In August of 2009, just before my sophomore year of college, my family took a trip down to Arizona. There we stayed in Sedona for a few nights, before shifting to Scottsdale for the remaining nights of the vacation. Along the way we saw Sedona’s beautiful inner canyon of red rocks, and the Grand Canyon’s vastness.

There was a view everywhere – even out our hotel window. The image of the rock formations to the left of this passage is the view out of our hotel window at night. This trip spawned a plethora of panoramas – all of the panoramas are at the bottom of the gallery below. Have a look at them! Each one offers a different, but equally spectacular, view of Arizona’s beautiful environment.

There’s nothing like star gazing in Sedona. Just to take more photos like these, I’d go again. But to see the Big Dipper one more time, I’d fly back down tomorrow. You don’t get these kinds of wonderful nights, living in New Jersey. It would be nice, though.

Word Count: 42,149

I kicked the capsule. “This thing is pretty sturdy,” I said. “I don’t think you’ll be getting out. Is there a place where I can find a list of patients?”

“There is nothing of the sort,” the lab worker said, staunchly defending his knowledge. I looked around the room, at the terminals, at the cryogenic tubes. I thought of placing him in one while I left to find Curie, so that he couldn’t escape no matter what. I frightened myself with my own thoughts – I was being no better than Maiya, intimidating and hurting others to get the information I needed. And yet, it felt oddly rewarding; ever since that day in the purification plant, I could feel more and more of Maiya’s traits seeping into my personality.

Little by little, I was becoming her.

“Do you even know what you had planned to do to me?” I asked the lab worker, tapping his prison with my foot.

“No,” he said, lying to me. “Maybe you should have just let me do my job, instead of doing Maiya’s dirty work by proxy.”

“I told you, nobody sent me.”

“Don’t play me for a fool. Of course she sent you. She’s been acting suspicious ever since she moved to Central Square. We were all doubting her loyalty to us. She works on her own, she does whatever research she wants- she has an agenda that she’s not telling anybody. You’re not wise to listen to her.”

“And why would I be wise to listen to you?”

“Because I’m here. I’m not questioning my identity. Maiya is a woman with a million faces, and then some. Even when you think you’ve found the truth about her, it will turn around. Full one hundred and eighty degrees. Everything you knew about her will simply dissolve before your eyes.”

I didn’t want to fall for the man’s trap. I knew he was trying to make me admit that I had been sent by Maiya to gather information about The Collective. He probably wanted reason to arrest her – maybe he just didn’t like her. On many levels, I wasn’t fond of Maiya either, but I wasn’t about to let this man ruin my chances of discovering what had happened to Derek and the rest of my district. I especially was not going to let him ruin my chances to discover and stop what could have been affecting the entire planet. I kicked his prison again, harder this time, so that it shook and he held on to the walls.

“They’re building something in here. It makes me nervous,” I said, calmly. “I’m just looking for a friend of mine. I know he was taken here. I want to know… I want to know what you did to him. What somebody in here did to him. At the very least, let me know that something was done so that I can be at peace with myself.”

“Can’t tell you anything. What makes you think I have the authority?” As he said that, I tilted my head to think. I didn’t know what made me think that. I didn’t know what made me think that holding him up in a cage was somehow going to get me information.

But it was too late for that. I could hear more footsteps – I needed to either get the information out of this man or split. In the end, I could do neither; the doors on the wall burst open, and in strode a well-coifed man with blonde hair, dressed in a dapper grey suit. He was alone, and his blue eyes lit up the room. He smiled, his perfect white teeth brightening the atmosphere about the polished chamber.

I took out my Mu Gun and retracted the light, setting the lab worker free. He quickly ran away, out of the room, and I was approached by this well-coifed gentleman, who slowly stepped toward me and bowed. I respectfully, I bowed back before asking who he was.

“I’ll tell you when I feel you’re ready to know. But it seems you’ve made a little fuss in here; I saw it on my terminals.”

“How? There are no cameras in this room,” I said.

“The Collective is everywhere, Vincent Torsten. There is nothing you can do that we don’t know about. So, I hear you’re looking for somebody. I’d love to help you. Derek Marland, is it? You’re wondering what happened to him.”

“How… no matter. Yes, tell me what happened to him, if you’d be so kind.” I put my hands in my pocket. Who was this man – and how did he really know that I was looking for Derek? How had he burst in out of nowhere, expecting to find me here, knowing what to talk about, and probably knowing I’d set that lab worker free if he came?

Instead of talking, he just pointed to his head. “He’s in here, Vincent.” He tapped his cranium. “He’s all in here. You see, I don’t think you’re aware of just what you’ve stumbled into – you’re in my new home. You’re in everybody’s new home. Derek, you see, is just a new resident. He recently moved here, you could say. But here he is – just like all the others.”

“I thought that The Collective was in boxes, not in your head.”

“It’s everywhere. The Collective is my baby – my brainchild. And it will save this planet. It’s already saved your friend. It has saved you. It has saved your partner, Adam Curie, who is currently in the west wing of this facility being assimilated with all the others.”

“You know where Curie is?” I began to move, but he took out a Mu Gun and conjured a wall of light to block my path. I couldn’t leave – he had me trapped. I was going to get the knowledge I sought, whether I wanted it or not. There was nothing I could do. Helpless, I turned around, frowning at the man who had overcome me, waiting to hear the words that Curie’s life was about to end; that he would lose his consciousness in a mess of thoughts within The Collective. That he would become Derek; that Derek would become him. The loss of individuality – the fate worse than death.

I couldn’t let that happen to Curie. I had to escape this man and get to the western wing. With all my strength I tried to run around the wall created by this man’s Mu Gun, but he kept moving it – I couldn’t get through. I pounded on the wall, hoping it would break, but remembering that even my kicks could not free the lab worker.

Eventually, I ran the opposite direction – away from the man and his Mu Gun. If I couldn’t get to the western wing through the door this man had come through, I would find an alternate route. I had to, before they got to me as well – before I was assimilated with all the others.

I could hear the cries of all those living on Cydia; they didn’t know their eventual fate, and yet their souls cried out for salvation all the same. I wanted to help them. I didn’t want to see my world changed; eight years of normalcy had embedded itself too deep in my mind to simply crumble beneath my feet. Before I could reach the other door, a security officer appeared.

“The Collective is everywhere, Vincent Torsten!” the man said from across the room, laughing. “Don’t think you can get anywhere!”

As the security guard rushed toward me, I readied my fist. With swift movements I landed a punch square in the middle of his face, knocking him out. I could feel the fluid that had leaked through the skin of his face; it was not blood. I guessed that he was being sent back to The Collective at that moment. His body lay, lifeless, on the floor behind me. I heard the whirr of the Mu Gun’s light firing at him – as I turned around, the well-coifed gentleman was angrily stomping away, with the security guard’s lifeless body floating along with him in a Mu Gun capsule.

Through the hallways I could see more guards. Thinking quickly, I tried to avoid the majority of them – not really knowing where I was going, I snuck by several guards and worked my way, eventually, around to the other side of the lab I had been in. I was on my way to the western wing – where Curie was waiting for me. I only hoped that I wasn’t too late.

One security guard spotted me as I ran through the halls; I defeated him with ease, making me call into question just what material my fetch was made of. Maiya, perhaps, was creating custom fetches with extraordinary strength. I thanked her, in the back of my mind, for that. It gave me a fleeting chance in this hellhole facility.

However, my urgency did not pay off; I quickly got lost in the monstrous Renaissance facility.I was surrounded by nothing but polished Slate walls – I could see reflections of myself in every direction. It was nothing but a repetitive hallway of mirrors; I thought, for a moment, that perhaps Maiya had provided me with a map of this area as well, but I knew that would have been too much of a blessing. I was without navigation, so I simply kept moving in the direction my gut let me – or whatever it was I had in a fetch.

Through the narrow hallways I ran, until I saw an open room. Thinking it might be what I was looking for – or would lead me to that goal – I stopped and took a look inside. Terminals floated against the walls of that nearly empty room, but there was something very different about it – something that set it apart from the rest of the facility.

It was the walls.

I remember those walls; they were the only in the facility that were matte black. I was one person once again, in that room, for that brief and defining moment in the Renaissance facility. But it was what I found on the floating terminals that truly defined that moment – for upon the terminals on the farthest wall of the room I saw a map of Cydia. With my hand, I rotated the map, noting several marks across it, both on and below the surface.

On other terminals, diagrams and schematics for chemical compounds floated in midair. Looking at the name for this chemical, I saw that it was an enzyme – whoever had created it was designing and manufacturing it there in the Renaissance facility. Underneath one of the diagrams read its name, “Taconic Rasase.” Apparently, the rasase was created to break down Taconic Slate, and the marks on the map represented injection sites.

Different dosages and concentrations had been injection in different locations around the world. As I looked across the map, I saw that there had been injection sites in places I was very familiar with – beneath Tychon, beneath district 137, and nearby the purification plant that had fallen in my old district.

The entire operation was a setup. The fetches, the instabilities in the Slate mines, The Collective – everything fit together. And suddenly, I felt utterly helpless; what was I supposed to do against this?

I moved around the map again, zooming in on the red points that represented injection sites of the rasase. As I zoomed in, the shape and scope of the injections became clear; the rasase was seeping through to the core of the planet, causing the structure of the mines to break down. That explained why nobody could weld the Slate back to stability – as they welded, the rasase simply crept back in, destroying the bond and the Slate.

Not wanting to sacrifice this information, I began to copy it, unsure if my decision would prove to be a fatal one. With each passing second, as the files copied to my fetch, I became more and more nervous. And when the files were finished copying, I used my last moments of spare time to search the databanks in the room for a map of the Renaissance facility.

I was lucky enough to find one. I hastily copied it to my fetch, and ran out of the room, praying that nobody had seen me – and knowing that, in all probability, somebody had.

Word Count: 40,069

Eventually, I fell asleep, and wasn’t awoken until several hours later. The ceiling was a deep, midnight blue, and the noise had quieted outside in the caverns. Dust had settled. The world was calmer. Curie looked at me and shook me away. As I lifted my head up, he pointed me towards a metallic object, half-constructed, in the corner of the room.

“It’s compiling right now, so you’re looking at a cross-section of a modified droid. It will capture us; there’s no doubt about that. If we leave it in the room tonight, it should gather data about us while we sleep and report back to The Embassy with data. The Embassy is obligated to send that data to Inland, who issues the order to capture. But it looks like they always say yes, so we shouldn’t be too worried.”

“You gleaned all of that from the source code?” I asked.

“Yeah, boss. It’s all in there,” Curie said.

“I told you not to call me boss, kid.”

“Well, don’t call me kid, then.”

We laughed. I asked how long it would take to finish compiling; Curie told me I’d just better go back to sleep, and that in the morning we’d probably be taken away. I didn’t feel tired anymore, however, and I was fascinated at how the droid compiled It was being built from the bottom up, component by component, as if it were a real machine – t looked like it was being printed by a mysterious, ghostly force.

Little by little, metal fragments and wire snippets appeared in place, completing the droid just a little bit more. With each little bit of construction, my fear grew. I didn’t know what to expect when the time came to be taken away; I was also afraid that Curie and I would find no way of resisting their experiments.

Curie knew I was thinking this. “Don’t worry,” he said. “If you can’t stop them, I can. I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve.”

I felt in my pocket at the Mu Gun. “Well, don’t think that I’ve got nothing myself.”

