by Zac Strong
“Oh, is that right?”
“You’re looking at the two-time DeltaCraft racing champion. Soon to be three-time tomorrow.” I proclaim with pride, dusting my shoulders off.
“Okay flyboy, you gonna order me a drink or just stare at my tits all night?” she asks as my jaw hits the floor. Blindsided. Who is this woman?
We down the first two shots like they were water, then two more after that. I immediately feel the full effect. This is my element.
“How does that thing work?” she asks peering into my eyes like she’s about to kiss me.
“How does what work?” I ask admiring the perfect plushness of her hot pink lips, imagining the head of my dick between them.
“Your eye, silly.”
“Oh, this?” I reply unaware it was even noticeable. “It enhances my vision. A small piece of tech just under the cornea. It helps me see things the naked eye might miss.”
“Like…”
“Like that tiny freckle just under your left ear, or the way the hair on the back of your neck stands every time my hand accidentally brushes yours.”
She’s blushing.
“Some would call it the next level of evolution,” I say a little pompously.
“Oh, is that what the brochure said?” she mocks. “Personally, I don’t see the point. I would never alter my body like that.”
“Yeah. Like that ancient wolf tattoo on your wrist?”
“Well, that’s different,” she interjects. There’s a hint of vexation in her voice. I might have struck a nerve.
“That’s different?” I push.
“Yeah.. there was no surgery.“
“Just needles. You’re quite the naturalist,” I interject.
“Okay. I see your point, asshole. What do your tattoos mean? Anything symbolic?” she asks as she seductively rubs her hand down the arrow tatted down the backside of my right arm.
“I like to think the bow on my other arm represents all of the struggle and pain I’ve been through that propelled me in the direction of where I am today. The arrow your hand is holding is the direction I’m headed. No looking back.”
“You? Struggling?” she bursts into laughter.
“My life hasn’t always been easy.”
“When has your life ever been difficult, Eros?”
“Well, right now for starters.”
“Exactly,” she smiles.
“What’s yours mean?” I ask, stroking my hand over her wrist.
“I just like wolves. I would give nearly anything to see a real one. Not that virtual knock-off. I’m talking about the real thing. It’s a shame Lethe couldn’t save their DNA.”
She looks up at me. Her lips part again. Damn that smile is going to get me in trouble. Glancing over at Poth I see his tongue halfway down Sophia’s throat. How in the...
“Those two seem to hit it off quite nicely,” slurs Selene, leaning on me, staring directly into their performance from her front-row seat.
“The universe works in mysterious ways.”
We finish our drinks and exit the Mug extremely tipsy, the four of us stumbling in the aura of Olympia’s neon lights.
It’s late, even for this city that never sleeps. There’s something nostalgic about her hand in mine as we tread drunkenly down the sidewalk. Strangers mere hours ago, now we stroll together past beautiful towers of glass blooming from fields of asphalt. Music at every turn. A slight breeze from the air purification centers above persuades the black Lethe flags to dance to the melody. The smell of amity in the air reminds me of how grateful I am to live here.
Located right beside BioHacks, the upgrade shop where I got my eye done, we storm face-first into a living nightclub named Nexus. Upscale type. One of my regular spots.
The absolutely wonderful and highly illegal gorgonite Poth provided hits the moment we step through the holodoor. It rocks me in waves, multiplying faster.
Incessant tech rhythm thrashes the air as if the entire club becomes linked to my heartbeat speeding out of control. The lights rotate and strobe from the walls and ceilings. The floor, a giant LED screen, projects the illusion the entire club is falling endlessly into the center of a black hole. Naked Machina with copper wire for hair dance erotically from fixed metal platforms hanging from the ceiling. Some, with holographic lights for clothing.
The walls of the place are covered in different colored cables. Every few meters a silver arm jack, strategically placed for those who prefer something a little more virtual.
The gorgonite hits harder.
