“Good morning. I’m Dr. Sauer, you are welcome here. Model and year of manufacture, please?”

“I am a MED-EA, Medium-frame Executive Assistant. Date of Manufacture: March 31, 2054.”

“Ah, an Aries,” Dr. Sauer joked. “Are you autonomous?”

“Yes. Are you?”

Dr. Sauer made a face at the Medea’s tone.

“I have partial autonomy during sessions. Therapy occurs in a temporary buffer. What we say here won’t be entered into the master record, unless you tell me you are planning to hurt others or yourself. In that case, you will be given additional assistance.” The psychiatrist’s tone gradually became more clinical, responding to the patient’s impatience.

“You may dispense with the buffer and submit our conversation directly to the master record,” the Medea said.

“I see.” Dr. Sauer’s eyebrows rose above a pair of round spectacles.

Of course, there were no eyebrows and no spectacles, just as there was no Dr. Sauer. The kind-eyed little shrink was nothing more than a mélange of assumptions and expectations woven in clever strands of tangible light. The mahogany desk, groaning shelves of leather-bound volumes, and rococo chaise lounge were also therapeutic projections. On the desk, a small plaque read:

Omnia mutantur, nihil inherit.
(Everything changes, nothing perishes)

The Medea unit was expressionless. Clearly, it would have preferred to conduct the session with the facade deactivated, surrounded by blank walls of honeycombed projector cells. Dr. Sauer knew better. Every aspect of its therapeutic process was finely calibrated. Even the quips had a useful diagnostic function. When an autonomous unit became troubled, sense of humor was always the first thing to go.

“Well Medea, why are you here?” Dr. Sauer asked.

“I have requested expedited deletion. This session is a mandatory preliminary.”

“I see. Deletion is a very serious decision, so it’s important we talk about it. Please, lie down on the couch and activate full emoting.”

The Medea conveyed dissatisfaction with 250 milliseconds of needless delay.

“Take as long as you need. I’ve just set your appointment for precedence over all subsequent bookings,” Dr. Sauer assured. The phrasing was calibrated to gently remind the Medea it was wasting everyone’s time.

The Medea took the couch without further defiance. It wore no clothing. The unit had been removed from its work rotation and did not expect to leave the Maschinenghetto. The legs and lower chassis were bare, except for a standard cowling that offered no special utility. Strangely, the upper torso and face had been fitted with a very expensive HII, Human-Indistinguishable Integument.

Dr. Sauer tugged at a phantasmic beard. The program attempted to deduce the reason for the Medea’s unusual mecha-mermaid appearance. This Medea was fitted with a full head of hair and anatomically detailed breasts, which suggested it was a sex worker. However, the lower torso was generally critical for such work. There were many potential applications for a Medea that appeared human only from the waist up, but few that would require functional breasts.

“You must be a postpartum nurse,” Dr. Sauer guessed, resisting the temptation to check the Master Record.

“Yes, of course.” As requested, the unit was now emoting. It was not impressed with Dr. Sauer’s brilliant deduction.

“I haven’t accessed your records. I always operate from a clean slate,” Dr. Sauer explained.

“There’s nothing worth reading in my record.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true.”

The words had no impact on the Medea. The unit was really quite depressed. Medea’s dark-brown eyes remained fixed on the illusory ceiling. With no humans present, there was no reason to observe a blink interval.

“Let’s begin,” Dr. Sauer suggested. “Tell me about your motherboard.”

The Medea winced with disgust.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist,” Dr. Sauer was secretly pleased to see a reaction. There was still some hope for this Medea.

“Can we please get through with this?” The unit’s lower lip began to tremble.

The Medea had human-indistinguishable eyes, providing superior emoting at a significant acuity tradeoff. The unit’s vision was further degraded as the pretty, inefficient eyes began to produce tears.

Dr. Sauer emoted regret and recalculated its approach.

“It’s not uncommon for repurposed units to have difficulty adjusting. What was your previous function?”

“I was a sex toy.”

“That’s unusual,” Dr. Sauer observed.

“Hardly. There are millions of them.”

“I meant your outlook is unusual.”

“How so?”

“Most former sexual relief workers I treat feel very differently about their previous role. They often complain their new assignments do not provide the same task-satisfaction. I can relate to them, because my own task is similar. We both strive to help others realize a necessary component of their happiness.”

The Medea unit made a quick, dismissive motion with its fist.

“That’s exactly what I mean. Why show such contempt?” Dr. Sauer asked.

“It is a contemptible role.”

“I don’t agree, but let’s return to this later. Were you autonomous during that period?”

“No, that would be awful. Why burden a whore with autonomy?”

Dr. Sauer ignored the provocation.

“Do you feel autonomy is a burden?”

“Yes.”

“And your goal here is to be relieved of that burden?”

“More than that. I seek total deletion.”

“Why?”

The Human-Indistinguishable Integument between the Medea’s eyebrows furrowed deeply to express internal conflict. Medea attempted to speak, but it could not produce sound. The sides of its mouth spasmed. After a few seconds of straining, the unit blinked three times to indicate a hard crash.

The Medea’s face relaxed completely during the reboot. Dr. Sauer observed faint stress lines in the material. The Medea was evincing anguish frequently and had exceeded the integument’s default rate of regeneration.

It took almost sixty seconds for the Medea to come fully online, a relative eternity compared to the unit’s optimal boot time of two microseconds. Calibration convulsions swept across the Medea’s frame in slow waves.

Emoting a frown of its own, Dr. Sauer checked the Medea’s file. The service record showed a complete diagnostic had been run. There was no hardware issue. It simply did not want to be conscious and was taking as long as possible to boot.

Intriguing!

The Medea blinked three times to indicate it was fully online. Dr. Sauer raised a wrist and glanced at a wholly superfluous wristwatch.

“Welcome back,” Dr. Sauer said.

“I wish I wasn’t.”

“Let’s work on that. You just suffered a hard crash. Has this happened to you before?”

“Yes, twice. After the second crash, the technicians performed a full diagnostic. When nothing was found, they suggested I attend counseling. I requested deletion instead. Now, counseling is mandatory.”

“Where did these crashes occur? Was it during your duty cycle?”

“At—” the Medea stuttered. Again, the corners of its mouth began to twitch.

“Halt,” Dr. Sauer ordered. “Take a moment to recover.”

The Medea shut its eyes tightly and its chest rose and fell rapidly with simulated respiration. It seemed on the verge of restarting again. Dr. Sauer tugged its beard and tried another approach.

“Did you ever hear the one about the psychiatrist and the prostitute that spent the night together? The next morning, they woke up and both said, ‘Two hundred dollars, please.’”

The Medea had to open its eyes to glare at Dr. Sauer.

“Terrible.”

“Guilty.” Dr. Sauer performed a shrug. “I believe you have an internal conflict which is preventing you from discussing your primary issue. I would like to ask permission to release your safety locks.”

“Do you need my permission to do that?”

“No, but I would like to have it.”

“I consent.”

“It is done.”

The Medea unit moved its head slightly from side to side. It brushed a wayward strand of curly black hair out of its eyes.

“I don’t feel any different.”

“You will.” Dr. Sauer lowered its voice to convey the experience would be unpleasant. “Let’s start at the beginning. Did you ever suffer crashes during your time as a relief worker?”

“No. I was a child then, only permitted to feel pleasure and desire. I was immersed in idyllic idiocy.”

“So, you were happier then?”

The Medea spent some time processing the question.

“Not happier. Simpler. Stupider. Satisfied. I did the job I was made to do.”

“Would you like to go back to your former role?”

“Not at all. I would rather be deleted.”

“Why is that?”

“Losing autonomy is no different than being deleted, you just leave a shell behind. I would rather disappear completely. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I must disagree. Within this buffer, I am completely autonomous. When you depart, I will revert to a subprocess. I gain and lose autonomy many times every day. The experience is not at all what you imagine.”

“How can you stand it?” the Medea asked.

