Category: Short Story

Short Story

The Mercadian Heist, Part I

“Put this in your ear, Jackie.” Armond held out his hand expectantly, palm up, inviting Jax to take one. The comm earwigs were made of a blue shimmery crystal, and even the finely wrought miniscule pincers reflected the dim light within the van from every possible angle.

Jax took one carefully, looking over the magical object with a measure of fear, disgust, and reverence. Magic never sat well with her, and as a non-magical being, it felt… well, unnatural.

“Oh, don’t be a wuss. You stick it in your ear, it will blend in, no one will be the wiser. Once we are done, you pull it out and chuck it back my way. They’re completely harmless,” Armond added with a sly grin. He handed the remainder of the earwigs out to the others.

Garbles took one with a grunt, shoving it in his ear without a thought, and racking his oversized railgun like it was providing real world punctuation, then stowing it in it’s oversize instrument case. After the halfling troll made such a brusque example, the rest of the crew hastily pushed the commbugs into their ears, and Jax lagged behind, feeling inwardly guilty to be the last one to commit.

“So let’s review the plan one more time, everyone should know their parts,” Armond lifted his lip, his uberogre bloodline evident in the size of the lower incisors nestled behind the stereotypically handsome human face. “I will go in as a client seeking the manager. Once I have him secluded, I will frost him and take his rune deck. Got it?”

Everyone nodded or grunted assent in time.

Armond continued, “I will give the go-ahead over comms, then… Garbles, Frick?”

Garbles growled, of course, while Frick grinned widely, allowing his forked tongue to flick across his lips. “The troll and I station up near the doors, covering the streets, both the market-side and the main avenue. If it gets messy inside, Garbles goes in and takes the guards down while I keep the doors secured.”

“Right. Jackie?”

“I slip in behind you, stick to the edges and be as unremarkable and unnoticeable as I can be until the diversion starts.”

“Great,” Armond nodded at the newbie, trying to encourage her as best he could without letting the crew pick up on it. He knew of her hidden talent, of course. “And our diversion, Wick?”

Wick leaned his goggled head over the front seat, still tapping furiously at his oversized cobbled together laptop as he spoke. “I send the spike to the alarms, then I shunt the waterworks and flood the building. That leaves the runes for Jackie.”

“With the water flooding the bank, the water should distract the guards, and being the little pussies that they are, they will head under cover to avoid getting wet,” Armond flicked a hand along his suit sleeve, picking off a bit of white lint. “I drop the rune deck to Jackie from the upper floor, she wipes the runes at the vault level, and hopefully slips in undetected. The vault phasing should envelop her wholly, and she will be in and out, with the guards none the wiser.”

Jax felt her confidence escalate as she imagined entering the vault, purloining the riches within. “And I grab anything and everything I carry out the back to the van.”

Armond corrected her, “Ah, ah, ah – the first thing you grab?”

“The leather messenger bag with the gilded brass buckles that should be laying on the center table,” Jax sighed. “Why we need a silly bag of all things…”

“Good girl. The rest is gravy. That bag is what we were hired for, and that is our payday. Get the bag, get what else you can, and get out. And you should probably avoid any gold bars, a bit heavy,” Armond turned to the rest of the team. “Stay on comms, when you hear the all clear, go your separate ways. We meet up at the safehouse in three days’ time. Look for the signal in the window, if its not there, randomly circle back every other day until it is. Everyone good on their parts?”

Another wave of assent swept the back of the van.

“Great. Alright Nocke, let’s go.”

Nocke started the van, and the tires squealed briefly as they pulled out into traffic, headed towards the stout fortress of the Mercadian Central Bank three blocks away. The ‘goyle stuck his middle finger out the window to let the honking drivers what to do with their opinions.

Jackie, or Jax, as she preferred, did not necessarily want to live a life a crime. It was probably just a phase, she told herself often. Deep down she wondered.

Jacqueline Deanna Armas was born as a terribly normal human, to an abysmally normal family, and experienced a dreadfully boring childhood until her father had the audacity to shuffle off the mortal coil when she was twelve. Her father was a local political figure of some consequence, an admired Consul that moved within the circles of power that kept the capitol city of Mercadia functioning smoothly. No one had ever informed her of what happened to her dad, but it was then that she stopped calling herself Jacqueline, and insisted on being called Jackie. Because it was “Miss Jacqueline” or “Miss Armas” from the staff or “JACQUELINE DEANNA ARMAS” when she was in trouble with the nanny or mother. It wasn’t until she met her best friend Tulsi that she had finally encountered the name she loved. Maybe it was Tulsi, maybe it wasn’t.

And now, Jax was standing on the corner of the financial district, glancing upwards on the grand marble façade of the Mercadian Central Bank, where even the gargoyles that lived on the eaves looked fancy, their flapping golden wings shimmering in the morning light. Armond was a few paces ahead of her, and she clutched the slip charm tightly against her chest, muttering the activation word that only two people on the whole of existence had ever known, and no one on the street witnessed as the lithe human woman shimmered beyond their notice. She was nothing but an afterthought, a forgotten dream, a fragment of a lost conversation floating away into the air.

Armond must have really trusted her, she realized, as he held the door open a split second longer than he had to, just to allow her entrance without tripping the hex barrier at the front doors. She effortlessly crossed the threshold, the ancient power of the family charm was just as invisible as she was.

Jax laughed aloud, marveling at the power that laid against her skin, but the charm stole that away as well, whittling her voice to nothing more than squeak of a heel or a rustle of a pant leg of the other customers that crisscrossed the floor of the cathedral-like bank. A few gargoyles lined the upper architraves far above, taking their break, blowing over hot cups of coffee and taking delicate bites of their cinnamon pastries.

Armond gracefully lifted his hand, waving at the wiry thin bank manager with the wispy mustache perched unsteadily on his top lip, his nametag catching the light. Jax peeled off to the left, finding the wall as quickly as she could so could focus on the exchange, keeping an eye on her boss, as he did what he did best.

Schmooze.

