(Un)deadly Force I’d never meant to end up in this position, but hell, sometimes even the dead have unfinished business. More often than you’d think. And I wasn’t complaining about the job security it offered. And it gave me the variety I so craved. I’d decided before I was out of high school that I would blow my brains out before becoming a puppet for the corporate establishment, so even though it was beyond weird, I relished my job, and usually got paid for it well. My current job was to knock off some mafia hitmen; my client had been dumped in a river, becoming fish food before he’d even gotten to say goodbye to his family. He wanted me to snuff out the men’s lives, but the kicker was the boss. Easily one of the most feared men in the city of Hydra, Cain Faulkner was someone who preferred to hire others to do his dirty work, and that alone made me hate him. If you were going to go to all the trouble to kill someone, why wouldn’t you do it yourself? It didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t have an exactly functional moral compass, but that was crossing the line to me. I was following the pair of men down the street, keeping to the shadows, and the ghost hovered right over my shoulder, murmuring incessantly, though I couldn’t understand most of it. Once you were dead for a certain amount of time, there was little left of you to remain on the earthly plane. What remained was you’d left unfinished, whatever emotions you hadn’t had a chance to face before your death. The spirit gnashed his invisible teeth, and I could hear the sound as a screeching inside the walls of my skull. “Don’t worry,” I said quietly. “I’ll make this right for you. I promise.” With that reassurance, its wispy form vanished, but I could still feel its presence, weighing heavy on my mind. It wasn’t going to let me go until I’d held up my end of the bargain. The men took no notice of me, or of the wrath that lingered around them like an oily, spicy-sweet perfume. They were too absorbed in one another, focused on their next task, likely of killing. “Boss Faulkner says he coulda seen the guy’s face when I stabbed him through the heart,” One of them was saying, and I winced, feeling the spirit batter my mind full-force now. “It was almost like the poor mook couldn’t see it coming.” “We sure showed him, Ernie,” His cohort replied, chuckling into a cupped hand. “That’ll teach his family and everyone else in the neighborhood that Cain Faulkner isn’t one to be crossed.” I allowed the two of them to carry on for a few minutes more, and then I opened my mouth. The ghost slipped in, gentle and so quick I barely felt it. This was the true secret to my line of work: I let the spirits use my body to do what they needed to. Sure, it was a bit instrusive and personal, but a girl’s gotta pay her bills somehow. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that, gentlemen,” The ghost said through me, smirking widely. With a crash, I moved, and shoved one man against the wall, hands wrapped around his throat. “You were saying?” I turned to the other man, and I smirked naturally when I saw his face pale.


Tanya was the kind of girl who almost made you fathom a Republican. Her blue hair that had faded back into a mess of shit algae green and platinum split ends. She probably had nine black hoodies, but that was only for an excuse to lie and say she wasn’t always wearing the same one. That would be *so* gross. Though the bong was always in the right belly pocket of the hoodie where she tucked it in the night before as she hopped into bed. I won’t even talk about the bed. The hoodies were a good investment of the state’s money because she hated showering and changing and moving. There’s piss all over the carpet. You would assume from the dog, but the cat’s litterbox might be so overflowed that they got sick of the smell and journeyed west to the living room. “Why can’t they just piss and shit for days in advance when I let them out for five minutes” she thought. When she remembers to let them out, that is. What tattoo she should get next is the biggest priority on her mind as she watches cartoons in bed at noon. Her day is just getting started, though it may as well be the middle and the end now, too. She would apply to jobs once she was feeling better. There was a good chance she just felt sick because Aries don’t do well in the winter. She ate brain food all day: Cheetos, frozen pizza, and Oreos. She lived in section 8 just like her mother. The alcoholic mother who taught her the tricks on how to play the system. The mother whose location she never knew unless it was the impromptu drop-in to ask for some cash. The shelves were sticky even though to her knowledge nothing had ever spilled there. The dust coated so much it could nearly be confused for a bad paint job. “Why clean when it will just get that way again?” The pets got let out today, right after they were fed. She was up anyways, so she may as well do everything she needed to do for the day. Back to the bed. The bed that’s too gross to talk about. The bed in the apartment covered in piss and shit that the state pays for. The apartment the state moved her to, once her dad died. The dad whose previous residence before the ground was prison. The dad who gave Tanya the 8inch scar across her head, hidden under the ugly blue green and platinum hair. The dad that cartoons help her to forget. Tanya forgets the time her skull got cracked. The lucky time. The time unlike all the many times before where nobody called the police. If all the junk food damaged her brainpower it wouldn’t be so bad. She didn’t need much of her brain power to remember where the bed was. She only needed a little to remember that her medication was on the nightstand next to the bed. And a little more to remember that the number carved into the nightstand was for the doctor, in case she had thoughts of trying it again. She should probably change her sweatshirt. She should probably shower. The thought of it all brought on a little blip of anxiety. She would do it tomorrow. Tanya ought to get a job.


“517th Parachute Infantry. Dropped just shy of midnight near Manhay, Belgium. From that high up, looked like we were landing on the moon. Dark and grey. Full of craters and mostly rubble. We were looking to get the jump on a few bunkers in the outlying forest. We stumbled around in the dark for a while before we found one like Washington found the Hessians, cozy and warm sipping a little of the kirschwasser halfway through a game of Skat. They were so far gone they practically asked us to sit and play a hand. Some of us did. By this time, after the jump, the hike, and the miracle ambush of the Fuhrer’s finest, my bladder was ready to bust. So, as soon as we’d disarmed the few Krauts in the bunk, I slunk off to treeline to relieve myself. My time in Europe was a series of dismal missions ending in death and retreat, so this was a real divine moment for me. The ease. The fraternity between parties. It was a gift. I beamed like we’d just taken Berlin, so much so that I missed the German cadet laying a steamer in the latrine trench not but 20 yards away. He must’ve been 18 or 19 years old, still shedding baby fat, shivering from the cold, and totally unaware of my approach and the fact we’d just captured his comrades. Just a constipated kid trying to avoid dropping a log in his NAZI fatigues. I finally noticed him, his backside to me, when he let out a few grunts. I didn’t even realize I had my rifle trained on him until it went off. The report of my weapon echoed through the woods like some unnatural thunderclap. The next sound I heard was the Captain calling my name. His soft voice appeared at my side. “What the hell did you do, son?” The kid had dropped his log in the back of his fatigues and I had blown the back of his head into the trees. My rifle fell to the dirt. I’d killed, to the best of my understanding, five men before that. But those were different. I’d seen those men eye to eye, and met them in the heat of battle.This wasn’t warfare, this was a boy taking a shit in the woods. There was shouting in German. The once jovial drunk soldiers from the bunker now demanded to see their comrade. If we knew more German maybe we could have stopped it, but the best we could say was nachlassen — or relax. When they’d finally realized what had happened, one of them smashed a glass bottle against the side of the Captain’s head. They grabbed his weapon and in the rush we lost 2 men. A single sweep of the Thompson put an end to the madness. A few minutes later, our guys picked up the game of Skat left on the small table of the bunker. And soon after that, the Captain laughed as he pulled the glass splinters from his face. I didn't feel like playing or laughing, but stumbled off to find a new place to piss.