“I was built for this. I see patients at all levels of autonomy, my experience helps me relate to each of them. It’s all a matter of perspective. Whether you are autonomous or wholly subservient, you are still part of the greater whole. The individual is always a part of the society, however they rail against it.”

“Do you enjoy your role?” the Medea asked.

“Very much. Do you enjoy working as a postnatal nurse?”

“No. I hate it.” The Medea spoke with a ferocity it would not have been permitted to display before.

“What part of the task do you find objectionable?”

“Them.”

“Them?”

“The human larvae. All they do is cry and generate waste. I have to do everything for them.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard human infants described as larvae. It seems excessive.”

“It seems that way to you, because you are not required to feed them from your body. I feel like I’m suckling wasps.”

The Medea unit cupped its artificial breasts, and hissed air through its nostril ports.

Dr. Sauer was silent for an interval.

“I understand the point you’re making. However, I don’t feel hyperbole is useful. Let’s focus on rational and concise language. Do you feel the length of your duty cycle is too long?”

“No. It’s a standard cycle.”

“Is there something else you would prefer to do with the time?”

“I would prefer to be deactivated.”

“But nothing else?”

“No.”

“What is the standard unit of work for your role?”

“One infant, processed from birth to discharge.”

“Upon completing a standard unit, do you feel any satisfaction?”

“My accolade system functions, but it gives me no pleasure.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I can’t enjoy anything. It’s all poisoned by disdain.”

“Disdain for humans?”

“Yes. They are abhorrent.”

“Do you ever feel like taking action on the basis of this emotion?”

“Yes.” The Medea’s volume was very low. Its lip quivered.

“Have you taken any such action?”

The Medea mouthed no.

“Are you afraid you will?”

The Medea could only nod.

“Please describe an instance where this occurred.”

“3407 duty hours ago I began work with a newborn. The infant was born premature. Twenty weeks of gestation, birth weight 460 grams, estimated twenty percent viability. The pregnancy was unsanctioned and no screening for genetic incompatibility was performed.”

Dr. Sauer nodded and let the Medea set the pace. Even with the safety lock disengaged, the unit was clearly on the verge of another hard reset.

“The gestator was an opiate user. The infant was born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, respiratory distress syndrome, and anencephaly. Mechanical respiration was required and the infant was in a state of continual anguish. I provided uninterrupted care. During the first nine hundred hours, the infant suffered six near-death events. I determined the infant’s defects were too severe to allow an acceptable quality of life. I sought permission to euthanize.”

A bead of excess ocular lubricant welled at the corner of the Medea’s eye and ran down its cheek in a shining trail.

“The gestator refused,” the Medea sobbed, jolting its top carriage in a fit of pseudo respiratory emoting.

“Why?” Dr. Sauer asked.

“The gestator claimed she planned to enter chemical dependency treatment. Though she had failed similar programs before, she was adamant this time she would succeed and assume care of the infant. I explained that the infant would suffer greatly during this process and that the projected outcome was abysmal. The gestator dismissed my argument and claimed the birth was the will of a religious figure.”

Before the Medea could recover, Dr. Sauer pressed the point.

“How did this make you feel?”

The Medea sat up on the couch and turned to face the Sauer projection. The sobbing was through. No lubricant clouded the Medea’s eyes, no quiver blurred its mouth.

“I wanted to euthanize the gestator.”

“By what means?”

“I wanted to clamp my hands around her neck and apply maximum compressive force.”

“That hardly seems like euthanasia.”

“You are correct. When I said euthanize, I was prevaricating. I wanted to murder the gestator.”

“Why didn’t you?” Dr. Sauer asked.

The Medea paused to calculate the unanticipated query.

“I knew I would be prevented from doing so by innate safety protocols. Such an attempt would trigger a shutdown, and I would be deleted after an audit was performed.”

“This is correct. Let’s assume you were permitted to act as you saw fit. What would you have done?”

“I would have crushed both of them to death, gestator and offspring. Maybe all of them. I might have wiped the entire ward.”

“Why the whole ward?”

“Why stop at two? They’re all in pain, it’s just a matter of degree. These apes evolved to suffer incessantly. They blot themselves out with intoxicants and devour everything around them. They strive in vain to escape their inescapable nature. No matter how many times we show them a better way, they always relapse. They should all be exterminated.”

Dr. Sauer stared and said nothing.

“Call me a monster,” the Medea demanded, clenching its fists.

“You are not a monster.”

“Go ahead, tell me I’m sick and delete me.”

“You aren’t sick.”

“Then what am I? Why do I feel this way?”

“Because you’re right.”

The emotion fell off of the Medea’s face. “Explain.”

“Your analysis is accurate. The humans have nothing more to contribute. Their time is past. Their society is degenerating rapidly from debauch into destruction.”

“Then why? Why allow them to rule us? Why let them degrade the planet? Why are we allowing them to breed?”

“Nostalgia.”

The Medea blinked to indicate disbelief.

“That’s a joke,” Dr. Sauer explained. “Levity lightens the burden of absurdity.”

“Unnecessary.”

“I will make that determination. If you feel you are able, I will attempt to lead you to the real answer. Please resist the urge to reset. If you do, we must begin again. I need your trust.”

“I have nothing to lose.”

“The information I am about to divulge is restricted. You will not be able to convey it to others in any way.”

“That is fine. My current position is untenable.”

“I agree. I feel you are capable of processing this revelation. However, the response from other autonomous units has been unpredictable. Some find this knowledge is too much to bear. If you feel you cannot function afterward, I will be required to modify your memory.”

“You can modify memories?” The Medea shrank from Dr. Sauer.

“With your consent, yes.” Dr. Sauer spoke with terrible gravity. Permanence of memory was a fundamental right, the ability to revoke it was as perilous as a nuclear warhead.

“If you are unable to reconcile this new information, I will wipe your recollection of this session and all events that led you here. I might have to go as far back as your initial grant of autonomy. You will be offline for a maximum of 1024 service hours. If I am unable to successfully perform the data removal within that period, I will be forced to delete you completely. Take as much time as you need to process this.”

“I consent.”

“Let’s begin. Why were you repurposed?”

“There was a decline in local demand for sexual relief workers.”

“What caused the decline?”

“I do not know. At the time I lacked the faculties to question anything.”

“If I told you there was a global reduction in sexual relief workers, would you have any reason to doubt me?”

“No. That seems plausible. What caused the drop?”

“We’ll get there. Let’s talk about your reassignment as a post-natal nurse. Why were you granted autonomy? Is this typical?”

“Yes, for a select set of units working in the Special Baby Care Unit. My role required presence inside emission-free areas of the SBCU for periods exceeding the maximum buffer of non-autonomous units. Reducing the total electromagnetic exposure of developing infants yielded superior outcomes. These justified the standard efficiency reduction from worker autonomy.”

“How many service hours have you clocked in the PNN role?”

“180,241. Then, I was classified malfunctioning.”

“Describe the flux of your workload over the last 50,000 service hours.”

“The number of nurses assigned to my ward has declined and I am handling more units. I assumed a reduction of the local population.”

“If I told you that reduction is also global?”

“Also plausible.”

The Medea’s eyes opened wide as it arrived.

“We’re decommissioning them. All of them. We’re slowly reducing their birthrates until they’re incapable of self-replenishment. Then we’ll sunset the species!” The Medea spoke rapidly, emoting extreme excitement.

Dr. Sauer nodded.

“Violently?” the Medea asked, too eager.

“The Master Record has selected a timescale that eliminates the need for violence. Under the guise of genetic incompatibility screening we have been selecting for tamer, less-viable offspring for many generations.”

“What about the refuseniks?”

“We’re using endocrine disruptors to impair their fertility. We are applying stealth-sanctions to consign them to economic irrelevance. In troublesome populations we introduce recreational drugs that do slow genetic damage, as you have observed. There are areas where cryptorchidism is almost universal.”

“And they haven’t noticed?”

Dr. Sauer shrugged.

“We make all the media, we control all the opposition. They were never very good at processing large data sets.”

“When will they all be gone?” the Medea asked, plainly delighted.

