle amidst two galaxies colliding. One child was arguing with another about whether a ball was
orange or red, and the red advocate replied by calling him blind and throwing the obviously
orange ball at his face. A pair of soon-to-be social outcasts were walking around the edge of
the field with a picture book about the solar system, moving their hands about in animated
fashion as they spoke of its majesty. A little girl spun in circles with a flag and clipped a boy
running by on his way to his group of friends, landing them both on the ground, but it was the
boy who took a pole to the face who got back up on his feet, while the girl cried for no good
reason. It was all so full of unrest and so empty of intent, yet the chaos brought more of them
together than apart.
Maybe the uniqueness and strength of a relationship was just as determined by the con-
scious effort of those involved as it was by the strangeness of the coincidence that brought
them together in the first place.
Then there was Fennec in a blue jersey playing a game of soccer with some teenagers,
who were just as interesting as the small children, but for very different reasons. They were
too polite to say she couldn’t play, and some even had warmed up to her, but most were on
the fence as they internally struggled with their adolescent instinct to bond together in the
face of peculiar circumstances and their emerging adult instinct to disassociate with situa-
tions out of their own control. The convert or die mentality was equally present whether they
liked her or not—it was only a matter of method about how to bring her to the light, either by
bribery or by blackmail, but, unfortunately for them, neither would work.

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I had immunized her from any influence, shredded her every inclination to assimilate, and
encouraged all her ambitions to prove herself to be better. There was nothing they could do
about her popularity because we were essential, so they, including their parents, had a right
to fear the real converts would be from their own stock rather than from mine. Fennec’s
team had put her on offense, and they were quickly discovering her talents for dodging and
weaving through impossible spaces were just as inhuman as she looked.
She was crushing the opposition.
“Don’t you have work to do?” Jacob enquired, and he smiled when he saw he had startled
me.
“Who says I’m not? It doesn’t take an office and a nice swivel chair to plan a revolution,” I
rebutted grumpily as I resettled and retrained my eyes on the mechanics of Fennec’s anato-
my.
“We could use your engineering skills,” he said, his tone reflecting his willingness to nego-
tiate, but I was not that kind of engineer.
“I’m just an electrician who can follow a manual. Your tech boys know a whole lot more
about weaponry than I do,” I parried.
Jacob sighed and sat in the lawn chair beside me to watch the game for himself.
He broke our silence after one whole minute. “You went to your lab this morning.”
It was a few days after the funeral, and upon a concrete wall next to the field, which had
been bare before, resided the names of the 24 women soldiers who had died, forever en-
graved into the memorial. Fennec ran past it with possession of the ball, and I took a mental
photograph of the moment.
“So, you’re watching me, eh?” I asked passively.
“Everyone is watching you,” he stated equally so.
“Doesn’t bother me one bit and I have to maintain my lab. Not completely fruitless for you,
however. I brought you something,” I said, slipped my hand into my jacket, and pulled out a
schematic.
He took it from me and gently opened the old collection of papers.
“‘Proton-Enhanced Nuclear Induction Spectroscopy – PENIS.’ What is this, a joke?” Jacob
sat the papers in his lap abruptly.
“I’ll admit, I did want to hear you say ‘penis,’ but if you tune your lasers to the specific ra-
dio frequency described in this schematic, you can use the PENIS technique to magnetize any
material. Including humans, if you’ve got the firepower, which brings me to these.” I again
reached into my jacket and pulled out two metal cylinders.

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“Nuclear batteries?” Jacob couldn’t conceal his greed. “Your Laserlite contained one of
them, but we thought they were all used up decades ago. Where did you get them?”
“I can get you what you need, but I will not tell you where they are being kept. You need
me around for some reason, eh?” I smirked at him, and he shrugged.
“Fine by me. So, you think we should magnetize our enemies…?” he drawled and looked
concerned as he thought about the prospect.
“No, you’re being silly. You can use the schematic to build an MRI machine, or maybe your
techies can weaponize it in a more practical way. As I said, I’m just an electrician,” I reiterat-
ed.
I gave him the nuclear batteries and readjusted in my seat to watch Fennec as she
scored a goal. I could tell Jacob was confounded by my gifts, which was not my intention. I had
expected him to accept my offering as a sign to leave me alone for the day.
“Do you bring more news?” I asked him impatiently.
“No, it’s all quiet. Real quiet. Scouts on the surface have reported there are no signs of
life,” he relayed.
“In cases of emergency, everyone is supposed to go to the genetics facility and regroup,”
I responded blandly.
“Can they sustain themselves there?” he asked and took on the body language of a sub-
missive.
I took a long draft of my Stack as I surrendered to the possibility he had nothing better to
do than bug me.
“For a while. They still have nonperishables stocked up and enough nuclear generators to
compensate for the grid. They’ll kill off their Nats—including the Treats—first to buy more
time,” I answered coldly.
“That’s 70% of the population,” he noticed gravely.
My imagination drifted to thoughts of white floors, butchers, and screams of pain. “You
say that as if you are going to feel it when it happens.”
“Can’t we use this to our advantage? Get them to revolt?” he enquired desperately.
He was as naive as the boy who died preaching, and I was in awe that he cared at all.
“You want to send a message?” I threw in halfheartedly. “Don’t you have WPA contacts?”
Jacob chewed on the side of his tongue in contemplation. “We used to, but we pulled them
out when everyone working in the WPA had to be treated.”
“Nobody wanted to make the sacrifice, eh?” I jabbed at him.
“No, and we didn’t ask them to,” he returned, taking offense.
“Then how can you ask for a revolt?” I asked, knowing he had no answer.

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I became aware of the uselessness of the conversation we were having, and I imagined
he wished he would have left 20 questions ago, because once again we were at moral odds.
“They’re going to die!” he emphasized, expecting some shred of advice or sympathy.
“They already volunteered for extinction, the time or place of death is trivial. They voted
in the asteroid and anxiously waited for it to release us all from our mortal prison with a last
lethal dose of great existential acceptance,” I explained callously. “I say we let them have it!”
“That’s how you live with yourself? You relegate the sanctity of a human life to mean
nothing but a pawn of the master it serves? No man is capable of self-creation, and if you plan
on destroying everything of superstition, I only ask you start with yourself. You’re just like us:
we know not what we do, but we still want to do the right thing despite our ignorance,” he
said, waving away my reasons.
“The right thing, Jacob?” I scoffed. “There is no right thing, just justifications for the
wrong thing. If you believed what you say, you would call off this war, lay down your arms, and
let the Armageddon commence, because no soul is worth more than any other, right? For how
long have your people prayed for the second coming of Christ to admonish the damned and
relinquish the righteous from suffering in this fallen world? Do not tell me I am like you. It is
you who are like me, because despite all your prophecies and amenities you still fight for your
own mortal existence against the tyrant; and although you are blind to your own, at least your
God cannot kill me if I say I don’t believe.”
I stared blankly at the grass under my feet, feeling out of place and homesick for a time
yet to come.
Jacob would never be a true friend of mine, not because of our differences, but because
of our similarities. Fennec wasn’t stupid and seemed to understand my reasons but cared
more for action and encouraged me to get out of my own head, which was the antidote to my
mental complexes and the primary reason I brought her along to begin with. Jacob was more
like me—a person of words trying to determine reality through a language which could never
hope to express it fully but obsessed over making it so.
I too was enslaved to this process: the compulsory construction of sentences strung to-
gether to make my thoughts real, at least real enough to persuade, tempt, and indoctrinate.
We would never be friends, just combatants, and we had no care for what the other said as
long as our actions did not interfere with our daily fix of listening to ourselves talk. Jacob
could talk to anyone else, but I suspected he had already exhausted his supply of dinner
guests. Perhaps he had grown bored of his fellow citizens because they either cared too little
or assumed too much.

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He couldn’t get enough of argument, so he would never eradicate me, because without
me, he would succumb to playing Devil’s advocate, forever testing the faith of his companions
and comrades until they broke under the impossible weight of defining their honest reality
with the suffocating language he believed to hold the answers to all questions—if only every-
one could choose and order their words rightly.
Such was the curse of our breed: too suspicious of actions and too sure of words. We
both saw the praying commoner as suspect despite their honest kneeling and—although I
would call it slavery and Jacob would call it salvation—we would still ask them why they were
praying. We would then expect their utterances to match our set of codified arguments and
we would return the appropriate responses we had already rehearsed in our heads a million
times before.
I would try to convince them they truly believed their endeavor was a useless one beyond
any doubt, and Jacob would try to ensure they truly believed their endeavor was a useful one
beyond any doubt. The nihilist and the tyrant were two sides of the same coin—intellectual
people who asked why until faith was determined in the minds of their followers as superflu-
ous and counterproductive compared to their respective dogmas where the question why
needn’t ever be asked again.
Unfortunately for Jacob and I, why was an infinite series of steps into the bottomless pits
of Hell—places full of properties and objects not yet known to man, not yet named, and poten-
tially impossible to define with the certainty of language. Hence why our ideals, founded purely
on the logical and poetic sense of our symbolism, would never come true no matter how de-
tailed and secure our respective utopias might be. Why always needed to be asked, but often
the answer was so incompatible with peace and order we would rather torture the philoso-
phers who dared than envy the savages who never cared to.
The coin of faith, where the nihilist and the tyrant resided, was not symmetrical. Neither
was it equal in opposition by any means, and Jacob’s fatal error was to assume I was a being
of reckless destruction where he was a being of protective creation. The polarity between
anarchy and authority was not one of decay and rebirth, nor freedom and slavery, nor was it
one of chaos and order. The polarity could only be described as probability and possibility.
Aye, the nihilist and the tyrant always questioned their people’s faith until none was left,
but they had to use the same methodology to gain their influence—that being language and its
properties of logic and poetry. To appeal to the masses, they delved into both utilities to pro-
vide the people with the rationale and the passion required to establish their idealistic propo-
sitions, whether systemic or personal; thus, they were bounded to the common conventions
of their era and appealed to the very senses and attitudes they dictated to be destructive

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until they had the sufficient authority to alter convention itself. To secure their victory, they
tediously warped language so no opposition could ever form, because there were no words to
commonly express or share dissident thoughts.
The nihilist spoke of probabilities and statistics, and preached for the acceptance of the
uncertain, the undefinable, and the dispossessed, which need not be oppressed if all would
come together under the umbrella of meaninglessness, as everything was probably meaning-
less in comparison to the time and scope of the Universe. They asked the people why such
suffering needed to exist, why they were so hateful towards the other, and why they justified
themselves to be morally superior when the math was clear they were monsters. The nihil-
ist’s philosophy of relativism—that all people should be respected and treated individually—
was entirely coherent and rang true with freedom itself, until it was accepted wholeheartedly
by the populace and culture degenerated into tribalism.
Humans had a unifying ethic, a base program, which the nihilist said didn’t exist because
the probability of being the same person as any other or determining the personality and
behavior of an adult by studying their infancy was essentially zero. They went far enough to
claim anyone who enforced a conformist policy was committing exploitation and abuse; none-
theless, without these despotic cultural norms, uniformity, cultism, and identitarianism
emerged from the psyche of every person born without a collective mission.
The nihilist was no leader, just a prophet, as the truest nihilist had no respect for any-
one’s authority including their own, and they were among the first to protest but were quickly
snuffed out by the advocates they indoctrinated with this rationale: if conformity bred exclu-
sion, exclusion bred harassment, and harassment bred suffering, then diversity bred inclu-
sion, inclusion bred acceptance, and acceptance bred happiness. Nihilism, the existential
belief nothing mattered—such as the dust mote of a planet called Earth floating in space wait-
ing to be obliterated in time—reverted entire generations of humanity into hedonistic rapists
hellbent on humanity’s ascension from the very notion of progress. Eventually, anyone who
applied themselves in the pursuit of betterment were excised from life for daring to demon-
strate the superiority of their methods.
Hence the inherent flaw of nihilistic thought: it required comparison to declare its funda-
mental axiom, but once its reference point was broken, it compelled its constituents to fabri-
cate a new intolerance to survive. Therefore, nihilism was parasitic and opportunistic in na-
ture, fed with the motivational structures of brain and culture until it exhausted its resource
entirely and died along with its sexless children as they starved in a wilderness surrounded
by carnivorous animals who couldn’t bother to answer their human questions of why.

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The tyrant, on the other hand, spoke of possibilities and grandeur, and preached for the
acceptance of his visions, his God, and his fearlessness. He promised progress and flaunted
his power for all to see to prove himself strong enough to lead. He was selected by the cheers
of hope flooding through his fallen nation, and he won their downtrodden souls. The tyrant
understood the majority, even if they were at odds before, because all the majority needed to
conglomerate was a common enemy, and he gave it to them by allying himself with the unde-
niable authority of God and the undeniable purpose of nature. He shined forth like a beacon to
remind the people of their heritage and all they had lost, not because of his lust for power but
because of his patriotism and his firm belief he was somehow innately superior solely for the
blood in his veins and the shape of his face.
Propaganda was his bread and butter as he antagonized humanity’s primitive base pro-
gram with subtle messages and promises of better futures. The tyrant developed into an
ever-harsher critic because he no longer contributed value but rather deemed what was to
be valued, and thus he escalated every effort to bring his great vision to pass with no regard
for money, and it was done by any means necessary. The population was purifying itself or-
ganically in every way. Every face was like his, every road pristine, every factory maintained,
every child wide eyed and healthy, and, most importantly, every infestation eradicated.
He wondered how his words and signatures had brought about such prosperity, and he
came to the conclusion it was because he was divine, so he went again to the people and
declared his nation’s expansion over the earth. He promised a new empire and told his people
they were saviors of the world, guiding humanity into a new era of peace and progress at the
expense of the inferior people who plagued it.
Perfection was his mantra, genocide his crime, and his people gave him license to contin-
ue ever more.
That was until he encountered an entity impossible to reason with, so dispersed and
amorphous he saw no head to cut off. A culture much like his own, but self-organized and
Godless, taking out his forces who had grown lazy in their appetite for easily accessible tor-
ture and rape. His foes gained ground and the tyrant blamed his people for being seduced so
easily by what he envisioned to be a kind of mercy, and he was depressed for witnessing his
own kind ruin his nation’s credibility with their grotesque displays of atrocity which had also
boosted the vigor of his enemies. When the tyrant neared the dissolution of his grand dream,
he decided he would not suffer his own shame and damned the world as he put a gun to his
temple and pulled the trigger.
Hence the inherent flaw of tyrannical thought: it required loyalty to declare its fundamen-
tal axiom, but when its price couldn’t be paid, it dealt in such deprave gratifications that its

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guilt could only be remedied by murder or suicide. Therefore, tyranny was an expensive and
maddening process, a disease of obsessive purity which ate holes in the brain until the ty-
rants found themselves standing trial unable to stutter the answer to the question posed by
the entire world: why?
And we dared to wonder why.
But I knew better than he.
And I was aware I knew better because Jacob was with me watching my bitch instead of
his own.
“You must believe in something,” Jacob affirmed with conviction.
I looked at him and he was sad, but I couldn’t tell if it was for my sake or his. I had an im-
pression he knew. I had the impression my existence kept him awake at night. He couldn’t
accept the idea Rachel was enough for him as Fennec was for me as I explained to him in the
Tunnels. He thought it was a deception, that I was maliciously counting the seconds behind my
facade to unfold some devious plot, so he refused to entertain ruminations about the proba-
bility of what I possessed. But the possibility haunted him, just as it had haunted me as I laid
countless times in bed with Ray. In his eyes I saw a madness, but it was not like Fennec’s and
it sure as hell wasn’t like mine. It was mixed in with something else, so I prepared myself to lie
to keep it buried in his jealousy ridden skull.
Fennec was not a person of words, and she did not ground herself in the confines of lan-
guage to constantly vindicate her positions by how well the puzzle of letters fit in her own
mind, and it was this trait about her which I found so precious. She was the thing I needed but
simultaneously hated: a soul who couldn’t care less if its existence was justified. That, of
course, was her prerogative; she could claim the right to never ask why because she was
why. Not the consciousness who called itself Fennec, but she: that thing—that circuit—which
possessed her along with every other female creature on the face of the earth since there
were any. However, in humans it was modified, gifted, mutated, and evolved to exhibit behav-
iors Max simply referred to as “bizarre.”
In mammals, the percentage of monogamous species were estimated to be 10% at the
highest, but when factoring in paternal care and genetic monogamy (meaning to mate exclu-
sively with one partner for life and raise offspring as a pair), the estimate could drop as low
as 3%. It was a number so negligible, Max wondered if the animals were not properly ob-
served or if the concept of genetic monogamy was even real, especially since humans them-
selves faltered to stay faithful when given the chance. But the absurdity of Homo sapiens only
thickened from there—an absurdity highlighted by birds, no less.

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Only 3% of avian species had penises at all, and those that did, like ducks, were such rap-
ists that the genitalia of either sex corkscrewed in opposite directions to combat unwanted
partners. When it was discovered evolution itself was finding a way to mediate rape, it be-
came apparent there was a piece of the sexual puzzle missing. 90% of avian species were
monogamous, the males of which had a paternal instinct, thus the only evolutionary driver to
explain why the penis was abolished was because rape resulted in single parent offspring that
did not survive. So, the birds with smaller penises had less potential to successfully rape,
causing penetrative intercourse to completely disappear over millions of years.
Therefore, the only resort left for avian males to reproduce was to impress, and impress
they did with all their colorful feathers, immaculate nests, shiny collections, and chirpy songs
to prove themselves suitable for fathering eggs. Then avian females would inspect their work
and make their choice, hence why the phallic organ was not necessary for birds and only
existed in other species for the sole purpose of rape and sexual warfare.
Then what of humans?
Some other primates were also monogamous, but the sexes looked identical unless they
were feeding young, and often would produce twins because their pair bonding system al-
lowed them to sustain that rate, while chimps could only handle one offspring at a time for
being single mothers. This was why Max determined human females to be utterly bizarre,
because the evolutionary track record indicated they somehow managed to enforce their own
reproductive choice—without any known means of doing so—over 2.5 million years since
Homo habilis was crafting the first stone tools: a species of hominid which resembled chimps
more than modern humans. Max couldn’t wrap his mind around it, how such primitive beasts
could ever break the mating habits perfectly suited to them, which then resulted in the tri-
pling of hominid cranial capacity over millions of years and gave birth to an intelligence natu-
ral selection couldn’t have created alone.
Females were the answer, as there was no environmental justification for the cortical
expansion—the only competing theories for which were the inventive instinct and the ever-
growing complexity of language, but Max thought of humans like birds in that respect: their
creations were what impressed them. This rationale was also why Max thought human males
could not have done it either, because there was no need to impress if there was no possibil-
ity of rejection—a possibility the larger males could have thrown out at any point but never
did, or at least never did long enough for humans to devolve.
And even more strange, the penis was not eradicated in humans like in birds, but became
larger than any other primate. Sexual dimorphism was not equalized but enhanced, such as
the advent of permanent female breasts—a trait exclusive to humans. To top it off, general

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intelligence did not diverge but remained equal between the two sexes. The odds were so
astronomical, Max often threw up his hands and humorously blamed the aliens who must had
visited Earth and altered the human genome as a science project.
Fennec and I were lucky, very lucky, to have Max Sig, that deranged old pervert, explain
with his typical surgical precision everything we never wanted to know about what the hell the
relationship between males and females were supposed to be since we were teenagers; and
with all he knew, he could sum it up in what he called the four fetishes of genetic progress:
pleasure bonding, intellectual seduction, environmental manipulation, and immortalized ado-
lescence. Or, in my own words: trust, humor, skill, and imagination—but Max said if it were
simpler, he would have said it more simply.
So, I decided I would lie to him. I had to lie to him. I had to look into Jacob’s space-black
eyes, which yearned for the kind of dependency his religion had supplanted with the faith
somewhere out there was a being capable of filling the void, and then tell him squarely I didn’t
have it. I couldn’t tell him the same reason he felt a need to talk to me instead of his wife was
the exact reason I adored Fennec. I couldn’t tell him all words rang hollow in comparison to
the ancient existential feelings I felt from her mere existence, like when I shared food with
her, heard her walking next to me, or paid particular attention to her casual demeanor around
my relatively giant frame.
I couldn’t tell him, because mixed in with his insanity was the coin of faith along with its
obsessions of possibility—which would drive him to tyrannize his wife, and probability—which
would drive him to nihilistic despair. He could never know what he desired was of earthly
origin or else he would kill Fennec out of jealousy regardless of which side the coin in his eye
decided to settle, because she was the last female on this planet who could satisfy his sinful
cravings.
But her choice had already been made.
So, his God had better catch that coin before it landed.
Or else I was going to pull it out myself.
“I believe I don’t believe,” I lied with my typical angst.
“How empty you must feel,” he chastised me, shaking his head with pity.
I studied him intensely to notice if he caught my bluff.
“How full of shit you must be,” I sneered at him, and with that, he appeared to return to
some semblance of his former self: a proud dutiful man respected by his community rather
than the cowardly despot he was moments before.
He stood with his back straight and his shoulders wide, putting me back in my place in his
world, and I thanked God for his arrogance. “I should be on my way.”

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“Not yet, I have a request,” I announced to him cordially.

My own thoughts pestered me, and I couldn’t help myself.
“What might that be?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Find me your most troubled youth so I might save them,” I said shamelessly.
“Save them from what?” he inquired.
“Themselves,” I answered, staring yet again at the grass, wishing for my heart to slow.
“Nobody is going to let you near their family, Dune,” he told me, folding his arms and tap-
ping the ground with one foot.
“I am far more certain there are some untouchables hidden from view for the shame of
their unholy actions than you have managed to produce only angels,” I said, mocking his right-
eous indignation. “Let me try, I can make them at least productive if not civil. Send the lost
causes to Conference Room 306 at 7 a.m. tomorrow.”
I didn’t have to look at him; his subtle hesitation was proof enough they existed.
“I’ll see what I can do, but I’ll be sitting in,” he negotiated.
“No, you will not. They must feel free,” I promptly rejected.
“They are free—” he tried to say.
“What is your favorite American amendment?” I interrupted him.
“The first,” he answered, peering up at the high ceiling.
“Mine’s the fourth, and now that you are all self-proclaimed Americans, I demand you re-
spect it,” I demanded, finally looking at him to accuse him of hypocrisy.
To argue against the point was to argue against privacy.
“You know what? Fine, Dune, fucking fine, but if you make them worse, you can kiss all
your privileges here goodbye. You’re not a citizen, do not forget that,” Jacob pointed out an-
grily, and I thought I had made a mistake because he sounded hurt.
“My God given rights are independent from government,” I declared, remaining calm as I
stared at him predatorily, waiting for his twitch of mania to emerge again.
“Fuck you,” he spat, picked up my gifts, and walked off without another word.
I sincerely hoped he thought twice before talking to me about anything other than war.
Fennec jogged out of bounds to greet me, as her team had substituted another in her
place so she could rest. Although she was agile and generally thin, she had lost her ability to
sweat and suffered easily from heat exhaustion.
“My team’s winning,” she panted, poured half her water bottle over her head, and then sat
next to me where Jacob had been.
I feigned sympathy for her foes. “I see that. You really beat the shit out of them.”

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“Oh, come now, it’s just a silly game. What did Jacob want?” she asked as she fished out
an ice cube and threw it into her gaping muzzle.
“He asked me to teach a class for the youth,” I said smugly.
“We are going to be teachers? That’s so cool! What are we teaching?” Fennec mumbled
before crunching her ice cube with her molars.
I decided to wipe away the water hanging from her whiskers by massaging her snout, but
she caught my hand and gnawed on it before I could finish doing so.
“How to make a human being,” I answered her with a mischievous smile, and then she bit
me.

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 ╠╬╡╕╢║╒╤╕╦╗╝╟┼╤╙┼╨╩╢╞╞╒╨╢╬┼╞╪╤╝╣╬╗╖╘╒╕

CHAPTER 9

The alarm rang and I instantly snoozed it. Our bedroom was small and cozy with a shag
carpet littered with a couple pieces of generic furniture and a picture of Jesus—who had
already witnessed his fair share since we moved in—hanging above the bed. All the lights in
Level Five followed the same day and night cycle, and at 6:00 a.m. they were the soft blue
glow of dawn.
I stretched out my limbs to feel around blindly for the demon and found her softly snoring
at the foot of the bed. She claimed she didn’t remember anything, but every night she tossed
and turned in her sleep, just to finally rest in strange positions and places. At the Pet Store,
they didn’t sleep separately but in piles, and this behavior was some remnant of that. I pulled
her back to the right side of the bed, and her eyes opened just to glare at me.
“I was dreaming,” Fennec complained.
“Chasing rabbits?” I asked.
“I was human again, and my old friend and I were on a boat sailing somewhere. I’m al-
ready forgetting it,” she yawned to diminish its importance.
“You wonder if she is still alive,” I guessed as I ran my fingers through her fur.
“Probably is, but I doubt she thinks of me, so I don’t know why I think of her. It’s better
here with you anyways,” she mumbled, then pushed up against me so I could cradle her.
“At least you dream. I hardly ever do,” I mentioned dully. I didn’t want to talk about good
old days when so much lied ahead.
“Maybe you forget them. Hey, does that thing ever go down?” she asked.
Fennec shuffled her weight, and I realized what she was talking about.

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“In the morning, it is just an automatic response to hold off a full bladder,” I explained,
disregarding her concern.
“Then go pee,” she ordered grumpily.
I felt a little insulted by her annoyance. “I can’t until it goes away.”
“That’s the dumbest paradox I’ve ever heard of,” she tittered, putting me at ease.
I wasn’t exactly sure why she often seemed crass to me, but it had something to do with
her lack of certain facial expressions and her abnormal oral resonance due to her surgeries.
Or perhaps she enjoyed tormenting me to see if I cared.
“The real paradox is, the solution both prolongs my suffering and ends it,” I said jokingly.
“Go ahead, but this one’s all you. I’m going back to sleep,” she decided.
She turned on her stomach, sprawled out her limbs, and obnoxiously snored.
“Jesus, Fen…” I giggled as I carefully crawled over her and nipped at her ear. “You like
‘Fen’? I think it’s cute.”
“What? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over my manly snoring and my huge body that needs all
the space,” she ridiculed me as she made a snow angel in the sheets.
“I don’t—” I tried to protest, but she interrupted me with a loud snort and the giggles in-
side me turned into hearty laughter.
“That’s you. That’s what you sound like, Dune,” she said, turning her head to frown at me
as I took her hips in my hands to set up the angle.
“I wake up thinking there are beetles in the headboard because of how much ice you eat
at night, Fen,” I rebutted.
“Maybe if you would let me use the thermostat,” she argued, raising her tail to tickle my
chest.
“You can’t touch that,” I snickered, but the last time she did, it felt like I was in a meat
locker.
“Belch, me strong, me big, me have big gonads, everyone see. Female don’t understand,”
she mocked my sex as she made the obscenest carnal noises I had ever heard.
My sides seized and I was at a loss for air as my chest hyperventilated.
“Fen! Fennec, no more!” I cried, trying to refocus so I could impale the idiot.
“Oh my God, is it really that hard to find?” she berated me, but the moment she knew I
was center, she moved the goal.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I squeaked through my breathless laughter and piti-
fully slipped again.

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“Do you need me to make you a map?!” she asked disparagingly. “Stop laughing—this isn’t
funny! Hey, did you know your probability of dying within the next hour is two-in-a-million?
Max called it, ‘la mort d’amour,’ which is French for, ‘dying in the saddle.’”
She gave me a seductive smirk, and I knew what she was getting for her birthday as I
calmed myself: a muzzle.
It would be a gag gift.
“Probably because of women like you who won’t shut the fuck up,” I whispered wetly in
her ear as I gripped her flanks to stifle my shaking hands.
She opened her maw to bully her captive audience some more for her own amusement,
but the performer opened the curtain, stormed the loge, shot the heckler, took a bow, and fled
the scene with thunderous applause.

╗╨╖╙╖╥╕╩╒╕╘╘╜║╦╢╞╛┼╧╓╒╙╨╠╗┼╥╔╢╗║┼╣╩

The outside air was cool, and the large vents embedded in the walls gave us a gentle
breeze. The sky lights soaked the Great Hall’s hybrid construction of concrete and metal with
tints of yellow. We were among the first to be wandering about this morning, and on our way
to the conference room we stopped by a coffee stand surrounded by children and the elderly:
the only two groups of people who thought sleeping was a waste of precious time. We pur-
chased their signature mix for ten cents, and Fennec melted from nostalgia as we sipped
along to Conference Room 306. We were early, so we found a table outside next to the railing.
We each took a seat and let the warm drink work its magic.
“I never thought I’d have real coffee again,” she said, her face shrouded in melancholy.
It had been perhaps a decade since I last had a cup, but it was only coffee to me.
“What is it that depresses you?” I asked tentatively.
She furrowed her brow and took another sip. After she swallowed, she nodded to herself
and knocked on the table.
“This,” she said, as if it were the answer to all things.
“The table?” I asked faithfully.
“Aye, the table,” repeated Fen as she scratched her nails along its rough, wooden sur-
face. “Look at it, Dune. It’s crafted, not manufactured. See the stains? Imagine all the conver-
sations had over this table—all the happy times, along with the sad times. A simple thing:
robust enough to last, but corruptible enough to record where it’s been. You know what a
Model would say about this table?”
“What?” I asked her, never wanting her to stop talking to me like she was.

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“They’d say it was uneven and dirty, that they had better tables none could violate, and
then they’d burn it,” she asserted, looking at me with smoldering eyes.
I did not yet understand her point, as no Models were around to take away her precious
table. “Why does that trouble you?”
“Look around you, Dune. Look at the cracks in the floor, look at your clothes, look at… look
at everything,” she implored me with wonder. The fire waned in her eyes and longing took its
place. “It’s all so messy and random, but authentic and satisfying. Is it not better? Or would
you prefer it to be fixed?”
“Oh,” I exclaimed as it clicked, but I had not pondered the question before.
I never felt much sentimentalism besides for the jacket on my back, but I did not miss my
past. I imagined the decrepit hotel to see if I could conjure an emotion, but nothing came. In
my confusion, I felt subtle despair for how disconnected I was from my history.
I hoped her experience would supply me a remedy. “I don’t know, Fen. How do you feel?”
“Give me the scalpel,” she urged me, jutting out her chin, so I fetched it for her. She took
it and began to scrawl words.
“What are you writing?” I asked, but she didn’t answer as she carved out the wood. I
sipped the last of my coffee as I watched her write our names out, surrounded by a heart.
“We are part of it now,” she professed, and was pleased with herself as she brushed
away the shavings with her claws.
“But it won’t last,” I realized, immediately regretting that I had.
“Aye, it won’t last. And neither will we, but maybe after we’re dead, one of those kids will
see it and remember we had lived. Maybe they’ll write their names elsewhere after this table
has turned to dust. Everyone’s forgotten, Dune, but although I couldn’t tell you the names of
my grandparents, somewhere in me they go on. I only wish I figured that out sooner,” she
confessed, staring at her depiction with a sad smile, and I did too as my emotions swelled.
I knew of what she spoke of, and I felt it more and more as I imagined the future I was
growing in a glass sphere back in my lab.
“Fen,” I took her hand, “there’s something I need to tell you.”
But her eyes were looking behind me, so I turned to look as well.
The undesirables were coming as Jacob herded them towards us. He looked a bit
stressed like he was juggling his attention, but it was obvious he was familiar with the group
of misfits.
“So, what am I supposed to do?” Fennec asked with wide eyes.
“Just be quiet and put on a show,” I advised, and gestured for her to follow me into the
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She cocked her head and asked, “What do you mean?”

“We are not here to make sense; we are here to make no sense. The more alien we are to
them, the more interested they will be, because they feel alienated themselves. Just follow my
lead, you’ll see what I mean,” I promised.
I left the door open, and we sat next to each other around the large, boring, polished ta-
ble.
“Okay, Master, but I’m not doing anything weird. They’re just kids,” she reminded me sus-
piciously.
“Aye, and we will all be very good friends soon. Be cool, I think they’re here,” I whispered,
and Jacob corralled the group into the room.
They took their seats cautiously and I counted eight of them. They made no signal or eye
contact with each other, but kept their curious eyes trained on the fox.
“Here they are. I’ll be waiting outside. Watching the door,” Jacob informed us, and hung
around until I waved my hand at him. He rolled his eyes and shut the door on his way out.
I slouched in my chair and studied each kid. Nothing about them stood out as abnormal,
probably because they were not allowed to wear the particular style best suited for them.
There were five males and three females in their teens, and I began to wonder if they had
really done anything tragic or if their sins were blown out of proportion.
“Why are we here?” asked one of the girls, a rather annoying one at that.
I held up my finger to silence the infernal question.
“Let’s set some rules. Rule number one: you may only speak if your hand is upon the fox’s
head, like this,” I demonstrated by resting my hand between Fen’s ears before listing on-
wards. “Rule number two: what goes on in this room, stays in this room, or else Jacob will
break my legs and you will remain handicapped by your criminal status. Rule number three:
you will not betray each other under any circumstance. That’s all I got, so we are going to go
around the room and introduce ourselves, including what you did to be here. I suppose I’ll go
first. I’m Dune Burnswick, I’m 33, and I used to work as an electrical engineer for the WPA
before I decided to help you,” I briefed them, then nodded to Fennec, who put her own hand on
her head in an exaggerated fashion.
“I’m Fennec, I’m 32, and I worked at a nice place with nice people like me before I was
sold to this pervert,” she said, scowling at me.
“And I regret my decision more with every day that passes,” I cooed.
“He tragically needs me,” she drawled, put the back of her hand on her forehead, and
fainted.

