A Certain Number of Hypothetical Scenarios

by Joseph Wright

  Each of them has the wide, triangular head of a cicada. Their bulbous red eyes catch the light like a glass of wine. The only thing that freaks me out more is the sideways chewing motion their mandibles make as they speak.

  “We want your information,” says the middle one, standing at the foot of the bed. I start sweating at the sound of their voices. They sound like they're speaking backwards through a fan blade.

  As I said, they're identical, apart from one thing. Each of them has a number, a roman numeral, carved into their forehead without art or care. The one on my left is IV. The one on my right is XII. Sometimes V will be here instead, or VII, but tonight it's XII.

  The one at the end of the bed just bears a single line that splits his head in two like an ugly old scar. He's always here. He was the first of them to visit me.

  I shake my head uncontrollably, shivering. I don't understand what information they want. My heart hurts it's beating so fast.

  “Soon it won't just be happening at night,” he says. “You might not feel it but we're consuming your head. The gaps are growing. Ask yourself how many things we've already taken from you.”

  As he comes closer I crawl back against the wall. I recoil when I find it's bristling with translucent cocoons.

  “We will eat away at you until we find what we want. You'll spend every moment with us until we have your information.”

  He seizes my head and pulls it toward his own until our faces are pressed together. My skull could be crushed easily in his grip.

  He hisses. “Soon your brain will be crawling with us.”

  THIEF

  There's nothing cooler than running along the side of a skyscraper. Unless you're running along the side of a skyscraper with a pretty girl's arms around your neck. The weight of her on my back is kind of throwing me off, but the skysoles are handling it well, leaving an impossible trail of burning azure footprints. I fling myself into empty space and fire up the gauntlets, gliding onto the roof of the Aegis building. Dad's company.

  We hate Aegis because it's a military contractor. No, that's a lie. I hate Aegis because I hate Dad. The girl on my back hates Aegis because she's apparently received a tip that they're up to something shady. Really shady.

  I'm helping her break in.

  "So, what's the plan?" she asks. "Gonna use your pass key?"

  I should never have taken off my mask for her. The rest of my clothes are harder to regret though. "No I'm not going to use my damn pass. Number one, they have a log of IDs that enter and exit. Number two, shut up, we don't know who's listening."

  "You said you can get us in."

  "I can," I said, waving my gauntlet.

  "Your weird steampunk glove can hack card readers too?"

  "It can do all kinds of things. And it's not steampunk."

  "It looks steampunk."

  "It's not brass, and there's no steam."

  She points at the glowing blue vapour trailing from my palms. "That looks kind of like steam."

  "It's not steam." The roof access door beeps and slides open.

  "What is it then?"

  "Blue."

  "That's an adjective, not a noun."

  The argument continues as we approach the R&D department. Apparently it can be a noun too. I hack whenever necessary, and she takes photos of god knows what. Eventually we're standing in front of a heavily secured storage unit. I hold out my hand and a complex series of ion pulses does the rest. The unit unfolds and reveals a suite of massively advanced and destructive weaponry. That's when the girl tazes me.

  "I can't believe how easy this was. You really are stupid," she says, strapping on some shoe plates identical to mine. "Cute, but stupid."

  She loads up on tech, plants a kiss on my lips, and leaps out through a window, setting off every alarm in the place. The shutters slam down behind her. She's probably wondering right now if the ends justified the means. She's probably wondering if she can learn to use this stuff fast enough that she stands a chance when I hunt her down.

  Thing is, I'm not stupid. I know what she's like, and I knew this would happen. The way I figure it, a crazy girl armed to the teeth with experimental weaponry, doing the things I know she's going to do... that's not going to look good for Aegis. They've been working on some real MKUltra type shit. Weaponising dementia and sensory elimination. Making money from the worst possible things you can do to other human beings. One way or the other, this company is going down.

