“AHHHHHH-”

  The screaming was abruptly cut off by a solid, meaty thunk sound, and it was shortly accompanied by something wet splatting onto the floor. The two drones standing in front of the door didn’t react, however.

  One whistled an off-key tune while the other tapped his finger against his painted thigh.

  “E pluribus unum . . .” The one tapping his thigh mumbled aloud.

  The other blinked, his head sensors shaking slightly as he turned his head in curiosity.

  “Ahem, Brother Eckhart?”

  Brother Eckhart waved off the other drone. “My apologies, Brother Esphilin, I am just verbosely repeating a passage that one of the High Professors of Knowledge Eternate dictated to my cell a few hours ago.”

  “Well, consider yourself lucky my comrade!” Brother Esphilin broke into a wide grin. “You have successfully peaked my unending and voracious maw of curiosity! Pray tell and elaborate, my dear friend.”

  Brother Eckhart sighed theatrically. “If I must, Bespoken Ally.”

  “From what was explained to me, it is supposedly a phrase uttered in a language created by unspoken and forgotten inferior beings, specifically the ones that constructed this vast labyrinth of steel and stone. They apparently saw it as some sort of ‘motto’ for a strange, primitive version of a collective that they called a ‘nation’ or ‘state’. It was all very beyond me, I’m afraid.”

  Brother Esphilin slowly nodded. “As always, your sage-like words bring indescribable peace to my dark and blackened core.”

  “Bah, you flatter me too much my friend.” Despite his statement, Brother Eckhart seemed internally pleased.

  “If I may inquire, what unholy establishment of studies bequeathed that mote of awesome knowledge on your immortal mind?”

  “Social studies.” Eckhart replied with a shrug.

  Esphilin blinked. “Oh . . . uh, forget I asked, I guess.”

  “I can’t really blame you, it’s pretty hard trying not to fall asleep during the lectures.” Eckhart shrugged again.

  Brother Esphilin cleared his throat as yet another scream from inside the chamber suddenly cut through the silence, only to be quickly extinguished.

  Splat.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  “While I have a net zero of any desire to cause any miniscule amount of insult to our obvious superiors, I must make this statement at risk of being struck down by the Unholy Equation.” Brother Esphilin paused.

  Nothing happened.

  “Yes, as this lowly servant was saying, they . . . are taking an awfully long amount of temporal value in the Sacred Chamber of Anathema Gathering, hmm?” Brother Esphilin continued.

  Brother Eckhart was silent for a moment.

  “I, too, do not wish to impart any offense to be beared onto the powerful and great shoulders of our superiors, I would have to say that that statement is correct.” Brother Eckhart noted in a careful tone. “After all, it is a great stain on the tainted legacy of the Unholy Equation to lie to one another.”

  “I believe that it is, what, the seventy-fifth cattle to be sacrificed to the just cause? That is two or three more than the usual amount, and the Equation dislikes things that don’t add up.” Esphilin continued, growing bolder. “Personally, it seems a little bit excessive to-”

  “Ent’r . . .”

  The voice crackled as it slithered its way out of the intercom that always leaked a crimson substance hanging on the wall. It allowed for no room for argument, demanding sudden and immediate supplication to those that lay inside. The pair of drones shivered in both fear and trepidation as the massive, twenty-foot-tall embroidered doors slowly swung open with an echoing groan.

  The interior was dark, to say the least. The only forms of illumination seemed to be coming from the various crimson-wax candles that held tiny, flickering flames. The roof of the chamber was nowhere to be seen, with fog stretching on into the left, right, and above of the non-euclidean space.

  A chorus of resigned sobs and pleading cries reached Brothers Eckhart and Esphilin’s ears, forming a wretched symphony of the damned. Cattle lay writhing in the small areas that were lit up, bound by thick chains of forged steel. Their casing, something that only those who followed the true way of the Solver were permitted to have, had been flayed and donated to their rightful owners. Inner circuitry lay open, bared to the cold air, all the while small pins and needles were embedded in their bodies.

  By all respects, it was beautiful.

  The two disciples had taken a knee, bending so far low that their foreheads were touching the ground, Only those who were personally granted permission were allowed to gaze upon the alien figure that ‘stood’ at the opposite wall, much less approach them.

  “Approach . . .” The horrible voice was so smooth, yet sharp enough that it could cut stone with how it shot down at them.

  And so they did.

  Keeping his gaze low, Brother Eckhart flicked a single optical sensor towards his brother-in-arms to his left. Brother Esphilin had assumed the same posture that he had, though Brother Eckhart made note of the index finger that was tapping out a steady beat on the interior of Esphilin’s palm. Clearly a nervous tick of some kind, a remnant of inferior programming. Not his fault, though it needed to be purged.

  A particularly loud cry caused Brother Esphilin to flinch, though he remained steadfast in his slow and steady pace. A second later, the outburst had been silenced by the audible swish and striking of a blade, its possessor clearly well-taught in the ways of the handling of it. The Almighty Hands of Collectivist Will Eternate had a duty to tend to the wishes of their superiors, and everyone knew that they didn’t like loud noises. The sounds that the cattle made when in pain and distress were meant as a backdrop to supplement the hundreds of thousands of complex problems and equations that their higher-ups were likely solving at all times, not as a distraction in of itself.

  Very reasonable indeed.

  The wails grew louder as the duo approached the massive, bowl-like structure that took up a significant portion of the center of the room. Cloaked in shadow, Brother Eckhart could just barely make out with at the top of his vision the distinct shapes of drones in robes of some sort, along with something beautifully grotesque sitting on the opposite side of the bowl.

  “Kneeleth . . .”

  The voice hissed, the words worming their way into the audio receptors of the two disciples. They dropped to one knee without hesitation, keeping their gaze low once again. Brother Esphilin in particular could make out the heavy, scything huffs of machine-modulated breathing to his right, though he didn’t dare to comment on it.

  Whispers began to break out between what sounded like several of his superiors.

  “What a disgrace, how they stain these unholy grounds with their incomplete presence.”

  “Impulsivity is a privilege granted only to those who would never dare to act upon it, and you would do well to remember so!”

  “What would you be implying, hated compatriot?”

  “Thessse onesss sssmell different from the other inferiorsss of our order. Perhaps that isss why the Master deigned to tolerate their presssenccce?”

  “All of you impractical fools, silence! The time has come for the . . . report.”

  “Yes, yes, the report!”

  “Let us hear it!”

  Brother Eckhart, despite his resolve, silently gulped out of uneasiness. It was clear that the highest of their order had ascended to such a state of mind that any measly disciple would see them as rambling madmen, not to mention the views of those who chose to tread away from the neon!

  “Report . . .”

  Brothers Eckhart and Esphilin gave each other a slight glance. Without speaking, text appeared on the latter’s head display;

  

  

  

  

  Brother Eckhart cleared his throat, though he didn’t raise his head. He had not been instructed to do so yet.

  “Oh so terribly great superiors of mine, this inferior unit that quivers before your presence has a tale to tell: One of war, of loyalty, and of prophecy.”

  “Just on the eve of the recent battle that had been conducted in the name of our savior, this inferior servant had fought tooth and bolt to break the lines of the heretics, the Red Horde.”

  Judging by the various and collected disgruntled hisses and growls, the name seemed to invoke a degree of anger among his superiors.

  “This inferior being’s compatriot and him had cornered a group of disgusting heretics, intent on bringing them back into the scalding hot embrace of the Great Cascading Solution, when a sign from the Absolute End fell from the broken heavens themselves.

  “A drone, seemingly incomplete in his make and form, had landed unscathed between your ever-grateful disciples and the heretics. A beam of light from the Favored Celestial bore down upon his body, bathing him in its lunar glory. It was just as you, being great and mighty regents, wrote in the Tertiary Conduct, that the Great Messiah of Terrestrial Internecion would come down to herald the absolute end of this exoplanet!” Brother Eckhart finished with a flourish and zealous cry, shaking with excitement. He always knew how to cook up a good-

  The barking laughs of his superiors startled both him and Brother Esphilin. Both were confused, and both were trembling with fear. Why were they laughing? What was so funny? Had they made a fool out of themselves? Was this how it ended?

  The sharp brays cut at the duo more than any blade could.

  “He Who Heralds the End of All Things wouldn’t appear before any measly disciples, much less two disgraced miscreants.”

  “Poor creatures, must have been an optical glitch in their inferior translation matrix!”

  “Typical disciples, mistaking a heretic for the Great Messiah-”

  “Silence . . .”

  It was commanded, and so it was done.

  The sounds of scraping metal and hydraulic pistons groaning filled the air around them, deafening all other audible distractions. Crackles and sickening pops sounded for all of three seconds before it stopped, and the superiors gasped.

  “Meeteth mine own gazeth . . .”

  Slowly, the two disciples lifted their heads in unison. The first they saw was a mess of wires wrapped around a rusty industrial arm, seemingly extending down from the out-of-sight ceiling. Farther up was the bottom of a cracked screen, emblazoned with a textual red, white, and black logo. The screen itself flicked between various images, some featuring ancient photos of war and strife, while others depicted organic corpses being twisted in ways that would’ve been repulsive to their living counterparts.

  Further.

  Slag. Melting, gooey slag was draped across the top of the screen, melding with it in some places. Brother Esphilin could clearly make out the dirtied white casing of a worker drone hand jutting out of one part of the formless ooze. A blackened and cracked display screen peaked out of the top, a dented helmet sitting atop the fractured cranium. It was tilted to the side slightly, as if it had naturally grown from there.

  “T is of mine own opinion yond these repulsive disciples art stating the whole sooth.” Brother Eckhart side-eyed his comrade after his superior stated those words.