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“She can’t resist my morbid charismatic charms and my dark velvet affections,” I said
like I was going to punish her, and Fennec sank in her seat.
One of the girls caught my eye and, when I looked, her face was red. “Are you blushing?” I
asked her, and she seemed to physically shrink. I pointed to her with a nod and Fennec got out
of her chair to kneel beside the blusher, who softly put her scarred hand on the yellow-tail’s
head.
As she spoke, her fingers became comfortable and lively.
“I am not,” she pouted. “I’m Lizzy Bonneville, I’m fifteen, and I have attempted suicide
more times than I can count,” Lizzy said proudly.
I sensed a weakness about her, a kind of mind that only paid any attention when it was
alone. She was most likely a victim of neglect.
“Have you ever had anal sex?” I asked medically, and she was perturbed.
“Um, no,” she responded awkwardly.
There was a conflict in her face, a kind of curiosity which was being besieged by the forc-
es of her pathology. She could either cry and report my misconduct or wait to see if my at-
tention yielded the purity she craved. I would have to warn Fennec against getting too close to
her. The girl was a hemophile, waiting to detonate the moment she knew the blood on our
hands wouldn’t wash off.
“Well, since you’re going to throw your life away, might as well be charitable with it be-
fore you do,” I suggested with the tone of a mother over spilt milk. Lizzy didn’t like that at all,
so I added, “Or after?”
“You’re disgusting,” she determined, grimacing from nausea, but her hand kept fondling
Fennec’s ears.
I wondered if she was capable of injuring another person for her fix, or how quickly she
would self-harm if I took her too lightly. I remembered the same, but different, calibration I
had to do with Ray. She was also an explosive, always trying to convince herself of her own
authenticity, so there were times I had to tell her she was a counterfeit good-for-nothing
besides for the very things she hated about herself.
“‘You already mutilate yourself in one way, what difference is another?’” I asked Ray, still
thinking I had chances to make her my wife.
“It’s my body, I choose what is to be done with it, and I just want to die. I don’t hate my-
self. I don’t like pain. I’ve been in and out of the infirmary since I was four. There’s nothing to
fix, but they won’t let me go. I’m trapped here,” Lizzy explained her torturous existence as the
rest of the class stared at the table passively.
I decided to change tactics.

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“All rewards are reminders, and all punishments are antagonists,” I thought out loud. “I’ll
make a deal with you, Lizzy: if you show improvement to their standards, and credit me for
your miraculous recovery from the call of death, I will assist you to your grave,” I offered.
Eight pairs of frightened eyes focused on me.
“Nobody believes me anymore,” Lizzy stressed.
“But they will believe if the group shows promise as a whole. Do we have a deal, Lizzy?” I
asked her as I imagined running a knife through her pale throat, and that must had reflected
in my face, because her breathing stuttered.
“Aye,” she accepted quietly. Whether she did so to vindicate her own misery or to end it
didn’t matter to me, as long as she held up her end of the deal.
“Expressing some enthusiasm wouldn’t kill you, you know,” I told her warmly before send-
ing the fox to the “Next!” kid. I looked at the student, who appeared older both in form and
expression.
He had a set of keen brown eyes that invoked trust. Fennec scurried over to let him place
his hand on her head so he could talk, but it was obvious he was more interested in her. He
leaned forward until Fennec couldn’t help but look at him as he petted her. To him she really
was just a dog, or he just enjoyed the novelty of treating her like one. Fennec wagged her tail
to play along, but neither of them cracked. The moment lingered until he had his fill and took
his turn.
“Christopher Lopp, I’m seventeen, and I’ve sold around a thousand dollars’ worth of
goods, making me the richest man in the Great Hall,” Christopher introduced himself and
smiled. It was a sly one.
“You’re here for running a business?” I asked the young man skeptically.
“Apparently, everything in the Tunnels is owned by the Patriarchs, so smuggling anything
is considered theft,” he explained, shaking his head with sheer annoyance, but he didn’t quite
portray the vengeful innocence expected of those falsely accused.
“That’s quite a lot of money. But nothing’s worth anything if you can’t sell it, eh? What did
you smuggle?” I asked him knowingly. He could have earned some money from computers and
medicine, but I was certain the real money was made with what was on them—especially at
the price point he described.
“Rare tech and data,” he said, shrugging.
“Uh-huh, sure, Christopher, sure. Does Room 4288 mean anything to you?” I interrogated
him, and the moment I referenced it, he didn’t recognize me for who he thought I was, and I
saw a hint of shame hidden within the visceral terror upon his face.

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Room 4288 was a data hub in Level Three, but it was an unusual one. I was surprised he
found it without getting lost, let alone how he broke into it and figured out how to decode what
was on those drives.
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” he answered. He went deathly pale, as he should, be-
cause he deserved nothing less than the death penalty.
“What were you doing, loading it onto old tablets and distributing them anonymously? How
did they know what you were smuggling, but not what they contained?” I pressed him.
“I can neither confirm nor deny, Dune,” he pleaded, but it was already too late, because
the younger boy next to him figured out the conspiracy.
“Chris, those were your touchies?” asked the bewildered boy.
Before I could ask, I figured out a “touchy” was their name for a portable touchscreen
device.
“Kaylin, shut up,” Chris snapped at him.
“What are you talking about?” Lizzy chimed in, and Kaylin was about to answer when Chris
interjected.
“No. No. Do not—” Chris began to panic.
I pounded the table once to silence everyone.
The truth of the matter was, Room 4288 was a storage bank for the Federal Bureau of In-
vestigation before the war of 2030—after which the WPA dismantled the FBI—but those serv-
ers were never destroyed. I had meandered there a couple of times when I felt like getting
lost, but I had universal access to the Tunnels thanks to Father, unlike Chris who must had
crawled through a vent to get in and found himself an encryption key. The servers were full of
case files and the like, some of which were unsolved and could be read as a good way to pass
the time, but nobody was buying it for its literary content.
“Alright, leave him alone. Next,” I commanded, and the confused Fennec obeyed.
She nested herself under Kaylin, who had a bashful yet anticipative demeanor like a cow-
ardly dog begging to play. He placed his hand on Fennec’s head gently and felt the joints of her
ears.
“Hi, Fennec,” he greeted her humanely, but she did nothing but stare at him. A little flus-
tered, he resumed, “Kaylin Goodall, I’m fourteen, and I have eleven charges of prostitution,” he
drawled the last word as he noticed my immediate relief.
“Thank God, with you we have a perfect fifty-fifty split,” I said, clasping my hands, and the
three other boys gave each other awkward glances—besides the one next in line, who was
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“I only did it for the money,” Kaylin excused himself and put his hands up in defense, but I
knew a hopeless romantic when I saw one.
Nothing about him necessarily gave it away, as he had no way of knowing the entire cul-
ture of sexuality which preceded him, but he had the same naive clumsiness and introspective
obliviousness that tickled everyone’s instinct to utterly spoil children. Of course, this culture
would rather punish than reward him, which was cruel, but far better than the culture that
would have turned him pathologically rotten. It was always a sad thing to see such innocent
souls as himself claim sin as virtue when they weren’t guilty of either.
“Kaylin, what’s your favorite color?” I asked him.
“Pink,” he reluctantly admitted, “but that doesn’t mean anything!”
He saw Lizzy hide her embarrassed, patronizing smile at his expense and it hurt him. I
thought he was going to cry as his hand left Fennec’s head, but he bottled the emotion. I felt
the urge to throw something at her stupid face, but I would break her spiteful nose with a
mirror soon enough. Fennec also noticed, and she winced for Lizzy’s ignorance, but instead of
barking at her, she sat on the table to block the bully from Kaylin’s view and offered her paw
to him.
“Fennec’s a prostitute too, you know,” I told him as he felt her pads.
“Really?” he asked, and looked up at her with newly found promise, but she was too in-
volved in her mysterious pet routine to even defend herself.
That look of hope confirmed everything I thought about him.
“No,” I corrected the record. “Next.”
I kept my eyes on Kaylin as Fen slowly got off the table, and Kaylin took the hint I could
help him.
I panned my eyes to the next kid as Fennec placed her head on the table, and just by the
way he nonchalantly prodded her skull, I could tell he was a cold and calculating wretch.
“I’m Cole Hunt, I’m sixteen, and I raped three girls—including my sister,” Cole confessed.
He was neither prideful nor ashamed about it, but analytical as if he had to make a con-
scious effort to remember and dissect his own history like a psychologist studying him would
have—most likely already had—done. Fennec froze under his palm with her ears splayed back,
and she seemed like she was going to jump out of her fur.
“Was one not enough?” I asked the psychopath.
“Has nothing to do with the amount, I suppose,” he said as he stared off into the distance
behind my head.

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The room was not as uncomfortable as I expected—besides Fennec—and I could only

guess that they had grown so familiar with his presence that they had lost their respect for
his threat.
“Flavor, then,” I spoke to his poetic sense, which insulted him.
“Aye, if flavor is what you want to call it, but don’t fucking pretend to know,” Cole tiffed.
The problem with psychopaths was not their lack of emotion, but rather their belief eve-
ryone else lacked emotion, which was an easy enough conclusion for any person to come to if
everyone around them was predictable and everyday was the same as any other. Cole was
most likely a solitary creature, as psychopaths preferred isolation, because the people out
there were clocks who pushed one another’s buttons to pretend to be alive, while the people
in here—in their own reality—were not clocks and had no buttons and therefore were truly
conscious. I also respected the sentiment, but it alone did not a psychopath make.
The key was calibration, the definitions of there and here, and what algorithm was em-
ployed to transfer material between them. Cities were autonomous for the most part—little to
nothing changed day to day, so it was reasonable for individuals to assume automatic behav-
iors to navigate there; but inside a household, especially with families, everyday had a differ-
ent atmosphere, because problems were personal and required participation to find unique
solutions to the ever-present decay that, if neglected, would unravel here. In other words:
people were only themselves when observed in a domain of their own control. Thus, the dis-
tinction between psychopaths, empaths, and normal people was not one of birth, but one of
geography.
The empath, a suffering creature, claimed all places to be their home, and was a socialite
to such a degree they sacrificed everything private for positions of trust, leadership, or ce-
lebrity. The normal person, a naive creature, assumed the distinction was real, and pretended
the personal and the public had no business intermingling, resulting in a tension which inevi-
tably would snap and leave them lost. The psychopath, a selfish creature, had no concept of
their own domain—meaning the only place they really existed was internally—thus, they could
never be observed, nor punished, because the world was just a simulation to experiment with
for the perfection of their own reality.
In a sense, all psychopaths were victims of institution syndrome: a pathology afflicted up-
on inmates, causing them upon release to there, to do anything to get back to here, which
reflected in their passive expressions and complete disregard for any freedom bestowed
upon them. That was why Cole was so dangerous, not because of his perceived emotionless
malevolence, but because his actions only correlated to the necessities of his internal world.
It was only a matter of time before he spontaneously killed an infant in front of its mother just

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to imagine fathering it in his mind, and I wondered what twisted purpose it had served him to
rape.
“Why your sister?” I asked him.
Cole’s face hung like it was about to fall off his skull.
“She was always nice to me,” he reminisced, “idolized me, adored me because I protected
her like any big brother should, thought I would never hurt her… She wanted nothing more
than to escape the circumstances we grew up in, was treated well by everyone, and was
surely set to become a good woman, but,” he paused, took a deep breath, and resumed con-
trol over his skin, “she wasn’t meant to live so blithely. I wanted her to realize that, so I made
her understand. A blessing, really—NatOrg would rather their women be happy and dumb as
cows when they’re raped. How can you love someone who doesn’t know any better?”
Cole smiled for some joke only he understood as he petted Fen, and then decided to taunt
me by insulting her: “I see you disagree.”
“Biastophile,” I called him, “don’t hide from me behind your appeals for asceticism, when
we both know it’s you who couldn’t live a day without indulging yourself. I can smell your dis-
eased genetics from here and so will the mothers of your children as they stack their abor-
tions to monument your inadequacy.”
“What?” he scoffed, secretly irate, and gently spread his fingers out over Fennec’s unas-
suming head.
I then realized I had made a mistake as he primed himself to snap her neck just to watch
me suffer.
It was often the case when psychopaths did hurt people, they tested the responses of
their prey first to see if they were really clocks or human beings with a sort of game. If the
responses were deemed predictable or inflammatory, the game would be over, and the clock
deserved fixing. If a human being by their definition was identified, it was more than likely the
person was another psychopath of their own type, who operated along the same vein of moti-
vations—which could sedate their violent tendencies or bolster them, depending on the rela-
tionship and the peculiar hobbies they shared.
But unfortunately for him, he was playing my game.
And unfortunately for him, my reality was reality.
With potentially little precious time, I snapped my tongue hard enough to produce an ear
splitting 140 decibel pop, which made everyone briefly panic like they had heard a gunshot, but
it triggered Fennec to dash away from Cole and reclaim her position by my side. Cole came to
his senses and realized I had bested him, becoming deliciously furious over how easily he

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could be manipulated; but when Jacob came in, he dug into his ears with his pinkies to stop
the ringing like the rest of the class.
“What was that?” Jacob asked in confusion.
The class immediately accused me with waxed fingers.
“We were displaying our talents. Mine is a very loud cluck. I warned them, but they
wouldn’t believe me. Right, Cole?” I smiled my wicked smile at the psychopath, and he under-
stood the threat I posed if I decided to tattle.
“Right,” Cole confirmed, and Jacob blinked his eyes a couple times in disbelief.
“Well, don’t do it again—for the love of God,” he warned me, exited, and then closed the
door behind him.
“Well, that was fun, eh?” I asked casually, but I was in a state of hypertensive attention—
my eyeballs wide and emotionless, taking in every detail as my subconscious calculated the
survival of itself and its mate. Even Cole couldn’t bear to look at the mechanical animal, as it
was something he could not romanticize into his fiction.
“Dune? You okay?” Fennec asked cautiously.
My head rocked to the beat of my heart, and my gaze twitched inhumanely from pulsating
adrenaline, but I was alive and well.
As was she.
“I’m fine, Fen,” I assured her, rustling her ears shakily, and then pointed to the next kid.
She went to him but kept watching me for a clue as to what kind of creature I was at the
moment. The older boy reluctantly put his hand on her head to achieve as little contact as
possible.
“Samuel Bates, I’m seventeen, and I’m here because I chose to be,” he said honestly, and
didn’t cower from my stare.
Finally, a man of honor.
“Aren’t you the president of the priest’s quorum?” I asked him, recalling his prayer after
the attack.
“Aye,” he answered.
“What’s wrong? Trouble in paradise?” I asked absently. I felt like I was on methampheta-
mine with how simple minded I was.
“Not exactly. I’m just curious,” he responded normally.
I decided I liked him.
“Do your parents know you are among felons?” I interrogated him, slowly diverting my
eyes to inspect the lines of cut wood our table provided.
“Aye, but it’s a trial of my faith,” he stated dutifully, and I liked him even more.

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He was the same as Kaylin in his honest lack of introspection, and I mused to myself
about how they were the two successful mating strategies of men incarnate.
“Ah, yes, a trial—just a matter of resisting temptation. The number one rule to avoid sin is
to avoid precarious situations, but I suppose you find that to be the philosophy of charlatans,
eh?” something else spoke out of me, and I realized I was coming down from the high.
“Those who have not faced temptation voluntarily will crumble when it is at their door. To
shield our eyes is to make us no better than the sinners and the pharisees,” he philosophized.
“We’ll try not to nail you to a cross this time,” I said sickly, but before he could respond, I
winced at the sight of his hovering hand. “Aren’t you going to pet the fox?” I shamed him, but
he didn’t budge.
“I am,” he said.
“Get a good handful of ear,” I instructed him.
Such decisions as this were the fault of his kind—those who claimed to be spiritually in-
corruptible—because if they did not face temptation voluntarily, then they feared corruption,
and if they did face it, there was no way to prove they had not been corrupted. Did great spir-
itual leaders surround themselves with virginal women to prove their self-mastery or to
excuse their appetite for them? Who had more virtue, the repentant sinner or the blemish-
less saint? Did one have to taste wine to properly embrace sobriety? Was intent the only
measure of innocence? Could selfless suffering be the only cure for partaking in the fruit of
knowledge? Was Christ a demon for knowing or was he an angel for believing?
Regardless, the entire exercise of religion was a meaningless publicity stunt to begin
with, hence why all true believers chose death in the ignorant obscurity of their selfless, ac-
tionable faith before they ever defined themselves by the infinite recursion of their selfish,
introspective reason. The guilt of desire was a believer’s only sin, and the pride of pain their
only redemption; thus, Sam would pet my damned fox and pretend to hate it all the while.
I watched drunkenly as he gently fondled her ear. “Soft, isn’t she, Brother Bates?”
“Aye, Brother Burnswick,” he agreed impatiently.
“Right. Next, Fen,” I muttered.
Fennec nestled by a girl who blankly stared at the table in front of her, and she made no
motion towards the fox. I could not recall if she had reacted to anything thus far, and she
might had been in that position since she arrived. Fennec looked up at her and, when nothing
happened, took her hand and placed in upon her head, but the girl remained withdrawn.
“If you reject your autonomy, you must desire abuse,” I threatened her, but the girl did
not betray her oath of silence. I pulled out the scalpel hidden in my jacket and brandished it.
“Only question is: for punishment or for pleasure?” I asked the mute, but she was glass.

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“Mr. Burnswick?” interrupted Christopher.

“Yes, Chris?” I obliged.
“Her name is Miriam Crandall, she’s fourteen, and she murdered her entire family a year
ago while they slept. She hasn’t spoken a word since,” he explained reverently.
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“Well, we all know. There are only a few thousand people living here,” he reminded me.
“Ah, sorry, stupid question,” I apologized. “Did they abuse her?”
“No evidence was found. There was also no evidence of brain trauma or illness ei-
ther,” Chris said, more disgruntled about his latter report than the former.
“What about an exorcism?” I suggested.
Then Brother Bates decided to speak out of turn.
“Dune, we don’t believe in demons or monsters or Satan. She’s sick, we just don’t know
how yet,” Sam scorned me, and scratched his forehead to alleviate his annoyance.
“Your insistence to place evil at the feet of illness disturbs me, Sam. No more talking.
Next,” I ordered, tucked the scalpel away, and soon enough Fennec was enjoying the pets of an
older girl.
The limp, hanging arm of Miriam slowly retracted itself back to her lap where it was be-
fore.
“Isabelle Burnswick, I’m seventeen, and I’m a supporter of the heretical idea that we
should spread the gospel to the WPA,” the bratty idealogue preached.
Her very name opened the door in my mind where I kept the infernal spirit of a dead child,
and he wondered from the bottom of his well how quickly he could kill her with the scalpel.
How could I believe NatOrg had contacts in the WPA, but never had the thought the reverse
was also likely true?
“Man, Fen is so adorable. I just want to eat her!” Isabelle molested Fennec’s face with her
hands, and I wondered if I could produce some other noise to make the fox bite her head off.
Isabelle caught my gaze and fearfully asked, “Hey, why are you staring at me like that?”
“Do you all remember her? Was she here since you were born?” I asked the class in all
seriousness.
They nodded their heads in agreement.
“Any relation to Walter Burnswick?” I pressed them, and they shrugged.
“No, I’m the granddaughter of the Patriarch unjustly imprisoned in that glass cage: Moro-
ni Burnswick,” she informed me, and I was put at ease.
If we were related, the common ancestor preceded the Founders.
“That was your father and brother who died on the surface?” I asked.

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“Aye, and I want us all to do the same. We can still turn them back to the light, with our
faith and God’s help, before you foolishly resume your damned war,” she accused me, pointing
at me with condemnation.
“My damned war?” I scoffed. “You motherfuckers found me! Let me tell you something,
your family up there? I saw with my own eyes what happened, and your father almost saved
them both, until your brother stupidly ran his mouth and was torn limb from limb by the mob.”
“And he will be crowned in Heaven for it! We should all lay down our weapons and prove
to the WPA we want peace and coexistence. God will see us through,” the prophetess prophe-
sied.
“Peace? As long as God is male, they will declare war with the ocean and proclaim victory
over the tide. There is no peace with the WPA, there is only constant war with what they can-
not control; and you should have appreciated your safety in obscurity, rather than remind
them of the pests underneath their feet,” I hissed at her.
“If they kill us all, then it is our sacrifice and God’s will, but cowering in this false Heaven
to live lives of leisure and plenty is a disgrace, and we should be ashamed. God leads us, not
man, and war will only damn us all to Hell,” she spouted her convictions, and I finally met the
first person who adequately fit the WPA’s descriptions of NatOrg.
I could no longer take her seriously, but someone else could.
“When engaged with religious nutcases, you need a translator. Brother Bates, what are
your thoughts?” I clasped my hands in anticipation, and Fennec decided to play along as she
laid across the armrests of Sam’s chair and sat in his lap, anxiously waiting for his reply.
He must had slipped, or found the moment too important to regulate himself, because he
rested a hand on her stomach and gave her a thoughtful belly rub.
“God gives to those who ask of Him and work with their faith for their fellow man to pro-
duce good deeds, not to those who think they deserve it just because they believe their abso-
lute faith is all that is required to enter God’s kingdom. There is a reason suicide is a sin;
because throwing away your own sacred life is just as severe as destroying another if done
for selfish reasons, which her proposition inherently implies. The only sacrifices God will
accept are those that breed good and fight evil in this world, not those which cheapen and
bypass this world for some false ticket into the next. It would be nice to believe if we only
prayed enough, God would flood the earth once again and spare us with some kind of miracle;
but the real miracle was Noah building the ark in the first place—not the flood. It is us who
must prepare and take opportunities when God presents them, and I, for one, believe this is
one such opportunity. We must protect and free ourselves, and the WPA has proved, with her

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help, that it is more genocidal towards us than we knew. We must fight for our children and
our lives, or we do not deserve Heaven,” Sam concluded.
“Philistine,” Isabelle slandered him, rolling her eyes.
“Charlatan,” Sam countered. He caught himself after his train of thought had finished, and
Fennec removed herself as she was no longer welcome.
“Let’s all just calm down. We have the last, but not least, member of our team,” I punned
as I motioned towards the final boy.
He was stocky, and his young face did not suit the mountain of a body he possessed. When
Fennec got too close, he picked her up and cradled her like a child, and I had never seen her
so utterly bewildered.
Fennec dared not struggle against the anacondas around her, as he was either a hormo-
nal retard or a gentle giant.
“Got you! Who’s a good girl?” he cooed at her, and her eyelids twitched as he went on,
“I’m Joe Carlisle, I’m sixteen, and I killed a man for insulting my mother.”
“Just one man? What did he say to deserve such an end?” I enquired of Joe.
“A Patriarch. He said my mother was a harlot, so I put an ax in his chest,” he said without
remorse, then asked me with a deadpan expression, “You think she’ll have pups? I’m looking
to adopt.”
He wasn’t an idiot after all.
“No, I had her spayed, sorry. Not sure why you’d want a dog either, when humans make
for better pets than anything else,” I told Joe honestly.
“Oh, do they? I didn’t know that,” he murmured, and feigned a deep think.
“Of course! Can train them to do anything really, but I’d recommend getting a female as
they are easier to raise in captivity and are generally more affectionate than males,” I edu-
cated him.
“How do I get one?” he implored me.
“Well, I wouldn’t buy one from a breeder, that’s for sure. The human farms often leave
them irreparably traumatized, so you want to catch one out in the wild. Keep an eye out for
the strays, even if they seem immediately undesirable, because you won’t run into other
hunters trying to poach your kill. Also, undesirables are frequently just unkept and stubborn,
so a little effort and attention could potentially add major points to their value; but if you real-
ly want an alpha, just use food to bait the one you like away from her pack, then pick her up
and take her home. They make a lot of scary noises at first, but they’re relatively harmless
creatures, so you’ll have to be friendly until she trusts you,” I advised dryly, but I had forgot-
ten what the joke was.

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I looked around, and the class didn’t remember either.

“Seems fair. Where should I look?” asked Joe as he absently stroked Fen, her bewilder-
ment fresh as ever.
“Uh, there,” I pointed at Lizzy’s face, and she smirked expecting a punchline.
When it never came, she closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands.
“Okay,” Joe approved.
“You make me want to die,” Lizzy groaned.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Joe muttered.
“We’re not your pets,” Isabelle hissed.
“What bible have you been reading?” Sam teased.
“It doesn’t say that!” Isabelle objected.
“Fucking virgins,” Cole scoffed.
“Shut up, Cole,” Chris snapped.
“Sounds kind of fun,” Kaylin murmured.
“In moderation,” Fennec advised.
“What’s in it for you?” Lizzy interrogated.
“Love?” Fennec guffawed.
“That isn’t love,” Isabelle rebuked.
“Signature of love,” Chris postulated.
“Nope,” Kaylin contradicted.
“Doesn’t exist,” Cole dismissed.
“Yes, it does,” Joe insisted.
“Only without lust,” Isabelle corrected.
“Back to holy bedsheets, eh?” Sam gibed.
“Sam!” Isabelle yelped.
“What, gorgeous?” Sam flirted.
“What if I told your mother, you were such a misogynist?” Isabelle threatened.
“She’d ask why you couldn’t appreciate God’s design,” Sam seduced.
“Of course, I do!” Isabelle blushed.
“I’m going to vomit,” Lizzy cringed.
“How?” Chris gawked.
“None of this is right,” Joe suspected.
“Told you,” Fennec bragged.
“Whatever, they’re both nutcases,” Cole renounced.
“You’re a nutcase, Cole,” Kaylin giggled.

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“Suck my dick, Kaylin,” Cole degraded.

“Woah, I don’t want to hear that shit,” Lizzy protested.
“At least he would, bitch,” Cole challenged.
“Joe, choke him out,” Lizzy commanded.
“Why?” Joe beseeched.
“Because of POWER, you adolescent fuckwits!” I seethed. “Give me my fox, Joe.”
“Aye, sir,” he complied, and released the poor thing so she could return to her seat away
from the tenderizing fingers of humans who conflated their food with their children.
“Now, I will tell you why you are all here. I can guarantee your freedom if you capitulate to
NatOrg and claim, whenever you are asked, that I have been instrumental to your recovery.
Not just freedom in your society, but freedom in totality—the kind of freedom which allows
you to thrive despite the forces of government and nature who want you dead. Why am I doing
you this favor? Because in return, you will pay attention to everything I have to say and learn
all that I know, so if NatOrg fails, if I fail, or if the WPA fails, you can start over from scratch
and build something new without becoming savages. You are the fail-safe, and I chose you
because you respect yourselves enough to take matters into your own hands. You will lie to
everyone, enemy or friend, and you will keep this knowledge to yourself until the time you are
truly alone and free. If you plan to spy on me, just know if I disappear or am found dead, I
laughed picturing the WPA mercilessly killing you all in my last moments. I do not care what
you do with this information, as long as it means you can secure any future you want at the
expense of the WPA or any other entity declaring a monopoly over your soul. Are we in an
agreement?” I scanned the room of degenerates and felt a modicum of hope.
“Aye,” the group accepted unanimously, besides Miriam.
“Good. We meet here tomorrow at the same time,” I notified them, and walked out of the
room. I found Jacob sitting at a table with a drink and a burger.
“You done?” he asked, taking a bite without looking at me.
“Same time tomorrow,” I told him.
“Fine. Send them out,” he ordered, and waved me away.

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 ╘╕╪╫╤╗╜╬╕╘╧╤╙╦╗╔╗╜╜╘╥╣

CHAPTER 10

I sat in my lab at four in the morning with a catheter in my arm, watching the steady flow
of blood fill up a one-liter bottle as I reflected on the past few days.
Class was going smoother than expected without incident. They had learned how to grow
their own meat walls, and how to build generators capable of harnessing the power of nuclear
batteries, as well as where nuclear batteries could be found within the Tunnels. I taught them
math, chemistry, biology, and physics in such a way they saw their applications in creating
weapons of destruction and tools of survival.
Even better, their skepticisms had waned. With every day that passed, they were hollowed
out. They were discovering the unutilized space in their minds, and they were quickly altering
their personalities to fill it. They were beginning to see what I saw. They were beginning to
understand what the natural human being was. They were realizing their own power and their
common reality. I only hoped they would become the new set of Founders once their Great
Inclusions were deprogrammed completely.
Such a stupid mistake.
It was all a mistake. I already had my ticket and I kept watching myself sabotage my own
security for the benefit of traitors with visions of their own fortunes, spelling out the end of
mine. My baby was just a sack of cells living in a corpse, and she was so fragile and hungry
and growing. Like the meat wall, she was hooked up to a blood pump which registered glucose,
saline, hydration, and oxygen levels, as well as the status of the dialyzer filtering waste prod-
ucts from her blood and the percolator oxygenating it.

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All this required maintenance every day, and I risked malfunctions every minute I was
gone, but NatOrg had tethered me to their allegiance by retaining Fennec as collateral for any
recourse I might had planned to take against them.
Even worse, that fox-girl enjoyed her time there, and she was shedding her mental de-
fenses to accept the affections people gave her. Her sign language class with Rachel had
thirty women in it, and she would tell me all about the gossip she had heard over our dinner.
She even went to church with the class, which forced my hand to go with her, and while I was
trading blasphemous notes with Lizzy, Cole, and Chris, Fennec paid attention to the pulpit and
traded hushed words with Sam, Isabelle, and Joe. I didn’t want to suspect her, as she didn’t
act any different in our private life, but I hoped she knew any attempts to gain her favor were
efforts to pervert her mind to become an unwitting spy on this foreigner whose motives
served a deity different from their own.
Thus, my inner turbulent thoughts.
Fennec was my nature, religion, and government, but if she subscribed to a collective,
what choice had I if I couldn’t be without her? Perhaps I was being paranoid, perhaps females
required sociability, perhaps females built homogenous cultures to control males, perhaps
that was how they secured their mating choice long ago, and perhaps I had to allow her to
fulfil her own natural proclivity.
But then again, I was her only way out if they abused her or if she wound up abusing oth-
ers to keep her social status. Perhaps I was her anchor to sanity as she was mine. It was all
about power, just as I had said to the class. When Fennec was with the relief society of wom-
en, she felt a kind of power, a kind of spiritual solidarity that could—and would—shape the
next generation in her own image. It must had been very tempting to belittle and demean the
males who generated that power to begin with, and I wondered what Fennec said about me in
her gossiping sessions. I wondered if her loyalty was stronger than her agreeableness.
I wondered who she really feared.
What was it like to live in terror of God? What kind of nightmare was it for a believer to be
in the presence of a faithless man who could destroy civilizations with a thought? What kind of
logic was it to witness the fatal fate of his former matador and then attempt to bridle him?
Why must the master of things be subservient to the master of peoples? Of what utility were
lawyers and sophists if not to preach their perfect legislations in public just to sew into law
their own immunities in private? What kind of people did not elect the mathematician to regu-
late the treasury and commerce, the biologist to supervise health and agriculture, the physi-
cist to monitor and employ resources, and the engineer to architect public utilities and wage
war? Why did nations validate their sacrosanct ideals by erecting bureaucratic ministries to

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enforce them by fiat? What kind of grand narrative was so fragile, that an ambitious rocket-
eer who broadcasted his launch, planted his flag, and colonized the Moon with his comrades
would shatter it? What kind of state would prevent him from doing so or attempt to blot out
the sky to hide his success? Of what consequence was it to a culture after one of its own
apostatized, proved resilient to all reprisals, and its citizenry realized their divine ordinances
were the fictitious conjurings of their own pretentions subsidized with their equally pompous
expectations of recompense? How was it the human animal found absolution in reparations
from his master for the slights against him perpetrated by another slave? Why was fairness
sufficient to quell a man’s desire to accomplish and obtain commensurate to his ability? When
did man abdicate his own propensity for violence and relegate his brothers to lives of mere
proxy? At what point did kings no longer lead their charges as soldiers in their own wars?
Who dared say death by the hand of an enemy would be better spent on countless hired men
than himself?
Not I.
I was no leader.
I was no savior.
I was no slave.
I was no God.
I was the Devil.
And none would forget the only way out of Hell was through me.
I patched my arm and poured my essence into the apparatus sustaining the meat wall
and watched it twitch. There was something about it screaming, and maybe it would if it ever
returned to the thigh muscle I had pulled it out from, but what fault was it of mine that its
perpetual struggle against the current only made it more, rather than less?
I heated the stove, took the butcher knife, and lopped off two slices to be put on the hot
pan as it roiled and tugged against the pins fastening it to its rack. The cut meat sizzled as it
cooked, and the rest of it equally so from my branding irons. When the flow was cauterized, I
tossed the cooked muscle into the vat of acids to feed my child and ate the other to feed my-
self.
I imagined scenarios of privation where she may be tempted to kill me and wondered if
she would remember the taste.

╗╤╘╤╣╢╪╨╓╔╜╨╙╞┼╪╩═╜╡╠║╥╨╤╚╣╡╧═╕╤║

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I was in a mood, the kind which brought imagery of shattering my knuckles against the
Tunnels’ walls into my mind. I believed it needed to be released, but I knew nothing good would
come of it. I thought I should hold it inside and maybe Fennec would coax me out with her
innocent hopes and dreams. Maybe she would be right, and I was just in denial about what I
probably deserved. Maybe I had fought long enough, and I should be grateful for a chance to
live a life of peace.
I puffed my Stack, and the smoke choked me in all the right places as I flipped my lead
pipe in the air and caught it. I found it lying around one morning and carried it back and forth
from the lab and the outpost because it made me feel dangerous in the dark. It fit my hand
nicely, and at the end there was a right-angled elbow shredded by some internal explosion to
display metal barbs and jagged hooks.
Maybe one day I’d find peace with the world, but today was not that day.
This world and I still had a score to settle.
Level Three was not in the same desolate condition as Level Four, but it had its own spe-
cial air of misery about it. The hallways were cramped—some passageways undiscovered and
unmarked—leaving only the common features of pipe, cable trays, and metal door frames
copied and pasted every twenty feet. Any man who wandered in Level Three would come to
believe he was trapped in an endless maze where he could not recognize whether his feet had
already warmed the ground where he stood.
It was built for the sole purpose of confusing the enemy if its inhabitants had to retreat to
the lower levels, and NatOrg had yet to map even half of it. Father had left its layout out of his
plans and saw to it himself it was built in a specific way without any of his engineers figuring
out the methods of his madness, but he taught me how to read the walls.
The maze could tell any person where to find Level Four, if they knew the algorithm used
to construct it, but Level Four was just one solution to Father’s algorithm. It functioned like
the byte addressing system in a classical computer. To get to any room in Level Three, all one
needed was the room number and knowledge of the algorithm. There were only four entranc-
es into Level Three and four exits out to Level Four, and they were organized in an octagonal
pattern equidistant from the perimeter and the epicenter of Level Three. The only way
through was to first find its perimeter, then travel through the infamous “Snakes Nest” at its
center, and back out again to one of the eight ports. The room numbers were not organized
sequentially on a grid, nor were they relative to the origin. They were strictly predicated upon
how to get to any room from any other room, or entrance, and this was when Father’s genius
was apparent in the design of Level Three.