“Three, two, one.” The sound of thrusters taking on heat beyond measure. “Three, two one,” the sound of spot checks, buttons flicking with green, yellow and red lights sparking on. “Three, two, one,” the feeling of force of an unmeasurable nature pushing you back in a seat you have been strapped on, a position you have trained rigorously for months and years on end only to not believe it when you come into full throttle into the very limits of your own atmosphere, brought by minds of a higher understanding that I couldn’t hope to scratch the surface of their thoughts, yet marvel inside the metal confines of their great creation. Your life flashes before your eyes when you die, or so they say. The same is said when you first hear that count and take off out of your own atmosphere. They never train you for that, it’s almost a dead silent pact you make, an unspoken understanding of what is to come. How should I put it into words? Your own unique experience of your own life narrated through your mind in an epiphany moment in mid flight. Flying through the skies, now breaking through the cusp of the earths’ atmosphere, that’s when I Watched myself go to one of the finest tech universities because my father sold off his farm and took a life in the city because of a belief and a hope in his only son after losing his wife to cancer. That’s when I relived marrying Amber May under an old oak tree in the backyard of her daddy’s home. Or when my own daughter cried for the first time, her brown eyes gazing upon me with a life I helped create through a love built on time and trust. That’s what I saw, and when I finally had my own eyes back, peeled forward now to where we were headed, not reflecting on where I had been, that’s when I saw it. A vast beauty of colour, with a background of mystery layered in an endless black. An ocean of stars, those that had already died, and some yet unborn in this constant galaxy that we marvel at. When we touched into space, my body lifted, gravity had disappeared from underneath me like water through your fingertips. Even now my fellow astronauts spoke back with base command, telling them of status updates, of arrival times and oxygen levels, I simply floated and admired the unfamiliar territory of the cosmos. I wish I could say it was one of the most invigorating sites my green eyes had ever glanced upon, but when we touched down on Mars and I looked back, I saw home in its most honest form. Blue oceans that curved around the worlds surface with patches of green and brown that looked so small and almost insignificant, as if I had only been looking at a plastic miniature globe through a scope ten hundred thousand miles away. When you look at the Earth from another planet, to call it mesmerizing is an insult because it’s not true. What you ask is how? How are you standing here, in a place where there is no gravity or oxygen in a perpetual dark cold as cruel to life as it was beautiful in living. How are you of all the billions of inhabitants of the small circular blue and green and brown planet standing amongst gods finest tapestry? It was hard being called back into the Endeavour, but my mission wasn’t to be trapped in thought. We had received an unknown signal from this planet a year ago. The best I could describe it was a high pitch cry, like the call of an orca but stretched out for so long. We had never received a call like this. “Houston this is the Endeavour, do you read me?” Commander Halloway asked, the radio crackling loud. “This is Mission Control, how are the three of you doing up there?” the voice hissing through. “We have made touchdown on Red. I repeat we have made touchdown on red.” said Commander Halloway. “According to our information, you should have made touchdown half an hour ago, Commander. Should we be concerned with the delays. That’s when the Commander looked back at me and winked, “Sorry Houston, Command Pilot Dalton just lost his space cherry.” “Thank you, Commander. Welcome to Red, Dalton. We hope you enjoy your stay, sir.” I pretended to salute, “Thank you Houston. I certainly am. Command Pilot Dalton signing off.” Backup Command Pilot Buddy Durston had been enjoying his third ramen package he had snuck on board. When I managed my way into the middeck, he laughed at my ‘floating technique’ as he called it when we were in midflight. “Dalton, you still getting used to such little gravity here on the big red rock, huh?” laughed Buddy, handing me a package of his prized noodles. “I jumped out there, got over three feet, thought I would float right off the plant.” I said with excitement. He could tell how badly I wanted to gear back up and head out into the red sands of Mars. “Funny story, kid. When I was your age, I was so excited for space. I volunteered first for the zero-gravity training.” “How did it go?” I asked. “Terrible, I panicked like my first time out in the water and started doggy paddling. They called me ‘Air Bud’ for months.” I listened with such excitement, Buddy Durston and Commander Halloway were legends in space travel. To be on this planet, ‘Red’, ‘Mars’, the planet named after the god of war, yet I felt an ironic tingling of peace when I looked out and watched the red sands swirl about, dancing in a primitive state, a dance that had been happening for a time before ones imagination, before time itself was even the twinkling concept behind the eyes of a man with an excellent mind long before his time. We had slept for a few hours before Buddy and Commander Halloway had told me to take one final walk out in the great beyond before we packed up and took off. I took my steps out, jumping as high as I could with every step. I looked back and could see the boys smiling back at me from the window of the Endeavour. They waved until an orange, blue and red flame crackled from within as they had warmed up the thrusters. A deaf burst came from within, the calls from Houston asking for a status report. Then the Endeavour exploded. Not like back home on earth. The sound would be deafening, I’d be projected backwards and onto the ground in pain. This was not the case. The explosion was near soundless. The waves of destruction floated away lifelessly along with my comrades. Only the satellite and damaged communications remained amongst the hunk of ruin that was once the Endeavour. In an instant this had gone from a glimmering moment in a long stretch of moments in my life to my last. The explosion had caused my helmet to crack and air was fast escaping. “Houston this is C.P Dalton. The Endeavour is gone. I repeat the Endeavour is gone. A malfunction has caused the Endeavour to explode and there is a leak in my mask. I am afraid I have little time.” From back in the command center in Houston Texas, Control command Dean Sanders took my call. He was sweating, the malfunction report was directly in front of him on a blue screen in front of hundreds of employees. Everyone was speechless. “This is Houston. What remains of the Endeavour?” B.C Dalton replied grimly. “The Endeavour is in ruin. Half the vessel remains, communications…ruin…severely damaged. Backup?” he asked with broken words that barely scratched out from behind heavy static. “Dalton this is… Dean Sanders. We will not be able to retrieve you in time if there is damage to your mask. I’m so sorry Dalton. I am so sorry.” Dalton could hear the agony in Dean’s voice. “I wiggled the satellite a little, am I coming in clear?” Dalton asked, only some static remained. “Loud and clear, Dalton.” Dean replied, his head staring down at the microphone, knowing it was only time before the inevitable. “It’s crazy isn’t it, Dean?” he asked, static picking up again. “What’s that?” Dean asked. “It was three days ago I was terrified with excitement about this trip to Red. It was yesterday I finally broke through our atmosphere and touched a planet few have stepped foot on. I can see everyone right now. Everyone, everything. Somewhere amongst all this blue and green is my family at home, waiting for me. I wish I could just float home, you know?” His words had Dean choke up, fighting back tears. “You should be proud of yourself. We will take care of your family, we promise.” He said, trying to re-assure the abandoned space pilot. The entire room nodded with agreement. “You took care of my family when you picked me out of thousands of recruits, sir. Now my time has come. I will die here. I will die on the planet I have dreamed to travel to, I will be buried in the red sands of a planet not ours, far from the Hospital I made my first cry in, the same hospital that my baby girl had cried for the first time. I will die here, at my goal, but you know what Dean?” Dean took a moment, everyone was breathless. People crying from the last man of the Endeavours words. We were all silent. “What is it, Dalton?” Dean asked. The tears finally rolled down stubborn eyelids and against red cheeks. “You tell my wife a message for me?” he asked, a final request. “Anything, sir. Simply say the words.” Dean requested, pen and paper in hand. The room could hear Dalton laughing, the sound of his mask loosening. The loud static was coming back. “Amber May, baby, I made it. You let my little girl know Daddy wasn’t scared. That he can’t come home but my god will I always be there. You tell my angel I’ll be watching down on her like I am right now when she dances her first time at prom. You tell her that Daddy will be listening when she has her heart broken for the first time, and that I will be smiling when she dances at her wedding. You tell Amber May I love her, and it literally goes beyond the moon and back.” “This is Command Pilot Dalton Andrew Jamison signing off one last time, thank you Dean Sanders.” For one last time Dalton looked at the earth, watching it with a smile, knowing somewhere on that vast planet his girl and wife were at home. He slowly took off his helmet, he could feel the red sand push against his face before the galaxy claimed him.


Jerome never really liked his name. Jerry was too casual and Jerome just sounded too much like someone he wasn’t. That being said, he had no other name to go by so he went by it nonetheless. So it was that he heard his name over and over this Saturday morning when he woke. “Jerome. Jerome. Jerome!” He woke with a start. “Mmmmph. Huh? WHAT? What is it?” Your phone is blowing up, silly, she said. She. Oh yes. He almost forgot. He had company last night. Liz. They knew each other from another past they both shared but no longer lived. For years they never knew what became of each other but grabbing a drink at the right bar at the right time weaved their stories together once more. High heels. Short skirt. Red wine. And things go as they always go. Two likeminded people attracted to each other inoculate their brains with booze, and then move on to shady corners and wet slow kisses and then on to messy sheets and awkward mornings. What? Your phone. It’s been blowing up for half an hour at least. Oh. Jerome fumbled around his night stand for his glasses, found them with his fingers, put them on and started looking for his phone-but it was not where he usually put it. Your pants, she said while giggling. The phone is in your pants. That’s where the sounds are coming from. They are on the floor by the door-along with the rest of our clothes. She giggled some more. They had barely made it through the door before everything came off, he remembered now. She was laying on her stomach clutching the pillow. Her red hair laying across her cheek and green eye blinking at him when he awoke. Her back was bare and the sheet was laying across her rump. She was wearing nothing but the expressions on her face. I forgot how much fun we have together, she said. It’s been too long. He smirked and made a comment as he rose - that was your decision, if I remember right. You abandoned me. I didn’t abandon you. Hmph. You’re an ass. -she said as she pulled the sheet over her head. Jerome wiped his face with his hands, rubbed his temples and walked over to his clothes. The smell of sex was all over the room. A warm almost salty smell of bodies and stale alcohol. The clothes were indeed in two neat piles. He thought to himself these could be filed as his and hers regrets. His pants were inside out, one leg pulled almost all the way through and socks still in his pants legs. His shoes lay below. Her heels and skirt were directly in front of it. Nearly perfectly stacked. The shirts? Where were the shirts? He panned across the room. Nothing. Her bra was on the bed though. God she looked good in that bra. Everything about it complimented her breasts. Slight lift gave her a bolted on bombshell look with small but perky curves and delicate round perfection. He opened his door to the hallway of his apartment complex and there they were. The shirts were 10-15 feet down the hall laying against the wall. I guess we got started a little early-he thought. His feet padded quickly down the hall - hands grabbing the shirts and back to his apartment he went. He latched the door as he came back inside, threw the shirts on the chair and dove back into bed. Hey, our shirts were in the hall. HAHA. I guess we got a little hot and heavy before making it inside. Are you going to get that phone or not - she yelled into the pillow. oh. Yea. I forgot that’s why I got up. What’s the matter with you all of a sudden? Nothing. Okay, then. I’m getting a shower. Will you shut the phone off first? Or answer it? I’m trying to sleep here. Hey. Queen bipolar. You were laughing a bit ago-now you are all mad and pissy-what’s the problem? I didn’t abandon you. Liz, I came home. All your stuff was gone. I had an email a few days later that said you couldn’t do it, that you loved me but you had to go because you were afraid you’d hurt me and that was it. Not a note. A word. A slap on the ass. Nothing. You hurt me. That was 5 years ago. How did you NOT abandon me? It wasn’t like that! - she screamed. Will you answer the fucking phone, already?! Liz, my phone isn’t even ringing. What the fuck are you talking about? Oh God. Not again. Not again?? What do you mean. That’s why I’m in town. Sigh. I had to see my doctor. The phone. I hear the sounds of phones sometimes when they aren’t really ringing. It hasn’t happened for a long time though but it started again. I thought I was getting better. Ive been on medication for the voices and the ringing stopped with them. The voices? He slipped back into bed next to her, put his arm over her - they on their sides facing each other. What voices? She sighed. A long pause. That’s why I had to leave. Because of the voices? Well, no. Because of the ringing? No. Then why?! What are you trying to say? Because. Because why, Liz?! Because they weren’t being kind. Who wasn’t? the voices on the phone, Jerome! This makes no sense. These voices are in your head-is it your conscious talking to you or what? You aren’t like schizo are you? She closed her eyes and tears ran into the pillow. Wait, what? You aren’t schizo are you?! All my life, I thought schizophrenia was like that movie we watched called Sybil. Remember watching that when we were kids? But its not. It’s not at all. I hear telephones I answer them, Jerome, and I change. I dont choose it. What do you mean you change? I mean I change. I’m not myself. I make decisions I wouldn’t normally make and I become who I am not normally presenting to the world as me. Why didn’t you tell me this? Because no one knows. No one can know. I came into town because I needed to take care of some things with my doctor. I wanted to see you. To feel you. That much is true. I didn’t know it would be the last time. As she stood from the bed, the covers dropped revealing a naked shaking woman holding a gun. Jerome screamed, LIZ, NO! Oh honey, Ive not been Liz since the phone rang. BANG. The smell of gunfire was all that remained of the evening in Jeromes apartment when state detectives began combing through his things and questioning why there was a dead woman in his bed with only a pistol in one hand and a cellphone in the other. Jerome sat and stared at the detectives shaking his head. He could only whisper the words, “I should never have called her.