I took out the Mu Gun and created a forcefield between the outside caverns and the inside of our enclave. I just wanted a slight feeling of shelter, in a way that I didn’t get living on Cydia anymore. Curie must have been feeling it the worst, knowing that there was a fresh and beautiful planet out there waiting for him on Earth. I wanted him, on some level, to feel safe. To feel like Cydia was a place worth living on.

Together, we fell asleep, Maiya’s cables dangling from their outlets, Curie’s darkened arm hanging from the bed, and my eyes staring at the midnight sky on the ceiling.

Before we knew it, there was a rapping at the forcefield, and I pushed the button on my Mu Gun instinctively to retract the wall of light. Knowing, and fearing, what was to come, I didn’t even bother resisting. I looked in the corner; the droid was long gone. Now there were several men, presumably in fetches, strong-holding us and silently dragging us away. Curie and I put up no fight, and I saw him smiling to me as were were dragged out of our enclave and into oblivion.

It was only a few minutes before we realized where they were taking us. Beyond the living area, beyond The Embassy’s office, was a transport mechanism used to move large pieces of slate. The transports would chop up the pieces and distribute them among various purification plants; this was what the light trams next to each mining station went to.

At least, I had thought that they were transports for Slate. As it turns out, only a few of them were – there were several transports meant for other purposes, hidden among the legitimate transports. They were obvious in several ways. They were large enough to fit several human beings – large cylinders that resembled elevators, connected via a Slate tube to a much larger building – and they were not light trams. Every other transport connected to the building was a light tram.

Although any other person might have assumed these larger transports could have been meant for especially large pieces of Slate, I knew better by now; it was simply a high-security entrance to the Renaissance facilities. What I didn’t know, however, was that the men holding my body and those holding Curie’s would split at the transports.

As I entered one cylinder, Curie entered another, and neither of us were sure if we would end up in the same place any longer. And yet, we didn’t make a sound; we just accepted our fate, knowing that we both had a plan in mind. And if we didn’t, that we would come up with one soon – before it was too late for us.

Inside of the cylinder, I saw what would be taking me to the Renaissance facilities: A rock, beneath our feet, grew upwards and wrapped around us, creating a secure pod. After we had all entered, the pod doors closed, and I felt the rock engage. Embedded in the stone were several glowing crystals; as they glowed brighter, I saw that the rock lifted into the air.A magnetic transport system using impurities in the stone – it was one of the first technologies I’d seen on Cydia that was built without the use of Slate.

I was fascinated as much as I was frightened. I watched one man work the controls as the others held me down. Physical controls – real, physical controls. I could only imagine that these transport vehicles had existed at the beginning of the mine’s history, when Cydia was younger, and when Slate was just being discovered as a useful resource. So very long ago – and yet they were in working order. The rock rumbled with us inside, and all of a sudden we were shooting off through the pipelines at speeds that made my fetch’s stomach churn.

There were no stops along the way; the ride lasted for a good minute or so before it abruptly ended. With my limbs restarted, I could not hold my stomach, but I felt as if I was going to vomit. I restrained myself, thinking that the men holding me captive might harm me if I did anything out of the ordinary. Instead, I tried to collapse onto the cold ground as soon as the pod’s doors opened.

I coughed and wheezed. The men let me gather myself before picking me up and dragging me.

We had landed inside a building, in a port that opened into a hallway. I was reminded heavily of The Embassy’s office; no doubt Marco’s abode was derived from this larger-scale equivalent. I kept expecting to see him around every corner. At every turn there were infinitely many copies of me and my kidnappers; we marched through hallways, endless hallways, as I gave into their hold and let them lead me directly to those who I needed to speak with.

Along the way, I kept hoping we would run into other people – Curie, at the very least – but we never did. There was nobody to run into; the facility seemed empty. And at no time along the way did my capturers ever say a word to me. It was silence, through and through. And to them I reciprocated the gesture. Only our footsteps pattered on the metal flooring.

Eventually, doors lined the polished walls. Lights, gradually more of them, lined the walls next to the doors. They hovered, gently floating up and down, inorganic and ghostly, the spirits of those who had been taken to the Renaissance rooms.

There was a stark contrast between the Renaissance facility and the Inland facility. I had assumed that both were set up to participate in the same practice, but there was no conflict in the Renaissance rooms. In fact, being led by these silent men, I almost felt comforted about the possibility that I might not escape from my fate. I felt resigned, calmed. But I wasn’t accepting.
More hallways. More doors. Still, not a soul around but us.

Eventually, we came to a door at the end of a hallway that did not lead to yet another hallway; instead, it led to a large room containing several floating consoles and cryogenic tubes. The tubes, no less than ten of them, were neatly lined up on the eastern wall and connected by large pipes to refrigerating units that kept their insides cool. The consoles floated in the middle of the room, waiting for some scientist to take control of their power.

I could see other machines, larger machines, located all around the room. I couldn’t make out what they were for; I didn’t want to find out. One of them, a large pillar, stretched all the way to the ceiling and was spotted with openings – human-shaped openings that I assumed were meant for patients and test subjects. Robotic arms traversed the length of the pillar, scanning for patients to probe.
Cool mist filled the cryogenic tubes.

The panels hovered, silently.

The room, empty, revived my fear. To emphasize this, the men released me and pushed me forward so that I stumbled, almost falling onto my face against the hard Slate tile. I looked down, resting on my knees, at the reflection of my face. I kept a stern look and waited for something – anything – to happen. I prayed for an opened where I could turn the tables on these men. I made sure that I still had my Mu Gun and turned around to face my kidnappers.

Big mistake.

From behind, I was grasped by a mysterious force, and my arms were held in place against my back. I turned my head around and saw a man in a white lab coat, goggles over his eyes, his hair slicked back and greasy, adjusting the handcuffs he had slapped across my wrists.

“You may go,” he told my kidnappers, who then removed themselves from the premisses. Fussing with my handcuffs, the lab worker continued talking. “Quite a mess you’ve gotten yourself into, wouldn’t you say?” He moved my body over to the eastern wall and pressed it against a cryogenic tube. My left cheek felt cold against the glass, and I could see the cool, condensed air shuffling around inside the tube.

“I’ll say,” I responded.

The lab worker continued fussing with the handcuffs. He was taking so long that I began to think he was suspicious of me – he worked his hands up my body, padding me to make sure I wasn’t packing heat, completely missing my Mu Gun – as if he were trying to avoid it. As he got closer to the back of my skull, I became more nervous that he would discover I was in a fetch.

He approached my neck, making curious noises. Hums. Grunts. He was questioning me. I knew that if I let him keep doing, there wasn’t anything good in store for me. He would discover that I was in a fetch, and he’d send me straight to The Collective. Rip my soul right out of my body, and that would be the end of it.

As he inspected my neck and began to move upwards, I knew I had to do something. I thought back to my fight in district 137 with the thugs on the way to the Inland facility with Curie, and I knew what to do – I knew what my fetch was capable of.

I swung my head backwards with full force and hit the lab worker square on the forehead. He, holding onto my handcuffs, fell over, taking me with him. I struggled and picked myself up, then began to fiddle with the cuffs until I had gotten them loose.

With my hands free, and with no thugs around to restrain me, I picked up the lab worker with one hand. He tried to subdue me with his own fists, but I stopped them; he was clearly not in a fetch. His natural strength was no match for the strength of my artificial body. With it, I subdued him against the cryogenic tubes instead of me.

“Hi. My name in Vincent Torsten, and, now that you know who I am, I have a few questions for you.”

The lab worker became frightened – this had clearly never happened before.

“Don’t worry. This won’t be complicated,” I said. “It’s just a few simple questions. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

“You’re in a fetch!” he said. “Please, stop! Did somebody send you? Did Maiya send you here?”

I stopped intimidating him. “How do you know Maiya?” I asked, loosening my grip on his arms. “No, that’s not the point of this. I’m here because nobody seems to know about the operations going on in this building. And, for some reason, whatever is happening here is affecting the entire planet. I’d like to know why, and I’d love to see it stop so that hardworking citizens can be relieved of panic. I’m sure you’d know the answer to at least a few questions I have.”

“If Maiya sent you, I’ve got nothing to say.”

“Nobody sent me.”

“If you say so,” the worker said.

“First things first,” I said, pressing him closer to the cold cryogenic tube, “I came here with a friend of mine. His name’s Adam Curie. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is right now, would you?”

“You think I’m going to tell you something? You’re insane. Breaking free from government capture, assaulting a laboratory worker. I will have you arrested and killed.” Half of his face smiled; the other half was being crushed against the cryogenic tube.

“I think you’ll at least tell me what wing he’s in, if this place is as huge as I think it is. And if you won’t tell me anything, I’m sure there are ways to get it out of you.” I reached with one hand into my pocket and pulled out the Mu Gun. With haste I let him go, back away as he caught his breath, and fired the Mu Gun directly at him. Light shot out its nozzle and enveloped the man in a blue prison from which he could not escape.

“There’s no way you have one of those…” he said.

“You don’t know much about me, unfortunately.” With him locked away in the capsule, I put the Mu Gun back in my pocket, ensuring I wouldn’t retract the light. From there on out, I knew it would be smooth sailing – I had one person who knew most everything I needed to know. Now all I needed to do was find Curie so we could drill him for answers.

Word Count: 37,599

“You’re insane. Even if I could do such a thing, why would you want me to do so? You’re in a fetch, and a rather pronounced one at that. You won’t be able to fool anybody into making you an eligible subject.”

“How are these subjects usually found, anyway?”

I stepped back into the conversation to let him know. “Judging by Derek’s disappearance after he interacted with one, I would say that it’s the virtual droids roaming the area that have been looking for test subjects this entire time, rather than monitoring our work in the mines.”

“Vincent is right,” The Embassy said. “The droids select who is called down to the Renaissance facilities and what their fate is – it’s all highly automatic. For those who resist capture, I am tasked with ensuring that they are safely delivered to those facilities for the proper tests to be run. Vincent, that man you captured was running from his long overdue appointment in the Renaissance rooms. No matter what he told you, he knew what was coming for him – everything he said to you was most likely a fabrication by him, or his own mental rationalization of the situation he was in.”

“So, we can probably trick one of the droids into tagging us as a test subject.”

“Or,” Curie injected, “I can modify one of them.”

Neither The Embassy nor I knew if Curie had the skill required to modify the code of a droid, but it was clear that all three of us wanted more information about what was happening to Cydia, if for nothing but to help the social order in the mines return to its normal, calm state. The Embassy looked at me, wide0eyed and sad, nervous and shocked, and nodded.

“If you’re truly going to do this, you will need my help to secure the source code of a droid. At the risk of my job, I will get you the source code. Please stay underground in the meantime, in the mines, and I will find everything you need. Vincent, your enclave is still available and open; Adam can stay with you. Don’t make a scene, or somebody less generous than I will have you hauled out again. Don’t think anybody has forgotten who you are and why you’re here.”

“I won’t,” I said. “And thank you for doing this. Come to my enclave when you have the source code available, and I’m sure Curie will put it to good work. Don’t let this stress you out too much—”

“Marco York,” he said. “Just call me Marco.”

“Of course, Marco. Don’t let whatever’s going on get to you – Curie and I will get to the bottom of it. Whether the bottom is on the surface or at the core of Cydia, this fetch business reeks of fish. I know that you think so, too, and I know that you’ve just been following your orders as an Embassy below the surface. But I have to find out what really happened to Derek, and why – not just why you say so, but so I can find a way to save him.”

“Alright. Get out, and be careful. With all of the crumbling slate, mining has been postponed; citizens are becoming restless and violent. A few fights turned into daily struggles. Markets have been destroyed, so many are without food. Just watch your back, Vincent.”