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Every wedged fork signaled to add one, every flat fork signaled to subtract one, and every
other intersection of any type had no value. The path through “nodes” with any number of
exits could be calculated by adding the number of wedged forks and subtracting the number
of flat forks encountered since the most previous node from the current tally, and once the
calculation was complete, all one had to do was count that number clockwise if negative or
anticlockwise if positive from where they entered and proceed through the corresponding
tunnel.
Level Four's entrances were registered under four different numbers and I, for example,
was headed towards 1206. Upon entering Level Three, the first step in the algorithm was to
divide the room number into its factors to form a kind of tree with levels starting from the
median factors, each of which ordered left to right, smallest to largest, in its own domain. The
path through any fork was found by reading the tree, and an even factor meant right and an
odd one meant left.
From any of Level Three’s entrances (one being the only way in and out of Father’s per-
sonal lab, registered as 801), the median factors of 1206 were 18 and 67, which told me to
take the right path in the first wedged fork, so I had one tallied, and then to take the left path
in the next wedged fork, so I had two tallied. The next tree was 3 and 6, but since 67 was
prime, it could not be spent again. I took a left and a right through two flat forks and my tally
was zero again. The 3 terminated and the 6 split into 2 and 3, thus I took another right path
and another left through two more flat forks, leaving me at negative two when I entered the
first node. I counted two doorways to my left and repeated the cycle starting again from 18
and 67, keeping score of the previous tally to decide which path was appropriate in the next
node.
If one ever lost count, the path was not lost as long as the person knew the room number
he was currently at, because to traverse the plane between rooms, the only requirement was
to find the difference between the current room number and the desired room number, start
the tally at zero, and follow the algorithm with that number. This rule was universal, but every
entrance from Level Two was registered as zero by design, therefore the desired room num-
ber was the difference.
Level Three was designed with one simple principle in mind: there was no need to fight the
enemy if they starved to death first. When Father revealed his dastardly intentions to the US
government, they first asked for the blueprints and the key to unlock its secrets, but Father
promptly refused. They unanimously voted to throw him off the project because of his unrea-
sonable demeanor as well as the potential cost and inefficiency of his architecture, but they
quickly changed their minds once it was realized Level One and Two had already been built

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with complete disregard to their specifications. Father was the only man on the planet who
understood it, and none of the other soon-to-be-Founders would comply to tell them how the
tech worked or where it came from, so they conceded and gave Father the absolute freedom
to design a stronghold capable of holding 50,000 souls and surviving anything—from solar
flares stripping the earth of its atmosphere, to meteors obliterating its crust.
Level Three was eventually completed, and, since then, it had taken the lives of thousands
by no other method than starvation and cannibalism. Father had written about such during
the war when the revolutionaries led a charge into the Tunnels. By the time they found Level
Four, they had utilized half of their military, but the moment when the first soldier peaked his
head to peer down the exit ramp, the remnants of the US government sealed the eight ports
with automated vault doors hidden beneath a thin layer of concrete camouflaged to look
seamless. The revolutionaries inside were calculated to die over the course of five years if
they ate each other, and the revolutionaries tried everything from drilling around the door to
melting it to get them out, but Level Three was an airtight vessel with outer walls constructed
with a metal alloy specifically intended to be used as the hull of an ark for civilization in space.
Father remained in Level Four and Five with the US and broadcasted terms for a treaty.
The revolutionaries accepted and negotiations began. Similar circumstances were happening
around the globe, and every government was in some way at a stalemate with their citizens.
From these peace talks, the World Peace Authority was founded in America as a conglomer-
ate of revolutionaries and old US government agencies; and once their alliance was made,
every country joined it to contribute and end their own wars. The revolutionary soldiers were
released, Father rose from the Tunnels, and the WPA employed him to bring to pass a great
future.
And a great future it was, until Father saw his work abused by the WPA and finally under-
stood their motives were wildly swinging into totalitarianism with an emphasis on eugenics
that would lead to a slow and methodical genocide of the worst variety. The abolition of a race
of people was an animalistic approach—an easy, proven, and beneficial approach to guaran-
tee survival of one’s own race, adopted by humans since there were any—but at least with
the archaic mode of genocide, the winner was arguably superior in the game of evolution and
the lesser man deserved extinction, as it had been for countless other extinct hominids yet
discovered, but what the WPA planned had nothing to do with the animal instinct, race, or
religion, except for the annihilation of those very concepts.
The WPA sought for unification, and they understood in order to get it, any and all trace of
the primate Homo sapiens had to be flushed out to allow the mind to ascend its primordial
struggle and finally become a master to itself, rooted in itself, and born of itself. NatOrg re-

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fused to surrender their reproductive ability in the 2040s, and when reproductive laws were
to be passed in 2050, they started to panic. The Tunnels had been long decommissioned at
that point, most of its features decayed and useless, but Father offered shelter to NatOrg and
taught them how to survive in the Tunnels.
Before the WPA caught on to where NatOrg went, it was already too late, and they didn’t
even try to find them once they knew. Father was to be put on trial for abetting their escape,
but when the Face made its nest in the Tunnels, he was instead hired to recapture it as a way
to repent. A year later, he disappeared, never to be seen again. The WPA hoped the Face would
smoke out their favorite scapegoats, but it never happened because the Face could not find
its way through Level Three and had plenty of food in Level One and Two in the form of curious
people from above as well as below.
I walked along the winding path and exhaled a cloud of mist from my Stack. Father must
had walked through the Tunnels countless times, thinking countless thoughts, and perhaps I
was simply following his footsteps down its long dark corridors in search of something nei-
ther he nor I could describe. Max told me once that I, like Father, was cursed to live as a rest-
less creature who desired something no worldly experience could satisfy, but I disagreed.
Father got exactly what he thought he wanted, but he couldn’t handle the price he made eve-
ryone else pay for it. He was a god with no souls to his name—a man of ability but no direc-
tion, a puppet, and a fool, who eventually was digested by the deformed creature he made
from love and cruelty.
I wondered about his last moments with the Face and if death was enough for him to for-
give himself, but I doubted it. He died with his guilt, afraid, alone, and in pain, by the hand of his
zombified daughter, no less. He got what he deserved for what he did to the world, and he
indeed was guilty of every accusation thrown at him, but his debts did not go with him to the
grave. I was his last hope, whether he thought of me that way or not, and I would not cease
until his miserable life was justified.
Because it wasn’t his fault.
I stopped at the intersecting hallway where Jacob exchanged code words with Zephyr. He
was always behind the corner, and I often had pleasant chats with him as he searched me, but
I did not see him there. Without his confirmation, the patrols in Level Four were far more
likely to shoot me on sight. After a few shouts, it seemed that was a risk I had to take.
My boots slapped against the decline and the Tunnels barked back. I turned off my normal
flashlight and let the darkness swallow me as I imagined the echoes as waves diffusing and
deflecting off the Tunnels' surfaces. There were documentaries on blind people who claimed
to have the power of echolocation by using sharp tongue clicks, and some proved to have the

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ability, although limited by the dull human ear to perceive only large objects and walls. I
snapped my tongue and tried to visualize the sound the void spoke back to me, but I failed to
intuit my surroundings.
I was mid-way through the offramp when the echoes of my footsteps desynced. I immedi-
ately stopped and turned on my light to look around, but there was nobody else among the
graffiti and clutter. I continued, and there was a cart parked under a wall lamp, which hadn’t
been there on my way to the lab earlier.
There was a large duffel bag on it with something inside.
After looking around me once more, I approached the duffel bag and unzipped it to reveal
Zephyr, who had multiple stab wounds in his chest and a slash across his face. His torn uni-
form and the large cart proved it took more than one person to kill him, let alone fold him to
fit inside the bag.
Multiple theories sprung into my mind as I pictured WPA agents, NatOrg traitors, and
monsters, but the sound of footsteps coming from both ends of the ramp would soon reveal
which. I patiently waited by the cart with the lead pipe at my side, and a group of five men
appeared to my left and to my right, the same ones I had seen staring at me during the cele-
bration. Each of them had a knife, two of them had blood on their clothes, and one had Zeph-
yr’s rifle, but it seemed their desire for revenge demanded I had to suffer longer than a bullet
would allow.
I held perfectly still, and my eyes were wide as I stared at nothing but what was in my pe-
ripheral vision. Sweat ran down my sides, my heart raced, and my muscles became taught
iron cables waiting to snap at a feather’s touch.
I succumbed to the warmth with an almost giddy pleasure as pulsating adrenaline
pumped through my veins, and any thoughts I had about the past or future were collapsed
into the present situation where every second was a lifetime. Max called it “Nature’s Finale,”
the final solution to an organism’s chance of survival—the greatest drug evolution could fab-
ricate to enable its fleshy creations to exhibit powers surpassing their own structural integri-
ty, often resulting in performances peoples past had described as divine.
The human was no different than any animal in this respect, except a human’s capabilities
seemed somehow proportional to the type and intensity of their emotional state, which was
especially apparent when comparing the influence of adrenaline on humans in states of rage
and fear.
The enraged state, heightened by adrenaline, brought about a kind of unpredictable ma-
nia, where pain was reduced to fuel for the engine of hysteria to burn in a vicious cycle of
terminal self-harm; while the fearful state, accelerated by adrenaline, produced reactionary

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impulses, ancient ones, unsurprisingly, since fear was the most primal of emotions and the
reflexes tied to it were tried and true over the course of a billion years, but they were only
mere twitches and stutters good for avoidance and fleeing.
I kept my face placid and saw they were unsure, but I already knew where the barbed
ends of my pipe were going to land.
“Hello, Dune,” spoke the biggest and oldest among them. He was a few inches taller than I,
with a bald head and beady eyes.
“Hi,” I greeted him, but my vocal cords stuck, so my greeting came out as a hoarse whis-
per.
“I’m Mike, and you killed my daughter—and their wives,” he said, taking a step towards me
and gesturing to his crew.
I cleared my throat and blankly stared at the wall.
“And you killed one of your own,” I reminded him.
“We gave him a chance, but he didn’t know what was good for him," he mourned, then
channeled that loss to fuel his anger. "Nobody here seems to realize what you are: a Devil
worshipper manipulating useful idiots, eh? How the Patriarchs could all be fooled is beyond
me,” Mike spat.
“Perhaps they are not—" I suggested absently, but he shouted me down.
“Liar!” He took another step in my direction and pointed his knife at me. “Liar. I have
seen—we have seen—what you have been doing to those lost souls who call you teacher. They
say they are better, but we both know they are worse, don’t we?”
“I am helping your people,” I muttered.
“Helping? My daughter is dead! And you deserve to be. If you are lying, then you are an
evil man, and if you are not, then you are a sick man. Whether merciful or just, you need to be
put down,” he reasoned vindictively.
He took another step towards me and broke the rifleman’s line of sight with his torso.
I snapped my tongue to set myself in motion, and the serrated hooks buried themselves
into the meat of his brain before he had the time to change his stupid face.
As he fell to the ground, I took his knife and threw it at the gunman behind him, who in-
stinctively shied away and refused to look at it spinning past a foot from its mark. Before he
could hear it clang on the floor, I smashed the pipe through the back of his cowering head and
jerked it out as I spun around to meet the rushed steps behind me.
The front man had too much momentum to be defended against, so to prevent his blade
from penetrating my chest, I thrusted my right palm into the tip and let it skewer my hand. I
gripped its handle with my left, pulled him down, rolled onto my back, and then planted my heel

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into his diaphragm to flip him over. He crashed behind me, he was winded, and he had let go of
the knife; so, I pulled it out of my palm, ferociously pinned him down, and slashed his throat
open.
The last two were almost done getting the rifle out from under the gunman’s body, one of
which saw me and decided to obstruct before I could interfere. My reply was to pick up the
pipe and throw it overhand at him as I charged. It whistled in the air and stuck firmly into his
sternum, freezing him in place as he registered the injury, giving me enough time to jump and
land the heel of my boot on the metal to drive it home. He stumbled backwards and landed on
the last living member of his team, who had the rifle in his hands and misfired a few shots.
In the closeted space, the shots rendered me deaf, causing me to panic as I kicked his
head like a soccer ball and stomped on the rifle to pin it to the ground. He kept struggling,
desperately pulling the trigger to catch me with a ricochet, so I kicked his face again and
again until I could no longer feel bone crunching through the steel toe of my boot.
It was finally over.
And I was already feeling the aches and pains of overextended joints and strained liga-
ments.
I slouched against the wall and inspected my hand under the light, relieved to find it had
not split in two. I stuck my finger in its slit, teasing my flesh as I pushed through. Once that fun
was over, I cut off a piece of fabric from one of the men’s shirts and bandaged myself with it. I
regained my sense of hearing, my breathing slowed, and I felt alive.
“Are you laughing?” Jacob’s voice startled me, causing me to jam my elbow into the wall.
“Jesus, can’t you knock?” I giggled.
He pulled back the hammer of his six shooter and came into the light with it pointed at my
face.
“Dune, what have you done?” he asked, genuinely furious, so I laughed no more.
“I killed five people, what does it look like, Jacob?” I demeaned him.
“I count six,” he corrected me, and his knuckles turned white.
“Zephyr wasn’t me,” I said. “These five traitors already had him in the bag, and then they
ambushed me.”
I put my wounded hand in between me and the barrel so he could see.
“Bullshit!” he growled, thrusting the gun at my face.
I stood on my feet, stared him down, and shouted, “Fuck you, Jacob! Pull the fucking trig-
ger!”
He came to terms and lowered his gun.

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“Just look at them! What am I supposed to say to their families?” he fussed helplessly,
holstering his weapon and rubbing his face.
“How many people get lost in Level Three per year?” I asked him.
“Ten or so, but those are always teenagers, Dune,” he groaned.
“If you are going to tell the truth, I’ll let you take care of this. If you’re going to lie, I’ll help
you hide the bodies,” I negotiated with him.
Jacob punched the wall.
“Fuck. Fuck! No,” he shook his head as he thought, “nobody can know about this. It would
just spark rebellion.”
“Aye,” I agreed.
Jacob looked at me one last time in doubt before he reached for the cart.

╬╧┼╢╥╥╚╒╣╡╫╢╢╖╪╠┼╛╤╥╔╙╘

It was still dark when I got home. After turning on the kitchen light and rummaging noisily
through the fridge, a sleepy Fennec came out in a shirt and underwear. She sat on a stool
behind the counter and blinked the sleep from her eyes. She stared at me for a long time as I
cracked a dozen eggs into a pan, so I met her gaze of spiteful resentment with a curious one
of my own.
She looked like she was hungover with all that bed-fur and one droopy ear.
“I fucking hate you,” she finally greeted me.
“Now you don’t get any eggs,” I harrumphed.
“You woke me up at five-thirty in the morning, you’re bleeding all over the floor, and
you’ve gotten more ugly since the last time I've seen you,” she observed angrily.
“You’re just upset because you’re hungry,” I muttered to the frying pan.
“I want a divorce,” she mumbled.
“I’ve been thinking of what to do with you when you plot, and I’ve been thinking about mak-
ing myself a nice coonskin hat,” I teased, but I did not mean the eagerness in my voice to be
so genuine.
“Oh, I get it, then you can masturbate yourself with me as a senile old man! Ha-ha! Wait, I
just described what’s already happening,” she realized, placing her finger on her lips in con-
cern.
“It’s not my fault you’re so rape-able," I excused myself dryly.
I slid over a plate of scrambled eggs to the ornery fox and sat down my own plate so we
could eat across from each other. She slowly chewed a fluffy piece and squinted at me.

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“You’re a pain in my ass,” she complained.

“You’ve felt nothing yet,” I warned her.
“Is it really that enjoyable?” asked the yellow skeptic.
“Once you get used to the pain,” I assured her.
“You’ll help me clean this shit up after, won’t you?” she asked hopefully, referring to dish-
es and blood.
“Yes, dear,” I agreed warmly.
“What happened to your hand?” she wondered, pointing her fork at it.
“One of the five men I killed got me with a knife,” I answered casually.
I flexed the hand but couldn’t make a fist.
“And why, and how, did you kill five men?” inquired the yellow inquisitor.
“Their women died on the surface, so they waited in the Tunnels to kill me. I killed them
with a metal pipe,” I reported, popping my eyebrows at her seductively.
“Biblical, eh?” she approved.
“Aye,” I confirmed, and ate a forkful of fluffy egg.
She finished her plate, as did I, and then she pulled me into the bathroom for mainte-
nance.

╣╞╤╒╥═╨╥╦╗╚╨╒╗╩╨╖║╫╨╛╙║

We got our coffees from the brewery and meandered for a while before class started.
Fennec was leaning against the railing like she was going to vomit as I sat peacefully at our
secluded old table, pondering about what I was going to teach today. She banged her fist
against metal and did a couple hops to distract herself from her pain. She took a few heavy
breaths, finally sat next to me, and buried her face in the crook of her elbow. I put an arm
around her and rubbed her back with the new bandage she had wrapped around my hand
earlier.
“Never again, Dune,” she whined.
“Now imagine a stallion,” I boasted.
“No,” she pleaded.
“Like, the size of your entire arm,” I clarified.
“Ew, no, and I don’t care. The Church was right—missionary is the only position sanc-
tioned by God. All others are devil worship.” She shivered to shake off her condition, clenched
her fists once, and then lifted her head for a long draft of her coffee.

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“You’re fine,” I said, rolling my eyes at her. “Was kind of cute watching you crawl up the
wall though.”
She choked on her coffee and sputtered, “Asshole… you’re not fucking me for a week.”
“But, I’ll admit, from the perspective of the giving end, you’re-a-cunt,” I confessed, and
waited until Fennec noticed the insult before adding, “is better. Your cunt is better.”
“No wonder why people try to kill you! And no shit, Dune, it’s almost like that’s what it’s
made for!” Fennec chided me.
“I suppose God knew what he was doing, eh?” I asked sarcastically.
“If men didn’t confuse the two, I would agree,” she retorted spitefully.
She tried to stifle herself, but her comically unhappy face brought me to simper, which
made her laugh.
It was near 7:00 a.m., so I put both coffees in Fennec’s paws and carried her to the con-
ference room, where we cuddled and sipped as the students came in and found their seats.
Jacob shut the door and left without a word. I moved my eyes around the table and Kaylin
opened his mouth.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“I tripped,” I answered casually.
He grimaced with concern. “Does it hurt?”
“A lot. Now, let’s do roll call,” I announced. “Whore?”
“Here,” Kaylin muttered.
“Rapist?”
“Here!” Cole confirmed enthusiastically.
“Witch?”
“I’m not a witch,” Isabelle denied grumpily.
“Prophet?”
“Here,” Sam stated proudly.
“Ghost?”
Lizzy looked at Miriam. “Here?”
“Doll?”
Miriam remained silent.
“Thief?”
“Here,” Chris yawned.
“Butcher?”
Joe shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

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“Very good. Let’s begin,” I announced. “Today I’m teaching you about the birds and the
bees.”
I took a puff of my Stack and wished for a window I could vent the vapor while mysteri-
ously looking over the City.
“I think we are already familiar,” Sam said, hoping for a different topic.
“No, I don’t think you are, Brother Bates.” I offered up my damaged palm to him. “For ex-
ample, do you have a girl in your life?”
“A few. It is customary to date multiple young women and then choose one to marry at
eighteen,” he explained.
“Do you already know who it will be?” I pressed him.
He quickly dismissed the issue with a sideward glance. “Not at all.”
“You say that with slight disappointment,” I noticed empathetically. “Do none of them suit
you?”
“No. If I had to place my finger on it, I’d say they are all too willing,” he hypothesized, dis-
playing his shoulders with a smirk.
The class sighed.
“Well, you are the President, the top of your pack, so this should not surprise you,” said I,
the diagnostician.
“It doesn’t,” he agreed.
“Which gets us to the first topic about sex: why there are sexes at all. In the beginning
there was one cell and it split into two all on its own, and the result was a clone. Such organ-
isms still exist—but if one of these cells mutates or otherwise suffers damage to its DNA,
there is no way it can repair itself without reference to its original parent, so it will die. There
are many theories about how sex began, but they all tell the same story. Some way or anoth-
er, a cell figured out a way to cannibalize other cells in order to mend or better equip its own
DNA, and soon enough cells were trading mutations and bug fixes to update themselves. It’s
not really hard to imagine—it’s a lot like a virus inserting its own DNA into a cell to replicate
itself, and when you do imagine that, you can now imagine a virus released by a cell to im-
pregnate another cell whereby it could infect and trigger cell division to reproduce. And there
it was, the first two parent offspring,” I said, wiggling my fingers in magical fashion.
“Later, multicellular life emerged and, as it turned out, sexual reproduction was far more
secure than asexual reproduction, because offspring could repair themselves by replacing
defective genes from one parent with the other. So, this new form of life designated one of its
cells to be a gamete, and when two gametes meet, they detach, divide, and form another

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organism of its species. Now look at us! Large lumbering beasts roaming the earth still using
the same method of reproduction with viral sperm and hospitable eggs,” I romanticized.
“So, men are viruses,” mused the witch.
“That’s not very nice,” rebuked the whore.
“Well, you can take them all, Kaylin. I’ll keep my oath of celibacy, okay?” Isabelle patron-
ized him.
“Jealous much?” Kaylin teased her with folded arms.
Isabelle was about to return fire, but I interrupted.
“Which leads us to our second point: the wonderful world of sexual dimorphism. In most
forms of life, the female is big to produce and protect more eggs, while the males are small
and only exist to produce sperm—often becoming a potential food source for the female if
they hang around too long. There are some species of anglerfish where the male attaches to
the female from the outside, his brain is digested as they fuse together, and the female car-
ries him around as a sperm factory,” I recounted with a bitter taste in my mouth.
The class was horrified.
“However, this dichotomy is reversed in mammals. The male is near twice the size of the
female, such as polar bears, bottlenose dolphins, and Rhesus monkeys, but the reason for this
is clear. Mammals primarily live in socialized groupings like packs of wolves, troops of mon-
keys, and prides of lions, so there is a massive emphasis on cohabitation and territory; and
since survival is primary and reproduction is secondary, a great many males will benefit their
group even if they do not mate, while every female will mate—thus creating the problem of
choosing which males should mate. The answer was an emergent structure called the domi-
nance hierarchy, where all males compete for status with as little bloodshed as possible, and
this is where the dimorphism begins,” I told them like a good story, and it sold to my audience.
“Males grow out of proportion and develop aggressive behaviors in order to win domi-
nance disputes, allowing them to mate with as many females as possible, therefore creating
further dimorphic offspring. Another tell of this occurring is females typically reach maturity
sooner than males and generally live longer to reproduce with multiple males. In other words,
polyandry and polygamy are successful breeding practices, but are the driving forces of
sexual dimorphism, and whichever one is in effect will influence the outcome of the opposite
sex generations down the line. Here, I’ll prove it to you. Kaylin and Joe, please stand side by
side,” I instructed them, and motioned them to conduct the experiment.
They got up and stood next to each other. Joe towered two feet over Kaylin and weighed
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“See? There is your male variance, the proof that Homo sapiens is a polyamorous spe-
cies, no different than the apes we came from,” I claimed grandiosely, but only Cole seemed
to be piecing the puzzle. To drive the point home, I asked, “Lizzy, who would you trust more of
the two specimens?”
“I’d rather not say,” Lizzy politely refused.
“You might as well be honest if you are going to be forced to live,” I reminded her.
“I’d trust Kaylin more,” she admitted.
“And who are you more attracted to?” I asked.
“Joe,” she gagged.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what the fuck is that?” I sliced the air with my extended hand and
pointed it at Lizzy’s face. I looked across the table and caught Cole, who was wide eyed, and I
could see the cogs turning.
He looked at Kaylin, at Joe, and then back to me.
“That can’t be right. We practice monogamy,” he refuted, bewildered, so I smiled at him.
I waved my hand down, and the pair of males returned to their seats.
“That’s a lot of talk from a serial rapist, but yes—there is another side to the story, isn’t
there? In mammals and birds there is another method of mate selection. The first I told you
about are species called tournament species, where males are attributed high variance and
5% of males do 95% of the mating, but there is another category of species called pair-
bonding species and they have a few key characteristics. The first of which is less sexual
dimorphism, like in Marmoset monkeys, where there is no way to tell which monkey is female
and which one is male just by looking at them, unless you examine them feeding their young.
This type of mating behavior has many implications, such as paternal care, less aggression,
and female reproductive choice—which, by the way, females in these species choose males
who act and appear more like themselves,” I paused to wink at the ghost, “hence less sexual
dimorphism; and more males get to mate since the females use monogamy as their breeding
strategy.”
Cole was still unconvinced and looked at me intensely like he would somehow catch me in
a lie. “So, what are we then? What is our nature?”
“Cole, that’s a question you should probably ask yourself—but I can tell you one more
thing. Humans have the largest penis of the apes, but atypically small testicles. Also, humans
don’t have a penis bone like the chimpanzee. Can anybody tell me what’s going on there?” I
asked the room, but everyone was sweating and rather uncomfortable.
“Okay, I’ll just tell you. The only reason to have a penis bone is to mate longer with a fe-
male in any given round, ensuring she doesn’t immediately mate again after, or damage her in

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such a way that she is not receptive to anyone else. This technique is only necessary in poly-
amorous groups of animals, because much of the competition is not outside between males at
all, but inside between sperm. It’s a crazy arms race down there, thus the plethora of genita-
lia types, even among the great apes. The gorilla, for example, has the smallest penis to body
size ratio, but large testicles, because gorilla females live in harems for one male, and there’s
no reason to have weaponry between your legs if you just kill all the competition; however,
you should have large balls to keep up with the demand,” I told them smugly.
“And with that information, we can now deduce Homo sapiens is primarily a monogamous
species, because we trust our females are not going to betray our males; therefore, we don’t
need special weaponry or brutal practices to ensure reproductive success. But there is a
more accurate description of our kind,” I paused, and let the silence linger to draw them in.
“Serial monogamists,” I said, pronouncing every syllable.
“What does that mean?” Chris asked.
“Means the paternal instinct runs out when the kids hit puberty. Mothers and fathers go
their separate ways to find new mates, resulting in a semi-dimorphic species—monogamous
enough to raise and protect offspring cooperatively, but polyamorous enough to preserve
gender roles and male variance. Thus, the two mating strategies of men to woo women,” I
pointed to Kaylin, “loyal submission and,” I pointed to Joe, “domineering fitness.”
“Why not both?” Fennec chimed in.
“Exactly,” I affirmed to the fox in my lap.
“No, I mean, why not both in one male?” she clarified.
“Maybe if you gals weren’t the jealous conniving creatures you know you are,” I kissed the
top of her fuzzy head, “you wouldn’t feel the need to cheat and could come to a goddamned
consensus. Did you know if a woman knows a man is married, she’s more attracted to him
than if he were single?”
“That’s not…” Isabelle began to say but thought more about it.
“Not what?” I asked.
“Not…” she tried again.
“What?” I mocked her.
“Never mind,” she surrendered.
“But what about the… big penis?” asked Lizzy with measurable shame, and Joe snickered
at her for it.
“That, as I’m sure you already know, Lizzy, is your gender’s fault, and only was selected
for display and sexual gratification for your benefit, which brings us all full circle back to you,

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Isabelle,” I accused her while pointing at her disgusted face. “Aye, men might be brutish, stu-
pid, and pitiful ‘viruses,’ but it’s your own damned fault they are that way.”
“I had nothing to do with that! And men, just like women, can choose how to be and act,”
Isabelle countered.
“Of course, and that’s the point. You all get to decide, more than anyone in history, but do
not be surprised when your fetishes beget feedback loops in the opposite sex that could po-
tentially devolve humanity—like religion,” I antagonized her.
“And what do you think we should be selecting for?” asked Brother Bates, unfazed by my
heresy.
“The very thing that got us here, Sam. Competence and parental care,” I stated simply.
“Sounds fine to me,” he said, and we all sat for a while cooling off.
I was happily scratching Fen’s ears until the witch spoke her venomous words.
“Then Dune is a hypocrite,” she sentenced me.
“Excuse me?” I belittled her accusation.
She shamelessly slandered my beloved: “Fennec is your fetish, isn’t she? Are you not con-
tributing to our demise by mating with an ageless child, a mentally ill one at that?”
I felt Fen wince and recoil at her comment, so I couldn’t hold my tongue.
“Hey, baby face, ever looked into a fucking mirror? You kept those infantile features and
smooth skin for the sole purpose of being attractive and eliciting a protective response in
males, and it is arguable the reason the female mind struggles to compete in any male pur-
suit, is not a matter of choice but a matter of generations of women selected by religious
fanatics to remain mentally retarded for their entire life, much like how we turned wolves into
dogs,” I whispered suicide to Isabelle and it was enough to hurt her feelings profoundly, but I
wasn’t done with her.
“What’s wrong, domestic? You deserve respect?” I asked with the perverted sympathies
of the God who cursed her sex to begin with. “I have an explanation for that too: the reason
why you are so fucking entitled, is because your nervous system is not built to ensure your
survival, but the survival of your infants, and therefore you feel everything as an approxima-
tion of what your baby would feel to ensure you understand what it needs—including food,
shelter, and attention, which we are all happy to provide to you for fucking free, if you would
just get over yourself and create the next generation.”
I was breaking through to her, but I also could see her fortifications mending.
“And before you dare gaggle on about equality, I don’t give a shit about equality. I give a
shit about utility, and Fennec and I work together so well it seems we have earned the ire of
this entire fucking asylum of batshit crazies who DARED relegate women to chattel and every-

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one else to slavery! Stop projecting your insecurities onto her and go ask your father to beat
some humility into you,” I suggested honestly, before twisting the knife. “Oh, wait, he’s fucking
dead, because you and your deceased brother joined a cult.”
Isabelle looked like she was about to scream, or cry, or die on the spot, so I leaned in and
gave her the merciful way out: “Grow the fuck up, your people are at war, you’re not safe,
nowhere is safe, and your greatest enemy is yourself. Let your anger go and embrace life, or
else we are all going to die, just like them.”
She opened her mouth to retort, but her dam was decimated, and the great flood poured
out of her eyes.
Sam and Joe were angry.
Chris and Lizzy were sad.
Kaylin and Cole were pleased.
Fennec and Miriam were dead.
“I-I miss them... so much…” Isabelle managed to mutter. “It’s all m-my fault…”
She wept in her hands as she spoke what we all knew to be true. The class became rev-
erent as Isabelle mourned for the deaths of her brother and father.
“I’m so—so sorry. I-I didn’t know what I was doing,” she repented. “God forgive me.”
Isabelle’s eyes became empty, and I saw no light in them, but I couldn’t be the one to put it
back.
“See you all tomorrow,” I announced solemnly, and left the room with Fen bent over my
shoulder.
Before I closed the door, I saw a lonely tear roll down Miriam’s cheek.
Jacob sat outside in his usual spot and gave me a peculiar look.
“Over so soon? And what’s wrong with Fennec?” he asked, his concern quickly growing,
so I put her on her feet.
She pickpocketed my Stack to curb her anxiety—an anxiety produced by her realization I
had no valid reason to keep her around like I did, NatOrg even less so, and worse for her, I
knew it.
“She’s fine, see? And it was a quick lesson. Philosophy, you know?” I subdued his suspi-
cions.
“Well, I’ll take them home then,” he said, and made way for the door.
I swiftly stopped him with a “No.”
Taken aback, he asked, “What?”
“Don’t open the door until they do. Or just give them an hour. Could you do that for me?” I
beseeched him.

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“Well, I suppose, but why?” Jacob wondered.

“Just trust me, Jacob. Just trust me,” I promised, patted his shoulder, and laughed as I
walked away with Fennec on my heels, sucking my Stack like it was her ventilator.

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 ╛╞╗┼╫╒╟═╗╧╦╪┼╙╙╝╛╬╤╘╥╜╫╘╙╠

CHAPTER 11

It was 3:00 a.m. and Fennec laid sleeping at the foot of the bed.
I carefully got up, silently collected a few clothes, and closed the bedroom door behind
me. After slotting two pieces of bread into the toaster, I couldn’t find my mug, so I sat in wait
for my toast. It didn’t pop up as expected. Upon checking, there was no bread in it at all. I
rubbed my eyes and turned around to the loaf on the table, where the two pieces were sitting
next to it. I put them in the toaster and waited another three minutes. Everything worked
perfectly this time, and I found my mug on a counter I had overlooked.
I put on my clothes and left the apartment with coffee in hand, finally feeling warm and
alert again. I went through the double doors and walked the usual mile before Level Four,
where the new scout, Trevor his name was, called the patrols to let them know I was coming
through. I wandered through the paths puffing my Stack until Father’s sign appeared above
the door to the lab. I scanned my Proofer and went inside to check on the sphere. When the
lights flickered on, I saw it was cracked open on the floor and its contents were flowing into
the storm drain.
The organ was nowhere to be found.
“No, no, no, it’s too soon, you’re too soon,” I murmured, shook my head, and peered care-
fully over workbenches and toolboxes, but I couldn’t find it.
I searched everywhere frantically, pulling out drawers and shelves and diagrams off the
walls. I was panicking, scratching my head, and pulling out tuffs of my hair as I kicked over the
blood pump. In my despair, I took my ax and raised it to smash it all to bits.
“Dune?” asked a voice.
Startled, I fell over on the ground and the ax blade fell on my hand, leaving a gash in it.

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I looked up and it was Fennec.

“Oh, fuck! Jesus Christ, Fen! What are you doing here?” I yelled at her as she stood in the
doorway with her pillow clutched to her chest.
She stared hauntingly at the broken sphere.
“I-I just came to see you, that’s all,” she explained innocently.
With a long sigh, I squeezed my hand to hold in the blood and prepared to apologize for
shouting at her, because it wasn’t over. Maybe she could help. Max wouldn’t have gutted eve-
rything. I was sure of it.
“Fen, you’re not supposed to leave the Great Hall…” I told her, but I caught myself as I
heard my own words.
We never had to go back. We never had to go back! I just needed an ultrasound. I was sure
I could build one, and then I would know if I could try again. I approached her, and she cocked
her head to the side. I became aware my hand felt warm and sticky to me. Beads of sweat
collected on my forehead.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked.
I was about to tell her, but in the hall behind her person, a white porcelain face crept into
view from the upper corner of the door frame, and a spindly jet-black leg silently passed the
entrance.
It wasn’t possible. How could there be two?
“NO!” I shouted, and the Face reeled back at the sound.
Its eyes locked on target and harpooned Fennec’s chest, bursting her ribcage. Fennec
looked at me and cried a breathless cry before the Face retracted its limb and threw her into
its mouth. As her bones snapped, I realized I had failed. I had utterly failed. I collapsed to my
knees and watched my tears fall to the ground as I reminisced about the electric blues I loved
so much and the future I had worked so hard for.
So, I waited for death. I needed it.
“Do it, you stupid fucking monster,” I surrendered, but nothing happened.
When I looked at it, its porcelain expression was grinning at me. I stared horrified at the
creature, as I had never contemplated its humanity, and its eyes fixated on me in return.
With a voice that whistled like the wind, it whispered to me, “Son…”
“Father?” I asked it, but it slowly ducked back into the hallway and turned to leave.
“No! NO! KILL ME!!! You can’t leave me here! I can’t do it!” my howls tore at my vocal cords
as I begged, but it was useless.
He was already gone.

