In a ruined northern wilderness, two survivors find each other. They build nothing that lasts, lose what briefly matters, and learn that the world does not pause for grief. The story follows what remains when there is no victory to claim, only the refusal to stop.
Coming soonA neon rainbow screams staccato into the eyes of people running errands, walking with intention away from its chaos. Few meander. The rain came from one dark cloud that the setting sun mocked by shining around and through its wispy edges making it the third sunshower of the day in that corner of the city. Isolated weather in palatable chunks for a populace of whiny, outraged town criers all shouting into each other's throats with their phones or their glasses or their implants. Or for the truly narcissistic all three at once.
The lone projected hologram in this intersection faced west and danced with the glee that only the inanimate can. Sam sat on the edge of the sidewalk bench closest to the tree that had the most rubbish and human shit near it. He sat knees wide apart, one arm on the back of the bench and the other free to adjust his “maybe I’m a ninja or maybe I'm wearing a diaper” sweatpants so his dick wouldn't stick too much from sweat. Every minute he'd poke a digit into his nose for good measure and look around to make sure no fine citizens would consider taking the spot beside him.
She walked the street without a care in the world. Didn't notice the filth she stepped over or the eyes looking for a purse to snatch or a ring to pull. She just smiled and held head high as she walked toward him. A free ray of sun focused on her sweet freckled face and the smile that got him in the guts and the pants at the same time. And then he felt that familiar echo of shame. It was gone almost as quickly as it appeared – a momentary shadow across his features, a tightening around his eyes. Had she forgiven him by now? No one used the words "failed to protect" when talking about what happened but those same words had looped in his head for years all the same.
From an empty pocket he produced a disinfectant wipe, cleaned his hands with the practised perfection of a surgeon, wiped down the bench and by the time he was done, Ava stood in front of him.
"May I?"
"I wish you would."
Just being near her, he felt elevated and it somehow made him a little taller and a little more substantial.
"I wasn't sure if I could come down here."
"I had a feeling. Memories or the state of it?"
"It's worse than I remember. Like is that guy dead over there?"
Sam didn't look in the direction of the corpse on the lawn across the street. He just looked at his nails, and said "probably."
"So?"
"Sew buttons."
"You must be a little put-off by this scene. Social obligation and the like, you once said in your adorable way."
Ava considered this deeply. As she always tried to do before she answered his serious questions. She left the comment about being adorable aside, not wanting to investigate if it made her feel bad because it could be taken as condescending or his awkward way of telling her something. Deflecting the oddness of people around her was just one of the ways she felt like a caretaker. And she was happy to do it.
"I just want to run over there and see"
"There are bots for that."
“The answer to all this exists. It's everywhere. Yet in cities all over the world we still have neighbourhoods like this. Grief, sadness, and suffering. Fucking buckets of it."
A slick looking robot handed out bio-printed bananas and hydration balloons of water encased in edible strawberry flavoured skin at the edge of the park.
Sam interrupted, "That robot gets me."
"Why so?"
"The very picture of technological advancement fixing cables at the bottom of the ocean, cleaning the insides of reactors, and handing out bananas to the great unwashed in parks all over the world. Any job a sane person wouldn't do. It kills me."
"Don't play the cynic, Sam, it's tired. Especially when I know you have done great work down at the shelter."
Sam smiled out of the corner of his mouth. He liked the feeling of nourishing, being positive for people even if he hated talking to them. Mostly he liked that she brought it up, and even brought it up without mentioning how he got swarmed and robbed by those very same people at the shelter that he hasn't been back to since.
"So you agree they should be forced to take it, the DNA thing." He already knew she didn't. Still he'd play it as though her kindness towards others was somehow impractical and not completely one of the reasons he liked her so much.
She didn't commit every conversation they had to memory but she definitely remembered him pushing this on her before.
"Individual rights are far more important to protect. You can't just force people to take medicines so you don't have to be confronted with their mess. Medicines, alterations at the genetic level!"
"It's a bit more than that." Sam said with a knowing head tilt. "They rob. They spread sickness. They descend and pull everyone down with them. You think any of the restaurants that used to look into this park get full... ever?" "We used to meet at the ... yellow logo place... medium coffees and two breakfast burritos"
"Oh yeah"
"Its been gone for 3 years, Ava"
"Really?"
Ava, scans the series of unrecognisable shops and cafe windows, evaluating each for any kind of nostalgic echo and coming up empty.
"I guess you're right." She paused. "But a restaurant and the freedom to choose - not even comparable."
"Ask yourself why they don’t want it. We live better now than royalty did a hundred years ago. Than Royalty. Longer lifespans, better food. No manias. No addictions. Less suffering - that's all upside and no downside. Why don't they want it? They still opt out."
"A lot of these people, I remind you, these are human people, who have been knocked out of sync, out of a natural orbit. They don't make decisions like you because none of the events of their lives are even remotely similar to yours."
"Maybe for some, but for others, they're choosing - a deliberate and direct middle finger. Fuck you, they say, I don't want any of your society. And yes, you know what, that does in fact scare me. And when they come for you and knock you down and split your head so they can get the copper in your wires? No. I'm not here for that."
"Are you protecting yourself or me?
"Everyone! No one is safe"
"Ok. Next subject please." Ava's irritation and potential for abandoning this ship altogether was rising.
Sam pulled his hand away from his forehead mimicking an explosion as sounded by a child colliding two imaginary jets.