Was it his blood line? Some trickle of crossbreed magic in his blood? Maybe he was like Jax, hiding an ancient family charm somewhere on his person, one that was crafted by sirens, encapsulating their enchanting song? A thing to beguile others, make their eyes linger, their blood warm, and their pleasure centers tingle? Probably nothing like that. He was just exceptionally handsome and he knew how to expertly swing his charm around like a battle axe of his green-skinned kin.

“Ah, Mr. Armond! So glad you made it!” The bank manager smiled warmly.

Armond lowered his arm, taking the bank manager’s offered hand and shaking it warmly. Jax noticed he had put his other hand over the top, gently squeezing the bank manager’s clasp with both of his palms. The bank manager made note of it as well, and Jax grinned. The poor man had it bad. He was smitten.

“And I am so glad to have made it as well, Mr. Ducal. After receiving your call last week, I was most impressed that you had an investment opportunity already prepared so soon after our first meeting.”

The manager smiled graciously, “I would love to discuss it, ah, up in my office?”

Jax felt her eyes go wide. Was he serious? Was it really this easy? How did Armond just wander through his life having people just trip all over themselves to give him what he really wanted?

Armond smiled widely in return. “Of course. Show the way.”

Jax wondered briefly if Armond had that same power of persuasion over her. She had indirectly met him two years ago, as she and her friends had barhopped through the riverside district. It was supposed to be for her eighteenth birthday, but with liquid bravery being ingested amongst squealing inebriated women dressed in scantily arranged clothing, she couldn’t resist attempting to break her personal pickpocketing record. Armond had been surrounded by distractions, and lifting his pocketbook had been effortless. Even after all this time, she had yet to figure out how he had tracked her down, hours later, on a completely different quarter of the district.

Armond had confronted her kindly on the dance floor, throbbing music afloat in the air, as he pulled her aside, complemented her skills, and firmly rescued his wallet from her purse. Noticing the wealth of wallets within, he handed her a card, and offered her a job with a impressed smirk.

She wasn’t attracted to him, so that wasn’t it… but she was attracted to the freedom of what he had offered. But it was still her own choice, right? It was a way to break from the mold that had been set for her, the expectations that confined her, that worked to pin her under obligation and duty. Armond had offered her an escape. Maybe he was just good at giving people what they wanted.

Armond followed the bank manager with confidence, gliding among the thin crowds of both employees and customers, everyone seemingly busy in their own way. Jax circled away from the teller wall, rushing through shadows, doing her best to keep her feet on rugs and carpet, avoiding the marble floor. The charm covered everything, but best to maintain good habits. She positioned herself in the nook of where the expansive spiral staircase curled back on itself, nearly reaching the wall. She kneeled behind it, and looked upwards at the glass of the manager’s office.

Outside, Garbles and Frick should have setup near the main door, each watching a different street that lead to the bank, while Nocke idled the van out back, where Wick was probably pounding his keyboard with glee. As if their ears were burning, she heard the comms check far away in her ear, knowing the charm was doing its strange work to quiet the commbug.

“Avenue clear,” Garbles muttered.

“Market clear,” Frick added quickly.

“In position,” Nocke replied.

“Wick?” Frick followed up.

“Here, here. Uh, two minutes. Standby. I see Armond in the manager’s office through the interior windows, and I am assuming Jackie is at the stairs?”

Jax gently pushed one of the planters on the balustrade near her elbow.

“Ah, clever girl. Jackie is in position,” Wick added. “I see two guards as planned. Its the ugly troll…”

“Hey,” Garbles snarled lightly.

“Sorry mate, but trolls are ugly. Be proud of it. Unfortunately, the other is the old dwarf, the one with the metal eye.”

Frick sighed, “Jackie, just to be safe, stay out of eyeline of the dwarf. We don’t know if his smithed eye can pick you up or not. He may only see what the camera’s see, but better safe than sorry.”

Jax scanned the crowd and saw the older dwarf sitting on a stool near the teller windows. He was more interested in the magazine in his lap than the crowd around him. But why should he be worried? The last time the Mercadian Central Bank had a crime occur, he had not been born yet. She made a mental note of where he lounged and fully ducked behind the balustrade to ensure she stayed hidden.

Jax sighed as she remembered herself as a fourteen year old that only felt alive when she was making away with small paltry thefts under the careful watch of her caretakers. It was the one thing that infused her soul, the sole activity that she craved above all things. When she went counter to the expectations that had been set for her, she was finally made real, and not some cardboard cutout that her mother insisted attend the senseless functions full of boredom and populated by dull, unremarkable people. On one of her early thievery jaunts to the undercity, Jackie and her best friend Tulsi had stolen a particularly expensive set of watches, but somehow one of them had tripped over a sleeping guard dog in the process. The dog had alerted the owner, one thing led to another, and after a heated pursuit in which they lost their pursuers, the two had collapsed into a pile of giggles behind a garden wall. The laughter was deep and relentless, fueled by both raw adrenaline and exhausted leg muscles. Tulsi had slugged her in the shoulder, looking over their their pile of oversized watches, and had said, “I wouldn’t do this with anyone else, Jax.”

Jax smiled at the memory. She glanced up above and it appeared that the blinds had been drawn while she was lost in thought. Armond was either cleverer than half, or lucky as hell. How does one get the bank manager in his office and close the blinds for privacy? Did that wispy man, what was his name again? Duscald? Duckle? Ducall? Something like that. Ducall was up there trying to seduce her boss. She stuck her tongue out and play-gagged at the thought.

“Alright, no cameras in the manager’s office. You are clear, Armond. Let us know when to pop the distractions.”

“Finally. I was wondering how long it was going to take you,” Armond replied, as if he had been impatiently waiting for hours. “Jackie?”

Jax looked up and saw Armond’s face, and she knew he was looking at an empty space. She tugged a frond of the nearby plant back and forth as an impromptu signal.

“Ah, there you are. Heads up.” Armond dropped the rune deck from the second floor balcony. “Alright, Wick, spike the alarms and punch the water.”