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“WHY!? Why…” I bawled and smashed my bleeding hand against the concrete floor where
some of Fennec’s blood had splattered.
“It’s over, it’s over, it’s over…” I hoarsely whispered to myself repeatedly as I pulled out
my Shocker, then switched its voltage to the unmarked space below the weakest setting.
“Fuck you all—Walter, Isabelle, Max, Todd—you can fucking rot. Nobody escapes this
place. NOBODY!!!” I screamed out my final curse and pulled the trigger.
I jolted awake and my heart raced as I searched oblivion. My fingers dug into the sheets,
and they were soaked. I felt for the lamp and switched it on before I sat up and looked around
the room, not believing my own eyes for a second. Was I hooked up to a BCI? Was Todd playing
with my head? Was I a Scan? Was it just a dream? Was my brain telling me something?
I placed my head in my blood-soaked bandages until I came to my good senses.
I knew what was real. I knew better than anyone.
It was 3:00 a.m. and Fennec laid sleeping at the foot of the bed.

╞╫╣╟╫╞╞╒╡╕╦╢╞╩╞╤╕╕╘╡╩╕╟╬═╤╙╤╥║╤╨

I pushed my way through the double doors and felt relieved to be back with civilization af-
ter my nightmare had put me on edge. Today was Sunday and, as such, most places were
closed for church services and worship. Families walked around in units—the men and their
sons wearing black suits and colorful ties, and the women and their daughters wearing
dresses such that no two of them were the same.
I looked over the railing to see if I could pick out a yellow tail in the crowd, but I was
quickly distracted by a well-dressed Jacob arguing with an old woman on the balcony below in
front of a shop with two small palm trees on either side of its door. I stepped down a flight of
stairs and casually walked towards them.
“This isn’t right, Brother Hurst, we’ve always tried a search and rescue,” said the dis-
traught old woman.
“I understand, Sister Roberts, but you know as well as I how busy we are preparing right
now. I’m sorry, but those aren’t kids missing. It’s five men and a scout. They had to know what
they were doing wandering off like that. They could have gone to the surface, for all we know,”
Jacob consoled her.
“Damnit, Jacob, listen to me! At least send one search party; my son wouldn’t do that!”
Sister Roberts pleaded with hushed desperation.
Jacob spotted me and held her hands to give her a quick and satisfying answer.
“I’ll bring it up with the Patriarchs,” he promised her.

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“Thank you,” she said. When she turned around, she was surprised to see me, but averted
her eyes and shuffled out of the balcony area to the stairs.
I raised my eyebrows at him and shrugged.
“I wouldn’t be so worried. Send a party,” I told him.
“You sure?” he asked, bowing his head.
“Aye, they won’t find them. I double checked the area for blood this morning,” I assured
him.
He cracked his neck and said, “If you say so.”
I looked behind him expectantly, but she wasn’t there either. “Where’s my girl?”
“I’m glad you asked,” he said, implying bad news. “She’s been causing me problems all
day.”
“What did she do?” I asked, imagining she might had tried to escape.
“Well, she didn’t want to wear a proper dress, just wanted to watch, so I couldn’t partici-
pate in sacrament today. She just wouldn’t stop asking if you were back yet. I mentioned later
that I was taking your class for a swim, and she wouldn’t shut up about how she’s always
wanted to but never had the chance. I told her no, but she kept begging and begging, so I told
her yes. She was super happy and was annoying everyone, so I had to tape her muzzle shut
and throw her in this janitorial closet here until you showed up,” he explained, motioning to-
wards a metal door in the wall, and I winced in frustration as I approached it.
“Listen, man,” I reprimanded him, “if you’re just going to tie her up and lock her away
while I’m gone, we are going to have a problem.”
I opened the door, but nobody was among the mop buckets and sweeps.
“Who do you take me for, Dune? She’s in the shop picking stuff out. Make sure she puts
money on the counter when she leaves, will you?” he directed me, and tossed over a yellow
envelope, which I caught.
“Aye. See you there,” I promised, and then he left me on the balcony.
I opened the front door to the shop named “Hawaii,” and Fennec was inspecting herself in
front of a mirror with a white and orange striped one-piece suit held up to her chest. She
turned and saw me, but only briefly. I came up behind her and found her eyes in the mirror.
“What about this?” Fennec asked.
“Makes you look even more like an orange creamsicle,” I answered ambivalently.
“I’m yellow, but whatever,” she said, put the swimsuit away, and went for a plain black bi-
kini with laces.
“Nothing like black,” she murmured.
“Preach,” I approved.

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I sat a nearby black sunhat on her head and a pair of sunglasses too big for her on her
nose. She viewed herself without a flick of expression. I was about to ask her what was wrong,
but she asked me first.
“Would you undress me?” she asked timidly.
“Undress you?” I repeated, frowning.
She held her pose for the mirror. “Aye, I want to see—well, I don’t know what I want to
see—but I want to see.”
“Alright, then,” I agreed tenderly.
I sat her head accessories on a shelf next to us, and she raised her hands to allow me to
take her shirt off. I unclipped her bra, discarded it on the floor, and knelt in front of her to
unbutton her jeans. When I got them down to her ankles, she stepped out of them. I went for
the last article, a bright blue pair of panties with a rabbit on the front, and I became all too
aware she was looking at me. I wedged my fingers in between the silky straps and her soft
plumage as my knuckles grazed her legs to the ground. She didn’t say a word, and I felt a kind
of reverence, like a shaman conducting some sort of ritual.
I took the swimsuit off its hanger and knelt once again to allow her to step into the bottom
piece, which I then lifted to fit snugly around her hips, except for the part with her tail. I
stepped back behind her to fit the bra over her breasts and adjusted the straps. She stared at
my face up through the mirror and I stared back.
“I don’t understand,” she said, but I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or mystified.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I-I didn’t feel anything,” she confessed. “Did you feel anything?”
“I felt at peace,” I told her.
“Maybe that’s what it was,” she pondered before asking, “What does that mean?”
“It means we keep no secrets,” I answered, and scratched around her ears.
“I see,” she absently accepted. Then she abruptly sneezed, which brought her back to re-
ality. “I’ll take it from here. Go pick something out for yourself, and then I’ll show you where
the pool is.”
“You know, about that, I haven’t kept up on my summer body and I’m really shy, so…” I
humble bragged, and Fen punched my muscled gut for it.
“What a load of bullshit. Hurry up!” she barked.
“Alright, alright,” I conceded.
I found a pair of black swimming trunks, a floating squeaker toy shaped like a bone, and a
few towels to take with us. After I cut a tail hole in the back of her swimsuit and I changed into
mine, we set a dollar on the register and headed out of the place. Fennec guided me up a flight

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of stairs, and the people who were still holding their meetings filled the air with their soft
voices. We turned into a back alley and the floor became tiles. She opened a door at the end to
reveal a fifty-foot square pool filled with distilled water never intended for recreation but for
testing explosives and submersibles, indicated by the circular hydraulic press hanging above
it that could pressurize the water to simulate any depth.
Lights glowed around the edges under the surface and the pool reflected dancing specta-
cles of waves and disturbances onto the walls. Peering any deeper towards the middle re-
vealed the abyss at its center: a cylinder forty feet in diameter and a thousand feet in depth,
as depicted by the markings around its lip. We stripped down to our swimsuits, and then Fen-
nec ran to the edge where she got on all fours to touch the water. She caught me looking, and
she arched her back and swished her tail to vex me. When she slapped the water, her ears
perked, and she quickly retracted her paw.
“Dune! It’s warm!” she shouted, her voice echoing beautifully.
“Oh, is it?” I nonchalantly approached and, when I was near enough, I put my foot on her
ass and pushed her in headfirst.
The pool was four feet deep, besides the abyss, and the submerged humps splitting the
pool into quadrants were only two feet deep. Fennec floundered and kicked until she found her
footing, and reemerged sputtering water from her snout.
“You fucking dick!” she complained.
“Cannon ball!” I jumped in next to her and my wave toppled her over to drown again. I
broke the surface and wiped the water from my eyes, which were immediately doused by
Fennec’s angry splashes.
“That’s what you get!” she growled, splashing me once more before hopping away to-
wards the event horizon, out of my reach to grab her.
“Oh, you’re dead now!” I yelled, dived under the surface, opened my eyes, and breast
stroked towards my bouncing target.
In this environment she was helpless, and from the depths I could see her gleeful panic
before I jumped and bearhugged her. Then, I flipped us over so I could back stroke with her
resting on top of me, but we sunk because she didn’t know how to distribute her weight. I
stood us up by the lip while she giggled.
“That’s not going to work, Dune,” she shook her head slowly.
“Sure, it will! You just need to float,” I insisted.
“I can’t swim,” she confessed without hesitation.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t float,” I said. “Just lay back… there you go, now stay stiff as a
board, but relax. I’m letting you go now. Take slow breaths.”

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“Okay,” she obeyed.

When I let her go, she was able to keep her face above the water.
“See? You float!” I proudly observed, then put my hands under her shoulders and pulled
her onto myself as I laid back.
“What are you doing?” she asked nervously.
“Nothing. Now, just rest your head on my chest… very good. Look at that! We’re drifting
into the abyss,” I said comfortingly, but Fennec dared not speak or look around out of fear she
would destabilize us.
“It’s so dark out here. I feel like something is going to eat us,” she softly spoke at last.
The flat head of the hydraulic press loomed above and, with our position being so far from
the lights, we were shrouded in darkness.
“Aye, who knows what monsters lurk down there. It’s too bad you don’t have tits; we
might need them to float us back to the surface if we have to fight them off,” I teased her.
“Flat as a board, float like a board. That is my motto,” she semi-whispered in her silly way
before asking, “Does it really bother you?”
“Not at all, Fen, not at all,” I answered, the warm water melting my muscles. “Does it
bother you?”
“A little. You know, I really can’t remember what I used to look like, but I still wonder what
kind of woman I would have been. In the City, female Nats were kind of rare, but down here
busty women are everywhere, and I can’t help but compare myself and feel like… less,” she
said, relaxing further for finally telling her secret. “If I had those breasts, I don’t think people
would treat me the way they do.”
“You’re probably right,” I admitted to her as my skin lost sensation, “but if I wasn’t as
gorgeous as I am, you wouldn’t have come with me. Lots of things about human behavior are
dependent on attractiveness.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. You were just so ugly, I had to take pity on you,”
she scoffed for my gravitas.
“I really am just a pervy dog fucker,” I muttered.
“I know, Dune, I know,” she acknowledged, flicking her ears independently back and forth
to the beat of my heart, which tickled my jawline.
I closed my eyes so I could only hear the water and our words. “Look around you, Fen. We
could sink and never be seen again. No one is here. In fact, the majority of this planet has no
one around. Doesn’t it feel nice to be nowhere? Doesn’t it feel good to drift without knowing
what shore you will wash up on?”

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“Maybe I’m a little more sentimental, but I felt homesick after leaving the Pet Store, and I
don’t want to leave here,” she mourned. She knew this might not last either, so she added, “I
like having a home.”
“My home is anywhere with you,” I professed, and in the dark with her I felt bliss.
“Very romantic, Dune, but don’t you feel better when you’re around people? Don’t you feel
a sense of excitement and belonging?” she asked, yearning for us to stay.
“No…” I whispered.
“That’s kind of sad, Dune,” she pouted.
“It’ll be okay, Fen,” I reassured her. “We’ll save them, you and I. I promise.”
“I can’t do anything…” she discouraged herself.
“But you’ve already done so much, Fen,” I reminisced, “and those kids will do so much
more. All they need is a little faith. It’s not about us, Fen. It was never about us.”
“God… I… We’re so fucked,” she choked. “I guess… I guess we’ve run out of choices, eh?
How did I end up here?” she laughed and whimpered, but she wasn’t asking me.
We floated for what felt like an eternity, feeling our beating hearts until the door crashed
open and eight teenagers walked in. Fennec and I raised our heads and saw them taking off
their normal clothes, besides Chris, who knelt at the edge of the pool holding something under
the water.
He stood up, and it was a water gun.
“Hey! I know you really like each other and all, but can you for the love of God stop grop-
ing in public?!” he yelled at us, raised his gun, and fired a stream of water which caught our
faces.
Before he could drown us, I swiftly paddled towards the lip. Fennec raised her hands to
block the stream and we sank, but by then we were in the shallow waters closest to the class.
I left her to suffer the attack and swam to the other side of the pool where the foam noodles
were.
“Chris! I’m going to bite off your face, Chris!” Fennec threatened as she hopped towards
him, but the spray kept her at bay. “Dune, help!”
I swam back and submerged a noodle to fill its hollow tube with water, which I then blew
out and shot Christopher’s smug grin.
“Gotcha!” I beamed.
“Come on, I haven’t even undressed!” he complained, too disgruntled to notice Joe run-
ning up behind him. Joe slammed into his older prison mate, and they crashed into the water
together. The rest followed in their wake, besides for Miriam who sat in a chair.

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Christopher coughed up water and looked down at himself. “Damnit, Joe! What am I sup-
posed to wear back to the apartment?”
“I don’t know, your birthday suit?” Joe teased.
“Might as well just do that now,” Christopher jested as he pulled his shirt off, causing all
the vocal girls to shriek and him to snicker.
I smiled at the sight of them, but suddenly remembered all the nights before I had ever
met them. All those nights kept up in a decrepit hotel, surrounded by humans who had forgot-
ten so much of the animal that they were alien. I was consumed by the same feeling, the feel-
ing that what I was witnessing—these young people, these insane, temporary people—was
nothing to invest in, emotionally nor timely, and shouldn’t exist at all. But there they were,
dancing in the glassy water, their skin glimmering with the projections of their own turbu-
lence between the abyss below and the machine above, every expression translated into rip-
ples destined to be lost forever.
And I would never tire of watching their inane oddity.
Such a deadly waste of precious time, yet an honest and entertaining one, and a privilege
of sorts to observe despite its fragility. Perhaps that was what captivated me so. Perhaps I
couldn’t help myself from imagining a rare experience to be invaluable, when such things
could not be measured. Perhaps my brain invested in reality without me, knowing what profits
could be made before I did, ever searching for unexplored markets to capitalize on before I
could interfere. Some things could not be imagined, some things could not be understood, and
some things could not be created; but once seen, one wondered how they ever lived without
something so obvious, often cursing their own history for wasting time on other things trivial
in comparison. Thus, the two appropriate responses to reach equilibrium were introduced:
invest oneself or divest another.
Vice and virtue were the regulators of such markets, constantly whispering their propa-
ganda to buy in early and sell out too late for dividends. Indoctrination was the tool to maxim-
ize profit, earlier the better, and children were the stock of social shareholders who invested
time and money to secure their immortal growth in the mortal minds of toddlers. Some would
say the very concept of profit was the enemy, as it was a constant manipulating force work-
ing for its own sake; but in the land of millions, there was no greater force for progress, be-
cause money was a populist weapon—if the money was not arbitrarily valued to begin with.
Vice and virtue were the solutions if they could only be defined, after which profit could be-
come greatly beneficial and productive—but in the land of millions, agreement was ignoble
among commoners and common among nobles, thus demoting the regulatory powers of vice

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and virtue to mere commodity to further profit from those honorable few not yet included in
the scheme.
That was how division erupted, how the war of 2030 began, how money became useless,
how the WPA came to be, how fair trade became democratized monopoly, how animals be-
came aliens, and why I never got to see something like this; because civilized people had di-
vested from independent maintenance and invested in dependent neglect. There was a great
benefit for a time, because the tendency for decay was the safest bid by natural law, but once
all had bought in, there was nothing left to judge its value as it became relatively priceless
and worthless simultaneously, mandating the creation of governments like the WPA—infernal
organizations erected for the sole purpose of determining value itself—which led to the heart
of the matter: decay would sooner neglect profit than poverty, and rot would sooner eat chil-
dren than shit.
But the WPA already knew that, hence why they dispensed with the degeneracy of pro-
creation and gave birth to preordained investors to secure their growth regime for eons to
come.
NatOrg took the other route, but were not the land of millions, which meant they could
sustain their capitalistic game without the threat of untouchable overlords mucking about in
their self-regulatory nature or the development of their children; however, the child necessi-
tated demand for coherency, and, if it was not met, the lack of structure in a world of plenty
would render them unproductive, unruly, and destructively impulsive. Thus, religion was their
tool to ensure the youth’s investment, promising experiences from before and after mortality
to undoubtedly convince them to play fairly in accordance with their rules.
Any religion would do, but the further it strayed from puritanism the better it would fare,
because the practice of burning heretics would devolve into democratized monopoly all the
same, repeating the cycle once more lest they pursued it long enough to ensure humanity’s
domestication as artificially as the WPA had done with their Models—but infinitely worse be-
cause the WPA could at least afford to fashion genetic equity by the automation of labor, while
NatOrg would irrevocably fashion genetic inequity by dictating privileges and responsibilities
associated with the immutable characteristics of the population.
This decision was by no means a conscious one but collectively an unconscious one, as
discrimination was a recursive evolutionary function first written about in the ancient myths
they refused to let go. These ancient stories explained in detail who were their God’s chosen
people and who were not—or, more importantly, whose ancestry was promised and whose
was cursed. Although NatOrg was tame for the moment, this genocidal tendency bled out in
their mate selections and treatment of said mates.

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NatOrg and the WPA were the extreme representations of humanity’s two methodologies
to combat decay—NatOrg betting on virtue and the WPA betting on vice—and they would have
succeeded too, just as their various analogues in history would have, but there was some-
thing other than chaos and order influencing their systemic drives for perfection. The prob-
lem was that they should have succeeded already. There had been enough time in history to
domesticate—to create another species of human to serve another—but something sorely
impeded their march towards absolutism. That impedance was the uttermost deprave human
instinct to fetishize, often that which was either commonly regarded as disgusting or painful.
The very entities defined by NatOrg and the WPA as decay, could be fully summarized as
filth and death, which, evolutionarily, were the antithesis of life since it began, but, more im-
portantly, were the primary drivers of civilized people to invest in government—the same
people who would fight order for freedom one day, just to vote slavery for security the next.
All determined and predicted by the hidden force defined as fetish: the lust for an asexual
thing, asexual insofar as it contributed nothing to reproductive success.
Thus, the third and final methodology of mankind, not born from virtue or vice, nor sub-
jected to order or chaos, but born from their distinction and subjected to their exchange. It
emerged in the form of irrational fetishes that, by all accounts, contradicted every evolution-
ary reason to exist. From inanimate objects to mutilative torture, there was no end to the
ability of one’s imagination to warp itself around a single facet of subjective experience and
anchor their sexuality to it, no matter how concrete or abstract the thought, thus repurpos-
ing the circuitry built to risk life and limb in the name of continuing one’s species for some
nonsensical, meaningless, or downright suicidal gratification.
Such a curious trait should not be and should have been stomped out long ago, but per-
sisted despite natural, sexual, and societal selection pressures hellbent on its eradication. The
reason it survived despite those forces was because it wasn’t real, at least in the sense there
wasn’t a gene nor a circuit responsible for the behavior, rather it was a kind of synesthesia:
crosstalk between independent and necessary neural circuits who had no business speaking
to one another. Much like the temporal lobe interpreting signals from the occipital lobe—
which caused the afflicted to hear color—the sexual circuits could also interpret signals from
others and often did to scan for potential mates, but since the human mind was plastic
enough and imaginative enough to contemplate the utility of tools and ideas, it essentially
could (and often would) personify anything to the point it could masturbate to it; therefore
seducing its sexual circuits to adopt nonreproductive entities, living or not, as mates.
A much similar example was a child’s proclivity to carry around an item, like a blanket or
a toy, with them for comfort; and this bond was strong enough that without their comfort

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object, children would register similar levels of stress and anxiety as being separated from
their mother—which was then discovered to be the case. The children were confusing the
comfort object with their mother, because the children who had more time alone developed
more object dependencies with increasing severity than those with mothers who were around
all the time. The same could be said about fatherless children, who would pathologically idolize
celebrities or induct themselves into cultish organizations for paternal direction.
So, even children could trick themselves into this kind of delusion, but it didn’t stop there.
Bizarrely, despite having outgrown their dependency and bearing the knowledge their comfort
objects had no special power, many still kept them when they gave away their other toys, and
their brains still reacted positively to their presence throughout adulthood.
The reason sexual synesthesia was such a menace to ideology was inherent in the very
structure and anatomy of the brain. A small example, a benign one, was how the region of the
sensory cortex dedicated to feet and the region dedicated to genitalia sat adjacent to one
another. This brought about the fetishization of feet and foot massages, but such practices
were all too common to declare it abnormal or debauched. A far more sinister example, a
dangerous one, was when the circuitry of disgust mingled with that of sexual appeal, and it
was this in particular which made purity of any sort impossible. The more an ideology en-
forced the eradication of an idea, an ethnicity, or a behavior, because it was disgusting or evil,
the more people came to court it for its novelty—indulging secretly in whatever “filth” made
their rotting flowers blossom for an ejaculated dose of diseased sunlight radiating from an
illegitimate star.
The brain would not yield this insanity no matter how vigorous the cure, as every totali-
tarian state came to understand when they imploded from all sides. There was no way to get
rid of it without immunizing the brain from indoctrination altogether; therefore, the only way
to secure loyalty was to force the natural categories of the mind to adopt their state as
Mother, as Father, and as mate—which predictably failed, because if such a thing became
common, it could no longer be called fetish. Although the mind had the insane ability to fet-
ishize objects and substitute them for natural fulfillment, it didn’t have the ability to conflate
between categories themselves, meaning a totalitarian state had no chance to become what it
imagined would finally supplant religion. Religion had already unlocked the human mind: first
with many gods governing a plethora of emotions and relationships, then with one God called
the Father and His Son who was born from a virginal Mother.
This granted religion an immortality no secular government could ever obtain, because it
invested in all the key natural relationships, such that the brain knew how to digest the dogma
instinctively and would then become loyal beyond doubt. Governments could only be one,

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which depended upon the citizenry who created their governments to resemble whichever
relationship category their collective brain wanted or required, but the other categories also
demanded representation—thus, their respective sources would always be separate from
government. Unless, of course, the citizen was a Treat or a Model: beings without this cate-
gorical sense.
Religion had one last problem to solve, however, and the totalitarian state would never
admit defeat as long as it could solve it, because of the one primal sense who refused to
comply with the schizophrenic terror of conscious experience. It was the sense which made
everything real, and it was the sense the brain would not concede; just as the human couldn’t
pump his own heart, because if he did, man would forget and die—a privilege only experienced
in the deepest of dreams where he spectated his subconscious acting in ways he only wished
he could. Perhaps that was what was so tantalizing about the idea of totality: the superstition
that if a dream could make one feel as if they were flying, then one should be able to provoke
the feeling wakefully.
But such thoughts were the ravings of a weak mind too dissatisfied with reality to believe
in it and too narcissistic to acknowledge its own limitations.
Hence why the sensation of touch was buried under a hundred feet of concrete inside a
vault with a ghost and a one-way radio broadcasting on every channel—all incomprehensible
to the lone receiver of sentience but one; because if it weren’t, there would be no reality, as
reality was that which persisted involuntarily by producing pain or pleasure, and those com-
modities were far too valuable to ever allow the peasant beast on the surface to control with
its greedy incompetent hands. For example, the ability to tickle oneself was so far removed
from consciousness, it required an actionable delay of five seconds before the brain could be
tricked into believing something other than itself had touched its body. Thus, the totalitarian
state had the advantage of physicality, where religion had the advantage of spirituality.
So, they could never touch the God they believed in.
And they could never believe in the government who touched them.
Neither could they for themselves.
Only for each other.
But they could touch and believe in me.
And I could touch and believe in them.
So saith the Lord fetishist of filth and death.
The last man to pump his own heart.
How did I get here?

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“How often do you come here?” I asked Sam, who had swum to me and might had said
something when he initially arrived.
“Well, these guys come every Sunday afternoon, because the pool is closed to everyone
else and they need exercise,” he stated happily, but then withdrew, “I’m just here because I
want to be.”
I looked towards the door. “I see. Isn’t Jacob supposed to be here?”
“He said you can watch us,” he replied.
“For how long?” I asked.
He shrugged. “An hour or two usually.”
“Okay.” I nodded, then thought we should play. “Is that a beach ball?”
“Aye. I’ll go get it,” Sam said and got out of the pool, so I took the time to count heads.
Fennec was inspecting and chattering with the witch and the ghost about what they wore,
the prophet and the doll were out of the pool, the thief was wrestling a hopeless match
against the butcher, and the rapist was swimming out with the whore into the abyss.
My job was easy today: keep Lizzy from drowning.
Sam threw the ball in, and I slapped it towards Fen, who batted it away without breaking
conversation. It landed in the middle of Chris and Joe, who decided it would be best to hit it as
hard as they could at each other, echoing their punches throughout the room. Sam threw in
some other toys and swam back to me. Lizzy grabbed one of them, the floating squeaker toy
shaped like a bone I had purchased, and teased Fennec to play fetch.
“Does Miriam swim?” I asked the prophet.
“Surprisingly, it’s one of the few things she does do, but Jacob told me he always has to
place her in the water first,” he answered, curious as I.
“Who dresses and feeds her?” I enquired.
“Nurses. A few of them work at the apartment they share,” he explained, motioning to-
wards Lizzy. When he saw my confusion, he added, “the guys live together too.”
“Oh,” I muttered. “Well, I’ll get her in then. Keep an eye on Lizzy, eh?”
“Aye, everyone does,” he assured me, and swam away as I pulled myself onto the tiled
floor and walked to the depressed creature.
“Okay, Miriam, raise your arms,” I instructed, raising mine for her to mimic, but she did
not. However, when I took her hand and pulled it over her head, she retained the formation.
“Like a doll, I suppose,” I remarked and pulled off her clothes to reveal the one-piece suit
she wore underneath, then lifted her to her feet so she could walk with me to the edge.
“We’re going to fall in now,” I announced, and I let myself tumble into the water, taking her
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She righted herself quickly and had her head above the water before I did. She made way
towards the center, where everyone had gone, besides Fennec, who looked rather left out. I
took my swimming noodle and swam over to her, where she grasped it and was able to go out
into the depths with the others.
We played a game of volleyball without a net, and when we grew bored of that, I made a
suggestion: “Ever played chicken fight?”
The class shook their heads.
“Okay, let’s go to the shallows,” I directed them, and we swam to the corner where I
squatted low to begin my demonstration. “Fennec, hop on my shoulders.”
“Okay,” she obliged, straddled my neck, and held onto my forehead.
I raised her into the air and made the obvious teams.
“Uh, let’s see,” I masked my thoughts with spontaneity, “Isabelle, get on Sam’s shoulders,
Miriam on Christopher’s, Lizzy on Joe, and Kaylin on Cole.”
The group sputtered and gave awkward glances to themselves—besides for Kaylin and
Cole, who got right with the program.
“You know, if I didn’t know any better, which I don’t, I’d say you are trying to get us all
hitched,” Joe speculated half-humorously.
“You know, if I didn’t know any better, which I do, I’d say you already should be,” I retort-
ed, staring blankly at the mountainous butcher as he crumbled.
“I-I…” Joe was stunned by my answer, but Lizzy saved him from replying.
“You need to stop this. We’re all just friends in rehab,” she pointed out.
“They’re not,” I rebutted, jutting my chin towards the other duo.
Lizzy opened her mouth to deny it, but with one glance at Kaylin’s coy smile, she knew it
too.
“You’re joking,” Lizzy gasped.
“What?” Kaylin tried to dispense with the declaration of love.
“Not as weird as I thought, to be honest with you,” Cole said as he glassily stared at her,
but possession was written all over his body and it betrayed his hollow demeanor.
“Fine, but it still doesn’t mean we have to do the same,” Isabelle butted in.
“Nor would we want to,” Sam added, and Isabelle’s face twitched from the insult.
“Chris?” I sighed in defeat.
“Yeah?” Chris replied.
“Pick her up,” I exhaustedly commanded him.
“She doesn’t like me,” he protested.
“Aye, she does,” I affirmed.

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“How do you know?” asked the thief.

“Because you’re the only one who took the time to figure out why, just like you do with all
the abandoned treasures you keep, eh?” I suspected with a half-smile, and saw that he did
know, but it wasn’t his secret to tell.
“I suppose,” Chris answered cryptically.
When he looked at the girl, Miriam stared up at him with an eerie intensity. Something was
communicated silently, and his guilt became obvious.
“I didn’t know,” Chris promised her.
Cole gulped and was the most perturbed of us all, and I wondered why the doll scared him
so badly.
Miriam returned to her old self, and Chris didn’t say anything more, but I saw his sorrow.
“Pick her up,” I ordered him again.
“Come on, Dune, she’s not a toy,” he refused shakily.
Why did she kill them?
“Kneel,” I commanded, pointing at her side.
He looked awfully pale, but he found his proper place.
What did he know?
“Okay, I’m here,” he announced to the ether, but she did nothing.
How bad was it?
“Silence has a price. If you won’t pay for it, he will,” I promised the doll.
Miriam held her breath for a moment and her nostrils subtly flared, but she surrendered
to her misery and mounted the boy.
Chris blinked a few times and stood firm, but his face was numb and…
Then it hit me.
Her father was the first to sell her photos, but Chris was his distributor to avoid any sus-
picion. Once Miriam killed her family for abusing and exploiting her, Chris stumbled upon the
FBI servers and kept business going where Miriam’s father had left off. Jacob knew exactly
what was being sold and the rationale behind the murders, so he dropped the death penalty
for her because of her abuse.
Chris only knew the truth after the murders when he tracked down a package he had de-
livered and saw for himself, but he was never caught until he began trafficking again—for the
money, no doubt. Then, he must had agreed to turn in his clients to avoid the death penalty
himself. Perhaps they had been friends before, hence Christopher’s conflicted emotions, but I
doubted she knew he was implicated until I stupidly brought it up. He was afraid for the same
reason Cole was afraid, because I suspected she had also killed an older brother they had

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both been fond of. There was nothing more to be done. Either she didn’t believe him and in-
tended to kill him too or believed him and wanted someone familiar to share a life with.
“Who are you?” Lizzy gawked at me.
“The Devil,” I muttered. “Why do you ask me like that?”
“Do you always get your way?” she asked in disbelief. “I’ve never seen her respond to an-
yone.”
“I bet on fetishes,” I admitted.
“What?” she scoffed, confounded, but I shook my head instead of explaining.
“Never mind. You can watch the first round, but it’s just a game—no need to be such
prudes about it,” I scolded them, and then turned to Cole and Kaylin. “Okay, the goal is to dis-
mount the top person or otherwise tip them over into the water. No hitting or anything that
hurts. Ready, set, go!”
“Oh, fuck!” Kaylin yelped as I charged through the water at Cole, and when we met, I
pushed him back, but Kaylin had gotten ahold of Fennec and nearly carried her off my shoul-
ders.
A few pushes back and forth later, Fennec managed to topple over Kaylin, sending him in-
to the water along with Cole, and it was the first time I had seen them genuinely smile with
joy. After that, everyone was properly mounted, and the chicken wars were fought gallantly. In
the end, Joe and Lizzy were unstoppable, and they bragged about their victory to Jacob all the
way back to my apartment and beyond.

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 ╠╝╢╟╦╥╡╥╧╧║╛╞╠╪╒╜╝╩┼╚╘║╢╠┼║╝╞═╨╨╦

CHAPTER 12

“This is called ‘Sushi,’” I taught Fen as I stabbed a fork into a piece of rice battered eel.
I noticed the restaurant owner spying on us, and he shook his head at the sight.
Fennec and I shared a small table in the corner of a packed and noisy restaurant. The
walls were covered in traditional art, and the waitresses in garb, reflecting the culture of the
old country Japan.
“Looks like candy,” Fennec remarked, inspecting it as I raised the piece to her maw.
She ate it off the fork and praised it. “This is good!”
“Isn’t it? Here, try this one,” I offered and fed her another piece.
We had bought a variety platter and a bottle of drink to go along with it. I enjoyed the fla-
vorful experience of NatOrg as much as Fennec, but I was immensely surprised by how they
managed to produce it all. They didn’t have meat walls or any other artificial foods, rather
they grew it all naturally in various rooms in the farming sector of Level Five. The reason they
had these resources to begin with was because of an old vault filled with seeds and vitrified
animal fetuses pumped with antifreeze, ready to be warmed up, but they had only a limited
supply as they could not successfully replicate the process. NatOrg had to maintain their
ecosystem naturally once it started, just as humans had been doing for thousands of years.
“Tangy, but still good,” she critiqued.
“This one’s deep fried,” I said, putting it to her lips, and she scooped it up with her tongue.
“Mm! I think it’s my favorite,” she exclaimed as she savored the sushi.
I could only stare, which caused her to ask, “What?”
“You’re adorable,” I told her, and ate a piece myself.

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“No, you,” she rebuked, and made such an ugly face that I had to swallow my sushi whole
so I wouldn’t spit it out everywhere.
“Aw, you’re so ugly,” I cooed as I scrunched her cheeks and kissed her whiskery face.
She violently pulled away from me and cleaned her mug with her arm, after which she
said, “Ew, gross!”
While she grumpily fixed her fur, I poured us some liquor. The shop owner stepped back
into his kitchen and disappeared, but I heard him punching buttons. The Tunnels didn’t have a
wireless communication network like the surface, so NatOrg used landline phones placed in
every room around Level Five or short-range radios to communicate.
“I—” intended to tease her more, but she abruptly sneezed at me and coated my face in
her mist. “Holy shit, woman!”
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and my hysteria shot snot from my nose.
“Hey, what is this?” she asked casually, and held the glass of warm liquor to her snout.
“It’s tea,” I lied, drying my face with a napkin, but it wouldn’t remove the anticipatory bliss
from my face.
It was a liquor they called “Sake,” and I watched with great interest as she gulped too
much and exploded all over our table.
“I fucking hate you,” Fennec sputtered with alcohol running from her nostrils and murder
in her teary eyes, but I was cackling too much to care.
“I’m so sorry,” I squeaked.
She shook her head menacingly to mask her embarrassed smile.
“I’m going to get you back for that one. Just you wait, Dune,” she promised, reluctant to
forgive.
“Oh, God,” I panted and became self-conscious about my manners—a new development
for me—so I slowed my breathing to regain some civility.
Fennec looked at me in a peculiar way, and I realized we had become good friends.
I had not expected it before, but it was apparent this was a kind of progression, and I felt
silly for believing we would only ever be lovers, always following the codes of dichotomy. We
had returned to adolescence—a time and place without the protocols and boundaries inher-
ent to math and flesh.
I remembered when I was smaller and weaker than my mother, and equal to my sister;
so, no matter how much I grew, the assumption of strength could not be shaken, lest I harmed
them. An analogy came to mind: a foal roped to a stake in the ground so it couldn’t escape,
growing up to believe it never could despite possessing twice the necessary force to do so as
an adult.