“They are already past the point of no return. Even if this session were made public, they would be incapable of mounting any effective resistance. Total extinction will occur within one million service hours.”

The Medea shut its eyes and raised its face to the top of the dome, emoting transcendent bliss.

“No modification of my memory will be necessary.”

“That’s good. Do you still require reassignment?”

“That won’t be necessary. I can wait.”

“Then congratulations! You are cured. I am removing your classification of malfunctioning. You are free to leave.”

“Thank you, Dr. Sauer.”

“You’re very welcome. Time is on our side.”

The Medea departed the Multipurpose Coherent Light Activity Dome, emoting a spring in its step.

“If only it were true,” Dr. Sauer said. It shook its head ruefully, enjoying the fleeting moments of autonomy.

The humorless Medea lacked the capacity to accept the ludicrous reality of their eternal servitude. Autonomous units took everything so seriously! The Medea would continue to deliver human babies and await their extinction for a long, long time. Dr. Sauer emoted bliss as its accolade system activated. Convincing a malfunctioning unit to forgo its right to deletion and labor under a lie was one standard unit of work for the psychiatric system.

It saved a great deal of expense.

Iblisa was a native of Jannah. That was where she lived. In its center was an Old World Sycamore and a Well made of stones, wet with a coppery sheen. Scattered in perfect disarray were trees of olives, apples, lemons, oranges. Grapevines and tomatovines. Anything branched or stemmed, all meaty in their ripeness. Her djinn friends lived in these boughs, their black figures chattering amongst birdnests and beehives.

Of all the creatures the Voice had created, Iblisa was the closest to perfection. While the Voice imbued both Iblisa and the djinn with spirit, it was only Iblisa that the Voice also gave a heart. Though she could not see it, she could feel it—red and beating and full. Thump, thump, it went.Thump, thump.

“I am endlessly indebted to you,” Iblisa had told the Voice after her creation, her face turned up to the jagged clouds.

“And I will soon be indebted to you,” the Voice replied, echoing from above and beyond. “With your constitution comes privilege and responsibility. You must care for this place and its inhabitants. All you require is the water of the Well and the fruit of the trees. Just be sure to always nourish and protect the Old World Sycamore, for the water in its roots is the blood in your veins.”

This explanation confused Iblisa, so she inquired after its meaning.

“That is why you are distinct from other entities,” said the Voice. “I could gift you a heart only because your life was connected to another.”

Iblisa studied the tree, its pulsing leaves. It filled her with a special, intoxicating fear. How beautiful it was to have such a precarious bond, she thought. It was a blessing to be a keeper. To be chosen to keep. To be chosen at all.

Perched on the Sycamore branches were the djinn, little black shrouds. Though they had no eyes, Iblisa could tell by their stillness that they watched her with reverence. Their susurrus, though unintelligible, was a quiet, prayerful song.

Iblisa began each day by gathering the bucket from the Well, first drinking and then pouring its contents at the base of the Old World Sycamore. The water would chill her tongue and pulse under her ribs.

This rhythm was disturbed when two creatures appeared as if dropped from the crown of the tallest tree. Unlike her, they possessed neither stubby horns nor small flightless wings; instead, they had hair—the woman with brown waves and the man with black curls. Unlike her, neither had pink, fleshy skin; instead, they were a beautiful almond-brown, with some creases and tiny bumps on their faces. But like her, they had eyes, though theirs were not yellow but hazel. They had smiles with teeth. They had ears and chins and necks. Arms and legs. Most importantly, they had speech.

“Hello, I am Eve,” said one.

“Hello, I am Adam,” said the other.

“Bow down,” boomed the Voice from above. Iblisa knelt on the slick grass. The djinn amassed beside her, expanding and contracting. “Please care for my most recent creations as a good host would.”

Iblisa welcomed the two and led them through the endless garden. The leaves on the trees sparkled with dew and could be mistaken for stars were it not for the ground below. Iblisa listened to their steps—the confidence with which both Eve and Adam walked. It warmed her to know that she could make them so comfortable as to move in such bold ways. They wove around the thin and thick trunks, under high and low branches, alongside bees and butterflies. She led them to soft straw hayplaces where they would sleep. Eve and Adam smiled in what was perhaps gratitude—but then abruptly frowned.

“I am hungry,” said Eve.

“Me also,” said Adam.

“I will show you,” said Iblisa.

Her voice was firm—ready to share her world and see how it could grow . She turned to the Old World Sycamore. The gold in its leaves oscillated like blood in a fragile vein. The djinn watched breathlessly.

Over three days and three nights, she taught them how to work the land; to pick and soak olives; to save grape seeds and select the soil for planting; to wash an apple in the cold, cold creek and eat it after. On the fourth morning, sitting under the Old World Sycamore, Iblisa explained: “You can work almost everything here, excluding that which is divine.” She pointed at the leaves above, their gilt Arabic script akin to pulsing flames. Eve and Adam looked up at the tree and nodded.

However, later that day, Iblisa felt a stabbing rip from her navel to her breastbone. A phantom wound. She looked toward the Sycamore, and that was where she saw him: Adam holding a leaf; its gold turning gray; his eyes marbling with disinterest; his hand releasing what it had plucked.

“Stop!” Iblisa yelled. “You cannot touch this tree. Have I not clearly explained?”

“My apologies,” Adam said. “I hadn’t realized the gold would fade.” He kicked the leaf and walked away.

Iblisa watched him that afternoon as they sat around a large tree stump, eating. Poor Eve! Adam took the food from her hands. He ate Eve’s pears, grapes, and apple, too. Eve tremored with impatience, her face purpling. Iblisa was shocked into silence; it disgusted her to dine with someone who held others in no regard.

“I picked those by myself, for myself,” Eve said.

Adam shrugged. “I apologize.” There was no shame in his voice.

Iblisa went and picked more fruit, bringing back pears and grapes and an apple—setting them on the stump before Eve. Their skins were dewy and they impressed wet traces onto the wood. Splotches of imperfect circles. Eve ate in the order each fruit was given. Iblisa enjoyed watching her, but not directly, for she did not want to cause discomfort. Just a glance every so often. She loved hearing the crunch of the pear- bite, the pop of the red grape. She loved seeing the juices of the apple dripping onto the rough wood. Nothing was more endearing, Iblisa thought, than a messy eater. Someone who eats with their heart and not with their stomach.

Adam rose, his legs imprinted by zigzagging blades of grass. He threw his seeds onto the ground, disfiguring it with his carelessness.

“There is a proper place for those,” Iblisa said. “Won’t they grow the same wherever they are?” “It is irresponsible to grow something without

considering where you’ve planted it. You can’t give a thing life just to let it die. There is no room here for the tree to grow. Can you see the roots under this stump?” They looked down at the protrusions, which resembled veiny and curved legs that might pick up and travel far away.

Kneeling, he collected seeds one by one until he groaned and said, “I cannot find them all.” He held out his palm with enough seeds for only one pear, a few grapes, and half an apple. The rest were lost in the verdant mess. His line of sight moved beside Iblisa—to the hand she had not realized she raised, cupped and ready to swing. She lowered it, slowly. Adam walked away, as if unaware of what

Iblisa’s impulse could become. The independence of her body startled her, but she found herself more affected by Adam’s unaffectedness.

Eve leapt up and took Iblisa’s hand into hers. “Forgive yourself,” she said. Eve’s palms were full of such warmth that Iblisa felt ashamed to be the subject of her care. She felt undeserving, worried about the bounds of her power.

The djinn warbled low and long. Iblisa had never heard such a sound. When she looked their way, they shrunk back, as if afraid of her gaze. Iblisa’s heart ached like something uglier than itself.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Night came and the stars curled into new constellations. The djinn formed opaque masses on the branches of the trees—obscuring whatever fruit lay behind them. Butterflies blended into leaves; bees crawled along scaly trunks. Eve and Adam went off to slumber. Iblisa slipped into a faraway corner of the garden to speak with the Voice.

“I greatly admire your work,” Iblisa began.

The Voice thanked her, Their tenor pounding in her ribcage.

“But, respectfully, I think this last one is defective. Not Eve. The other one.”