"Ok, ok. Let's walk down to the market and get you that mustard you like so much." Said Ava, the peace maker.
"That wonderful whisky crunch. Great idea. You know what goes with whisky mustard?"
"Roast beast, I bet"
"Well that too, but I was thinking of Babe... A great big Montreal Style deli sammy"
"Oh god. Not even bioprinted??"
"I half thought you might be busy today, out there again on the road tipping water bottles to pigs in the trucks on their way to slaughter."
"Don't mock. The cruelty is unbelievable"
"Its believable"
"It’s the possibility of change that's unbelievable"
And with that agreement between them, they were on the move.
—
The afternoon sun strengthened and fought the clouds and the showers and their walk was unsullied by having to hurry or any significant discomfort. Everything flowed. The streets were mostly clean and sharply dressed young professionals hurried with packaged salads and smoothies in biodegradable cups with neatly folded edible cutlery.
"Fucking hell, is everyone in better shape than me?"
"Don't start, I was just feeling better about the day. If you start again it'll knock me right off my feet."
"Seriously, it's all perky nipples and broad shoulders down here."
"No! No more. Just walk with me and keep me company." Ava wrapped herself into Sam's arm to soften the shut-down.
Old doors, irreplaceable architecture, plaques for named buildings, and cornerstones with dates from worlds so alien you'd never believe they existed right where you were walking. Surrounded by beautiful mystery, design crimes and assaults on taste were the only things they talked about. Not the past, not the future, just the thing right in front of them. He wanted to tell her about the AI he'd had inserted that was supposed to help him navigate his OCD-driven anxiety. He kept it light instead for the sake of her smile.
They walked over ghosts of spills past and mess more recent. Blood and day-old poutine vomit. Some club rat that hoped a snack would help them with the vodka-pollution that went all tilted washing machine in their stomach. The further Sam and Ava walked the less it looked like the same city from just a block back the way they came.
A gutter-punk shaman cast damnations from the corner Sam and Ava found themselves walking toward. The backdrop to his stage, a horror-tent made to look like human skins decorated for celebration with bio-printed scalps and ear-necklaces. This corner was his claimed territory and the mirror of contempt he wanted so badly to shove in the face of every passer-by. His condemners, his audience.
Ava clutched Sam's arm as they squeezed together to get past the mess. Elevated by the discomfort in his audience he took a special interest in Ava. "Maybe you'd like a trip to hell." he hissed as he poked a rust-rotten serrated steak knife into Ava's shoulder like death's skeleton finger poking for attention. The blood on its tip caught the light and all the social unlocks and wealth from that DNA lit the shaman's eyes. The easily misled believed they could just drink enriched blood to gain all the benefits, social and biological. Dark web concoctions killed kids in basements. This misunderstanding was the least of his many misunderstandings.
Ava yelped. Sam's eyes widened; he had to shake her grip to get around her to stop whatever was happening. He snap-pulled her grip from his arm. A flurry of movement - crews of pigeons taking air at once. The dirt prophet showed rotten teeth as the corners of his mouth curled and his machete was pulled from his pant leg. It's handle wrapped in ancient duct tape. His excitement grew from connecting, from any connection at all - it electrified him. He grew taller.
Sam's left hand held the machete arm and his right held the steak knife arm, his right foot on his opponent's left foot, the other gripped the sidewalk for balance. They held there, suspended in-aggro, neither making any move or gaining any ground. Same noticed phosphorus ink glow in the dark stars and P.L.U.R. tattoos around the dirtbag's critter-lousy hairline. Ava watched on with the alertness of a coked-out meerkat, no idea what to say, not wanting to see her friend hurt or be distracted by her. A few people on the street watched and the disinterested majority walked on at unaltered pace in whatever direction they wanted.
The news drone, a four-sided video & projection device, held aloft by magnets, witchcraft, and recovered alien technology, switched from stories of the day to a synthetic smiley face with almost convincing human skin texture. It floated here and there giving the people on the street a connection to the world past the edge of their noses. Here and now, it stopped in front of two people it recognized as embracing in excitement. "Hahah, what a story! Kids, did you know that there is an ice cream made of ketchup and mustard right now at the CNE! Can I call you a heli-car to take you there right now?"
The two combatants, blood and sweat stinging their eyes, knuckles bright from lock, had no choice but to ignore the soulless automaton. Sensing a shift in energy, the shaman released his grip on his short blade and then the machete and started making kiss-kiss smooches with his mouth and thrusting his hips at Sam. Sam pushed free of the man's arms to get distance from the funky hips of this street maniac. Now free but still flustered, the shaman tried to grab the floating news drone to throw furiously at Sam but the drones are built to withstand any pressure a human can exert and it immediately began to lift itself higher than humans can reach. The prophet found his new game and laughed holding onto the drone as it floated higher and higher. Sam and terrified Ava clung to each other and hurried away, not staying to hear the screams of remaining onlookers when the prophet finally lost to gravity under afternoon skyscraper shadow.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Don't you think we should?"
"If that guy had taken his shot - his free, painless, DNA shot, he'd be with his family somewhere with a piña colada and a smile and we'd be arm and arm at the market with all the free mustard and pretzel samples." Sam was still coming down from his adrenaline rush. It was a slight vibration but if called upon again to get punchy, he could still access it pretty quick. A hare in the grass, outrunning coyotes, stopped in shade ready to bolt again. Always ready. His body paid the price. He could feel muscle inflammation mature into burning soreness in his neck and shoulder.