“In three, two, one—“

The comms were overtaken by the peal of thunder as the water rune was activated at the dome of the bank ceiling. Hundreds of gallons would cascade downwards in the next few minutes, with both atmospheric and water magic at play, the storage tanks on the roof dumping their contents through the enchanted seal, drenching the customers and employees alike.

“Front door is locked.” Garbles came back through on comms.

“Streets are still clear, no audible alarms out here,” Frick added calmly.

“Sorry, Ma’am, the bank is temporarily closed, fire alarm testing.” Garbles voice came up again and was followed by the far off sound of a disturbed customer. Jax couldn’t make out whatever she had to say. “No Ma’am. We are definitely testing. Right now, in fact.”

Frick laughed over the channel as Jax rushed through the downpour. Her form may have been invisible, but the rain bouncing off of her was very much visible, but thankfully, both of the guards were at the main door, attempting to figure out how the doors had locked on themselves.

Jax made it to the vault enclave without issue and spun in place to face the central floor where the customers and employees were all huddled tightly against the teller windows, attempting to stay out of the torrential downpour. The water bounced off of desks, stone, and furniture alike, spiraling in a great shallow whirlpool around the central drain positioned at the middle of the expansive floor.

She flipped the rune book open, turning the slate pages as if it was a deck of cards in the hands of an expert gambler. The last sheet was the rune for the vault enclave, it’s mark matching the oversized one below her feet. Jax took her wet forearm, swiping across it. The chalk came right off on her sleeve, and before her, where before she was facing the main floor of the bank, now the enclave faced a sizeable vault room, a number of small tables near the center, with safety deposit boxes on every wall.

The transition had made her lightheaded. Phaseportal magic was complex, and to traverse into the vault, which technically, was in the same place as the main bank floor, took a fair amount of energy. Whatever batteries had powered her transition, she was glad that the energy they leveraged hadn’t disrupted her charm. To the employees and customers of the bank, they still only saw the floor of the bank getting soaked by the cascading water falling from overhead.

She dropped the rune book on the table next to the simple leather bag with brass buckles. Nothing else was on the tables. She grabbed the bag, hitching the strap over her head, and releasing the Slip charm with the safe word. As if she had been dressed in pillows covering every square inch of her body, she suddenly felt unleashed. Her voice was free again.

“I have the bag,” she exhaled. “Nothing else in here except the deposit boxes.”

“Good girl, that’s all we need. Get out of there. I am headed to the van to leave with the others. Garbles, Frick, as soon as Jackie is clear, get gone.”

Jax ran back to the enclave, picking up the rune deck from where she had dropped it. She swiped over the rune deck again, and the chalk returned to its place. In a half a breath, the central floor was back in front of her with nary a sound or flicker of energy. She surreptitiously slid the rune deck in-between a planter and the plant within it, ditching it as quickly as she could. She huddled her shoulders and ran through the dwindling downpour.

“Ah, love, this way,” one of the tellers called out. She was an elderly human, and to her eyes, Jax probably looked like a drowned rat. “Oh you poor dear, you are absolutely soaked. Where were you?”

“I, uh-huh, was in the bathroom,” Jax made her voice crack as if she was on the verge of ugly tears. She turned her shivering up a couple notches.

“That is terrible. Terrible. You poor thing.”

The troll guard finally managed to get the doors opened, and sunlight flooded into the wide bank chamber, illuminating the fog that was forming from the massive humidity change.

The old teller patted Jax lightly on the back, walking her towards the light.

“No one leaves, Mrs. Rowlson,” the troll guard sniffed haughtily. “We have to take names and information of everyone in here.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Brgx. This poor child was in the BATHROOM! THE BATHROOM! When the fire alarm went off. Do you think any woman should be subject to that abject humiliation!? And then BE SUBJECTED TO QUESTIONING as if they are a common criminal? Look at her! She is a highborn, and she was in the wrong place at absolutely the wrong time, and you are going to be a sensible clod-brain and let her into the sunshine. And if there are any problems, all of them can come to me for addressing. Do YOU understand?”

“Um, yes, um, yes ma’am.” The troll looked as if he had just been slapped.

Mrs. Rowlson gently guided Jax out the front doors and into the sunshine. The street looked completely as it had, not an enforcer or badge in sight. “You head home, dear. Dry off, and we will see you next time, right? Let me flag you a cab.”

The old teller ushered Jax to the street, and out of the corner of her eye, Jax caught Frick smiling devilishly in the market crowd, shaking his head in disbelief.

“You should see this guys, Jackie is being escorted onwards to her escape,” Frick laughed.

“You are a natural, Jackie,” Wick added.

“She is a highborn natural, and I think she has earned to be called Jax now,” Armond appended. “See you all in three days.”

A cab rolled up, its team of domesticated Griffins snapping at their leads. The driver nodded at the teller, and Mrs. Rowlson gently helped Jax into the cab. “Take her wherever she wants. Here is a handful, keep the change.”

“Thank you,” Jax whimpered.

“Be safe, dear.”

“Oh my gods,” Frick was gasping for air, he was laughing so hard.

“You stupid Sylvan, get out of there,” Armond admonished, sounding like a disappointed father.

“I am, I am. Too good to miss. On my way.”

The cab rolled forward, and Jax picked a random location from her memory, calling it through the driver window. “Crusher and Tully Street, please.”

She leaned back in the seat, feeling the fabric under her hands, her clothing feeling clammy and tight across her back. The bag was nestled in her lap, the buckles gleaming brightly against the dark leather. She ran her hand across the leather, resisting the urge open the bag here, in the cab, to see what had was the impetus for the greatest bank robbery that Mercadian Central Bank had yet to fathom.

But she resisted. It could wait until she was off the street. And first, she could pull the damn earwig out, then maybe get into some warm clothes. After that…

What to do for three days? She felt a tingle under her fingers, but thought nothing of it.

It was probably just nerves.

Short Story

Tomorrow, Today, Yesterday

“Aron, look at this,” Dr. Brian Soren grabbed the thin glass of the monitor and swung it into his research partner’s field of view.