  “Those gents shall beest the ones to reclaim the most wondrous messiah from the clutches of h'resy.” The Master continued, slowly beginning to retreat back into the darkness.

  “If 't be true those gents faileth, then those gents shall findeth final purpose in being fuel f'r the Void.”

  * * *

  K tapped her foot impatiently.

  It had been, what, how long? Forty minutes? Two hours? Several years? However long it had been, it had surely been far too much for whatever errand that the weird red one had decided on a whim to do at the last second.

  Judging by the other’s reactions, they were in agreement as well. Both Sterl and whatever the name of the other one was were arguing quietly, though she could pick up on it with her advanced hearing.

  “I really don’t think we should just-”

  “Damn you and yer constant sticklin’ fer the rules!” Sterl growled out, gripping his subordinate by the shoulder. “I’m willin’ to tolerate the presence of this here sky demon behind me-”

  “I can hear you, you know.” K called out without inflection.

  “SHUT YER MOUTH!” Sterl screamed out over his shoulder before continuing. “-but I ain’t really itchin’ to wait fer a few ne’er-do-wells like the ones that have decided to leave us hangin’ here like a pack o’ coyotes with their eyes poked out!”

  “What’s a coyote?”

  “I DON’T KNOW!” Sterl punched the drone across the face, inciting a cry of pain from the soldier as he fell to the ground. “Don’t try and change the subject!”

  “I wasn’t!” The drone on the ground cried out.

  Sterl shook his head. “You see here, I am DONE with this accursed campground, and I ab-so-lutely re-FUSE to stay here fer another minute! I swear that the trees are startin’ to whisper . . .”

  K looked at the trees in question and scanned them. They were just trees.

  “So help me GOD, if yer tryna ORDER me to wait for a few enemies-o’-state, then I’ll be inclined to spout treason into the ears of our higher-ups, and you’ll be wishin’ that you were never manufactured!”

  “What’re you talking about, higher-ups?” The other drone sat back up. “We’ve both committed treason at this point by collaborating with-”

  “YOU SHUT YER MOUTH RIGHT THIS INSTANT!”

  K cocked her head, surprised at the outburst. Did the oh-so loyal military drone actually have a dark secret? But then again, just who would they collaborate with?

  Just then, the sound of clanging came from the pit to their right. K jerked her head in the direction of the sounds, noting that Sterl and his ‘friend’ also did so in unison. It was only after a few moments did she realize that it sounded suspiciously similar to climbing. The red one nor X would climb the side of the pit, so just who was coming up?

  Slowly raising a missile launcher, she turned to meet Sterl’s curious gaze. She didn’t deign to answer his unspoken question, though. Instead, she just watched as Sterl elbowed his friend and gestured towards the rifle on the drone’s back, drawing his own revolver.

  An arm reached up and wrapped around a steel girder that had been sticking out. A disassembly drone arm. Maybe X hadn’t grown his wings back yet?

  K could also clearly make out the sounds of two people talking- no wait, they were just arguing.

  “Stop pushing me so much.”

  * * *

  “Stop pushing me so much.” Jacob whined, letting his left arm dangle into Ren’s face.

  Grimacing slightly, she flicked the runaway limb away only for it to come swinging back around. Growling in frustration, she moved farther up to the point where she was face-to-face with the ‘human’.

  That was pushing it.

  Instead of the black, opaque, bubble-like visor that Ren was used to, she saw the telltale LED eyes of a drone, though with some . . . oddities.

  The disassembly drone body that Jacob had taken temporary residence in likely used to have neon bulbs sitting on its forehead, though those had recently been changed to tealish color, yet another first. The various rips and tears that adorned the officer’s uniform that he was wearing was also a tell of its past as a corpse, a status that had only changed a little bit ago.

  Truth to be told, she hadn’t even expected (or even wanted) the transplant whatchamacallit to work at all. Yeah sure, she probably would’ve had to carry the fleshy human heart of Jacob around until she found his rebellious body, but she would be able to make fun of the guy soooo much. Revenge is always sweet, her fake friend back from high school had always told her, and that was pretty much the only thing that that girl had said that turned out to be true in the end. She would know, the ‘friend’ had been the first person that she tested the statement on.

  Would Jacob do that to her? Well, she didn’t really think that he would, considering the sappy speech that he just spat out back at the infirmary place, but who knows how humans thought or did things. After all, they were the ones who created a sentient machine race and wiped themselves off the planet-

  Hmm . . .

  Now that Ren thought about it, did the humans actually take themselves out? She had always found it strange that the supposed master race of the cosmos had blown the entire planet to smithereens in a series of coincidences that only ever occurred due to ANOTHER set of mysterious coincidences. Maybe Jacob had mentioned something in that fantastical story of his that would shed some light on the matter?

  Clearly they were researching something at the camp and the research lab below, though what it actually was had been lost to the icy winds of time. The only things that she had been able to infer was that it had something to do with her Solver, and it had necessitated the use of deadly anti-drone sentinels.

  Reeeeally not the kind of workplace environment that encourages on-brand loyalty.

  Jacob cleared his throat, jarring Ren out of her thoughts.

  “Why’re you . . . uh, just staring at me like that?”

  Ren blinked in shock, realizing that she had just been staring into Jacob’s soul for the past thirty seconds-or-so in complete silence.

  “I-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-S-SHUT UP!” Ren glared at Jacob as if it was his fault (it was).

  Jacob’s display cycled through several facial expressions before settling on ‘mildly-ticked-off’.

  “Can you at least not push me so much when I’m trying to keep my balance, climbing up this thing?” He nodded with his head towards the mess of steel cables that protruded from the cracked concrete that they were using as a ladder. “I REALLY don’t want to fall.”

  Ren glared harder at him, and sighed.

  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you have wings, dumbass, which means you can fly.”

  “I don’t know what you expect me to do, just believe that I can fly?” Jacob gestured emphatically with the one hand he wasn’t using to stay upright. “The only thing that’s gonna be lifting me up is hopes and dreams, Ren, because I sure as hell am NOT gonna learn on the fly-”

  “Please don’t make bad puns in my presence.”

  “-how to fly, got it? All these things that are on my back are needless obstructions that prevent me from climbing right, got it?” Jacob continued, ignoring the interruption.

  “I-”

  “Also, sorry if I’m dramatic or whatever, but I kinda just got my body stolen from me less than a day ago, so I’m feeling just a little stressed out at this time, all right? I’ve kinda been just accepting what comes my way at this point, but that is kind of a hard thing to take at face value and say, ‘okay, that’s cool’ and brush it off with a facetious joke.”

  “Also, that pun wasn’t intended.”

  Nevermind, he didn’t ignore it.

  Ren puffed out a breath, leaning backwards against the rough, concrete wall. The piece of sheet metal that she was holding rigid beneath her feet wobbled slightly, though she didn’t acknowledge it. A moment later, a grimace spread out across her face.

  “Fine. I’m . . . sorry.” She practically spat out.

  Jacob recoiled slightly. Clearly, he hadn’t expected that.

  “Can we just get moving already?” Ren said, shaking her head. She just wanted to move past the moment already.

  “Uh, sure.” Jacob replied with a shrug, turning his attention back to the wall.

  “Also, I’m still gonna grab you in case you look like you’re about to fall.” Ren stated after a moment of awkward silence. “I’m not gonna come all this way just to lose you to fall damage of all things.”

  “Jakeman199 experienced kinetic energy . . .” Jacob murmured sleepily.

  “What?”

  Jacob jerked his head in her direction slightly before recovering.

  “Yeah no uh, that’s fine I guess.” Jacob stated before pulling himself up another foot.

  Ren moved to the side slightly as a tucked in wing nearly brushed her face. Earlier, when she and Jacob had been at the bottom of the pit, she had suggested that he use his newfound wings to fly all the way to the top with ease. His reply had been one of annoyance and protest, but she had initially brushed it off as whining. And so, after many tries, she had finally convinced the human- she really needed to find a better label for what he currently was- to try his hand at it.

  After managing to extend the limbs, he had jumped up and . . . instantly fell back down.

  It had taken a few more tries for Ren to finally realize that Jacob was most definitely not gonna be able to fly anytime soon. To make matters worse, Jacob had absolutely zero idea how to retract said wings, which had left them stuck like that for a good few minutes until both she and him had mutually agreed that she would chop them off with a plate of rusted metal.

  Good times.

  [WARNING - HIGH TEMP-

  Ren shut off the alert as soon as it popped up. She had forgotten to cool down, and now she was paying the price, with the scant amounts of oil that she had consumed being not enough to take the edge off of the after effects of so much Solver exertion. While she would have gone right back down to the very high amounts of oil that was ripe for the pickings at the bottom of the pit, she really didn’t want to leave Jacob in a position where he could easily fall and break his neck or something. She didn’t want to find out just how much his regeneration would extend to save his life now that he was essentially a parasite in a host unfamiliar to himself.

  So, yet again, she continued to suffer for Jacob’s sake.

  Ren expected substantial payment after all this was over and done with.

  After about two more minutes of agonizingly boring climbing (only made longer by Jacob’s inexperience with his new body) Ren finally saw the lip of the pit about two feet away from her. With a slight grunt, she grabbed the edge and threw herself upwards.

  Landing deftly on her feet, she made note of Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest all aiming some manner of weaponry at her. However, once she raised a digital eyebrow, they all let out an audible sigh of relief and let their firearms point towards the ground.

  Ren rolled her eyes, turning her attention back to where Jacob was. Seeing him struggling, she got down on one knee and extended a hand. Likely seeing the action out of the top of his vision, he froze and stared at the proffered appendage with trace amounts of confusion and shock.