Ava rubbed around her now-bandaged wound, trying to avoid the source as much as possible while still trying to soothe by touch. Sam was sitting too close. It made him feel better. It made her feel dependent and she had learned to hate that feeling. Focusing elsewhere, she smiled at the barista who'd been so kind. Of course Ava was the type of person who made friends in every line she was in. With everyone she spoke to. She just had that thing.
The cafe was active without being full. A combination of music, plants, and refills being refilled. Downtown gets so oddly quiet when everyone leaves at the end of the normie work day. In one corner, a deviant with a jailbroken AR implant overlayed nude hallucinations onto unknowing shop patrons. Subtly he rubbed it a bit.
"I'm glad I was there." Sam was looking at the printed wood grain in the table. Hoping she'd know what he was talking about without actually putting a spotlight on it by saying "This time."
"What are the Nazi's doing?" Ava looking for a change of subject and regretting her rushed choice instantly.
"What now? The What?"
"They're leaving today." Ava struggled to hide her irritation. The entire day went from what she needed to what she hated. Everything around her felt like disturbed energy, refracting, deviating. She would contort in whatever ways it took to get back on a straight line. One she could follow.
Sam eyed the people on the sidewalk as he spoke. "It's the ones that they're leaving behind that worry me."
"Anyone who stays will likely be far off-grid. Newsbot said that over 30 million people were on those ships, I think?"
"Can malware happen by intention - I mean just by thought? Cuz today I meditated hard to make the ship redirect into the sun instead of whereverthefuck they're going"
"I don't think we're there yet. I mean, fuck'em all but I'm shocked this is coming from you, Ava"
"Fascists get no quarter. Are they taking reusable rockets? Wait - wouldn't your AI block anything about them?"
"Yes and yes. I want these shots - the DNA shots, available to jab people on the street with at a moment's notice. Our new friend, Hairy the stabby-bag-of-shit is first in line."
"That guy probably died when he fell, Sam."
"Also, One - it's not a jab, it's a gun. Two - you do not get to tell other people how to live. It's one of the reasons the government settled with that bigot head psycho to get them the tech and find them a planet to just leave instead of starting more forever-long street battles. I, for one, miss Calgary."
"You've been there twice and complained about the weather and their airport staff both times. Your point though - sometimes you have to let it go, you cannot banish, fight, kill, or destroy through reconstitution every sick idea in the human experience. And we can't just let robots do all the dirty, dull, and dangerous work."
"I get it. But the idea, the very idea of any authority - any bully coming into these parks and forcing people to alter the DNA in their own cells or forcing any of us to wait in long lines just to get a treatment we don't even know might have significant side-effects..."
"You might remember I had my Meniere's treated with it - that tech some time ago. Worked a charm. One shot, no more rumble. And that one was a jab."
"Oh that's right! I forgot. I did, sorry. This isn't 2020, The science is pretty clear on it. I know it well from work. I'm not anti-progress - I'm anti-tyranny. If people want to spin in circles all day until they puke on themselves they should be able to do that."
"Fuck me, Ava. And if your child or parent - if your mom slips on that puke and breaks a rib? What then?
"You're being absurd?"
"You're being obtuse."
Ava didn't step away physically but the air between them became intangibly but perceptibly colder. Sam clued in. He was being pushy and Ava had just been scared to death.
"We should go, treats are waiting. Come on, sweets."
"What did Nietzsche say about freedom? Something about humans not having inherent value?" Despite how she felt, Ava was trying to meet Sam where he lived. In that nebulous, watered-down understanding of philosophy he so loved to swim in hoping eventually to tie something meaningful to whatever was happening in front of him. She was too good for him. Far too good. It didn't stop him from trying.
Like his father before him, and his before him, there was a deep-seated need to always have an answer. To always look to be worldly, knowledgeable, and strong. The hint of something like a missing piece of armour was just an invitation to be humiliated or stolen from or worse, beaten in plain view. His personality formed through so much neighbourhood violence and terror at home for noncompliance. A sense of what is right in the world that could only be swayed in the face of overwhelming evidence and even then, it would happen after the conversation, in the dark, like it had always been there and there was never a wrong opinion to begin with.
—
The sun was low enough that all the streets they walked were shadowed under a sky losing the brightness of its blue. Laughter, arm in arm, friends and family in their contemptible joyousness held up a lighthouse glare of light onto the awkwardness they gained and the closeness they'd lost in just a few words. They waited for a light to change on a busy corner. Another floating news drone hovered on the corner opposite, following crowds as they crossed the street just to follow a different crowd back. Back and forth. Over and over. Reflecting light there and everywhere mimicking a strobe of electric bullshit tainting everything around it, healed with natural light and then defiling it again. Sam pulled an imaginary wishbone that they'd miss it. The light changed. Instead of following the closest crowd, it floated right to Sam and Ava assaulting their eyes with insane light and hieroglyphs.
Deep in its engine of insights it read their faces, matched the expressions to a full psychological profile, saw the wounds they wore, and knew what story to show them and in what tone. "Friends! Amazing News! A group of vigilantes attacked the unhoused in parks all over the city today. They shot them full of new DNA to remove any ability to over produce addiction-contributing brain chemicals! No more junkies! No more junkie crime!"