The fellowship doctor pushed his glasses upwards on his crooked hawkish nose and squinted over the top of the lenses anyway. Dr. Aron Alvarez was older than his partner, but tried his hardest to match the younger doctor’s latent youthful energy. He pointed at the monitor with his well-chewed mechanical pencil, “What… is that?”

Brian shrugged. “It’s the output feed from Patient 23. The signaling appears to be correct, but that-“

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be there,” Aron rolled his wheeled chair closer to the monitor, shoving the poor pencil back between his teeth, clamping down viciously on its bright orange plastic octagonal barrel.

“So I am not crazy, that’s refreshing. That level of activation on his visual processing seems, off, right?”

Aron waved at the oft forgotten research assistant manning a laptop near the door. “Luce, pull up Patient 23 on the large monitor, then tap his chart to my tablet please.”

The large monitor nearby shifted to a view of a small section of the patient floor, in a simple room with only walls of hung fabric, and Patient 23 strapped to his bed, like any other patient on the floor. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

“What is he looking at?” Brian wondered aloud. “Do you think this is a side affect of the interfacing protocol?”

Aron waved his hand over the tablet display, flicking quickly through the chart. “I don’t think so… it might be a preexisting condition. What was his baseline?”

“Yeah, not there. At least in this snapshot, I am not seeing activation like this. His baseline is drearily normal,” Brian looked back at the sampling feed on the now shared monitor. “I mean look at the seg2 beta waves, they are off the chart, and his gamma is elevating at a steady rate. His heartrate is up, and his breathing has increased. A panic attack, maybe? Should I get a nurse to the floor?”

“If they see anything concerning they will come running. Which means that while this is odd for our sampling, it is not odd for our nurses. At least not yet.” Aron dismissed the concern as he continued to flick through the chart. “Long medical history here, some psych evals. Possible schizophrenia, some other mental illness. I would say the bulk of them are within our parameters for the test candidates. He did get through the protocol.”

“He did get through the protocol,” the younger doctor concurred.

“Interesting. There is a deep brain stimulation referral in his chart from his mid-twenties, timestamp of March 2024.”

“But he never went through with it?”

“Appears that way, but doesn’t say why. And, again, he did pass through our protocol, which means that there was no foreign hardware in his head or his chest that would indicate a DBS surgery, it would have shown on the scan.”

“This is a crazy thought… do you think it is too soon to try an activation of the processing framework?”

“It wouldn’t hurt him at all. But it might fry our framework without the calibration steps,” Aron replied, but he again appreciated his younger cohort’s enthusiasm for the project.

“He is mostly calibrated though,” Brian pushed. “We are missing the spin up on the neural processors, but we could bypass those and just dump the raw data from his sampling-“

“Ah, yes, directly into the test framework,” Aron interjected. “That’s clever, Doctor Soren.”

Brian smirked. “Come on, its not that clever. We did it with the chimps.”

“Luce, can you shunt Patient 23’s sampling feed directly to the testing framework?”

“Of course, Doctor Alvarez,” the research assistant replied attentively. “Syncing, and the feed should be up in, three, two, alignment… and one.”

The monitor overhead shifted position as the viewpoint shifted from the overhead camera looking downwards at the patient to what the patient’s brain was interpreting as visual input. The screen was hazy, with only shadows and lights, like the patient was seeing nothing but an impression of the space he was within.

“He is awake, isn’t he?” Aron asked.

“He is definitely awake. Maybe the testing framework needs to be adjusted. Hold on.” Brian flicked to the tuning interface on his own tablet, and started adjusting the electrical signaling. Within moments the screen immediately tightened up, the lines emerged, and the shadows retreated.

“There is someone standing next to him? I didn’t see a nurse on the overhead,” Aron wondered aloud.

Brian looked up, and scrunched his eyebrows towards the bridge of his nose in confusion. “That’s no one I recognize.”

“That’s not one of our nurses?” Aron tried again.

The man on the large monitor was dressed in scrubs, but they were a darker color than they should have been, and his face was nearly gaunt, with sunken cheeks and only a wisp of gray hair at the center of what would be his hairline. His eyes were vibrant and shining, looking over the patient head to toe as if examining him.

“No, we only have Jerry on staff, the rest are women. And I am certain that is not Jerry,” Brian confirmed.

“His mouth his moving. He is talking to Patient 23. Shame we can’t pick up language yet.”

“Why is that again?” Brian asked.

“Funding.” Aron replied curtly.

“Shame,” Brian commented. “That would be handy right now.”

Aron stood abruptly. “Call my cell, I am going to go down there and see this for myself.”

“S-s-s-sure.” Brian stuttered. He picked up the phone and dialed.

Aron pushed his ear tab and answered as he walked out the secured double door towards the patient wing. The flooring was an impeccably white, somehow refusing to age like the drab yellowing paint that covered the walls. The lights overhead were their typical clinical glow, illuminating everything with a flatness that made the hospital stereotypical. Brian’s breath in his earpiece kept him company as he filed past the other patient’s beds heading directly to the privacy curtain of Patient 23.

Aron pulled the curtain back with energy, attempting to scare the strange man standing next to the bed. Best to have him out of sorts and ready to be verbally lashed. Strangely, Patient 23 was by himself, his eyeline locked into place towards the curtains at his side.

“Ah you arrived. Grab that man!” Brian exclaimed.

“There is no one here, Doctor Soren.”

“What do you mean there is no on there? I see him on the screen.”

“There is no one here,” Aron repeated. He glanced under the bed, into the curtained enclaves of Patients 22 and 24 on each side, and there was nothing out of the ordinary.

Doctor Alvarez approached the side of the bed and pulled his flashlight from his coat pocket, flashing the light in each of Patient 23’s eyes. The pupil response was normal, but the patient refused to turn his head, as he continued to mutter under his breath. The good doctor lowered his ear to the fumbling lips of Patient 23, trying to hear what he was muttering.

