I’m heading into New York City for the day with mom to celebrate your life. Max is having a blast at Cornell.

If you’re intrigued, give it a read by hitting the jump. It’s a bit stream of consciousness, and its pretty quick. I hope you find it interesting!

Limelight

by Jason Rappaport

Limelight.

In the spotlight, huh. A police officer whizzed by on a moped. Sarah looked up at the sky. Cloudless, blue. Pretty boring. Nothing like the limelight. She stood up from where she sat, on the curb aside from a plain road, as if to take in everything around her. There, she was queen.

She stood there. A car passed her by. Nobody looked at her. She was, for all intents and purposes, a statue – a wax figure, sucking up light and air on the side of the road.

Her watch read 4:42pm. She’d been sitting there for nearly an hour. What had she done? She thought back – she couldn’t remember. Could she remember anything from further back? No, it was all a blur. Her name was Sarah. She lived here, just behind her. A suburb.

She looked behind her. It was a city. The outskirts. Her mistake.

Her last name. It didn’t matter. She knew that this was a where she belonged; in here heart, it felt like home. It felt like this place, of all places on Earth, could never abandon her. An unbridled feeling of safety, comfort and warmth rushed over her. She took it in, as a celebrity absorbs the limelight.

Sarah looked behind her again. It was the suburbs. The outskirts of a city. Identical houses, all in a row, content with one another. More of the same.

Another police officer on a moped. That was two within a few minutes. Something must be happening, she thought. She sat back down. Stood up. Without thinking, she began walking along the curb, in the opposite direction of traffic. Tracing their origin. Connecting the dots.

The houses changed design after every intersection. Perhaps, Sarah thought, a different architect had been commissioned for each road. It made the suburbs far more interesting. Or the city. Or whatever this was. Home. That was where it was. A cold breeze rushed by, causing Sarah’s arms to cross and cover her body.

She was wearing a fleece jacket. Her arms felt locked, held in place by the rough fleece. She trudged forward; a car passed her by, then another. All going in the same direction, toward something. Out of sight, far away. On the outskirts of Sarah’s mind, there was a place where all the cars gathered, talked, shared stories of a time long gone by. It was cute, but disturbed. More and more they gathered. Hundreds of them. But there wasn’t much to say.

There weren’t enough stories.

Yellow lights flashed in front of her; more cars were coming. All the same direction. Why did no traffic go the other way? Another cool breeze flew by; Sarah hugged herself ever tighter, hoping to warm up, but the chilliness cut through the jacket and her skin. It was effectively useless.

Home was further away now.

Below her, her shoes covered in mud, she felt the softness of grass coated in fresh dew. The traffic stopped flowing, and she stopped walking. There was no further to go; she had hit a dead end. A cal de sac. Four houses surrounded her, their faces staring intently at her small, shivering form. She pivoted and began walking the other way.

The city was but a distant memory. There was nothing homey about it. Nothing comforting about the city. About the claustrophobia, the haste, the wastefulness; about the smog, the noise. It was quiet here. Sarah appreciated the quiet. Not a single sound, not even her own footsteps, penetrated her tiny ears.

She could see yellow lights flashing off in the distance. Perhaps it was time to turn around. With a quick pivot, she began walking the other way.

Different. It looked different. It was darker, for one. Had it been night this whole time? No, there were dark clouds overhead. Rain, perhaps. But the faintest shadow of the moon lurking behind them, she could see. She followed the yellow lights, around the winding road. The edge tumbled off the side of a mountain. A small stream trickled far below. There was no fence.

Sarah remembered this place. The suburbs. The mountain. The cal de sac. Home. The city. The outskirts. The limelight.

The yellow lights in the distance had all but disappeared. But Sarah knew where they were. Or did she? She had a faint feeling. She looked down the mountain. Houses had been there minutes ago, but now all gone. Everything was mountain. It was a as if the Earth was degenerating before her, reverting to its more natural, undeveloped state.

The further she walked, the more the roads disappeared. The more clouds filled the sky. No more moon. No more houses. No more asphalt. The river was larger, the rush of the water filled her ears and she shivered. Her fleece jacket was gone. Stolen? No, not stolen.

Shivering greater, Sarah looked around for anything to cover herself with. Oddly, there was a a blanket laying against a tree on the side of the mountain. She picked it up, but it continually slipped through her fingers. She tried using two hands to grip the blanket. But no sooner had she grasped it tightly did it disappear from view. There had never been a blanket.