The belch of seizure-inducing light and sound found new targets with new news and new vibes to present as people crossed back to the other side of the street. Sam and Ava walked on in silence, their eyes a little wider and seeing nothing. Stinging pain reminded Ava constantly to soothe her arm. Medical science could easily heal a wound but do nothing for the phantom pain from nerves too delicate to repair.
"I can't help but think..." Sam started.
Ava Finished, "That they had their personal autonomy stripped from them – the very thing that makes us human?"
"...and it wasn't even the state that did it - it was their fellows, their community. The other people who live every day stepping over piles of shit, their needles, the blood and cops and fighting and stray bullets hitting mothers - no police state - no authoritarian thug in a $3000 suit."
"Free-will doesn't mean making decisions in a vacuum; it means having the ability to choose among available options, even if those options are influenced by the world at hand."
"Free will! What about free will? Do we not have that right? To make our own choices? Even our relationship as individuals to the state is defined by a natural right to liberty... I think. I can't remember that class and my AIs are off when I'm not working."
"That world only... exists, if an individual isn't infringing on someone else' rights - right to be - like say someone choosing to stay addicted when they could choose a different path ...no matter what unfortunate series of events got them to that point."
"It's likely not a choice at that point - not a choice at all. My point stands, you don't get to tell other people how to live. Or shouldn't get to. Not ever. I'm talking about reason. Reasonableness. I'm talking about freedom from murder of personhood."
"I think the law just hasn't caught up to this new reality and medical technology and a group of people..."
"...yeah, medical technology and a group of people... went too far and made choices for people they didn't have the right to make and how long before more powerful alterations are stolen or hacked and they come for us or the people we love..."
"Mostly, I agree with you, you know that. I don't like this idea either, but we have to learn to live with a lot of things that require putting trust in people to manage, insane weapons technology, mega-skyscrapers, robots that make our sushi and on and on."
Sam learned from her every time they spoke. How to be empathetic. How to be compassionate. How to include a little levity. Ava marveled at Sam's myopic practicality. They smiled at each other when making points emphatically to avoid any misunderstandings.
While their conversation continued on, Ava noticed plastic plants in windows that caught flat light and hung in a descending pattern. Further still, street lamps dappled through sidewalk maples onto French gothic style archways. She kept getting pulled out of her mind into sensation and resonance with the moment. Amidst the bedlam of the street they could hear each other's breathing and each of them felt warmed by it. Their words came to a natural end without conclusions or admonishments or commandments.
Each person just content to be thinking through half-informed opinions out loud in the safety of their affection for one another. Elsewhere in the world, they knew actual answers mattered. And very soon they'd see what happened when answers were missing or malformed in the minds of large groups of aggressively frustrated people.
"Ok, I'm sitting down right here"
Sam sat filthy against an oversized planter home to an undetermined original plant dead from trash buildup while Ava walked up to the locked doors of the market. Arriving just in time to confirm that they had in fact just been quickly closed and locked as Sam and Ava approached. It was true. The day wore on them both, neither suggested an end to it.
Ava approached Sam. He watched her walk up somehow not defeated, a grin in the corners of her perfect mouth. He almost told her how beautiful she looked. Instead he went with "Well, you blew it again."
"Ha, excuse me?"
"You heard me."
"I'm not biting, let's get ice cream"
"It, too, will be closed, at this hour."
"You know, sometimes I wonder if the world swallowed me whole would anyone notice at all."
Ava grinned and was about to suggest a cab ride to her place and the possibility of finally taking this thing between them where it desperately needed to go when screams came from down the street. From back the way they came was a sound that spiked hairs on their arms and necks. Something was very wrong. A surreal choir of horrific screaming arriving to their senses in waves bouncing off tall concrete walls. People running towards it. People running away. The mind didn't want it to be real, it placed dangerous doubt. The kind that can get you killed.
"We should go see - someone might need help"
"What? We might be the ones who need help if we go down there."
They looked at each other. Seconds passed looking into each other's eyes and each knowing the other person was right but not saying. They quick-stepped shy of a full panic run towards the chaos clutching on to each other's arms again. As the street began to bend they saw a crowd had formed in the intersection. Large video displays and holograms projectile-vomited frenetic hues across every unprotected surface. A manufactured daylight for insanity to touch every surface at the speed of thought.
"I had my AI filters block most of these things."
"You paid for that?"
"It was in my severance package when I was laid off two gigs ago."
"Can you see this?"
"I think I can see it all, no weird blank spaces"
The face on the screen read out the news report while the ticker swept by. VR captures of violence in cities all over the world. Riots. Fires. Smoke billowing out of windows in furious plumes. People broke and twisted ankles jumping from 2nd and 3rd story windows. The pope, the holy father of a billion people, had been attacked with a DNA gun. He would lose his need for religion in hours, possibly sooner. Like the addicts in the park, religious extremists were reported being attacked because of their measurable, irrefutable negative effects on the human race.
Once DNA alterations could spew new things in new places, the mesolimbic dopamine system – which plays a critical role in the reinforcement of rewarding behaviors, could be fully manipulated. Multiple areas of the brain affected with one forced treatment by sanctimonious maniacs with exotic technology could reduce other sanctimonious maniacs to harmless kittens.