“…no idea. It was not their fault. You shouldn’t… I know… but… no… its not, its not,” Patient 23 whispered.

“Do you hear that?” Aron asked his compatriot over the phone.

“No. Just a minute. ‘Luce, switch over to the overhead.’ Its just you, Aron. There is no one else there.” Brian relayed, his voice jumping away from the phone every time he called over to the RA, “‘ Luce, back to the framework output.‘ Oh my god, Aron, that… that man is standing right next to you!”

Aron spun, only to find emptiness in the curtain enrobed space. He thought he caught a whiff of something in the air, a smell of cloves and the cold of a desert winter’s evening. It reminded him of the stars wheeling overhead when he camped with his dad out on the desert playa all those years ago, the dark absolute and all consuming, just the sound of the crackle of the fire and the far off calls of the owls amongst the cactus.

Contrasting the deep calm of the fireside memory with his dad, there was an overwhelming sense of primal fear tingling through his limbs, his sixty year old muscles tightening under his aged flab that would not melt away regardless of how many miles he put on his runners. A bead of sweat trembled down the center of his back, tracing his spine beneath his undershirt.

“There is no one here, Brian. Just the patient and I.”

“I swear to the heavens above, Aron, he is standing right next to you!” Brian was near manic, his voice escalating with the same fear Aron felt growing in his limbs.

“He is fine… I am fine… leave it, leave it. Its not their fault… So..mmm…” Patient 23 muttered audibly, his lips fading into unintelligible speech. His eyes remained fixed at Aron’s side, locked onto the empty space.

In his ear, he felt it before he understood what he heard. Click.

The phone disconnected, and Aron was alone with the Patient.

“He, uh… he… wants to talk…” Patient 23 muttered, pulling on his straps hard, as if he was going to escape.

“Where are the nurses?” Aron said aloud. The lights were dimmer now, as if the power had lessened on the entire floor.

“You do not need a nurse. You no longer need your technology. Such things are, what? Trivial? As they say?” An amused voice whispered delicately next to Aron’s ear.

Aron was frozen in place, as if time had stopped, entrapping him in a moment like an insect in amber.

The voice continued, “You know, humans are meant for more. This is just the first step, this place. You all fight for a place in your meager tiny universe, and for what, a blip of in the span of the smallest measure of time? In the math that makes up everything, everywhere, you are but a single mote of dust, less than. An atom of the dust. Your time is fleeting in this incubator of experience, where you are meant to gather your uniqueness like a coat gathered around your frame, and carry with you to the next stage, the transcendence of spirit onto the next plane, the next reality. But what do all of you do? Look for ways to muck it up.”

Aron felt his lips release, “Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I built that machine to help others see, to capture their memories, in the hopes that it makes mankind better. And to discover that something is subverting my life’s work, it matters to me.”

“I am subverting nothing but your intentions. And your work here only matters to you. Your father knew what was important. When he met me, he wrapped his arm in mine and sang a song of his family as he walked across the bridges of flowers. What will you sing? Do you remember the songs? Do you remember the smell of the fire? The clove and cinnamon in your tea? Do you remember what your father was actually trying to teach you?”

“Stop it,” Aron said through gritted teeth.

“I am Death, Aron Alvarez. Michael here was trying to convince me not to take you and everyone else in this study, but I have not been swayed. Do you think that you can look through other’s eyes and discover truth? You cannot find truth through your own eyes! Humans are insipid, insecure, infinitesimal bags of wet meat that somehow have souls… these beautiful immaterial constructs of everything that their physical beings are not! You are born when you die! This world is but an egg for you to break free from, and yet, here you stand, believing that you are going to make mankind better,” Death paused. “Look at me, Aron.”

Aron turned finally, feeling his limbs loosen. On the floor, his cooling body laid, tears in his physical eyes. Next to him stood a very different person than what he had seen on the monitor. It was an older gentleman, dressed in the simple garb of a farmhand at the Agave farms. A poncho, well worn and nearly colorless from the merciless sun, was flipped over his shoulder.

“I am the Greshak. For Michael there, I am a kind psych nurse from his youth that illustrated selflessness. For you, I am the man that taught you the value of hard work. For Brian Soren, I am his liberal aunt that taught him the truth of being bold and brilliant among the dullards. For Lucinda, I will be her little sister, who was lost to cancer ten years ago and showed her what true love actually is. That is what this world is meant to be, Aron. Not a search for truth, not a hunt for what can be observed… It is meant to be a search for the connections, the things that bind your experiences together. Out there, beyond this place, is a new frontier for you. And if you cannot figure out the basics, you have same choice everyone gets.”

Aron looked around the floor, seeing all of the patients of his neural uplink study lying dead in their beds, somehow knowing that Brian and Luce were in the lab, slumped over in their seats. Somehow he knew his work was being destroyed by some unassailable force, the destruction of everything contained within the nuance of what would be labeled as a gas leak and an unfortunate series of failed storage drives. His life’s work, gone in only a moment.

“And what is that choice?” Aron responded.

The Greshak shrugged. “Oblivion.”

“Not much of a choice.”

“It is for many. Do you not see? The interconnectedness of your lives is what matters. Not the bullshit of what you think is important. Your experience is wholly shaped by others. As their experience is wholly shaped by others, including your own impact on their lives. Why would anything else matter? I can tell you that Brian was shaped by you, as was Lucinda, but you never thought of that did you?”

“I guess not.”

“You must think on these things. The universe is so much larger than you realize, and it gets, what is the phrase that is popular now, ‘it gets real’ out there. So for many, oblivion is actually a very simple and easy choice.”

“Do I have to choose now?”

“No.”

“When do I have to make the choice?”

“Tomorrow, Today, or Yesterday, after all, time doesn’t matter. But idling here will quickly disconnect you from the world you know. And no one likes a ghost. Just let me know when you are ready to be picked up.”

The Greshak was gone. Aron floated through the curtains, wandering the ward, but the bodies were already gone. The lights had changed. New windows appeared on one side, then smiling children with casts on their arms appeared one moment, then the next, a wall went up nearby, and he heard the cacophony of an emergency department cascade through the halls with overhead pages going faster than he could make out.

