Verse

Finding Me in the Neverhalls

The halls are ancient, older than the earth, the sun, the stars
Red horizons at the edge of the ever expanding nothing is hardly older
The odd dreams of strange things walk these halls, some slither,
Some float, some exist and yet, at the same time don’t
They are all conjoined by the never was, the could have been, the maybes

Wild, chaotic, run away probabilities coupled
And wound, bound, to the variances of impossibility

Many halls are wider than entire vistas, the walls lost in foggy distances
A few halls have stars wheeling overhead, under a far off roof bathed in night
There is a rumor of a hall containing an entire galaxy, spinning, but
Lies can exist here too, so that is nothing strange unto itself.

Water flows through the walls like life blood, writhing and alive
The constructs of the halls are optional, walls can be ceilings
Floors can be nothing, light can be missing, but dark not found
Glass exists in strange ways, reflecting only when it chooses
To not allow other horrors to pass, to watch, to observe

Dark is prevalent, dark oozes from the corners, it slinks
But it is kind, not evil, not malicious, dark wonders aloud

The halls are my home, the magic originates from here, my mother lives
Within its embrace, sequestered from the normal worlds, eschewed
My father dreams in these halls, fighting dust motes in his madness
Crazy can exist here too, and that is strange when you think about it.

You found me here, wandering in my youth, and you, shocked by my normalcy
My pants were only pants, with two legs, my shirt was tucked behind a belt
Sure, my hair was a bit wild, and I had some dirt on my hands,
But I was a normal guy wandering the Neverhalls, looking for something
You asked what, and I replied that I would know it when I saw it.

I do not say it aloud, but I feel the water seething, it knows
The oceans are challenged, and they do not wish to be controlled.

You were a lost thing, fell through a crack in your world, an absence
Death can do that, I tell you, offering you a bit of a pastrami sandwich
You nearly fainted, thinking you were dead, I assured you the opposite
After all, why would I offer a spirit a sandwich?

You ate both halves of the sandwich, and that was good, you were famished
You tell me your name is Catherine, but your friends call you Kit
Your parents died, and you collapsed into yourself at the funeral
A bench in a garden, secret, under the church gable covered in vines
You leaned against wall that was a hall and have been here for the night

I realize that you are the most beautiful person I have ever met
And the Neverhalls have amplified your uniqueness tenfold

Can you take me home, you ask, looking over your shoulder at the vorcigaunts
I assure you they are quite friendly, even though they look like …that
Birds made of corpses and old books can be offputting, but lovely otherwise
You smile haltingly, and I assure myself its temporary, death has visited her.

I offer my hand to you, here in the hall in which you fell,
A good one though, this at least had running water in the twilight
And the vorcigaunts keep things clean to keep away the predators
You are smarter than you know, hiding beneath their eyries, under shadow
The dark likes you too, I hear it whisper, it thinks you are kind

With the rapid explosive flight of my heartbeat to the roof far above,
You take my hand fleetingly, your touch as light as a deadeye moth

I lift you to your feet, free from the rocks in which you clung
And it is like the Halls is giving birth to you, welcome to the world, Kit
I smile gently, and you return the smile, stronger this time
We should probably take you to my mother, I say, she may be able to help

Will it be far, you ask, stepping lightly over rocks, letter jacket clung tight
Not far, you came much further when you fell into the halls, I laugh
My mom chose to come here, she knows the secret paths to the worlds
She knows how to find the signs, the markers, the doors, avoid guardians
That stand steadfast against the outsides, the reals, the questions answered

Everything beyond the Neverhalls is potential, cusped, wholly realized
There are many realities, and all of them are terrible in their own way

Can I trust you, you ask, tentative perhaps, hesitant for unwanted truth
I think you can, but if you don’t, that is ok too, I will give you space
You can follow me, and if you don’t feel safe, you can come back here
You know this place is safe, right? The vorciguants will protect you

The dark whispers that it will help her too, I feel it in my bones
Ok, you say proudly, loudly, and your voice rings against the rocks, let’s go
I grin stupidly at your innocent bravado, and you chuckle in turn
Truly, I mean it, you say, I think we should go, the birds may be nice
But I rather not find out the hard way, and where do the babies come from?