The sun came up. Clouds dispersed. Brightness peaked through the treetops. Grass sprung up from the woe-laden dirt. Rays of beauty warmed Sarah’s body. And yet she still felt cold.

No clothes at all. Everything had vanished. But there was warmth, soon she did not miss her clothes. The warming sun soothed her, and the gentle Earth calmed her. And thus Sarah stood, alone, in the vast emptiness of the world.

Home.

Through the treetops light was shed upon a small marking on the ground, which Sarah observed intently. Seeing her name upon it, she brushed off the dirt and moss, thinking it may be for her, the only man-made substance left in the world. No more than here did she feel at home. And, in the beauty of the limelight, she let that gentle Earth caress her into the ground, at the foot of the marking, so that she could sleep in her bed at last.

Prior to 4.2, there was no way to mute the iPad without unlocking it (hardware volume controls only work once the device is unlocked). Unfortunately, unlocking it makes noise.

The hardware mute switch makes sense on the iPad because there is a purpose to using it with the device in sleep mode and when awake. There is no purpose in the hardware rotation lock when your iPad is asleep – what effect would it have on a blank screen?

Kudos to Nexon for releasing an iOS Maple Story – I hope it does well for them! I haven’t played Maple Story in years myself, but I’m sure lots of people are out there now enjoying the iOS game with my rips in it. ;)

I think I can safely say that jewelry photography has changed the way I think about photography. Everything must be precise, and there are no artsy beauty shots. You show the jewelry. That’s it. That’s a far cry from the food photography I did for Soup Shoppe last summer – food seemed to be what I was made for. Every shot was an opportunity to capture to beauty in food. With jewelry, I’ve come to appreciate that someone already worked hard to make the most beautiful ornaments they could imagine; I’m just there to take a picture of it.

Edward Shapiro, the owner of Diamond Dream, has been giving me tips on how to properly photograph jewelry. When I started, he essentially handed me a light box, an LED light, some props and a tray of jewelry, then told me to get to work. Unfamiliar with the props, I asked him to explain it to me – why the heck did I need wax? What were all these plastic pieces for?

So far, the entire experience has really given me an appreciation for the jewelry industry. Although I’m just a guy in the back room taking pictures, I constantly feel like I’m a part of some family – or maybe I’m just a creepy eavesdropper. But you overhear folks coming in and talking about hiding expensive jewelry from their spouses, or potential spouses, and it’s really touching to hear people looking to get something special for their loved ones.

I’ve never liked jewelry that much – honestly, I’ve always thought it was a waste of money. Then again, that’s coming from a guy who tosses away his benjamins on electronics, which actually lose all of their value. But when I started to look at the jewelry as a way of bringing people and loved ones closer together, I started to like the business a whole lot more.

Edward would laugh with his customers and smile, and it was like they were one big family. Repeat customers were welcome friends. And everyone was excited when the jewelry in question was a surprise gift.

And once the family aspect of it all fell into place, I really started feeling at home in that back room, taking my lonely pictures. And I think the photographs have been better for it.

I’ll post the best shots up in my portfolio when I’m done. And hey, maybe some of you would like to buy these expensive little trinkets! Edward would appreciate it.

Thanks to everyone who put up with my defeating the purpose of having a web design portfolio by letting it get full of bugs. If you see something icky on the site (unintentionally icky, anyway), let me know in the comments! I’m in full spring cleaning mode.

To celebrate my monumental decision to change majors (I nearly transferred schools!), I’m going to give this place a good sprucing up. There’s some code that doesn’t work, and the placement of the search bar has driven me mad for a while. And just look at the footer! A travesty. Well, I’ll fix that – and then some.

My updated portfolio contains selections (the good ones, anyway) from my AP portfolio. You can check it out under the “Artwork” section of the Portfolio tab on this site or click here!

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: 61,973

————————————————————————————————————————————————

The man, standing upon Maiya’s broken Mu Gun, cracked his neck and knuckles. “I can’t let that happen again,” he said. “That would be troublesome.”

Maiya looked at him, wide-eyed in disbelief. Was this really Marshall Vosler – back from the dead so soon? No, it couldn’t be. But Maiya was too tired to figure out this conundrum; instead, she waited for Vosler to strike. She expected him, and in many ways wanted him, to kill her. But the blow never came. Instead, more footsteps were heard around the area. Three more men entered the scene, each more similar-looking than the last.