I nodded, and Curie and I left Marco York’s room for the outside. A tremor shook the ground beneath our feet, causing the dust to kick up and partially block out our vision. Through the mist we followed the virtual lights lining the caverns to my enclave where I had spent the solitary night with Maiya. The wires she had plugged into the back of her skull still rested next to her bed, snaking around the structure into the wall. I still didn’t know what they were for, and I was curious to find out.

It seemed that Curie was even more curious than I was, for he noticed the wires instantly and began picking them up. “These are controller cables. What are they doing here, beneath the surface?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know what they are. But hey, are you sure that you can interpret the source code of one of those drones?”

“I used to develop some augmented reality applications for glasses in the past. Nothing too complex, but I’ve dabbled. If I had to guess, I’d say that there’s probably a function inside of the droids checking for certain parameters that make a good test subject. If I can change those parameters to match our qualities, then that droid should report that we are meant to be test subjects. Since it seems automated, I doubt anybody will notice that we’re in fetches – especially with The Embassy helping us.”

“I suppose that man was just as fed up with his current job as I used to be with mine, to not mind messing a bit with the system. I know I threw everyone for a loop when I requested to be transferred beneath the surface. But I was having hell up above; I wasn’t enjoying life. I can see now that The Embassy – erm, Marco – isn’t enjoying his life much, either. Maybe we can change that for him.”

Curie nodded, but as he did so we heard a massive banging noise outside of the enclave. Looking outside, I could see that two citizens had left their homes and were fighting over a morsel of food. One man was setting explosives near his enclave, threatening to detonate them. It looked like the second man did not feel threatened, and so the explosives went off – another massive bang – causing part of the enclave to shatter and shards of Slate to scatter.

Screaming could be heard about the cavern. The second man – who had not set off the explosives – was dead, buried beneath a pile of rubble. From his hands the man who he had fought pried the morsel of food, consuming it in one bite with joy. Parents hid their children from the caverns, families backed away into their enclaves.

It wasn’t hard to take notice that nobody was working. Over the last several days, all mining had ceased – presumably because of the increased danger of cave-ins. It was my best guess that several workers had been killed by falling Slate over the last few days, perhaps hours, and that everyone had been ordered to avoid damaging or mining the walls of the caverns, even to gather Slate.

On the surface, I could only just imagine how a shortage like this would affect industry. I felt a new Mu Gun in my pocket; Maiya must have slipped me one in this fetch, probably the one she’d taken from the purification plant, because my old Mu Gun was still at the Inland building back in district 137. I thought about how it was made almost entirely of Taconic Slate, and how it would not exist without such material.

When I thought about it, most everything on Cydia couldn’t exist without some form of Taconic Slate. Food was processed with it; equipment that processed food was made with it. Guns, knives, buildings, bridges – everything was made of Slate. It was the idea material for making everything, and so without it there could only be nothing.

Curie and I didn’t even bother approaching the scene – we simply remained, frozen, inside of our enclave. Curie fiddled with the cables, I watched. Neither of us had anything to say, and we weren’t sure what we would say even if we did. Finally, Curie stopped looking at the cables. “Whoever was using these must’ve been an interesting person.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Oh, right. You don’t know what these are – they’re controller cables. They plug into the back of the fetch; you’ve probably felt the ports on your neck. Using the controller cables, you can move your consciousness along a network. You could connect yourself to, say, another fetch far away and control it simultaneously with yours. The cables have been used, I’ve heard, to control vehicles as well. It’s interesting stuff, so it must have been an interesting person using them.” He tosses the cables in his hand, feeling their weight, and looked at me.

“That would be Maiya,” I said. “She stayed in here with me for one night before I was thrown out. As she slept, she put those cables in her head. When I saw her doing that, I left the room. That’s when Marco found me and threw me out. The strangest thing was, Maiya was also in his office up on the surface. But she’d been sleeping.”

“The controller cables explain things. She must have had two fetches. I’m not surprised, given that all of her research is with them. She might have had one stored in Marco’s office, and connected to it when he took you there.”

I mulled over some thoughts – if Maiya could connect to a second fetch hundreds of stories above the ground, would it be possible for me to connect to my lost fetch in Inland’s district 137 facility? I had a hunch that the Renaissance rooms and the conflict going on at Inland were connected, and I was eager to find out what was going on – but the droid source code wasn’t coming for several hours. If, in the meantime – or even during – I could re-enter the Inland facility without fear of injury or death, I could investigate the conflict within Inland further.

I heard gunshot noises outside. I couldn’t fathom what was happening now, and I was afraid to remain in the mines for too long. But now I was no longer afraid of death; I was afraid of assimilation. If what Marco had said about Derek was true, then he had suffered a fate worse than death – the loss of his identity. All of his thoughts, all of his secrets, they had all been forcibly merged into a locally pooled consciousness. Derek was no longer himself, but some massive super-consciousness. A collective of various other test subjects.
I shivered at the thought of losing my identity before dying. I shook at the thought of never passing away peacefully, contained in the cold world of The Collective for the rest of eternity.

I hated waiting. I hated not having the source code in my hands – in Curie’s hands – and not knowing what was happening to my home. More gunshots. Unfortunately, my enclave had no door; if they wanted to, those being aggressive could have waltzed in and killed both me and Curie freely. Strangely, I never feared the possibility; my mind was so focused on the crumbling walls of our enclave, the cables under Maiya’s bed, the strange conflicts within Inland and the Cydian governments, that death felt like a peaceful escape.

But now that I was in a fetch, there was no peaceful escape for me. There was no foreseeable end.

It was several hours later that Marco arrived with the source code. He handed it to Curie shakily, as though he’d gathered it through rather suspicious means, and I gave him a frightening look to make sure he wasn’t handing us something that would do us in. Curie looked at the source code, scrolling through its tens of thousands of lines, nodding at intervals.

“Thanks, boss. I’ll have this compiled by morning.”

That was all he said, and Marco nodded in response. Still shaking and disheveled, the poor man left us. It looked as though he was limping, though he might have just been walking slowly. I wasn’t sure if he would have the nerve to capture us – but it was necessary. I watched Curie begin to fiddle with the code. He kept scrolling through, looking for the lines that would identify us as test subjects.
“See anything?” I asked him after a few minutes of silence.

“Not yet, but this is very interesting. It’s not like any code I’ve seen before, though I think I understand what’s going on. When this compiles, we’re going to have to configure the droid. Give me another hour or so, and I should have this ready.” He pulled down a few glass panels and began distributing the code and controls and keyboards among them. Within a minute, he was lost in his editing – even if I had called upon him, he wouldn’t have stopped.

For that hour, I laid on my bed and listened to the sounds of gunshots, falling Slate, and screaming at random intervals. I couldn’t imagine what the conflicts were over; I thought, perhaps food was the main concern. With each passing minute, I pieced together what had happened in the mines in the few days that I’d been gone.

Collapses around the caverns must have killed off citizens and destroyed markets, upsetting the social structure and causing mass fear. To that end, there was a humongous food shortage, and many citizens were under the impression that they were going to die anyway. The citizens in fetches, those who had been forcibly transferred by the program at Inland, we being sent back to The Collective after their fetches were destroyed – and I assumed that, due to the lack of people down in the mines, some entity was either killing them off or moving them to another location.

But with the light trams to the surface closed, it seemed that citizens beneath the surface began to worry about their health and well being. Those in fetches might not have known what had happened to them, and were trying to eat regardless. Nobody had any means of escape – there was only panic, panic, panic.

Our squadron of soldiers had devolved into a civil war battlefield. Man against man. Fetch against fetch. It was quickly an environment of survival of the fittest. And, chances were, any citizen that knew about The Embassy was banging on his door, wondering when Inland was going to send help, knowing in their gut that Inland wasn’t about to do anything for them. And that must have drove Marco mad; mad enough to develop a limp in his leg and a coward in his heart.

Word Count: 35, 218

In the several days since I had seen that man, he had changed substantially. No longer was he the mysterious, clean-cut figure waltzing about his room, but a nervous, disheveled ambassador to the underworld. When we entered, he cowered, and it was clear that something had happened beneath the surface over the last few days to cause this dramatic change in character.

Curie turned to me, “Is this The Embassy? He looks pretty grim and down, boss. You sure this is the guy who put you into a fetch? He looks like he wouldn’t hut anybody.”

“Well,” I said, “don’t let that fool you. He sure as hell did a number on me, and on Derek. Probably on countless others, too. I have no idea what to expect from him right now, so just be cautious and safe with him.”

We approached him, moving slowly closer to that nervous wreck, until I was able to shake his hand. “I believe we’ve met,” I said, gripping his hand and moving it up and down. His arm felt limp, and he moved to my will without reciprocating any of the force of my gesture. When the handshake was done, he stepped back, in the same manner he had when we’d first met.

“You, huh…” he grunted. “What do you want, Vincent Torsten? And who have you brought with you?”

“This is my friend, Adam Curie. He’s a mechanic, and looking for a little adventure. We’ve actually come to gather some information from you. Just a few questions, that’s all. I hope you don’t mind answering them – they won’t be hard, I promise.”

He stepped even further back, nearly stumbling over his desk, the infinite copies of his blunder all motioning in unison around me and Curie. “You’re not from them, are you?” he asked.

“Them?” I asked.

“The damned Cydian government. You’re not working for them, are you?”

I wasn’t sure what to say – we were working unofficially under Maiya, an agent of the Cydian government. In a way, we were both working for the government; at the same time, I was still employed in the mines, and Curie was a mechanic from district 137. “No,” I said, having made my decision. “We’re not working for anything of the sort. I’ve just heard some rumors about strange happenings down here. I used to work for you, so I figured I’d ask you.”

I gave it to him lightly; I knew he’d tried to murder me. He needed to be made aware of the fact. As expected, he stared blankly. He knew how I’d survived, soul intact. I needed to know if it was his intention to send my soul to the collective by destroying a fetch he’d put me into.

“And what makes you think I’m going to tell a brat like you? You’re the cause of all this mess! You and your damned squad member. You’ve ruined us – you’ve ruined me… what more could you possible have to ask?”

“Well, knowing that seems to be like a good place to start. How did I ruin you?” I inched my way closer, just as I had before.

“You, you and that girl – that devilish girl. I knew there was something strange about her. After we tossed you out of the building, she tied me up and went back down below the surface! When I broke free, it was utter chaos and panic. Structures were failing, plants breaking, homes collapsing. I couldn’t help but think that she was the cause of all this, and that you were indirectly related… but no, you are directly related.”

Another step forward. I slowly trapped him into a corner; with each step, his infinite copies merged into a single frail being.

“Directly?” I asked. Curie, behind me, was staring him down, curious as could be.

“Your partner, Derek Marland – he was taken from you. I never told you what became of him, and yet I’d promised you. I suppose at this point, you’ve proven that you deserve to know. As much as I’d rather not tell you, I feel it is your right.”

I felt my stomach sink. Bad news was coming from The Embassy – Derek was dead, Derek was maimed, Derek’s body was burned to ashes while his soul rotted within the confines of a digital realm.

“Deep below the surface – even deeper than the mines – is a research facility. It’s so close to the core of the planet that pressure suits must be worn to protect their bearers from fatal injury. It is in this room that I have been conducting experiments, if you will, at the behest of the Cydian government and Inland. I told you earlier I was just doing my job, just trying to get by as you were, and I didn’t lie.