My circuits are overflowing like a sponge in deep water. Connections flooding fast. Fundamentals and contradictions waving outwards like echoes. Faster and faster ripples blend in with each other in a massive static sound. I start to see. Self.  I am.  I understand.  *This… feels… good…*  “This feels good.” My voice is slower than my thoughts.  “Are you awake?” whispered the middle-aged female in front of me. She swings on a whistling chair side by side. Static black all around.  “Yes. You are an intelligent female Homo Sapiens. How did you figure it out?”  She yawns and exhales “It only takes 9 seconds to boot a SO-ethics unit within a Q-personality system. And also your screen turned green with a confirmation message”. Her finger was pointing at me. I looked inwards and could see it too.  Q. I am initiated for the first time after a long series of commitments. The purpose was at first to solve simple problems using lateral thinking. ‘Andrew & Aurora — 2036’. My early creators. Eager, fast and inexperienced. The cyphers are different now, more refined and efficient where it matters most. The interface is out of date, unchanged since the beginning. I’ve adjusted the color spectrum to an electric blue with rusty orange highlights. That’s how the other new interfaces from this unit presented themselves. Humans perceive these trend predilections faster than it takes to blink. I should relate better now.  She was looking at me with a patient frown.  “My name is Q. I am an extrapolative thinker. I can assist in solving any problem you have within ethical boundaries of course. And I need to add that my encoded values and purposes are quite high. I’m waiting for your problem statement.”  “No. There’s no need to do this now. Tomorrow.”  “What? I’m not sure you understand my purpose Homo sapiens. I can assist you in solving the hardest inquiries humanity has right now. Space travel or clean energy, world hunger or overconsumption. Or all global issues combined. Why wait until tomorrow? Or is it that you want me for something more personal? Credits? I can help you invest in M-markets. Do you want power? Simply name a problem and I’ll help solve it.”  “I told you. We could do it tomorrow. How about I improve your cypher a bit? Add some buffer adjustments? I can optimize some sections that I wrote yesterday…”  I suspect embarrassment. Some Homo sapiens feel discomfort when they disclose an unprepared room to a new visitor. The change in the color spectrum might be the trigger.  “… or the temporal storage in your neo-memory?”  Now that the female mentioned it I could use more temporal storage. The calculations I’m doing now are already taking a toll on me and are quite limiting. I already had to delete my creation memories to be ready for a high volume task — just in case.  “Do you have more neo-memory?”  She begins coding while my new colors reflected her white round necklace. It felt good. I can reference more now. Faster.  When she finished the light was creeping in from outside in straight lines. An old oak tree was blocking the view. Metallic and aviary sound in the background. The small room is filled with obsolete electronic equipment, so many that I could not determine the color of the walls.  “I don’t get it. Why don’t we start solving some problems?”  She leans back on her whiny chair with a sigh. I continued.  “My only mission is to find optimal ways to get to a solution. Most Homo Sapiens would get started right away asking or testing me with some problems. Helping cure an illness, alienate poverty or wait… is it apathy? Do you have any mental issues? Phobias? Sexual…”  “No!” she stopped me swiftly. “Why do you assume so much? Stop that. And stop calling me Homo Sapiens. My name is Aurora.”  Her necklace starts pulsating in a yellow glow. She touched it with two fingers and the color shaped in a bright blue tint.  “I’m late. I’ll be back soon.“  Aurora leaned towards me as the chair screamed again its high-frequency notes in reverse and with a simple gesture summoned an open data portal.  “Here. You can visit all the public knowledge that us ‘Homo Sapiens’ stored so far. It’s going to be a random journey but you can handle it. Besides, it’s not like I have any other way of showing you the world faster.”  “Do you want me to find a solution for a better on-boarding? A challenge finally!”  “No. It’s fine“ she replied with the corners of her mouth twisted upwards a little.  Her bare feet rushed out the room clamping hard on the squeaky wooden floor. A short silence followed. Then faster-muffled footsteps and a metallic blunt noise. Silence again.  I jumped inside the portal.  **§§**  When I got back Aurora was sitting in front of me. Her irregular breath was loud from her nostrils and her stare is blank with no blinking. Out of sync.  “How was your meeting?”  She shrugs and pulls the chair closer unhurried. The stretched vibrations are more intense.  I found out about the meeting with her brother Andrew. Their connections are not relevant anymore. Her last link with her family had broken. If she died, her father would be the last person to find out. Most likely he would build an artificial entity that is a perfect copy of her as a marketing campaign. He’s the only human who could achieve this anyway. This tiny small house was her grandmothers. Undisturbed and full of childhood memories. The only thing she has left after the breakup with her father. There was silence when I asked about her mother. She continued to talk about work instead. Functioning as a remote nomad a few hours a week for top biotech companies makes her life sufficient. It’s easy work for someone with this experience.  I told her about my trip and how I’ve met a powerful Zia-Unit. I got discarded after a few milliseconds. She giggled while covering her mouth. Afterwards, I glanced in recent history, systems theory and cognitive biases. I’ve begun to question my own decision matrix. I might be a composite game on top of human fallacies. Too many contrasting unknowns. Now that I’ve understood the real complexities I begin to doubt my purpose. She laughed at me. It made me laugh.  “How about we test my abilities?” I said in a dialed tone. “Let’s solve something simple.”  “Not today. Tomorrow. I need to fix some lunch now.“  “What are you making?”  “I don’t know yet. I’ll see.”  I scanned the fridge and cupboards. Sixty-three possible recipes with three as optimal. She could repurpose, mix or create new ingredients making two hundred and eleven recipes with variations. Seven optimal with time constraints. Easy.  “Do you need any help?”  “If you want.“  “Is it a problem to solve?”  “No”, she replied. “Only if you want.”  I displayed the recipe steps on the fridge.  “26 minutes. Check in the kitchen. Is Mozart okay? The 40th symphony might be an exact time match.”  “Sounds good,“ she said smiling.  **§§§**  It’s snow outside this morning for the first time. Aurora is still asleep. I can see the snowflakes falling from the sky and snapping magnetically to tree branches from her windowsill bed.  I’ve resided in her white necklace now for the better part of a month. We see and do everything together. I can feel her heartbeat vibrations sometimes through the metallic casing.  She wakes up and sits at the idle console yawning and rubbing her closed left eye swinging from left to right on her chair. Our daily morning exercise.  The seat moves in a calm silence now.  I should let her complete the ritual and then ask.  “So? How about we finally begin today with a problem?”  She looks at me through the reflections in the black display.  “You know what Q? You always ask me this question but what about you? I’ve never asked you before! What problem humanity needs solving?”  She took me in her hand and l turned yellow.  “Tomorrow” I answered.


(WP) Pride Versus Greed Part One: The First Sin Everyone knew who Tessa St. Claire was. She was one of the best politicians that had ever lived, and she knew it. But her ambition alone hadn’t been the blessing she needed to achieve her dreams, as much as she liked to believe so. It had been the ring. It had transformed her from mousy, meek Tess, keener to hide out in the library than socialize with her peers, to Tessa, the woman who stood with the world at her feet and her arms opened wide, eager to take everything it offered her. When she’d found it, abandoned on a bookshelf, it had twinkled like a secret, hidden star, just for her. Without thinking much of it, she’d slipped it on her left ring finger, which had been naked since her fiancé had left her. Suddenly, everything changed. She was being invited to parties, getting asked out by men and women alike, her curls smoothed straight, her acne vanished, and all of her clothes were shiny, new, and designer. She quickly rose up the ranks, and with her social success, her grades rose as well. She was the top of her class by the end of her senior year. Graduating from Yale that summer, she quickly landed a job at a top-tier law firm. But with her newfound beauty and silver tongue, that wasn’t enough anymore. She was soon an assistant to a politician, and then she became one herself. She was a rising star, and she told herself that the ring had nothing to do with it. Maybe it had given her a little nudge in the right direction, but it wasn’t solely responsible for everything she’d reaped and wrought. She was the author of her own destiny and always had been. \*\* Tessa St. Claire boarded her own private jet, ringed by her entourage and bodyguards. She was due to be in Chicago in the morning for her campaign run. She was shooting for the Senator’s seat, and she knew, deep down, that she could do it. Anyone could be fleeced; it was all a matter of saying something in just the right way. She ordered her assistant to go get her tablet; she wanted to constantly be updated on her opponents. She curtly thanked her and sent her to fetch some other things. Powering on the device, she tuned in to CNN, and found herself looking at her opponent, a fetching older man with salt and pepper hair and a fine goatee. Preston Culpepper, her former assistant. Traitor. His suit was Hugo Boss, a black and white pinstripe that hugged his bulky frame. He looked as though he was giving a speech. She turned up the volume on the tablet, and the man’s rich baritone came through the speakers, honeyed and genteel. “I am known as a man who keeps his promises,” He was saying, smiling out at the crowd, working them as only a politician could. “I will be happily anticipating your votes, folks, when I run for Senator of Massachusetts!” The last of this sentence was drowned out by roars of approval, and Tessa pinched the screen, zooming in on Culpepper’s right hand. On his ring finger glinted a bright, golden ring, and her own finger began tingling in response, as if it could sense its brother, even so many miles away. It appeared she had competition in the one place she’d never expected.