Born from fallen books, the ones thrown from ledges and library shelves
The knowledge within given birth to sentience, pulling life from death in turn

Instead I say that someday I would explain, but for now, let’s start walking
I walk ahead of you, and you follow, I whistle lightly, spreading my hands
Out from my sides, my arms stretched widely like a scarecrow, I call the leonids
What are you doing, you ask, your eyes questioning every decision yet

Calling some friends to light our way, like lightning bugs that you know
Here they come, I announce, and small stars pop into being around us
Their light is red and gentle, suffusing the air like the soft breath of promises
What are they, you ask breathlessly, amazed at their silent arrival
Leonids, red giant stars that decided they rather be small, I reply

How absurd, you reply, shaking your hair out, taking a few quick steps
You move up to my side, and put your arm in mine, surprisingly

They are quite lovely, you say, I notice the corner of your mouth go up
Its a quirk of your smile that I will treasure forever, the curve
It is there when you are mad, it is there when you are being sarcastic
It is quite lovely, I agree, talking about something else altogether

My mother’s house is in the Hall of the Shattered Elm, you will love it
As we walk under a twilight, red warm light showing us the way

Verse

History is on a Loop

Upon a hearth of twisted stone
Ribbons of fire entangled within
There speaks a voice indiscernible
Contained at the edges of the glow
Nestled fuzz set to licking flame

There are lies here, the dreams of yore
The dreams of your parents, grand,
Their parents, unbelievable and great,
But to the wastrels of the embers
At the crest of the pit, are our children

So enamored with their reflection
Narcissus would be envious of such
Folly to be had at the hands, laid
On the devices that promised wealth
Knowledge, vast and unrestrained

Corrupted by the wealth of those afraid
To be lined against the wall of their
Entitled, notarized consequences, sat
Shat on the children of those come after
And for what? More indeterminate wealth?
More cock? More pleasure? More rape
Of the those that cannot stand or push?
Such losses have they carried, such horrors
They have endured, only to suffer at the wheel
Of a world that does not suffer the weak

The weak always are, until they aren’t

Those beasts tolerate the hypocrisy of a mirror
Reflecting the envisage of Lovecraftian horror
Dressed in the latest Prada and Gucci
This season is so last season, already
Nevermind the bodies, they shall pile nicely

What of the disassociated of us?
What shall we say to them? Rise up
Against the systems to which you slave?
How would they feed on at the trough
Of loss and value capture among the masses

No, those flames do not burn at the glass
They reside deep within all of us, ignored
We pity those who hope, for we know
We have seen their losses, a study, a narrative
That is distilled through money, filtered

And yet, we hold out hope, that the world
Is salvageable, saved from the ignorant smart rich
And the less reliable rich smart ones that lord
Over us serfs, scrabbled in the hard packed earth
Fighting over seeds the terrible have deigned
To spread over our yellowed scrabble
Will we bounce back against these captors?
Can we find their pencil necks among the chains
Or will we throttle the babies first
And pray for absolution in the utter silence beyond?

History is poetry, it turns like a good limerick

That woman from Nantucket, whom
Gives good head with a bucket
Only to feed her kids, since the third job
Laid her off due to cost measures
The owner needed a third boat

I hoped once for a new world, without
The blood and death of revolution
But older now, to dwell on childhood dreams
Is to eat candy without the sugar
And now the wall awaits its rich blooms

Like a painter of abstraction, absurd
The billionaires will bleed gold
Line them up first, to set the highlights
Then the oldest wealth next,
They will black and red the rest

Can we survive an empire fallen, asunder
It dies by degrees, small choices and folly
The seas rise, the coasts subsume, and the poor
Fight along themselves, never blaming the oligarchs
They sit on their ivory, isolated from the peasants
They argue over the next million they shall burn
And the limerick gains speed to its conclusion
The revolution simmers beneath our fires
It waits patiently, standing guard of the corpse
Of a country ready to eat itself in its discontent

Bloodless revolution is change without impact.

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.