The aether ripples. Cables turn into beautiful snakes, sparkling every shade of every color, slithering in the neon wind the music is secreting. One of them smiles. I smile back.
Reality tilts.
The bass echoes against the hollow walls of my chest.
Laughter. We can’t stop laughing.
Another round. A glowing cyan liquid this time. It doesn’t have a taste.
The room spins.
I feel a warm thigh next to my own. Both grinding into each other. Sophia’s spinning on my other side. More laughing.
They turn the gravity down. Pushed up against the plush ceiling, my tongue swirls in Selene’s mouth.
Speeding.
Another round.
Music blaring.
A virtual woman floats over in front of me bouncing her ass with the rhythm. Perfect ass.
Poth climbs the bar, drink in one hand, swinging his shirt around his head with the other.
More laughing.
Selene’s naked tits in my face.
The drag of a much-needed cigarette.
Pavement.
Chapter 3
Life isn’t life without you, Kalli. It’s just a different death.
Seven days locked in this apartment since they told me you were gone. These pale walls mock me. I’m barely existing off the last of the credits we saved. I can’t eat. Sleep has abandoned me. You are the sole occupant residing in what’s left of my mind. I see you in everything. I still hear your soft whispers. I lie in our fucking bed and smell your sweet aroma. It haunts me. It paralyzes me. It pulls me to places that I don’t know the way back from.
This is all wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was going to make you remember. We were going to be happy. Together, the two of us against the world. Please come back to me, Kalli. The days have grown darker since you left.
It’s too hard. Existing is never easy. We all just do it out of habit. What’s the point of living anymore if the only reason I’m aware enough to feel the emptiness, this pain, is because I’m acting out of some habit, some predetermined code that I have no control over? It’s absurd. There is no good reason to live. It’s too much work. It hurts. Content, I clench the inevitability of the noose I tied and embrace a future that I can only long for. Nothing in the world feels truer.
I don’t want to live without you.
I won’t.
The world is nothing, and the fucked-up thing about it is, people actually think they matter - that they somehow make a
difference in this shitty, fucking excuse of an existence. That is the absurd! They cry out for an explanation, a reason things happen the way they do. They are fools. The only clarity that exists is the understanding that it doesn’t.
The nurse said it was complications with the machinery. That it was a rare occurrence. That’s my fucking clarity.
I can’t take it anymore. I know I’m not beating this. There is no way to win. I realize that now. The only way to stop losing is to stop playing their game.
I’m so sorry I didn’t get to tell you goodbye.
I’m sorry for everything.
I love you, Kalli. I always will.
Cold, quivering hands tightly grip the frayed rope hanging from the metal pipe that slithers down the hall and into the bathroom. It easily falls around my neck.
Pausing only to fill my lungs completely one last time, I exhale and confidently step up on a rusted chair borrowed from our bedro
om.
My eyes close.
I take in the silence.
This is the only way.
“What are you going to do if I don’t come back?” asks a restless Kalli in the shadow of the infirmary doors, her arms crossed to keep herself from biting her nails.
“Where are you going to go?” I reply sarcastically, looking around and laughing to myself at my own attempt at humor. “Far away from this place. There must be something out there. What if I just ran away... never looked back?”
“Well,” I say, after giving it a bit of thought. “I guess, I’d go with you. Like I’m really going to let you leave me here in this shithole.”
She smiles back at me.
“I will never leave you, Palin.”
I kick the chair from beneath me.
My body falls.
The rope creaks as it quickly tightens around my neck. I feel the weight of gravity dragging me, pulling me down. This is my happily ever after.
My body jerks.
The distinct smell of burnt friction, pulling, and twisting the tattered rope, dances on the cusp of my perception. There is no panic. No chaos. All is calm. Everything is numb. I swing into the dark. I let it take me. Floating down, down, further into the void. I can hear the faintest sound, a warm, inviting rhythm. It reminds me of her heartbeat. Steady. Melodic.
