To anyone watching, he was a fat guy walking down to get himself a large cod and chips. Inside, he was running a mental gauntlet, fighting for survival against dangers unseen.
That branch looks like it might fall.
What if I’m suddenly allergic to grass pollen?
It’s so bloody hot out here. If I collapsed right here, on this spot, would anyone notice? How long would I be here before someone came out to help? Does anyone help anyone anymore? Or are we too afraid of each other?
He tried to notice the details of the world around him. Many of the two-story semi-detached houses had red and black ribbons displayed out front. Violence awareness. The practice was wholly American, but it’d caught on around the world. It gave the survivors something to cling to, to gather around.
No matter how many ways he tried to distract himself, the incessant pessimistic droning wore him down. He allowed the thoughts to pass through him, like water through a sieve. The video he’d watched told him he had to accept their validity, offer another opinion, and release them into the ether like a balloon on a breeze.
The branch is fine, it’s just heavy with beautiful leaves.
You aren’t allergic to anything, so there’s no reason to think grass would suddenly kill you.
It is hot, but you are improving your cardio by walking. If anyone saw you, they would definitely help. People are largely good.
By the time he reached the shop, he was drenched in sweat, physically and emotionally drained. The store was owned and operated by a friendly family. The owner, Jeff, was usually in the store, but with school out, his two daughters were running the front.
The blonde one smiled at him, her face shiny with sweat and grease. He’d been coming regularly enough she’d started to recognize him, by face but not name. “Hiya. What can I get ya?”
Alex pretended to read the menu as if deciding. He also used it as an excuse to catch his breath, fighting to breathe normally through his nose and not his gaping mouth like he so desperately wanted.
He smiled and nodded. “Small cod and chips, cheers.”
The blonde nodded to her younger sister at the other end of the counter. “Just a few minutes,” she called out as she dropped the fryer baskets.
The store was empty, far past normal dinner time. They were probably in the middle of closing down when he came in, he figured. He leaned against the tiled wall, savoring the cool sensation against his hot back. The old TV blared in the corner and served as a good distraction from his rumbling stomach.
“Groups have clashed for a third evening. The streets of London, New York, Paris, and many others have been turned into veritable war zones. What begins as a peaceful demonstrations turn quickly into violent riots.”
The screen flashed with scenes from across the country and world. Major cities erupted into violence every day, almost like clockwork. Masked men with cricket bats and batons shattered parked cars, set fire to entire city blocks. The violence was pointless and utterly destructive.
“Scary stuff, huh?”
Alex nodded to the blonde, who he noticed for the first time was probably older than he first thought. He bit his tongue to keep from outright asking her age. Talking to people, let alone attractive girls, wasn’t exactly easy for him. In his haste to act more normal, he sometimes jumped past a few social cues. Just because he bought dinner from their shop nearly every night, didn’t make it okay to ask blunt questions.
“I don’t know what they think they’re accomplishing,” he said.
She shrugged and leaned on her elbows, squeezing her breasts together. He quickly averted his gaze back to the TV, a hot prickly wave of embarrassment washing over him at the thought of her noticing.
“I kinda get it, though, you know? Blaming all this on the Seed is stupid. It’s like, how could something so little cause so much damage, right?”
“I guess.”
“There has to be more going on. The government is always covering things up, doing things to the public without anyone knowing,” she said as if it were common knowledge. “I bet they’re behind it. Plus, who else could send out messages like that to everyone? I got mine in the middle of the night and you’re telling me, the government wasn’t behind it? Pfft.”
Alex pressed his lips together to keep from arguing. He might not know a lot about women, but he understood they didn’t really like being told how stupid and naive they sounded.
She stood on her toes, pushing her torso on the counter. With wide brown eyes, her voice dropped to conspiratorial levels. “I heard they’ve been putting a drug in the water that makes you suicidal. That’s why so many people have been…” She finished her thought by dragging a finger across her wrist.
“Lots of people drink water though.”
Her brow furrowed but she quickly recovered. “Not me. I’ve been drinking tea and juice for a week now. Never felt better.”
He licked his lips and fought to stop himself, but couldn’t. “You do realize tea and juice are made with water, right?”
“Yeah, but boiled.”
“So as long as I boil my juice, I’m okay?” he replied.
The other sister appeared with his food just as the blonde stood straight, ready to launch into him. He waved his cuff in front of the pay sensor and accepted his food without another word.
The sheer stupidity of the conversation distracted him the entire walk home. As he unlocked the door, he had a minor panic attack. He realized he hadn’t been paying attention. He was so caught up in an imaginary argument, he hadn’t been paying attention to the world around him.
Something could’ve come out of nowhere and I wouldn’t have known.
Once in the safety of his own house, he realized how absurd it was to panic about forgetting to panic. He tried to consider it a win, mark it as progress. But as he unfolded the greasy paper, all the pent-up anxiety hit him at once.
I can’t even walk down an empty street without losing my mind. How am I ever going to survive on my own? What if a mob comes after me.