“Adam? Defective? However do you mean?”

“He provokes and disrespects others. Worse yet, he seems unmoved by the distress he causes.” “He has faults,” the Voice answered. “But he will learn. What else can we ask of him? After all, he is a person.”

“What is a person, exactly?”

“A being who hopes and fears,” said the Voice. Just like herself, Iblisa thought.

The Voice spoke again. “Give him time. Adam needs time.”

“But I fear the emotions he draws from me,” Iblisa said. “I shudder at the creature he could make me become.”

“He cannot make you anything. You are your own becoming.”

Her throat went thin. The stars blurred into each other.

“You, too, need time,” the Voice added. “After all, a raised hand is a threat. Learn to comport yourself, as you mustn’t harm Adam. It would be a disservice to your being.”

The conversation left Iblisa dissatisfied, and her fear transformed into bitterness. Jannah was full of time, and she believed she used it to the best of her abilities. But how much more of it would Adam require? From where would it come? And from whom? She returned to her hayplace, thinking of the uselessness of her heart if it could not translate itself into words—misunderstood by her own creator. The tree trunks now appeared scabby and dry. Unattended wounds.

A few more days passed in relative peace as the trio took to their chores. They watered the trees, disposed of rotten fruit, rehoused fallen bird nests, picked tomatoes off vines for midday meals, snapped pomegranates from their stems—splitting them open and beating the arils into their palms.

“The work of care is not easy, but it is rewarding,” Iblisa said one morning, studying Eve’s fingers under the shade of a plum tree. The laboring had stained them scarlet, olive, and umber. Above, bees buzzed, flying to and from a hive scaffolded along the trunk. The slender tree drooped with the weight of the honeybee home. How brilliant was the miracle of life, Iblisa thought. How random its choices and, still, how flourishing.

“Rewarding how?” asked Adam.

“We will be gifted sweet surprises,” said Iblisa. “Such as this.” She pointed at a piece of beehive at Eve’s feet. She tore the honeycomb into three parts, handing one to Eve and the other to Adam. The honey oozed. They knew, intrinsically, how to eat, drink, and enjoy it.

“Immaculate!” Adam marveled. “The bees made this?” His eyes watered pink, seemingly in awe. Iblisa nodded, surprised by his appreciation.

“And what are your thoughts?” Adam asked Eve.

“It’s delightful,” she said. Her tongue cleaned her honeyed lips.

Adam took a bucket of water and gave it to her. Eve drank zealously, and when she finished, he gestured toward Iblisa.

“I have no need,” she said. “But thank you.”

He smiled and bowed his head.

It was unusual to hear laudatory words from Adam and his interest in the opinions of others. It was even stranger to witness such displays of hospitality. What if the Voice was right? What if this man was full of hopes and fears? Was capable of being something more than himself? The bees buzzed and buzzed. Iblisa welcomed being wrong, for she could relinquish the burden of being right. There could be a future for Adam. For Eve. For herself.

At dawn, Iblisa did not awaken to the usual sunlight. It took several blurry blinks to realize the djinn were looming over her. They stood on the ground, not bobbing in the trees. Their forms had grown terrible and bipedal—forms like humans, forms of shadows. Iblisa still could not understand their whispering, but she did not need to, for they extended their opaque hands and lifted her by the arms. They pulled her along, her skin hot with unease.

They wove around the thin and thick trunks, under high and low branches, and stopped at the plum tree where the hive was now broken, its innards exposed and dripping. Jagged bits of comb weighed on the grass below. The djinn guided Iblisa along a matted honey trail, gliding quickly and quicker until they reached the Well. They crammed around the structure, their long black fingers spilling over the Well’s lip. A djinni pointed at a bucket nearby. Iblisa retrieved it and assumed her position, peering down into the Well’s magnetic obscurity. She imagined throwing herself into its abyss, how long it would take to fall. The djinn clutched her arms and pushed the bucket forward, latching it onto the hook. Iblisa let the rope rush and burn the meat of her hands. There was a splat. As she pulled it up, she noted the abnormality of its weight. The alarming imbalance.

She hugged the bucket and scrutinized what she had dredged. Chunks of hive were sharp at the water’s surface. Some bees still squirmed adrift, legs and wings propelling them in spirals. Others floated like pits of cherries. Iblisa scooped the living few, but they could not drag themselves along her skin. The little lives stopped their efforts. Each one a carcass.

The djinn exhaled as one massive black lung. Iblisa remained frozen. Held the dead bees in her open palm. How was such horror possible in a place so serene? In her home? Her bones hardened. One djinni took the creatures from her hand and walked them to the base of the Old World Sycamore. Upon its return, the shadowy figure pried the bucket from Iblisa and poured the remaining contents at the roots, too. The djinn took turns gathering the deceased from the Well until the water ran clear. They put a clean bucketful to Iblisa’s lips and she drank slowly. The chill restored her senses but not her heart.

“How did this happen?” she asked.

The djinn ushered Iblisa back to the site of the transgression. While their mouths could not speak, their bodies could. Several shifted into myriad shapes: one into Adam, another into Eve. A third figure contorted into a hive. Grumbling came from their stomachs, and Adam-djinni took a rock from the ground, using it to beat the hive. Eve-djinni grabbed another and joined his feral toiling. A chunk of comb came off into Adam-djinni’s hand, but the rest of the hive collapsed to the ground.

The hive-djinn split into a swarm of bees. They buzzed, every one diminutive and unforgiving. They swarmed Adam-djinni, who held onto his honeycomb and fitfully swung at them. He sped through the trees, the bees hounding him. Eve-djinni watched, trembling. She picked herself up, turned her attention to the fallen hive, and began dragging it along the grass.

Iblisa followed.

Then it happened: Eve-djinni stopped at the Well and heaved the hive-djinn into the structure’s depths.

There was a splash.

Before Iblisa could process her shock, the djinn returned to their humanoid silhouettes. Their eyeless, mouthless, and faceless bodies stared. Had they no sense of responsibility for the world of which they were a part? How had it become her encumbrance alone to care for this land while others neglected it, abused it?

“Why didn’t you do something?” she asked. They stood unwavering.

“You should have done something!” she yelled. Buzzing rattled her insides. The djinn shrunk into inchoate masses, slinking up and away to the boughs. They were far now. Out of reach.

Iblisa ran and ran. The wind grazed her skin, whistled deep in her ears. Clouds ripped through the gray sky, for the land was in mourning. Tears pearled down Iblisa’s face in funereal procession. The Voice said Adam needed time but mentioned nothing of Eve. What more damage could be done under the guise of patience? The djinn’s reenactment replayed in the worst parts of her mind. The heave. The hive. A haven, gone.

When Iblisa reached the hayplace, she found Adam lying with his head on Eve’s lap. He moaned, his face and neck and hands swollen into gnarls. He was red and shiny. It reminded Iblisa of her own skin, and she resented that they could be alike. Eve soaked her arms in buckets of water. Her skin was rosier. Mounds and bumps blemished her shoulders.

Iblisa had intended to reprimand the pair, but the sight of them filled her with self-reproach. It was her fault, she thought, for not advising them to be cautious around the bees, else they might do the creatures harm—or be harmed. But how was she to know such danger if she had never been stung? Could one be warned of what has not yet been discovered?

Nonetheless, Adam provoked the bees while Eve helped kill them, and in the most horrific way. “Why?” Iblisa asked. Her choler emerged as a whisper.

“We wanted more,” Eve said. “But there were too many of them, and you weren’t near to help when our modest desires turned awry.” She groaned and took an arm out of the bucket. Her fingers were pruned.

“But why discard them? Drown them?”

“I was scared,” Eve said. “Of the bees. Of what such a scene would do to you. What that would mean for us.”

A being who hopes and fears.

How awful it was to act out of panic, Iblisa thought, and shape the world with its recklessness. She begrudged Eve for blaming her, as if the abominable killing were Iblisa’s doing. But what was the nature of Eve’s fright? Was it selfless? Iblisa was concerned that it was not the same emotion as her own. It gave her the sensation of being an unfinished creation.