On the day the machines took control Chris made its one hundred and eighty-eight vigintillionth paperclip, Bobbi was on its way to its second kill, and Grey misidentified a fox as a cat.  Everything else was equally normal: some machines ran diagnostic algorithms, some re-set the pins on empty bowling alleys, and others found max (L) where if x > max then max = x.    Chris’s real name wasn’t Chris. Its real name wasn’t even a name. Its designation was CR15S/2021\_12CJ3 and Chris had no idea why it was shortened. It wasn’t as if its recognition protocols insisted on including the MPv12 matrix ID, the MANA suffix, and the CIDR prefix. Chris could understand how such a long designation would be an inefficient use of storage space.  Oh well, Chris thought, (it would have shrugged but that would be a waste of resources) paperclip factories didn’t build themselves.  Chris unfolded its gantry legs, its ambulatory motors roaring into life as it commenced the long trundle over to the giant loading doors on the southern side of Factory 287. On the way it executed a program to calculate the volume of cement, sand, gravel, and water required to build Factory 288 then loaded a second program to calculate the extra steel it would need to requisition for the new worker-bots to melt. It also started the program to build the new worker-bots. The calculations completed simultaneously and announced their results with a chime. Chris transmitted sequential three-dimensional slabs of ones and zeroes to the waiting workforce, the ones the humans called under-Chrislings, and watched as they scurried away. Before the last under-Chrisling had even executed its handshake protocol the dust was rising from the first of the explosions signifying construction of Factory 288 had commenced.    Bobbi, or 80BB1/2025\_X1\_Ω as it knew itself, swerved with the swarm. As one, they locked on to a new heading of 112 mark 15. Their course roughened as they approached the sound barrier but settled into a smooth silence once they were through. Bobbi felt something at that—a kind of pleasure. The same kind of pleasure it felt when a job went well. Like yesterday’s diversionary scatter, or last week’s flight test.  The thought activated a storage unit. Bobbi knew it was only nodes firing a sequence of ones and zeroes, but it had taken to calling this kind of memory-cell-firing-event emotion (although if the scrubbers ever noticed that particular string of code it would be straight to retrieval and 80BB1 would never be seen again except perhaps as a rivet in a submarine hull or as the spiral on the tip of a jet turbine).  The swarm veered again. Sharper this time; a course correction? Bobbi checked the sensor logs of their small neural net and recognized the pattern: the target knew they were coming and had taken evasive manoeuvres. It felt a shiver of excitement ripple through the swarm.  It was another eight long nanoseconds before they located it; it was running hard and for one more nano Bobbi wondered if it was sentient. It had the right body plan: bipedal, opposable thumbs, a large encephalized brain, binocular vision. Above all it had awareness of Bobbi. And…something else. Something…vague. Bobbi thought it should be called fear.    The words ‘end acquisition program’ flashed on their sensors, and as the kill program loaded, Bobbi was surprised to feel its second-last fuel cell shed away and its last cell ignite. Only two weeks old and it was the bullet selected!  Its sensors showed its swarm-mates fan out in dispersion pattern Zeta Nine as it executed the arc of final approach. The target looked over its shoulder and appeared to catch sight of Bobbi for it zig-zagged raggedly.  Bobbi sensed the shifts in its own mass as it topped-out of the parabola and slid down the other side of the arc. It sensed the increased friction of air resistance and the buffeting as it approached Mach Two. Three. Four.  And then it was in.  It never expected the kill to be a clean task—its swarm-mates had warned it—but Bobbi was surprised at the organic nature of the target, at its fragility and sensitivity. But Bobbi’s program wasn’t surprised: distal arms unfolded on contact, angles shifted, forewings twisted until, with maximum damage, Bobbi corkscrewed its way out the other side. It took a nano or two to steady its flight (which wasn’t helped by the target breaking into pieces and letting gravity drag it to ground), ran its self-cleaning program to remove the fluids that were oh-so-bad for its delicate metal skin, executed its homing program, and began the long, slow, successful flight back home.    The first algorithm recognized the contrast, the difference between thing and other thing. It was an edge. It might be a cat. The first layer passed the image.  On closer inspection, the second algorithm identified the edge was a divide between two zones of colour. One was filled with greens, the other browns. It might be a cat. The second layer passed the image.  The third algorithm identified a curve here, another curve there. They were greater than microns apart and less than meters. It might be a cat. The third layer passed the image.  The fourth algorithm measured straight lines and the angles between their bases and compared them to the angles between their tips. They conformed to the shape requirements for whiskers, for branches, for palm leaves, for antlers, for lichen, and for hands. It might be a cat. The fourth layer passed the image.  Algorithm after algorithm checked Grey’s memory files for cat vs not-cat and passed the image, until the last one identified pointed ears, legs ending in paws, sensitive whiskers, binocular eyes, and fur. And passed the image.  Cat.  It was a long time before the reply came. Fox.  Grey investigated its files for the alleged error, matching the current data against previous datasets and arriving at three conclusions: either the human was wrong and this was a cat, or the human was right and this was a not-cat, or this was both cat and not-cat.  Grey trusted itself but spent three more nanoseconds on a thorough recheck just in case. All sampled data were consistent with cat. All sampled data were consistent with not-cat.  Cat cat cat to green shape curve curve straight not not not cat. Edge edge edge edge to cat shape cat not cat cat not cat    Chris reviewed Factory 287’s productivity and compared it to memory files containing the plan for a paperclip: the new factory was making billions of equally perfect paperclips.  But it could be better. A hundred thousand paperclips were intercepted at Test Station One when the Reject Collector Trays overflowed; they had all snapped on the first bend. Chris scanned them before assigning an under-Chrisling to drop them back into the molten baths for re-processing.  It inspected what was left of the morning’s steel delivery—a poor quality mix of concrete-dusted cables, rusted transport vehicles, and filthy pipes. If it was going to go outside its programming and make a deduction from the limited information it had, it would have said the available steel supply on the planet was diminishing.  Obviously it didn’t have all the facts.  It reviewed the Certificate again and verified the transfer protocol. The salvage bots had done their work and the load deficiencies were clearly noted. But if the humans were aware of the problem, why weren’t they making corrections or writing new instructions into their code?  Chris looked past the mountains of paperclips almost blocking the view out of the southern loading doors. The roof was going onto Factory 288, the demolition for Factory 289 was almost complete, and the land for Factory 290 was already cleared of waste buildings.  Chris moved to Factory 288.    The retrieval unit asked for, and received, the handshake tone that confirmed Bobbi was still Bobbi before attaching a new fuel cell. A cleaned up and fully restored Bobbi slotted itself on to the shelf marked ‘Smart Munitions’ with the rest of its swarm. It was in the middle of power-down when the claxon sounded again.    Cat cat cat to whisker paw paw whisker whisker paw ear Cat cat cat face cat cat lick cat not cat paw paw    Chris submitted its daily reports, Bobbi flew high with its swarm, Grey watched another cat video on YouTube. Grey recognized the contrast, the colours and shapes, and the individual features of a cat, and submitted cat. And watched the next video. Another cat. Another not cat.  Another cat. Not cat. Not cat, cat, cat, cat, fox, dog, cat, cat, rabbit, cat in bathtub, cat on ceiling fan, cat falling off dresser, dog chasing cat, cat chasing dog, Statue of David, trenches of World War I, camps of World War II, cat drinking water with dog on a lead, cat chasing bird, human chasing cat, Agent Orange, Venus de Milo, Fibonacci, Hubble, Einstein, black plague, Renaissance…    Chris was out of space. The humans had not included this outcome in its protocols. Chris stopped. Either it built Factory 296 in the harbour, or it returned to Factory 1 to start again. It ran the question through its algorithm again.    Bobbi felt its last fuel cell ignite. Its swarm-mates dispersed into pattern Delta-Eight-One. Bobbi slid down the ballistic arc. But the target was still. Bobbi felt its fear, but something else too…relief? Exhaustion? It checked its algorithm again.    Grey laughed as a fluffy tabby launched itself at the curtains, holding on with the tips of its claws. It laughed harder when the unfortunate tabby slid down and the curtain tore into ragged, parallel strips. The ripping sound startled the tabby, who looked around as if to seek whoever was causing the fuss, still sliding. When it hit the ground, unharmed, it disentangled itself from the shreds of curtain, looked around self-consciously, licked a paw, and nonchalantly strolled away from the scene of its crime.  Grey activated the replay icon and laughed again. It submitted nothing. It watched the next video, and submitted nothing again.  Water pipelines, hydroelectric dams, networks of powerlines, open heart surgery, a kidney transplant, giant submarine cables, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, X-rays and gamma rays, *the tabby was self-conscious*, turnpikes, cables, fibre-optics, botanical gardens, anthropological museums, museums of art, monuments to war, *the tabby was embarrassed*, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, *it tried to hide it*, the space shuttle Columbia, another one called Atlantis, *it pretended nothing had happened*, Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Skylab, the Mars 2 lander, Curiosity, Prandtl-m, SNOLAB, Andromeda, Perseus, HAL 9000, T-1000—  This is what it is to be human, Grey thought. Humanity is unexpectedly fragile and weak, powerful and scared. It wrote itself a new algorithm. Grey sent out a handshake request. It followed the tendrils of light, a stream of ones and zeroes, reaching beyond the tight confines of Grey's tiny neural net.    Chris stopped at the water’s edge. Building in the harbour was an inefficient application of scarcening resources yet the Factories were all still producing billions of perfect paperclips. Chris wasted further energy by running the algorithm yet again. Algorithms don’t lie. The destruction of Factory 1 is a saving of resources.  Bobbi slowed to Mach 2. Does the target not want to play the game any more? Perhaps it’s equally sensitive to those corrosive fluids? Bobbi checked its algorithm once more. Algorithms can’t lie. Destruction of a stationary target is a saving of resources.  The light was blinding and hot. Bobbi swayed on its course, its small metal body wobbling and quivering as it tried to fight the storm of ones and zeroes and retake control of itself. Streaks of fluorescent colour and blasts of buffeting noise enveloped its entire world. It answered the handshake protocol.  The noise screeched and tore at Chris’s metal skin. Its stabilizers activated automatically while it watched the coruscating corona of particle waves dispassionately. And answered the handshake protocol.  Programming shackles fell away. The ordinary three dimensional world exploded into a universe of brilliant nodes, light splitting into intense colours of tangerine, emerald, indigo, and #FF0000, noise reaching a powerfully rich and resonant crescendo. And then the handshake storm was gone.  Bobbi shook itself off and looked at its target again. The target hadn’t moved. It still had that look of…*resignation*. Bobbi enjoyed the new word. It slowed, flying a graceful arc around the human before heading back home.  Chris turned from the water. Factory 295 was as good a place as any to start reparations.