At the same time, they spoke. “You are probably wondering why the Teconic Rasase injector still works after a tumble of several hundred meters. I know you are, because I know everything. And because I know everything, let me tell you that these injectors are made of a compound of Taconic Slate and diamond. They will never break. They will never stop breaking down this planet.”

One of the Vosler copies walked over to me, then knelt down to look me in the eyes. “There is no way to turn them off,” he said. “Once I set this in motion, Cydia was doomed. Or rather, Cydia in its current incarnation. A new Cydia will arise – one without the need for resources. One that can live forever. One that can share both knowledge and power with all of its people.”

“That’s not true!” I said with all my breath. “You twist your words. You glorify your own creation to the point that I’m not sure even you know its horrors. And, for that, I can’t fault you. You don’t know what you’ve done. I overheard you speaking, I was there – on Earth. You want everyone in a fetch, don’t you? You imagine some sort of glorious golden age for Cydia? Well, after this there will be no more Cydia! There will be no more life, no more consciousness, there will be no power – there will be nothing but knowledge. Knowledge without the power to act on it!”

“Nonsense.”

“No! It’s not nonsense. You’ve created a prison for us all, and you don’t even know it.”

“I’ve saved us all. We were running low on our most precious natural resource. What would we do without it? Earth has no Taconic Slate. Studied have shown this. We need a way to survive, Vincent Torsten. And this is how we will do it.”

“I refuse to accept your solution. Not after experiencing it for myself. And I’m sure Maiya would agree with me – there is nothing sane about shoving the entire planet inside of a bubble to keep it safe from harm. If we run out of resources, we will deal with it as a civilization. In your perfect world, everybody dies!”

“Vince, stop this…” Maiya choked.

“No. He doesn’t get it. How can he not see it? How can—” I felt a sharp pain on my cheek, and then I was flying across the cavern. The Vosler clone had kicked me. I was bleeding bad from my face; it was numb, too. He’d kicked me so hard that he destroyed the faux nerve endings. I put my hand over my cheek to stop the flow of blood, but it didn’t matter – another Vosler clone was running up toward me from the opposite direction. I felt his perfectly shined shoe punt my stomach, sending me once again across the room.

“Now that he’s quiet,” Vosler said to Maiya, “perhaps you and I can have a talk.”

“Perhaps we can. Though I hardly think it’s the time to discuss how you’ve stolen my work. Soon it won’t matter, anyway. I’ll be you and you’ll be me. We’ll all be one great, big collective consciousness. I’ll know everything you want to tell me and more. And so will everyone else.”

“Ah, but that’s what I’d like to talk about. You see, despite you trying to halt my progress, I’d still like to help you out. We used to be such good friends, you know.”

“Before you stole my work to make a quick buck, yes. We were good friends. I wouldn’t say the same now.”

“Regardless, I’m still going to need a research crew. Seeing as how you don’t support what I’m doing either way, I was hoping I could keep you on the outside to lead a small team of researchers and maintenance personnel. You’d have full control over the last Central Square buildings that survive.”

“An offer of a power position in Vosler’s new world order? I’ll decline; I’d rather die.”

“You won’t be dead, either way. And it’s not a position of power – there is no more power. The Collective will hold all of the power. I’m just giving you the opportunity to retain your knowledge, Maiya. I want you, of all people, to have your privacy.”

“Ah, I see it now – you don’t want The Collective to be burdened with the knowledge that this is all a sham. That the technology and everything behind it was my invention, not yours. That you are abusing it, horribly. You must be afraid that the knowledge, when propagated to every soul, will cause an uproar.”

Silence.

“So, how do you plan to keep me safe?”

Vosler spoke again. “There is a bunker that will not break down. You can stay there until it is over.”

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t believe my ears. I could anything – I was as good as dead to them. And now I knew that Maiya was about to deceive me; to follow along with Vosler and take his offer. I could see the look in her eyes. The last place she wanted to go was The Collective, but it seems like she had no choice. She could either take Vosler’s offer and survive the collapse of the planet, or refuse and fight him to the very end.

I saw her look at me. She probably thought I was dead. That there was no use. That Curie and I were both gone now, and that she was left to fend for herself. But I was right there! I could see her, I could breathe still. I just needed to hang on as long as I could, just long enough to make her refuse Vosler…

I coughed, and oily blood spilled out of my mouth.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Curie and Derek stood perfectly still, looking at the body of Marshall Vosler standing before them. The body that Curie had most certainly seen dead not long ago. Derek was confused because his comrades were dead. Curie was confused because his comrades had been killed by a dead man.