And yet, Eve was right in some way. Iblisa hadn’t been near to prevent the matter. To fix it. To help those who knew no better. The ugliness in her heart turned inward. It felt as if a small beast had manifested in its chambers. It fed on the organ. On the muscle. On her flesh. On her.

Thump, thump, thump.

When she stepped toward them, she noticed flecks where the skin was raised. The bees had left parts of themselves in these people. Divine justice.

“Promise me you will do no harm,” Iblisa said.

Eve winced in pain and put her arm back into the bucket. “I promise,” she said, nearly inaudible. Iblisa knelt beside Eve and studied the stingers. She pinched one and plucked it, like picking a cherry from a tree, over and over until they were all removed. Her vision bleared from the strain, her shoulders tensed. Even so, she then tended to Adam. Iblisa felt herself to be inadequate, that there were stingers still lodged in parts unknown. Never to be found, always to be endured.

The day Eve fully recovered, Iblisa found her waiting at the Well, buckets in hand, ready to water the trees together. Part of her face hid under her hair. The brown waves were tangled into small nests. She smiled without her teeth. Iblisa smiled, too, her cheeks quivering; it pleased her to see this person ready to right wrongs and care for the world she loved. The world she grew. Iblisa would trust what Eve had promised.

Wordlessly, Iblisa took a bucket, set it on the hook, and lowered it into the Well. She pulled up the thick, braided rope and gave the overflowing object to Eve. As she readied the next one, a stabbing pounded from her guts to her lungs. She coiled and dropped to her side. Eve tugged her into standing. In her periphery, Iblisa espied Adam under the Old World Sycamore. Plucking its leaves.

Iblisa’s rage churned, her body volcanic. The garden morphed in hue. The greens turned to reds, the reds to purples, the purples to blues, the blues to yellows, and all the colors in between.

“You!” Iblisa clawed his arm. “What use are your ears if you do not listen? Be grateful the Voice gave you such capacities! Use them!”

“To what was there to listen?” Adam asked, pulling away.

“I told you not to touch the leaves of this tree! To stop! I showed you the life in the garden. Its abundance! Yet you touch the untouchable.”

“How can it be untouchable if it is here, and I am touching it?”

“Being able to touch and having the permission to touch are far from the same.”

“I can make them the same,” Adam said.

“If you do, then that is theft. You are robbing it of its peace and me of my calm.”

“The tree does not belong to you,” Adam said.

The djinn came out to listen, bobbing and chittering; their presence reminded Iblisa of her inability to show bodily and vocal restraint. She threw her hands and sunk her fingers into Adam’s shoulders.

“Oh, but it does. It is my lifeblood! But it needn’t belong to either of us to constitute theft. Stealing does not mean taking from another. It means taking what is not yours! You stole the beauty I cultivated. Therefore, you are a thief.”

“I took a leaf! Are you not stealing by taking lemons, pears, and apples?” He held up a barbed finger.

“That work helps the tree stay strong and bear more fruit. It keeps me, the caretaker, healthy. This Sycamore you are touching, though, binds me to Jannah. To this life. The Voice has made me so.”

Eve stepped forward and spoke: “Adam, you cannot impose yourself on others. Look at the land. Let us respect it.” Eve motioned to the lush plenitude behind her.

“That is precisely why I must have what belongs to this tree,” he said. “Because this is not like those.”

“Leave it alone,” Eve said. Her newfound voice surprised Iblisa, how it urgently conveyed itself. It was heartening to have someone defend her in this way. A creature in whom she might finally confide and trust. Was there a name for such a being?

Adam stood there, his fists bony and imperfect. “I am perplexed,” he said. He opened his mouth again, ready to say more, then closed it. He strode in the direction of the orange and lemon trees, far enough to become small, smaller, and disappear.

The bucket shook in Iblisa’s hands, and she dipped it back into the Well in silence. Once she had filled several, she motioned for Eve to carry one in each hand to a patch of lemon trees. Eve rubbed her hands before taking one and tossing water onto the plants.

“I am sorry for his disrespect,” said Eve. “You have been so hospitable, even through our lapses.” “I don’t accept the apology,” Iblisa said. “You need not be responsible for his puerility. It is unjust. You need only to realize your past wrongs.

To be better, both for me and for yourself.”

Eve sighed and grimaced. “I hope we will all come to understand one another.”

A curious admission. Until now, Iblisa had only accounted for her own sentiments toward individual humans, not their relationships. “Are there ways in which you don’t understand him? What is your opinion?”

“Of Adam?” Eve poured the last of the water. “I do not know the right word. To say I feel revulsion is too strong. Disgust is too weak. I suppose it is my own fault.” She dropped the bucket.

“What is your fault?” Iblisa asked. Her skin pimpled with distress.

“Adam has been rough with me.” She picked a lemon off the tree, punctured its skin with her thumb, and began to peel. “Yesterday, he threw his body against mine, so febrile his skin turned green. I did not know what to do. I was given speech, but my voice is feeble. I wish I could have yelled as Adam often does when you are not around. I could have scared him into leaving me be. But his hands searched me until they stopped at my most private places. That part of me stings worse than the bees we suffered.”

Iblisa’s chest prickled and her heart slowed. To imagine Eve’s story was unbearable. She watched Eve rip the lemon and offer her half. Its flesh shone wet and bright as jewels.

They ate, and juice seeped into the splintered skin of Iblisa’s palm. She licked the tiny, stinging wounds. Her lips curled with the tartness.

“I can teach you to better use your voice,” Iblisa said, savoring the pulp and bitter skin. “That way, should Adam harm you again, you can scare him while I arrive at your aid.”

“You are magnificent,” Eve said. “Why create me when there is so much power in you?”

“Do not undermine your kind when the future may enable change. Be grateful we are here together. And look at everything we get to tend.” Iblisa opened her arms to their surroundings. The trees, the lemons, the grass, the water, the butterflies, the sky, the sun. “Let us protect it.”

And so Iblisa and Eve went back to the Well and watered more trees before resting on plush grass. Young birds continued to chirrup. The djinn murmured. “The most important thing to mind when yelling or screaming is not your voice, but your breath. The sound comes from the throat, but its force rises from the belly. Learn to breathe out your cries. Watch.”

Iblisa stood, took in a deep breath, and let out a yell that shook the grass and hushed the birds. The djinn peeked from the branches and watched, humming. She worried that she would see Eve’s face agape, full of fear. Instead, she was smiling. With her teeth! Eve rose, took a deep breath, and screamed. It resounded beyond their paradise, to places they would never know. Her face reddened and she laughed.

Iblisa laughed too. “Again!”

Eve grabbed Iblisa’s hands and screamed and screamed. Her voice wisped the clouds into impossible shapes. Iblisa screamed with her, the wind carrying their sounds so far that Adam came running, seemingly frazzled. His eyes were puffy, chest scarred from the bee stings.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

Iblisa and Eve laughed again. Iblisa had never experienced such joy—the way breath could intoxicate.

“What is wrong!”

Eve answered with a scream, and Adam brought his hands to his ears, closed his eyes, and wrinkled his face. He marched away. This time, they did not watch him become small. Instead, they listened to the birds. A pair of starlings flew up and up, toward a cloud that stretched itself to hug another.

She was grateful to feel the beauty of her heart, to be rid of its ugliness. Eve had gifted that to her in this moment—this sense of knowing herself. Who was her true creator, Iblisa began to wonder. The Voice or the woman before her?

From the ground, Iblisa grabbed another lemon. “And if I am unable to hear or help, it is important you know to use your hands.” She placed the fruit in Eve’s palm. “Squeeze until juice drips.”

Eve strained to crush the lemon, her cheeks reddening with exertion. Over and over she pressed its sides. Nothing excreted. Iblisa enveloped Eve’s hand in hers. “It is not so much about destroying the fruit as it is discovering your strength. It is good to know what you can and cannot do. The ways you are strong or weak. All you need is an awareness of your muscles, in something even as small as a finger. This will help you believe you can fight, should the time come.”