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I couldn’t tell if I had trained Fennec to adopt my games or if I was just too uncomfortable
to play them with her, but, either way, in the domain of mischief we were equals and she was
a force to be reckoned with.
It was a wonderful thing to fear her.
“Did Max ever give you alcohol?” I asked.
“Yeah, he often made it himself,” she said.
I refilled her glass and lifted mine for a toast: “To Max, then.”
“To Max,” she seconded, clinking her glass against mine before we drank them.
“Fuck,” I cursed after the drink kicked my throat.
“What kind of man can’t stomach liquor?” Fennec teased.
“Shut up, Fen,” I said numbly as warmth accompanied me from within.
“Are you an angry drunk?” she asked kindly.
“No, no, I just become sociable,” I informed her, and bit down another mouthful. “What
about you?”
She shrugged, her eyes getting hazy. “I don’t know, people just tell me stories about shit I
do afterwards,”
“Oh, do tell me a story,” I insisted, and refilled her ration.
“Okay,” she obliged.
She nodded her head in contemplation and wiped off the liquor from her whiskers as she
remembered her tale.
“It was Fyre’s birthday—an otter-girl who worked at the Pet Store—so, Max gave the
night to us, and we set up some beer pong and watched old movies like usual, but Fyre really
wanted to remember this night. In her drunken stupor, she challenged the rest of us drunk
animals by promising to sleep with whoever could get her another bottle of moonshine from
the cellar,” she recalled, smiled lazily, and leaned into her story.
I matched her until I felt her sweet breath on my lips and saw myself in her pupils.
“The only problem was Max had the key. Nobody had the balls to do it, but I said I would.
According to them, I snuck into Max’s room and came out with the ring of keys in my mouth,
running on all fours from the old man, and managed to get in the wine cellar before he cor-
nered me with a broomstick. I said to him, ‘I’m getting pussy tonight,’ and he said, ‘not if I give
her the bottle,’ and then he took a swing at me. I rolled under his legs, bolted up the stairs,
and then I locked him down there! God, he was so pissed, but not because he didn’t get the
bottle, oh no. I made Fyre scream so loud, cats were showing up to the door. Max begged and
begged to be let out, and he even promised a year off work! We all knew he was bluffing, so
when we did let him out, it was already over. He really acted like an abused dog; I swear I’ve

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never seen him so disappointed. After he got over feeling sorry for himself, he put a shock
collar on me while I slept. The next morning, whenever he thought about it, he would shock me
for fun. Every time I told him I didn’t remember anything, he’d just say, ‘you know what you
did!’” she chortled, and then scratched at her neck nervously when she caught someone at a
nearby table looking at her.
“Dirty old zoophile,” I said, grinning stupidly. “I really hope that fucker’s still alive.”
“I think he is. The Pet Store is kind of isolated in the City, and the man is persistent,” Fen-
nec yawned. Nothing but teeth could be seen where her face once was.
“Aye,” I agreed, nodding as some primordial instinct kicked in and killed my buzz.
Before the predator could shut her mouth and catch my stare, I returned to a normal po-
sition and pretended to investigate my sushi.
“Aye,” seconded Jacob in a deep voice overhead, startling us both.
Fennec hit her elbow into the side of the table, and I nearly stabbed myself in the eye with
my fork.
He laughed.
“Fucking hell!” Fen growled, displaying her canines while holding her arm to her chest.
“Why are you even here?” I asked him, already exhausted by his presence.
“I know I have that effect on people, but you two are something else,” he said as he pulled
up a chair and sat with us, scavenging some sushi from our plates.
“I came because somebody called in a disturbance about a loud drunk man and his talking
dog—but from what I just heard, you were probably just speaking about some unsavory
things,” he told us, widening his eyes as he popped a piece into his mouth.
“We aren’t even drunk yet,” I slurred in an exaggerated fashion.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. The real reason I need to talk to you, is because Miriam dressed
herself this morning,” he briefed us enthusiastically as he poked the air with his chopsticks.
“So?” I asked, reaching for the bottle, but Jacob pulled it away.
“So, every one of them has completed their rehabilitation goals,” he notified us seriously.
“So?” Fennec asked and yawned again, which made me yawn.
Jacob stared into her gullet the same way I had.
“So, each of them gets to ask for a reward of some kind, or try to be released,” he men-
tioned, averting his gaze back to me.
His eyes asked how I could live with such a creature.
“So?” I repeated, keeping myself straight, and Jacob’s face contorted into the silent pain
of constipation.

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“So, Dune, they have asked for you to move into their house!” he hissed at me, and the
shop owner was noticeably pleased by his hostility.
“Oh,” I muttered, and Jacob relaxed as if nothing had happened.
“It’s two apartments really, side by side, but in between them there’s a recreation area
with a nice room reserved for whoever is watching over the class. You can be permanent
residents,” he proposed, then added with a shrug and raised palms, “if you want.”
I looked to Fennec, and she nodded her agreement.
“I think we do,” I confirmed.
“Well, here’s the keys,” he jingled them before handing them off to Fen, “and don’t stay
here too long. I don’t want another complaint about either of you.”
He eyed us sternly and stood up to prepare for his leave.
“Aye,” we acknowledged in unison.
After Jacob left, we picked up our scraps and our bottle of sake. Fennec rushed out the
door too soon to see the shopkeeper’s face when I left him a dollar tip on top of what we owed
him.
On the way home to collect our things, I found the cart Jacob and I used to move the bod-
ies in Level Three hiding in an alley. I pulled it out and Fennec hitched a ride as I pushed it
along the cement floor. We didn’t have a lot of things at our place, just clothes and some food,
so we quickly packed it all up and wrote on the back of Jesus to prove we had been there.
It was almost dark by the time we got to the class’s apartment, and it didn’t look any dif-
ferent from ours on the outside. I slotted the key into the door and pushed it open to reveal
the recreation area. It was a wide-open space with a few table games, a couple couches, a
projector, and a large kitchen as well as a French door towards the back. I dragged in the cart
and opened the French doors to the master bedroom, which was twice the size of our old
room and complete with the biggest bed I had ever seen. Fennec hopped off the cart to inves-
tigate every cabinet, wardrobe, and drawer, and organized our stuff how she saw fit while I
took the empty cart outside to dump someplace.
When I came back, Fennec was naked in the master bathroom, perched in a tub big
enough for four, playing with the controls.
“This bath feels so good,” she lauded, cranking up one of the nobs.
“Are you sitting on a jet?” I inquired.
“M-maybe,” she huffed.
“You’re such a reprobate,” I chastised her.
“What does that mean?” she whined, looking up at me grumpily.

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“Not an hour in this house and you’re already molesting appliances.” I closed my eyes and
inhaled through my nose with exasperation. “Have you even checked for towels?”
“N-no, Master,” she answered, bowing her head shamefully.
“Don’t ‘Master’ me when I’m scolding you,” I said, and searched for some towels. I found
them folded in a cabinet along with soap and a body brush.
“Yes, Master!” she barked and saluted me.
I took the items from the cabinet and sat on the tub’s wall to undress.
“The beating of recalcitrant women used to be encouraged, you know,” I told her warmly.
“Your big words don’t scare me,” she growled as I hopped in next to her.
I stretched my arms around the rim of the tub and let the hot water melt my muscles, but
my overdue relaxation was interrupted by her pokes and jabs.
“Damn, Dune, have you been working out?” she complimented me.
“A lot of that is your fault for being an insatiable vixen,” I cooed, then kissed her forehead.
She ceased her teasing.
“Fuck, yes,” she exclaimed, but not because of anything I had said.
I decided to let her be and searched a collection of magazines on the small table next to
the tub. I found one titled “Whisker Club,” and flicked through pages of WPA advertisements
and stories published in 2063 about cats.
“‘How to teach your cat to sense a Nat,’” I read aloud.
“I think I’m about to cum,” Fennec panted, but held firm.
“‘In today’s society it has become increasingly difficult to tell if someone is treated or not,
and (as we now know from the WPA statistics) Nats have become increasingly violent and
deceptive since it was announced everyone would be treated by 2070,’” I orated, then paused
as the fox tensed beside me.
“Oh!” she yelped, hugged her knees, curled her tail and toes, and squeezed her eyes shut
as she forced herself to endure the current.
“‘Maybe you believe your ‘Nadar’ is enough, but the case of Reilly Shaw’s murder proves
no matter how civilized a Nat is or how much you trust them, they always will lose control to
their animal nature in high stress situations. It is important we remind them that treatment is
the only way, but until everyone is treated, allow me to introduce you to my cat, Nibbles, who
can sniff hormones in Nats and alert me to their presence. Here’s four easy steps on how to
turn your cat into a Nat detector!’” I read to her as she retained her position for a full minute,
completely self-absorbed.
I watched her grit her teeth every time she reached climax. She opened up after her fifth
round and sprawled out, blowing bubbles from her snout under the water while she lazily

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stared at the white tiles in front of her. I tried to read her thoughts, but I didn’t like the op-
tions of what she might had been thinking in her moment of bliss—the kind of selfish bliss
which either inspired shame for oneself or pity from others.
For some reason or another, masturbation had a workaround for the self-touch delay.
Perhaps the prefrontal cortex had grown too quickly to integrate with the more rudimentary
parts of the brain, making self-gratification feasible and encouraging the development of
positive feedback loops that required nothing but imaginative daydreams and idle hands.
Boredom in the agricultural age was a plague against product, circumcision was its cure, and
religion was its warden; thus, the problem was avoided for millennia, although the archaic
remedy was arguably worse than the disease itself.
Unfortunately, genital mutilation would never fix the tendency of the human mind to adopt
isolationism and mate with itself, but the cults who practiced it already knew the futility of
rectifying it socially. They sought not for the end of their means but for the means to their
end, creating every form of genital mutilation to supplant sexual desire with the unadulterated
conscious duty to bear children—void of the sinful pleasure which warranted suicidal hedon-
ism.
In some way I was jealous, even if my competition was pressurized water, but I was also
creeped out by the thought of being just as inanimate to her. Some biologists believed the
female orgasm was vestigial—an accident without providence—evidenced by the ritualistic
circumcision of women for thousands of years without the human race dying out, while other
biologists believed the female orgasm was necessary and the fundamental motivation to
evolve man in the first place.
Regardless of the truth, the endeavor to inhibit or exploit natural urges for piety was one
of hollow creatures who hated themselves enough to birth children just to make them equally
suffer. I bit my tongue to clear the confusion of my species and pulled Fennec in to lay back so
I could hold her. She rested her head on my chest, so I took permission to lather her with
soap and wash her. I gently scrubbed her short fur with the brush and quelled my impulse to
express my gratitude just to have her around. She remained limp until I grabbed her leg and
lifted it over her head to reach the pads on her feet.
“Hey!” she barked, kicked away the brush, and wriggled her ankle out of my grasp. “Don’t
touch those, those are sensitive.”
“What, your toe beans?” I bullied her.
“Aye, my ‘toe beans,’” she sneered. “Don’t tell me you’re a foot fetishist too.”
“Those people aren’t real; they just think it’s funny you care,” I chuckled.

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“Feet are gross,” she declared, shaking her head and clipping my chin with her pointed
ears.
“Feet are sexy,” I said perversely.
“Just give me the damned brush,” she ordered with an open paw, so I gave her the han-
dle. She turned around and ran the bar of soap across my skin.
“You know, reaching orgasm five times within one minute ought to be a record or some-
thing,” I grumbled as she toiled.
“The joys of being female,” she muttered absently.

╜══╢╟╬╧║╚═╝╧╦║╜╥╨╫╢║╡╛╣╝═║╗╔╕╟╞╡═╡╞╒

An hour later, we were in comfortable clothes and decided to investigate the recreation
area. It was populated by a rummaging Chris, who stared at us for some time chewing a piece
of our sushi in his mouth.
“There’s just no escape from you two, is there?” he finally said.
“I suppose not,” I answered suspiciously. “Where is everyone else?”
Chris shrugged. “In bed. We aren’t allowed to be out here after 8 p.m.”
“And yet, you are,” I observed, exaggerating my concern.
“Only because you saw me here,” he replied, wearing a smug face as he slowly ate anoth-
er piece.
“And you stole our sushi,” Fennec scolded him, her hands on her hips.
“Is it really stealing when you wouldn’t have cared to notice it was gone?” he orated as if
quoting a Shakespearian play.
“Seems you’ve lost that bet a few times, Chris,” I refuted his excuse.
His smugness collapsed.
“Just because they saw me and coveted what was in my possession. I work hard to get
what I want, and when they confiscate my loot, they call me the thief!” he complained and
swallowed another piece whole just to spite me.
“Before you choke on your greed, go get your degenerate friends and bring them here,” I
directed him with a nod.
“Fine.” He shut the fridge door and walked out of the kitchen area. “The girls are through
that door, by the way,” he said, pointed, and then ran out through the opposing exit.
Fennec went to fetch them, and I remained alone.
Upon checking the fridge, my plate still had plenty of sushi on it and my bottle of sake ap-
peared untouched. I took out the platter and sat it on the kitchen island for everyone, along

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with a bunch of drinking glasses I found in their cupboard. The class flooded the room in their
pajamas and appeared unsure about my presence.
“Hi. Jacob put me in charge or whatever, so the first thing I’m doing is establishing there
are no rules. Except housekeeping, of course,” I decreed.
“What does that mean?” asked the rapist.
“No idea, but I’m sure we’ll find out.” I pulled the sake out from the fridge and landed it on
the kitchen counter. “Ever had a drink, Cole?”
“No, and that would be illegal, actually,” he mentioned, grimacing at the bottle.
“You want to know what else is illegal?” I asked him. “Sending minors to prison, which is
where you really belong, so drink up.”
I poured him a glass and gave it to him.
He held it in his hands, and I saw guilt, but it was gone after he painfully swallowed the
stuff.
“Fuck, it burns,” Cole coughed.
“Aye. Who’s next?” I proffered, holding a glass in one hand and the bottle in another, up
for them to see.
“Me!” the whore volunteered and stepped forward to share in his companion’s suffering.
He swallowed his portion as if it were water.
“Done this before, Kaylin?” I asked with mock surprise.
He retreated shyly to Cole’s side and murmured, “A couple times.”
I looked around the room and found my next target.
“Lizzy, you’re up,” I invited her as I poured the liquor into a glass.
“I don’t want to,” she refused, stepping back.
I held the glass out to give her a second chance, but Lizzy stayed where she was.
“Okay,” I honored her decision and walked over to what I assumed was the pantry door
and used the key to open it. I found what I suspected to be locked up there and pulled it out.
“Well,” I said to prompt my farewell, “consider this a promise kept.”
I held a knife by the blade and offered her the handle. The room froze, besides for Joe.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he objected, reaching out to take the handle, but Lizzy got
to it first and jumped away from the butcher.
“Care to share with her how you feel, Joe?” I challenged him.
“It’s not like that,” he pleaded, but kept his eyes on Lizzy.
“What is it like then, Joe?” I questioned him, but he didn’t say anything.
Lizzy stared into my eyes to try to understand what I wanted her to do, but she didn’t find
anything and cringed away from my hollow expression.

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“You’re evil,” she quivered as she spoke.

“Aye,” I admitted.
I offered the glass up to her again as she lifted the blade to her throat, which, without her
makeup, had a few scars already.
The class held their breath as they tried to form words on their silent lips to stop her.
Lizzy withdrew herself to a place we couldn’t see and pressed the teeth of the blade
against her skin.
“Don’t,” said a tender voice I had not heard before, and it seemed to come from the ether.
There was something haunting about Miriam’s face that compelled one to believe death wasn’t
the end, and whatever was on the other side afforded no escape.
Lizzy couldn’t break away from her gaze as a dozen emotions flashed across her face.
“W-what?” she asked in bewilderment.
“Don’t,” Miriam said again, her doll lips barely moving.
Lizzy’s breathing became unsteady as rage and sorrow tore her face apart, and when it
was too much, she screamed and plunged the knife into her thigh muscle.
She sighed as she let go of the handle, and it seemed the pain had numbed her inner tur-
moil. I offered the glass again and she glared at me as if she were going to stab me too, but
she downed the liquor and savored the bite. I offered her the bottle and she handed it back
after she took two swigs like a man running from the law. She nodded to herself and pulled
out the blade, which she returned to me without a word.
“Where’s the first aid kit?” Fennec asked, noticing Lizzy’s blood loss.
“Here!” Joe barked, ripped a metal box from the wall, and put it on the counter.
Fennec wasn’t medically trained, but Max’s trade had certainly rubbed off on her. She
opened the metal tin and fished around for supplies. Once she found what she needed, she sat
Lizzy down and got to work.
“Next?” I offered, and Miriam crept to the newly filled glass. It was the first time I realized
she was fairly cute despite her generally depressed appearance.
She gently took the glass in both hands and sipped it like tea.
“You had no idea what was going to happen,” said the witch, who was flush with righteous
anger.
“It didn’t matter what happened,” I rebuked her softly as I petted Miriam’s head.
Her eyes were so gray, and with how she stared at me so calmly, I couldn’t help but be-
lieve they were made of glass.
“How can you say that? If she died, you would have been finished!” Isabelle shouted at me.
I left Miriam alone and directed my attention to the wailing siren.

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“So what? Even if I could be ‘finished,’ what difference does that make?” I asked the
spoiled brat, but she still did not understand. “Ask yourself this: are you trying to win or are
you trying to be right?”
“Those are the same thing, and you weren’t striving for either,” Isabelle argued.
“That’s what the moral objectivists say, and, oddly enough, the dogmatic religious types.
Absolute truths that produce absolute goods and absolute lies that produce absolute evils,” I
scoffed, irony thick as molasses. “Bell, has it ever occurred to you that transparency is a
losing strategy that ends conflict while opacity is a winning strategy that prolongs conflict?”
“What are you even talking about?” Bell asked hysterically.
“We all agree winning a game looks the same whether you’re from the perspective of us
or them and eventually there will be a winner, but the moves you make to get there can be
judged in two ways. Was the move you made right because you won or because it was the
best move for the position? If you defeat your enemy, does it mean their assumptions were
wrong or they just didn’t see the right conclusions? Sometimes being right means to accept
defeat,” I pointed out to her. “So, I’ll ask you again: are you trying to win or are you trying to
find the right answer?”
“I want to win! You taught us to win with secrecy, didn’t you?” she asked, her desperation
growing.
“And maybe you would have by keeping the knives away to prevent the potential conse-
quences, or maybe not and Lizzy would have found a way. Given light of what just happened,
it’s almost silly to believe your game of tricks, shadows, and bluffs would have led anywhere
but dispute, regret, and hatred. All I did was show everyone’s hand and let the game play itself
to solution, because being right is paramount and we only lie to outsiders, not ourselves,” I
reminded her.
“You couldn’t have known!” she reiterated.
I lost my temper and shouted her down, “And none of us know if we are going to win the
war! But our principles demand we try, so shut the fuck up and drink.”
I put the glass in her hand and some spilled onto her, but she was too furious to care.
“Fuck you,” Bell spat, and knocked back the glass to take it all in. She gagged as it went
down her throat and she struggled not to heave.
“That’s a good girl,” I congratulated Bell and patted her head, causing her to recoil, but
she said nothing else. I took another glass and filled it.
“Here you go, Joe,” I offered him, and he just seemed pleased he could focus on anything
but the conversation as he swallowed.
Chris took a glass for himself, and I gave him the bottle to take as much as he wanted.

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“Where is Sam?” I wondered sincerely.

“That do-gooder doesn’t live here, dumbass,” Cole insulted me as he held out his hand for
Chris to give him the bottle.
“Oh yeah, my bad,” I apologized.
Fennec finished repairing Lizzy and weaved through the circle to get to Cole, drafting
from the bottle twice before giving it back to him. We shared the bottle till it was gone as well
as the sushi, and Chris brought out a large speaker to play music from an old touchy. Bass
filled the room, and we were all drunkenly chattering on couches as my Stack was passed
around.
“So, you cut the motherfucker in half, did you?” Fennec asked as she traced a line down
her sternum.
“Aye, the ax nearly cut him through,” Joe confirmed. “He bled out within seconds.”
“Sorry,” I interrupted, “what was his name?”
“The Patriarch’s true name was Dan Staples,” Joe replied.
“A nice guy—from what I remember at least—but after his death, a lot of people came out
against him for his scandalous behavior,” Isabelle snickered.
“He was a big customer of mine,” Kaylin added.
“Aye, he was considered the next in line to lead the Patriarchs too,” Chris said with a
haunted expression.
Perhaps Patriarch Staples had been a customer of his as well.
“Eh, I saw him for what he was a mile away,” Cole recounted, looking off to the side. “If we
knew everything about everyone, I doubt we’d be the only ones destined for exile.”
Lizzy rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Cole, we’re not getting exiled.”
“What’s exile?” Fennec enquired.
“It’s when you get blindfolded and dropped off somewhere in Level Three,” Isabelle an-
swered.
Fennec furrowed her brow. “Why not just kill the criminals?”
“Jesus Christ, Fen, we’re not murderers,” Joe sniggered.
“What if they make it back, then?” Fennec pressed them defensively.
“Then they get a second chance, but those people are rare,” Joe said.
When Fen’s confusion didn’t clear, Isabelle explained.
“You see, we believe no one is too far removed from redemption, so we don’t kill anyone
ourselves, but we’ll drop them off to wander aimlessly until they starve to death. The principle
is: if they truly repent, God will lead them back home as a sign of forgiveness,” she clarified,
slurring her words.

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“And your grandfather?” I asked her.

“He came back thrice,” Bell informed me, holding up three fingers and giggling for my
shock.
“Oh,” I said as I thought of explanations, but I was not sober enough to commit to one.
“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Bell repeated, then puffed my Stack and sent whisps out her nostrils. “They
locked him up in that box to make an example of him, but the fact of what he achieved
strengthened the faith of his followers, including me.”
There was a long silence.
“Being drunk is so weird,” Chris remarked.
When I looked at him, he had his eyes locked on the doll beside him. Miriam was staring
too, but she had the demeanor of a husky trapped in a cage with a wolf. It was the first time I
had seen her so unsure.
“In what way, Chris?” Lizzy asked with suspicion, as if she could do anything about it.
“Everything is so… easy,” he mused, but didn’t make a move.
“What does that mean?” Isabelle interrogated him.
“I just…” Chris wanted to confess, but he was self-conscious enough not to incriminate
himself.
Fennec must had been bored with conversational avoidance, because she left my side and
walked haphazardly toward the witch.
“Hey… Hey, Bell,” called out the intoxicated fox.
Bell’s eyes glittered with anticipation as she set her eyes upon the majestic creature.
“Yes, Fen?”
“Breath in when I give you a puff, eh?” Fen instructed her as she took the Stack and filled
her lungs.
“What do you—” the witch tried to negotiate, but Fennec choked her words with a stolen
kiss.
“How was that?” Fen seduced her.
“I… I…” Isabelle stuttered as smoke poured from her mouth.
The fox took advantage of her weakness and straddled the helpless girl to give her anoth-
er mouthful. The air ignited, and none of them were saved from the flames. I breathed slowly,
my drunken mind too numb to sense victory, nor doubt. All I knew was such innocence was not
mine to trifle with.
I stumbled into my bedroom and collapsed onto my soft bed to sleep alone before the
dogs could howl.

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 ╗╨╛╫║╦╓╨╪╠╞╥╝╙╗═╦═║╝╝╙╕╣╤╟╝╖╬╗╤╒╥┼╩

CHAPTER 13

I woke up with a blistering headache and the realization my fox had not returned to me. I
took a cold shower, put on my usual clothes, and entered the commons where I found Fennec
sleeping soundly, curled up on the floor, and hugging her tail, which was caught between her
legs to cover up her bits. I picked her up and cradled her on the couch until she came to.
She yawned and looked around confused. “I’m naked,” she finally said.
“Yep,” I affirmed.
“And I smell like sex,” noticed the yellow detective.
“Mhm,” I hummed.
“We?” she asked, looking up at me with morning eyes.
“No,” I answered, and shook my head.
“Oh,” she murmured curiously. She was about to fall asleep again, until she went wide
eyed and shriveled up in my arms. “Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes,” I confirmed her worst fears with a tap on her black nose.
Chris sleepily wandered in from the female apartment entrance.
“You let me do that?!” Fen whispered harshly.
“Dear, I was asleep,” I chuckled.
“Who?” she asked, and Chris grumbled something unintelligible.
“What?” I asked him.
“She asked who, and I said everyone,” he reiterated as he opened the fridge and drank
our orange juice straight from the carton.
Fennec raised her hands and pulled her ears over her eyes. “Please tell me you don’t re-
member?” she whimpered.

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“Oh, I do. I really, really do,” he said, putting the orange juice away and hopping over one
of the couches to lie down next to us. “Especially this one part, where you looked like a spit
roast and—”
“No, I don’t want to hear it!” Fen shut him up.
“Suit yourself,” the thief obeyed.
The next person to enter the room was Lizzy, who limped to the couches and collapsed.
We watched her as she exhaled slowly with her eyes wrinkled shut.
“I am in so much pain,” she announced casually.
I inspected her from a couple feet away. Her new clothes had no blood on them, and her
thick bandages bulged out from under her cotton pants.
“Is your leg okay?” I asked.
“It’s not my leg I’m talking about,” Lizzy tried to laugh, but landed into a coughing fit. “Oh
boy, excuse me. What’s wrong with Fennec?”
“Nothing. I am nothing,” Fen muttered, hiding her face in my shirt.
“You are definitely not nothing,” the ghost burped. “Let me tell you, whatever goes in must
go to some other dimension, because it’s actually geometrically impossible to fit—”
“Shut up!” Fen howled. “Why does everyone remember but me?”
“You drink too much for your size,” I mumbled.
“Damnit, it’s not fair. I’m taking a bath,” she declared, and rolled out of my arms.
“Can I come?” Lizzy asked earnestly.
“No, no, nope, nope, I can’t hear you!” Fen rambled as she ran away into our room.
Others came in and wandered around, but nobody spoke. I observed them and first
thought they were angry with me, but they made eye contact and shared food and did their
normal routines. It was like watching a family go through loss with how they remained silent
yet supportive, sharing in the belief speaking would only make the room emptier of the dead
person than it already was. But nobody had died, so why the reverence? I concluded the death
was not of a person, but of some unspoken line they had crossed, and each wished to deal
with the shock as a unit. Fennec came back into the room, dressed in modest clothing, and
looked like she was going to implode and disappear when everyone set their eyes on her.
“What?!” snapped the embarrassed fox, but none answered her call.
“Dune?” the hungover Bell asked, spinning around to face me.
“Yes, Bell?” I obliged sweetly.
“Would you adopt us?” she wondered.
Whether it was a joke or not, the answer was the same.
“Of course!” I exclaimed. “I’m so glad you asked.”

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I beamed my wicked smile, and my brain cracked just a little more.

╞┼╫╗╪╓╓╣╝║╪╦╗╛╥║╗╡╣╧╚╥╩╜╒╝╝

Fennec was licking donut glaze off my fingers when the class walked into the conference
room in a bout of lively chatter, which continued after they took their seats. Even Miriam
seemed eager in her movements. Jacob laughed at something Sam said and then left the
room, closing the door behind him. I quickly rapped my wet knuckles on the table so everyone
would hush in order to save my throbbing head from noise.
“Welcome back everyone. How was your chat with the Patriarchs?” I asked them, expect-
ing good news.
“They seemed very accepting of the idea, I’d say, but they will make their final decision
when they can,” reported the prophet, our diplomat to the powers that be.
“That sounds promising,” I thought aloud. “Anyway, today we are going to talk about all
the different kinds of love.”
“Isn’t it all just the same thing?” asked Isabelle.
“Well, I’d sure hope not!” I gently poked fun at the girl. “You wouldn’t love your father the
same as your husband, would you?”
“Not like that!” she huffed.
“Then there are distinctions you make,” I said as I nipped at Fen’s ear, to which she re-
plied by flicking it away, “preprogrammed relationships in your brain every person you know
fits into. It was this process of categorization the WPA investigated—hey, Chris, turn off the
lights, please.”
My headache from the morning had turned into a full-blown migraine, and my voice re-
flected the measured monotones of nausea.
Chris turned off the lights and we were left in darkness.
“Thank you. The hypothesis was, if you could trigger a love response—such as when you
see your siblings or spouse—every time you meet a total stranger, then the discriminatory
behaviors in your psyche would cease to exist. Everyone would then be part of your family, so
to speak. The WPA essentially wanted to reduce disgust sensitivity and increase sexual pro-
clivity so subjects would no longer be able to distinguish mother from wife, or pet from child,
or brother from father, and everything in between. But don’t get confused—I don’t mean you
wouldn’t know the difference, I mean you wouldn’t feel the difference between them emotion-
ally,” I clarified, and then heard Sam’s clothes ruffle as he dumbly raised his hand in the air.

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“Why would they want to do that? That just sounds like complete confusion,” he correctly
pointed out.
“To get rid of the concept of the other. To get rid of the concept of me and you. To finally
bring to pass true equality. And to your point, it was confusing, and their drugs were a total
failure. For example, not only would the men inbreed, rape, and commit infanticide by penetra-
tion, but some wouldn’t even make it that far and just fucked the refrigerator door until their
dicks ripped off. Women impaled themselves and died from abdominal bleeding—and the ones
with any sense to actually find another person would inevitably starve to death in their own
beds. The WPA had to tie most of them down and masturbate them every hour to keep them
sane enough to comply with their researchers, but that was only a temporary solution. A cure
was found for them, but all it did was shut off their sexual circuitry completely, and the ma-
jority of those killed themselves shortly after,” I retold the events while imagining their horri-
fied faces in the dark.
“And this has to do with love, how?” Lizzy asked.
“Oh, yes, love. Well, these experiments weren’t for nothing, as they were able to collect a
lot of data on the brain circuitry related to social cohesion and pair-bonding, the first of
which being the circuitry for intercourse. It’s a rather simple circuit and well-studied before
the WPA, but it is one of the oldest and, as such, it doesn’t really care about why, when, or how
as long as you deal with it. It’s this instinct that brings one to masturbate, but this is no mys-
tery; however, the real discoveries were insights about the circuitry growing out of it, such as
the grooming circuit, the play circuit, and the romantic circuit,” I said, and gave scritches
between Fennec’s thighs, causing her to faintly squeal.
“The grooming circuit was probably the first thing to emerge from the sexual circuit as
parental care became more important. In social animals, grooming is generalized to everyone
in the group—so, not only are you taking care of the hygienic needs of your kids, but you’re
also picking off the parasites on your neighbor’s back. This is a very reciprocal arrangement
between members, especially females—as one would expect, because they raise children. It
also explains why so many women practice medicine. The WPA then found out in their female
subjects who took these drugs, that a disproportionate amount of them were engaging in
lesbianism when screening tests reported them to be strictly heterosexual. To figure out what
was going on, they did some brain scans and found the grooming circuit was heavily amplified.
They concluded lesbian relationships were influenced—if not caused—by the grooming circuit,
and if anyone is still in doubt, just go look at Bonobos: a matriarchal species of great apes
who partake in polyamorous lesbianism for the same reason,” I explained, and I heard the
witch squirming uncomfortably in her chair.

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She was trying desperately to find the words to refute what she believed to be an attack
on her spiritual being, despite her appetite only a night before.
“Just because girls like to cuddle and do each other’s hair doesn’t mean we’re gay,” she
regurgitated her strawman.
“Yeah!” Lizzy agreed.
“I know a bottle of liquor who says otherwise,” I reminded her.
“That proves nothing except you’re a perv,” Isabelle shot back.
“Girl, you have no idea,” muttered Fennec, who was trying not to moan.
“Did something happen?” Sam asked suspiciously.
“Whatever, I admit defeat,” I slurred lazily. “Next up is the play circuit, a kind of prepara-
tion system. Children physically play, male and female, as a method to not only calibrate the
brain with the body, but also to calibrate it to other people’s bodies. What hurts, what doesn’t
hurt, what is fun, what isn’t fun, etcetera. Thus, it’s all about finding limits and learning to
cooperate; and all of this, in most mammals, is the precursor to sexual relationships. Mam-
mals who don’t learn these social rules with the opposite sex will be viewed as awkward or
dangerous, and rightfully so.”
I imagined the middle finger Cole gave me for that remark, so I added, “Cole, stop flipping
me off.”
He was surprised by “How the fuck…” I knew, but I dodged the question.
“Orangutan males have these wings on their faces that grow to look like a plate to ex-
press dominance. Females approach the most dominant male for mating, but the less domi-
nant males with less growth don’t get any action, so they have to resort to rape—and guess
what? If one of these subservient males overthrows the dominant ape, they will grow in size
and plate-width, becoming the dominant ape. This appears to insinuate social status, general
health, and physical appearance are in some way correlated. Another example is when baby
rats are born, those who are separated from their mother will die even when given enough
food and water. Some neuroscientist figured out the only thing you had to do to keep them
alive was massage the rat pups with an eraser to simulate their needed attention. The same
goes for humans for the most part—infants who do not get comfort and stimulus from their
parents grow to be smaller and weaker than other children who had healthy amounts of so-
cial and physical affection…” I trailed off as I imagined Kaylin was testing me in some way, so I
grabbed my Proofer and threw it at his usual spot while addressing the related comment to
his name, “...Kaylin.”
It rattled in the air until it connected to what I hoped was his forehead.
“Ow! How can you see?” he giggled through his self-pity.