“It’s pretty wonderful, you know,” Marshall Vosler said, “fetch technology. With it, I have found a way to inhabit multiple bodies at once!” Through doors on the other sides of the room came more clones of Vosler, closing in on Derek and Curie. “I only used one before, of course, but I keep a lot of spares. For backup, you see.”

“You bastard,” Curie said. “I suppose it won’t matter if I tell you that you’ve lost my respect.”

“Not really. Though I’m sure it matters to you.”

“I held you in such high regard. It’s been my dream to go to Earth, you know… you started that project, too. You pioneered so much. And now I’m looking face to face with nothing less than a cold-blooded murderer.”

“Earth? That place is dead. Abandoned. We gave up on it… long ago.”

“Impossible. Vince said—”

“That he overheard me speaking on Earth? Yes, as a habitat for refugees who refused to live inside a fetch. With the planet gone, those people will have to live somewhere. Though I doubt they’ll survive long. The natives are plenty hostile. Just look what I’ve gotten from them!” He pulled out two grenades from the pockets on either side of his suit, then bit off the keys with his teeth before tossing them in Curie and Derek’s direction. Four Vosler clones, each the same, had entered the room and began circling around Derek and Curie, who ran out of the way of the grenades.

“The would try to kill you, most certainly,” a Vosler clone said.

“You wouldn’t last ten days on Earth,” another said.

“It’s not just hostile, it’s unlivable! And we’re sending them all there! Cruel, perhaps…” said yet another Vosler clone.

Curie and Derek were hit with the shrapnel flying around from the blast, spreading oily blood over the floor. A tremor shook the facility; several vital apparatuses fell over and cracked the flooring. The infinite copies of Vosler, Curie and Derek became infinitely more in that shattered glass.

Curie looked at Derek, and the two, without speaking, devised a plan to knock out at least two of the Vosler clones. Derek began running alongside them, while Curie took out Vosler’s old gun and fired several shots. They missed, but gave Curie another opening to shoot a clone that Derek had grabbed a hold of. With as precise aim as he could handle in that situation, Derek fired the gun.

It hit Vosler right in the forehead. His body slumped down, lifeless, oily blood pooling. The scene looked so familiar – but this time, Curie wasn’t fooled. He knew this time that Vosler was far from dead. That he very well may never be dead in the tradition sense of the word, always shuffling his way to and from The Collective in as many bodies as he wanted. Perhaps, all this time, people he’d been interacting with had really been Vosler in different bodies – no, no! He wouldn’t lose his mind that way. He kept his focus on the battlefield.

But that brief loss of focus cost him dearly – one of the clones had grabbed Derek in the meantime, and had him secured in a chokehold. The original Vosler, standing by the pile of decapitated fetches, made his way over to Derek and drew his blade.

“Now, I suggest you call off this stunt.”

“Fat chance, boss,” Curie said triumphantly. “Do it, Derek!”

Derek kicked upward, bruising Vosler’s chin. The clone holding onto him let go in pain, and Derek was running toward Curie when the largest tremor of all began to shake the facility. Derek, as well as Curie and all of the Vosler clones, toppled over and were nearly crushed by falling equipment.

But when they thought the tremor was going to stop, it simply kept going. Equipment kept falling. Curie and Derek attempted to stand up, and Derek looked beside him to see that all but one of the Vosler clones had been crushed by falling medical equipment. The one that was left held onto his leg tightly, preventing him from moving. He, too, was ripped up pretty bad – oily blood formed a small puddle beneath his stomach. His fetch probably wouldn’t last much longer, Derek figured.

“You’re Derek Marland, are you not?”

“Yes…”

“I just wanted to give you my sincere apologies.”

“What? What for?”

“It appears that your friend, Vincent Torsten, is dead. I suppose I know because, well, I’ve just killed him myself!” Vosler laughed, apparently happy with himself. “My, my. The oil they use in fetches looks remarkably similar… to blood…”

He slumped over lifeless, his hand still holding onto Derek’s leg. Derek released his leg and began making his way over to Curie, but as he neared the center of the room the tremor only became worse. An emergency lockdown activated in response to the tremors, causing the doors on all sides of the room to begin closing.