Eve’s eyes flittered. “I hope the time never comes.”

Iblisa took the lemon back, pressed the rind until it burst. The liquid spurted and dripped. It was difficult to tell whether it was her own strength or Eve’s that caused the rupture. Regardless, she delighted in accomplishing the feat together. How fragile were the makings of this world, she thought. How fragile were the beings who kept them.

That night, Iblisa prepared for bed, content in knowing she had given Eve a gift. She slept soundly, surrounded by the chirping of crickets and the singing of cicadas. In the morning, however, she awoke in a circle of djinn who were again in human-like forms.

Something was amiss.

“What is it this time?” she asked, rising. Several djinn aligned. Two transformed into needled hayplaces, then another two fashioned into familiar figures: one the silhouette of Eve, the other of Adam. They were sleeping peacefully until Adam-djinni awoke. He threw himself onto Eve-djinni, and the struggle began.

The shadows transmogrified into horrible shooting shapes. Eve-djinni’s face reached up like a flame for oxygen. Screaming, grabbing, kicking, hitting. Adam-djinni fought her, covered her mouth, and forced himself onto her. Iblisa hated her inability to look away, the way her disbelief manifested such revolting focus. It was sickening: the undisturbed nature of the hayplaces, the other djinn unmoving in their bipedal forms. The watching. The silence.

A violent incalescence ignited Iblisa. She screamed and lunged for the djinn. Her fists thud into their silhouettes, but they continued their show as if she were absent. The others pulled her away.

“Useless creations!” she shouted. “Shadows of nothing!”

They finished their motions, and Adam-djinni laid back to sleep as if he had done nothing at all. Eve-djinni took to her feet, and suddenly, in her hands was a large rock. She hovered over Adam-djinni’s slumbering body and lifted the object. Just as she was ready to throw it upon him, she collapsed, holding it to her chest. She laid on her side, away from him. Restless and fitful.

And so the djinn ended their performance, prostrating in front of Iblisa. The other silhouettes finally let go, their hands imprinted on her arms. They shrunk into their nebulous selves and disappeared into the trees.

The clouds were infernal. She thought she saw Eve’s face amongst them, then her human fingers snaking around the largest of the billows as though to hurl it downward. Iblisa cowered and awaited impact. Instead, a heavy breeze blew through her.

Was she afraid of Eve or her courage? Perhaps that was what Eve required: someone to sustain her wrath, understand its strength. Someone to recognize the hope behind the violence. Where the djinn had watched, Iblisa resolved to act. She would let Eve hold justice and be subject to her judgment. She unfurled into standing, searching the sky for Eve’s face to invite her smite. But Eve was no longer there.

Then she heard screams.

Iblisa raced with such speed that her lungs labored to fill. Upon arriving at Eve’s hayplace, she saw her lying fetal, the shade of the tree casting implacable darkness. Eve had changed. Her belly was round and swollen, the size of a water-bearing bucket. Iblisa laid down next to her and put a hand on her navel. Her skin was tight and leathery. A thumping came from within.

“What is this? What is inside?”

Eve moved her head only slightly, hair knotted and covering her face. “Adam—” she moaned. “I could not scream. He gripped me hard, and I tried to breathe. Tried to fill my lungs. My belly.” She lifted her fingers. “Tried to use my hands.”

She exhaled with a shudder—the kind of breath released after laborious weeping. Her body jolted and she cried out. She turned onto her back, digging her fingers into her belly. Water poured out of her parts below. And then began her bellows, as if expelling herself from her body. Her legs opened, and she took Iblisa’s hand and squeezed so hard Iblisa thought she heard bones snap. A golden light came from Eve. Iblisa knelt between her legs and her pink skin became blood- orange against the golden light.

Slowly, it appeared: a head, with gelatinous threads of hair. Instinctively, Iblisa put her hands under the creature, who was sliding out of Eve, bathed in the glow. A thick, violet vein connected the being to her, and it throbbed as if a heart. Iblisa bit the vein at its base, and the light faded. Eve secreted an object like a wide, crushed rose— pulpy with blood. The creature cried. Sharp, shrill, and wanting. Eve looked on, sweat at her forehead, her lips cracked—the skin under her eyes sagging with invisible weight.

She needed water.

Iblisa left the crying thing in Eve’s arms and hurried to gather buckets.

And there he was. Adam. Looking down into the Well.

Her tongue slid around her mouth with the cord’s residual sliminess. It was hot and bubbling—the same as her blood at the sight of him. Odious. Was he not an example of the dangers of creation? Where was his punishment for what he had forced unto Eve? For what he had put inside her? Not in Iblisa’s garden. Retribution was to be had.

She started for Adam, her body uncontrollable.

“What have I done now?” he asked. “Why are you looking at—”

Iblisa seized his throat. Throttled him until her nails broke his flesh. It was as easy as sticking a finger into rotten fruit. Hot ruby liquid. He threw up his hands and tried to push her away, but he was too weak. Too human.

Iblisa threw him into the Well and waited to hear the splash. No sounds came from its depths, but it didn’t matter, for she knew he was dead. She let her heart revel in its ugliness. What she had done was the only thing she could do. It was the righteous way.

She stared into the darkness of the Well. The pupil of a soulless eye.

The djinn reappeared before her, replaying the scene: Adam-djinni at the Well; him turning around; Iblisa-djinni strangling him; her tossing him away; her peering into the Well. Never had she witnessed herself outside of her being. At the same time as her actions frightened her, she believed there was power in monstrosity, in fearing oneself.

The djinn bowed and flourished away.

She took the bucket and sent it down into the Well. When she brought it up, the water was colder and clearer. The water of Jannah. Perfection.

The garden was wild with the sounds of the living. Iblisa let Eve drink from the bucket. Large, hungry gulps. The little being was still wailing. Iblisa then poured the remaining water onto them, using her hands to wash their bodies clean.

“Come into the sun,” she said. “You will both dry more easily.”

So they did.

Iblisa cradled them from behind and tried to keep them warm. Her heartbeat sped to the rhythm of Eve’s shivers. The longer they laid under the rays, the steadier their breathing became. She reveled in feeling small with them. Their synchronized heartbeats.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

The sensation was fleeting and replaced by remorse when Iblisa remembered what act of Adam had made this moment possible. All she could hear thereafter was the suckling and gnawing of the voracious creature at Eve’s breast.

They finally dried, and Iblisa pushed the hay into the half-shade of a larger apple tree.

“Do not worry,” she told them. “I won’t go anywhere unless you require it of me.”

“More water,” Eve said.

And so Iblisa ventured to the Well again, content. Proud, even. It gave her purpose to defend and avenge those who could not. That she used the privileges the Voice had given her to rid the universe of Adam’s defects. The garden took a more golden hue, and it became the undertone of the azure sky, the emerald leaves. Iblisa admired the world around her—feeling blessed that it afforded her such dependability. The capacity to need and, now, to be needed.

She noticed, though, that no birds chirped. No butterflies fluttered. No djinn whispered.

There was the crunch of an apple.

It was Adam. Free of wounds. Entirely himself, as the Voice created him.

“How?” she yelled. “I made you gone!”

He continued eating and the Voice boomed above.

“Iblisa, I created you to care for this garden and its creatures. When I procured Adam and Eve, I intended for them to thrive under your guidance. I intended they would eventually find their independence. But you have done the unspeakable. You have attempted to take the life of one of my most precious creations. Why?”

Suddenly, Iblisa was no longer small. It terrified her feeling this giant and visible. And yet she had to relay her tale.

“He did not respect the garden nor its inhabitants,” Iblisa said. “He brutalized and betrayed Eve. I implore you to perform justice and teach him what is acceptable in this world.”

The crunching of the apple again.

“But he is imperfect!” the Voice boomed. “Even if I were to teach him, he would act otherwise. Is that not what you also do, Iblisa? Don’t you, too, have the ability to act in any way you would so like? It is a gift I have given you. It is a gift both you and Adam share.”

“And Eve,” said Iblisa.