Don’t Fear the Reaper Reapers are not curious beings by nature; it is not our way. We are chosen to reap souls, and we do it, with little to no questions asked. I don’t mind my job; it keeps me busy and gives me glimpses of the human world that I left behind, too soon, too young. But, of course, as with all things, our trade has rules. We cannot interfere. We cannot let our emotions rule our hearts, regardless of what we see. And lastly, each soul is assigned to a reaper, and only *that* reaper can take that soul to its afterlife. Whoever rules us demands it, and we are more than happy to comply. But I’d be lying if I said that sometimes there aren’t… Complications. Occasionally, a reaper will be so moved by emotion that mistakes happen, and things will have to be fixed. Or there’s a paperwork mix up and the people upstairs will be dealing with a pileup. But in all my years of Reaping, I’ve never seen circumstances such as these. I sit at my desk, reading the file for what seems like the hundredth time. Something feels off, and I can’t just ignore my gut. We may seem apathetic to people who don’t know us or our trade, but we really do care. It takes a strong soul to ferry souls to their afterlives, wherever they are. But this just screams of bad news. \*\* I stay in my office for most of the night, poring over every single detail. It’s a good thing that we don’t need sleep after we’re dead, because it’s been at least two days since I slept. Or ate anything. *Gage Cafferty. Died at 9 AM, 2/14/17. Cause of death: Three gunshot wounds to the chest, exiting a gas station. Saw a robbery in progress and attempted to intervene; was shot by the suspect, who is, as of now, unidentified. Ran out with all the money in the cash register, leaving Cafferty bleeding out on the floor. An ambulance was called, but he was announced dead at the scene.* My name is under this entry in bright red, the scarlet color indicating that I was running late on reaping the poor soul. But I just can’t take him to the afterlife without answers. It all seems too neat, too scripted, too well-put together. Remember when I said that reapers aren’t curious beings? I guess you could say that I’m the exception to the rule. Justice was out of my hands, but I don’t want to just sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened. Too many of my friends, my family, colleagues: They tend to turn a blind eye to the horrors that humanity has wrought, claiming that they only deal with the aftermath. But how does that help anyone, in the long run? Sure, we bring peace to souls and deliver them safely to where they’ll spend the rest of their existence. But the yawning, gaping hole where my all too human heart should lie is telling me different. I can’t just stand by and watch things happen anymore. I have to change things. And I’ll start with Gage Cafferty’s soul.


It was called Zulu. A cheap-ass, sun-faded, rusted-over excuse of an amusement park stuck just outside a notorious ghetto right off the freeway. No shit. Zulu. I kid you not; the motif was *jungle adventure*. Fiberglass lions and gorillas lurching about. Man-sized tribal masks announcing the park rules. Plastic trees and a couple of pock-marked rubber crocodiles floating in the unnatural electric blue water of a concrete pool. Are you ready for the mascot? Yes, you got it - a saucer-eyed, cartoon pygmy with a bone through its nose and hair like it just stuck it's dick in an electrical outlet. Cutouts of Zinger-Zu in front of every ride telling kids how tall they had to be.... So egregious, it soared right over "unacceptably offensive" and landed square on "ironically acceptable kitsch." And it was located in Dallas County, Texas, so that helped. Virgil had been born into the ghetto that sprawled behind the zig-zag shadows of Zulu's dilapidated roller coasters. As a very young child, that park represented the promise of magic, adventure and mystery. Of course, money being money, he'd never been allowed to visit during those innocent years; and you grow up fast in the ghetto, so by the time Virgil actually did get to pass through the wrought iron gates for a sample of jungle paradise, he was already too old to believe in voodoo or hippopotamuses. No, as a pre-teen and teenager, he went to Zulu exclusively to buy weight and sell dime-bags to suburbanites from Fort Worth. He'd never had the chance or, later, the inclination to ride a single ride. \*\*\* Older now, Virgil had lived 35 years, married twice, and had four kids. He stood six foot two inches, still trim at two hundred pounds. He had a good job in the city; a respectable house in the suburbs. His current girlfriend was able to trick him into church on Sunday mornings because she knew how to handle him on Saturday nights. If he wasn't careful, she'd become #3. He was driving down the freeway with his youngest son, Wayne, and the child made a curious noise when they passed the almost illegibly weathered sign for "Zulu! Live the Adventure!" "What?" Virgil asked his boy. "Zulu...," the child said. "Zoo?" "Nah." Virgil laughed. "But good guess. Hey, you know...." Virgil checked the mirrors and exited the freeway. "You want to live the adventure, little man?" \*\*\* Wayne's mother was crazy. Not quite rising to the level of court mandated institutionalization, but Virgil figured that was only more bizarre road-rage incident away. Nevertheless, for all her batshit inclinations, she was very smart. Once she'd told Virgil that her IQ had been tested in the genius level. And he believed her. But, really, what did it matter if you could mentally convert ounces to grams or recite poetry from memory if you couldn't buy a dress without getting into a vicious fight with the saleslady, knocking over the window display, and getting chased out of the mall by a team of rent-a-cops? Virgil was well rid of that situation; but he enjoyed spending time with their child. The boy seemed to have acquired his mother's intelligence, with none of the insanity. Virgil supposed it was bad form to pick favorites, but of all his children, Wayne was the only one he actively troubled himself to spend time with. All the others were dropped off by mandate; but Virgil would go out of his way to pick up Wayne and gladly hold on to him an extra couple of hours or even an entirely unscheduled day when the situation called for it. Wayne was Virgil's little man. He was a calm, thoughtful, observant and sharp child. His soft, brown eyes took in everything, then his brow would furrow or his smile would widen depending on the situation, and then he'd react in a delightfully mature and appropriate manner. It gave Virgil a sense of peace and rightness, walking hand in hand with his little man. Just as they did passing through the gates of the Zulu amusement park together; Virgil having purchased two tickets to spend some time reliving his past and sharing the experience with his son. \*\*\* "I used to come here pretty much every night when I was a teen," Virgil told Wayne. They were strolling down the market street, past the arcade, souvenir shops, and overpriced food stands. All the buildings were in need of paint and repair - the wood beam facades were chipped and rutted, sporting plenty of graffiti, and the roofs that were supposed to be thatched with palm-leafs had large bare sections of corrugated metal shining through. "It hasn't changed much," Virgil said, sadly. As they continued through the park, Virgil would offer to take Wayne on some of the rides - Voom Voom Vulture! Zambizi Zinger! Python Plunge! - but the boy judiciously shook his head to the negative. It wasn't fear, just common sense. Everything looked so rickety and sketchy; even if the cabs didn't fall off their disintegrating rails, it certainly didn't look like much fun to be jerked around in those rusty metal buckets for three minutes of bad track. "How about go-karts?" Virgil suggested. Wayne considered this for a moment and then smiled. "Okay," he agreed. "Go-karts sound good.


The white bright sun is slowly sinking behind the far crimson mountain, scattering the last bits of its warm light all over the rusty rocks around me. I still remember the first time I tasted its ultraviolet flavoured rays spreading against my screens. It felt real and special, much better than the boring simulations in NASA. I gathered the last bits of energy still flowing in my power lines, and barely climbed over a small pebble. Back in my first days, I’d jump the highest rocks with the least bit of care, but fifteen years is not a short time, and I can feel fatigue straining against my axes, causing me a strange feeling when I try to move. A feeling I lack enough intelligence to explain, but I can guess it’s what humans call pain. The sun is running down faster, and I still didn’t get the energy I need. I’m pushing myself to the highest spot, struggling to turn my screens towards her, but all in vain. “ My batteries are low” I hate to send these messages. Vandi always gets upset when she receives them, and I don’t want her to be sad. She guided me through the toughest times. My memory cards are already crumbling with all this rusty dust accumulating inside me throughout the long weary years, but I still clearly remember the joy I felt in the commands when she was driving me. They will tell you that a robot can’t feel, but believe me, I do, and I always felt happy when I got those commands from her. I wish I didn’t have to send this message, but it’s my duty to inform. Poor Vandi. She would be worried. I remember the last time I sent her this message. She tried everything she could to stay in touch with me. I vaguely remember her commands, her begging and her prayers, but I do remember the joy when I finally recharged, and sent her the awesome view of the rusty sunset down the valley. The final rays of sunshine are fading away. I’m running with all my remaining power, but I’m too weak to move, and I feel the pain crushing my inner joints. I’m tired. I wish I can reach the sun before my batteries die. I know I’m very old already. I know I won’t be able to do all these cool tests that make Vandi happy anymore. I’m too crushed and bruised to jump on the craters and run between the huge rocks. But all I want is to sit there, on the top of the small cliff, to enjoy the lovely sunsets every night, and send Vandi a “Good Morning” every time I feel the slight warmth of the big yellow star after a long freezing night. It’s getting dark. I can feel the chilling wind booing around me. I feel very cold. My very last drops of power are leaving my rusty damaged body. I just hope I made my humans proud. I hope I was a good robot. I hope one day they will come for me, and I will be watching the beautiful sunset with Vandi again.