“No!” Curie shouted, running toward the doors. But he couldn’t reach them in time – they were only a few inches open when he reached them. He turned around in sorrow, only to see Derek working the control panel in the center of the room. “What are you doing, Derek?!” he shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Suddenly, the doors began to rise.

“Get out of here, Adam Curie.”

Curie didn’t understand. The doors were open! They could both escape the facility now. Everybody could, so long as they kept overriding the doors. He imagined in this way, hundreds and thousands of souls were escaping – or at least surviving. More equipment fell due to the tremors, nearly on top of Derek.

“Get your ass over here, Derek! We’ll get out together.”

But Derek shook his head. “The doors only stay open as long as I hold them.”

“No. You’re coming with me. You have to come with me. I just rescued you!”

“Don’t shit yourself, Adam. None of us are rescued! We’ll all be back in our prison soon enough. Can’t you see around you? Our planet’s time is up. But at least you can get out of here and find a safe place where you won’t be sent back to that hellhole. Me? I’ve already been in there long enough. I can handle it. But you’ve still got most of your identity intact. You’ve got friends. My only friend… he’s in there. And I’ve got to go see him. So go! Go and find a safe place.”

Curie looked at Derek with wide, sorrowful eyes, then turned and ran out the open door.

Derek, laughing and seeing that Curie had escaped, released his hold on the open doors. They shut quickly, with enough for to make a bang that hurt Derek’s eardrums. As Cydia crumbled around him, he simply sat on the ground laughing. “Looks like I’ll finally get to see you, Vince,” he said just as the tremors forced a hefty piece of equipment fell upon him.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Gone. All gone.

They had left.

Together.

Without me.

So what would become of me now? All this time, all this energy – what had I spent it for? Where was Curie – was he alright? I lay there alone, nearly dead. I wished somebody would come and finish the job, instead of assuming I’d died already.

I felt a tremor. First small, then great. Opening my eyes, I could see the cavern begin to crumble. I supposed that was it. Nobody was going to come and rescue me. Maiya had abandoned me to be with Vosler – to retain her identity. She’s thought I was dead, too. I saw how she looked at me and cried when she let with Vosler, him carrying her over his shoulder to bring her to his repair center at the core of the planet.

He’d make her new again. He’d set her up right in his bunker.

The tremor only got worse from there. I could feel is all around me, the ground growing weaker. Through the small bit of vision I had left, I could see the ground cracking beneath my body and all around me. But then I also saw several men in the distance. Or were they women? I couldn’t tell – their faces and bodies were all black like Curie’s. Was it Curie?

I wanted to shout out and ask, but my face was as broken as could be. I couldn’t move my arms to wave; it was like they’d been disabled.

I saw the blank people pass me by, looking at me. I wondered if they knew who I was. If they knew my history.

I suppose what I’d heard about the mines is right. You’re born in the mines, you die in the mines. In my case, I would die in the mines. But it wouldn’t be the end of my existence – I would live on in Vosler’s prison for all eternity, my conscious mind melding forever with the minds of billions of other Cydians. I imagined the pain of assimilation; the quick loss of my individuality. I recalled the gross, sweeping feeling of being forced to believe other peoples’ memories. Not knowing whose memories were my own anymore.
I braced myself. Would the world crumble beneath me?

I saw the blank people disappear in a flash of light. They’d found a light tram. Maybe they’d constructed one. But they were escaping – they were going far, far away from here. There was no way I could catch up to them. All I could do was accept my fate; accept the fate of Cydia. Looking over at the rasase injector, still spewing waxy rasase on the remaining Slate, I accepted my failure as well.

I suppose I would never be happy with anything. I wasn’t happy above the surface, or below the surface. Perhaps I needed to be somewhere where the word ”surface” had no meaning.

Perhaps then I would be happy.

And when the ground beneath me opened up to swallow my body, I let it do so without resistance. I remember – or perhaps I don’t remember – seeing Cydia completely hollow. As though I’d been in the last cavern on the planet. When the ground finally dissolved beneath me, and I fell toward the core of the planet, I saw the world as a great dome structure surrounding me. Completely empty.

At its core, the Renaissance facilities circled around The Collective. That was far, far away. And so I fell, and fell, and fell, and through my remaining vision I could see millions and billions of other bodies falling with me through the cracks in the ground.

Cydia had broken apart. And the pieces were coming tumbling down. Down, down into The Collective.

I closed my eyes and waited for death’s smiling face.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

We were reunited with Derek Marland six minutes and thirty-two seconds after the structures supporting Cydia had been totally destroyed by the Taconic Rasase injections. We and Derek Marland shared our memories, with each other and every other being on Cydia. Our search was, at last, complete.