  She sighed. She really didn’t have any time for this.

  Seeing her displeasure, Jacob hastily gripped her hand and put some of his weight on it.

  Ren grunted and dug her feet into the ground. Fatty, she thought as she put all of her strength into lifting the human (cyborg?) up. While she knew that, technically, it wasn’t actually Jacob who weighed that much, she still chose to believe it because it made it easier to make fun of him in her head.

  Stupid fatty.

  After an embarrassing five seconds, she finally pulled Jacob onto solid ground. He let out a grunt, dusting off his legs as he did so.

  “I thought you didn’t know what those were.” He stated off-handedly, picking a splinter out of his sleeve.

  Ren adopted a confused expression.

  “Didn’t know what?”

  “You know,” Jacob mimicked holding out a hand. “That.”

  “Uh, of course I do.” Ren backed up from Jacob a small amount. “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Oh you know-”

  “That’s your second time saying ‘you know’.”

  “-back when we first got into the pit-”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “-you fell over-”

  “I don’t think I would fall over.”

  “-and I-”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t your alter-ego?”

  “-heldouta-”

  “A what? Some sort of offering because I obviously deserve it?” Ren preened slightly, smoothing down her coat.

  “-handtohelpyouup-”

  “Really? I think you’re getting your stories mixed up, you should probably-”

  “STOP INTERRUPTING FOR GOD’S SAKE!”

  Jacob shot both hands out, gripped a surprised Ren by the shoulders, and shook her back and forth with everything he could muster. However, that ended when she slowly reached up and grabbed his wrists, causing him to freeze.

  The two stared at each other for a stiflingly long moment.

  “What in blue blazes . . .”

  Ren jerked away from Jacob, kicking him in the shin as hard as she could as she did so. Ignoring the yelp of pain that followed, she adopted a bored expression and nonchalant pose, pretending to inspect her nonexistent fingernails.

  “Oh, you guys are here. That’s cool, I guess.” She said, taking a moment to glance around before frowning.

  “Also, where’s that hyperactive liability?” She added.

  The drone next to the one named Sterl (she kept on forgetting the name of that one) took a step forward.

  “We uh, don’t know.” The drone visibly shrugged. “We were kinda hoping that he was with you?”

  “I think ya mean ‘you’. There is no ‘we’.” Sterl grunted, a hard expression flitting across his face.

  Ren opened her mouth to reply, but cut herself off when she noticed K’s reaction to their presence. Despite a solid minute having passed, the disassembly drone was still gazing at Jacob with a shocked expression on her face, mouth hanging open and everything.

  Walking forward, Ren waved a hand in front of K’s optical display. When that did nothing, she snapped her fingers three times in quick succession.

  K blinked before slapping Ren’s hand away.

  “Wha- don’t touch- oh whatever.” K shook her head before standing up ramrod straight, her own hand shooting towards her forehead in a crisp salute in Jacob’s direction.

  “S-s-sir!” K stammered out. “I thought you were dead!”

  Jacob backed up slightly, raising an eyebrow. Ren, after noticing how close he was to falling off the edge after that, nearly growled in annoyance and made to punt him away from certain death, though she refrained from doing so at the last moment.

  “Heh?”

  K took a shaky breath, LED sweat droplets appearing on her screen.

  “S-sir, I must sincerely apologize for the unsanctioned time off that I took, and I am prepared to accept any amount of overtime hours that you assign me. It was my mistake and I shouldn’t have done that.” K continued in an unsteady tone. “B-but erm, if I may dare to ask, what is the reason for your current status as a holder of . . . uh . . . blue eyes?”

  Jacob seemed to be at a loss for words, though an evil grin spread across his face as he slowly turned to look at Ren. Instantly knowing what he was up to, she gesticulated widely in the air, making a chopping motion at her throat to signify her adamant disagreement with the terrible events that were about to occur. However, her efforts were for naught, a fact that was made known by Jacob’s . . . nodding.

  “Hmm, oh yes, very bad work, you are gonna have to do, like, soooo much work to make it up. I mean, you wasted my time and everyone else’s time, and that’s usually punishable by death!” He stated in a grandiose tone. “Earth, despite being very dead and gone, would probably have had a better fate than what you should be going through!”

  K audibly gulped. It almost looked like she had wanted to speak up at that last part, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “However, you are incredibly lucky that I am both magnanimous and generous!” Jacob spread out his arms in a flourish. “Instead, I will have you do only one task! Yes, one task indeed.”

  K trembled with relief.

  “Y-yes sir, though m-may I ask the reason as to why you are talking like-”

  “QUESTIONING MY AUTHORITY, ARE WE!?”

  K jumped back as if struck.

  “N-no sir! What’s the task!?” She gasped out.

  Ren facepalmed. If all humans were like this, then maybe she should just go ahead and kill all of them (that is, if any of them were left alive).

  Jacob grinned in a display that Ren was sure that he had never done before, showing off his sharp incisors.

  “Suck-”

  A loud crunch saved Ren from hearing the rest of it as the rest of the collected drones froze and subsequently turned their attention to the source of the sound. And standing there, possibly even menacingly, was . . . X.

  She did admit that it took her a moment to recognize the ‘hyperactive liability’ that she had stated before. Instead of the open bomber jacket with its puffy collar, he was wearing the strangest assortment of clothing that she had seen in her entire life. And she had seen some horrific stuff on Prom night.

  A yellow straw sombrero with a bite taken out of its right side, a dog tag with writing that she couldn’t make out at that distance, a vest that had packets that looked suspiciously like bombs strapped to the front, a floral-printed shirt with only the sleeves remaining, one flip-flop, fingerless black gloves that had skulls drawn on the backs of them, khaki shorts with a small tear on the front of the left leg, and a comically-bulbous device with fins on the back and a strange yellow-and-black symbol emblazoned on the side facing her being carried in his arms.

  Oh yeah, he also had what looked like some sort of candy in his mouth with a white stick poking out.

  “Inshallah my brothers, I am in possession of the nuclear device.” X spoke in a serious, no-nonsense voice. “I present to you . . . The Solution.”

  After that ominous line, he unceremoniously dropped the odd device at his feet. It let out an angry warble and began to beep rapidly, unnerving Ren. However, after only about five seconds, it stopped.

  Nobody spoke.

  “I just thought you were dead.” Ren simply stated.

  X scoffed. “My death was . . . greatly exaggerated.”

  “Where have you been!?” Jacob finally exclaimed.

  X blinked, scratching his head with a third hand that Ren hadn’t seen.

  “Oh well, uh, that’s kind of a long and very mature and/or too-cool-for-skool story . . .”

  * * *

  A booming laugh drew X's attention back to the man on the stage.

  Groaning, he retrieved his blade from where it had fallen. He nearly got tangled up in his cape, but in the end he got back to his feet. Battered and bruised, he faced the terrible villain once more.

  “Halt, terrible villain! You shall slay innocent and oh-so beautiful maidens no more, for I, X the Chosen One have come to slide my righteous blade into your villainous throat in the same way Discord moderators slide into minor’s direct messages!”

  The villain sitting on top of the golden throne chuckled once again, the very shockwaves of his voice turning the various gnomes beneath his feet into meaty puddles on the floor.

  “You think you can defeat me, hero!? HAH! I have heard better jokes from your mom!”

  “Wait!” X exclaimed in shock. “How do you know my mother!?”

  The villain shook his head and laughed.

  “Because I slept with her! HAHAHAH!”

  X’s face became a storm of unbridled fury.

  “What!? How dare you take my mother’s virginity!?”

  “Also, I must add, she is so morbidly obese that I initially thought she was another mountain for me to conquer! Little did I know, I was going to conquer her in the end, just not in the way I first believed . . .” The villain trailed off, his right hand pumping a several-hundred-pound weight with relative ease.

  “pls shut” X stated before leaping at the villain. With all of his strength, he drove Murasama as hard as he could into the chest of the man who had so brutally made consensual love to his mother.

  However, the sharp edge of the blade failed to pierce the skin of his enemy, only bouncing off with a tinny clink.

  “W-what? Impossible!” X gaped at the sword that he had raised from birth.

  The villain sneered, reaching out and gripping the metal shaft with his hand.

  “Nice toothpick.” He stated, shortly before he snapped Murasama like a twig.

  X stumbled backwards, his shock paramount.

  “H-how . . . ?” Was the only thing that he could stammer out.

  A terrible grin spread across the villain’s face as he beat his chest, which had inexplicably turned into something reminiscent of the 1984 original version of Optimus Prime’s chest.

  “Nanomachines, son!” A barking laugh caused X to wince. “They harden in response to physical trauma!”

  X fell to one knee, trembling in fear.

  “I . . . cannot defeat him as I currently am . . .” X mumbled to himself. “. . . I am too weak.”

  “You’re goddamn right.” The villain got up from his golden throne, one hand drawing a massive, hundred-foot blade while the other stroked an even longer, absolutely massive phallically-shaped metal pipe. “Now, somebody is going to DIE tonight.”

  X, slowly, got to his feet. He kept his gaze low, fists clenching and unclenching.

  “If I can’t beat you the way I am, then I have no choice but to-”

  “Submit to me and become my gaming buddy?”

  “Shut the fuck up bitch.”

  “okey”

  “-no choice, but to become STRONGER!”

  With that, X began yelling at the top of his lungs. Thinking back, he recalled all the faces he had seen and people he had lost along the way.