How this tech broke out of whatever startup will be what everyone else focuses on. The why will be obvious. The implications for everyone - why hate your neighbour when you can alter them by force? Why hate yourself when you can reduce the entirety of yourself to your ingredients and hit the restart button? A different kind of infinite life. A real new year - new you for the poseurs to parade. Non-stop dopamine stimulation with zero risk of addiction and no reason to stop anyway.
"Your dad will be losing his mind right now."
"Pfff - without a doubt" Scoffed Ava. She played it cool but she was counting the miles and the hours and wondering how to get home as fast as she could knowing no heli-cars, no Lake Ontario hovercraft would get her across before things got really bad. Panic will drown you and anyone trying to save you.
"Don't panic, Ava. Do not." With every exhale, she held this thought.
—
The world erupted into chaos, predictably. Precious to their hearts they held each belief, a one-way funhouse mirror they held up to the world. Bent and pulled. Stretched and horrific. My book is better than your book. Buy my flag. Follow me, I carry twisting inferno in a numbered phrase. Watch me wield. You want purpose? You want meaning? Let me tell you about these throats you should cut. They look like people but they're animals and their screams should be no different to you than from the lamb for your dinner. Sirens in the street again. They aren't people like us. No soul behind black eyes. All midnight in the ditch they crawled out of.
Piles of bibles, Qurans, Torahs, scrolls, pamphlets, and everything a fool could scratch an idea on is witnessed thrown into a pile and lit to push the edges of darkness away. Every unknown idea is a potential destabilizer. These comfortable ideas are the relief that comes with bright dawn and a flatland that stretches to the edge of the world with no obvious threat.
In the wake of the first wave, extremists dug caves and shuttered portcullis to basements hiding massive piles of wealth. Extremists made videos and wrote newsletters and sawed heads off artists just in case they were in on it. Other extremists fired rockets in the air. Rubble was kissed. Robots dispatched. Mere anarchy loosed.
"We need a change of venue. This one is getting played out."
"That's one way to put it." It felt like an eternity from the moment they started running, jogging, fast-walking to now. He kept a hand on her, checking her pace and her level of worry. So many people screaming could be heard from above, from alleys they passed, from the inside of parked SUVs and former daytime cafes.
For the second time tonight a stranger attacked Ava. It wasn't an accident. He simply didn't like her face and open-palm swatted it hard as he ran past, knocking her right off her feet not missing a step on his rampage. It happened so fast Sam couldn't react and Ava was distracted by the anxiety hormone cocktail driving her brain and her guts harder than an overclocked processor.
The security guards were standing at their desk talking about the chaos on their screens. Wondering if they would have to kill someone before the night was over or if they should just leave for their families because everything was murder and murdered peace in the streets nearby and everywhere humans gathered in groups of more than two.
Sam and Ava walked in at a brisk pace.
Biff & Bill looked up. Biff saw the shoulder bandage through her clothes and the shiner. "Ava, are you in trouble? Did something happen?"
"Yes and yes, but I'm ok. I'm ok. We're going up, I have data to secure at my desk. If we're going to be away from work because of ..." Her hand waved around to help finish her sentence with "everything".
"We haven't heard anything yet about locking down the building but we know it's coming. How quick can you be?"
"We won't be long."
"And your name sir, any ID?"
"Sam Miftah"
Biff scanned Sam's upheld ring, the soulbound token in his government-issued phyigital wallet flashed colours and tones of authenticity that only killer junkyard dogs with their special wisdom could validate.
"He can wait down here."
Like the slack feet of the recently judged and swinging dead, those words hung in the stale lobby air.
"I need his help while I'm up there, Please... "
Biff eyed Sam hard until some crash nearby drew his attention to the glass doors.
Without averting his gaze from the doors he commanded a stern "Be fast."
Up they went in the lift. A bit dewy from the running and electricity of the street panic. Their animal scents. The safety of the closed car. A moment of peace from the storm outside. Relief from the fear of almost being separated. When the doors opened again on the 30th floor they were on each other. Ferocious and intense. The way they always knew it would be.
If anyone else was in the lab or in their office, they didn't let themselves be known to the two lumps of flesh still catching their breath, raked fingers on their skin, rug burns, and soon a bruise or two. They sat sticking on leather office furniture that had never witnessed anything more exciting than a nervous interviewee's anxiety-induced flatulence.
No matter what the future might be, we can all agree. Advertising won't leave us the fuck alone. It looks like any other office space. The windows to the outside world face a side street, not even the main street, and still the retinal abuse from street signs refract and bounce and warp there and everywhere. From the first cells able to capture basic light 500million years ago until now. Sensing its environment is vital to survival for a competitive species, for any species. The world and others who are only a few generations removed from being kin will pound you into pulp and leave your dreams, your every hope, your every ideal worked for and built, will leave all of your bullshit to either slow decay or spread among the dregs. To defile the only anything you ever were elevated by.
But can you imagine it? In this mess that your brain can barely manage. Two creatures of complimentary disposition found each other. Their paths, like the light from some random unknown source, refracted, bounced, warped and eventually met in time and space to create entirely new colours and paths that would have never existed otherwise. Like chemical reactions in the sun, subatomic particles bouncing around for millions of years just to finally be ejected, flung to Earth and discovered in a repurposed mine in Sudbury, Ontario.
"We didn't come here for this."
"Geez, are you ever happy?"
"I'm fully blissed out. It just came to me."
"What did?"
"That we were going to do something about something because if we don't there won't be a point to anything."