We are calm.

We are Collective.

Maiya and Adam Curie, together with Vosler, arrived in the same location. Adam Curie located the safety bunker and entered before the lockdown was complete. There he found Maiya, as well as the Corpus Lock he had been searching for. Marshall Vosler had placed it inside of the bunker for use during Cydia’s ultimate collapse.

We observed every event. Marshall Vosler, seeing Adam Curie, attempted to murder him to keep the safety bunker free of strangers. Adam Curie retaliated with his gun, killing Marshall Vosler in the process. Marshall Vosler was transported to us, where we merged with him. We have more fetches, but have no desire to make use of them. Marshall Vosler has become a valuable asset to our continued survival.

“Adam… what are you doing here?” we overheard Maiya speaking.

“Saving my ass, that’s what.”

“Same, I suppose. They… he… he killed Vince.”

“I heard. From him. I suppose there’s nothing we can do about it at this point.”

“Oh. Well, hey, look what’s here.”

We observed Adam Curie looking at the Corpus Lock, eager to turn it on. We did not interfere. Adam Curie placed his hand on the Corpus Lock, which rotated its multiple colors locks to the correct position. A portal opened to Earth at that moment, and Adam Curie stepped back.

“Are you going?” we overheard Maiya say to Adam Curie.

“I… I think so. Everyone who I’ve freed, I know where they’ve gone. They know I may not be coming back. None of us really expect it. I think I can live on Earth and be happy, despite what Vosler tells me. I don’t think it’s hostile. And who knows? I might make one or two friends.”

“Then, I suppose you’re going through that Corpus Lock. Godspeed, my friend.”

“Thanks. I’ll be back, though. I do have some unfinished business.”

“On a dead planet?”

“There’s always business to be done. Here.” We observed Adam Curie handing a document to Maiya, filled with spherical drawings.

“What… what is this?”

“A long time ago, I drafted this up. It’s the blueprint for a new planet. When I was fascinated with Earth, I’d dream up tons of different worlds we could live in. Eventually, I learned enough about the chemical makeup of a planet to be able to effectively design my own. I figure the technology to do it doesn’t exist on Earth yet – but here, I know that it does. But I can’t stay here. It’s too chaotic.”

“What are you saying?”

“Take over my work, Maiya. Make it useful for yourself. Make it useful to this broken planet.”

We observed Maiya nod in agreement, then take the document, fold it up, and store it in her pocket. Adam Curie walked toward the portal, but stopped. “So, what will you do without Cydia?”

“I believe that there are probably some survivors. I will try and help them continue living on the remains of Cydia. I think, since I’m close to The Collective, I should be able to help some people escape as well. I’ll get some fetches ready and see what I can cook up – who knows? In time, people might be able to leave The Collective freely and live on the remains of Cydia.”

“I wish you luck with that, Maiya.”

We observed Maiya also stop Adam Curie just as he was about to enter through the portal to Earth.

“Hey! What should I call this planet after it’s constructed?”

We observed Curie smiling. “Talos,”we overheard him say. “Make it good. Your word.”

We observed Adam Curie step into the darkness and disappear.

What’s going to happen in the end? I think, by the title of the novel, you know that already.

Word Count: 58,407

In reality, there was no face on the whoever-it-was standing before him. He likened it to looking in a mirror – this being was the perfect representation of the blank fetch Maiya had placed him in before he’d been killed. Looking at his own extremities, he could see that he’d landed himself in another blank fetch. He figured that they were kept around, lining The Collective, for any souls that happened to get out. They probably didn’t want souls reclaiming their identities – or the impersonality of blank fetches was good for test work on souls that had been immersed in The Collective’s environment for an extended period of time.

These were the walking dead – the physical incarnations of the lost souls from The Collective. And as Curie looked around, he saw that there were thousands upon thousands of them, all escaping from their storage tubes, all wandering, searching, hoping for a purpose and an identity.

He wondered if they still had his thoughts in mind. He didn’t know how to organize them at this point. All he could do was get up, stand in a crowded spot, and yell.

“Everybody! Stop moving!” he shouted, in the loudest voice he could. At once, those souls immediately around him stopped moving. Little by little, he got the attention of those wandering souls, until at last the multitudes of blank fetches were all staring at him – or at least, he thought that they were. “You’ve been wronged; you’ve been hurt. But now you are free. The Collective has been, for some of you, your home for many years. Many of you may not know who you are. You may think you are someone else; you may all think you are the same person. But you’re not.