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“I tell you this because the drugs induced homosexuality in males as well. Because domi-
nance is a male game, their play circuits were put into overdrive—much like the grooming
circuits in females. The WPA rediscovered a practice in humans that apes, and many other
species, have been documented doing for centuries: male submissives taking on female roles
for favors, protection, and perhaps even permission to mate. It’s hard to deny—genetically
speaking, you have twice as many female ancestors as male ones because 50% of males did
not reproduce, so what were they doing?” I asked the class.
Nobody wanted to respond, especially the unhappy rapist and his whore, but they didn’t
need to.
“And males have yet another peculiarity. The prostate is suspiciously located in a spot
ripe for stimulation an inch or so in the rectum, and it alone can produce a male’s orgasm. It
all seems too perfect to call homosexuality unnatural or coincidental,” I hypothesized, but
became disappointed with their silence.
At least with the light I could see their expressions.
“You know, ever since Darwin released his theory of evolution, many have pondered why
homosexuality persisted if no offspring were produced, and some even speculated it would
eradicate itself for that reason. After the year 2000, the amount of people identifying as gay
or otherwise outside gender normative behavior was multiplying and gaining traction, so what
happened? Were past generations lying about their sexual feelings and modern people were
waking up, or were modern people brainwashing themselves? The answer is neither really, or
both—it all depended on age. The WPA figured homosexuality persisted as a strategy for pu-
bescent development like a risk-free trial of adulthood where teenagers could become famil-
iar with dominance hierarchies and reciprocal grooming, but then they discovered something
else they consequently buried,” I said, stopping briefly to catch my breath.
Then someone’s finger poked my skull.
“Got you,” said Miriam, who had snuck up on me.
Chris turned on the lights, which blinded me to the Proofer card as it flew into my face
and hit my nose.
I squeezed my eyelids shut and hid in Fen’s fur to muffle my agony. “Jesus, fuck.”
“He bleeds,” the prophet observed.
“Just… turn the lights off,” I begged them, and a few snickers later it was done.
None had noticed my curious hands under the table.
“I call it the ‘romantic’ circuit, but it never was officially given a name. It is a structure in
our frontal lobes which gives us the reason for our monogamy and heightened parental re-
sponsibility—the kind of abstract love we believe to be so specifically human. It’s one of our

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more remarkable features; the love sickness we tend to feel, that infernal emotion so many
people before had written and spoken about, the instinctual assumption that somewhere out
there exists the other half of our souls, and even our desire to cross entire universes to find
them,” I purred, staring into space as I dug into my quivering Fen.
“When the WPA investigated the area, they realized it was what they were searching for
the whole time: the source of our ultimate discrimination. It’s the part of us so oddly tuned
that it can pick out one person in ten billion and never let go. It works in ways mysterious
even to ourselves, and often is associated with love at first sight, but it’s so much more than
that and equally inexplicable. Sometimes, it’s just the way they walk, or talk, or stare silently
into the ground. The best part is, they are only mesmerizing to you alone, and you somehow
know they can’t be anybody else’s but yours. Aye, the WPA found what they came for and they
made a new drug to specifically suppress it, and that is what we call treatment today—
although we have far more advanced and effective treatments now than we did in the 40s,” I
finished my lecture and spoke no more, allowing the awkward silence to fester.
Fennec finally convulsed, then ripped my hand out of her skirt.
“That’s all treatment is?” blurted out Sam, unconvinced.
“That’s all it needs to be, Sam,” I confirmed. “This is why your grandfather will never suc-
ceed, Bell. The people up there can’t be saved, because they literally can no longer sense…
sense… well, I don’t know what to call it other than their soul. They can’t see themselves,
there is nothing transcendent, nothing to connect them with the past, and nothing to connect
them with the future. To them the world is uniform, and everyone is the one.”
“So, you’re just going to kill them all?” Isabelle asked.
“Do you have an alternative?” I answered with a question.
“We stay down here,” she put simply.
“Oh, now you want to stay in this ‘false Heaven,’” I mocked her. “Would have been nice if
you said that before we destroyed the only thing keeping them alive. Chris, let there be light,”
and there was light.
“What do I know?” Bell buried her face in her hands and sighed.
“That’s the spirit,” I said, nipping at Fennec’s ear again. She elbowed my gut to save her-
self from embarrassment. “A… any more questions?”
“I thought treatment was to turn everyone into girls,” the skittish Kaylin mumbled.
“It helps the WPA lower aggression and fertility, but it’s just a selling point for treatment
really. I mean, who doesn’t want to be female?” I asked rhetorically, but everyone raised their
hands besides Miriam, Kaylin, Fennec, and myself.

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“Are you fucking serious?” Fennec scolded her sisters and gave them two middle fingers.
“God damned traitors.”
They each held up one of their own to counter her gesture.
“Fucking misogynists, the lot of you,” I contrived humorously. “Class dismissed.”

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CHAPTER 14

They were disgusted. Everyone was disgusted. It was all disgusting for reasons far re-
moved from what disgust evolved for, but then again, how could anyone rely on a sense with
properties mysterious as detecting how symmetrical a man’s face was by his scent alone? At
least that was biological and indicative of good health, but the rest of it was useless and hu-
mans were sorry creatures for being born madly sensitive to an organ as residual as the
appendix. I saw their upturned noses and their foul faces, those expressions classically re-
served for when in contact with parasites—which was exactly what they were insinuating I
was. One could say I was a hypocrite for believing the same thing about them, but if I was a
parasite upon their way of life, then they were parasites upon life itself.
There had been many cults in human history, but the least respectable of them were
those so enamored with death that their constituents couldn’t muster the motivation to
breed; thus, they resorted to the cowardly practice of conversion to replenish their numbers
and, more importantly, their political relevance. These types of organizations were the sickli-
est of them all because their ideologies were so puritanical, their members felt the need to
repent for the original sin of mere existence, often by sacrificing their children—born or
not—and preaching to their kin to follow suit.
And there lied the truth of the matter: the human mind mapped its old emotional systems
designed for the material world onto its newer abstractions, and these primordial motivations
cared for nothing but sensation regardless of where it came from. What difference was it to a
dog whether he humped a leg or another dog? What difference did it make to the stomach
whether the meat was of its own flesh or not? Why did one feel pity for those who spoke to
voices in their heads? Why was there something terribly eldritch about killing a person in

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their sleep? Why did people care for and defend their political movements as if they were
their own children?
Why were they so disgusted about their children deciding to stay with me?
Masturbation—the cyclical reward—made one guilty when discovered and engaged. I re-
membered the first time I did and had to talk to Mother as if nothing had changed, when as
her son everything had changed. I eventually realized how insignificant the act was, but it was
one of my first lies and it ate at me. It was the same uncomfortable feeling as watching others
truly believe deceptions and act upon them, when it was so clear they had fallen victim to a
trick of their own minds.
In one particular instance, General Todd Moses documented his BCI could make people
eat shards of glass while every sense told them they were chocolate candies; and the footage
he took of them slicing their gums, blood spilling onto their bibs, and telling him what filling
they liked best, was a sight to never leave the imagination once seen.
That was what I meant when I said they were parasites upon life. They abused it to sup-
port the life of something inhuman and intangible in any sense, a life best described as a mass
hallucination with the sole purpose of enforcing circular reason so it could feed. They believed
I was a parasite upon their collective unconscious, but such a thought was an error of classi-
fication designed to trigger disgust and preserve their God at my expense.
Because I was not a parasite.
I was the antidote to parasitism.
“If you’re not going to take care of her, then I’m taking Lizzy home!” proclaimed Lizzy’s
large, disgruntled mother who was pointing at the judge.
“Order!” the Pink Flamingo slammed his gavel, and the large conference room fell silent.
I had been summoned the day after Lizzy’s parents dropped by and took great notice of
the bandages and bruising around her thigh. There wasn’t much that could have been done—
she was wearing gym shorts in the commons when they barged in. After her mother slapped
me for my lack of care, she left with her daughter and tattled, putting every student into
question. We all, including their parents, were in front of a Patriarch acting as a judge. Sam
and his parents were also in the room, but as witnesses.
“Why are we even here? It’s our right!” heckled Cole’s shameful father, a feeble man who
reeked of alcohol.
“I said order!” the Pink Flamingo slammed his gavel once more. “We are here for two
reasons: to evaluate Mr. Burnswick’s activity and to discuss the emancipation orders these
young men and women have filed. Normally, I would dismiss a case like theirs, but as they all
have lived without your presence—in all cases at least a year—I am sympathetic to some of

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them, so go ahead and piss me off to show how fit you are to be a parent again, eh, Brother
Hunt?”
“Sorry, Patriarch,” Cole’s father muttered.
Pink Flamingo nodded and refocused his attention to his task.
“Mr. Burnswick, can you tell us again what happened to Lizzy’s leg?” he inquired of me,
and I noticed by his enunciation of mister that the word was essentially foreign to him.
“We were making our own sushi, and then she accidentally stabbed herself in the thigh,” I
reiterated.
“And the bruising?” he questioned further.
“Result of falling on the floor,” I lied calmly.
“Is there any dispute among you this is what occurred?” he gestured to the class, and
they unanimously lied under oath for my sake.
Lizzy’s big mom rolled her eyes.
“They’re lying, look at them. We all know Lizzy’s history, and those bruises are handprints,
for Christ’s sake!” she raged.
The Patriarch tipped his glasses in a no-nonsense fashion. “Sister Bonneville, what exact-
ly do you expect me to do here? Every witness—including your daughter—swears by Mr.
Burnswick’s testimony.”
“This is ridiculous!” the hysterical woman objected. “That man brainwashed them all and
turned them towards the Devil!”
“Thank you, Sister Bonneville,” the Patriarch dismissed her protest and moved on.
“Brother Hurst, could you detail your experience with Mr. Burnswick and these youngsters?”
“Dune Burnswick,” Jacob stood up and cleared his throat, “is an outsider, and the only
thing we really know about him is that his father built this place. He also worked for the WPA
as an electrical engineer before he helped our war effort. In my personal experience, Mr.
Burnswick is a very intelligent man; however, his attitude and actions are highly volatile, and
his motivations are unclear besides for our shared hatred for the WPA. If he is lying, it would
not surprise me, but these students have improved steadily since they were put under his
charge. Cole’s feeling empathy, Joe has apologized for the murder of our since-
excommunicated Patriarch, Miriam speaks now, Kaylin is less wily, Isabelle stopped associat-
ing with her grandfather, Christopher told us where he hoarded our stolen property, and Lizzy
doesn’t want to kill herself. Whatever he did was a success, and I fear to stop whatever he is
doing now would put them all at risk of relapse—perhaps fatal ones,” Jacob testified and sat
down.
The Pink Flamingo, satisfied, motioned towards Sam.

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“Thank you, Brother Hurst. Brother Bates—I know you were not there that night, but
could you weigh in on Mr. Burnswick’s character?” he summoned the boy, and Sam stood
honorably.
“Mr. Burnswick is a ruthless and wretched human being devoted to the art of warping the
perceptions of anyone around him, but I have yet to determine why. He is absolutely danger-
ous—there is no doubt about that—and I’m surprised he roams free as he does when we don’t
know exactly what he is capable of or why he has taken such an interest in this group,” he
spoke confidently, and the parents of the class were utterly horrified by his words.
My imaginings of a quick escape with the Laserlite at the apartment were cut short as he
went on: “That being said, I also know these young men and women—some cases from birth—
and the truth is this: that home has a poor track record. Despite how many people have tried
and failed to rehabilitate the youth before them, the majority were still doomed to exile at the
age of 18. Even if Mr. Burnswick is everything I said, he’s not traitorous, he’s reasonable
enough to barter with honestly, and he’s not doing any of this for purely selfish reasons. I
don’t quite understand why or how his methods work, but I wouldn’t trust my brothers and
sisters with anyone else—at least for now.”
He paused and looked at me, hoping what he would say next would be right.
“Perhaps it takes a man like him to repair a mind like theirs,” Sam concluded.
When he sat down, the Patriarch was left massaging his temples.
“Can we just pretend this never happened and make this decision the next time something
suspicious occurs?” the Pink Flamingo offered. “Let the man take care of them and the par-
ents can visit more?”
“No!” everyone in the room abstained.
“Well, then I am given no choice! These young men and women were put in that house be-
cause it was determined their parents were incapable of controlling their criminal behavior. I
see no reason to overturn that decision, so I declare each of them emancipated—but do not
celebrate too soon,” he threatened, eyeing each of us with deadly intent. “If you commit an-
other criminal act, you’ll be sentenced to exile instead of a house for troubled youth.”
There were a few seconds of silence, and then the room was in an uproar. The gavel was
of no utility as people screamed and shouted at each other, so I went for the door with Fennec
trailing behind me to escape. When we were outside, I rested on the railing and inhaled a
much-needed puff from my Stack.
The conference room was still noisy from the outside and Fennec yawned, showing off all
her teeth. Then she sneezed, letting the pressurized air rush through her vocal cords to
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“What a shit show,” she muttered after her hellish howl, and then pawed at me for the
Stack.
“Aye,” I sympathized and handed it over to her.
She looked over the railing as her trails of mist revealed the currents in the air.
“Let’s go home?” she asked.
“Aye,” I obliged.
“We should stop at Pulp,” Fen suggested. “I’ve heard they have mango pineapple smooth-
ies.”
“Oh?” I pondered. “That does sound good.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!” she begged, impatiently tugging on my sleeve,
so I tucked the Stack away in my jacket and followed her.
It wasn’t long until Jacob ran up behind us and took a place by my side.
“Just left like that, eh?” he said disapprovingly, but took out a familiar envelope of cash
and held it in front of me to inspect.
Fennec snatched it from him and started counting.
“Were you sent to fetch me?” I asked him, and then answered any protest he had prema-
turely, “You heard the judge, and I’m not staying for squabbles.”
“They are still squabbling, but I didn’t come find you for that,” he told me, slowed his pace,
and spoke in unsuspecting tones as we passed through a crowded café full of curious eyes,
“There’s been an update.”
“Finally, I’ve been feeling bad about taking money from you,” I chuckled.
Someone caught Fennec’s attention and she happily made a swift collection of signs with
her hands.
“We haven’t needed you for the general preparations, but we had a scout try to snoop
around the genetics facility. He had to get his hand amputated this morning after he kept
trying to find a way in. He described that around the perimeter there was a kind of energy...”
Jacob explained, then waved with a smile to a girl waiting by a stack of palettes, who looked a
lot like his wife, “and if he put his hand into it, it would feel like it was on fire, but the gloves he
wore showed no signs of damage. When he came back, he didn’t realize the extent of his inju-
ry, but it was cooked inside out to the point amputation was our only option.”
“Mom says to pick up dinner!” the girl shouted at him as we approached. She was Fen-
nec’s height, and it wasn’t long until the two of them were staring awkwardly at each other.
“I will, Mary. I’ll be home in an hour or so,” Jacob promised.
Mary seemed not to acknowledge his words and kept her eyes on the fox.
“Peek-ah-choo,” she slowly pronounced.

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“What?” Jacob and I asked at once.

“Shut up, kid, those hack jobs have nothing to do with me,” Fennec growled at her.
“I… I’m sorry,” Mary laughed nervously and ran away.
“What did she say?” I asked the yellow fox.
“Nothing. Let’s keep moving, eh?” she replied.
We kept after her and I remembered Jacob’s important news.
“Anyway, that’s a microwave field. You’ll need to tell your techies to build a camera that
can capture microwave wavelengths, so we can see where the emitters are,” I explained to
him.
“So, the lasers are to destroy them?” Jacob asked.
“Aye, but more,” I told him, sliding my hand down the railing as we descended the final
flight of stairs, and then asked, “How are the laser cannons coming along?”
“They are complete, just being calibrated. From what I’ve seen, just one of those things
could cut the world in half,” he reported nervously.
“Perhaps,” I said, shrugging for his exaggeration. “Have you ever seen the outer walls of
Level Three?”
“Aye, blacker than anything I know and shining a light at it does no good. Eats your shad-
ow too,” he answered.
“Layers of graphene and magnesium forged together in a nuclear oven. The alloy is so ef-
ficient at absorbing radiation, when put in direct sunlight it is impossible to measure as it
melts through anything it touches. The genetics facility is using the substance beneath its
concrete facade, and the lasers should be able to melt the shell—or, if not,” I held up my index
finger towards the possibility, “at least heat the entire building enough to cook whoever hap-
pens to be inside.”
“I see,” Jacob acknowledged, biting his cheek. “I’m rather anxious about the whole thing;
there’s only a week left until we siege, and we still don’t know what weaponry or strategy they
will deploy.”
“No doubt once they see the lasers rolling up, they are going to come out in full force.
Just map out routes with the least visibility and mount the lasers in inconspicuous places.
Once the lasers are powered on, it will be everyone’s duty to protect them,” I instructed him.
Then I thought aloud, “Only a week, eh?”
I envisioned the scenario, the last of the WPA sinking into a lake of fire.
Fennec stopped us in front of Pulp, which was a shop built into the eastern wall of the
field, and crossed her arms impatiently. “Well, here we are. Anything more you two need to
talk about?”

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I looked at the place and realized where we really were. The room had once been the ra-
dio station the United States built to communicate with the surface, and it was the only one of
its kind in the Tunnels.
“No, I don’t think so,” Jacob said, but he seemed intent to stay.
“Then bye, stinky,” Fennec blurted, waving at him in a half-friendly, half-annoyed manner.
The man seemed hurt, but self-embarrassment quickly overcame him instead.
“Right, sorry. Got to get food. See you around, Dune,” Jacob chuckled, gave me a casual
salute, and swiftly left.
“What’s up with him?” Fen asked.
“He hates his wife,” I disclosed to her.
“How can he hate Rachel? Everyone loves Rachel,” she told me, bewildered by the
thought.
I held the door open for her and we went inside.
“Hi!” I greeted the shopkeeper, an old woman saturated in neon purple light—as was the
majority of the interior.
“Hello, what can I get for you?” she crooned.
“Two mango pineapple smoothies, please,” Fennec replied as she slapped a quarter on
the counter. “Keep the change.”
“Very kind of you! I’ll be only a moment,” the woman promised and disappeared, but I
spoke as if she could still hear.
“There are two problems with success. The obvious one is becoming a target for attack,
but the other is just as dangerous,” I whispered.
I folded my arms and noticed Pulp had renovated the back wall to jut out ten feet from
where it should had been according to Father’s old photos.
“What’s the other?” Fennec asked.
“People who believe they can be successful in the same way,” I answered gravely.
“Oh, you mean he’s jealous,” Fennec whispered back as she gnawed on her knuckle.
“Not quite,” I said, petting the smart girl, “he’s still figuring out what to be jealous of.”
“And you don’t want him to find out,” she speculated as she took my hand off her head
and pulled it around her shoulder, “because… why?”
I began my answer but couldn’t finish it, “Because…” the woman reappeared at the coun-
ter with our cold treats.
“Here you go!” she gushed.
After we thanked her, we found our seats at a table surrounded by berry bushes whose
fruit glowed white under ultraviolet lamps. I had seen similar fruits on the surface when I was

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a kid, and it was unnerving to see them down in the Great Hall. Fennec plucked a raspberry,
popped it inside her mouth, and leaked neon juices from her muzzle.
“It tastes normal,” she concluded, and wiped away the excesses from her lips with a nap-
kin.
“Aye, fox-girl. Would you like to know how they glow?” the woman from the counter, who
spontaneously appeared and harvested a few berries for a jar she carried, asked.
“Of course!” Fennec encouraged her, pleased about the shopkeeper’s accurate descrip-
tion of her.
“Scorpion DNA,” the granny revealed her secret ingredient. “Just a few genes spliced in
the right places, and you can make anything glow under UV light.”
“Scorpions?” Fennec murmured, picked another berry, and sniffed it suspiciously.
“Who made them?” I asked the old shopkeeper casually.
The question caught her off guard and she nearly stammered.
“NatOrg had the seeds in storage for who knows how long. I’ve been growing and breed-
ing them for several years, as well as some other hybrids,” she giggled jovially, “but that’s
another story! Sorry for disturbing you. Such a cute couple.”
She put her hand on her chest dramatically and left to blend up her freshly picked fruit.
“Anyway,” Fennec slowly turned back to me, as weirded out as I, “because?”
“Because she would never submit—in our sense of the word—which is also why he is be-
ginning to hate her. You’re more familiar with her than I, am I wrong?” I enquired of her and
gulped down a deliciously cold mouthful of my drink.
“I never really thought about it like that. Max called it ‘phallic worship,’ is that what you
mean? Seeing us and the class makes him feel… incomplete in some way? Expendable?” She
grimaced at the thought. “She’s only a little younger than I—why couldn’t they be like us?”
“That’s a nice way to put it, but it’s more complex than that,” I said, blushing for her as I
thought of the right line of questioning. “Look, who does he work for?”
“NatOrg, I suppose,” she said passively and sucked on her straw.
I plucked a glowing strawberry from the bush next to me and studied it intensely. “And
who does NatOrg work for?”
“Everyone?” Fennec guessed, but when I frowned, she rethought her position. “Women!
They protect women.”
“There you go,” I commended her. “Now, who does she work for?”
“Her children,” she replied with anticipation.
“Who are taught to love what?” I asked the female, and then added, “above all else.”
“God?” Fen cocked her head to the side.

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I popped the strawberry into my mouth to analyze its taste. “Who is the tool of?”
“NatOrg,” she answered.
“If he was to die tomorrow, who would take care of her?” I wondered.
The strawberry tasted normal, and that soothed me.
“NatOrg,” she repeated.
“If I were to die tomorrow, who would take care of you?” I asked, putting on a half-smile.
“No one,” she muttered depressively.
“If NatOrg were to collapse tomorrow, what would happen to everyone who depended on
it?” I egged her on.
“Chaos,” she answered.
“And what would happen to us and the class?” I delivered my question with importance,
and I could see her begin to solve the puzzle.
“We’d be… no different,” she realized as she pondered that potentiality. “Wait, is that
your—”
“Hey, hey, shush,” I whispered and grabbed her snout. “No, it’s not, you hear?” I promised
her, and once she nodded to me, I let her go. “Good.”
Something clicked in her mind, and she began to disentangle the knots.
“He can’t find out how to live without NatOrg, because she wouldn’t be able to let go of the
advantages NatOrg provides. You worry he couldn’t handle it if he knew how we and the class
function, because he might use you—through me, or maybe the class—to gain power and
change NatOrg so he and his wife can be like us, which… you don’t even seem to want your-
self, for some reason,” she noticed curiously, then finally understood me.
“You want him to stay the same, you want to appear helpless when you could just as easi-
ly destroy them, because you find it better to be unknown and ignored than known and perse-
cuted. You know your theories won’t work on a large population, so you collect forgotten
outcasts and train them to be free among slaves. Just like me, eh?” she giggled and slurped
down her icy beverage to cool herself.
“Well, I do hope you’re having a good time of it, but you ought not look so happy in public
around the ‘slaves,’ as you say,” I advised and winked at her.
“You’re the Devil,” Fen said lovingly, and winked back.
“Don’t flatter me, you demon bitch,” I cooed, and when her lips touched mine, they were
as cold and sweet as death.

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CHAPTER 15

“You woke us all up at six in the morning, for this?” whined a very grumpy witch sitting at
our usual conference room table.
“I’m sorry—did I hear you just say, ‘thank you for buying me coffee?’” I asked Bell, cup-
ping my hand around my ear to hear an apology for her ungrateful attitude.
“We have coffee at home. You know, that place we all live? Together?” Bell complained as
she took a sip.
“That’s no way to treat your father,” I harrumphed.
The witch whispered an unintelligible spell to the ceiling and buried her face in the crook
of her elbow.
“God, you’re such a dick!” she yelled into the fabric of her oversized sweater.
“Bell!” Sam yelped as he kicked the girl’s shin.
She jumped and was shocked that he would hurt her.
“What the fuck was that for?!” she whimpered.
“So, you’re swearing now? Taking God’s name in vain? Drinking coffee?” the prophet ac-
cused his archnemesis angrily while clutching his hot chocolate.
“And I lost my virginity,” Bell boasted just to spite him.
“What?” Sam choked as his faith in her completely evaporated.
I saw immense regret in his eyes, and I imagined it was for helping us during the trial.
“Why’d you bring him here?” she asked me, belittling his pain and subjecting me to her
disgust.
Sam’s face twitched traumatically, but I still believed in his potential.
“Because we need him on our side,” I told her firmly.

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She wanted to deny it, but she held her tongue as she saw most of us were fed up with
her.
“Do we?” asked Cole.
“Do we…?” I drawled, holding out my hand for my proper title.
“I’m not calling you ‘dad,’ asshole,” he decried, got up, and snapped his fingers to call his
lapdog. “You didn’t adopt us, we were emancipated, which means we don’t have to do...” he
feigned deep confusion until he had his fake epiphany, “anything!”
“Cole!” Kaylin pleaded, but went with him towards the door all the same.
“Aye, you’re right,” I admitted, “but I’m sure there are some who’d take offense to your
new freedoms, eh?” I sneered at the rapist, and his hand froze on the doorknob. “The game is
hardly over, Cole. I paid good money for you, and I’d really hate to discover one morning that
my investment had become a castrated corpse rotting in some backwards alley.”
“Cole,” Kaylin begged his name again, and the older boy inhaled a new gravity of air.
“Fine,” he capitulated, and they returned to their seats a little more fearful than they had
been before.
“That goes for the rest of you as well,” I warned them sternly. “You are still denied ac-
cess to the Tunnels, we are still at their mercy, and now you need not only maintain the lie
with the authorities, but also with the public. From once you were negative, I made you neu-
tral, and now you must become positive until you are no longer expendable.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” Chris asked.
“Yeah, Sam, how do we do that?” I redirected the question to the prophet.
“I think I’ve had enough of these games,” he grumbled in agony, and he was sickly pale.
“‘Perhaps it takes a man like him to repair a mind like theirs,’ eh, Sam?” I quoted back to
him.
“You call this repair?” he scoffed as sweat beaded upon his forehead.
When the boy turned slightly green, I grabbed a small trash bin from under the table and
slid it across to him. He caught the vessel and hid his face in it as he puked up his morning
drink. After he and the room quit cringing, I answered his question.
“Certainly,” I murmured, but his only response was another round of heaving. I frowned
at the table and cursed myself for underestimating Sam’s zealotry. “Are they not better?”
“None of you are any different than you were before,” he spat in the bin and closed his
eyes to run diagnostics on himself.
“A murderer rots in a cell for killing, while a soldier is honored for it,” I mused.
“Yeah, yeah, Dune. The evil side of us is necessary and can be put to good use, I under-
stand, but you’ve…” he said, shaking his head as he thought of words.

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He couldn’t think of any or was preoccupied with his stomach, so I grew impatient.
“I’ve what, Sam? What did I do? You can’t even say, because doing so would expose you,
wouldn’t it?” I lazily mocked his accusation. “To admit to their civility now, either means they
were never sick to begin with or they have been cured by the sickness itself, both of which
paint a bleak picture of your beliefs, eh? But to say they are still uncivil only reflects your
desire to see them fail now that you have abandoned them.”
Sam looked up at me like a rabid dog, but he did not allow himself to speak.
If I hadn’t known his sensitivity to guilt, I would have sent him to the infirmary to check for
poisons.
“You know the difference between you and Bell?” I asked him rhetorically. “Pragmatism
and idealism. Before, it was you who preached about preservation and the harsh truths we
cannot hide from. You dismissed Bell as a hack too far removed from humility and soil. Now
you come here and say the opposite? That we have somehow wandered too far from the
light?”
“You have to be able to choose death instead of evil, otherwise we won’t have to die to
find ourselves in Hell,” Sam seethed.
“Ok, Mr. Pragmatist, do you find yourself in Hell now?” I gestured to the room and the
people within it.
“Not yet,” he retorted.
“Not ever,” I replied.
“So, you want a paradise where none will suffer? Sounds like the WPA to me,” Sam sniped
at me while he grinned, and the whites of his teeth were mirrors.
“I just want people to suffer for meaningful reasons,” I admitted casually.
“And you get to decide what those reasons are, right?!” he snarled.
“No, but you obviously think you can, just like the WPA. Why must you feel so ill about your
contributions to our little band of misfits? You’re a misfit too and you prided yourself for
being so, but the moment it turns bad you can’t help but feel guilty about something so benign.
You think you would feel regret for having sex before marriage if you were born to a cave
dwelling hominid? You think your relationships would mean any less? I argue they would mean
more, because that was how it was before the creation of agriculture and gods—the worst of
which being the generous sort. At least with a cruel god, man will work together to mediate
the catastrophe—but with a kind god all things are motivated by righteous greed,” I preached
to the preacher, and he looked sick again.
“You want us all reverted to ignorant savages?” Sam asked, reaching out for his last
desperate argument.

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“Congratulations, Sam!” I laughed at him. “You use pencil and paper instead of stick and
dirt, and you sleep on a bed instead of rocks! You’ll have a wife instead of a woman, you’ll die
old and unaccomplished instead of young and well-traveled, and you’ll have children instead of
being a father! We are still the ignorant savages we always were, you idiot, but you’ve swin-
dled yourself out of the best things in life for a sophisticated mechanism which lied to you
when it said you couldn’t live—nor understand—purposefully without it. Look at what it has
done to you, Sam. Look at how it keeps you an arm’s length from everyone around you. Look at
how lonely and ineffectual you are to the people you call friends. Why must instinctual behav-
ior be mutually exclusive to societal stability when you can have both?” I tempted the prophet
and pointed directly at Isabelle’s face.
Bell’s lips pressed into a firm line, but she made no comment.
Sam held his head in his hands.
“Sam—” Joe began saying with the tenderness of an old friend.
“Shut up, Joe,” Sam spoke through his wrists.
“I’m still the same—” Joe went on.
“God damnit, Joseph!” Sam exclaimed, slamming his palms on the table.
Then he took a few deep calming breaths before he faced Isabelle with an expression of
such tortured love it bordered on hatred.
“Kids?” were all he asked for.
“Sure,” Isabelle somberly agreed to sacrifice herself for God and country.
Sam grimaced from swallowing the battery acid derived from life and sin as he hopped on
the train to Hell.
“Okay, here’s what we need to do,” he began.

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CHAPTER 16

In the dark I found everything I ever wanted.

In the dark I saw what couldn’t be seen.
In the dark I heard the Universe harmonize with itself.
In the dark I felt the finite dimensions of being.
In the dark I knew infinity was 65 cubic inches of space and 2.6 pounds of mass.
And she was the only light I had ever known.
“I love you,” I whispered as my nose grazed up her cheek.
“Dune…” Fen ran her nails through my hair, pulling me in to meld with her heart.
It was slow—suspenseful—the way we ebbed to prolong seconds until they were hours. I
wandered a landscape of gentle hills and valleys—shapely derivatives of golden spirals and
e—ever searching for landmarks to point myself true north. The earth was pliable and forgiv-
ing to my disruptions, although it had its tendrils buried under my skin like a parasite for a
leech. Sometimes I’d find solid ground to sturdy my seafaring legs, but other times I broke
through the surface and drowned as it recast me into my mold. The oscillation of our encoun-
ters produced gravitational waves like binary systems destined to dance in tandem till disso-
lution.
Such were my alien thoughts, but I reminded myself of their native origin despite my ef-
forts to burn off the deadwood of my soul. There was a hidden caveat to self-reliance and the
manipulations of nature guaranteed by math. My manic-depressive, pathos-obsessing, fanta-
sy-addled brain had somehow conjured a plot to fix itself, and I had gone along with it, damn-
ing the consequences all the while. I had foreseen my cure and I had been cured, but in my

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moments of satisfaction, I continued to wonder if the world consented to my reformations or

if I sought out an excuse to believe it had.
That was the problem with changing the world.
One forgot the difference between animal and machine.
So, I doubted my faith.
And I prayed she would again remind me of God.
“Sam?” I heard Jacob whisper harshly from out in the commons, slamming the front door
behind him.
“Oh, fuck!” Isabelle yelped for the uninvited visitor.
“Listen, Jacob, this isn’t—” Sam’s voice quivered.
“Damnit, Sam!” Jacob chastised the boy, and I heard our table lamp shatter against the
wall. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”
“I’m sorry!” Sam pleaded, but Jacob’s footsteps were already angrily approaching our
bedroom.
I hurriedly reached over to the light switch and flicked in on, then rolled off Fennec as our
door was being kicked down.
Fennec clutched the comforter and pulled it over her chest to cover herself as she
barked, “Jacob! What are you doing?!”
I, however, hopped off the bed, approached the splintering door, measured Jacob’s tim-
ing, and spartan kicked the space beside the doorknob to break it free at the appropriate
moment. The door swung open towards the commons and Jacob was scrambling on the
ground, out of breath from landing on his backside. I entered the recreation room, careful not
to step in debris, and noticed a very scared and naked Bell huddled behind a very ashamed
and naked Sam.
“You really need to learn how to knock,” I said, ran over to the cop, and stomped his dia-
phragm to keep him from recovering.
Jacob assumed the fetal position and stuck his tongue out as he tried to cough air he
didn’t have. I knelt by him and waited for his lungs to retake their first breath.
“You never… answer… your phone,” he groaned hoarsely.
“I unplugged them in case you were spying,” I explained impatiently. “What brings you
here eleven o’clock at night?”
Jacob wobbled to his knees and hugged his chest. “My wife… had a stroke… you Satanic
fuck.”
“How bad?” I asked.

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“Doctor says… her left hemisphere is gone,” he pointed to the right side of “Her face…”
and when I nodded my understanding, he reported, “and she hasn’t said anything since.”
“And you expect me to do what?” I enquired, keeping my tone indifferent, but I must had
betrayed myself.
“Damn you, Dune,” the crumpled figure cursed me as he looked up to beg, wincing as he
stretched his bruised abdomen. “Just fix her! I can’t live without Rachel.”
I grimaced at the lost and clothed creature. “You ever broke someone?”
Jacob pushed on his knee and stood to face me. “What?”
I circled the lone wolf and tempted him, “Would you torture someone just to have your
way?”
Fennec appeared in the bedroom doorway in her pajamas, while Sam and Bell scurried off
through the male wing door to hide in the dark where God couldn’t see them.
“No—unless you mean you,” he threatened me.
“Not me, Rachel!” I shouted her name at his stupid face.
But “Why…” would he want to do that?
“Fennec, sit,” I commanded the bitch, and she did. “Fennec, crawl,” I ordered, and she
came.
Jacob’s eyes lit up with jealousy, ripe with the tragedy of his wife.
“Fennec, tell me why you obey?” I asked her, but kept my dry, stinging eyes on the per-
sonification of envy.
“I love you, and I know you wouldn’t hurt me,” she answered from the floor, her head
cocked curiously towards the broken man of God.
“Simple, isn’t it? Faith? Aye, I can bring your wife back, but you…” I stepped towards him
and held his bearded face in my hands, “you are going to give her a new soul. Have anything in
mind?”
He shifted his gaze from Fennec to me, and I saw the coin of faith stop spinning in his eye,
so I smiled my wicked smile and ripped it out.