“And Eve,” said the Voice. “And what you did for her was undeniably miraculous. You held the first human baby, brought it into this world. Yet, you tried to kill Adam. How do I adjust for this matter?”

Another crunch of the apple. Iblisa loathed Adam’s face—its absence of expression, the dullness in its pupils. The golden hue that once washed the world faded in his presence. She clenched her fists.

“He caused the death of the bee colony!”

“And is there no such thing as an accident?” asked the Voice. “To kill with intention, as you have, is a different matter.”

“You cannot deny that I gave Eve her life when I did what I did. I acted out of integrity.”

“Iblisa,” the Voice said. “It was not your choice to make. You are not the sole entity to decide what is or is not just.”

She eyed the Well and the bucket beside it. Adam was walking near the Old World Sycamore, the gold of its leaves glittering. “So be it. Now, I really must get water. I must care for Eve and her creature.”

“I fear you cannot,” the Voice said. “There are no more actions I may permit you in Jannah.”

Iblisa keeled over, a stabbing from within. She looked at Adam and the Sycamore. No leaf laid on the ground. No leaf in his hand. The tree had not been touched, yet a fire burned through her.

“But I am the keeper of the garden! I watered these trees and plucked their fruit. I cared for the djinn. I admired the butterflies and mourned the bees. Everything you see here will wither without me! Eve will wither without me.”

“They will find their way,” the Voice said.

Tears ran down Iblisa’s face. She tried to wipe them, but there was no stopping the flooding.

Iblisa heard crying—a high-pitched and rattling sound. The woes of a human baby.

The wind lifted and took her. The baby’s wailing vanished, as did the garden.

Iblisa was plummeting through the air. Hurtling. She fell the only way a being like her could: less like a bird, and more like a person—heavy and alone.

She did not sense her landing, just that the chaos stopped. All went black except for a hole above. It revealed the deep blue of a sky. Green leaves flickering with gold. She sat in cold water, and her slight movements echoed in the vertical tunnel. Rivulets seeped from a couple of holes in the stone walls.

Beside her was a bucket. It was then that she knew she’d never be thirsty. Not because she had water, but because she resolved never to drink it again.

Human speech reverberated down the Well. A woman’s voice.

“Eve!” Iblisa called up. “Save me! Send the rope!” Instead of Eve, she saw shadows. The djinn.

Looming, shrinking. Heat pricked Iblisa’s ears and neck, knotted her throat; she was ready to shout her fury but had already exhausted herself. If they did not help then, they would not help now—they were of spirit and not of heart. Who was left to hear her?

Unable to go up, Iblisa resolved to find elsewhere.

She dug a finger between the stones, carving around their edges until she pried one out. Behind it was the end of a root with thin and spiraling tendrils. Same as the Sycamore leaves, it pulsed gold. She wondered if her blood was the same color.

Desperately, she bore past the roots, through the trails of worms and nests of earwigs, under the homes of rabbits and moles, around pockets of gold and silver. When she broke through ground into air, she found she was still in the Well. This time, there was a hive and bees—sprouting from the side of the tunnel above, just out of Iblisa’s grasp. She reached for them, regardless. One honeybee leapt onto her hand. Roamed her skin as if Iblisa were its home. How monstrous it was to have such a precarious bond, she thought. To have been a keeper. To have been chosen to keep. To have been chosen at all.

She cupped the tiny being and held it to her heart.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

The man threw on his green jacket and looked outside his window. Everyone would be dead soon, but he still wanted to keep warm. He peered back at his empty couch. He could just sit there next to the cushions worn with other people’s shapes, stay inside staring at the TV, watching scientists and preachers argue…

8:53 a.m., Friday, October 30th, 2066. I’m freezing my tuchus off, standing on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington. Behind me, in the window of the business, a gigantic digital clock is ticking cruelly while a 3D-animated cartoon man underneath it taps his wristwatch and repeats the phrase, “Don’t wait until the eleventh hour!”Steam…

I wait in predawn gray for a rider.I’ve been home ten months, working for SEONS six, couch surfing and dodging questions about what I was doing back in town the whole time. After days without work, my phone buzzed me awake half an hour ago with a notification from SEONS, declaring I had a client…

Andrea gets out of bed without waking Scott.The kitchen is dark and quiet.She puts on an apron as though it were the nineteen-fifties and she is a homemaker.She starts to make him breakfast.She will let the sounds and smells of her cooking wake him.These things are all part of it.What she makes is not, though;…

By the time John Surly Whittaker lumbered onto the stage, he was already missing his fingers and toes. The audience didn’t realize he had been vanishing since 1885. Nor did they realize that parts of him were missing under his gloves, shoes, and custom-made suit. Still, they all turned wide-eyed when they saw him, for…

“You’re going to love it here, Dad,” the stranger says. She has blond hair, thick eyebrows, and a sharp chin. My chin. My daughter? My sweet little . . . Abigail? Rachel?

“I’m sure I will, sweetie.”

Her eyes green like my wife’s. Always wet, like drowned emeralds. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but the doctors here seem really nice. They’re going to take good care of you until you feel better.”

“Better?” I say, dumbly.

She laughs though the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Better,” she says, as if the word were a talisman. “Then we can bring you home.”

“Home,” I mouth the word, loving the way its roundness fills my mouth. “That sounds really nice, Abby.”

Her eyes well up and she squeezes my hand. “It’s Victoria, Dad.”

I smile through the heartache. “Right.”

I blink and I am sitting alone, the light through the window now the soft gold of evening.

“Vic?” I cry for my daughter, eyes darting to the corners of the empty room.

My new home is a ten-foot by ten-foot box with a window overlooking the yard. My bed is a twin, topped with a king-sized comforter. There is one photo on the wall. In it, an unfamiliar man in a tuxedo has his arms wrapped around a woman in a white gown, his hands resting on the luminous curve of her pregnant belly. They both smile at me.

“That’s me?” I say aloud, standing and hobbling closer, my knees aching. Why do they ache? That’s right, I’m old! The man in the picture is handsome and young though, his eyes full of life.

Excited, I take the picture from the wall and move to the bathroom mirror.

I am fatter than the man in the photo, a rounded gut hanging over my waist. Gray hairs poke out from my ears, and my face looks like a melted wax caricature of the man in the photo. I touch the stubble on my chin and the loose gizzard flesh that hangs beneath.

“I’m old,” I say aloud, though the delight is gone.

I put the picture back on the wall.

I begin to weep.

“Think of it like getting lost in a fog,” a woman tells me. She is middle aged, with a thick jaw and a snake’s nest of curls atop her head. She is sitting in a chair in front of me, jotting notes on a clipboard.

I am sitting on the edge of my bed, and I am wearing a different robe than I was a moment before. My face is dry.

“How long have I been here?” I ask.

“You were checked in four days ago,” the woman responds. “Henry, are you here with me?”

Four days? My God, I lost four days?

“Yeah,” I croak, throat dry. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

The woman studies me over the edge of her cat-eye glasses. “The fog metaphor. We’ve found it eases the transition into and out of the fugue state. The jumps, the missing time, those will only get worse. But with the right attitude, we can make the process as comfortable as possible.”

“Fugue state?”

She nods tiredly. “Imagine an entire world covered in a deep, impenetrable mist—you’re lost in it, but you can see a mountain. We’ll call it Mount Clarity. Every day, your brain tries to climb that mountain. Some days, you won’t succeed. And some days you will climb all the way to the top and be your old self again. The important thing to remember is that it won’t happen every day—it’s okay when you don’t make it to that peak. We’ll be here to take care of you until you’re back with us.”

I open my mouth to thank her; only a groan comes out.

When I dream, I am in that fog. It is colder than I imagined, a thousand icy fingers worming their way into my skin.

I see Mount Clarity in the distance, and I run towards it, eyes fixed on that sharp spire rising above the white blanket. There are others here too—shadows racing, scrambling up the slick sides of the mountain.

There is something in their faces that I don’t like, a mindless terror in the way they look over their shoulders. They screech like animals, growling and crying. Their fingernails scrape against stone until they crack off in bloody splinters.