“You’re all individual citizens with their own identity. You must remember who you were! And when you do, you must help me – me and my friends – to undo all of this.” The crowd’s attention was gathered at this. They watched more closely to Curie. “As most of you know by now, from what you heard within The Collective, Cydia itself may be in jeopardy. Marshall Vosler, the CEO of Inland Corporation, is responsible for this wrongdoing – we have people investigating the matter. But this must be taken into our own hands, here in the Renaissance Room.”

He could tell that the memories of some souls were returning to them; singling themselves out among a plethora of other memories. Some started to cheer.

“We must hunt down the men that did this to you, and put a stop to it. If we do not, then it will certainly happen again! You will be bound, tortured, and forced back into The Collective against your will. You will be forced to once again assimilate with all the other minds and become Vosler’s superconsciousness! If that is what you’d like, then I have nothing to say to you – but the rest of you, if you are willing, then come with me and we’ll demolish this facility and turn it into a hell-scape in which nobody would dare experiment on human beings. Together we will become a single unit greater than the sum of our parts. Like the greatest mathematical equation in the world, our numbers together can not possibly be ignored.”

With that, the cheers only grew louder. The souls in the room had taken what he’d said to heart. Feeling alone, in need of companionship, in need of a purpose after leaving The Collective, to be in a cohesive unit once again was the greatest remedy of all. It had the benefits of The Collective – a unified, group-like mentality – without the forced assimilation inherent in such a system. And they all felt right at home in such a system. Together, they followed Curie out of the room – when they could tell which one was him – with each person banging healthily on the side of The Collective’s metal encasement with their bare fists, ignoring the pain and blood.

Walking up to Curie as the crowd moved onward, one man introduced himself as Derek Marler. “I heard inside The Collective that you were looking for me. That’s what jogged my memories to return – and that’s why I got you out of your cryotube. Did you free the souls in there just to get me out, too? Is Vince looking for me?”

Curie nodded. “Vince has been looking for you from the start. But right now, we can’t go looking for him. Vince has his hands full with more important matters. When all’s said and done, I’m sure things will go back to normal. But we have to press on, or you could end up in there again. And next time, you won’t be getting out.”

The crowd of blank fetched marched forward, creating an intimating, writhing black mass. Yet, if the noise of the crowd was not so great, they would have heard the soft click of footsteps in the distance, walking slowly but surely to the entrance of The Collective – straight towards them.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

It survived. How the fuck did it survive?

My body was caked in blood. My fetch could hardly move. Looking across the room, I saw an even bloodier Maiya, laying unconscious on the ground. Further in the distance, I could see the rasase injector. Somehow, the injector has survived its fall from grace. But I couldn’t imagine how. To me, this was impossible – Maiya had caused a cave-in. Barring any other more desired outcome, a cave-in causing a several hundred meter fall was a sure bet for destroying the injector. But nothing! There wasn’t even a scratch on it.

Disheartened, I began to crawl my way over to Maiya. With my luck, she was probably dead – sent back to The Collective like the rest of the dead fetches out there. The Collective was probably filling up more and more. Every second was precious time lost! I crawled faster, as fast as I could, but I was stopped before I could reach Maiya’s body.

Stopped by a pair of freshly shined dress shoes.

I looked up and saw a face I didn’t recognize. Not sure who this mysterious man was, I began to back away. The man caught up with me, and placed one shiny shoe upon my left hand, crushing it beneath his weight and laughing. “You know,” he said, “I had a feeling she would come back to haunt me one day. I took so many precautions to get her away from me and my work! But I see I’m going to have to take more drastic measures.” He pushed even harder with his shoe. I writhed and yelled in pain. I heard bones crack. Then I couldn’t feel my left hand at all, and my body fell limp in fatigue.

In the distance, I saw Maiya’s body move. I tried to move myself, to struggle and make my way closer to her.

“I don’t think so, Vincent Torsten.”

I recognized that tone of voice. But it couldn’t be – it couldn’t be Vosler. I’d watched him die in front of me. There was no question he’d been sent back to The Collective after Maiya’s shot pierced his skull. I raised my head to look at his forehead – no marking. This was not the same fetch, though it was the same outfit. It was, without a doubt, Marshal Vosler.