Sam caressed the skin around Ava's shoulder wound. He worried for her, and she for him.
"There might not be anyway", he said.
"And still you kissed me. Go on, pretend you're a cynic, nothing says hope like jizz."
They laughed deeply and the energy became momentum that got them dressed and into her office for lab access keys.
—
Compounds, gates, panic rooms, private security. Alarms, alerts, notifications, and memos. People hid in basements, man-caves and literal caves. In the Niagara escarpment. Under barns. In 1%'er prick helicopters and asshole private jets. The vigilantes, these fool heroes, inspiring others and still others after that. Driving fear like a surfer on a wave with a whip to crack by the ear of gravity to pull everything and everyone and light irretrievably deep into it.
By the time they had the lab's prototype DNA gun and a property-of-CrimCorp laptop with software worth untold millions in development, the security guards were gone from the lobby, chairs vacant, screens blank and the street viewed through lobby glass was quiet. The light was warm and yellow, and dappled from streetlights through summer air on power-washed concrete.
"We have to test this."
"You worked on this?"
"It was someone else's project to lead. But I was in every department meeting, watching progress. You know, managers managing managers."
"Sounds efficient. You know, there's something to the theory that when an advancement is found, its because it was always going to be found and someone just had to snatch it out of the air and make it real."
Ava was deep in the code, holding the warming laptop to her face, struggling with keyboard shortcuts usually easy when keyboards are on flat surfaces.
"Is that what happened here?" Sam asked.
Shouting could be heard some streets away but there was no traffic person or vehicle when looking down either direction of the street.
"OK, What are we going to do with this?"
"I halfway thought we could do something to change whats going on out there"
"That mustard won't go back in the bottle. I think that game is played."
They stood in the lobby looking out. Uncertain.
To Ava's mind they are two scared animals who've never left their woods watching a vast wildfire span to touch both edges of the horizon. She calms herself with Sam's hand, and he too is calmed and empowered by her touch.
"What if nothing bad happens, it all doesn't fall apart, and we're forced to just deal with the here and now of our lives - the work to do, the life to live, the kids to raise? We could wake up tomorrow and everything is fine."
They look at each other, smile awkwardly, and build up into a hysterical laughing fit.
"Of course it's all going down! How could it not?"
Maybe they didn't believe it. Maybe it was just momentum they fell into. Just one last taste of safe cynicism in the microcosm of their shared experience. Their laughter echoed, like a pillow of cotton candy spun from pure relief and then disintegrates just as quickly from a sudden and targeted downpour.
"It really isn't funny, though."
"I know." Sam agreed while still chuckling a bit.
They step out onto the sidewalk and stop.
Some blocks away. A dark figure stood watching them from under street light, face shadowed by the brim of his ball cap. They both notice him at the same time.
"Is it ready?"
“It’s ready when the gun light is green.”
Ava, her grip unsteady on the machine that transmitted orders to the device her man held, hesitated for an agonizingly long beat before finally ejecting the words – "30 seconds!"
The dark figure, now joined by several others, watched them closely and from their trunks swung machetes and fire axes and crowbars. A mimic of murderous willow branches in the August breeze.
"No time to test this. Are they coming this way?"
Both ends of the street had random people coagulating into a mud of simmering anger. Quiet, uneasy, loitering. They were angry from being forgotten, from being stuck in traffic and never getting to work from home, from repairing the same fucking robots that took their old jobs. Angry for wasting their votes. For buying shit boots and gloves year after year because only the wealthy could buy a pair of boots that last 8 years without falling apart.
"Ava, is this going to work?"
"Sam, you already asked me that. "
"Are you certain you want to do this?"
"Not even a little bit. Not fucking at all. I don't want to die and I can't watch you die."
"They're coming!"
Waves of The Angry came at them as a tsunami of wreckage, of broken city, filling empty street with its sinister stalking villain momentum. Sam and Ava sprinted back toward the office doors. The closest maniac wore over his street clothes a too small suit from the now shattered window display at Harry Rosen on Bloor. His outstretched hand wrapped around the back of Sam's hoody pulling Sam back by the throat towards the mob and certain dismemberment.
Ava pulled the gun out of Sam's hand and placed it over his shoulder, target right on the grabber's forehead and ejected the hooks of the DNA gun in that oversized forehead slant. The current carrying leads stretched between the now closed lobby doors and the crowd's attention stretched to see the exciting violence. Ava hit the laptop button with gusto and it dropped to the floor, the echo of which was only slightly quieter than a tommy gun burst in a closed metal coffin.
Everyone on both sides of the door watched the man intently. Slowly, his face contorted into the saddest, ugly cry a face could make. He watered the inside of his khakis, pooling where he stood. Ava whispered, "whoops".
He dropped to his knees and wept at volumes, making sounds rarely heard and shivered and convulsed. The crowd moved away from him as one movement, not from the stink of his mess but in case his fragile state was somehow spread by proximity. On the other side of the glass Sam and Ava watched like zoo keepers witnessing entirely new animal behaviour.
"What did you think you were removing?"
"Aggression, violence, anti-social behaviour... the MAOA gene."
"Is it working?"
"Yes, I think so"
"Then... what am I seeing right now?"
"I think his inability to commit violence in a dark, violent world made him so insecure and so terrified of death that he reverted to his earliest childhood mental state. Utterly dependent on others and no one came to his rescue."