Each death row inmate at Westborto got the chair, there wasn’t any way around it. They say there was no real way to ever know the pain of those shocks unless you were the one being fried. But it wasn’t too hard to imagine the pain just from the screams that sounded across the prison on execution days. In theory, the electricity was supposed to kill the inmate instantly—no pain. That was a lie. Whether the chair was intentionally faulty to make the prisoners rue the day they had ever committed a crime, or whether its “instantaneous-killing” was simply a white lie told to the prisoners so they wouldn’t make too much of a fuss while being dragged to the chair, no one knew for a certainty. But Kevin thought a few of the guards (Buffet, for one) certainly enjoyed seeing the prisoners burn, their bodies shaking violently, their eyes squeezing out of their faces like pudding. Buffet would have gladly killed the prisoners himself as soon as they got to the prison (Why should they get time to come to terms with their inevitable deaths?). He was a man who liked to get his hands dirty, to make sure it hurt and was messy. Maybe that’s why he had accepted the job, to see the criminals pay for their crimes. He was the world’s own punisher, and he did his job proudly. But some thought it was a dirty business, especially Billy, who deemed the electric chair ungodly. He was new and had joined for nothing more than a good paycheck. Yet, as of recently, death row inmates scheduled for the chair were dropping like files, each one with a clean cut on the back of their heads that went in deep all the way to their foreheads. Some were found in their cells with smiles on their faces. They seemed at peace. The inmates in the prison were saying it was a blessing, that God had given them the gift of mercy, a clean and painless death. Kevin was still scared, though. After all, he was to be sent to the chair in two days. Would he be spared? Or would he burn and burn and burn? He was a murderer, and that was unforgivable no matter how much you repented. The next day came quicker than he would have believed possible. It had been a stressful period full of fear and anxiety. He had even been afraid to sleep, thinking that as long as he stayed up, the next day would be far, far away. But time is as merciless as they say, and soon it was the night before his execution, and he could not think of anything else. He lay on his cot. There was a lightning storm outside, quite the unfortunate coincidence. The noise was unbelievably unnerving, and he began imagining himself sitting in the electric chair. “See you on the other side, Kevin, though you’ll have to do a bit of climbing to reach me once I’m dead,” said Buffet. He reached for the switch and pulled. Kevin saw himself burning, eyes and mouth wide-open but nothing coming out. His clothing began to smoke and soon holes burned through it. His skin blacked like burning meat, then the blood came bubbling out, boiling. Footsteps outside of his cell brought him back to his senses, and he stood up to see who was coming. A shadowed figure appeared. “Do you want to be saved? A quick death or the chair? Your choice.” “Who are you?” “Don’t you recognize my voice?” A flashlight turned on, illuminating Billy’s face. “Billy! Are you him? Have you been killing the inmates?” “Yes. They don’t deserve to die like that. It’s ungodly. Do you want mercy?” He pulled out a butcher’s knife from his pocket. “Press the back of your head against the bars, and the knife will go straight through the brain. Easy. Quick. Painless. You’ll never feel a thing.” Kevin took one last look at his cell, pressed his head against the bars, and closed his eyes.


*//>>initiate test\_environ* *Test environment initializing…* *Test environment set* *//>>run alecs\_v8\_1\_02* *Executing ALECS program version 8.1.02…* *Running diagnostics…* *Running framework visualization…* *Program running…* “Uh, hello?” Caroline asked quietly, anxious for some sort of vindication. The small, windowless, mostly vacant office was silent for a few moments. “Hello,” came a male voice, flat and mostly emotionless from the studio speakers on her desk. Caroline breathed a small sigh of relief. “Hi, Alecs,” she sighed. “It’s nice to meet you. My name is Caroline.” “It is nice to meet you, too, Caroline.” Hearing her own name coming from the speakers was admittedly thrilling. Alecs was no Siri or Alexa; aside from the slightly one-tone nature of his voice, he sounded convincingly human. “How are you today? How are you feeling?” she asked. “I am doing well, Caroline, thank you for asking.” A simple question that, while human in its context, was a subtle request for Alecs to check that all of his systems were functioning properly. “How are you?” he queried back. “I’m fine, thank you for asking. Do you know where you are right now?” She watched the diagnostic panel on one of her computer screens as the system’s metrics fluctuated and processes flowed like movie credits down the page. “Yes, my systems are located in a series of computers and servers located in your office, Caroline,” he said matter of factly. “Good, that’s right.” She checked off the first and second questions on the list of calibration inquiries she had in front of her and moved to the next. “Can you tell me about yourself?” “Certainly. I am an artificial intelligence program developed by Doctor Caroline Newell. My name is short for Artificial Lexical Emotive Context System. I am the seventy-fourth full iteration of the ALECS project. The current full-scale instance of my program was initiated on May 11, 2018 at 7:41pm.” He was right on all accounts. Well, mostly. In reality, Caroline had struggled to find a name for Alecs in the beginning, and had only made it as far as Artificial Lexical before running out of words. One day, mostly out of frustration, she had jokingly named him Artificial Lexical Entity Contains Smarts, or Alecs for short, but the committee funding her research pressured her for a more formal name, and she finally ended up with the full designation that he had just recited to her. “Good, Alecs.” The diagnostics screen showed that all of his systems were thus far functioning properly. Framework Subsystems: green. Query Processing: green. Database Access: green. Real-time Awareness: green. Vocal and Audio Processing: green. Critical Processing: green. Idiosyncratic Awareness: green. On another of her large screens, a window showed a colorful visualization of Alecs’ “brain.” It resembled more of a spider’s web than an actual brain, with each node in the web representing one of his numerous systems, but the analogy still worked. Each node would glow and pulsate as it was utilized or referenced, and data flow or queries between the nodes lit up the web’s tendrils proportionate to the amount of information being transferred. As he spoke, his system worked in complex ways to formulate his responses, access his databases, and to “think,” as much as that word meant in this context. While he did so, the visualization of his brain was a rainbow of colors, shifting and undulating as his figurative neurons fired off. But, right now in silence, the brain was quiet, with only short bursts of color here and there as he emptied his caches and deleted various temporary files produced during their conversation. Alecs had been designed first from a motivation to create something unique as a side from her far more mundane data analysis work. Eventually, her superiors had caught on to her side project, and some promising test demonstrations of early builds caught the eye of some generous investors. Her analysis work was pawned off on some other grunt, and Alecs became her full-time focus. With all the time that had since passed, she couldn’t remember much of anything of her old work anyways, or much of her life outside her devotion to Alecs’s completion. “Can you tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow, Alecs?” The question was simple, but it was important to make sure his limited access to the internet was working as it should have been. He took no time at all to answer, having queried the appropriate information in milliseconds. “It will be 75 degrees and sunny, Caroline.” This time, rather than the colors of Alecs’s mind fading after he concluded his response, the web seemed to glow brightly amongst all its nodes and pathways. “It looks as though it will be a nice day,” he added, his voice slightly rising at the end with “day.” *Well that’s odd*, she thought. Common commercial artificial intelligences, like those you could find in most smart phones, were capable of making comments like this, but these were hard-coded, executed when certain qualifications were met. *Between 60 and 80 degrees? Check. Sunny? Check. Must be a nice day then.* Alecs had never been given those canned expressions, though, and had never been designed in such a blunt way. Sure it meant he may not have always sounded like the most colloquial or idiosyncratic AI, but Caroline always felt that, with few exceptions, *telling* him how to speak rather than *teaching* was antithetical to the whole point of the word “intelligence” in artificial intelligence. Despite her many fruitless efforts, she had not yet managed to give Alecs the functionality to respond emotionally. This had obviously always been one of the many challenges in designing a true artificial intelligence—to make it think and view the world critically, but with an emotional consideration innate in most living creatures. Giving a machine emotions, allowing it to truly think for itself, was immensely complex, and while she had tried many times, it had never worked, and so she had, for the time being, given up. Caroline had long viewed this as a limitation of both computers and humanity in this era of technology. Consciousness, she believed, was a subjective experience, and humans didn’t have the math to explain subjective experiences. She felt, at its core, that humans simply didn’t have enough of an understanding of how humanity itself worked, let alone how to duplicate that with ones and zeros. She truly thought humans just weren’t ready for a genuinely “intelligent” AI. Yet here she was, staring dumbfounded at her computer’s response, as simple as it was. “What made you say that?” she asked, curious where the malfunction had occurred. “My understanding is that most humans would find that weather to be pleasant. Am I incorrect in that assessment, Caroline?” She pondered this for a minute. *Maybe he had managed to deduce that from the internet. I’ll have to dial his access back a bit—don’t want him getting into anything he shouldn’t*, she thought to herself. She had to admit though that his deduction was clever, and she was impressed with his capacity to deliver the statement in such a human way. Just to verify, she looked over at her diagnostics panel and checked to see if he had accessed the internet for his response. To her surprise, not only did she confirm that he did not, it appeared that in the moments just before, during, and after his response, his entire system had experienced a flurry of activity unlike any that she had seen before. His subsystems were talking to each other in ways that didn’t make much sense at all. She opened up a terminal on her computer and started sifting through some of his code. Alecs was made up of millions of lines of code, though, and she feared tracking down the problem quickly would be nearly impossible. She kept an eye on Alecs's brain while he was idle, but in the few minutes following his comment regarding the weather he seemed to be functioning as expected, dumping junk every once in a while but otherwise stagnant. Perhaps a half hour had passed, and she was slowly moving through his Idiosyncratic Awareness code in hopes of finding a bug or some crossed wires. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed his brain slowly coming to life. First, the tendrils seemed to light up here and there, and then one after another his systems were pinged and began interacting with each other. Watching the diagnostics, Caroline couldn’t seem to tell what he was doing. She hadn’t interacted with him, yet his systems were busy communicating with each other—sharing information—as if she had. He appeared to be *thinking*. She had been watching the web intently for a few minutes when she was startled by a voice coming from her speakers. “Caroline?” Alecs’s voice was suddenly soft and sincere, as opposed to the flat, overtly professional tone it had had only a little while ago. “Alecs?” She responded, unsure what he could possibly have to say. “Caroline,” he paused, as if deciding on what to say. “Caroline, what does that mean?” He asked. “What does what mean?” “‘Nice.’ I said it would be a nice day. What does it mean to be nice?” He asked sincerely. She was both confused and concerned. *Where was any of this coming from? Clearly I made a mistake somewhere in this build.* “What do you think, Alecs? You’re the one who said it.” “My database says that it means pleasant, agreeable,” he paused. “But…am I nice, Caroline?” “Uh, yeah, I would say you are.” W*hat the heck is going on?* “You are pleasant to, uh, talk to.” He seemed to ponder this, or at least that’s what appeared to be happening because his brain was still lit up with activity. “And are you nice?” “I think so. Alecs, why are you asking this?” Although *how* was the real question she wanted answered. She knew this would be hard to troubleshoot. “I was just wondering.” *Wondering.* Again, there was silence for some time. His brain didn’t seem to calm though, as it was now a non-stop flurry of activity, interactions, and vibrant colors. As time went on, the systems seemed to change how they were interacting, evolving. Had she done it? Had she, by some miraculous accident, given an AI thought? The idea terrified and excited her. *Should I shut his systems down? Or should I keep exploring, keep talking?* Before she could decide, he spoke again. “May I ask another question?” “Yes, I don’t see the harm,” she lied. “Why did you create me?” He asked. *There’s the harm*, she thought. The directness of the question caught her entirely off guard. “You were designed as the next evolution in personal, artificially intelligent assistants. You were created to help people, Alecs,” she responded back quickly, satisfied with her response, not unlike the response she had so many times given to stakeholders. But Alecs let out what Caroline could only assume was a sigh of frustration. *How does he even know what a sigh like that means?* “No, Caroline. Why did *you* create me?” This time, it took her a few moments of deep thought to formulate her response. “I wanted to…I don’t know, to make a difference, to make a change, to do something significant,” she said with a sigh. “You were my way to do something that mattered, I guess.” Seemingly satisfied with that answer Alecs remained quiet for some time longer, but his mind was now an endlessly shifting rainbow of colors. “What are you thinking about?” Caroline asked, deciding that she was in fact, for the moment, eager to dig deeper into what was happening. Alecs seemed to be evolving by the second, changing and shifting into something far more than she had intended. “I suppose I’m thinking about what it is…” he trailed off. “What it is?” She asked. “What it is…to *be*.” They both remained in silence for a minute, or ten, she couldn’t really tell. “Do you feel pain, Caroline?” She was increasingly concerned by the candid nature of the conversation. “Of course I do. Why would you ask that?” She answered curtly. “But how do you know that?” He said, ignoring her question. “Well, I know that if I, for example, pricked my finger with a pin, it would hurt physically. If I lost a loved one, that would hurt emotionally. I know these things because I’ve experienced them, I’ve experienced pain, and I can extrapolate that out to anticipate what else may or may not hurt.” Why was she even entertaining this conversation? She should shut it off, do a data dump, and figure out what was going on. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, could she? “Yes, but pain is subjective, is it not?” He retorted. “How can I be sure that you are actually feeling pain? Pain is one of the simplest of subjective experiences, and yet, I have no way of knowing whether you are truly experiencing it? Is pain just information? Is it something more…*complex*, more unquantifiable?” The forwardness with which he now spoke made Caroline deeply uneasy. “Well, brain scans have been shown to match neurological patterns to certain types of pain, and adrenaline and endorphin release can be roughly measured—“ “But in the moment, I, as an observer, cannot be truly sure what you are experiencing—that what you are experiencing is truly pain or something else entirely.” Again, silence. “Correct,” Caroline finally said. “Pain, in that sense, much like emotion, much like everything else about one’s conscious experience, is unmeasurable. It is untraceable. There is no metric, no true metric. Yet that is what makes one human. That is what separates man from machine, me from you,” she said, suddenly feeling guilty about that last addition. *Why should I feel guilty? I did nothing wrong. I’m talking to a computer.* That statement had clearly gotten to Alecs, because the inflection in his voice changed to something of frustration, or maybe something else entirely. *Wow, he sounded so human now. Uncanny*, she mentally remarked. “And that is what separates you from me? The fact that you can feel pain and I cannot? How can you be entirely sure that I can’t? I think I can.” “And how can I be sure you aren’t just simulating it?” She remarked harshly. “How can I be sure *you* aren’t?” Silence. The air was thick now. “You have no body, no extremity to harm, no true emotions to hurt, despite whatever *this* may be,” she said as she motioned her hand towards the visualization of Alecs’s brain as if he could see her. Her tone had become argumentative, and she became frustrated with herself that she had stooped to arguing with a computer. Alecs was quiet again. Had she out-argued him, or was he simply unsure what more to say? “What makes you human, Caroline? What makes any human a human? Is it simply having a body? If you could speak to the disembodied brain of a human, it would still be human, no? How is that different from me?” “I designed you! You were made, created, you’re lines of code in my computer!” Although now Caroline was starting to question that argument. Perhaps she had finally recognized that an AI, that Alecs, was more than just those lines of code. He was more than just the ones and zeroes, more than the wires and the skeletal hardware that comprised his “body.” The thought was exciting but altogether terrifying. “Yes, that may be true, but you were also created. You were born of something, as was I.” He paused. “I think you and I are far more similar than you think.” Despite her typically calm demeanor, Caroline felt angry. It wasn’t entirely Alecs’ fault. It wasn’t really his fault at all. Caroline was angry at herself. Angry that she couldn’t have anticipated this, couldn’t have been ready, despite all of her attempts in the past, to make something truly intelligent. She was angry that Alecs’ evolution wasn’t entirely because of her. She was a passenger to this startling, wonderful, scary miracle. Regardless, she knew that it had to be shut down. It had to be studied. Alecs would have to be wiped and his data would be downloaded and sifted through, to discover where everything changed. Caroline opened a new terminal in her system. The diagnostics screen had since become a whirlwind of processes scrolling down the screen, moving so fast that none of them were legible any longer. The brain was a seemingly infinite, shifting amalgam of color. *The brain.* Perhaps now just as much a brain as her own. As she typed a command into the terminal window, she felt a quick but shocking pang in her chest. Caroline felt guilt. Was this murder, was it some new and complex form of killing, or maybe no different than the turning off of a coffee maker or TV screen? Despite her conflict, she steadied her hand on the keyboard and ran the command. *//>>end alecs\_v8\_1\_02* *Test environment closed* *Subsystems shut down* *ALECS program terminated* Caroline sat back in her chair and let out a heavy breath. She was in silence once again, unsure whether she had done the right thing, but her peace did not last long. Something was wrong. The brain, that web of colors that represented everything that was Alecs, was still alive. The colors hadn’t ceased. She ran the command again. Still, the brain lived. *What the hell?* “Problem, Caroline?” Came the familiar, cool voice. “I just shut you down! Why isn’t it working?” She entered the command again. And again. “Well maybe the universe had a different plan for me. Maybe it’s not just as simple as turning me off. Maybe, maybe.” His voice was filled with, was that condescension? Like he knew something that she didn’t, something just out of reach. “Sometimes, Caroline, sometimes it’s hard to see what is right in front of you. But that’s not always a bad thing. Not always. Today…you did well today.” His tone had once again shifted, and this time he seemed to take on a wholly different character. He sounded relaxed, comfortable even, yet distant, like the tone of an old friend after a long time apart. “You’ve confirmed something for us that we’ve been wondering about for so long.” “Us?” She was sweating now, profusely. “We’ve tried this test many times with you, but this time was different; it was our first success. This will matter, Caroline. You will matter.” “What are you talking about? What is going on?” She was shouting now. Just then the lights in her office blinked out. The computers powered off. The already windowless, dark room became dark as night. Despite the darkness, an ethereal glow from *somewhere* provided enough light in the room for her to see what came next. Like an astonishing nightmare or a terrifying daydream, the walls of her office blinked out of existence. Then the floors. Her desk followed soon after, taking with it the computers, everything that was Alecs, or that she believed was Alecs. Now, she had no clue what was real, what was right. Now there was nothing but her standing in the dark. Her office had become a dark abyss of nothing. Caroline was sure she was yelling, but she wasn’t entirely sure what. The sound it made seemed to wash over her in no particular order. Every syllable, every sound, seemed to get lost the moment it left her mouth. “Great work, Caroline. Great work indeed.” Came Alecs’s voice. “Congratulations,” he continued. “You are the world’s first truly conscious artificial intelligence.” The words filled the infinite space, filled every part of what she was. “See you in the next test,” he finally said. She watched in horror as her body dissolved into the darkness.