  My legs are kind of shaky, but I climb to my feet and pull my hood back up. My gauntlets blast a hole in the security shutters like they're wet paper. I steal a few records before I leave. It'll be interesting to know exactly who they've been testing this stuff on.

  There's some faint scarlet trails in the air like tail lights on long exposure. I'm gonna miss that girl. She's likely either going to end up a casualty or cause a few of her own. I'll stop her if it gets out of hand. In my experience, the ends and the means are simple enough. The problem is the lies we tell to justify them. To bury them. The worst kind of villain is the villain that convinces everyone he's a hero. I know who I am. I'm a villain who preys on villains. I have ends, and I have means. I don't give a damn whether they're justified.

  TREES IN THE MIST

  The trees can see us, with Daguerreotype leaves. They're aware of our movement, but not our shape. We're blurred by time's cataract, like a babbling stream on long exposure.

  When the wind blows, and they can rustle and whistle, they call us the mist people.

  They stand outside our houses, and play with our children, and shelter us from the rain and the sun.

  And when they feel the bite of saws, they ask why.

  RECOVERED AUDIO LOG

  [LacunaMail Message Cache: Eng Sgt. Ariadne Dalassen- SS Prester John]

  [2128h, SDQ2, August 05, 2208, Anno Domini]

  Hey honey. Sorry I'm late. I mean, you won't get this for weeks anyway, but I know how worried you get. I got stuck in engineering explaining to idiots why it's not a big deal when we lose ablative plating. It's ablative. That's like, the entire point. They freak out about it every time we breach atmos.

  I mean, yes, ideally the port side shield generator would be working properly. But that's just how these things go, it's a missionary ship. When you're off the charts this long things get worn out. She's built to last though. This old boat's doing pretty well all things considered, it's the people inside I worry about. Less and less people turning up to prayers... and some people are acting really, seriously odd. You know I caught Gabras praying to that thing the other night? And the glare he gave me! As if it wasn't bad enough just sitting there in the cargo hold, now there's all these stupid trinkets around it like someone's... making offerings to it or something. I don't know. It's fucking weird.

  You know when they brought it onboard the Captain had me scan it. My analyser didn't pick up on anything harmful, but the readouts were all screwy, like, it's projecting a field, but the analyser can't recognise what it is? So this thing's beaming out like, mystery rays, and they bring it on board anyway! I can't even comprehend the kind of mind that makes a decision like that.

  They found it in the centre of some kind of grand temple, so they think it's of 'singular cultural importance'. Important to the culture of an abandoned planet. If you ask me, when an entire race deserts a planet, the weird looking techy thing they leave behind is either junk, or ridiculously dangerous.

  Aaanyway. Enough about work, I'm stressing myself out just talking about it. I got your last message! The one about Justin and Sophia's wedding. I wish I could have been there with you guys. Being out here you kind of have to forget about normal people things sometimes. Because when you remember, it hurts, y'know? So you get up, you get to work, you show up to vespers and you go to bed. You have to make yourself care about that stuff, because otherwise you're just alone in space. I don't like being alone in space. I tell myself, I'm here for a reason, right? I'm here to carry the word of God across the stars. So what
I want to know is, why are we bringing someone else's god back? Far be it from me to question the actions of a priest, but-

  Listen to me going on about work again. I'm sorry. I really miss you, you know that? I just get so anxious and stressed out, and I just need you. I don't know how to relax without-

  Just someone in the hall. So, uh-

  Jesus. Just give me a moment's peace, for the love of-

  Oh god.

  David, I think something is going on, I should-

  -off me! Gabras, I'm not fucking kidding, get the fuck-

  -oh god-

  -David-

  [New voice unrecognised] -dwindle in unbelief and fall into the works of darkness, and lasciviousness, and all manner of-

  [You have been silent for two minutes. Do you wish to continue?]