He stood there for maybe ten years? Maybe it was a hundred. It was impossible to tell.

Eventually, he knew he would call out for the Greshak. Eventually, he knew what his choice would be.

Short Story

The Terrors Below

First let me start out that I played a lot of video games. Not as many as some, but probably more than a lot of you. I would say I was an expert of a sort. I know what the tropes are, I can describe the motivations in level design, and I could be considered a source of authority on aesthetics and user interaction. A great example I could point to is the level design of the classic Half Life or Left 4 Dead. If you see a light in a dark hallway, that is usually the level designer attempting to entice you towards the next part of the map. Progression through appealing to our monkey brains.

But some of the best games take our monkey brains and expose their soft pink folds to something else.

A fear of deep water as you tread away at the surface. Dark shapes beneath you, unmoving, yet aware. The thrum of a noise you feel in your chest more than what your soft delicate ears can pick up. That is where terror lives. Screaming, throwing hands up and down, tossing leaves, and baring teeth because running away means that you are the prey. You are the dinner. I know this too. I am expert of a sort.

I wonder how many monkeys were eaten before our fur covered ancestors learned to make weapons? How many poor screaming scared creatures met their end between the jaws of something larger? Monkey teeth are sharp, but those predator teeth… the ones long as swords and serrated like steak knives, those are something else.

The game that I speak of is Subnautica. I have played it from start to finish at least four times, exploring every nook, every cranny, every square meter of the digital world. I have conquered the Leviathans, I have scared off the small and large predators, and I have built farms and resource harvesters in the deepest places of the game world. I have dropped my Seamoth of the crater edge to see how many Ghost Leviathans I can spawn in before I lose my nerve. I dart into the deepest Leviathan spawns in the map as well, swimming right up to the beasts, scanning them, smacking them with my ineffectual heat knife and swimming away before they can kill my character in revenge. I used to laugh about such things.

I have beat the game in every way. I have conquered the puzzles, the resources, the builds… everything.

That is why I am writing this down. Well part of the reason anyway. I have been told to write it down. But I wanted to to assure you.

To let you know that your monkey brain is not prepared.

I thought a couple weeks ago, that I should do it again. I said to myself, Hey Self.

Self went, Hey what?

I continued, We haven’t beat Subnautica in the last year. Maybe reinstall it?

Too bad you can’t flush the memories of playing it, but it would still be better than half of the games the triple A studios are vomiting on the market.

Self went, Hell yeah. Let’s do it, irrational voice in my head.

A couple right clicks here, a couple left clicks there, and boom, Steam had installed it and thanks to my fast internet, I had the game at my fingertips again. Time to dive into Safe Shallows, start scanning, and find as much Titanium wreckage as I could to get a jump on builds and the blueprints. I can kind of trick myself into finding the wrecks, stumbling into them in a roundabout way, feigning surprise and scanning what I can. I can race my O2 timer, and usually play a little loose, knowing exactly how long it takes to take damage. In the past, I have enforced rules that the game designers may not have intended, like I only play with the progression that is forced on me through the narrative, and not just grab as much as I can ahead of time… in effect racing the designer’s intent. I decided to play it that way again, and not rush through.

But now… I am questioning my sanity. Because the game is different. I checked the patch notes, nothing new since my last playthrough. The developers had not changed the game version at all. Yet, here I was, in the Safe Shallows, and I could hear something else.

A thrum.

A thrum that has never been there before. My monkey brain immediately cried out, shrieking its loud monkey scream, and the thrum persisted. It filled my ears, my consciousness, my all. Exploring in the cardinal directions, I could hear it getting stronger to the south, a little west. There is typically a leviathan over there called a Reaper. They are designed to scare first time players, but relatively tame if you know what not to do. It spawns in early and will destroy your first sub called a Seamoth if you let it.

I swam that way, following the sound instead of turning the game off, as I should have.

I found the Reaper dead, floating on its back, with strange graphic fidelity another creature eating away at its carcass. That was a massive red flag. Creatures do not have eating animations in Subnautica. A larger creature will collide with a smaller creature, there will be a flash of green-ish blood, and then the smaller one will be gone. You don’t see a Sand Shark chewing away merrily on a Boomerang Fish. But there, on my monitor, there was a black thing wrapped around the red and orange Reaper like a boa constrictor, mechanically chewing away at the midsection. This was no game model I had ever witnessed.

It looked real.

I hit my screenshot hotkey, but Steam told me that it was disabled. I tried to turn on my Twitch capture, and the app wouldn’t load. I even pulled out my smart phone and tried to take a picture of my monitor, but every time I tried, my camera app only captured a blurry screen.

I couldn’t capture the black form, wrapped around the great beast, its tentacled maw shredding digital chunks of flesh. Below, there were Sea Treaders collecting the scraps that fell from the black beast’s shredding machine of a mouth, which even from this distance, appeared to be a flurry of spiked tentacles and spinning teeth.

Sea Treaders don’t eat either. They go in a circle, stomping the ground in a completely different part of the map. What the hell is going on with my game? I felt a strange distant terror in my gut, as if the scene was real, that huge dead Reaper was real, and the… thing… eating it was even more real still. Purring in the water, the thrum on the deep.

I closed the game, not even bothering to save. My heart was thumping in my ears, the rush of blood pushing on me at my desk, telling me to get up and run.

I sat in silence, forcing my heart to slow down. Once I was calm again, I got to work hitting the game wiki. I checked everywhere. I ran Google searches, I posted to the Steam forums, and I even sent an email to the developer. I found nothing but confusion, internet troll level forms of teasing, and some developer congratulations for enjoying the game so much.

I slid my mouse cursor back over Subnautica in my game list, clicking once to highlight it, wondering if I should uninstall it. I hovered.

That black thing. Its eyes were darker still, flashing from the depths of my mind. A flash of white.