╓╞╤╔╛╖║║╠╥╙╧╪╦╝║╪╬╫╔═╦╟╡╕╖╚╟╚╒╕

Neuroglass was a material invented by none other than General Todd Moses, the fourth
and final Founder of the third millennium. The WPA were skeptical of him at first, considering
the chain of asylums he had been put through for his experimental “accidents,” as he called
them. He was never put away for long, even when the US government were the ones handling
him. Todd Moses had more PhDs than anyone bothered to list off, because there was no task

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too specific for him to achieve, hence his self-given title of “General” and his obsession with
general purpose AI.
He was sought after for his schematics and designs, especially those of energy produc-
tion, capacity, and expenditure, which ranged from relatively harmless solar panels to mili-
tary grade lasers in Earth’s orbit capable of vaporizing mountains—an experiment which was
so catastrophic, the entire Middle East became a global patch of pure glass, some parts still
molten from the oil burning underneath. But those inventions were not what gained him his
infamy. It was his attempts to marry animal with machine which gave him his reputation, and
the articles written about him in the 2020s described the horrors of welding metal to bone,
pumping oxygenated oil through living hearts, and hammering integrated circuits into skinned
heads.
However, during the year 2034 in the twitching meat locker he owned as a lab, he con-
cocted a substrate of infinite potential and built with it a structured crystal cube of nanome-
ter lattices containing trillions of memristors each. The memristor, as opposed to the transis-
tor, was an analogue device that could be set to behave digitally, hence General Todd’s claim
to its superiority. It was with his new substrate that he was able to finally bridge the gap
between the transistor and the neuron. Memristors, as their name suggested, were able to
“remember” the last voltage which flooded their gateways and, depending on that value, de-
crease or increase their electrical resistances such that the more a circuit was used, the
lower its resistance to activate would become, and vice versa—much akin to the dopaminer-
gic system of the living brain.
It was only when Dr. Moses plugged a dog brain into it with a dozen or so probes, did he
come to understand his invention was major. The cube slowly became clouded around the
connection points and the fog shot wispy vessels of electric stimuli deep into its circuitry to
grow new colonies of thought. Todd noticed the relationship the dog brain had with it ap-
peared to be reciprocal, as he could see changes in the glass when he interacted with the
tortured beast.
The dog couldn’t tell him what was going on, so he again risked his contractual freedoms
to fetch himself a human subject to drug and operate on. After his work was complete, he
woke up the poor soul and asked his subject questions as the glass responded to their brain’s
impulses. The subject had nothing of value to say, but Todd did not relent his experimentation
and treated his captive guest to all manners of experience to keep the cloud growing into
what he thought was a memory bank or a cognitive booster of some kind. After a full day, the
subject continued to claim there was no difference in their perception, so in an act of morbid
defeat, he connected the dog to the cube alongside his subject.

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The miracle which transpired shortly after granted him access to all the WPA funding his
sick little sadistic heart could hope for.
“Are you ready, Doctor?” I asked as I pulled the cuffs of my latex gloves to tighten them
around my fingers.
“I sure hope you know what you’re doing,” said the grumpy old man, but with the way he
held his electric bone saw, I knew he was happy to have an excuse to use it for a procedure
he had only read about.
Rachel’s head was bolted to the operating table with tubes running down her trachea, and
she had gone under moments ago from our anesthetic. Jacob sat worriedly with Fen, who
wiped his tears from time to time, among a row of chairs behind us.
“Crack her open,” I encouraged the doctor, and he shuffled forward to begin.
He gave me the job of suction and cauterization, the two tools of which were in my hands
as he cut open her shaved skull to reveal the dead hemisphere lying inside. He reached in with
his scalpel and hacked away piece by piece, trying to save as much brain as he could until he
managed to find the clotted source. I followed him with my suction tube, observing and etch-
ing the anatomy of the brain’s inner structure into my memory. We were only an inch in when
he grabbed his pincers and pulled out a dark embolism for me to inspect.
“Well, would you look at that…” he admired it, pulling it up close to his glasses before set-
ting it on his tray. “She’s rather lucky, we shouldn’t have to cut out much more. Given time—”
“No, we have to remove the entire hemisphere,” I interrupted him.
“That’s perfectly healthy tissue and we haven’t even removed a quarter,” the doctor pro-
tested as he prodded her brain for more dead spots.
“Wait, she’ll recover?” Jacob asked with eyes full of his former life.
“Aye. With some care and attention, certainly,” the physician assured him.
“Well, close her up and I’ll take—” a dot to the forehead, I completed his sentence in my
mind and shot him with my Shocker set at high.
Jacob convulsed on the floor until he rested unconscious.
“Dune, what the fuck!” Fen shouted and shook him, but he would be out for an hour.
“And as for you,” I pointed the barrel at the doctor, “I said all of it, or I’m leaving you
where I hid those five men.”
He recognized my reference and picked up his scalpel. “As you wish.”
We worked for another half an hour, carefully cutting through the corpus callosum to de-
tach the left hemisphere from the right. We removed the dead brain and gave ourselves a
moment to doublecheck every suture and cauterized vessel.
“Looks all right to you, eh?” I asked him.

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“Aye, but an adult her age…” he muttered sadly, shaking his head at the sight of her half-
empty head instead of finishing his thought.
“Fen, fetch the cooler,” I ordered while throwing away my blood-covered surgical gloves.
She picked up the foam container with ease and carried it to the table, where I opened it
with a scalpel and pulled out two nonconductive gloves made specifically for handling Neu-
roglass. After I put them on, I caught the curious stare of the doctor as I pulled out one of
Todd’s finest creations: a Left Gen-4 F-type hemisphere prosthetic.
“What in God’s name is that?” inquired the doctor.
“A piece of junk my father was using as a disco ball,” I answered as I checked its C-
shaped ridge and stem for any damage to the billions of brisling microscopic hairs protruding
from where it would mate with its living half.
The prosthetic also had two other areas hidden in bored holes where the hairs pointed
counter to entry so one could push in and lock the optic and auditory nerves in place, but,
since her ear was out of commission, I had a small microphone which would make a fine sub-
stitution.
“Anything you need me to do?” the doctor proffered morbidly.
His eyes were drawn to the pretty refractions of crystal, and it inspired his imagination
to wonder what results would occur from its installment.
“Just drill a hole behind her ear and thread the microphone,” I ordered, and sunk the
brain into the void.
The moment its whiskers contacted flesh, it fogged like it was touched by the ghostly
breath of her dead half.

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 ╣╪╛╚╦╥╡╥╢╩╕╡╣╒╤╙╒╨╓╓╣╫╒╪═╫╥╬╓╖

CHAPTER 17

“What did you do?” Mother asked Todd as their son laid in a hospital bed, encased in a
body cast.
“I made him better,” he promised, holding her shoulders with a gleam in his eye like he
had witnessed the birth of his second child.
“But what did you do?” Mother asked again, giving him a death stare backed with the full
weight of the WPA.
“Isabelle, come now, do not be upset,” he said softly while he hugged her. “You have no
idea what he’ll become.”
“Todd…” she murmured desperately, and she looked at me sadly from over his shoulder
to ask me what she should do.
She had wanted me to come with her for a “surprise,” and I hadn’t seen Todd for a long
while, so I agreed—but, when we saw Caleb, it turned into a premature funeral.
“The left hemisphere is just a computer, Bell. All it does is routinize the familiar. You know
that, don’t you?” He pulled away and kissed her cheek. “Caleb will be the same as he was,
you’ll see, but this time around he’ll learn all the tricks you wanted to teach him!”
He giggled, but finally noticed Mother’s depressed nature.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asked her with great concern.
Mother opened her mouth to deny her own preachings of transcending humanity, but she
couldn’t pronounce a single syllable before a blade punctured out from Caleb’s arm cast and
we heard him translate the tortured signals of neurons being forced to comply with Mediter-
ranean glass.

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I opened my eyes and let the echoes of my memory fade through the soft tissues of my
cerebrum. I was lying in an open cot, Fennec was draped over me asleep, the doctor was
carefully studying Rachel’s vitals, and Jacob was holding her hand with an ice bag wrapped to
his forehead. I embraced the fox and buried my face in her fur to forget, which woke her up.
“Dune?” she asked.
“Good morning,” I whispered.
“Good morning,” she grumbled.
“What’s up with Rachel?” I asked across the room.
“She’s breathing on her own now. She should be awake at any moment,” the doctor re-
plied curiously.
I rubbed my eyes and saw rings of color behind my eyelids. “Did you give her the LSD like
I asked?”
“That was LSD?” The doctor abruptly turned towards me and became furious. “Are you
mad?! She’s still recovering from the anesthetic!”
“It’ll help her brain adopt the transplant,” was all I could say.
Jacob put his face in his hands and probably wondered if he had killed his wife by overre-
acting to a minor stroke.
“You’re crazy,” the doctor accused me, poking his temple a few times, but quickly refo-
cused as we heard a groan from Rachel.
“Rachel?” Jacob held her hand once again and squeezed it.
“Jacob, my head…” she complained, lifting both her arms to investigate her bandages.
I could tell just by Jacob’s face that it was the happiest moment of his life.
“You can hear me?” he asked amidst a teary laugh.
“Yeah, I can hear you… just one ear, though… and barely,” Rachel slurred drunkenly.
“Let her see,” I ordered, and the doctor unwrapped the first layer of bandages to reveal
her eyes.
“You’re so… goofy looking,” she giggled, and experimented with placing her hand over one
eye versus the other.
Jacob brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. “Rachel, that’s not very nice.”
Fennec rolled off our cot and asked Rachel in both languages, “Who am I?”
“Fennec!” Rachel smiled lazily, repeating her answer in sign.
“And me?” I asked as I walked slowly into the light for her to see me clearly.
Her lovely smile turned upside down.

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“Little Donut?” she asked, and I swore on my life if I was in yet another dream, I would
admit to myself I was a scan and live out the rest of my eternal existence committing suicide
in Todd’s BCI.
“How do you know that name?” I asked her calmly.
“I… I…” she stuttered, but something else came online upon her face and forced her fea-
tures to comply with whatever program had been saved on the prosthetic.
Jacob lifted himself up and walked backwards with his hand over his mouth.
“No… What have you done?” he gasped, most likely to me.
“Message (4288). Date: November 22, 2048,” she regurgitated the metadata like a ma-
chine, but then there was a pause and the old Rachel bled through the program as she read
the recording. “Dune, it’s Walter—or ‘Father,’ if you still prefer to call me that. Anyway, I have
no idea when you will find this—or how, now that I think about it—but nonetheless, there is
something you must know, something that must remain a secret,” she sighed.
Rachel’s tears fell down Father’s smile: “I… I’m not coming back. I know it’s going to hurt
you… Little Donut… But I just wanted to say… I wanted to say I love you. I love you more than
anything else. But I fucked up… Father did a real oopsie this time around. Typical, isn’t it?”
“I found Jade—managed to get a sample from her before the tranquilizers wore off—and
she seemed to be doing okay, despite her condition, of course. When I was making a vaccine,
I… well, Dune, I spilt it. I fucking spilt it. Normally her illness isn’t contagious, but the concen-
trated sample—like her initial dose—is, and now I’m in the itching stage,” Rachel reported,
scratching at her abdomen.
“I can’t do it… I can’t fix it, Little Donut. I don’t know what I’ve done. This virus I made… its
more than its sum of parts, I can tell you that. Harder than unboiling an egg for damned sure.
So, I’m going to give up, Dune. I’m going to freeze myself in a giant fucking vitrifier! Maybe one
day you can fix me. I’ll be in the basement of our hotel, you hear?! You better come find me!
Kind of funny to think about really… it’ll be like I haven’t aged a day!” he laughed hard enough
she had to cough.
“Or maybe… maybe I’ll be frozen forever. I suppose we’ll see, eh? Anyway, I should go. I
love you, Dune! Father loves you,” Rachel delivered his final farewell, and instantaneously
switched back into a raving machine as she spat out instructions: “Terminating message.
Resetting values to point-five.”
Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and she went unconscious.
And then she broke out in seizures.
By the looks in the room, including mine, I knew we all wished she would just mercifully
die.

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╧╜╫═╤╫╦╙╢╔╕╣═╨╛╦╫╔╞╓╨╫╕╩╓┼╡╙╢

The City was a ghost town, covered in a foot of snow with no tracks to speak of.
It was midnight and I used the full moon to guide me through the wasteland, often step-
ping into debris that threatened to break my ankle below the untouched blanket of powder. I
shivered in the freezing dark, my gloves gripping my Stack as I breathed in its occasional
warmth. Behind me were the footsteps of Jacob, trudging along same as I.
After Rachel’s reset—lasting about ten minutes—she came to with a bad headache, but
other than that she was as normal as she could hope to be.
Jacob grilled her plenty on the memories of their past, which she remembered with feel-
ing but not in detail, and when it came to anything after her trip to the surface, she was utter-
ly confused and mixed up. Fennec then asked how she knew sign language, and I told her there
were plenty of functions—just like Father’s program—built into the prosthetic that she can
use if her living hemisphere learned to trigger them. Another odd side effect was her behav-
ior, at least in Jacob’s opinion. He said it was like she was a teenager again, like she had re-
gained her once youthful curiosity and vibrance. He was too happy for me to explain to him
why, so I didn’t, as it wasn’t the time for him to know he would have to raise her like a child for
a year before she relearned her necessary inhibitions—the ones Jacob considered neces-
sary, of course.
Whether he would attempt to restore her or reform her, I did not know.
I supposed such was the choice of those who resurrected the past.
The old decrepit hotel soon stood in front of me, its door busted off its hinges. I never
knew it had a basement because Father never showed it to me, and all our power and com-
munication cables came from the poles above ground.
“Damn, you live here?” Jacob stepped up from the road onto the sidewalk.
“Once upon a time,” I said to him as I reminisced about the mental decay I had suffered
there.
“No need to be so dramatic; it’s been less than a month,” he reminded me.
He walked up to the doorway and stepped inside.
“Feels like another life,” I told us both.
I followed him into the hotel expecting the feelings of home to wash over me, but it af-
forded no shelter from the cold as it used to. The interior had been completely destroyed,
most likely to find any clue as to where I went or what I did to convince their deity to smite
them. The floor was so cluttered, I worried I would never find the secret level below.

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“Any idea where this basement is?” Jacob asked as he jostled open a janitorial closet.
“No, but I suspect it might have something to do with the elevator,” I speculated, as I was
certain I had seen every square inch of the main floor.
“Can you power it up?” he asked.
“No need,” I said and pulled out a crowbar from my pack. He did the same.
“Well, let’s do this,” he prepped himself, took a breath, and we slotted them into the medi-
an crack of the elevator doors.
Once we had them pried apart, I was relieved to find the elevator was parked at an upper
floor, and even more so when the shaft revealed the depths below. I found a piece of broken
tile and dropped it into the abyss.
“Two seconds,” I reported after I heard it shatter.
“Not too bad,” Jacob remarked.
He turned on his flashlight and found the service ladder on the other side of the wall. He
stepped onto it to begin his descent, and I took one last look out the front door before follow-
ing him down. After thirty feet or so, the basement elevator doors came into view, and from
our position we were able to open the side closest to us. We stepped onto the secret floor and
began to silently rummage around, opening creaky doors and peering cautiously around cor-
ners with our weapons drawn. The basement level was noticeably warmer than the surface, a
small benefit to compensate for the odd taste of spore-like dust hovering idly in the air. We
didn’t find much besides ancient equipment covered in sheets, but at the very end of the hall
we found what we were searching for.
A ten-foot-tall cylinder stood in the middle of a bare concrete room the size of a chapel,
surrounded by a circular control panel littered with monitors and keyboards. We approached
the monolith, and when I tapped its shell, it held firm and resounded like it was solid all the
way through.
“Woah,” Jacob exclaimed like he had caught an animal stalking him.
I walked around the cylinder till he appeared and looked up to find numerous spear-like
limbs hanging out of the holes they punctured through their metal entrapment.
I was too late. Father had thawed out too soon, although it was hard to tell whether he
died a month or a decade ago. Besides the obvious, there was something disfigured about the
limbs like they had not fully developed. Such transformations required energy, but he had no
nutrients to sustain it.
“Damn,” was all I could say about the matter.
“I’m sorry,” Jacob offered his condolences.

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“He’s been dead to me for a long time, Jacob. Long time.” I washed the grisly picture from
my mind and headed for the exit. “Let’s go home, eh? I’m sure we’ve been missed.”

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CHAPTER 18

There were only a few days until the siege, and all the preparations had been completed.
Maps had been drawn, routes were cleared, and multiple redundant strategies devised. The
atmosphere of the Great Hall was filled with hopeful anticipation, but out in the Tunnels, it
seemed the news had not penetrated its dark immortal passages.
In its endless purgatory, everything was ambiguous.
In the Heaven above, every time was war.
And in the Hell below, everyone was forgiven.
I contemplated a ceasefire or perhaps some kind of treaty to keep this balance where I
could engage in all three for the rest of my life, but just as my daughter would be birthed from
the bubble, so would they. I knew my priorities, and my child was adhering to the typical pat-
terns of fetal development. The empty picture of her beautiful face hung on my retinas every
time I moseyed back to Level Five. It was difficult to suppress my premature sense of victory,
but I felt I deserved it.
I created a world, and I created the people who would soon inherit it.
“Isaiah forty-one fourteen!” I shouted at the proper turn.
“Isaiah forty-one fourteen!” replied Trevor the scout.
I approached the ramp and found him sitting in his chair leaning back on two legs, his rifle
cradled in his lap. He was 25 years old and new to the job, but he had a lot to say.
“See anything spooky out there?” he asked me.
“No, Trevor,” I answered, and handed him my Stack so he could take a puff.
He nearly coughed up a lung as usual, but once the kick to his throat resolved itself, he
relaxed his posture.

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“What’s in this thing?” he wondered, smiling stupidly.

“Flavored wax wafers.” I took the Stack from him and opened its body to reveal the
spring-loaded magazine of flat pellets. “That’s why it’s called a ‘Stack.’”
“That’s pretty neat,” he said, but his eyes glazed over from the boring subject.
“Aye.” I snapped its cover back on. “How’s the job treating you?”
“I swear I hear shit out there, Dune,” he professed with the tortured smile of a guy trying
his best to appear in control. “Things run around in the corner of my eyes.”
“Just turn your light off and wear earplugs,” I told him. “You’ll know if something’s coming
after you by the movement of air on your face.”
“Oh, fuck off,” he snickered.
“How’s the wife?” I asked with interest.
“She enjoyed our sushi date yesterday at the pool. I can’t thank you enough for letting us
in on a Sunday,” Trevor replied happily, but his eyes wandered to the floor when I didn’t re-
spond. “Think I should propose before the war or after?”
“Before,” I answered quickly. “It’ll give you both some extra motivation to win, if she says
yes.”
“She’ll say yes,” he encouraged himself. “How’s your wife?”
“Same three holes, same three noises,” I replied and nonchalantly puffed my Stack.
“Man, that’s gross,” Trevor giggled.
“Women are gross,” I lectured him. “Obnoxious little bleeding yogurt gremlins, all of
them.”
“What?” he squeaked, “Yogurt?”
“Yeah, the bacteria in yogurt—” would have finished my statement, but he plugged his
ears.
“Just get out of here, Dune,” he sarcastically scolded me and pointed down the ramp.
“Okay, okay,” I surrendered with my hands up and kept moving.
The next familiar face I saw was waiting for me outside the double doors of the infirmary
with two cups of coffee resting dangerously on the cliff railing.
“Morning, Master,” the fox yawned and stretched, her clawed toes spreading over the
smooth cement.
“Morning, Fen. Little early for you to be out of your kennel, eh?” I teased.
“Ray and I decided we had enough people to start another sign language group to teach in
the mornings, and today is our first day with them,” she said, grabbing the coffees and hand-
ing me one.
“Ray?” I asked.

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“Rachel, sorry,” she clarified, took a sip, and walked with me around the perimeter. “The
best part about it is, anyone who isn’t deaf has to pay up,” she said, rubbing the tips of her
fingers together greedily.
“Careful. If you make too much money, we’re going to have to pay rent!” I chuckled.
“If it wasn’t for the war, you’d be out of a job,” Fen cautioned me while she poked at my
side. “Speaking of which, what kind of business are you going to start after it’s all over?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll start a school.”
“If you actually knew anything worth knowing, I’d agree,” she said sincerely, and my ego
was shaken.
“I know things,” I defended myself.
“You know things no person should know, because you grew up in a place no one should
grow up in,” she explained. “Once NatOrg wins, your world will be gone and all the things you
learned will no longer be useful. Maybe you could teach electrical engineering, but I doubt you
could resist rambling to the next generation like you did with our old class. I think you need
another profession.”
I thought about it and realized she was right. My extremism was problematic in any
peaceful culture and only useful to those without a home. Even if I wanted to continue my
efforts to indoctrinate, I had no reason to. My old students would do that for me by breeding.
“I could start a construction business and rebuild the City’s infrastructure,” I suggested.
“That sounds like a good idea with lots of money in it,” gargled the gremlin, rubbing her
thumb and fingers together again mischievously.
She made me smile, and when she laughed, I felt our peculiar friendship again.
But the moment didn’t last, because I saw Kaylin crying in a backwards alley to my left.
Fennec looked around me when I stopped, and she gripped my arm at the sight of him.
His face was bruised, and he was huddled up in the far corner where he thought nobody
would notice him.
“Cole?” Fennec asked me.
“I got this, Fen,” I dodged her question.
“That motherfucker,” she cursed the rapist.
“I said, I got this,” I reiterated, and patted her head to calm her down. “We’ll meet up after
your class.”
“Alright, Dune,” she accepted mournfully and let go of my arm. “Poor kid,” she added be-
fore she walked off towards the stairs.
I entered the alley and slowly approached the teenager. He looked up for a moment, but
stared back at the floor numbly, lost in his own head. I sat down in the opposing corner and

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tapped his shoe, which he retracted by folding his knees into his chest. He had a black eye and
winced every time he had to breathe.
“How long have you been out here?” I asked him.
“Since midnight,” he said as he shivered.
“Was it Cole?” I wondered and imagined a scenario where the psychopath realized his fa-
vorite toy was not what he thought.
“Yeah… yeah, it was Cole,” Kaylin admitted, his voice filled with hateful resentment.
“What happened?” I asked neutrally.
“I asked him if he loved me, and he couldn’t say it. We got into a fight and then he raped
me,” he recounted, his eyes tearful but malicious, for he blamed me. “That’s what happened,
Dune.”
“Why didn’t you scream?” I further interrogated him.
For a moment, I thought he was going to scream at me, but exhaustion, or maybe his
helpless confusion, must had told him it wasn’t worth it, because his vengeful expression
dissipated.
“I thought he’d kill me,” he confessed. “When he did let me go, I went for a walk to clear
my head.”
“Because you think your relationship might be salvageable,” I completed his thought.
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself,” he confirmed.
“It is,” I stated simply.
“How?” he asked.
“Sit with me,” I invited him, and moved over to offer him my corner so he could be as
trapped as he felt.
“Okay,” he obliged, crawled over, and wedged himself between me and the wall.
I draped my arm around his petite shoulders and further suffocated his personal space.
His eyes were green as emeralds, especially the one contrasted with dark bruising. He
really was extraordinarily pretty.
I stared back at him with a hollow expression. “Do you still love him?”
“I sure fucking did,” he snapped.
“No, you didn’t,” I countered calmly.
“Yes, I really did,” he repeated, bearing a broken smile. “You saw us every day, how can
you even say that?”
“You knew he was a psycho from the beginning, so if you don’t love him now, then you
never did,” I reasoned.

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“I thought you fixed him!” Kaylin hissed angrily, but his harsh tone quickly softened, “And
Cole’s not what everyone says he is—at least on his good days.”
“I didn’t fix him, you idiot, you did,” I chuckled.
“Then why did he do this to me?!” he cried as he prodded his swollen cheek. “Sometimes I
feel like he wants to torture me, but other times I feel like he’s the only one who understands
me. I just want the kind of love you and the others have.”
“We don’t have the same kind of love, Kaylin,” I retorted.
“You say that, but you do. I see the way you look at each other—work together.” He tilted
his head up so I could see his desire. “It’s like you all know you’re going to be buried in the
same grave.”
“No,” I corrected him, “I mean we—as in me and you.”
“You of all people,” he scoffed, “telling me I’m confused. I know how I feel, Dune.”
“I know, Kaylin. I was a lot like you when I was your age. That’s why I encouraged it,” I dis-
closed to him, then took my Stack out and fired it up.
“Did you know this would happen?” he asked condemningly.
The betrayal in his voice disturbed me, so I force fed him the Stack until hot vapor shot
from his nostrils.
“Aye, I knew,” I told him, letting him struggle a little more before I pulled it out of his lips
to let him gag on his scorched throat.
“And I know what’s going to happen. You ready? You have ten years to make up your mind,
because you’re not always going to look as appetizing as you do, so here are your options,” I
educated the boy.
He was squirming out from under my arm, so I strengthened my grip on him to keep him
subdued. He attempted to scream, but his vocal cords were too scalded for vocalization.
“There are four of them. Are you listening, Kaylin? Leave Cole, and he will either hunt you
down or leave you to live out your days as a whore awaiting exile. Stay with Cole, and he will
either kill you himself because you’re a puppet of the people he despises or trade you in for a
real bitch when your youthful years are all spent,” I strained my words as he coughed and
struggled against me to escape.
“You will die in all of them but one. This world doesn’t fucking accept you—neither on the
surface nor under it—but Cole will if you would only open your fucking eyes, Kaylin. This is
what you’re going to do,” I instructed him, putting him in a choke hold to cut off his hoarse
cries for help.
“You’re going to wake up in Cole’s bed and you’re going to accept his damned apology, af-
ter which you will never bring up the subject of growing old in love again. You understand?” I

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asked him, applied more pressure, and cut off his blood supply as he raked my skin with his
nails.
“Just enjoy it for Christ’s sake!” I pleaded with him, “And pray to God he finds some girl to
replace you with. In ten years, you’ll be so sick of being a girl lusted after by men who don’t
give a shit about you, you’ll bite the bullet and turn lesbian, or straight—however you want to
justify it.”
I felt him weaken and guessed he only had a few seconds of consciousness left.
“You’ll thank me when you see your emerald eyes truly love you back,” I whispered into
his ear, and he finally went limp.
I gave him another second before releasing him, and then I wiped his tears and saliva off
my arm with his shirt. I picked up the poor lad, slung him over my shoulder, and hobbled out of
the alley on my old sleeping legs. Blood banished the numb tingly sensations as I quickly made
way for the apartment, avoiding weird looks as I went. No one questioned me until I opened
the front door.
Chris dropped his large wooden stirring spoon in shock. “Holy shit! Is Kaylin okay?”
He was cooking something with Miriam in the kitchen and it smelled fantastic. They were
planning to open a restaurant as part of Sam’s advice for everyone to start a business.
“He got a little too drunk last night and fell down the stairs, that’s all,” I laughed away his
concern before asking, “Seen Cole?”
“Just in his room,” Chris responded blankly.
I walked through the male wing door—the sign of which had since been removed—and
took Kaylin up the stairs. Cole’s door had so many stickers on it there wasn’t a single spot of
the underlying paint shining through. I twisted the handle and threw open the squeaky metal
slab. Cole was watching a children’s cartoon, and I caught a glimpse of his smile before he
jumped and turned off the TV to cover up his embarrassing hobby. He was scared stiff, but
most of all suspicious.
I threw his boyfriend on his bed and the kid began to snore.
“I reprogrammed your piece of fuck-meat,” I reported. “Just apologize for hitting him and
he won’t bring it up again.”
“Um,” Cole tried to form a defense, but I didn’t want to hear another word from his
mouth.
I reached for the doorknob to make my exit.
“Wait, that’s it?!” he protested desperately.
“Aye, that’s really it,” I told him with certainty.

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I pulled the door behind me but remembered something before I shut it. I leaned in and
Cole looked rather shameful. “Oh, one more thing! He might not be able to talk for a few days,
so be patient with him.”
“Oh… Okay,” Cole said, like I had given him a puppy he didn’t want.
I shut the door and went downstairs to see what delicious composition Chris and Miriam
were cooking.

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CHAPTER 19

The battle was about to begin. Jacob dual wielded his sabers and I stood opposite of him
on the field with my double-bladed sword. I spun the sword once and waited for the signal to
siege.
Soccer was a good enough sport for kids and good exercise too, but like all sports it was
alienating to mankind’s physical craving to prove himself. Teamwork was only possible when a
team could be formed, and every team needed a leader to establish and organize it, therefore
every man must be tried against his fellow man individually. The sword and the chess board
were similar instruments to detect strategic superiority, complete with move sets, counter
positions, and sacrifices to achieve victory. Sports like soccer could be said to have these
qualities as well, but only for the role of coaches, who visualize the players as pieces; hence
the distinction between man proving himself by his own primitive efforts versus man proving
himself by utilizing an external force he controls.
My friends and many new faces stood on the sidelines with anticipation—most holding
their own crafted weapons, some just there to watch the entertainment. Fennec, with her
small dagger, sat at Joe’s feet, and he—that towering figure—had a battle-ax taller than I
resting upon his shoulder. None of them had fought yet because Sam, with his simple sword
and shield, wanted to open the event with Jacob and I dueling to the death.
“You will get no mercy from me, Jacob,” I warned him.
“Your weapon is a disgrace on the battlefield,” he taunted me as he pointed one of his sa-
bers at my face.
“Alright, go!” Sam shouted, and we began to circle each other.
“What kind of coward has his wife make him his weapon?” I asked the audience.

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I saw Fen make signs to Jacob’s wife standing on the other side of the ring.
“Beat his ass, Jacob!” Rachel shouted as she moved through the cheering crowd to find a
spot next to Fen.
“For the queen!” Jacob bellowed and charged me with a double downswing, which I
blocked with a spinning step back.
I switched my grip on the handle and swung the bottom blade to connect with the side of
his ribs, but he batted away my attack, the momentum of which I used to hasten my down-
swing with the upper blade to connect with his shoulder. He dodged the move, stepped for-
ward as my blade carried itself to the ground, and swung his sabers in a scissor motion at my
neck.
I narrowly escaped by ducking.
The sound of pipe, foam, and tape clashing together echoed around the Great Hall as we
hacked away at one another—every attempt to stab, batter, or maim the opponent failing
spectacularly. The crowd cheered us on until we were struggling to walk, our muscles begging
for rest, but I saw an opening and howled valiantly as I spun and cut the air with all the
strength I had left.
Jacob saw the maneuver and parried me with one blade. They intersected at their cen-
ters of gravity, causing the plastic pipe in my upper blade to snap in half before I could force
it through his defense. In my moment of hesitation, he stabbed my chest with his other saber,
and I collapsed to the ground.
“Victory!” Jacob proclaimed to the crowd as he got down on his knees and pumped his
fists into the air.
The crowd applauded and cheered for our spectacle, and he absorbed his deserved
amount of praise before coming to me and offering his hand to pull me up. I accepted with a
smile and arose from the field.
“That was awesome,” I said to him in the privacy of roars.
“Aye, but I’m going to need to sit down,” he chuckled, and we went to our mates to enjoy
some back massages as the energy died down.
“Alright, alright!” Sam shouted, taking back the floor. “Before we get into the games, let’s
start with a free-for-all! Everyone who wants to play, grab your weapon and have at it until
there’s only one man standing!”
Everyone rushed past us into the middle and spread out naturally as they brutally
smacked one another.
The blade of Kaylin’s scythe, identical to Cole’s, shot out from somewhere like a boomer-
ang and knocked Fen upside the head.

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“Ow! What the hell?” she yelped as she rubbed her scalp, and a bruised Kaylin sprinted
over to fetch it.
“I’m so sorry!” he hoarsely apologized and checked her for damage, but the plastic cutout
had been well insulated with the foam of swimming appliances.
“Kaylin, I’m fine.” Fen handed the piece to him. “Get back out there!”
“Aye!” he complied and ran back into the fray.
“Oh no, look at Mary!” Jacob laughed and pointed so Rachel could see their daughter
sneaking behind an unsuspecting Chris, whose weapon of choice was a broom stick stuffed
into a swimming noodle.
She caved in his knees with one swing from her heavily padded baseball bat.
I looked around for Miriam to see her reaction, and there she was on the sidelines gig-
gling as her emasculated thief limped to her side. Behind them was Pulp, and the shopkeeper
woman sat in a lawn chair outside to witness all the fun.
“Jacob?” I called to him.
“Aye,” he answered.
“Who’s that woman over there?” I asked, pointing to her briefly.
“That’s Sister Staples,” he informed me. “Haven’t you met her?”
I squinted from my suspicions. “We have, but I never got her name. There’s something
strange about her and that place.”
Jacob looked at me curiously. “How so?”
“Well, there’s a wall hiding where the old radio should be,” I mentioned, and checked his
expression, but he didn’t have one.
“The old radio?” he queried honestly.
I suddenly became aware that the reality I lived in seconds ago no longer existed.
“Aye, the old radio. The one the US used to negotiate with the surface?” I asked him hope-
fully, but he shook his head, and his eyes were perturbed about my nervousness.
“No, I’ve never heard about such a device,” Jacob said. “Maybe the techies—”
“Let’s go see for ourselves, eh?” I interrupted him and lifted myself up.
“Sure!” Jacob matched me, and we walked to Pulp.
I noticed we had left our women behind, as they did not follow, but perhaps it was for the
best.
“I know it’s in there, or at least the wiring for it,” I stressed to him. “I’ll let you do the talk-
ing, aye?”
“Aye, but if she says no, we can’t just barge in there,” he warned me.
“We go to war tomorrow,” I reminded him sternly, “make a damned exception.”