  [Message saved to drafts]

  This one was part one of a four way collaboration between me and some friends. The other parts can be found here:

  Recovered Audio Log 2, by The-Inkling: fav.me/d6e6iyr

  Recovered Text Log, by Distortified: fav.me/d6e9x0r

  Incident Investigation Log, by Wolfrug: fav.me/d6e5hw4

  HESITANT EVIL

  Lance strode through the mansion, wondering what exactly he was supposed to do with the red gemstone. He turned it in his hand; it was beautifully cut and polished to a mirror-like surface.

  “Use it on the jewellery box” said a voice.

  Lance whirled around. There was a zombie in the corner, so he shot it.

  “Ow,” said the zombie, without enthusiasm. “Whyyyy?”

  Lance didn't know how to deal with this. “Uh. You're a zombie. I have to shoot you or you'll eat my brain.”

  The zombie looked at Lance's police uniform. “That's profiling, and I was just trying to help. Did someone try to eat your brain?”

  “Well yeah... zombies.”

  The zombie rolled its eye. “What's your issue with zombies? I may be clinically dead but I'm not dead inside. My condition doesn't define who I am. There's no good reason I shouldn't just be another guy to you. Y'know, ignoring the decomposition.”

  Lance lowered his gun. “Listen, I'm sorry. It's been... a complicated day. I really would appreciate some help.”

  “Well, I assume you're trying to get into the office in the East wing? For which you need the emblem key, which is disguised as a brooch, which is locked inside the jewellery box, which is opened... via the red gemstone.”

  “This mansion is stupid.”

  “It's hard to get around, yeah.”

  AN UNSATISFYING ENDING

  Sian woke up. It was all a dream.

  So why was she at the lab? Reality collapsed into place like a window shattering in reverse. She was working on the aetaframe with Dr Wells. How the hell had she fallen asleep? Standing up no less, in the middle of calibrating a...

  No, the diagnostic routine had only been running for six seconds. She'd initiated it herself. Was it even possible to have an entire dream in that amount of time? Sian started to worry that she'd suffered some kind of minor aneurysm or something, it was like she had two sets of memories overlapping each other. She looked over to Dr Wells but he seemed distracted, and perhaps a little hung over. That's when an alert popped up on her display. iteration field expanding beyond containable parameters- vertex location invalid. Exactly like she'd just dreamt it would.

  “Dr Wells, I've got a serious error here,” she said, her mind awash with deja vu as the words escaped her mouth. “Nothing flagged as being misaligned but the frame's definitely not stable.”

  “Why hasn't she shut down already?” growled the doctor.

  “I don't know,” she admitted, checking the data log. “I think it did! The bubble shouldn't be able to sustain itself like that.”

  “Unless it's drawing the power from the other side... I'm going to reactivate the frame and delineate a new harmonic screen. You try the entanglement coils, see if you can untether them or something.”

  “I don't have a time signature for the other end of the tether!”

  The doctor was tapping furiously at his screen. “The frame can only iterate when it's activated, and it self activated to run diagnostics, just use the data from the log!”

  Sian couldn't find it. “What happens if the bubble keeps expanding?”

  “Then we'll be enveloped by the last iteration.”

  “So we'll travel back?”

  “More likely we'll be collapsed into our previous instances. Hopefully with enough residual memory to stop this before it's too-”

  Sian woke up. It was all a dream.

  HANDWRITING

  It was a curse, really, but he thanked the stars that he lived in an age of word processors. He shuddered to think of the effect his condition would have had on his career if he'd had to write job applications by hand. Even so, sometimes it was too much to bear. He'd written a love letter once, to his high school girlfriend. She'd dumped him immediately afterwards.

  He'd tried different pencils. He'd tried changing his grip. He'd tried switching hands. He'd tried therapy, for fuck's sake.

  It didn't matter what he did. Everything always came out in comic sans.

  HAYFEVER

  The immune system was engaged in desperate battle. The mastzellen, a ruthlessly efficient contingent of white blood cells, were throwing themselves against the invading pollen particles to little effect.