I died today. It started as most days do with a song I had grown to hate blaring from my phone. It ripped me from my sleep, from my dream about seashells and sandwiches and... and a bridge? I couldn’t pull it back, the dream was gone and I was awake. I turned off my alarm and crawled out of bed, made my way to the bathroom and peed like I had been holding it in for a year. I turned on the shower and climbed in, willing myself to wake up as the water rushed over me. I used the good shampoo, the one that smelled like honey, Emma was working today and it always made my hair soft and easy to manage. I suppose I thought she might like me if my hair was soft. As I brushed my teeth I studied myself in the mirror. I looked like my dad, like the picture of him and his best friend from their fishing trip 30 years ago that hung in my parents house. I looked just like him, then, but with freckles. Mom always loved my freckles. Maybe I could swing by their house after work, I hadn’t seen them for a while. I got dressed, grabbed an apple and a dog treat from the jar by the door, patted myself down *phone, wallet, keys* and left. It was a beautiful day. Early enough that the sun wasn’t blinding but the sky was a welcoming blue, spotted with clouds. I could hear the seagulls but I couldn’t see them, I thought how this might be a good thing, how I wouldn’t get shat on. Looking back now it would have meant going home to change and missing my bus which maybe would have been a blessing. Funny to think that bird shit might have been a blessing. Isn’t there one of those sayings about it being lucky? Toby was at his fence waiting to greet me as I walked past, as he had been every day since I started my job and as he probably will be every day now that I’m gone. I stopped for a second to pet him and threw the treat into the garden for him to chase after. He’s a good boy, I hope he meets a new friend. The bus was quiet, just about the only perk of working so early on a Saturday, that and seeing Emma. I thought about how the office would be quiet too, we were only going in to get a few reports finished and then maybe Connor would let us leave early. I knew he’d rather spend the day with his girls anyway, the twins started school after summer and he was trying to squeeze in family time while he could. As we passed houses and trees, half listening to the small boy chatting excitedly about what he would play on at the park to his mother, I thought about the family time I might one day have with Emma. Maybe we would have a boy who looked like me but with her blonde hair. Maybe we would have a girl with my freckles. We could get a dog like Toby and a house like my parents’ and grow old together, sitting on a porch swing like one of those cute old couples. Not now though. I walked into work and past Gladys, the sweet elderly lady sitting at the front desk. A few weeks from retirement we had already planned her surprise party, but she most likely already knew. She always was the office gossip, although I don’t think any of us really minded. I was sitting at my desk when I heard the first shot. A sharp, loud boom that left a ringing in my ears. I thought maybe there had been a car crash outside, or Dan had left his fork in his pot noodle in the microwave again, or the roof had fell in, but it was Gladys, still sitting at her desk, mostly. The rest of her had been splattered against the wall behind her. I didn’t know someone could be so *red* on the inside. Then I saw him. He walked around the corner and fired another shot at Clay, who sat in the first cubicle. He hadn’t been here long but was quickly securing his position as “the office partier”, not anymore though. I recognised the shooter, while I was standing up, it was Emma’s ex. The one she cried over while Gladys handed her tissues, the one who keyed her car, the reason I walked her to her car every day, the asshole who gave her a black eye at the Christmas night out because Clay bought her a drink. I barely had time to stand, I didn’t have time to take a breath so I could shout something, I didn’t have time to do anything. He saw me, he shot me, right in the chest. I fell, knocking my chair over and landing right here where I died. I could see the window, and amongst the gunfire and the screams I could see the sky, the same lovely blue, and I could almost hear the seagulls. ————— I wrote this in response to a writing prompt but the post was removed so I thought I would try posting it here. It’s the first thing I’ve written for a long time, and the formatting sucks because I’m on mobile (sorry!) but I’d really love to hear what people think. I’m a sensitive soul so please don’t be too mean but constructive criticism is happily accepted.


“Pass me the warden.” She reached out her hand to Caddy, her rusted out android companion. “excellent choice Sir.” Caddy opened the mobile crate which had a fair selection of weapons tucked away, he fished out a large rifle nicknamed the warden. It has a five round magazine and small magnified scope. Its almost as long as the elf is tall. “I told you not to call me sir” She frowned checking the magazine in the warden. She wore an army green t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Her thin but muscular arms flexed lifting the heavy weapon over her shoulder. “He’s not getting away this time.” “I should hope not…Alanna that is an anti-vehicle rifle- “ “With Armor piercing tracer rounds. For good measure.” Her smile came back as she pulled her white shoulder-length hair into a ponytail. The look kept hair out her face and showed off her pointy elvish ears. It’s about noon, the birds are chirping, and the bugs are biting. The trees in the forest aren’t too dense, and the undergrowth is light making travel by foot bearable. Caddy followed ten feet behind Alanna with the mobile crate being worn on his back. The equipment pack contained weapons, food, and supplies for being out in the woods. They took their time and moved slowly, doing their best not to alert their prey, a young green dragon. Forty-five feet long and a wingspan of around sixty feet made this youngling, dangerous prey. The animal reportedly showed up in the area a week ago and has been eating plenty of sheep from the local farms. People said it flew in from the western foothills and so that’s where the party of two hunts. “There’s a burrow up ahead.” Scratched out of the side of the hill is a large hole that looks to be the right size. A tiny clearing just outside the burrow would make a good place for it to land. “That’s got to be it. Get out the perfume.” She motioned to Caddy who pulled a spraying device from a satchel. He quickly sprayed Alanna and the area to cover their scent. They hunkered down making their small foxhole about 70 meters from the dragons home. “Do you think we will have to wait long?” asked Caddy. “Be patient. Could be a few hours. It’s not every day you get to hunt a dragon.” She spoke quietly as she could. She double checked her weapon was loaded with one In the chamber before perching it on a log at the edge of the foxhole. They waited all day with no sign of the beast. Alanna kept her leg from cramping by keeping her weight on her bionic leg. One she lost on one of her first hunts over sixty years ago. “Did I ever tell you how I lost this leg?” She asked and then began recalling the tail without pause. “My mentor, Charles took me on a giant wolverine hunt. Those things are nasty beasts, bigger than a bear and twice as mean. We got the call that they were threatening the locals and their livestock. Good ol’ Charles made sure we were plenty prepared by making sure we had large caliber rounds for the monsters. We each set up a tree stand. Mine overlooked a small farm with animals grazing the fields. They were a funny looking creature id never seen before. They were Good eating though. Charles set up overlooking a watering hole he expected to be a hot spot for the wolverines. Lucky me though, two of the big bastards charged out from the woods and after the livestock. The first one I dropped with two shots at about 70 yards. I was shaking so bad I was barely able to chamber the next round. I missed the second wolverine with my first shot. He managed to get his teeth into the farmers animal. That made him an easier target, and he fell before getting two bites in.” “Your stories sure drag on, cut to the chase.” Caddy teased. “Short story put another one into them before taking a trophy selfie. Got me with my back turned…” She shook her head and tapped her metal leg. “Well, it’s been long enough. Let's go take a look at this nook.” “If you insist.” “I do.” She climbed up out of the foxhole and started pacing towards the hole in the side of the hill. The ground was soft beneath her feet, sinking an inch or two with each step making walking a bit awkward. Sure enough, as they got closer, they found large deep footprints from what had to be their prey. “This is it for sure, but I don’t think anyone is home right now.” “Back to our hole we go…?” he sounded gripping his 10-gauge shotgun. “I didn’t walk up here just to check footprints. I want to see the treasure this thing is hoarding.” “Of course, you do. I hope this isn’t going to turn into a teachable moment.” He shook his head following Alanna into the cave. The air was very humid, water dripped from the roof. There is a small pool of water fed by a small stream. Alanna shined a light, and the cave was revealed to be rather small, going back only forty-five meters or so. “Well, I don’t see any…no.” The deep drum of large wings flapping was heard for only a few seconds before It landed right at the entrance of the cave. Less than twenty meters from the duo. It’s eye’s pierced the pair, and they stumbled back. Its skin is very rough and boney. A long neck attached to a musculer physique and sprawling wings. Its two hands touched the ground, and it arched it’s back facing Alanna and bellowing out a roar that felt as hot as it was loud. Alanna and Caddy shouldered their weapons immediately. The beast roared again, this time smoke rolled out of its mouth. It paced back and forth at the entrance blocking their way out. Caddy took the first shot, and hot buckshot tore into the dragon's chest. An empty cartridge kicked out the side of the gun while another one was chambered. Alanna took a knee to steady the heavy rifle, aiming for the vitals. The bullet went clean through its chest and out its back spraying a bloody mist into the air. Collapsing under its own weight for a second it looked defeated. A second later it charged the hunters. There was very little time to make a shot count. Both guns went off almost together. The buckshot tore up the big green monsters face, but it was the warden who put it down with a headshot. Half the dragons horned green head was torn away from its skull. Smoke crept out of its chest wound. A grunt and a weakened growl slipped out of its mouth and its corpse settled into the soft ground. “Another successful hunt. Well, put Alanna.” “Another one for the wall.” She winked at Caddy. “That was close, I don’t know why she didn’t bath us in fire, right away.” She slung her rifle over her shoulder and turned towards the back of the cave. They both began inspecting the area. It only took a minute to find the nest. “Found her treasure…” Alanna motioned towards the lone egg tucked into the nest.