“You couldn’t outrun a winded corgi, let alone a mob of people,” he muttered to the empty room. The mental image finally broke the vicious thought cycle, drawing a single laugh.
Chapter Seven
London, UK
The world used to be a dull, lifeless, mundane place for Julian. But the last few months had completely rekindled his lust for life. It was incredible how much could change in such a short amount of time.
It was only a year ago, he would get his kicks riding around aimless on the Underground. He’d pick out a target, use his charm and good looks to get close, and push their boundaries. He loved watching them squirm under the pressure, trying to hard to maintain a level of social balance. It constantly fascinated him how far he could push someone, how far he could bend them. And they would sit and take it, all in the name of politeness.
Now? He got to do the same thing from the comfort of his own home. How far could he push society before it broke? Before it turned in on itself?
He had to admit his father’s latest move had been a thing of genius. He, and the rest of the world, had been transfixed by the miscarriage epidemic. While most people sat in gaping horror, watching the world burn with tears in their eyes, he couldn’t contain his glee. It was like a thousand Christmases coming at once. It’s not that he gave a shred of a shit about unborn children, but it was the power. The incredible control it demonstrated.
With only a few hours of sleep a night, he looked a right state. Luckily, so did everyone else. While his lack of sleep came from the over-exuberance of a child with a new toy and little adult supervision, theirs was borne from sorrow.
It was the third night of round-the-clock coverage and Julian was just settling in to watch. With a bottle of wine in one hand, an empty glass in the other, he confidently strode past his padded room without the slightest urge to enter. What tempted him most was a nice long evening in front of his computers, watching his work unfold in new, deliciously t
errible ways.
As he watched woman after family after couple cry over their loss, he had a rare moment of self-awareness. These self-indulgent videos were meant to help people mourn and deal with the loss, showing this was a shared event that the whole world would have to get through together. But rather than be moved emotionally, he was disgusted.
For a moment, it was as though he was watching himself from a few feet away, a spectator to rather than participant. And it was in that moment, with a fully unemotional realization, he could see how different he was from the rest of them.
They wept while he cheered. They saw loss while he saw correction. They lost their children while he had helped shed the world of the worst kind of parasite: humans.
The sensation was short lived. Like déjà vu, it passed as quickly as he realized it was happening, like a bubble of soap popping upon contact.
The little blip of awareness was scrubbed from his psyche. Of course the sheep would look to a wolf and think, How horrible! But the wolf never cared for a sheep’s opinion. His family were the top wolves, tending to the sheep.
“Thought I might find you in bed,” a voice murmured from the doorway behind him.
Although his nerves jumped internally, Julian was able to calmly swivel in his chair to look back. “How did you get in here?”
Harriet approached, an upturned smirk on her crimson lips. “I memorized your passcode ages ago.”
“And you decided to let yourself in?”
She tugged at the hem of her tight white tank top, revealing more cleavage. “Family never has to knock. What are doing sitting in the dark, anyway?”
“Relaxing.” He tilted his glass toward the screens, a half dozen different haggard reporters spewing the same nonsense for another hour straight.
He tried not to watch as Harriet collected a chair from the corner and settled beside him. A waft of sweet, summer sweat met his nose. A glimmer of dampness had stuck a few fine threads of hair to her neck. He badly wanted to move them around with his tongue.
He offered her his glass. She leaned across and grabbed the whole bottle, taking a swig.
“Classy,” he muttered, trying to sound annoyed and not aroused.
She wiped her full lips with the back of her hand and smiled. “You know me. So, things going well?”
Thankful for the distraction from her tits and mouth, he was happy to talk about current events. “Great, yeah.”
“It’s amazing how worked up everyone is, right? Like, it’s not the end of the world.”
He nodded. “The sheer arrogance is what gets me. All these people thinking they have genetics worth replicating?”
“Right? We should be the ones having babies,” she purred. He caught the subtext. “Which, of course, we can’t now.”
“Technically, we can because you don’t have a Seed.” He chose to misunderstand the playful smirk she gave him, knowing it drove her nuts when he was deliberately obtuse. “You don’t have a Seed, right?”
“Of course not, brother.”
Harriet lifted her toned, slender leg and draped it across his lap. The small skirt pooled between her thighs, tantalizingly short. She loved thinking she had the upper hand over him, and most times, she did. Fortunately for him, his will-power was at nearly a hundred percent.
Julian loathed and loved their games. Of all the people in the world, she was his absolute favorite to play with. Unlike the afternoon in their little tent, she would be the one squirming under his touch. Whether she knew it or not, the fact that they were loosely related was never the thing that stopped him from going after her.
She sighed and twirled her hair between her fingers. “Can you turn it up? That one. The one with the rivers of mascara going down her fat face.”
After adjusting the volume, he brought his hand back to rest on her knee. They watched the report, their contact unspoken yet electric.