"vulnerable."
"Wow, vulnerable."
From deep within the crowd a grumble of discontent and a parting sea of filth as an enormous, bulging, roid-rager walked to the doors, covered in blood and skins not his and not bio-printed hanging from chains wrapped around his neck and torso. He was holding his own customized DNA gun. It was glam-fab pink with purple sequins glued to it.
"I don't think if that hits me it's going to make me a better dancer."
Ava was too scared to laugh.
The rager held the gun to the back of the head of the still weeping and wet man-child as he gurgled, and chortled and pointlessly tried to wipe the endless stream of tears and snot away. The rager fired. The man-child squealed and the rioters roared holding their weapons high.
Sam and Ava backed away from the doors.
"How long will it take?"
"No idea but it won't be instant..."
Just as Ava finished her sentence, the squealer twitched and bulged like a bladder of air was filling and unfilling where his biceps, then triceps, then quads, then delts would normally be. Thick streams of blood pulsed out of every original hole in his body and a few new ones. By the time Sam and Ava were in the elevators out of view, the squealer was standing taller than he ever had before, arms held out, in a Jesus Christ pose. And the crowd roared for another killer born.
—
"Were we wrong to even try?" Ava asked.
They leaned opposite each other in the elevator, pulled into the sky to an empty workplace where exotic tech was played with every single day but not tomorrow.
"It matters that we tried." Sam trying to process the scene they'd escaped and the dent in the world that would forever change its shape for him.
"Does it?"
"I think so. If the theory of the universe is true this was always going to happen and in some adjacent universe it worked and cooperation won and kindness was the evolved state of being, not a better flesh machine for pulling people apart."
"I hate science fiction, Sam. It did work though, didn't it?"
"Do you have 9 billion guns or so because that's what we'd need."
"Shake your head, Ava. We're connected to a network that still seems to be working, we're not the only ones with this tech, obviously, and if we tell more people how to make their own, maybe we could start something. Something better than what is being spread now."
"I might be done."
"I might be done. And that's a lot of innocent blood to try and ignore."
"We're all born to murder. Righteous or not. For your imaginary border or not. For your fucking stupid book or not. Let it happen, we were just laughing about this, maybe we should be real. There is no saving it. Let it burn."
"Jesus, Ava."
"Yeah, and him too... I miss my dad right now. No one is coming to save us."
They sat in the reality of it. Floating in a saltwater lake of limited horizon they couldn't get out of. Sam was dazed in a way that could have been from a stun grenade beside his ears. He walked to the street windows to see if the crowd was still there or if they'd shattered the glass and were filling the stairwells and elevators floor by floor. From the window they could see most of the crowd was following the rager and the former-squeeler-now-murder-machine away down the street. A few stood in a circle ripping up t-shirts and assorted cloth from the corner donation bin to stuff into half-full of gasoline liquor bottles and soup jars.
"Let's check the news"
"The lobby video power should be somewhere around the front reception desk"
"I'll get it."
Ava stood silhouetted against the street-lit window. Calm as could be. Nothing was the way she thought it would be when she woke up this morning. She watched as someone's personal assistant robot lumbered down the street covered in broken plants, organic waste, and the dents and scratches of hundreds of implements of every type. It had what looked like someone's scalp in its hand. A dimly lit glow in the dark star tattoo was in the hairline with letters P.L.U.R. visible under the black dried blood.
At just about the moment the metal puppet was centered with the reflection of Ava's face in the window it was hit with a lit glass of accelerant. The flames grew as the fluid burned. The robot's pace was unslowed. A walking torch doing exactly what it was designed to do.
"It's getting worse out there" Sam called out from the reception desk.
"We should run. Make a break for the lakeshore, go east and then north and find a quiet lake somewhere."
"There are no more quiet lakes. People litter every habitable space."
The projector showed the chaos of a world without gods, without government rule, without authority. World leaders and yoga gurus alike found themselves shocked with dark web-coded and home-printed DNA guns. And their poison slowed and their followers drifted without anchor in pelagic mania. The streets were wholesale murder. The suburbs burned.
"Can't we fix the gun or find a laptop here and make ourselves super strong without the aggro so we can travel and fight off the animals? We'll take what we need and no one will fuck with us."
As Sam finished his sentence the sound of walls made of windows shattering filled the air. A bright orange light reflected from the street in their windows. The building's fire alarm and sprinkler system activated at the same time. Wrought iron bars dropped from ceilings and erected from floors connecting to seal off labs all over the building sending percussive shockwaves Sam and Ava could feel through their feet.
They worried for families. They worried for groups of well dressed, clean cut sinners in church basements. They worried for kids on farms and all the dogs and cats locked in apartments that their dead or fleeing owners would never return to. They worried for the Pickering nuclear power plant and the stale potassium iodide pills in catch-all kitchen drawers that would never be found in time.
"We have to run. And if we have to, we have to kill."
"Sam, It wont be like this everywhere and if there is any humanity left anywhere we have to be a part of it... whether in person or in fucking spirit."
"That's how it might go." Sam felt her response was more like her true self but it was dim at the edges, a weak star's light crossing from cold distance.
"Stairwell. Let's go now. I can smell fire."