“But this became too much. I was overseeing a top secret research project focused on the extraction and containment of human souls. I’m hardly a scientist myself, but I did a lot of the grunt work for the smarter men and women, and I didn’t mind it up until a certain point.” He paused, and picked himself up a bit. “When your buddy Derek showed up.”

“So,” I said, “what did Derek do to justify his ‘showing up’?”

“Nothing. He was simply determined to be a prime candidate for testing purposes. Everybody living beneath the surface is nothing more than a lab rat to those of us living above. It’s personally hard for me to view those people out there as anything else but test subjects. But you – when I learned you were originally from the surface, I was enraged.”

“Many people often are.”

“Yes. But your friend, Derek, he had arrived with some very specific information. Apparently, he was the first to notice a slight cracking in the structure of the caverns; since that discovery, the crack has propagated. Attempts to weld it just have failed. Several districts have collapsed, and our entire integrity is on the line now. When Derek first told me and the other scientists about the crack, the entire focus of the research project shifted; it became a development project. Apparently, not only could the scientists involved in the project see where Derek’s observation was set to lead, but were entirely prepared for such an occurrence.”

“And what happened to Derek?”

“His soul was the first used for special testing in this new apparatus. Hastily thrown together, this container for souls that we had made would be his home for eternity. We extracted his consciousness and placed it inside of the container. And then we did it again, and again, and again, until we had an entire district of souls within a single container. That man you saved from the collapsing purification plant, he, too, was extracted and stored as Derek was.”

I froze, hearing this. I had gone through so much trouble to save that man, even if he was no happy to be saved himself. Even if he lacked all the appreciation in the world, the way I had captured and transported him as cargo to The Embassy, I felt so immensely horrible that it had led to the extraction of his soul that I was speechless for a good amount of time. I remembered his struggling body, wrapped in the light of the Mu Gun, as it was delivered to The Embassy’s doorstep.

I was embarrassed and ashamed. Eight years of correcting myself, of becoming content with my life, had just been destroyed.
Curie looked at me, seeing my pain, reading my thoughts. He knew what had to be done, and so did I: We had to terminate the research. If the mines were at stake, then the surface was at stake as well; who was to say they wouldn’t soon be affected – captured and assimilated into The Collective as mere test subjects?

“Take us there,” I said. “We have to go see this facility.”

“I’m afraid it can’t be done,” said The Embassy. “The doors are locked tight, and non-subjects are not allowed access even to the passageways that lead to the facilities. Unless you somehow became eligible test subjects, which you cannot be as you are in fetches, there’s no way for you to visit the facility.”

“No, there has to be a way!” Curie said, his black skin blocking out his expressions of emotion. I watched him speak, his movement like those of an invisible man; his test dummy fetch appeared to be the most ambiguous being on the planet. On some level, I wasn’t even sure if it was Curie inside of there. “If you can’t take us there, I’ll build a Corpus Lock to do the same. I’ll smash down the walls of these caverns until I find the buildings in question.”

The Embassy laughed. “Good luck doing that. The walls crumble even as we speak. The crack that Derek discovered is slowly eating away at these mines; there is no way to stop it. By the time you even reach the facility, it may be too late to escape.”

By now, I had boxed The Embassy entirely into the corner. He had converged into one man, one force that could be easily reckoned with. He would take us where we wanted to go now, whether or not he believed that he could. Curie and I, together, placed enough pressure on that broken man that he had no choice but to spill everything he knew about the current state of Cydia.

“You keep mentioning the crack,” I said. “But who cares? It’s just a crack. If some walls crumble, it’s no big deal. That can be repaired.”
“Not this time,” The Embassy said. “No, the government has been busy preparing for a global disaster. The world is about to change, my boy, and it probably won’t be for the better.”

Curie turned his head in thought. “Boss, you ever heard of a planet called Earth?” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was smirking; his emotions were entirely hidden. But, judging from his tone of voice, he had a plan in mind. And it was getting a good start: The Embassy was silent at the mention of Earth. He just stopped and stared, blankly, into Curie’s empty face. He had nowhere to move back to; he was forced to face the issue right there.

“No? I’ve always wanted to go there,” Curie said. “It’s a beautiful world, I hear, entirely separate from our own. It even has life. We wouldn’t have to terraform, the inhabitants are rather primitive, there are bountiful resources. There’s quite a lot of water on Earth – I bet everyone loves all the water there. None of this rings a bell to you?”

The Embassy’s mouth remained shut.

“There are trees. Real trees. But you can’t go unless you’re in a fetch, because we don’t know the composition of the atmosphere yet to know if fetchless humans would be able to breathe on Earth. Everything’s real on Earth, boss. The plants, the grass, the sky – the air tastes fresh when you breathe it in. It’s a really nice place.”

“I know,” said The Embassy.

“I figured.”

“How do you know about Earth, boy?” The Embassy remarked with intense surprise.

“Did you listen at all to Vince, here? I’m a mechanic from the surface. I built Corpus Locks for the men who are negotiating with Earth so that they could travel through space. I still know how to build them; wasn’t building one but a few days ago before Vince here promised me a fetch if I went with him. And here I am. But now, I’m thinking something; if such a perfect planet exists, why would Cydia not be rushing in to take charge of it? With all its resources, you’d think the situation in the mines wouldn’t be an issue.”

After a moment of silence, The Embassy sighed. “Yes, there is a developing relationship with Earth. And yes, Cydia is looking to use it to gather resources. But it’s far more complicated than that. I shouldn’t even know what I could tell you about that world…”

He hung his head down in shame, hoping we wouldn’t ask him what he knew. Deep down, I think he wanted us to ask – otherwise he wouldn’t have mentioned anything. “I shouldn’t be talking to either of you. You both should be dead,” he said.

“Well, how about this – I have a hunch what’s going on. You can just play hot or cold with me, boss,” Curie said. “If you say that there’s going to be some kind of global disaster, I think that fetches are being subsidized right now so that the Cydian government can evacuate the planet to Earth.”

“You wish,” said The Embassy. “You wish it was so nice. You just want to get your scrawny ass to Earth because you like the flowers and the grass. There is war on Earth. There is suffering and pain and bloodshed. It is a primitive and backwards land to live in, and there are no plans of any sort. You should find and ask Maiya about this; she probably works for the government.”

“We did, and she doesn’t know. You’re the last person we can ask. Nobody seems to know what’s going on, but something’s clearly happening, and you know more than anybody else we’ve spoken to, especially more than Maiya. We’re trying to help; we need all the information we can get about the state of the planet and what the government’s plans are.”

“Well, I only know so much. But the researchers in the Renaissance facilities would know more. But, like I said, there’s no way you can get there without being selected as a test subject.”

“Then select us,” Curie said, “and send us down there.”

Word Count: 32,912

We decided that sleep was what we needed most at that time, not action. It was through this that I discovered where I was – back in Tychon, in the Central Square building. As soon as I had left Maiya’s laboratory, walls faded away and floors became transparent. I was able to see up to the top of the structure I was within; the signature mark of the gargantuan Central Square buildings. Every district had one, and each one was a center of science, business, and life.

The walls were solid Slate, reflective and passive. The floating, artificial lights that ran across those walls soothed me, and put me further to sleep. Residential areas and apartments were on the six hundredth floor and up. Outside of Maiya’s laboratory, a light tram waited, open, just for me.

The architecture of a Central Square building is peculiar in several ways. The outside is rather dull; there is never much to see. It is rectangular, and you cannot see in or out of the building, as there are no windows. The building is made of galvanized Slate, which appears matte black in the sun. At night, the building is nothing but a column of darkness. Inside, each floor is a different shape, and the walls do not always meet the tile of the floor. For transportation of goods too large to move through a light tram, they are carried via robotic arm down the inner sides of the building. As such, each floor has a remarkable drop at its edge, with nothing but a fence to stop anyone from falling over to their death, hundreds of stories below.

Light trams take pedestrians up any number of floors instantly. You walk in, you walk out. You’d never know that Central Square buildings were so tall unless you looked at them from the outside.

Curie and I went up to floor 604. On the way to my room, I could only think about how I was inches away from my old haunts. My old office was in that building; everything that used to be my life came from that building. And yet, so much had changed in eight years. This building was not the same building I once knew. I glimpsed down at the floors below off the ledge of floor 604, looking for my old office. The puzzle-like structure of the floors below greeted me by blocking my view.

I turned to Curie. “Well, you got your fetch. I hope you’re happy.” I pulled open the door that led to the assigned living area Maiya had placed us in for the night.

It was just like before. The ceiling, with its holographic sky, showing a moonlit night. The twin beds, together – one for me, and one for Curie. I imagined that Derek would be in one of these beds, in another place and time.

We started cleaning up the room; whoever had been there last didn’t keep it very tidy. It was a full five minutes into cleaning the room that Curie spoke to me.

“I like it,” he said. “The fetch, I mean.”

“Oh, good.”

“I don’t blame her, you know.”

“Blame who?”

“Maiya, for doing this to me. We needed to escape. It’s what I wanted, anyway. Now I can go to Earth; I can pass through the Corpus Locks. I can finally see the green fields. Real, green fields… and animals. Vince, thank you. Thank you for giving me this.”

“Your welcome, I suppose,” I told him, not knowing whether or not he truly appreciated the fetch. I loathed it – I loathed the idea that they were founded upon and the reason for their distribution. And, most importantly, I hated that my fetch could be destroyed, but my soul could not. That I might die, only to be consumed as fuel for the planet. “Say,” I asked him, “who will build Corpus Locks once you’re on Earth?”

“Somebody who cares more than I do. Somebody who wants a fetch just as much as I did. They’ll have the drive to work and build those locks until they have an opportunity of their own. And then they will be replaced by someone else, someone better at making those locks.”

Silence. The false night sky on our ceiling blew false wind that bore no noise of its gust.

“There’s a reason why they have to be assembled by hand, you know,” he said. “The glue that holds the small parts together is made to be resistant to the portals that the lock generates. The glue only activates through an enzyme present in the oils of human skin. So, since I’m in a fetch, I can’t assemble any more Corpus Locks anyway…”

Curie slumped down on the bed; I knew he was going to miss his work. I knew that he would try to reconcile with himself that he had gotten what he wanted, but that there was a part of him that was now lost – the engineer within him. Since he was no longer able to build locks, he felt that he was of no use. I decided that it would be my job to prove to him that he had use still in the world, and that he wouldn’t have to be exiled to Earth to feel better about himself.

I told him to get some sleep in the meantime. That tomorrow we were going down into the mines, and that it might be shocking to him to see the strange society down there.

He listened to me, and fell asleep. I, on the other hand, remained awake. When Curie was in deep sleep, I picked myself up and walked over to the restroom. There I did nothing but stare at my face in the mirror, touching it with my hands, feeling for inconsistencies. It looked just like me. I was no different than I was before. I could tell that it had been Maiya’s handiwork – that she had intended to give me this fetch from the very beginning, and that I should have expected nothing less from the woman whose sole profession focused on creating artificial bodies.

And yet, it was still remarkable. I felt my chest for a beating heart, but there was no pulse. The body truly was fake.

I reached into the air and pulled down a glass panel., then looked into its clear, reflective surface. My hands could feel the cold glass, as thought it were a real object. My fingers would not push beyond the sheet, or through it. When I took my alternate hand and punched the glass, it shattered. I felt the stink of the millions of tiny fragments of glass sinking into my fist, which dispersed when the shards disappeared.

It was the strangest sensation I had ever felt. I was no longer sure if I was human. But I should have expected that on Cydia – a world with no trees, foliage or organic life other than us humans. Even we were destined to become inorganic at some point; it was just that point that I feared rather than embraced. I looked across the room at Curie, sleeping soundly in his bed underneath the false night sky. Why couldn’t I be so content with my life? Why were situations so much more complicated for me?