“I’m not sure where we go from here,” the chubby woman sniffed. Her partner stood at her side, arm hung over her shoulders in a limp, pathetic gesture of comfort. “Do we try again? What do we tell our little girl? She was looking forward to having a little brother and now…”
The woman dissolved into sobs, hiding her face in the damp cave of her partner’s armpit.
“And now all we have is one pug-nosed little shit running around,” Harriet completed. She took another pull from the bottle of wine and wiggled her leg to get his attention. “You’re a goddamn hero, that’s what I think.”
Hearing those words were far more arousing than he could’ve imagined. He grunted a wordless response, pretending to focus on the screen.
While they listened to a doctor explain the possible causes of mass miscarriage, he delicately circled his index finger around her kneecap. Each sweep traveled further up her inner thigh. He kept his expression blank and passive, as if he were feeling the texture of a soft fabric.
He concentrated on the reporter, a dour-faced old man, as he spoke into the camera. “No one is sure where we go from here. Scientists and doctors are working around the clock to find the cause of this epidemic, but what will come of this lost generation?”
Julian’s finger met the edge of her short skirt, the contact pulling a gasp from her. But she was good at the game as well.
“I don’t understand something,” she pouted.
“What’s that?”
“Why aren’t people putting it together? The murders, the suicides, and now this. Are people really that thick?” The concerned look she gave him made him snort into the glass of wine. She was genuinely afraid she’d lived in a bubble this whole time, assuming people were smarter than they were.
He wiped a few drops of wine from his upper lip. “It’s design. Most people had Seeds, which mean most people are already under the influence.” He laughed again as her mouth fell agape. “What? You thought the Seeds were just for Dreamscapes? They’ve been used to influence people from day one.”
“Daddy’s been controlling people this whole time?”
“Influencing. There’s a difference. They still have a choice, an ability to think for themselves and make up their own minds, but most don’t. They’ll gladly listen to what they’re told and parrot it to anyone who argues. The more people who do that, the more authentic the belief feels.”
Harriet stared at the screens as if a veil had just been lifted from her eyes. “That’s brilliant.”
“Thank you.”
“No, I mean it. That’s genius. You could do whatever you wanted.” With her leg still draped over his lap, she pulled him closer. It was the one weakness he’d never built up a defense for… his obsession with being admired. Just as he began snaking his hand further up her thigh, a message popped up on his main screen.
I require authentication.
And just as when they were kids, their father had an innate ability to put an end to all their fun.
He reluctantly lifted his hand to join his other at the keyboard. He allowed himself one glance back to a ready and waiting Harriet, the spell now broken.
“Say hi to Dad for me,” she breathed, her full lips wet and parted. The flickering light of the monitors emphasized every curve and shadow on her face.
Julian typed out a response.
Sure. What’s going on? I didn’t think we had anything planned for tonight…
***
General maintenance
“Oh, this’ll be fun,” Julian mumbled sarcastically.
Harriet jumped up. Cold replaced the warmth of her leg as she pulled it away. “See if he wants to come over!”
“No.”
“Come on. I haven’t…”
She trailed off, her expression changing microscopically. It was all he needed in order to read her thoughts.
“No, really…”
With a graceful move, she flitted onto his lap, wiggling her ass for good measure as she typed out a message.
Hey Dad, it’s your favourite daughter! Maybe you could come round for a drink or two.
I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.
“Why do you two talk like this, anyway? Like you can’t call each other?”
Julian opened his mouth to reply, but realized there wasn’t really a good response. He’d often wondered why most their communication was over the internet now, but chalked it up to ease and maintaining good records.
“It’s not like we don’t speak,” he said, unable to remember the last time he’d actually heard his father’s voice.
There was a long pause, which was odd given his normal automatic response. She shifted in his lap, yet he didn’t protest or move her. In fact, it was all he could do to keep from grabbing her hips.
Harriet flicked her hair back as she peered over her shoulder. “You know, we could do whatever we wanted now that I can’t get pregnant.”
“That risk isn’t what stopped me before,” he grunted.
“We’re not even related.”
“Still not what stopped me.”
She ran a finger along the inside of his thigh, teasing a reaction from him, physically or otherwise. “You don’t find me attractive?”
“Again, that’s not what’s stopped me.”
“Whatever you say, brother dearest.” She bounced back to the screen as The Gardener replied.
Not happening.
Julian, I’m losing my patience.
He felt a genuine pang of disappointment for his step-sister. Her real father had died when she was an infant, so the only true father figure she’d ever had in her life was James Steele. Bad luck, really. Maybe it was a matter of biology, but he’d long learned to stop expecting anything from the man.
She sat frozen in his lap, staring at the screen.
“Sorry, I really have to—”
“Right, of course.” She stood and shook herself as if coming out of a daze.
“It should only take a moment, if you…”
Harriet ran a hand through her hair and blinked again. “No, I’ll leave you to it. You and Dad are obviously busy and…”
STASIS: Part 3: Restart Page 5