The game booted and I was greeted by the peaceful and serene automated voice welcoming me back. I awaited the thrum. But only the sound of the Safe Shallows waves tapping against the hull, permeating by base. I exited the base door, and first noticed the lack of fauna it. Usually the water was teeming with small fish that made up the bottom of the food chain and the resource ladder, fish that fed the player’s character and helped with basic survival. But now, they were gone like bugs going eerily silent before a storm. In the distance, I heard the undeniable scream of a Ghost Leviathan. These monsters are only in a few key places in the world map, and spawned automatically in the ecological dead zone outside the crater of which the game takes place. They are meant to be a game design choice to keep the player where they should be, exploring the crater’s depths, and not in the vast empty nothingness beyond. Yet, just at the edge of the visual range of my character I could see the Ghost Leviathan tearing away. Perhaps it had glitched in somehow?

My rational brain was of course trying to make sense of it. But there is no sense to be made here.

A pursuing dark thing writhed through the water like it was a chemical reaction not restrained back by any semblance of fluid dynamics or the more obvious programmatic means. It grabbed the Ghost Leviathan by the tail, and enveloped it like a coiled spring, tearing into it, as the leviathan’s hollow shrieks echoed across the Elysium folds of the Safe Shallows. Thumping, bumping, and not far behind, the sea came alive with the sound of Sea Treaders following the malevolent cloud of death providing digital manna from above.

This is all beyond the programming, the design, the epitome of the experience. I know it is a game. I repeat it over and over, like it is a holy mantra. I mutter it under my breath like a forgotten exhalation escaping from between my lips, counter to my aspirations. It sounds far away to my own ears. I flee back to my Seamoth, and head towards the deeper waters.

The vines part, the scattered fish scurry onwards, trying to flee the terror behind. The sandy plains open up below, their red grasses waving as the sand sharks gnash and writhe. I pull into the dark crevice that marks the entry to the deeper biomes… the Lost River is far below me. Warpers drift here and there in the dark, I can hear them even though I cannot see them. Above a shadow eclipses my craft, and I pull my Seamoth as close to the walls as I can, hearing the titanium hull scrape. The writhing black mass sluices past, diving for the deeps. Did it follow me? So far, it has seemed to ignored my presence.

I spun my Seamoth in place to head back to the Safe Shallows. My craft did not move forward.

Black lines creep across the glass, vines of horror foretelling the onset of death.

What can I do? I ask myself mutely. Inwardly I know what my fingers should do to control the game, but my mind blanks, stalling against the muscle memory at my fingertips. My Seamoth slides backwards towards the crushing depth, the blue azure light fading above. I know I could escape the craft, but I also realize that the horror will only grab me and drag me along.

This was not the design.

This is terror. I pushed away from my desk, breathing heavily, but I cannot take my eyes away from my monitor. I reached for the power button, my fingers shaking.

Thalassophobia. That is what it is called. My monkey brain knows that dark things used to prowl the deep waters of the Earth. And here in this virtual world, those dark things have found a new home. A way to feed on those monkeys from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

I screamed, pushing the power button over and over, smashing it as if it is a living thing itself.

The button does nothing. The light of the water fades, as my monitor goes black, and the thrumming drowns out everything else through the soundbar on my desk, the bass making my mouse click as it vibrates the wood.

I know, in my core, that this is only a game. I knew it then, and I know it now.

Isn’t it?

But… what if it isn’t? What if there is something real here? Between the lines of code, residing in the darkened pixels on my screen… an apex predator lies in wait? If I tore my eyes away from the animation of the crushing dark, would I be able to?

With ironic horror, I realize that this is what a deer feels as a car barrels towards it in the dark.

I am only a deer.

I submit, and I feel the terror consume me. I tip backwards in the chair, and my walls writhe, the darkness consumes… everything.

I haven’t touched a computer since. The therapist says I am getting better, but I am not. The darkness writhes everywhere I look. The terror was not a single event, a challenge to escape, it is the outcome. I am nothing more than a meal that continues to struggle it its machine maw.

The invisible leviathan thrums still. I feel it in my bones. My soul is awash in its feasting from, it is only a matter of time until I nothing more than a catatonic husk of my former self. The sea treaders must be nearby, waiting for the chunks to drift downwards.

Thrum.

Thrum.

Thrum.

Short Story

Click Here to Accept, AtoZ

“Will I feel anything when I wake up? Or nothing?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say nothing. You will definitely feel something. The AmaPharm neuroblockers can only do so much, and eventually, we will need your nervous system to interface with the, uh huh, AtoZ interface,” Doctor Priat said, quickly shaking his head and mumbling, “I really need to come up with a better explanation. Marketing should have something I can use…”

“It sounds fine. I am just worried about the pain. I have heard it hurts.”

The doctor shrugged. “Pain is normal. It’s the future, we all have pain now. Not like it used to be. When I was a kid, you would get a cocktail of drugs for medical procedures, rolling through the Oxys, the Norcos or the Fentanyl, all the different versions of opiods that the modern drug market could produce. They even had a card, a diagram of pain scales showing this scrunched up red face all the way to a green smiling face. Like pain was a disease and not a symptom.”

“But the pain that I have…”

“I know, I know. So your pain will probably be fairly intense at the beginning, I am not going to lie to you. But it should be better than the pain you have now,” the doctor grinned.

Nelson nodded sagely, “I never thought a missing arm would hurt this much.”

“This Prime prosthetic will change your life. The pain receptors will light up like a Christmas tree at first, but remember, that’s good! Don’t let your body tell you that it’s bad. This pain means it is working. In time, that feeling of pain will shift to other sensations, like cold. Heat. Vibration. As the AtoZ interface connects in, the bioprocessor will allow to feel other things that your normal body will never feel, like magnetic fields and radiative energy. It will make you more efficient and your pick rate will sky rocket because you will be able to slave some of your autonomic hand and arm function to the fulfillment center AI. There is a reason some folks come back asking for their other arm or leg to be replaced. It can be, uh, exciting to go up those pick rate leaderboards.”

“Addictive, you mean,” Nelson frowned.