They descended quickly the oddly small steps in the stairwell, lit only by emergency lights and not a single active safety drone to guide them down. They passed floors where people were screaming and whatever horrors were happening, they did not stop to participate, witness, or prevent. They hurried past, hearts thundering, as the hallway contracted in on them and 100 floors of concrete were held above them by a slowly unraveling string of tight budgets, strained contractors, and reliable materials quietly swapped for cheaper ones by the grandchildren of Vaughan mafioso.
—
For Sam and Ava, navigating the streets was watching a snail crawl on a straight razor. Subway entrances blocked, road traffic on top of road traffic on top of construction zones. Only the corpses would tell you it was different from any other Tuesday in this fucking mismanaged shit-show.
From the cafe where they took refuge after the shaman attack, in the world that used to exist, the subtle dick-rubber, now rubbed furious as Sam and Ava neared his doorway's stoop. They eyed him cautiously but tried not to eye him too closely. He tried to stand, lifting himself with one hand. Blood poured off of him. He looked like a lion who was just face deep in the guts of a zebra.
Down the block, Sam turned his head toward the threat they'd passed when from the alley a long slab of wood with nails hammered into the end of it hit him square in the face. The vibration, the ringing, the fire from torn skin. His disorientation was long enough for three uncast villains from Escape From New York to pull Ava into the alley and have her pants almost off.
Sam's reanimation and audible agony caught their attention just long enough for Ava to free one hand and burst one scrotum from furious pressure. His scream aged him closer to 14 or 15 and not the vicious adult his costume made him out to be. Ava's ribs bore the price of her resistance with a short kick from hooligan number 2 while hooligan number 1 went after Sam to put him down for good with a gorgeous designer Damascus steel blade.
A burst of automatic gunfire echoed with explosions of brick and wood on both walls of the alley. A crowd had formed two blocks away and were coming to claim civilian trophies from the weaker crew. Sam and Ava pulled each other up and back onto the street while the concussions of the slaying took place behind them and vibrated in their chests.
Blocks away, hidden behind the cashier's shoehorn glass display case they sat huddled like scared simians in a sheltering cave. Out of view from blood-soaked wankers and roaming gangs of dope-soaked killers outside.
"Everything is on fire." Sam gasped from shock every time Ava pressed cloth from her own ripped shirt to his head. His lips swollen and face swinging from tingling numbness to burning and back again.
"I guess we won't be cold then."
Sam lightened up some. Ava's stability gave him flotsam to cling to.
"At 90% of the storefronts in this city we could have ended up in a weed dispensary instead of a sex toy shop." Ava exhaled and sat back to take in the environment.
"Well, you're in luck. Because the horse-dick on the wall behind you is actually a water bong. A dispensary and a sex toy shop. Amazing."
"Never say I don't take you places, Ava."
"Is it an accident we’re here or is this familiar territory for you?"
"Hey now", Sam laughs, "I order my pegging tools on Amazon. Fuck unions before fucking myself."
It felt good to laugh. Sam could taste the copper-flavoured haemoglobin. The blood covering all his teeth made his honest smile a grim picture.
"If your laptop hadn't broken we could have given ourselves novelty-size parts to play with before we die. Baked, giggling, and blessed with flesh toys. We've unlocked the beautiful death achievement."
"Is everything a game to you?"
A deep rumble in the earth shook the floor and window frames and assorted loose toys. Thunder and lightning in the sky fell on top of each other, like angry street drunks colliding in the sky and falling and crashing into an Earth-sized glass coffee table.
"To us all, I think."
Ava's eyes floated down and weighed the circumstances. They were covered in blood, wounded in every possible way.
"Maybe instead we crank up the gun on each other and just let the end come – no dignity. Just let it take us. I don't think I need to see any more, Sam. I'm tired. So damn tired."
She put her face in her hands to muffle the sigh of exhaustion that came from the deepest parts of her. She wept without restraint indifferent to igniting the pain in her eye or the wound in her shoulder. She wept hard enough to break thin stitches and pull open barely-healed lacerations.
"Hey, we're together now. We'll never be vulnerable or weak again, it’s you and me forever. You and me, forever. I'll protect you. I will. A few of these gummies for pain and we'll be back on foot in no time."
Dizzy from talking, Sam winced when he tried to smile, spit out some of the blood in his mouth shaking his loosened front teeth and winced again harder. His body racked from a spasm of pain and the ache in his head took his awareness to that descent of being nearly blacked out.
"I don't want to kill anyone. And I don't want to maim or hurt anyone. I've been fighting my whole life to make things better, to help as many people as I can and this mess outside can never be fixed. There is no button to push to fix it."
Ava pushed through to continue, sharing "Sam, I never told you what it was like for me after that night you left. I didn't want to talk about it. The medication was so strong it took years to get over."
Sam looked at the vibrating toys and the collapsing streetlights. A burning building nearby was littering embers and ash to the street and onto other buildings as the hot dark wind took invisible flight with unknown purpose and indifference to result.
Sam wept tears into the streams of blood leaking off of his face. "I'm so sorry" "I'm sorry I didn't stay. I wasn't there when you needed me and I've been dying from it ever since."
"I know, Sam... I know."
"I'd follow you into a volcano, Ava. Where you go, I go."
They looked at each other for a long time. Just peaceful with each other's eyes. Breathing in perfect syncopation. Pain numbed by oxytocin. Their wounds invisible. The world outside all storm and man-made weather. The gyre widened around them. Then they kissed with more love than either one of them had ever felt before. It was the best kiss of their lives. And the last.
—