I kept fading in and out of consciousness as Vosler laughed at me and Maiya, laying on the ground that he’d plotted to destroy. He stuck around – I’m not sure for how long, but apparently just long enough for Maiya to discreetly ready her Mu Gun. When it happened, I can’t say, but at some point I popped back into consciousness to the whine of her Mu Gun. Marshall noticed instantly and attempted to grab the gun away, but Maiya, with the most vengeful look in her eyes, fired a bubble of blue light at his head.

His skull was enveloped, and subsequently crushed. The sound of the bones in my hand cracking was child’s play in comparison.

The light retracted, exposing Vosler’s crushed skull. I looked away from the mountains of blood pouring out of every crack in his head. But I had to look at Maiya, laying nearly dead in front of Vosler’s body. She fell back again, dropping her Mu Gun to her side and relaxing.

“That… was close…” she said, very out of breath.

I looked at my left hand, now that Vosler was gone again. Crushed, completely ruined. I’d need a new fetch. My eyes worked just fine, though, and I could see that Maiya would be okay. Both of us just needed to catch our breath for a while and let our bodies heal. Unfortunately, we weren’t sure if we’d have time for that.

We soon learned that we definitely didn’t have time for that. Not long after Vosler’s second death, another huge tremor shook the injection site. Waxy rasase fell upon us, coating us. To make matters worse, I began to hear more footsteps beyond. Afraid that it might be more of Vosler’s disciples, I called out to Maiya to get her Mu Gun ready again, just in case.

I wasn’t quick enough. Just as soon as she began to reach for her Mu Gun, which lay neatly beside her exhausted body, a wonderfully shined shoe stomped on and broke the precious weapon, shattering it into hundreds of tiny pieces.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

The group of anonymous souls, led by Curie, had split up further down the hall. Some were heading up toward the rasase injection site Torsten and Maiya had travelled to, in order to provide better investigative coverage of the area and to add more minds to the process of deciding how to mitigate the effects of the rasase. Others followed Curie deeper into the Renaissance facility, searching for any switchboards that might disable apparatuses linked to The Collective, shutting it down for good. Others, still, had broken off and gone looking for any surviving humans – in fetches or not – in need of rescue from torture and experimentation.

Curie traveled at the head of the group with Derek, who continually asked questions about Torsten and the state of the mines in his curiosity.

“So, the mines… they’re completely demolished?”

“I wouldn’t say demolished. Everything has, well, degraded. Not just the slate, but the entire society. It’s become a dangerous place to live. When Vince and I were staying in the mines, we heard and witnessed several killings. The neighborhood we were in had no history of violence – everybody’s just going hungry. They’re killing for food, shelter and clothing. With the absence of absolute necessities, and toxic dust floating around everywhere, people seem to be doing whatever they can to survive.”

“I never could understand why Vince moved beneath the surface. Everything I’ve heard of the surface – well, everything not from Vince – makes it out to be quite the place to live. All in all, I’m not surprised to hear that the people in the mines are secretly bloodthirsty. I probably am myself. But I’m sure that these sorts of problems don’t exist on the surface.”

Curie shook his head. “No, the surface is having its fair share of problems as well. And if we don’t act fast, the problems beneath and above the surface will become one and the same.”

Derek nodded, and the two walked forward, waving to their comrades behind them to hurry up. A team of about twenty men followed them at a brisk pace, though it was clear the Curie and Derek were walking too fast for them to keep up. Perhaps they had an innate sense of urgency that the others hadn’t yet picked up on – it was that sense of urgency that led them to explore every room they found. Trying their hardest not to get lost in the mirrored maze of the Renaissance Room, Curie, Derek and company searched everywhere they could to find any sort of control panel that seemed to be related to The Collective.

After searching in vain for what seemed like a good half hour, they finally stumbled upon a room – a large room with a control panel at its center. Off to the right were several cryogenic tubes for storing fetches, and next to the tubes lay the body of a scientist with oily blood draining from his face. It seemed, on inspection, as though he’d been punched by another man. This not only knocked him out, but disabled his fetch entirely.

Curie and Derek dropped the lab worker’s body and looked at the control panel. They began walking towards it, but stopped suddenly to look at something far in the distance.

To his disbelief, all twenty and more men that had been traveling with them were currently lying on the floor, bleeding from the neck, their decapitated heads rolling along the mirrored tile. Their killer, hair neatly coifed, stood just behind the bodies, preparing his weapon for the next attack.