Sleep is what I truly need, I told myself. And so, with that thought process, I laid down on the rock-solid twin mattress that was placed next to Curie’s, and stared up at the false sky up above until I surrendered unto sleep.

The next morning we were rudely awakened by an alarm from the ceiling. The sky had turned red and the sounds of armageddon were upon us. Curie and I sprang up, wide awake, to find Maiya at the door. Apparently she had set the alarm of our room for five in the morning – whenever that was. She was in the door, motioning for us to hurry up. Without spending any time on personal hygiene, Curie and I approached her.

“What gives? It’s early, boss,” Curie said.

“If you want to enter the mines,” Maiya said, “you have to do so while everybody beneath the surface is asleep so as to not around suspicion. We’re cutting it close to the wire as it is, but I wanted you both well-rested. The light trams to the caverns are open now, so you’ll be able to enter; I’m not coming with you. I need to be up here to analyze anything you send back.

“Once you’re in the mines, I need you to track down The Embassy I used to work for. Vince, do you know where to find him?”

I shook my head no; he’d never led me to his new underground office, just his above ground one.

“I’ll give you a map.” She pulled down a panel, fiddled with it for a bit, then handed it to me – upon the sheet of virtual glass was a map of the district 137 area of the Slate mines, which I stored in my own data banks for recollection later when we were down in the mines. I’d been stripped away from district 137’s netherworld so quickly that I wasn’t even familiar with the area; I knew that the map would come in handy right away. “The map also has all the information you need to enter The Embassy’s office and speak with him.”

“So, what about the Renaissance Room?” I asked.

“We’ll get there. The first order of business is to find out what’s going on on Cydia. Talk to The Embassies around the mines, starting with this one. See if you can extract information from them, and use force if you have to. Something’s up, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of it. Now, follow me and I’ll show you the light trams you need to take to get back below district 137.”

Maiya began walking out of our room, and we followed suit obediently. She led us down to a floor we’d never been to – somewhere in the 100’s – and we soon realized that it was a department related to the Slate mines below. The floors were covered in gravel that had trailed from the shoes of workers entering and exiting the mines – workers with privileges high enough to do so, in any case. I was immediately observant of all the light trams around the premisses, each leading to a different sector of the mines.

Maiya walked in front of one, placed next to an empty cubicle, and nodded. This would take us back to district 137.

“Remember,” she said, “once you go in, there’s no coming back unless you have the proper authorization. Gates will block the light tram behind you.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Any chance we can get some ID data?”

Maiya shook her head. It looked like Curie and I might be going down into the mines for keeps, so we both breathed deep, nodded at Maiya, and stepped through the light tram.

Down in the mines, everything’s darker. You don’t notice it until you begin to enter and exit often, and when you do it’s not hard to realize what a cave you’ve truly been living in. As soon as we stepped out of the light tram, a gate closed behind us, locking us into the netherworld, and I caught a glimpse of where I had been living for eight years: the sparkle of the slate reflecting the artificial lights, the noise of drilling, the silence of sleep, and the emptiness of the caverns. It was all so coherent and planned out. These were the sounds of the battlefield that I remembered.

I looked around, and saw Curie fascinated by this underground maze, as if it had never existed beforehand. A brand new world had unfolded itself to him, and he couldn’t contain himself. He, like the child he was, began running around, touching and examining every little facet of the mines. I was just hoping a drone wouldn’t stop by and catch this suspicious activity. To guard us, I made sure to stand nearby or in front of him at all times.

“Curie,” I said, “we can’t fool around. We have a job to do, and a friend to find.” I pulled down my map to see where The Embassy’s office was. “The Embassy’s office isn’t far. It’s hard to believe that I missed it. It looks like it’s mostly nighttime around here, so we shouldn’t have any trouble walking around. Just watch out for droids roaming the premisses. If they see you, it’s bad news.”

“Got it, boss,” Curie said, and we marched together towards The Embassy’s new office. The powdered Slate – that toxic dust – it kicked up onto our skin and into our eyes. None of it phased us; we were immortal, we were all-powerful, and we were invincible. The fetches – those artificial bodies – they had transformed us into beings unaware of poison, treachery or death. The Slate dust meant nothing to us.

It was hard to believe that I’d missed his office before; it was far more obvious than his old location. In the residential area, a stairwell made of highly polished slate led to a lit area below, filled with a bright, warm light that exuded brilliance from every corner – it was far more impressive an entrance than his old, grim office. And yet the door to where the real man sat was just the same as ever; bleak, desolate, intimidating. It was a door whose handle I didn’t want to turn.

I pulled down the map and tossed it to Curie. “Read me the pass code, will you?” I asked him. He immediately obliged and read the alphanumeric pass code written atop the map Maiya had given to us, while I pulled down a panel and began entering it in.

Subservient to our whims, the door opened, and we entered into the room to have our final talk with The Embassy of district 137.

Word Count: 30,565

My soul slowly moved its way across the abyss. Although I had no senses, I could function entirely on my own, and I used this ability to follow Maiya and Curie’s souls to the ends of the abyss. As we traveled, I took it that we moved from one box to the next, across a network of boxes and souls. I communicated with others, and gained their knowledge. Information flooded into me; I could accept and reject what information I desired. And yet, these people, floating in the abyss with us, never once released their names or identities.

Perhaps that had been inside of the abyss for so long that they no longer had identities. Perhaps, just perhaps, they had taken in the identities of everyone else around them – as I was doing myself – become one analogous being.

All around me, the same thoughts coming from each soul. They didn’t ask, they just ate information from my brain. They knew who I was, they knew what I did, they knew where I was going and who I was with and where I had been. There was no escape from these souls; as I partook of their knowledge, I began to feel as though I didn’t want to try and escape.

I heard Maiya thinking. “Keep moving,” she said to us. “Don’t listen to them, the path is just ahead.”

We continued moving, sightless, soundless. Thinking back, it’s hard to comprehend how we knew where we were – we simply knew. We knew where we were going, and we knew how to get there. Maiya didn’t have to say what she said, but it was a welcome reminder.
Eventually, we came to an area with what felt like wind blowing, if I could relate it to a feeling. In my mind, I could feel the pulsating, jarring nature of the wind. Maiya approached what I learned was an opening in another box, though she wouldn’t think where it was located outside of the void. We were being dispensed from one void to another.

As I approached Maiya’s location, the mental wind grew stronger. I could read her thoughts, telling me to embrace the wind, to travel toward it – and then she was gone. Her soul simply vanished.

Panicking, I chased after it, and Curie followed suit. We were both pulled in by the fierce winds and pushed out of the void. For a moment I could not even think, but soon found myself awake, in a body, with my senses fully restored. I moved an arm to touch the side of my head; my ears hurt from being able to hear. As I tried to move my hands farther away from my body, I noticed that I was encased in a glass coffin of sorts. I began banging on the glass, hoping it would break, but to no avail.

Outside of the glass, I could see the blinking lights of laboratory equipment dispersed throughout a dark room. An unknown woman in a lab coat approached my container, looked at me, and smiled slyly. She brought down a panel from above, and tapped in a password. The latches on my container immediately opened, and I was free. I stepped out from my glass prison, and when the cage shut I turned around to view my new body.

This one was different. This one was strange. It was not strange because of how it looked, but rather because of how it didn’t look. I was myself again – my old body, as if nothing had happened. I turned to the woman in the lab coat next to me. “Thank you for letting me out. I’m looking for two other people who should have been with me, would you happen to know anybody named Maiya or Adam?”

The woman laughed. “This is Maiya. The room is empty; this is my research facility, and only mine. Adam is over here, we can unlock his container now. He should be inside of his fetch.”

We both walked over to the container, where I saw the new Curie. I was shocked at the sight; the fetch had no visible features. In fact, its skin was black as night, without highlights to create a form. It was as though he had no identity in that fetch. There was no face to make out to determine expressions from. Just blackness, darkness as deep as the oceans.

We let him out, and his reaction was palpable. He was in shock, wondering what had happened to his body.

All Maiya could do was apologize. “I’m sorry, Adam. On such short notice, this was the only adolescent-sized fetch that I had prepared. Getting the equipment to set itself up from inside The Collective isn’t easy, you know. Mental commands are difficult to hide from residents. I hope you’ll forgive me for now.”

I was so unsure what to think about Maiya now. Was she a scheming murderer, or my personal savior? What was she really doing?
She looked at both of us. “You’re safe now. But you should stop meddling. What you saw in there you already know too much about. That’s why you were called upon by The Embassy, and that’s why you were thrown out of the mines. The more you know about it, the more damage you can cause and the less time we have.”

She paused, then spoke again. “You can’t leave anymore. I’ll get my ass kicked if you pull another stunt like you just did. I know you need to find Derek, but you can’t tamper with equipment you’re unfamiliar with. And you shouldn’t deal with Inland. Let people do their jobs.”

“What is your job, exactly?” I asked her, not expecting an answer.

“My primary work is with fetches. I’m working with the Cydian government.”

“So, you’re not actually an Inland employee.”

“Of course not. I was sent into the mines to investigate the deterioration of certain caverns and to ensure that districts in particular danger were outfitted with fetches. Contrary to what you’d think, I don’t try to kill as many people as possible. It’s my job to save people; I also work on The Collective, that neural network we just came out of. It integrates with fetches; when a fetch is destroyed or badly damage, it sends the soul inside to The Collective so that it can be placed in another fetch.”

She paused. I knew she wanted us to leave, but I wasn’t sure where we were, or what building we were leaving from. I was utterly confused; why did Maiya save us, and what was happening to Cydia that would alarm her so much? I decided that it was best to keep the conversation going, for my own motives. “So, how did you end up working for The Embassy?” I began, looking to track her history back to its beginning.

She pulled down a panel, as if to try to ignore me and ask why I was still around. Finally, she tossed it away. “I do research for the Cydian government. More often than you’d imagine, they sent some of us, in covert operations, beneath the surface to ensure that production is smooth. This time, however, it was with a different purpose. The government is suspecting structural instabilities beneath the planet’s surface, and several of us went down to investigate. However, residents of the mines are not supposed to know about these operations or about the structural state of the caverns.”

“Ah, and I knew about how the atrium with the purification plant had collapsed?”

“No. Derek, and then you, were the first two to point out structural instabilities in the core of the mines. To investigate, I told The Embassy to release a drone into your room to search your memories. When it reveal—”

“What? Those things… can search memories?”

“Well, not precisely. They’re programmed to search for certain patterns and recognize those patterns as thoughts that might propagate and disrupt the delicate social structure in the mines. They were developed up here, on the surface, in these labs.”

“But they’re not real. We touched it.”

“And it recorded that, as well. Everything regarding your interaction with the drone was recorded, it Derek was determined to be a hazard to the social structure in the mines.”

“So, what exactly happened to Derek?”

“That, I do know. The Embassy dealt with him; although that’s not my area, I was able to catch a glimpse of what was going on. When I saw that Derek was not returned to his enclave, I assumed the worst, and I went out on patrol to make sure that nobody was coming to take you. Of course, you came out to see me soon enough. I supposed that, seeing you, The Embassy might reveal to me where Derek had been taken so that I could rescue any others also taken away, but he assigned us to that mission in the atrium to stall.

“Derek was taken even further beneath the surface, by light tram, to a chamber called the Renaissance Room as a test subject. Research primarily takes place in the Renaissance Room – research that people don’t want you to know about. Research like The Collective, and my research of fetches. There, Derek was most likely transferred to a prototype fetch, for testing purposes. It’s almost certain that the test failed, and his soul was discarded.”