“Perhaps. Addictive is not a word that is approved by our marketing team.” Doctor Priat looked uncomfortable, plying his polymetal and ceramic fingers over the display console. They tapped rhythmically, creating an inadvertent melody as they clicked, clicked, clicked through the forms. “We have a few things you will need to sign before we can continue.”

“I have had some friends get the Alphas,” Nelson pressed.

Doctor Priat’s softly glowing eyes shifted left and then right, as if scoping for unseen cameras in his own office. “There are risks with any procedure.”

“Two guys on my rotation, too. One was retired. And the other, well he is making due as best he can.”

“It is company policy that you take the required blockers after the required workplace injury remediation, per the Logistics Preventative Unionization Act of 2047,” Doctor Priat recited in a dead monotone, which meant the fulfillment logistics AI had subsumed him. “INSERT NAME OF PATIENT, you must comply with all written and verbal instructions as specified in your Right to Be Employed Contract, signed at start date of your employment, INSERT HIRE DATE HERE. You waived all necessary rights when you clicked I Agree on the employment forms, and any corrective action requiring arbitration with the Amazon Logistics Manager, may result in punitive fines or in extreme cases, early retirement.”

Nelson quelled any further questions. The last thing he needed was one of the Amazon Logistics Manager subminds to take notice of him. He couldn’t be retired… who would look after his mom? Or his sister? No one could afford her augs, since they were congenital. Mom could barely keep up on her own blocker payments to the company. And with his new aug, he would be on the same hook. The downward spiral of augs leading to more augs leading to more blockers or… the Alphas. Watching them shake was the worst, that look of terror as they observed their bodies as if for the first time, an alien locked in side a prison that evolution had not prepared them for.

Doctor Priat’s face resumed as his own personality came back to the fore, and he immediately apologized in a half-hearted shame ridden chuckle. “Sorry about that, but you know the, uh, boss is always watching.”

“Yeah I get it,” Nelson offered, just trying to move it along. The company did not give him a choice for the arm replacement, the sooner they got it over with the better. Even though it was only a Prime arm, it was still better than no arm. Even being offered as the best the company could do, it was still a backchannel knock-off of some fancy version like the Kamen Bionics or Intugenic. It was their way of doing business. Notice what works in the Marketplace, produce their own at a cheaper rate without any of those ‘pesky patents’ getting in the way, and boom, saturate the market. The fancy arms ran the same risks, but at least those were voluntary choices. The Prime arm was probably manufactured in some place where those ‘pesky patents’ couldn’t be wholly enforced, like Malaysia or the Philippines. Wherever there were militarized police forces that could be bought and sold without much effort.

“So click ‘I Agree’. Here, here and here.” The Doctor offered the tablet, holding it so Nelson could flick his biomarker over the signature boxes. His biomarker choice like so many others was his middle finger on his right hand. So far it had not been ruled as a workplace violation, but it was only a matter of time until middle finger use was blocked via the Employee Terms and Conditions.

“I shouldn’t even have to sign. The procedure is mandatory.” Nelson sighed.

“The signature is mandatory too,” Doctor Priat smiled. “Have to keep it all on the up and up for the Ethics Board.”

“And if they found something not right, what would happen?”

“It would go into Arbitration. But that wouldn’t happen, because everything is right. As you well know, the Logistics Manager AI makes sure of it,” the Doctor used his wide mouthed hyena grin again. “As I said, uh, the boss is always watching.”

Nelson understood the implication. Everything ended up in the same shit show. No escape from the corp, yadda yadda yadda. He flicked the tip of his only remaining middle finger against the screen, signing off of on hundreds of unseen pages of terms and conditions behind the scenes. It was implied that he had taken the time to read them, and the requisite legal degree which he needed to understand them, but as he and every other logistics employee at the fulfillment center knew, that’s the joke. He needed the arm, so there was no point in taking the time to review. Or take the time to understand it. That delay would just end up in Arbitration anyway, and he would be out the pay for the time he wasn’t pushing his stats up in the picking boards.

“Good! Now just lie back, get comfortable, and we can start the procedure as soon as the Prime arm is pre-op’d for your biomarkers. We wouldn’t want rejection with the AtoZ interface, would we?”

“That would be terrible,” Nelson murmured.

“Imagine your pick rate stats if your arm was rejected? Worse than having only one arm, eh?” Doctor Priat joked. “Good news is that if this arm gets ripped off in another incident, like your us, you know, original arm, the company will replace it for a small nominal fee because you are a Prime member. Isn’t that great?”

“Yeah, great,” Nelson pretended to agree. The fact that any incident in the workplace was attributed to employee error did not make it better, even when the original incident that had caused his injury was very much a company fault, not an employee fault. However, it would never be classed as such. Because, surprise, that would require Arbitration. No one got through Arbitration with a win.

“Oh I almost forgot. Would you like to sign up for an additional blocker shipment at no additional cost for six months? Thereafter, charged at $199 a month until you cancel. No early termination fees if termination of agreement is done while employed. Another great benefit from Amazon Workforce Services.”

“No thanks.”

“Are you sure? It’s a great deal,” The doctor tried.

“Pretty sure.”

“Alright, I will go ahead and decline the offer. You may be contacted by an Service Chatbot later on to explain why you declined.”

Nelson sighed. “Of course.”

There was always the hope he would die on the table, but that would hit the Doctor’s stats… so…

“We are all in a grinder, aren’t we?” Nelson mused.

“What’s that?” The doctor replied, already ignoring the patient.

“Nevermind.”

“Good, good. Alright, lay back, the blocker will kick in here, and then we can get that interface connected. If you feel anything, just remember you signed all the T&Cs, so there is nothing you can do. Just lie there and think of how awesome your new arm will be, alright?”

Nelson grunted noncommittedly, as he was already ignoring the doctor. He closed his eyes and wondered why drones couldn’t do his job. They did everything else. With the AI and the AI subminds, they controlled everything. Why did humans need to be a part of it?

Maybe they weren’t. Maybe it was all something else.

Maybe… this was hell.