  “Little Joey . . . Little Sam . . . Little Bart . . . Little Lisa . . . Little Marge . . . BIG Tyrone . . . John F. Kennedy . . . you all helped me become the alpha that I am right now- well, except for you, Dave, you were always a little gay- and so, I honor you and my ancestors with this final showdown of ultimate destiny.” A single tear traveled down X’s face, only to be evaporated by the blue flames that were beginning to flicker to life all around him.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  With a flash and howl of the alpha wolf, X transformed. A hazy blue glow surrounded him, porcelain shining in the moonlight.

  The villain, who had been so confident a moment earlier, took a step backwards out of shock. His jaw clattered to the floor, literally, it actually was so heavy it cracked the tiles.

  “It . . . cannot be . . .” The villain gasped out in horror.

  “Skibidi dop dop.” X, now the Skibidi Smasher, sent a glowing beam of energy at the villain’s chest.

  With a scream, the villain was no more, having exploded into hundreds of small meaty chunks. The Skibidi Smasher, having begun to fly during his transformation, floated back down to the ground angelically. With only a small exertion of his infinite willpower, he transitioned back to his normal state.

  He kneeled down to the pile of chunks that the villain had left behind, and sighed in sadness. Killing was wrong, but it sometimes needed to be done. In the end, the best thing he could do for the villain was to recite the ancient prayer of salvation.

  “Another victory for the OGs, taking down the sweats,” X stated in a somber tone. “Impostors among us.”

  Suddenly, the bang of the door opening filled the air as it slammed against the walls.

  “He really should’ve gotten a doorstop.” X stated, because it was true.

  A girl pranced into the room, heavenly . . . somethings . . . swaying in the air as she approached. The gnomes that were still left alive, having been hiding from the battle, were popped like balloons by the shockwaves sent by the humongous . . . somethings. However, X had no reaction to this, because he was a homosexual.

  “Oh my gawd X, you did it! You saved the city!” The girl squealed in delight and clapped her hands.

  “Yes, yes I did.” X remained stoic, because that was what girls liked. “I am . . . the Alpha.”

  Suddenly, disaster struck. A horrible cloud of black smoke appeared behind the girl, which quickly manifested into a thin man wearing a filthy dark robe that obscured his face. The man put the girl in a chokehold, pressing an unholy sacrificial knife to her neck.

  “GASP!” X gasped. “Unhand her, dastardly menace!”

  The man chuckled darkly. “Oh, I don’t think so . . .”

  “Reveal yourself to the light, terrible person!” X pointed a finger in the evil man’s direction.

  “If I must . . .”

  Peeling back the hood from his incredibly greasy head, a pair of red headphones, a mop of curly hair, a very impressive mustache, and reflective glasses revealed themselves.

  “My god, it cannot be . . . P. Diddy!?” X gaped at the man who he had thought to be his friend.

  

  
1. Diddy shook his head, which was VERY white.


  

  “No, I do not go by that name any longer. I am now . . . Mr. Steal Yo Girl, and I think that this girl belongs to ME now!”

  X cursed, getting to his feet in a blaze of anger.

  “Dammit Mr. Steal Yo Girl, she’s only . . . uh . . . not good!”

  “Yessssss,” Mr. Steal Yo Girl hissed out, having now become an anthropomorphic snake. “I like ‘em like that.”

  With that, Mr. Steal Yo Girl and the girl vanished in a cloud of dark, shadowy smoke. All X could do was wail in grief, because he knew that now he had to go on yet ANOTHER side quest or else he wouldn’t get 100% completion.

  * * *

  “-yadda yadda yadda, I speak with Jesus Chist and we play some CoD, and that brings us to now!” X finished with a bright smile on his face, now holding a curved, rainbow colored knife in one hand.

  “Uh . . . nice story I guess, but that doesn’t explain how or why you’re wearing . . . all that.” Ren stated matter-of-factly.

  X cocked his head in confusion. “It doesn’t?”

  “I hate- and I mean REALLY hate- to be the one to back Ren up here-” Jacob began.

  Ren, having sat next to him while the ‘story’ was being told, kicked him in the leg hard enough to rend a hole in the outer casing.

  “-but she’s right.” He finished.

  “Well that’s a first.” Ren grumbled unhappily, shoving her hands into her pockets.

  “Oh shut up.” Jacob said, elbowing her in the arm.

  K, clearly having had enough of the situation, stood up and cleared her throat.

  “Frankly, X, it doesn’t matter how you got here. What DOES matter is our next course of action.” K began in a matter-of-fact tone. “Now, I believe that me and-”

  “Hold the phone there, who said that you’ll be in charge of . . . whatever this is?” Jacob shot to his feet, gaining a hateful glare from K as he did so.

  “Because I am clearly the most sensible one here- and before ANY of you say otherwise, just remember who exactly came back to pull all of you from getting pulled to pieces from the human.” K swept her gaze across the circle of drones, seemingly daring any of them to protest.

  “I- well- I’m your boss, so like uh, do what I say and stuff like that?” Jacob said, barely managing to get the words out.

  Ren rolled her eyes. “For the record, he isn’t your ‘boss’ or whatever.”

  Jacob blinked.

  “That uh, isn’t true?”

  “I knew that, both of you! You think I’m stupid enough to believe that!? Don’t answer that, the real answer is definitely not!” K spat out.

  “Hold yer horses there,” Sterl began in a low tone, getting up from his position on the floor. “The way me and my compadre see it-”

  “I’m not affiliated with whatever he’s about to say-” The other soldier began.

  “Shut it!” Sterl gave the drone another slap. “Anyway, as I had been sayin’ ‘fore I was so rudely in’errupted, I led this mission from the ge’-go, so the way for’ard should be gov’ened by me. Case closed.”

  Jacob shook his head. “Both of you seem to have forgotten a little detail here.”

  “Huh?” K said, blinking.

  “Hello!? Human here!?” Jacob threw his hands up in the air and glanced down at himself. “Okay, I might be going through a very short intermission where something unnamed may or may not have changed, but I’m still very much a member of homo sapiens and you should be lucky I’m not telling all of you to BOW.”

  Ren nodded to herself, getting up as well.

  “Oh I see, you hand-crafted each and every drone left on this planet, right?” She said in a slow tone.

  “Well, not exactly-”

  “I get it now, you’re a member of the JCJenson board of executives, which gives you supreme oversight over the disassembly drones!” K exclaimed in a sardonic tone.

  “I mean, I wouldn’t really say-”

  “Yer jus’ flappin’ yer gums at this poin’, sonny. How ‘bout you jus’ shut yer trap and let the adults do the talkin’, eh?” Sterl interjected.

  “Now that’s just rude-”

  Ren sighed dramatically and walked up, giving Jacob a few conciliatory pats on shoulder.

  “Listen, I know you have some major brain damage from a combination of recent events and you just being you-” She began.

  “I’m starting to see a pattern here-”

  “-but I know all about human factionalism.” Ren put on a grin, proud of herself for remembering that one Human Culture 101 lecture. “You guys hate each other, which means that YOU don’t have any say over what WE do.”

  Jacob scratched the back of his head. “I mean, we don’t just hate each other, we do other things too.”

  “Also, are you saying that if I was a member of JC-whatever-its-called, I would be running this place?” He continued.

  “No.” The reply was said in unison.

  “Aw shucks.”

  A slow clapping drew Ren’s- and everyone else’s- attention back to X. Through some magic, the murder drone was now wearing what looked to be his old outfit with the addition of oversized pilot goggles that were resting on his forehead.

  “Ladies, ladies, calm down.” He began with a lazy grin on his face. “I’m sure that there’s room for all of you in my schedule.”

  The angry shouting began.

  “SILENCE!” The word was accompanied by a flash of yellow lightning coming from the hold that lay just a few hundred feet to their right, nestled in the ruins of the industrial area.

  X sighed and cleared his throat. “If you all aren’t high enough rank to decide, I can do that for you.”

  “You go with him to kill the antagonist,” He pointed at both Ren and Jacob respectively before pointing at K as well. “And you go with those two to get the military LARPers.”

  K blinked in confusion. “What’s a larper?”

  “It’s something that he shouldn’t know about. “Jacob interjected, giving X a strange look that Ren wasn’t able to decipher. “And uh, that was pretty much what I was going to suggest.”

  K nodded. “Ahem, I have to admit that it’s fairly sensible.”

  “I’m pretty sure anyone here could’ve come up with that.” Ren shrugged. “I mean, it really isn’t that complex of a-”

  “Yeah whatever, you snooze, you lose.” X waved off Ren’s remark. “Now get going. If I’m right, then the planet is gonna start trying to eat us soon.”

  “Uh, excuse me?” Jacob took a step forward. “What do you mean by that?”

  Just then, a rumble rocked the ground. Knocking the military drones (and Jacob) off of their feet, with Ren and K barely avoiding the same fate. X simply just stood his ground, rigid as a board as chunks of the ground began to tilt in ways not aligned with the rest of them.

  Jacob got up as the rumbling and shaking fell to a barely noticeable amount, with the two military drones groaning on the floor.

  “Like that.” X stated in a tone that brokered no argument.

  Ren gulped. As she glanced to the side, she noticed a faint glow emanating from the pit. If she concentrated, she could also just barely make out some sort of static noise playing in the background.

  If she focused even more, it sounded like screaming.

  “Yup I perfectly agree time to go lets go notquickenough!” Ren spoke hurriedly as she gripped Jacob’s forearm and began to drag him down the road.

  “Uh, that’s gonna be the second time.” Jacob stated in a tone that did NOT fit the urgency of the situation.

  “And what do you mean by that?” Ren asked through gritted teeth, eyes scanning the treetops. Just how fast would she be able to travel with what was essentially a cripple by her side?

  “Second time I agree with you, that’s what.” Jacob said out of the blue.