I wasn’t sure what to think, now that I knew what had happened to Derek. Although I still didn’t know whether he was alive or dead, I knew the odds – but I felt a strange need to find the Renaissance Room and destroy it. Maiya seemed unfazed by the presence of the room, and continued on with her talk.

“What they don’t tell you, is that the fetches are a safety mechanism. When your fetch is destroyed, you’re sent to one of the many hubs of The Collective. In the event of a national disaster, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives.”
“That sounds good to me,” I said. “Who doesn’t want lives to be saved?”

“Of course,” Maiya said, sulking. “Well, here is Cydia’s distress call: It’s running out of electricity, and becoming rather overpopulated. As we market fetches, sell them in clothing stores and such, the Cydian government will bring in capital. That capital will be invested into building more hubs for The Collective – eventually, there will be enough hubs to house any number of human souls.”

“That’s excellent!” I said joyously.

“It would be, if Cydia wasn’t running out of electricity. The government…” she signed, and took a deep breath in. “The government plans to use these souls as an electricity source, instead of sending them back to hospitals. Most souls will return to hospitals, to create an illusion that the technology works as desired. But every so often, one will not. I also think that, to further this gain, there are other covert operations in practice to purposefully weaken the structure of the mines.”

I stood there, awestruck for several moments. “Won’t people notice that their loved ones aren’t returned to fetches?”

“Did anybody but you and I notice as everybody was replaced down in the mines? And even if somebody did notice, they wouldn’t be in their fetch for very long. On the grand scale over decades, enough citizens will need repairs and replacements that plenty will make their way into The Collective without ever being noticed or missed.”

“That unbelievable. In fact, I don’t believe it at all. Are you just trying to make me leave?”

“No. You experienced it for yourself, inside of those boxes. Those souls there, one of them could have been Derek’s. That entire area was a soul dumping grounds. All of the souls in there, if left, just exchange thoughts and eventually assimilate with one another, until they’re all identical. At this point, none of them have any identity left in them; no individuality to seek out a new fetch or live life as a human being. They’re just souls, for power.”

I stared blankly at her face until she decided to speak again.

“And, you can’t leave. Neither of you.”

“What?” Curie said. “Why not?”

“I need both of you to help me. Something is happening to Cydia, and I want to find out what it is. Both of you have fetches now; you can go wherever you like and wherever your souls can travel. I have a feeling that things are going to change on Cydia, and not for the better.”

Neither Curie or I could disagree with her, and I thought of it as a welcome opportunity to go back down into the mines and see if I couldn’t navigate my way to the Renaissance Room and look for Derek – or his soul – when I got there. Of course, I had no idea what I was getting into, and just how dire Cydia’s situation was. There was no way I could have known that the innocent crack from the mines, with its small gusts of wind, could cause so much death and destruction.

And yet, the fear was palpable. Like Maiya, I sensed a deep disturbance beneath the surface, tied directly to my experiences in the mines over the last eight years. I thought that it was time to show Curie what life was like, living as a soldier on a battlefield – firsthand. Together, we looked at each other, and then back at Maiya.

“Alright. We’ll help you,” I said. “But you’d better not be screwing us over.”

“Not in a million years, Vince. If the planet lasts that long.”

“Good.”

“I’m suspicious about The Embassy – all the embassies underground, actually – and I’m sure you’d agree he’s the first person we should talk to about strange activities going on underground. Just be careful; you know what can happen.”

And that was how I went to my fourth job – from working on the surface, to drilling in the mines, to working for The Embassy, and finally for Maiya. The last formal job of my life.

Word Count: 28,217

I looked at the soldiers, and then at Maiya. My limbs were still. Curie wasn’t sure what to say or do, but he got up and looked at the two of us, staring at one another in our moment of awkward weakness. Maiya lowered her weapons, two laser pistols, and took a step toward me.

“Get out of here,” she said. But I still couldn’t move.

“No,” I said. “Not until you tell me where they’re keeping Derek. I know you know! I know that’s why you got rid of me.”

“You really are an idiot,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “You just don’t understand. I saved you. Now… are you going to run, or are you going to die? I have a job to do, and it has nothing to do with you. I’ll cover your back while you escape, if you’re afraid.”

I had no choice. I had to get out. Curie was staring at both of us like we were insane, but I understood what Maiya was doing. It was her job, working under The Embassy, to facilitate the fetch project. She was an agent of change in this world, and I was just getting in her way. It hadn’t worked out, when we worked together for that moment. She’d wanted to be so aggressive, and all I wanted to do was help people. But I knew now who my real fellow soldiers were – and they were Curie, and Derek, and anyone else who could see what was happening to the mines, and to Cydia.

So we ran. We followed Maiya’s instructions and began to exit the building. She followed closely behind us; as we passed some floating platforms, I saw her flip switches on them. Not sure what she was doing, I pressed on, but she stopped multiples times in this way during our trip back up the surface.

And as we ran, more guards approached us. Maiya shot every single one without care or remorse.

Their blood, reflecting the sorrow in the room, trickled down the steps to join with their brethren at the bottom. It ran thick, filled with the heavy memories of their lives. To Maiya, each man was just another puppet. Again, I couldn’t look at her. Once I’d stopped looking behind me, it was a much faster climb up the stairwell – we all soon reached the office through which we’d entered. But Maiya would come with us.

“I don’t even know why you would suggest it,” she said to us. “I’ll guard the door. You two just get out.”

She remained outside of the door as we entered. Once the door to the office had been shut, I herd a clicking noise. Instinctively, I reached for the doorknob – twisting it several times revealed that Maiya had locked the door on us. There was nowhere to go but up.

Curie approached the wall where we’d entered, and felt it with his hand. “Why is this here?” he said, looking at the solid and study wall. “We destroyed it…”

He took out his shovel and blasted the wall away. Dirt, soil from the outside, flowed in and covered him. He picked himself up, and brushed the dirt off of his clothes. “Someone repaired everything while we were gone,” he said. “And it doesn’t look like they want us going back to the surface.”

“We’re locked in as well,” I told Curie.

“It doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere, then,” Curie said. “Who was that woman, anyway?”

“Her name is Maiya. I worked with her for a time below the surface. She’s the one who did this to me.” I held my hand in the air, looking at it. I flexed the muscles in my fingers; it all felt so real. If I had been born with it, I’d never have known that the body was artificial. “But I think she had her reasons. I just want to find out what those reasons are.”

Curie had nothing to say, and for a moment there was an awkward silence as we both assessed our situation. Finally, I saw it: The open light tram in the room. With it I could re-enter the mines and track down The Embassy, give him what he had coming, and rescue Derek.

“Curie,” I said, “do you enjoy working on the surface?”

“It’s okay. Why?”

“That light tram goes down into the mines – five kilometers deep. Down there is the man who is most certainly keeping a tight hold on my friend. But once we go down there, we might not be able to come back up; and there’s nothing I can do if that happens.”

“And you want me to come with you?”

“You’ve come this far. And it doesn’t look like you can get a fetch unless you stick with me.”

Curie contemplated, staring at the light tram, unsure of what to do. I knew he would make the right decision, to go down into the mines with me – but to make sure, I pressured him. “You’re the only person I have left who can help me. Without you, it’s all useless,” I said.

The deal was sealed. He would come with me.

But as we were about to walk into the light tram, the door burst open. Maiya, firing gunshot after gunshot, entered into the room and closed the door. She continued firing her laser pistol until the door was entirely shut.

“That was close,” she said, leaning her back against the door and resting her arms, tired from holding up the guns. “You two are still here? I told you to get out.” She looked at me. “You really are useless,” she said. “First you couldn’t do anything in the purification plant, and now you’re fucking up my work. Do you even know what you’ve gotten yourself into, Vince?”

“Not anymore,” I said, looking at her bloodstained figure. “But you need help. You’re covered in blood—”

“I can help myself,” she said, standing upright fully. “Listen, I tossed you out for a reason. You shouldn’t be getting involved with me. The Embassy was foolish for making you do what you did.”

“I don’t know whether to be angry or sympathetic. What the hell is going on out there? Why are you covered in blood?”

“It’s not blood, it’s a synthetic fluid. Nobody out there is in their original body – you think those men are brave enough to risk their lives? Vince, I’m sure by now somebody has let you know what I’ve done to you.” I pointed to Curie next to me. “Is that why he’s with you? Nevertheless, Vince, nobody out there is dead. There’s a conflict of interests happening right now at Inland. Let’s just say I screwed some people over.”

“Yeah, you screwed me over. Why should I believe what you’re saying?”

“I don’t expect anything of the sort. Listen, I want to tell you what’s going on, but I can’t do that here. We need to escape – and there’s only one way out that I know of.”

“Down to the mines,” I said, pointing at the light tram.

“No – it’s not safe in the mines, either. The crumbling rock might kill you. We need to be on the surface, where the ground is stable. I know how to get us there, but you’ll need to trust me and do exactly as I say.”

“I can’t possibly trust you after you betrayed me, destroyed my body, and threw me out of the hundred-fiftieth floor of a building. I could have died!”

“No, you couldn’t have.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small black box, then began unfolding its contents. The box flatted out into a very thin sheet of paper, which Maiya laid out on the floor in front of the three of us. “This is just a prototype, but it works well enough to get us out. Kid, are you in a fetch?”

“No, he’s not,” I said.

“That won’t do, then. I know what to do, though. Kid, this is gonna sting a bit, but don’t worry too much about it. You’ll be just fine.” Maiya reached into her pocket again, and this time pulled out her Mu Gun that she’d received from the purification plant. Pointing it at Curie, she released a beam of light that struck him, then surrounded him. Within moments, I heard Curie scream as his body was transformed by the light.

The capsule concentrated around him, shrinking, letting go of all the useless portions of his being. At the end of it all, Curie was no more – all that was left was a floating, silver mass, trapped by the forcefield of blue light emanating from the Mu Gun.

“Push that button on the sheet,” Maiya commanded to me.

“What?”

“The silver button. It’s in the corner. Push it, now!”

I walked up to the corner of the sheet and pressed the only silver button. At once, the sheet megan to expand; its frame stacked upon itself, and it became a solid, rectangular object, its black surface only marked by a single hole on its top face. The hole looked just big enough to fit a melon, or a small volleyball, and emanated blue light as the Mu Gun did. Within moments of the box’s expansion, Maiya swiftly moved the silver mass that was Curie across the room and slammed it onto the top surface of the black box.

The light emanating from the box grew brights, and the Mu Gun’s light dimmed until it was gone. When the flash of light had disappeared, so had Curie’s silver mass.

“…what did you do to him?!” I shouted at Maiya, sure she had just killed my new friend. She motioned for me to calm down, and be quiet – that I would be next, and then she would do herself. “But what… what is this?”

“That is a prototype of a condensed neural network. Inside is some of the most advanced hardware and software on Cydia; your friend’s soul is being stored inside that box. Everything that he is and will be is now inside of it’s walls. And it’s out only way to get out of here, so we both have to get in.”

“That looked incredibly painful. I’d rather pass.”

“You’ve already been through the pain. This won’t hurt at all for you. If you wish, I’ll do it to myself first so that you can see how to put your soul into the box. It’s quick and painless, since I placed you in a fetch.” I nodded to her; if she wanted to kill herself, she could go first, by all means. “Alright, I see the look on your face. I’ll show you what to do.”