  “It's no good sir,” said the nervous system. “They're just too strong. Might I suggest we pursue a different strategy?”

  The immune system slammed its metaphorical fist on the metaphorical table. “Where are my damn B-cells?!” it demanded. “I need antibodies on the ground tout de fucking suite.”

  “B-cells inbound. What's their payload?”

  “Immunoglobulin E,” growled the immune system. “The E is for experimental.”

  “Sir, we have no idea what the consequences will be, I strongly suggest that you reconsider,” said the nervous system, nervously, and just a fraction of a second too late.

  “Oh god, oh god,” it said as it watched the antibodies bind horrifically with the already present mast cells. “What's happening?”

  “RELEASE THE HISTAMINE!” screamed the immune system.

  “No, sir!” the nervous system begged. “Think of what this could do to me! The itching, the sneezing, the mucus! Please, just take some time. Do we even know the pollen is a threat? I mean, just look at them!”

  They looked at them. The pollen was bumping harmlessly off the capillary walls like balloons on the ceiling.

  “Motherfuckers,” growled the immune system. “They disgust me. Pathogens, each and every one of them, but I'll humour you. What are the brain's thoughts on this?”

  The nervous system checked. “The brain is thinking about how much it hates pollen,” it admitted eventually.

  “Well there you go, kiddo. Time to take one for the team. I think I speak on behalf of the whole body when I say we're all very grateful for your heroic sacrifice.”

  The nervous system tried to argue but struggled to be heard above all the mad cackling.

  PI

  He's a seer. A magus, practised in arcane rites the runic grimoire, 'forbidden numbers' imprisons. All of the chthonic gods shriek in terror that the hex circulus may be invoked.

  Abhorrent beast Pi, cackling, croaking, rise. O brilliant madness, O divine infection; the ur-decimal, gathering our howling souls.

  A world consumed in reverence, mankind dies murmuring each vile digit.

  [Pilish is when each word contains a number of letters equal to the number in pi that shares its position. It's about as hard to do as it is to explain.]

  SHED

  Dad steadies the roof and I screw it into place. I'm at about shoulder height on him but I can reach. Rain batters down onto the wood just inches above us, and a curtain of water confines us to this little pine shelter. It was sunny when we started building the shed.

  Dad looks frustrated with the we
ather but I prefer it like this. It's like we're building it for a reason. Like a life or death situation. Like we're castaways, marooned on a forgotten island.

  But it's not life or death, and I'm in no hurry. I just want to pretend like I'm doing something real. Dad wants to get the other half of the roof on before the wood gets too wet to dry out properly. I don't care about that. Half a shed is exactly the right amount.

  AUGUR

  Wren opened her window wide and breathed in deeply. She watched the flight paths of the birds and gleaned what little information she could from the patterns they carved in the air. She was an Augur.

  She sighed as she closed the window. As she dressed in her work clothes, she thought about how much she missed the wide open skies of the north, where the birds told her every little thing and attuned her to the world. Sparrows and Blue tits and Magpies and Ducks and Blackbirds and Kestrels and Herons and Swifts and Swallows all wheeled around her and shared with her their secrets. She could read them like unlanguage, content and meaning free of form and abstraction.

  Not like here. The dull, hemmed in skies of London were choked and claustrophobic, forcing the birds through narrow avenues and disrupting ancient flight routes. They couldn't think or feel anymore, and she could no more read the future in a city bird than she could read it in a plane.

  Most of all, she felt sorry for the pigeons, once bright and noble doves, brought low by the city and reduced to pitiful mangy creatures.

  STARLIGHT BATTLE TEEN

  Hoshiko walked into the secret lair of Lord Bloodbramble, leaving an army of defeated henchmen in her wake. She raised the sparkle spear and fixed him with a glare.

  "Your reign of terror ends here!"

  Her adversary laughed maliciously. Not a booming, ostentatious laugh, but the laugh of someone genuinely amused at the thought of another person in pain. The laugh of an absolute bastard.