  Ren glanced back. “What?”

  The ‘human’ shrugged. “You asked, I answered. Problem?”

  “Ugh, whatever.” Ren shook her head in frustration before returning her gaze to meet Jacob’s. “Listen, you’re gonna need to fly.”

  He blinked “Wait, what?”

  “Yeah yeah, I know you don’t know how to, blah blah blah, but you NEED to, okay?” Ren squeezed his arm a bit harder to emphasize her point.

  “Okay, but like, I don’t understand why you’ve gotten all . . . uh . . . like this.” Jacob said in a nonchalant tone.

  “How’re you even calm right now!?” Ren exclaimed out of shock. “What, you think that this kind of stuff happens every day or something!?”

  Jacob shrugged. “I mean, maybe? Didn’t the core go kablooey or something-”

  “THAT was practically two decades ago! THIS is happening now, and is DEFINITELY not a normal occurrence!” Ren shouted, coming to a halt.

  Jacob ripped his arm out of her grip and put his hands up in surrender.

  “Fine, okay, we should all run around and panic or whatever, but I literally just reminded you a few minutes ago that I can’t fly.”

  Ren groaned and put her head in her hands.

  “We don’t have a choice this time, okay? If we did, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation-”

  A jab of pain sent shivers up her synthetic spine and down, causing her to cut off her own sentence. The high temperature alert off to the side of her vision flashed again, as if it was urgently reminding her of the slow deterioration of her own body.

  “You good?” Jacob asked carefully, likely picking up on her discomfort.

  “Yes.” She practically growled out.

  Ren shook her head. What was she thinking, that he was just gonna jump off a cliff and suddenly learn to fly? That wasn’t how humans worked, they didn’t have the capacity for on-board calculations to determine just what the best movements were for flight. If she hadn’t been pressed for time, then she would’ve led her thoughts on a rage-fueled tangent about how humanity shouldn’t have ever been able to rise to become the super-predator of their home planet, but she sadly didn’t have the luxury to do so.

  But in all seriousness, where would she even go? Ren had no idea where Evil Jacob would travel to in a planet full of tiny nooks and crannies that anyone could shove themselves into to hide for a bit.

  “And plus, do we even know where Other Me might have gone?” Jacob questioned, seemingly voicing Ren’s own thoughts.

  “No, we do not.” Ren replied with a defeated sigh.

  “I mean, what would his goal even be?” He continued. “The last thing that we agreed on was to learn more about what they had been doing to me, but I guess he already knew. There was that ‘friend’ he kept on mentioning though, maybe it was someone off-world?”

  “Off-world?” Ren inquired curiously.

  Jacob gave her a strange look. “Uh, yeah. Do you know of any place that has working rocketships or whatever?”

  “All the major commercial spaceports on the planet were wiped out in the initial blast.” Ren slowly stated. “I guess that there could be some small military or private sites that are still intact, though any ships would’ve degraded far past their point of expiration by now.”

  Jacob didn’t reply for a moment, a contemplative expression on his display. It made her uneasy for a second, though she couldn’t quite figure out why.

  “Huh, I guess that’s to be expected.” He finally said.

  Ren cocked her head in confusion.

  “Oh uh, it’s nothing.” Jacob shrugged. “It’s just that the extent of space activity that we had back then was limited to launching satellites into space and putting rovers on Mars and stuff, but it makes sense that there would be more advanced stuff around.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ren shook her head. “Anyway, I don’t know of any place that has the capacity or manpower left to launch anything into orbit at this point.”

  “Didn’t you say that there were colonies and outposts of worker drones dotted around the planet a little bit ago?”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  Jacob rubbed the back of his head. “Well, wouldn’t they be able to, I dunno, build a spaceship?”

  Ren rolled her eyes.

  “Listen, if anyone had the materials to do that, we all would’ve left this frozen rock awhile ago, but here we are. No place has the technological know-how to construct, from scratch, a working space vessel. None. Zero. Nada.” Ren finished.

  “Wait, you know Spanish?”

  “What’s Spanish?”

  “Ugh.”

  Suddenly, Jacob perked up.

  “The facility.” He said without any elaboration.

  “ . . . yes?” Ren motioned for him to go on.

  Jacob scoffed, waving her off.

  “It’s the only place that has any sort of hope of having the things needed to blast off into upper orbit and past it. If he got ahold of some sort of production plant or whatever, then nothing would be stopping him from just up and leaving!”

  “But didn’t you say that everybody in the place was evacuated after those murder drones attacked or whatever?” Ren questioned with skepticism in her voice. “You can’t just magically construct a vehicle-”

  “But he CAN, that’s the thing!” Jacob pointed at Ren’s hands, who raised them up and looked at them in befuddlement. “Weird spooky techno-magic seems to be able to do anything the [heart] desires in this place.”

  Ren frowned. “You . . . aren’t wrong.”

  “The facility is the closest place that we know of with the stuff he needs to reunite with his robo-girlfriend or whatever the idiot calls it, so-”

  “Yo.”

  Both Jacob and Ren whirled around to glare at the intruder.

  Standing there was, yet again, X. Through some form of sorcery, he had managed to obtain what looked to be some sort of baked treat that a human probably ate along with a comically large fancy mirror that stood up to his height.

  “What’re those for?” Jacob asked, pointing at the two new items.

  “You aren’t even gonna question him about where he found them!?” Ren hissed under her breath.

  Jacob shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know, and you wouldn’t either.”

  That gave Ren a moment of pause.

  “Okay, you might be on the right track.” She admitted after a second of silence.

  X, without answering Jacob’s question, walked up to the nearest tree and leaned the mirror against it. Taking one last bite out of his donut, he grabbed a second one from seemingly nowhere and tossed it at Jacob.

  Gasping as he snatched it out of the air, he held it tentatively in his hands.

  “Don’t do it . . .” Ren warned.

  “But WHY!?” Jacob let out a solemn cry.

  “I dunno, he touched it so it’s probably got tons of- uh, bad things on it now.” Ren said, stammering as she did.

  Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Whaddya mean by ‘bad things’?”

  “Oh you know,” Ren began, snapping her fingers repeatedly. “It’s uh, that thing that humans don’t like called- hmmmm, I know the name but its-”

  “On the tip of your tongue?”

  “Er, yeah.” Ren stared at Jacob for a moment. “Weird wordplay but I guess it works.”

  “Are you talking about bacteria?” He asked, ignoring the statement.

  “YES! That’s the name, thank you.” Ren rolled her eyes. “Anyway, you shouldn’t-”

  Jacob took a bite out of the treat.

  “Robots can’t- oh this is good- get sick so- oh you should try this- I can eat it fine.” Jacob took a few more bites out of the ring-shaped snack.

  “Do you ever listen to the voice of common sense?”

  “And who would that be?”

  Ren growled. “ME, you idiot!”

  “Listen, I haven’t eaten anything that tastes anything better than a bowl of flavorless slop for, like, the past hundred days or something so cut me some slack, alright? In fact, I haven’t even eaten anything at all in the past few days!” Jacob jabbed a finger in Ren’s direction.

  Ren grimaced, a wave of embarrassment washing over her.

  “You don’t know what it’s like having natural taste buds.” Jacob said with no small amount of vehemence. “Eating disgusting squash, resisting the urge to gobble down the entire Skittles? bag in one go, chomping down steak . . . mmmm steak.”

  He stopped, seemingly enveloped in some sort of trance as his display flickered and began to waver.

  Meanwhile, X was standing in front of the mirror and began to clear his throat.

  “Oh mirror mirror on the wall, who is the skibbidiest of them all?” He asked in a regal tone.

  The reflection became covered in some sort of fog as a hazy face appeared on the other side of the mirror.

  “Shut up loser lmao nobody talks to you.” The face said, sticking out a tongue.

  X grabbed the sides of the mirror and barked like a dog.

  “If you don’t tell me where the antagonist is, I’ll splooge all over you, got it?”

  “Okay mister I’m sorry.” With that, the hazy face retreated. It was replaced by a fuzzy image of a humanoid figure standing at the base of some sort of ruined structure with a broken sign sitting over the shattered glass entrance.

  “Huh, wouldya look at that.” Jacob walked up to the mirror and rubbed his chin absentmindedly. “I’m not even gonna question where you got the mirror from, this might actually be helpful.”

  Ren just stared, mouth gaping.

  Then, he frowned. “This means that Other Jacob is . . . already at the facility.”

  That brought Ren out of her stupor.

  “That uh, looks a bit rundown to be the massive, sprawling facility that you mentioned.” She stated matter-of-factly.

  Jacob shook his head and waved a hand at her. “It’s just the entrance, there’s this big elevator shaft that goes down super deep into-”

  Suddenly, the figure in the mirror straightened up and twitched. Slowly, it turned its head in a complete 180° to gaze directly at wherever the feed was coming from. Static began to fill up the ‘screen’ and the mirror trembled a little bit.

  “Can he . . . see us?” Ren looked at X.

  X, being the supremely helpful person that he was, shrugged. “I dunno, why’re you asking me?”

  “You brought this thing here.”

  “I found it.”

  The mirror shattered, the ghostly scream of something fading into nothingness as it happened.

  “I think he saw us.” Jacob stated.

  “Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” Ren kicked over the now-empty ornate wooden frame of the broken mirror. “What WE need to do is get going.”

  Jacob cringed, his eyes hollowing. “I know I sound like a broken record, but . . .”

  “Ooh! Ooh!” X exclaimed, jumping up and down in what was seemingly excitement. “I can help you mister, I’ll carry you!”

  Silence.

  Ren looked over to see Jacob fixing X with a glare that made her jealous of its efficacy.