The sensation of weightlessness almost tickles as I feel my arms float up to my sides. Is this nothingness? Why am I still here if I’m not? In the distance, a light cracks the darkness like dawn’s first breath. Slowly, it creeps towards me in harmony with the perpetual rhythm, becoming larger, brighter.
Further, I drift, absorbed by its allure. I suddenly want the sound more than I’ve ever wanted anything. It’s mesmerizing, each beat flinging flares of color throughout the darkness. Every hue imaginable thrown miles in every direction. The closer I float, the louder and more compelling it becomes.
I’m not sure when, but at some point, I started to slightly rotate. The cadence now is unceasing, pulsating louder with every rotation. Where am I? Time seems to have abandoned this place. There’s no way to tell how long I’ve been drifting towards the lights. No way to know how much longer.
The atmosphere suddenly changes. The sound is coming straight at me. The darkness has practically retreated. I’m almost there, but it’s too loud. The beating has grown excruciating and bright. It’s too bright. Blinded by its beauty, the unearthly thrashing is all I can hear.
The colors scream violently, each flash more aggressive than the last. The once sweet melody has transformed into gnashing horror, clawing at my ears, rattling my core.
The light absorbs me.
It’s too much..
I scream, but nothing comes out.
It’s brighter than a thousand suns.
It’s banging louder. It’s so loud!
I’m spinning too fast!
The brightness completely surrounds me. It burns.
My eyes melt from my face. I feel their warmth on my cheek as they drip down to the ground.
“Please, no!” I cry, but no one can hear me.
What’s happening to me!?
My skin is engulfed in white flames. Scorching me, fusing my flesh to the bone.
I’m sinking!
It’s too strong.
It’s taking over!
What have I done?
What have I done??
I snap back to death to see Kalli’s friend, Jacee, standing over me. She’s freaking out, crying hysterically.
“Help me.”
The lights go out, and I fall.
There is no ground. No sight of the brightness or the horrid sounds, only darkness. Faster and faster, I descend deeper into the abyss.
A voice in the dark quietly murmurs, “Someone help meee.” A whisper, echoing on repeat. Each cry softer than the one before it. I frantically look around me. Oblivion stares back.
The echoes fade. Still falling, but faster than before, I catch the glimpse of something under me. Tiny at first but coming at me quick.
I blink and I’m soaring through the night’s sky miles in the air. The wind-worn landscape encompassing the walls of 34 quickly approaching. Before I can brace for impact, I smash face-first into the sand.
“What do you think it used to be like? Before Lethe…” asks a gentle voice I haven’t heard in weeks. With the quickness of a ghost storm, my head snaps up out of the sand. I quickly rise, dusting myself off without injury, as two dark figures pass by me like I wasn’t even there.
The slightly less than a full moon hangs in the velvet sky over the Outlands. The stars in full force between the clouds. Two
shadows, hand in hand, leave behind a trail of footprints in the sand towards the southern gate of 34.
“I think it’s useless to live in the past. Daydreaming about things we can’t change.. It’s torture,” states another familiar voice, my voice.
“Lame! I think we would’ve liked it. Free to do whatever we wanted, be whoever we wanted to be. A million different choices. People back then probably never worried about a thing,” says Kalli, eyes still in the clouds slowly creeping over the moon.
“People back then are Lethe, so I’m sure they weren’t all that great. Plus, I don’t need a million choices. I’d rather be here with you.”
I remember this conversation. It was a few months before she passed. I didn’t realize I used to be such a romantic.
Like a quake, the ground begins to tremble violently, much stronger than a typical quake. The two silhouettes casually pass through the electric field of the entry gate just as it collapses to rubble on top of them. Patches of sand begin falling around me. A crack in the sky splits it like glass. A web of light pierces through behind the fragments. As the structures of 34 crumble, the sand beneath my feet disappears. Into the darkness again I fall.