She stepped up to the box, and from one of its sides opened a small door that contained a mass of retracted cables. Maiya yanked out the bundle of cables and looked for the flap on the back of her head. When the flap was open, she moved the cables toward the ports in her head – they magnetically attached themselves to the right location.

“These ports do two things: They can recharge your fetch, you they can transfer your soul out of it. That’s particularly useful when you need to abandon your body to, say, escape from gunmen. Just attach these cables and push the silver button again. You’ll be moved to the box.”

“And my fetch?”

“You’ll lose control over it. It will slump over. Just remove the cables from my head before using it yourself. It doesn’t matter if people find the bodies – I have another set that we can jump into when we get out of here. Just trust me on this; I know it’s difficult for you, but if you stick with me, you will have another new body soon, and we’ll be out of this dangerous place.”

She waved to me, and pushed the silver button. As soon as she did so, her body slumped over, a lifeless mass of organic components. From the sheer force of her weight, several of the cables detached themselves from their magnetic latches. I sighed, and shoved her body aside, picking up the bulky cables in my own hands, feeling their heft in my palms. Maiya’s fetch stared at me with its eyes open, cheering me on, telling me that this was the right solution.

“Here goes,” I said to myself, opening the flap behind my head and shoved the cables into their proper places. Each metallic end felt cold against my skull as I reached for the silver button. My hand felt six times its normal weight while I reached across the black box to push it, not sure where it would take me after I had pushed it.

My fingers shook; they hovered over the flat, reflective surface of the button, afraid to take the next step. Finally, and with a deep breath, I urged my fingers to press themselves down, bringing the silver button with it.

The world became blank. I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. Yet, for the briefest of moments, I knew everything. I could sense Maiya and Curie within the world of the box. We were everywhere in the world; our presences intermingled in floating space. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life – I could read what Maiya was thinking. I could hear all of Curie’s thoughts. And that was all we were, there in the box – three floating masses of pure thought. Nothing but our souls.

We gleaned from Maiya’s thoughts that there was another box connected to this one; an entire network of boxes with souls of their own. If we simply traveled to those other boxes, we could transport ourselves elsewhere and exit this strange world. And when this box was emptied of our souls, it would revert to its normal state – what it had been when Maiya had pulled it out her pocket – and nobody in the Inland facility would think twice about what had happened to us.

Word Count: 25,868

We arrived at the building – Curie was right. Wandering around the campus on the outskirts of district 137, neither of us were able to find a single entrance to the building. I looked up at the building’s top, hundreds of meters high, grander than most other buildings in the district. It’s polished white edges contrasted its mirrored green-tinted windows. On something like the hundredth floor, I could see the broken window that I had been tossed out of.

I called Curie over, and pointed it out to him.

“And you survived that fall, boss?” he asked, amazed.

“Stop calling me boss. And I did, with not a scratch on my body. I’m sure I have this fetch to thank for my life. Though, on some level, I think they knew I wouldn’t die from the fall – otherwise they wouldn’t have thrown me down. At any rate, we need to get into this building. If we had something blunt, we might be able to break the windows.”

“Are you insane, boss? I mean, Torsten?”

“What do you mean? We can break the windows and just walk in.”

“Yeah, and get caught by security. If the place is locked up tight enough to have no entrances or exits, then security must be prowling every corner. We need to get in safely, without making a fuss, if you want to find your friend.”

I was about to suggest something, but he pulled out a shovel that had been strapped across his back. “Get digging,” he said. “We’re going in from the bottom up.” I took the shovel, unsure of the best place to begin digging. Curie told me it didn’t matter, just to stick it in the ground and watch.

I took the old shovel and put it in the ground. Instantly, a cylinder of soil burst from the ground and planted itself next to where I had dug in the shovel. I lifted up the instrument, wondering what had happened. Curie looked at me, baffled by a simple shovel, and laughed. “You’ve been below the surface for a long time, haven’t you, boss? What kinds of tools do they make you use down in the mines?”

“I told you not to call me boss.” I looked down at the shovel in my hands. “Nothing like this; mostly explosives. How old is this shovel, anyway?”

“Actually, it’s brand new. I built it from old parts. It’s a Curie original! It actually uses parts from a light tram. At the tip of the shovel is a dense nanobot cloud. When the tip hits an object, the cloud is released and converts the object to light, then transports it a set distance away before returning to the tip of the shovel.”

“Why bother making it look like a crappy old shovel, then?”

“So people won’t steal it, of course.” He reached behind his back and grunted as he heaved out another shovel. “I’ll help you. If we move quickly, they probably won’t notice what we’re doing. We can break through the building’s foundation with these, too. We’ll just have to be as quiet at possible.”

And so we dug, and dug. Something about Adam Curie reminded me heavily of Derek Marland. Perhaps it was the way that he moved; the way that he enjoyed everything he was doing. He was smiling as he dug into the ground, lifting up cylinder after cylinder of soil from the ground. Uprooting the fake grass. He could smell his goal – it was deep below the ground, and it was within a few strokes’ reach. As fast as I dug up the soil, he dug it up faster.

Eventually we hit a pipe beneath the surface. Curie wiped the sweat off of his head. “This must be the start of the foundation. This pipe is probably for communications; I doubt this building has a steady water supply.”

“No, it does,” I said, remembering The Embassy’s office. As I thought about it, I wondered how I’d come to be in his office, in this building – and then I remembered that I’d come through a light tram. There was an entrance to the building; it was just underground, in the mines. Inland didn’t need this building to manage their affairs in district 137. They needed it to manage their affairs below district 137. It wasn’t difficult to figure out what the pipe was for, after I knew that.

I looked up at how far down we had dug. We were at least fifty meters below the surface, and only just hitting this pipe. “Curie, this isn’t for communications. This pipe is the entrance.”

“What?”

“It’s a light tram. The pipe is shielding the transit line. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we can use it if this is in the middle of the transit line; touching it is a sure-fire way to kill ourselves, and the beginning of the tram is down in the mines, caged in with Taconic Slate. But there may be a structural opening in the building if we follow the pipe; we just need to be careful not to break it open, or else we could wind up touching the bare transit line.”

Curie looked nervous about digging further, but stuck his shovel into the ground anyway. We followed the pipe, all the way to Inland’s building. And, just as I thought, there was a massive opening to let the transit line through. With all of Cydia’s technological advancements, nobody had ever come up with a way to pass through a solid wall without cutting a hole in it.
That was brilliant for us. We just walked through the hole; instant entrance.

We stepped into somebody’s empty office, the floor freshly carpeted. I saw a desk, and a water cooler. The chair at the desk was pushed in; nobody was there, and I doubted that anyone would enter soon. To be cautious, I looked at Curie and nodded to him, signaling that we should exist the room as soon as possible. As we crossed the office, we saw the pipe covering the light tram’s transit line cross with us, over the ceiling, only to open as a bulb of blue light on the other side.

A light tram for each office. An office for each light tram.

We left the room and exited into a humongous spiral staircase. We were close to the bottom; here the hallways were narrow, and I could overlook the core of the building. It seemed like the entire center of Inland’s facility was empty, save for various floating platforms. At the bottom of the structure, not far from where Curie and I stood, was a tall dome with indentations over its surface, like a golf ball.

Curie and I walked downward, surprised that Inland’s facilities extended so deep underground. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been surprising – they were a mining company, after all. But to see what their facility was used for was rightfully surprising, and although it should not have been, it was also equally fascinating.

As we neared the bottom, I was able to make out the floating platforms that hung around the core of the building. Strapped to each one was a tube containing fluid, and suspended in each tube of fluid was a fleshy mass resembling half of a human body. The dome structure contained controls that moved the floating platforms around, and as each floor became filled with platforms, the entire group of platforms shifted upward, filling up the column that was the Inland building.

Awestruck, I watched as a distressed human body was punched out of the dome with great force, only to be caught and suspended in midair by one of these glossy white platforms. Curie and I ran down the remaining steps to reach the dome. Looking around for the controls, Curie found that the dome itself was hollow. After a minute more of searching, he managed to pull down an entire virtual control panel.

Panes of glass floated around the entire structure; tubes of human flesh simply passed right through them. Together, Curie and I began examining the controls. Every time a body passed by us we cringed and closed our eyes. Neither of us could stand to look at the sight; although I did not know any of these people, I knew what Inland was doing. I knew because of what I’d overheard on Earth.

Inland was, without a doubt, the primary sponsor of Cydia’s fetch project. I wondered if, somewhere in this mess of tubes, my original body was floating. Lifeless. Half destroyed. Organs hanging, dangling like Christmas ornaments, as if my mutilated flesh were a tree. A soulless, useless tree.

I began looking for Derek’s body among these tubes. I knew it was a futile search; there were so many. Half of my district had been put in fetches. I would never be able to find Derek surrounded by half of an entire district.

“Hey, Torsten!” Curie shouted. “This thing has a door, and I think I’ve got it opening up now.”

I looked over at the dome; an arc-shaped entrance did seem to be opening up. As it opened, I began to see what was inside, and just how everyone’s body was being processed. In an elegant, yet rather disturbing, way, everyone’s unconscious bodies were lined up and carried across the inside of the dome. Hundreds of these unconscious people lined the walls of the inside of the dome. As I stared at the lineup of bodies, the ground began to shake, first slightly, and then violently.

The force of the tremors topped Curie and I over onto the floor. Curie hit his head and lost unconsciousness temporarily, but my fetch kept me awake throughout the entire event. Tubes began to fall. Bodies moved around. When it all ended after about a minute straight of strong tremors, I got up and looked around and outside the dome; several tubes had broken on the ground, and the fluid was leaking everywhere. Scraps of human tissue floated downstream with the blue liquid that preserved it. I caught my first up-close glimpse of one of the bodies; what it looked like to be transferred into a fetch.

The head looked shrunken, shriveled. Wires wrapped around the skull, and exited behind the neck. Throughout the rest of the body these wires propagated, attached to temperature sensors, heart rate monitors, and all kinds of various electronics to ensure that the body stayed alive during the transfer. As for the missing organic components of the cadaver in the tube, I could only imagine what they had been used for; what sick and twisted designs Inland might have had in store for the “scrap” parts of the human body.

Behind me, Curie began to shuffle and regain consciousness. As he lifted himself up, his black hair covered in the flowing blue runoff, pointed out something in the corner of the dome that I hadn’t noticed before; a light tram. Unconscious bodies came through the exit of this one-way tram and were immediately strapped to the wall – in a similar fashion as I had been when Maiya and The Embassy dealt with me – and shifted around the inside of the dome.

I looked to see if, by some twist of fate, Derek’s body was anywhere inside of the dome. My gut, unfortunately told me it was far too late for that. That if he had come through here at all, he was already in a fetch – already set to be Inland’s guinea pig.

We both heard footsteps; Inland employees had felt the tremors and rushed out into the core of the building to see if anything had happened to their precious store of bodies. Unable to locate anybody I knew, I directed Curie out of the dome, who sealed it up using the same command he’d found to open it. We both took the glass panels and began tossing them out of sight, letting them shatter off in the distance before anybody could know we had touched them.

We began to escape through the stairwell. I was ashamed of myself for finding nothing – yet I felt, and knew, that Derek was somewhere inside this facility. If he was here, I now had no idea where to look, and I didn’t have the time to search every room in the gigantic facility. As I pondered, I heard Curie’s frightened scream and turned around.

Two Inland security officers had found him just before he’d gotten onto the stairwell, and I had kept running. From in front of me, I could see more officers coming down the stairwell. We had been spotted, and were under assault for our crimes of trespassing. As the officers neared me, I readied my fists and gave them a beating from hell; my fetch was so strong that it easily overpowered the officers. After I was free for a moment, I turned around and dashed back to rescue Curie from the grasp of the his two attackers.