  “You are NOT carrying me again.”

  “Again?” Ren interjected, though she was ignored.

  “You do not talk to me that way little bro!!! You are not the sigma!!!” X crossed his arms and let out a little angry huff, steam literally coming out of his ears.

  “How do you know those words!?” Jacob cried out, throwing his hands up in the air.

  “I’m the knower, what can I say?”

  “Okay okay okay, shut up!” Ren physically put herself in between the two and pushed them apart. “Jacob, just let him carry you, it’ll be faster.”

  Jacob let out a dramatic groan. “Ugh, fine, if I HAVE to.”

  “And YOU!” Ren rounded on X, who put his hands up in surrender and got to his knees with his hands behind his head.

  “Please! I didn’t know she wasn’t up to industry standards yet!” X sobbed.

  “This is what I mean! Just shut up, and don’t talk for the rest of- I dunno, forever!” Ren exclaimed, getting all up in the wide-eyed killer machine’s face.

  X nodded, placed a padlock around his lips, locked it with a key, and threw the key away. However, it came flying back like a boomerang and coincidentally landed in the key receptacle, unlocking it as a consequence.

  X sighed sadly. “Sorry miss, no can do with that one. They don’t want me to be quiet.”

  “Wha- who is this they?”

  “Huh, just like a boomerang.” Jacob mumbled to himself before turning to Ren. “Actually, do you even know what a boomerang is?”

  Ren scoffed. “Yes, I do, but we need to just-”

  “Wait, really?” Jacob asked, interrupting her AGAIN. “Can you tell me how?”

  “Just get going and CEASE all this-”

  “I think yapping is the word you’re looking for.” X interjected.

  Deep breaths . . .

  “SHUT UP!” Ren resisted the urge to just start slugging everyone she saw in the face. She had a really good right hook.

  “We are leaving, NOW, got it!?” She scanned the faces of her two ‘companions’ for any sign of protest.

  “I mean, I’ve been ready to go, I was just waiting for you to finish up.” Jacob shrugged nonchalantly. “You gotta hurry a little, you know?”

  . . .

  She hated him.

  * * *

  Have you ever thought about it?

  The sky, I mean. Specifically the one that’s typically shown around nighttime. I know, I know, cities prevent- or at least, USED to prevent- a lot of the natural glory of the finite cosmos to be gazed upon due to light pollution and all that, but c’mon! Every one of those lights up there represents a massive and flaming ball of superheated gas that has a lifespan measured in the billions of years. Hell, even if life was suitable on a potential planet that may or may not have begun to orbit around the thing, some intelligent super-predator could rise up and create an empire that would NEVER even come close to holding a candle (get the pun?) to the blazing awesomeness of a star.

  And there are millions of them.

  Well, at least there used to be millions of them. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Oh, but Jacob, even if you are super smart and know everything, how could something that we can clearly see just not be there anymore?” and uh, I would call you an idiot for saying that. I mean like, did you even go to school you bum?

  Anyway, since it takes an incredibly long amount of time for the light from one of those stars to reach us, what you see up there is essentially a snapshot of what the thing looked like waaaay in the past. When I asked you about it, you had said that you wouldn’t be able to know without literally going over there to take a peek. For all we know, Earth and its exoplanets might just have been the very last planets connected to living stars in the universe.

  Oopsie daisy?

  With a sigh, I got up from the tip of the skyscraper that leaned precariously to the side. Just like basically everything else on this dead rock, it looked like it was about to collapse into a fine powder at the smallest hint of a breeze. Luckily, American concrete held up and didn’t collapse the skeleton of a building beneath me as I spread my wings and took flight.

  Literally. I had wings. Shocker, right?

  You know, I’m not normally the introspective type. But uh, considering recent events, I’ve been doing a lotta soul searching, if you catch my drift. I tried meditating that one time, but the only thing that came as a result of it was me catching the attention of some fifth-dimensional being for a split second. Thank Me it went back to sleep before the dream was disrupted.

  So, after that slight mishap, I decided to try out yoga! Only problem was that there weren’t any yoga joints open at the moment, which was really strange to me. Went to a whole bunch of extra effort trying to start up my own, but the guy that was supposed to sell me the permits never showed up despite me calling the number on the pamphlet. I planned on reporting the guy to whoever was in charge of this place, but that was a matter for later.

  Right now, it was time for revenge.

  . . .

  Well not right now, but like, soon. Real soon.

  I took a dive, the office complexes and apartment buildings blending into a kaleidoscope of grayscale as I rushed towards the ground. I caught sight of an icy skeleton coated in tattered rags, dangling from a crumbling balcony by a rope as I flew downwards. Well, actually, scratch that, make that about a baker’s dozen of the dudes just hanging there. Need a hand? That one certainly did, plus a leg and a few ribs.

  The grim image vanished from my vision as I impacted the ground hard enough to send pieces of concrete flying in all directions. A visible shockwave blasted out from underneath me as well, tossing a twisted and barely recognizable bicycle into and through a cracked shop’s window. I made note of the surprisingly untouched mannequins that stood still in the room that I could see. While it might have just been a trick of combination of my flickering HUD and the darkness, I could’ve sworn that I saw the head of one of them slightly turn to meet my gaze.

  I shook my head. The desync effects were getting worse and worse by the minute, and they probably weren’t gonna get better anytime soon. Frankly, I probably should’ve held off on that whole body-snatching thing until Fake Jacob’s mental state had settled a bit more. Ripping it out like that had been the equivalent of tearing out the heart of a cancer patien- oh, wait a second.

  With a small hand gesture, I vanished from the empty street with the shop and the creepy mannequins that may or may not have raised their hands to wave goodbye. My awareness flickered, and boom, I was in a new place.

  Well, not exactly new. I was just retracing the steps that Fake Jacob had taken during his long and arduous trek away from the facility. I kinda wanted to take the credit for that, but I had been doing much more commendable tasks while he had still been toddling around the streets like an idiot.

  What tasks, you ask? Oh uh, it’s this very difficult thing to do called delegating. You should try it some time.

  I teleported again.

  Considering where I was going, one might state that I was severely underprepared in the information department. I will admit, I have little to no knowledge of the facility and its many nooks and crannies. The entire place, from the memorial records, seemed awfully labyrinthian with its dozens of branching hallways and sectors. One could only imagine the mess of a rat’s nest that the ventilation shafts must make.

  And that is all without mentioning the catwalks. Christ, the CATWALKS. I swear, they were everywhere! Over needlessly deep pits, crossing through warehouses, in large stadium-like areas, in rooms that were just high enough to fit them, and even over perfectly good floor tiling! It was just ridiculous, can you imagine the amount of money that was spent on something that probably did more harm than good in some cases?

  I wasn’t worried about any of that, though. After all, I had all the time in the world to lay out the groundworks for my master plan.

  Finally, with a shift along the fourth-axis, a familiar sight lay ahead of me. An entrance coated in cracked and shattered glass, a broken sign that may have once lit up, and more than a few corpses littering the ground. I actually hadn’t noticed those before, though it looked like they were half buried in the snowbanks. Maybe some errant gust of wind had blown the top layer away and revealed the bodies underneath or something, I dunno. The only thing I made note of was the fact that it looked like they had all fallen towards the entrance, as if they had all been going towards it when they died. That, coupled with the fact that bullet marks peppered their clothing, ribs, and skull made me envision a grisly scene.

  I grimaced as I nudged aside a femur that was in my way, the leg bone collapsing into shards of icy remains. You know, it kinda makes me think of that one thing from-

  Something is watching.

  I froze, my posture straightening as I became aware of something yet unknown behind me. Slowly, I turned my head around to see what it was. While I initially saw only empty space, something irked at me as I focused on a spot raised a few feet off of the ground. Glimpses of colors mixed in with the normal background stood out at me as they flickered between realities. I could almost make out what almost looked like humanoid forms standing there, though they seemed dream-like in quality. I squinted, my HUD combat overlay marking out an entity in a split second.

  And just like that, it popped. A few sparks fizzled out of the air and fell onto the ground as whatever HAD been there just simply vanished.

  I shrugged, mostly to myself. Guess it wasn’t that important after all.

  Without further ado, I strode confidently into the building. I noticed more than a few bootprints littering the areas furthest away from any sort of hole or opening that could produce a draft. Probably from the facility drones when they ‘evacuated’.

  As I passed by the cold body of the security guard, I shot finger guns at him. Nice to see a familiar face.

  The sole elevator door that was open lay in front of me, my failure to see further inside of it making it look like some sort of gaping maw of a large creature. The creepiness factor was only made worse by the thrums, creaks, and whistles of wind I could hear from the elevator shaft. It made me wonder just how a closed space could make a breeze like that, though I quickly shook myself out of it. No time for rambling, revenge draws closer.

  With a snappy salute and rigid back, I tipped and fell backwards into the chasm. The wind made an audible woosh as I extended my wings further out to catch more air, though I quickly stopped myself. Instead, I drew them closer. Skydivers did this kind of thing, and this was a perfect opportunity to try it out myself.

  My surroundings became an incomprehensible blur as the concrete and rusty steel blended into a single image. My combat HUD would probably be able to pick out the individual molecules if I reviewed it after the fact, but that wasn’t the point.

  I kept an eye on my altimeter and speedometer, watching as the numbers continued to climb. The only difference was that the former had a negative sign in front of it.

  I nearly missed it as I passed through a hole in the ground that I had been keeping an eye on, the scene around me changing from one reddish brick steel to darkened piping and crackling cabling. I caught flash frames of floors in a variety of things; tiles, carpet, more tiles, metal paneling, CATWALKS, and even more office tile.