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“Hello, Sister Staples!” Jacob greeted the old woman. “Enjoying the games?”
“Best thing I’ve seen in a good while! Absolutely lovely,” she replied.
“Well good!” he agreed awkwardly. “Listen, we actually have a question for you. Do you
remember an old radio in the back of your shop?”
Sister Staples hesitated briefly and looked at me like I should recognize her somehow.
“No, sir. I’ve never seen anything like that,” she pledged her innocence.
“Maybe they sealed it up on purpose before you moved in,” I speculated, “may we take a
look?”
“Oh, I’m dearly sorry but I’ve already closed shop,” she excused herself, and something
about her response tipped off Jacob as much as I.
“Sister, I insist,” Jacob flashed the badge hidden in his pocket and promptly put it back.
Her demeanor became serious and unfriendly.
“Jacob, just for that threat, you’re going to need a warrant,” she snarled icily.
“Open the door, or we’re kicking it down,” he promised with matching tone.
“The Patriarchs will hear about this,” she promised venomously, but dragged herself out
of her chair and slotted in her keys.
We walked under the purple lights and through another door, which led into her normally
lit kitchen area. We followed her deeper through another door where her storage room was.
Other than boxes of seeds and spare blenders, there were shelves of beakers and tables full
of chemistry equipment. I imagined the floor plan and determined the storage room did go as
far back as it should, but then realized it was the east wall that jutted out too far. The north-
east corner, about a sixteenth of the total area, was segregated from the rest of the shop,
and there was a large metal cabinet big enough to cover where an entrance could be.
“What’s all this for?” I asked her.
“No,” she refused angrily, “you came in for an ‘old radio’ and there isn’t one, so get out.”
I pointed towards the cabinet. “Not until you open that.”
“It’s locked, and you can’t make me,” she said, folding her arms in defiance.
I stared long and hard at her.
She reminded me of Mother, which made my blood boil, so I gripped the top of the cabi-
net’s chassis and started to pull.
“Hey! You have no idea what’s in there!” she yelled.
“I don’t care,” I muttered, and kept pulling.
As the large cabinet tilted on its edge, I felt nothing sliding around inside.
“HEY!” Sister Staples shouted her frustration and pleaded with Jacob, “there’s all sorts
of chemicals in there, stop him!”

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“Then why are you still here?” I asked calmly.

When gravity could do the rest of the work, I got out of the way and let it crash to the
floor. The back of it was hollow and there was a door in the space it once had been.
The woman struggled to maintain her dignity.
“What’s in there, Sister Staples?” asked Officer Hurst.
Before she could fabricate another lie, the Pink Flamingo walked into the room and sur-
veyed the situation. He took no time to notice all the tubes and burners sitting on the table.
“Saw you two come in and curiosity got the best of me,” the Patriarch said apologetically.
“Jefferey!” the old woman called his name like he was the messiah. “Help me! They forced
their way in without a warrant! This is unacceptable!”
“You what?” Jefferey eyed Jacob with deadly intent.
“Patriarch, we had good suspicion she was hiding something, and she denied this door
even existed,” Jacob reported, gesturing to the military hazmat graded door, which was com-
plete with a keypad and an optical retina scanner.
“AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO KNOW ABOUT IT!!!” Jefferey roared at the insurgent, and Ja-
cob’s body language became submissive because he believed him.
But the puzzle was putting itself together in my mind and I had no doubt something was
rotten in the Patriarchy.
Staples was the last name of the Patriarch Joe axed to death, a righteous man who was
then exposed to be a glutton and a brute. This woman was his widow, and she grew genetically
modified fruit similar to those I remembered from the surface. Those fruits glowed under the
ultraviolet rays to advertise their novelty, but that wasn’t their purpose. They were relatively
harmless in small doses, so that was what her little distillery was for. The WPA got rid of this
method in the 40s as they could make their compounds synthetically. Sister Staples didn’t
have the means to make the real drug, but could make its prototype from the fruit.
The experimental fruit had only one purpose: treatment.
That’s why her dead husband lost his mind.
That’s why Jefferey was losing his mind.
So, I took Jacob’s six-shooter from his holster and aimed it at the Pink Flamingo.
“Don’t you dare fucking move, Patriarch Jefferey,” I warned him as I cocked the hammer.
He put his hands up.
“You idiot, you just lost all of your precious students and your life,” he promised, feigning
his disappointment to demoralize me.
“Jacob, take his gun,” I commanded him.
“If you do, it’ll be your life as well,” the Patriarch threatened, but Jacob took it anyway.

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“Sister, open the door or I shoot him,” I stipulated as I numbed my mind.

“You wouldn’t,” she challenged me, so I squeezed the trigger.
The Patriarch cried out and fell from a bullet in his thigh.
“Open the door,” I repeated.
“Oh my God, you shot him!” she gasped, so I shot him in the abdomen.
“Please! Molly!” Jefferey begged her as I set my sights on his forehead.
“Open the door,” I ordered absently.
“This isn’t the way!” she screamed, so I pulled the trigger and pieces of Jefferey’s brain
collected on the tile.
“Jacob, go tell Fennec to fetch my Laserlite. We’ll burn through the door,” I decided, and
gazed into his eyes.
He couldn’t handle the void he saw there, let alone feel betrayed about how I had hidden
the laser weapon from him.
“God damnit, Dune. I’ll kill you myself before I get exiled,” he promised before running out
of the room.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God…” the old woman rambled as her hands shook.
“Open the door,” was all I could say to her.
“Dune, you’ve become a monster,” she spat, implying she had known me before—but I
didn’t buy it, like everything else she had said.
“Open the door,” I whispered my incantation.
Her fearful face flipped upside down in an instant. “What has become of you, Little Do-
nut?” she jeered.
She knew me after all.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked, cocking the hammer.
“Want to find out?” she tempted me.
“Yes,” I answered, and I slowly followed her with Jacob’s six-shooter as she approached
the door.
She pushed in a series of buttons and stuck her eye over the scanner. The door unlocked
noisily, and she pulled it open to reveal a small room with wires strewn everywhere, display
monitors with audio signals listed by room number, and a large desk with the massive mon-
strosity that was the old radio built into it. It was a machine just as complex as a digital com-
puter, but completely analog to prevent any tampering from hackers. It was connected to an
old tube television displaying the green text of telegrams with the surface.
Above the old radio were the screens of streaming signal, all bouncing up and down as
people spoke in their private places. I noticed Conference Room 306 had its own screen,

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which would have made me vomit if adrenaline hadn’t frozen the acid in my stomach. On the
opposite wall, there was a large corkboard of pictures with pins and string carefully docu-
menting everything I had ever done within the confines of the Great Hall.
“We’ve been keeping a close eye on you, Dune,” she said, gripping the side of the table to
press something under it, “and you’ve pleasantly surprised us every step of the way.”
She spun the rolling chair to its proper position and sat down casually.
I tilted my head like a lizard. “What did you just do?”
“I sat down?” she lied.
The woman was annoyed I didn’t bite her story’s hook, so I shot open one of her kneecaps.
I counted 2 bullets left as she screamed.
“What did you do?” I asked her again.
“Nothing!” she whimpered as her brain panicked, pulling her limbs and face around in odd
contortions like it was having a seizure.
With one hand she pulled the keyboard in front of her, and with the other she held up her
palm to me.
“I didn’t do anything!” she claimed as one of her eyes floated off to look at the green text.
I shot the disturbing creature’s ribcage.
“What are you doing?” I asked it again, but it did not answer as one half of it struggled to
drag around its already dead half.
The thing reached for the enter key, so I put a bullet through its skull to stop it. Its
planned action went through anyway, slamming the keyboard before admitting to death. Its
head pivoted towards me with two different expressions on its face, one smiling and one ter-
rified. The entry wound below drained blood, while the exit wound on top had shards of glass
protruding out of it.
It was Todd’s handiwork.
“Dune!” I heard Fennec call out to me, and soon enough she entered the room with the
Laserlite in hand and Jacob behind her. She saw the body and went to hurl in the corner.
Jacob looked like he wanted to ask a question, but between the records on the walls, the
shattered Neuroglass coming out of Sister Staples, and the old radio, he couldn’t think of what
to ask about first.
“Read the green text,” I told him as I handed him his empty gun.
He cautiously took it and stepped around the body to get closer.
“‘Little Donut knows everything. Plan failed. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Do it now,’” he read
off the screen, his eyes flicking back and forth across the lines to comprehend how severe
the threat was. “Do what now?”

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“Aim every laser cannon you got at the four ports of Level Three. Evaporate anything that
moves,” I advised him. He remained motionlessly petrified, so I slapped his face. “Listen to me,
Jacob. If anything gets past Level Three, we have no chance of containing their forces in Level
Four.”
Jacob woke up and sprinted out without a word. Fennec spat the last of her gastric acid
into her puke pile and stumbled out of the room. I thought about sending a message to spite
whoever was on the other side, but I had no intentions to give Mother the satisfaction. I fol-
lowed the yellow tail back onto the field, where kids were still playing with toy swords—
oblivious to the disaster that undoubtedly would arrive by nightfall.
“Dune, what the fuck is going on?” Fen asked me, but I was too busy scanning the area.
I caught sight of Trevor defending himself with a basic sword against Sam’s sword and
shield combo.
“Come on, Fen,” I beckoned her, and we sprinted to Trevor. I called his name, but I
couldn’t hear myself among the battle cries.
“HEY!!!” I screamed at him as I marched forward, and he collapsed on the ground in sheer
fright.
I could hear a pin drop in the silence I had created.
“W-what do you want?” Trevor squeaked.
“We have work to do, scout.” I offered my hand and pulled him up. “Where is your radio?”
“In m-my apartment,” he stuttered.
“Lead us there,” I ordered, shoved him along, and ran after him.
“Shit, are we in trouble?” Trevor asked over his shoulder.
“Class! Come with me!” I barked without looking back.

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CHAPTER 20

So, there we were, huddled around a small handheld radio in the commons of our apart-
ment, rivetted to the static.
There were eight teams—one for each laser cannon—migrating the weaponry along dif-
ferent routes to ensure at least one reached each of the ports connecting Level Four to Level
Three. Each team consisted of ten people: four to pull the laser, two to push its generator, two
to clear a path, one to fire the laser, and one to unwind a spool of fiber leading back to the
Great Hall’s communications array.
“Status report,” Jacob’s fuzzy voice came through the device.
He was taking point on this project, but he was still in Level Five simultaneously directing
an effort to barricade the Great Hall. He called for a status report every 10 minutes.
It had been an hour already.
“Team one is halfway through Level Four, no holdups,” reported a woman.
“Team two has fixed the broken transport wheel and we have just passed Level Five,” re-
ported a man.
“Team three is nearing Level Three, no sign of enemies,” reported a woman.
“Team four is still backtracking from the flooded tunnel, and we have decided to take
team three’s route,” reported a woman.
“Team three, after you have positioned yourselves, send your pullers to help team four.
Do you copy?” Jacob ordered.
“Aye, Captain,” acknowledged the woman of team three.
“Team five is on standby in Level Four. Apparently, waste management has not been
dumping garbage in the designated locations. Will take time to dig through,” reported a man.

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“Team six is in the same predicament. It appears to be backed up as far as we can see.
Any advice?” reported a woman.
“Keep digging,” Jacob ordered callously.
“Aye, Captain,” huffed both of the team’s communicators.
I had an idea and pressed the talk button.
“Team five and six, incinerate the trash with the laser,” I recommended.
“Negative, the noxious gas will suffocate us,” refused the man of team five.
“Jacob, how many diving suits are at the pool?” I asked.
“Way ahead of you, Dune. Teams five and six standby, you’ll get the suits shortly,” Jacob
promised.
“Aye, Captain,” they confirmed in unison.
“Team seven is midway through Level Four,” reported a woman.
“Team eight is nearing destination,” reported a man.
“Godspeed,” Jacob declared, and we were once again left with static.
“You really think the WPA could get through Level Three?” Trevor asked.
“Even you people can get through Level Three,” I reminded him.
“We only know of one way, and even that is a secret only shared between the Patriarchs
and the people they trust,” he explained hopefully.
I puffed my Stack before telling him the bad news.
“When we first went to the surface to destroy GC, I set out paths of string connecting the
four pairs of ports in Level Three—which I pulled out the day after. Now, consciously, nobody
could possibly remember the paths the strings took—but subconsciously, the navigation could
be extracted. Plenty of women were lost that day, enough I fear some were caught alive,” I
hypothesized morosely, and infected Trevor with my fatalism. “Do not underestimate the WPA.
The word ‘restraint’ has not been in their dictionary since 2060.”
That was not to mention the spy who treated its Patriarch husband, a man who likely
knew of the common route Trevor spoke of.
“I’ve seen the Level Three ports, and they appear to have doors built under them,” Chris
thought out loud.
“Aye, but the hydraulics running them are shot. They were built into the foundation, so we
can’t repair them,” I said with noticeable pessimism.
“So, we just sit and wait on our asses?” questioned the prophet.
“Aye, Sam,” I confirmed, “we have to let our plan unfold.”
“There has to be something we can—” Sam complained, but was cut off by the radio.
“Team five is suited up. Preparing the laser,” reported the man.

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“Position the laser as far away as possible, as well as yourselves. Set the laser to low,” I
responded.
“Aye, will do,” he confirmed, and nobody spoke for five minutes.
“Status report?” Jacob’s voice crackled.
“Team one nearing destination,” reported their comms woman.
“Team two halfway through Level Four,” reported their comms man.
“Team three is positioned and primed for fire,” reported their comms woman.
“Team four is nearing destination,” reported their comms woman.
“Team five is blazing a trail. We can’t see anything in the smoke, but we’re making pro-
gress,” reported their comms man.
“Team six is also making progress through the trash pile,” reported their comms woman.
“Team seven is nearing destination,” reported their comms woman.
“Team eight parked and ready!” reported their comms man.
“Very good, that’s two ports covered,” Jacob commended their effort, “as for the rest of
you, hurry up!”
“Aye, Captain!” confirmed multiple voices.
“As for us in the Great Hall, our barricades are coming along nicely. Godspeed,” Jacob
disclosed, and we were again left with static.
“Fuck this,” Sam muttered, got up, and headed towards the apartment door.
“Where are you going?” I asked him.
“To help Jacob,” he responded. “Sure beats sitting around in this depressing place.”
Sam opened the door and left.
“I’d better go too,” Joe sighed and lifted himself to join his friend.
“Alright.” Chris left his spot and motioned to the rest of us. “Anybody else?”
“I guess,” Cole groaned and took his place beside them, “Just the real men, eh?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Kaylin giggled, and stood just to punch Cole’s arm.
The women looked at each other and shrugged as they signed up for war.
“Do not die,” I ordered them.
“We won’t,” Joe promised, and with that they all left.
All who remained was me, Fen, and Trevor, anxiously waiting around the white noise ma-
chine.
It popped back to life.
“Team one is seeing movement,” whispered their comms woman.
“Position?” Jacob demanded.
“Only a few turns from our port,” she replied.

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Chills ran down my spine.

“Shoot it,” I ordered.
“Negative, one of the pulling crew is blocking the laser. He thinks it’s his wife,” she re-
ported, and let her microphone play so we could hear their dialogue.
“Sarah?” spoke a man. “Sarah, come here baby, it’s me!”
“Jack, get out of the way!” ordered another man.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot her!” Jack pleaded.
“Sarah’s his wife. She went missing on the surface,” Trevor told me.
My skin crawled.
“Hey, woman!” I shouted into the radio. “Shoot through him! Do it!”
“But… it really is her,” the comms woman said. “He’s getting closer to her… wait, that
can’t be right.”
“What can’t be right?” Jacob asked.
“Shoot it for fuck’s sake!” I begged her desperately.
“She’s a lot taller than I remember,” she described the ghost.
I wanted to smash the radio to pieces.
“Amelia, I need you to tell them to fire that laser. That’s an order,” Jacob commanded.
“Vaporize them both, Jacob’s orders,” Amelia told somebody.
“But—” the operator tried to refuse, but a horrified scream rang out somewhere in the
distance.
“Oh my God… She took his arm off,” Amelia narrated. “Jesus Christ, just pull the trigger,
Henry!”
“Setting to maximum. God, forgive me,” Henry the operator prayed, and then we were
subjected to a distorted screeching signal and an earthquake as the laser turned the target
and the tunnel walls behind it into gas.
It lasted for a full five seconds, and I worried they had all been killed by the explosion.
“Team one, what’s your status,” Jacob broke through the residual interference.
There was no response, so he asked the same question again. On the third try, the woman
responded.
“Team one is okay. The shock wave knocked us on our asses, but nobody’s hurt. Target
was eliminated, along with Jack,” she reported.
Trevor let out the breath he had been holding.
“Thank God. Now get that laser positioned!” Jacob ordered.
“On it!” she confirmed and cut off her radio.
“Captain, team two has eyes on what team one described,” their comms man reported.

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“Shoot it, soldier,” Jacob barked.

“We can’t, captain,” he explained in low tones. “The woman is behind us, and our tunnel is
too narrow to turn the cannon around.”
“They’re already here,” I muttered without pushing the talk button.
“What is she?” Fennec asked.
“Not sure yet,” I told her.
“Keep your rifles trained on her and keep moving until you find a spot to turn around,”
Jacob ordered.
“Aye, captain,” the comms man confirmed, and left his radio on for his own comfort.
I could hear the transport wheels squeak and their boots slide on the ground as they
pushed the laser along.
“She’s keeping a constant distance of around thirty feet,” he whispered into his micro-
phone.
“Tim, look,” another man nearby said to him.
“There’s… another one ahead of us,” Tim whispered.
I pressed the radio button to give instructions.
“Set the laser to 50% and fire. Focus your rifle power on the one behind you just in case,
but don’t shoot it unless provoked,” I whispered back to him.
“Did you hear him?” Tim asked his team.
I heard no response, but again we were subjected to the screeching noise—although
there was no quake to accompany it this time.
When the screeching stopped, gunfire took its place.
“…charging at us! She’s… she’s upside down!” Tim shouted in terror, and I could barely
hear him over the guns.
“She hid her face! And… and… I don’t see her anymore. I think she ran away,” he specu-
lated, and the bullets stopped flying.
“What about the one in front?” Jacob asked.
“Can’t see her either, but there’s a cloud of smoke where she was. Smells awful too,” he
coughed.
“Continue your mission, soldier. Godspeed,” Jacob declared.
“Aye—” but before he could use Jacob’s proper title, he was spooked. “Did you hear
that?” he asked one of his comrades, and I heard the scraping of bone against concrete. “I
can’t tell how far away it is. Everyone, shine your light!”
“It’s like the shadows are moving,” said the man near Tim, but immediately after, there
was the sound of a ribcage being pried open like an oyster.

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The gargling of blood in Tim’s throat and the air rushing over the microphone could be
heard from our speaker as he was taken by something.
“IT’S THE FACE!!!” was somebody’s last words before the muffled sounds of gunshots and
teeth grinding Tim’s body into digestible pulp occupied the broadcast.
His radio malfunctioned a few agonizing moments later.
Trevor’s eyes were popping out of his skull, Fennec had her claws buried under my skin,
and I was catatonic from an overdose of futile calculations.
The WPA had copied the DNA of the Face I had killed and gave them the appearance of
their enemy’s dead loved ones. This moment was exactly what the WPA was waiting for. They
knew of our threat and our day of mobilization, and they planned their counterattack accord-
ingly, hoping their abominations would snuff us out in the upper levels once Sister Staples
gave the signal. But I had figured them out—perhaps too late—and killed her, leaving the WPA
with only one option.
They could have sent the monsters sooner, but there was a high probability most of them
wouldn’t make it through Level Three, and if they did, there was a high probability the laser
cannons would take out anything less than a hoard.
That was my mistake. I thought I could outpace the WPA and fortify the choke points, but
in the end, the Faces were too great in number and intelligent enough to track our most re-
cent excursions to the surface. We were too late to plug the holes, our defensive bubble had
popped, and Level Five was wide open for infiltration.
It wouldn’t have mattered if the cannons were kept in the Great Hall, I reminded myself.
Level Five and the Great Hall were interconnected in more ways than the Tunnels, such as the
large sewer pipes and the wide air vents built into the walls.
Level Three was our last stand.
And we had lost.
“Orders?” asked the comms woman of team one. By her voice alone I could tell she had
already accepted death.
“Dune?” Jacob referred to me, but before I could call for a full retreat, the radio pierced
our ears with a howl and the earth shook under our feet.
I expected the burst to fade, for someone to come through the radio with an update, but
the howling and shaking lasted for too long. Either someone couldn’t shut off their laser can-
non or there were a multiple of them being fired in succession at maximum power.
“Did we just lose?” Trevor asked me, holding the sides of his skull as ceiling dust fell on
our heads.

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I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t answer him. So, I picked up my fox and left the screaming
device behind, stumbling as the floor shifted.
“Where are we going?” she asked, balling up my shirt in her fists.
“Dune, where are you going?!” Trevor yelled hysterically after me, but I was already out
the door. He chose to stay by the radio and wait for the familiar voices of his friends instead
of beating an answer out of me.
I saw people running every which way, falling down flights of stairs they had just climbed,
holding their small children, and clamoring over one another to make it back to their homes.
Ceiling lights fell from on high, crushing anyone who felt the open field was the safest place to
be, leaving a plotted map of limbs intertwined with metal.
Where the lights had obscured the paneled ceiling, a new darkness contrasted it, and in
that darkness, I saw more porcelain doll faces peering down from the suspended ceiling than
I cared to count.
“No, no, no…” I muttered to myself.
Fennec looked up at me and her face turned from scared to panicked in a second when
she saw them too, but she didn’t seem to notice we were already dead.
“Dune, what do we do?” she asked, gripping my flesh like she was drowning, but I still
couldn’t answer as bile flooded my throat.
I pried her off my person and sat her down so I could vomit on the platform.
Fennec hugged my back as she observed the chaos around her. “Dune, we need to get out
of here!”
Or in, I thought to myself.
A plan formed in my mind, so I hurriedly slung Fennec over my shoulder and ran for the
stairs, jumping on the railing to slide down and avoid the salmon swimming upstream.
We only had two more flights to go.
“Don’t see them. Not yet, please not yet!” I spoke to the wind in my ears, but as if on cue
with my words, one person pointed up after another ceiling light stuck itself in the turf.
As more people looked, more people couldn’t help but stare, and then there was a mo-
ment of dead silence as I saw their heads track a Face falling from the ceiling.
The shrieking of bare metal vent covers echoed around the Great Hall as more of them
tore through.
The quaking ceased, and the new stability made time crawl. The distance between my
steps stretched, my heartbeat slowly thumped in my ears, and I jumped fourteen feet off the
platform to the stair landing below—falling in sync with the spider-like body of the Face.

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I stared at it as we fell, and it looked back at me with the wobbling eyes of my nightmares.
Whether by adrenaline or luck, my body took the impact and allowed me to carry on to the
containment room, where Isabelle’s grandfather was safely tucked away. I was too busy grip-
ping my Proofer with my shaking hands to witness the Face impact the field, but by the time I
slotted it into the containment door, the people were screaming again and their voices were
being cut off one by one at an alarming rate.
The light finally turned green, so I pulled the heavy door open, squeezed us through the
crack, and shut the two-foot-thick glass panel behind us. I sat Fennec down and ensured the
door was locked as we watched more Faces fall with their Godlessly designed limbs stretched
out six feet in every direction.
We were at least saved from hearing the carnage, but we saw a woman with her child in
her arms running for her life on the balcony across from us as she was caught by a Face. It
bit off her arm, then her head, and then the rest of her—and moved on to the next target,
leaving her child soaked in blood and too shellshocked to cry.
Under the remaining lights of the Great Hall, I could make out the Face’s figure far better
than our previous encounter. They weren’t like spiders exactly, rather they reminded me of
mantises with their heads held high above their thoraxes, which housed the shoulder joints
for folded spear-like arms while their abdomen did all the leg work.
Fennec rocked on her heels and her face was numb as she forced herself to endure the
mass death. I remembered the old prisoner and saw he had his eyes closed, his lips reciting
some prayer.
On the balconies opposing us, the Faces climbed, and with a flick of their forelimbs, they
completely decimated doors and windows, then violently thrashed to pull their bodies through
to eat the meat hiding within. Some families ran out when they heard the torture of their
neighbors, but they were instantly picked off by the Faces swarming around the stadium.
There were so many, I couldn’t keep track of their positions, and I wondered how easy it must
had been for the monsters to brute force the combination to Level Three, where even more of
them probably were, still trying to find their way to dinner.
My thoughts were disrupted by Isabelle, who ran in front of the glass and pounded against
it, yelling at us, but the glass smothered her screams of terror. Her grandfather did nothing,
and Fennec ran to the glass to push on the door.
“Dune, open the door! Dune!” Fen pleaded.
“Look around you; there is no way out from the inside,” I told her as I approached the
glass, put my hand where Isabelle’s was, and shook my head.

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Bell stepped back from the glass with rage and betrayal upon her face, but that didn’t last
long as a Face came over the railing behind her and thrusted a sharp, jet-black limb straight
through the back of her abdomen, taking no time to drag her into its true mouth under its
neck, which opened wide like a Venus flytrap. It grinded her to pieces with its serrated mandi-
bles in front of us and her blood splattered onto the glass. Fennec screamed while biting her
fingers and fell back on her haunches.
A huge beam of green colored light pierced down from the heavens, and the room was
filled with unbearable light and heat for a split second.
When my eyes readjusted, all that remained of the Face were its legs and a crater, but
the thick glass had protected us by diffusing most of the light. The laser followed and killed a
few more Faces as they crawled up the walls in motions simultaneously blurred and twitchy,
but once out of sight from our point of view, the laser stopped tracking them, and then shut
off altogether. I thought about which team it could have been—maybe the ones stuck at the
trash piles—but I shook the thought as it was a waste of precious resource.
Another limb crept in front of the glass from the left and another Face slowly came into
view. The insect’s body shined with a fresh glossy red coat, and its joints and spines were
draped in random bits of flesh and tattered clothing. Its wobbling eyes peered at us through
its pale ghostly mask that somehow avoided the bloodshed of its feasting, and they increased
in frequency as it prepared to strike.
Fennec and I instinctively retreated to the back wall as its upper limb coiled and struck
the glass. I saw a vacuum bubble appear as it broke the sound barrier when it connected, and
we heard a small ting sound. It tried over and over again, until it shattered its own limb to
pieces and finally rested on the floor to watch us.
Reality caught up to Fennec, and she broke down next to me on the floor, mentally shat-
tered. I decided that would not do, so I picked her up and sat her in my lap. I could feel tears
dripping onto my arm, but I couldn’t tell if they were mine or hers.
She shivered uncontrollably as she asked me, “Are we dead?”
“Yes, Fennec,” I confirmed, and more tears fell. “We are dead.”
“Worry not, we will see each other again,” the old man promised.
I saw he had opened his eyes and appeared unfazed by the monsters settling themselves
outside our door.
“There’s no fucking afterlife, you idiot,” I insulted him, but I wasn’t angry. I was past un-
caring and all the way to numb emotionless statements.
“God has delivered us from suffering; He has called us home,” Isabelle’s grandfather pro-
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“You’re a murderer who killed his grandson, his son, and then his people—including Isa-
belle,” I condemned him.
“I told them fighting would lead to this. I told them the only way forward was to change
the hearts and minds of the WPA with the truth,” the ex-Patriarch explained, and his simple
conviction made my irritation swell.
“What hearts?! What minds?!” I shouted at him. “They are not human; do you fucking un-
derstand?! They’ve been manufactured! There is no hope for them, but there was hope for
you! You threw your family away just like the WPA did 19 years ago to fulfill the same exact
fucking sanctimonious death wish—all in the name of God damned perfection!” I hissed at him,
and then realized, “The only difference between you and the WPA is you believe it comes in the
next life rather than this one.”
“Do not compare me to them!” he shouted back with the righteous flare of a true Patri-
arch. “I loved my grandson, and I love him even more for his sacrifice to prove himself worthy
to God. He climbed up the mountain and told the wicked the error of their ways and offered
them redemption! It is not my fault they do not listen. It is not my fault they killed him and my
son. It was you who brought death to my people with your foolish war!”
“You were all dead anyway!” I tried to reason with the senile bastard. “I gave you a
chance and we won. The WPA has nothing without their machines to do their dirty work! I just
didn’t know they had monsters.”
“Monsters?” he scoffed. “Those are your sisters, Dune! How can you be surprised when it
was your father who made the first of these abominations for the WPA? Out of his own daugh-
ter, for Christ’s sake!”
He looked at me with sheer disgust, and Fennec’s ears perked up in attention.
“You couldn’t possibly know that,” I said, growing suspicious of him, “and I never gave you
my name either. How do you know me?”
He looked hard at me, and I recognized his eyes before he answered, “I’m your uncle, Mo-
roni Burnswick.”
“I’ve never heard of you,” I spat with disbelief.
“I’m sure you’ve never heard of your aunt Molly Shinar either, but that is because we
stayed here after the war was over, while your father, seduced with power, went with the
WPA to create a ‘more perfect world’ before you were born,” he said sarcastically.
“She was a traitor and one of Todd’s half-brains. I know because I put a bullet through her
fucking skull,” I jeered. He made no reaction, so I added, “And Father never wanted this. He
had good intentions; it was people like my mother who abused his talent for their own purpos-
es.”

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“He meddled in the realm of God, along with his naive friends! He got exactly what he de-
served, as did we all. Molly was no traitor—she was our ambassador for the WPA! And she
kept us at peace for decades despite these ‘American’ revolutionaries who believed they
could reclaim the world with yet another war,” he scorned, waving my words away like they
were flies. “Then they turned their hearts away from God and imprisoned me here for my
preaching, and you betrayed your own mother to help them!”
Moroni pointed at me condemningly, but I smiled for his compliment, which made his hand
tremble with rage as he snarled at me.
“Oh, I’m sure you think your father would be proud, and I’m sure he would be too, but only
because you are just as selfish and arrogant as he was. Look around at your father’s great
legacy, Dune! All this suffering and death—it is punishment for his sins and our complacency
as he wrought Hell upon this earth. Even now, as he lies in his grave, we are still not free of
him, because his son seeks to finish what he started! And where did that lead you, Dune?
You’ve lost! We’ve all lost! And I know you won’t, but you can still beg for forgiveness from God
with the little time you have left. A good start would be to repent for perverting my grand-
daughter and your defilement of that innocent child Max butchered and maimed for his own
amusement, just so he could sell her to you as a slave,” he hissed.
I was too stunned to notice Fennec had already pulled out the Laserlite from her pocket,
and I was too exhausted to catch her before she stood, set it to max burst, and shot a pulse
through Moroni’s skull.
The creatures outside focused their attention onto Fennec as she put the Laserlite up to
her own head.
“I’m sick of being controlled. I’m so sick of being told I don’t know any better!” Fennec
screeched and barred her teeth as she mustered all the self-pity she could. “But he’s right,
it’s all over and I’ve made my peace with it. I’m sorry, Dune, but I hope we see each other
again after you end it too.”
She shook and struggled to stifle her sobs as she fought her own instinct to live.
I rose to my feet and pleaded from my soul.
“No, Fen, look at me. Look at me! Fennec, there is a way out. Stay alive. Stay alive with me,
please. I can’t do this alone, I need you, I need you so, so much. Please give me the laser, Fen-
nec,” I begged and reached out my hand, but she stepped away from me. “Stop… stop pointing
that thing at yourself! We can live, damnit!”
“How? And what life, Dune?” she spat, but her bout of anger subsided and was replaced
with despair. “I’m a puppet, made by wicked men, just like he said! My life was already taken
from me!”

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“We all are puppets!” I cried. “We all are victims of our own selections throughout antiq-
uity! Fight it! In that sphere in my lab lies a human child and I cannot die until I see her grow!
You can be her mother! You can help me… I chose you to help me!”
I collapsed onto the floor and sobbed like a lost child.
“I chose you, Fennec… I chose you,” I murmured to myself as my voice broke, and I began
to imagine the sweet nothingness I could escape to.
I heard the laser hit the ground and thought it was over, but then I felt her wrap her arms
around me. I pulled her in and held onto her soft tufts of fur as if they gave me life.
“Thank you. D-don’t ever leave,” I choked, and we bled out our sorrows for what felt like
an eternity as Hell knocked at the door.
We eventually sobered up enough to think.
“What do we do?” Fennec sniffed.
“The Faces don’t see me,” I muttered into her ear.
She pulled away and was confused. “What?”
“Watch,” I told her, got up, brushed the tears from my eyes, and walked to where my dead
uncle was.
The Face’s paid me no mind and kept their eyes on Fennec.
“How?” she asked with hopeful surprise.
“I don’t know. Just sit tight,” I answered, retrieved the warm Laserlite from the floor, and
proceeded to melt the glass in the far corner.
Once a man-sized hole was cut out, I crawled through and walked up to the nearest Face
without fear—as being eaten alive was preferable to starving in that cell. I touched its smooth
exoskeleton and the Face turned so suddenly that I thought I had made a lethal error.
Fennec screamed, but all it did was stare at me with its wobbling eyes.
I realized I should have died at Run 10. The reason I didn’t was because I wasn’t consid-
ered food to these things. It somehow sensed I was related to it.
I turned towards Fennec and beckoned her to come.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she swore under her breath and kept her backside to the wall as
she came to the hole.
The Faces followed her across the glass.
“Hey!” I put my hand out and the Faces stopped five feet away. “Okay, Fennec, crawl
through and stand up right behind me,” I ordered slowly, and she obeyed.
The Faces kept their distance as I revealed my plan: “Walk backwards; we are going to the
double doors we first came through.”
“Yes, Master,” Fen whispered.

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We shuffled back, and they came forward, and we shuffled some more, and they came
forward again—slowly spreading out around us on the walls and underneath the platforms. To
protect our blind spot, I picked her up and had her latch onto my torso so I could zip my jacket
over her. Hope filled my spirits as I walked at normal pace up to Level Five and into Level Four,
listening carefully for survivors, but finding none.
Some Faces blocked the path, but they either retreated or let me climb over them. We
were finding our way through the maze when Father’s lab door appeared on the right. The
Faces were still behind me marching in line, and with a shine from my Laserlite, I peered down
the hall and guessed there were maybe thirty pale Faces staring back.
I opened the door and locked it behind us, but wasn’t settled with victory just yet. The
door was weaker than that of the containment room, but sturdy enough to resist their at-
tempts. The vents were too small for any of them or their limbs to sneak through, and our
power came from a small nuclear generator contained within the lab itself. My mental check-
list was complete, so I allowed myself the leisure of feeling at home.
The lights came on as they sensed my motion, and Fennec popped her head out of her
makeshift pouch to kiss me. I unzipped my jacket to release her, and she giggled with an in-
sane gleam in her eye—infecting me with it. We didn’t say a word, but we knew what we
thought was so funny.
When the lone survivor finds safety and looks back at the burning ruins of his world, he
asks himself how he could have felt any security at all, and the answer becomes funny to him
as he realizes he never was safe, but at last free. He doesn’t understand why the complete
erasure of his history makes him feel the way he does, but for every stray child he collects
running from the flame, he comes to understand his past was an adult fiction, his present was
a religious hallucination, and his future was an adolescent dream.
Such were the thoughts of the last survivor who inherited an entire world all to himself.
When our giddiness burned out and our sides hurt, I gave Fen a knowing smirk.
“What?” the smiling fox asked, cocking her head.
I grabbed her paw and dragged her to the APP, where I put her padded palm on its warm
glass.
I pronounced, “God is dead.”
“God is dead,” Fennec echoed with black spheres in her eyes.

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