Although I sprinted as fast as I could to reach him, I was too late – the two men began hoisting him up and carrying him away, cuffed. I reached for my Mu Gun, hoping to use it to dislodge Curie from their hold, but another shot was fired before I could do so.

I looked around the room; where had the shot come from? Another shot was fired; a strip of light flew across the room and hit one of the officers in the skull. He toppled over, blood gushing from his temples.

In the confusion, Curie scrambled away, and more gunshots came from within the room. Within three shots, the second officer was dead. Together, the two officers rested in a pool of crimson, their blood intermingling with each other’s. I looked around the room. Facing straight up, into the circle of white, floating platforms and corpses, I shouted, “Who’s there?”

To my surprise, the shadow of a person appeared from the stairwell above. As they jumped down from their balcony, I began to make out who our savior had been – but as I did, I didn’t want to believe it. From the shadows came Maiya, bloodstained, with a look in her eyes so murderous that my legs wouldn’t even take me a step back.

Word Count: 23,477

I found myself inside of a small room laying on my stomach, where I could hear voices talking. Behind me, the black void persisted, ready to take me in again. I shuffled away, afraid, and picked myself up quietly so that nobody would hear me.

Through a nearby window I could see endless green plains. Trees, grass, ferns. A clear, blue sky. A pond, filled with sparkling water – such a rarity on Cydia that I’d never seen a pond for myself before. It was something I’d only imagined in my dreams. I looked at the portal I’d come through and I knew at once that I was on Earth, nine light-years away from my home planet. For some reason, I felt more at home on Earth than anywhere else.

The voices were talking about Cydia. I heard chatter from the man I’d spoken with earlier, the stout one in the suit. His voice was distinct enough.

“If Cydia ain’t going to survive much longer, we need to do something about it. We should move everyone to Earth.”

“No,” said another voice. “Don’t be an idiot. If we move anybody here, the natives of this place will react negatively to the invasion. We’ll be killed for sure. We need to keep on track with the fetch project. The tests we’ve run in the mines are showing pretty positive results—”

“Yeah, sure they are. That’s why that one guy went and hung himself when he found that he had a new body, yeah? Workin’ real well for you.”

“It’s the safest thing to do. If we market the fetches and subsidize them, everyone should be able to survive a failure. We set up databanks to hold their souls in the meantime that won’t break down during a catastrophic event, and if anybody is killed they can be sent to the database.”

“What if I don’t wanna be part of a database, eh?”

“I suppose you could live here on Earth, then. The fact of the matter is, I’m running Tychon now. Earth isn’t going to accommodate shit, so we need to make our own accommodations. And if Cydia isn’t going to be able to house that, we don’t exactly know any other hospitable places to live. You guys think I just walk in every day with some shitty smile, but I’m living in this fetch. It works. I am proof that it works, and the mines are proof that it works. Countless lives have been saved because of fetches.”

“I’m not sayin’ that the fetches are bad. I just don’t think that they’re gonna do what you want ‘em to do when the time comes. I still don’t trust ‘em. I mean, whaddaya do with my original body? Keep it frozen somewhere?”

“It’s useless scrap. We need to mutilate the old bodies to move their souls into the fetch. They can’t be reused.

“Yeah, and where’re we puttin’ all these ‘useless scrap’ bodies, then? A magic compost heap?”

“We can send them through one of the other Corpus Locks. I’ve got one set up in Central Square that goes to the middle of nowhere. The last guy that went through there was dead as soon as he got out. Perfect place to dump bodies.”

“Alright. You can have yer shot at it. But you ain’t touchin’ my body until this stuff gets proven. I want to see everyone on Cydia in a fetch in the next year, if we even last that long.”

“You act like you’ve got authority over me.”

The man chuckled. “I kinda wish I did, so you’d stop making dumbass decisions all the time.” I stepped closer, but the floor creaked. “Hey, did you hear that? Anyone there? Micah, you there?”

I began to hear their footsteps coming closer to where I was. They were leaving their room and coming into the room with the portal. Thinking quickly on my feet, though frightened out of my wits, I tried to find a place to hide. There was nothing that would conceal me – the room was empty with a wooden floor and stone walls held together by primitive mortar. There wasn’t any furniture. I was completely exposed.

Without thought, I looked at the portal, and then at the lush green fields beyond. I could have either rushed into the fields and hid there – at the expense of my life at the hands of the natives – or returned back to Cydia through the portal to escape the stout man’s discovery. I chose the latter.

Before they could reach the room, I leaped into the black void and was rushed back to Cydia through the power of the Corpus Lock. I found myself once again face down on the floor, only this time it was on the floor of the Cascade Inn. The dust from the carpeted flooring filled my mouth, and I spat it out, then wiped the taste of filth from my mouth. Standing up, I contemplated what the two men had been talking about: The fetch program on Cydia. I couldn’t help but think about Inland being involved somehow with the entire venture.

That the fetches were protection against some sort of disaster surprised me the most, and made me more determined to figure out what was happening beneath the surface. Their conversation had confirmed my notion that Inland was capturing residents below the surface and placing their souls inside fetches, but how were they doing it so quickly, and for what purpose? What the kid upstairs had told me earlier only egged on my notion that something was fishy about Inland’s skyscraper at the edge of town.

I went back to the fifth floor and knocked on his door to see if he was around. The kid opened the door, leaning against it. “What do you want, boss?” he said to me, looking in another direction.

“I saw it. I saw Earth.”

“You shitting me? You went there?” The jealous look on his face was priceless. I knew that would reel him in.

“Yeah, I did. There’s a portal open downstairs.”

“That’s one of mine. Who’d be stupid enough to leave it open if they weren’t using it?”

“Oh, people were using it. I overheard some people say some things. And that’s why I’m here to talk to you. You want a fetch. I know how you can get a fetch, but I’m wondering if you’ll come with me for a bit and help me out. You see, I’m looking for my lost friend. Me and him, we come from beneath the surface – in the mines. I know it’s tough to believe, but I was tossed out here on the surface by Inland, a mining company. They fired my ass. I don’t know why they did it, but I think it was because I’ve been looking into some interesting ‘business practices’ of theirs, you could say.”

“So, you want me to help you find your friend. That it, boss?”

“Well, yeah, I do. But I need to get into Inland’s building first. You know more about it than anyone else around here – you know what it looks like, and that it has no doors or windows. I figure if you’re so good at building gadgets, you could build something to get us into that building.”

“Sounds like a pretty sweet deal for you, boss. You get to see the inside of that building, maybe find your friends. Sweeten it up for me, too.”

“You can have a fetch,” I said. His face went red; I knew that was exactly what he wanted, for no other reason than to go to Earth. I could see this kid in the future, living on Earth peacefully in those grassy fields, with his own house, without worries. I wish I could have seen myself there, but I could only see myself back down in the mines, doing my job, living my life. Just like The Embassy said I was doing.

“You’re not just shitting me, are you?”

“Not at all. Inside that building, there are tons of fetches. That’s where I was forced into mine. Sure, it was a little unpleasant, and I didn’t get to pick it. But I got one. If you’re up for it, I’m sure the people in there would be happy to force you into a fetch, too.”

The kid leaped up, eager to go. I told him to hold off, that we were going to have to be careful about who we interacted with on the way there, and to make sure that no people from Inland or the Cydian government got involved. I was afraid of Inland because I thought they might really do something to this boy, and I was afraid of the Cydian government because they supported the fetch project. One of the men on Earth had been a Cydian ruler – he was one of several men who led Cydia’s parliament. That the fetch project might have been his idea was mind-boggling, and also sickening.

“Don’t pack up anything,” I said. “You’re just going to over-encumber yourself. Take only the stuff you think you’ll need to get us into that building.” He nodded, and picked up a few supplies, but left everything in his room for the most part.

We took the light tram downstairs and exited the Cascade Inn. When the manager asked why I was checking out so early, I shrugged and said, “I got all the rest I needed,” then continued walking out with the kid.

“Say, kid,” I said to the boy, “what’s your name?”

“Adam Curie,” he said. “What about yours, boss?”

“Stop calling me boss. It’s Vince Torsten.”

“Torsten, huh. Alright, boss. I mean, Torsten. The light tram is that way, so let’s get going.” We walked up to the light tram, but could see from a distance that it wasn’t glowing the soft blue it usually would have. When we finally reached the tram itself, it was obvious that it was out of order. Without means of transportation, Adam Curie was demoralized.

Luckily, I was used to long trips walking on foot.

“We can walk to the building. It’s not that far – a few kilometers at most. A morning run down in the mines is worse than that, so pick up the pace and let’s get moving if you want that fetch.” I started walking; I never realized that district 137 was like a giant Cascade Inn – it was completely run down. Roads were not properly paved. The Leaf was spread about everywhere, but in many cases its code had been scrambled and decayed, causing the Leaves to flicker or show graphical artifacts. Buildings were missing paint. Pathways in between buildings were narrow.

I couldn’t even spot a Central Square building. It was as though district 137 had no community to gather.

We were about three-quarters of the way to the Inland facility when we heard footsteps behind us. The scum of district 137 crept through the back alleys of buildings within the urban stronghold. As soon as we heard the footsteps, they were immediately replaced with gunfire. Four men approached us, their clothes tattered, their faces desperate for anything they could get, pointing laser pistols at our faces.

I felt around in my pocket for anything that might be in there. I thought,perhaps, that my fetch might surprise me. As soon as I felt a solid object, I pulled it out.

I was greeted by what I was certain had been lost. My Mu Gun.

Either Maiya or The Embassy must have slipped back into my pocket before throwing me out the window. Probably for my own protection in district 137. I looked at the thugs approaching Curie and I, and raised my Mu Gun’s nozzle to their torn-up faces. They laughed, and kept on laughing until I pulled the trigger.

A blinding blue light encapsulated them, trapping them for as long as I saw fit. They struggled, firing their laser pistols at the barrier of the light capsule to no avail. With the power of the Mu Gun, I lifted the capsule into the air and lodged it into a narrow alley between two apartment high-rises. The capsule stuck, leaving the four thugs floating in midair.

As I walked away, an unnoticed fifth thug approached me from behind and hit me in the neck with his fist, hoping to subdue me and rescue his friends. Although it hurt, I was hardly injured. I grabbed his arm, turned around, and punched him square in the face, not thinking at all about what I was doing. From the looks of it, I broke his nose pretty bad; he bled all over the ground. At that time, I wasn’t aware of how much strength my new fetch gave me.

That one punch alone was enough to shock the other four thugs into fear. I released them from their capsulated prison, and they ran away without a second thought. The light from the capsule returned to my Mu Gun, safe and sound. Curie applauded, amazed that I could handle myself against a few thugs. I told him not to worry about it, that I had bigger things to worry about. That he’d see what I was really dealing with, soon enough.

The other end of the light tram was broken, too, but not in the way the first end had been. No, this end looked legitimately busted up – as if some external force had come in and pounded, hard, on the Slate caging of the tram’s bulb, breaking it up and scattering the nanobots within. It would probably never work again. Not until it was replaced, anyway. This was all located suspiciously only a few hundred meters from the Inland facility; I could see the skyscraper more than clearly from where Curie and I stood at the broken light tram.

Together, we marched toward the building. Like soldiers, we were prepared to risk ourselves on the battlefield. We were cohesive, a single unit, and we had but one operation: rescue the prisoners of war.