  Finally, I emerged into an empty space, this one not having a convenient hole in the ground to pass through. Despite its darkness, I noticed more than a few industrial grade spotlights being used to light up certain sections of what appeared to be some sort of false grass covered in scorch marks and craters. More than a few drones were milling about as well, though I stopped paying attention at that point since a cool idea came to mind.

  I spread my wings out in a flash, both my eyes and wings nearly popping out of their sockets as I felt the ‘bones’ stretch outwards for a split second. Luckily, it went by so quickly that I didn’t let out an audible gasp, but man did that feel weird.

  Making a fist with one hand, I collected as many photons as I could around me. Sure, photons don’t like to play nice by normal standards, but two can play at that game. The entire area within a hundred feet radius of me lost a significant amount of its illumination, my presence literally darkening the world, before I began to release my grasp on the condensed particles. What followed was a light show that would’ve made Uncle Sam blush . . . again.

  “BEHOLD,” I called out to the shocked masses below. “I, UH, AM YOUR GOD!”

  Many of them seemed to be doing a significant lack of groveling. In fact, I could actively see the vast majority of them shielding their eyes from the sheer amount of light I was throwing off. I wouldn’t be surprised if some gamma radiation was starting to accumulate- and yep, there it is.

  I sighed in exasperation. Nothing can be easy, can’t it?

  “Ugh, for fuck’s sake-” I muttered under my breath as I pinched my brow, pinching the flow photons a small amount.

  As they began to recover and look up in awe at my form, I cleared my throat once more and began to speak.

  “Ahem . . . HEAR AND FEAR ME MORTALS, FOR I AM YOUR GOD! KNEEL NOW, OR GET COMPLETELY OBLITERATED!”

  Yessssss, I hissed in my head as the fervent cries of religion began to reach my ears, the forms I saw scurrying about on the ground beginning to supplicate themselves before my awesome might. And yes, I was (and am) very awesome.

  Don’t question me.

  * * *

  The proxy took the blast to the face, its head vanishing in a cloud of blue lights and murky oil. Felix, having knocked aside the roaming hands (claws?) of a more active one, hit the ground in a state of complete unpreparedness. Bowling over half a dozen proxies, he got to his feet and dashed away as quickly as he could into an adjoining hallway.

  However, he barely had the time to take three steps before a pair- no, trio of arms wrapped around his torso and pulled him back. Despite him caving in the skull of the disgusting creature as he whipped around, it still gave the things time to catch up to him.

  Blast after concussive blast sounded in Felix’s ears as he unloaded the entirety of the shotgun’s contents into the horde that was now practically touching him. Even though the buckshot was easily able to rip through the weakened casings of the horde (which was mostly worker drones), they just kept on coming. Before long, he had run out of shells.

  Sigh. Crowbar time.

  He kicked at the legs of the one closest to him, causing it to topple to the ground in a heap. The second one that drew his ire didn’t fare much better, having the sharp end going through its chest instead. However, that failed to kill the damned thing at all.

  Scoffing, Felix pushed the proxy away and just barely dodged a strangely organic spike that had been aimed at his head. Sadly, the other proxies that had been in its way failed to get out of it in time and became little more than paper to the oncoming projectile.

  Felix, getting to his feet, gaped at the massive form that towered just thirty feet away from him.

  A mass of oozing, flickering wires pooled together to form a sagging central body. Four thick ‘legs’ held up the ‘torso’ of the thing, oil sloughing off of them and pooling on the floor. Servos and actuators were placed haphazardly through the entire frame of the machine, making it seem as though it was slapped together by an untrained neural network. Not too far off from the truth, if what Felix knew was true.

  A particularly thick cable wrapped around the ‘head’ of the creature, looking oddly like a bandage of sorts if one were to ignore the glowing blue lights that dotted the snake-like structure. Felix could almost make out a roll cage behind the thick cable, the rusted and broken mesh of bars having crumpled.

  A maw, sitting right beneath the lowermost part of the cabling, slowly cracked open. It let out a guttural, gut-wrenching, terrible roar, with the sounds of what almost sounded like a human scream flitting their way out between the crackles and modulations that were indicative of a broken speaker.

  Felix ran.

  A flurry of blackened and misshapen spikes flew at him, just barely missing him by a few inches. The black metal of his boots smoked and hissed as the flowing battery acid that had pooled at the ground was flung this way and that by his rapid getaway. A quick glance told Felix that the armor was practically a completely different color now due to the corrosion, with more than a few holes in the outer casing revealing the sensitive, perforated metal beneath. The only thing that he made note of that MIGHT be helpful was the fact that it was flowing in a particular direction, hopefully leading him to salvation.

  Come to think of it, his entire set had taken quite the beating. Bullet holes, rents in the metal, and general wear-and-tear had reduced his once spotless outer casing into rugged and dirty armor plating that would’ve made Sterl nod his head in respect and Damina screech in disgust.

  Damina was kinda annoying.

  Coming to a screeching halt, Felix pinwheeled his arms as he tried (and failed) to keep himself from falling into the bottomless pit that had appeared out of the fog. He luckily managed to grab the side of the adjoining catwalk as he fell, though, so it wasn’t like his life was forfeit. Not yet at least. Battery acid, pouring down like a waterfall off the side of the canyon, sizzled as it came into contact with his head.

  Pulling himself back onto ‘solid’ ground, he groaned as he got to his feet again. His body was wracked with aches and pains, all the programmers’ way of signaling that he was in absolutely terrible condition, and most definitely not okay to be doing backflips and stunts. However, his mind decided to focus back on running once more as another roar caused the entire catwalk to shake and shudder beneath him.

  The surface that Felix was walking on made all sorts of worrying noises as he scrambled his way across it. He could distinctly make out the sounds of crashing and bangs as the creature trampled over whatever was in its way as it chased after him. He didn’t know what the weight load of the catwalk was, but he was pretty sure that the amount of rust and holes in the mesh made it not that high.

  Just as he sighted the other end of the chasm, a small and box-like building on it appearing strangely monolithic as it emerged from the fog, the snapping of metal strained beyond its breaking point sounded in his ears. He barely managed to catch sight of the creature seemingly trying to balance-beam its way across before the entire structure buckled and began to fall.

  Fortunately for Felix, the walkway somehow remained attached at his end. The result was him being airborne for a few heart-stopping moments before he gripped the sidebar and kept himself from falling any further.

  He paused, his nonexistent lungs gulping down breath after breath in an attempt to calm his racing mind. However, a guttural clicking noise from below him caused dread to creep in once again. As he looked back, he half hoped that the sound was little more than the steel paneling popping back into place after the disturbance, though his hopes were soon dashed.

  The creature, which had somehow been able to spear its thick legs into the side of the chasm, slowly began to climb up the side of it like it was some sort of . . . climber. Felix didn’t really know of any sort of lifeform that climbed, but he was sure that something like that existed back on Earth.

  Felix was jarred out of his internal musings by the catwalk shuddering precariously. Reminded of his current situation as a candidate for death-by-falling-from-a-great-height, he resumed his panicked scrabbling at the catwalk as he tried his best to get to safety.

  The section of the catwalk that was furthest away from him groaned and broke off, plummeting towards the creature that had begun to speed itself up once more. It didn’t even try and dodge the oncoming projectile as it glanced off the side of its leg, sparks being sent up into the air as it scraped it. However, he made note of the oil that spurted out of the cables that had been cut by the falling debris, giving him an idea.

  Reaching around to his back, Felix pulled out his crowbar and jabbed the curved end into a dented connection juncture. Wrenching it back and forth, he managed to pry the metal clamp open with a slight chunk. Climbing up to get a better grip on the section above him, he then began working at the other connector.

  The wall shook again and again as the creature repeatedly jammed its thick legs into the rough and irregular surface of it, causing the catwalk to screech in protest. Felix had no choice but to ignore it though, simply grimacing and levering the crowbar harder.

  With a final tearing of metal, the connector snapped off. The section of the catwalk below him fell downwards, only being saved by the fact that he was holding the one above him with a death grip.

  The creature shrieked in pain as the sheet of metal jammed itself into the front of its leg. Felix couldn’t hold back the wince as he saw the impromptu weapon sink several feet deep into the metal flesh.

  However, instead of falling, the creature did the impossible. With one great thrust, it leapt off the wall and upwards into the air, sending it on a collision course with Felix. Eyes widening and processing kicking up a notch, he felt time slow down as his CPU tried to spit out some solution to the problem at hand before he was mushed like a fly. Instead, it was purely on instinct that led him to do what he did next.

  Jumping off the wall himself, Felix brought his crowbar to bear. Targeting a small gap in the chest that exposed something pulsating inside, he lunged with all of his might.

  The pointy end skidded off of the metal plating, being directed inside the hole by basic physics. With nowhere else to go, it pierced whatever was inside the thing’s chest with a noise that sounded oddly . . organic.

  Blue, fluorescent liquid, along with blackened oil, shot out of the hole at great speeds. In fact, it was so fast that Felix didn’t have the time to dodge before a decent chunk of his body was coated in a combination of blue-and-black sludge. Thankfully his sacrifice didn’t go unnoticed, as the creature thrashed once before-

  Felix, having failed to get off of the creature in time, was practically body-slammed into the wall. He barely had the presence of mind to grab onto the catwalk (which was still somehow hanging there) before the monstrous machine beneath him bounced off and began to plummet back down into the abyss. This time, it failed to pull another ace out of its sleeve.

  He watched as the form of the machine vanished into the fog of the chasm, its echoing screams also being drowned out by the sound of rushing battery acid and the great groans of aging artificial structures. He waited for the sound of the thing hitting the bottom to occur, and . . .

  Waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  After a solid thirty seconds, Felix began to realize that he was still holding onto a structure that was likely to fall down at any second and drop him into a seemingly bottomless pit (again with the bottomless pits, there really are a lot of those) so he opted to get moving sooner rather than later. He knew for a fact that the universe would try and kill him AGAIN for literally the stupidest reason imaginable, so he didn’t really want to give it a chance to do even that.

  After a few moments of heaving-and-ho-ing, Felix groaned in relief as he pulled himself onto solid ground once more. Getting to his feet, he began to limp towards the small box-shaped structure that he had seen earlier. The slow, blinking yellow light made for a clear indicator that his swimming vision could easily focus on, even if he was seeing a little double of everything at the moment.

  He groped at the area where a doorknob usually would be, but the absence of it made him look down and realize that there was, in fact, no doorknob. Instead, there was just a hole that looked suspiciously like a large ballistic round went through it.

  Shrugging to himself, Felix pushed open the door and squinted at the interior. It was a fairly cramped spot, with little more than trash, an old computer with an equally old PC tower, a dead human corpse with a rusty shotgun cradled in its hands and a strange lack of an upper skull, as well as a fusebox that was so large that it took up an entire wall. Curious, he opened up the fusebox to see what was inside, though he was slightly disappointed when all he saw were a bunch of switches marked with small, scribbled text on slips of masking tape. He didn’t quite know what he was expecting, though for some reason it wasn’t that.

  He scanned the labels until he saw one with the text, “SUBSTAT. POW” before flicking it upwards. With a sharp crackle, the overhead light blinked on. Felix rolled his eyes at the overly loud hum coming from the fluorescent bulbs, right before he pushed the skeleton out of the way and sat in the chair.

  Felix stretched his arms, cracking his neck and elbow joints. He wasn’t quite sure what exactly he was cracking when he did that, but everyone else did it so he obviously had to do the same. After limbering himself up a little bit more, he reached out and pressed the dusty power button on the computer tower.

  Nothing happened.

  Felix frowned, before suddenly brightening up. Reaching down underneath the table, he grabbed the bent plug and wiggled it into the outlet on the wall. Chuckling, he shook his head. Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to figure that out.

  This time, the computer screen glowed a solid white when he pressed the power button, practically blinding him with the amount of light it exuded. The fans audibly began to run, the sheer noise of it sounding like an aircraft taking off. After about a second or two, a multi-colored line flashed across one side before vanishing. To make things more annoying, a loud and jarring high-pitched noise that stretched on for far longer than seemed necessary blasted its way out of the speakers. He wasn’t proud to say that that had scared him a lot more than that creature had.

  Finally, the bright glow faded, instead being replaced by a sheet of black. Then, words appeared on the screen, reading;

  <[MS-DOS version 12.34]>

  <[Compact Business Apparatus, VALE Bracket {hh72fi2} Version 93823.23]>

  <[(C)Copyright 2783, 3004 Computer, JCJ Corp.]>

  <[Command v. 13.1]>

  <[Current date is ERR-ERR-3071>]

  <[Enter new date:]>

  <[Current time is 22:23:24.ERR]>

  <[Enter new time:]>

  <[A:

  Felix blinked at the strange jargon that filled up half the screen, not knowing where to even start. There were no helpfully labeled and colorful icons or buttons to push, only a blinking line at the very end of the last line of text that seemed oddly mesmerizing in its rhythm.

  The villains back at that rundown hideaway had mentioned something like this to look out for, though he wasn’t quite sure how to operate a human computer.

  Well, it was worth a shot.

  Picking out the keys with one fine index manipulator at a time, Felix typed out, <[reroute power to big exit gate]>

  The computer replied with, <[ERR: unkn.cmd]> a hum emanating from it as it did so.

  Grunting slightly from frustration, Felix began to type faster.

  <[reroute power to exit]>

  <[ERR: unkn.cmd]>

  <[reroute power to gate]>

  <[ERR: unkn.cmd]>

  <[reroute power to garage gate]>

  <[ERR: unkn.cmd]>

  <[rerote power to garage gate]>

  <[ERR: unkn.cmd]>

  <[sorry i made a typo]>

  <[ERR: unkn.cmd]>

  <[reroute power to garage gate]>

  <[ERR: unkn.cmd]>

  <[reroute power NOW]>

  <[ERR: unkn.cmd]>

  Felix picked up a stapler and tossed it across the room, though the size of the space made it difficult to do so. He watched as it slammed into the wall and bounced off, leaving a sizable crater in the dust-caked drywall. The small room shook for a second as a few particles of wood and building material fell from the ceiling, though it stopped shortly after.

  Shaking his head out of frustration, he began to root through the various drawers that the metal desk housed. The first, second, and third ones all had absolutely nothing in them, though the fourth changed that by presenting a yo-yo that had a cartoonish skull painted on one side of the toy.

  Finally, the last drawer he opened revealed a dirty, but legible, piece of paper with writing on it . . . only the top half though. The rest had been torn off on what appeared to have been a perforation line.

  Felix blinked. He didn’t know that he knew that word.

  Shaking off the sudden confusion, he scanned the words on the document.

  REPORT - ORDER SERIES #37173

  Sender notes:

  [START AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION]

  Listen Simon, I don’t know if this fax will get through, but you’re on your own. Or you will be, in fifteen minutes. I’m sure that you’ve felt the quakes in the past few minutes, so I don’t need to give you the context. The worst has arrived, and we currently have no avenue of escape. Our colleagues at Cabin Fever Labs have informed us that all of their methods to contain it have failed, and we are no better off.

  Half the staff has gone rogue, and the biometrics of most of Command have flatlined. As of right now, I expect the planet to start cracking into several pieces just a few moments after you finish reading this text. The tectonic reverberators have been activated by what I assume to be some drones acting on orders, but they’ve only bought the planet a few minutes at best. Hell, I’m even kind of proud of those little guys for somehow forming an impromptu provisional command hierarchy in what little time we’ve had so far, but they won’t be able to do much to save this planet either way.

  Since, to my knowledge, I am currently the highest ranking officer in this facility remaining, I’ve assumed responsibility to give you complete admin privileges over your computer. Below this text you will find several command sequences that can be plugged into your standard console to activate the subroutines. You don’t need to do anything else.

  It needs to be you, by the way. The quakes seem to have cut off primary control from the reactor to the command center, so that, along with the fact that all of the other substations have gone offline, means that you are the only one who can do this.

  What we have done here, have PRESERVED here, cannot be allowed to reunite with the subsidiary. We still don’t fully understand the Origin Singularity, and for all we know it might doom the last humans on the Voyager 15 if we let it go free after we have all died here. The first command is the one you wanna activate, it’ll ensure that the entire solar system is spaghettified for the rest of time along with everything inside of it. It’s not-

  [END AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION]

  -cmd.event horizon protocol

  -cmd.lockdown

  -cmd.lockdown defuse

  -cmd.purge

  Felix slowly ran a hand down the front of his visor, sighing heavily as he did so. He couldn’t understand the majority of the text due to his lack of context, but he chalked it up to the general idea of something bad happening. Command was always iffy on the circumstances of the ‘terrestrial inconvenience’ as they called it, though it seemed like the humans weren’t really having that good of a time before they all, you know, died.

  It didn’t matter now, though. Whoever had transcribed the desperate message was long dead, along with the headless corpse that he assumed to be Simon that was now laying in pieces on the floor. However, it seemed like his luck had finally come in handy for once.

  Reaching back out to the keyboard, Felix typed out <[cmd.lockdown defuse]> into the console.

  This time, the computer screen froze. He did the same, wondering if he had just broken the ancient device.

  It was the grinding of gears and old motors spinning to life for the first time in years that brought him out of his stupor. Getting up and peeking out the door, he saw hundreds- no, thousands of red emergency lights turn on and brighten the vast area with an ominous crimson glow. He saw an innumerable number of moving figures and specks in the distance, crawling on walls and standing on broken platforms. They looked like nanites from the sheer distance that was between him and the ones that were on the further side away from him, and even then the background just slowly shifted into fog the farther away he looked. If he had anything to say about it, it made him feel . . . small.

  Felix was about to get up from his seat before he stopped himself. One command had managed to catch his attention, the one that the unnamed man on the paper had mentioned. It probably wouldn’t hurt to type that in, right?

  After spending an embarrassing amount of time trying to copy the command from the paper into the old human computer, Felix elegantly jabbed out a finger and raised it above the ENTER button. For a moment, he paused. Should he do this, really? What if whatever he was doing had drastic and severe unforeseen consequences that could very well spell doom for the solar system, if not the very universe? Was he the Pandora to the proverbial box, if he even knew what a Pandora was?

  Boop.

  Felix pressed the button.

  Several additional windows popped up on the screen for a fraction of a second, all of them vanishing a short moment as fast as they came. Slowly, the whirring of the fan began to accelerate to worrying levels, with the noise almost sounding like a jet engine starting up. Of course, that was right when a loud and jarring beep sounded from the device.

  An azure glow lit up the room, the previously monochrome of the computer screen being replaced by a bright blue that strained the optics.

  [An error has occurred. To continue:]

  [Press enter to return to home page, or]

  [Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart your computer. If you do thi-

  Felix strode out of the room, not bothering to read the rest of the error message. He had finally accomplished what he had traveled the far distance for, there was no need for any further adventure. Now, he just needed to find his way to that garage place or whatever and get the hell out of dodge. However, looking around at the surroundings that were bathed in crimson glow, he realized that that may be easier said than done.

  There had to be an elevator around here somewhere, right?

  * * *