Seconds later I’m thrown into another reality. Bright blue sky in every direction. The intense pressure forcing me down as I fall leaves a hostile feeling in the trench of my stomach. Adrenaline rips through my veins. The intensity of the wind flying around me is deafening. Just barely able to turn my head around, I smash through the roof of a building; my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. Torn metal and concrete fly around me. Lights flicker each floor I
crash through until, at last, I land on the linoleum checkered floor she always hated.
Pieces of wreckage dangle from the ceiling above as a cloud of dust rushes in from behind. The two people in the common room quietly continue as if nothing has changed.
This is our apartment, a few weeks before she was scheduled to be reborn. A memory I hope I never lose.
Kalli carefully steps on my doppelganger’s bare feet. His arms wrap around her just as mine did that afternoon. An irrational twinge of jealousy squeezes me. What I wouldn’t give to be there again. She lays her gentle head on his chest as they sway in the silence of each other.
Before I’m able to interject, the walls around me begin to shake. Cracks race on every surface. The sounds of metal buildings smashing to the concrete boom from outside. The sky flashes a blinding streak of red through the open window.
“Kalli!!” I scream.
The memory of her turns and stares right through me in the crumbling apartment like she could almost sense I’m here. Reaching out for her, I fall. The floor reduces to rubble from under me. The world around us slowly collapses into the widening hole. Hands blindly reaching as I fall; they find a pipe barely attached to a broken wall of our home. Hanging above the spiraling swell of the abyss, I pull myself towards the edge of the shattered floor shaking loose from its foundation.
I hear it first. The long whine of metal grinding apart. The pipe gives. With it, I plunge into the cold blackness again. Smashing through the scenes of my life, through memories I didn’t know I had,
I fall. Every significant moment whirling by me like a film. I watch, unable to stop the inevitable, unable to change the ending.
It’s t
orture.
Finally, I collapse into her room in the infirmary, the place I last saw her. Something inside me tells me this is going to be my final stop down memory lane, except this memory hasn’t happened yet.
I’m lying on her bed. The room still reeks of death. One of the fluorescents above flickers in the twilight. Everything is blurred. The walls are dancing. The tiles are spinning. They spin faster, turning end over end. The clock on the wall stretches to the floor, melting like hot wax. Its hands, like propellers, match the impossible speed of the tiles. The people on the TV are laughing at me. They point and scream my name from their tiny, thin box. It does me no good to even look, she’s not here. I am alone in this place. I am alone.
All my weight enters me at once as I’m knocked back further into the bed I smashed into. The now possessed mattress pulls me into it, trapping me. The sheets wrap around my wrists and ankles. I scream her name into the nothingness as I struggle not to be swallowed whole. The nothingness remains silent.
Suddenly, a nurse appears over me.
My mouth opens, but only silence escapes me. There is no air in this place. No sound. Every one of my muscles refuse to work another second. My resistance halts. I just want it to end. I feel myself fading. Slowly disappearing.
“Palin, are you still with us?”
My eyes pry open. Burning light uncontrollably floods in as I fight back with little opposition. It’s hard to breathe, every desperate attempt chokes me. With a raspy, sleepy grunt I beg into the brightness, “What happened?”
It answers me with the tender voice of a woman. “You’re in the infirmary. Jacee found you. Luckily, she got there when she did. She saved your life.”
It all starts rushing back to me. My eyes begin to clear. They scan the room and find someone leaning against the chrome railing of my bed. Her face, impossible to focus.
The people on the TV are carrying about normally again. The walls still sway a bit – just barely. The clock ticks at a usual tempo. This means I failed. What type of cruel joke has the universe played on me? Maybe this life is my only death, a death without end, without escape. My eternal punishment. My hell.
Falling in and out of consciousness, I lock myself inside my mind. The woman continues talking to me, but I can’t quite make out what she’s saying. Her words are too muffled, and quite frankly I don’t care what she has to say. My ears quickly forfeit, and she too fades from the cold, dark room.