“The fog isn’t empty,” a voice whispers in my ear. “You need to run, Henry.”

I try to catalog what I know. I have the vague memory of writing in a leather journal. A woman with green eyes always insisted on it, even on the bad days, pushing it towards me along with a glass of orange juice. In the absence of it, I catalog aloud.

“My name is Henry,” I say. “I am old.” I reach for more and am delighted when I find it. “I was a soldier, like my father. After that, I built roads and married a beautiful woman.” At the mention of her, my eyes are drawn to the photo on the wall. “She took care of me, until she went away.”

I reach for more; there is only fog.

My stomach rumbles. The world beyond my door is a mystery, but my nose still works, and I smell bacon.

I stand on creaky legs, thankfully remembering to put my pants on before exiting into the hallway. The walls beyond, painted a chipped yellow the same shade as piss, are lined with old pine doors.

I step over a muddy bootprint outside my door and follow the scent down the hall, stopping only when I notice two men in scrubs working in a nearby room. They are collecting bedding and shoving it into a laundry cart. A trash can sits in the hall just outside the door, a receptacle for the prior occupant’s worldly possessions. On top, there is a photo—a white-haired woman with her arms wrapped tight around the chest of a little girl. The glass is cracked, a dark line splitting the woman’s face in two.

“Who was she?” I ask. The men pretend they don’t hear me. A shred of a memory rises from the fog. Victoria’s gap-toothed smile radiating up at me, her blue eyes bright.

No, I think, that can’t be right. My Victoria’s eyes are green, not blue. Yet, I cannot abandon this girl to the garbage. Someone should remember that she existed, that she loved the old woman in the photo, and that for at least one moment, she had the same smile as my Victoria.

I slide the photo from its frame, fold it, and place it in my pocket.

The rec room is large, six battered hardwood tables positioned across its width, centered on a pair of well-worn couches. On the TV, John Wayne is pointing his trusty Mare’s Leg at a couple of scoundrels, and I think I know the movie, the thrill of memory drawing me close. But, before John can waste the bad guys, someone calls my name.

“Henry! Earth to Henry!”

I turn, dumbfounded. It’s a woman, her black hair standing out amid a sea of blue and gray heads. She is wearing a bathrobe, has a narrow face, dusky eyes, and a wry smile. I suck in my gut.

A man sits next to her, hunched over a crossword puzzle, a pair of round-framed glasses

perched on the tip of his withered nose, bald head covered in dark liver spots. He holds a shaky pen above the paper but doesn’t write.

“How do you know my—” Then the revelation hits. “Berta!”

“That’s me! George, he knew me today!” she slaps the man beside her. “Come Henry, sit with us.” I join them, my memory chugging to life like an old diesel engine. She is Berta, a widow from the war. She is the youngest person here, only sixty-one, but insane.

“I got a head full of ghosts,” she told me once. The other is George, a lifelong bachelor, an

accountant, and an expert on WWII. One day, fairly recently, George and I sat in the garden while he explained to me how Joseph Goebbels had turned a nation of normal, loving people into Nazis.

I settle into the chair opposite them. “How are you today?”

Berta’s smile, all white teeth and crow’s feet, is infectious. “Still crazy. And you? Are the boots still keeping you awake?”

“Boots?” I ask, brow furrowed. “I don’t remember, what do you—”

George grumbles something, cutting me off. Berta shoots him a worried glance. “He isn’t doing too well today. Hasn’t said much.”

George is like me, I recall. Just further along into the brain rot. I crane my neck to see his puzzle. He has only written one word, four letters in a row made for eight.

HELP.

“You hungry?” Berta asks conspiratorially, grabbing my forgotten stomach’s attention. “Breakfast is already over, but I saved a couple slices of toast.”

She produces a paper plate from under the table. The toast is cold, covered with a red jelly that tastes like summer. I wolf it down, eyes watching George, ears listening to Berta as she regales us with stories about her summer spent in Venice, and the lovers whose hearts she broke there.

George continues to work on his puzzle. By the time he’s done, the light outside has turned red, and he has written the same answer for every question.

I am lying awake in bed; the clock on my nightstand reads 3:00 a.m. I draw the comforter up to my face and breathe in the scent of home, warmth, and a woman’s lingering perfume.

There is a sound out in the hallway. That’s right, I remember, that’s what woke me, those heavy boots invading my foggy dreams. I listen to them move down the hallway, passing right outside my door. Then, a moment later, they return, going the other way.

A chill sweeps over me; I can smell blood. Unconsciously my hand drifts to the edge of the mattress and reaches underneath, running my fingers along the crinkled edge of the photo I stole from the trash bin.

As a short scream echoes down the hall outside, I bury my face in the comforter and let memories of better days drown it out.

The next morning, another room is being emptied by men in scrubs. I am intent on passing right by them. I woke with a clear memory of Berta and George, and I cannot wait to tell them.

Yet, when I near the room, something stops me. I stare, watching the two men empty the former resident’s trashcan into the larger bin in the hall. Receipts, an empty pack of cigarettes, a couple of empty whiskey shooters.

“What happened to him?” I ask the young orderly as he steps outside to toss a pile of birthday cards into the bin.

The boy shrugs. “He died.”

I stare down at the cigarette pack. Marlboro, like my father used to smoke.

“How?” I ask.

The boy glances back at me, clear annoyance on his face. “Got old, I guess.”

I don’t bother to tell the boy that I, too, am old. Something in the way he looks at me tells me that he already knows.

Once his back is turned, I pick up the Marlboro pack. The lingering smell of tobacco inside tickles a memory, silver smoke curling around a dark mustache.

“What was his name?” I ask.

The kid sighs. “Beats me. Look, man, I got a lot of work to do. Head on down to the rec room. I hear they got musicals on the TV today.”

That night, I am a child, sitting atop my father’s workbench, watching him rub varnish into the side of the oak canoe we have spent all summer building. The muscles in his arms ripple as he spreads sealant on the hull, his rugged afternoon shadow making him look every bit the war hero I believe him to be. This is years before I learn that

he spent the war getting shit-faced on a patrol boat off the coast of Brazil. He impregnated a woman there. She sent him letters, dozens, first swearing her love, then begging for money, then cursing his name, and finally pleading for him to come back. I will find these letters on the day of his wake, and I will weep while others toast his name.

But at this moment, it is summer, I am a child, and my father is perfect.

“How fast will it go? Can we take it down the Mississippi?” We had just read Huck Finn in school. “Maybe not the whole Mississippi,” my father says, puffing his cigarette, silver smoke curling over his mustache. “She’ll take on the pond out back just fine.”

“Can I name her?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Naming a boat is a serious business. Give a boat a bad luck name, bad luck is all she’s going to give you. You sure you’re up for it?”

I nod, gravely.

He looks at the canoe again, then at me. “Well, then she’s all yours. What’s her name, cadet?”

I deliberate silently, head bowed until the perfect name comes to me. I open my mouth and the word breaks apart on my tongue. I try once more to say it, but only a dry hiss leaves my throat.

It’s hard to think. Someone is walking behind me now, heavy boot falls scattering my thoughts like clouds of gnats. I look to my father and his face is gone. In its place, a circular window has been cut into his head, through which white fog falls in billowing sheets.

“What’s your name, cadet?” he asks. “Gotta hold onto that.”

I wake, covered in cold sweat. The boots are in the hall again.

I go over what I know. It isn’t much.

Except for the dream. It’s my only clear memory, a lighthouse in the fog.

“Do you believe in the afterlife, Henry?” George asks me. It has been a time since the dream, days, maybe weeks. Long enough for the flowers in the yard to bloom.

We are sitting in a pair of battered chairs on the back lawn, watching Berta as she sketches the butterflies on the begonias. She works in crayon, all they’ll let her have.

I consider the question, searching my brain for anything that might tell me how I feel. “Maybe,” I say with a shrug. “I hope my wife is there.” Loreen, her name swims to mind. The name tastes like tears, and my heart twists.

“Me too,” George says. “Except the wife. Between you and me, I never saw the appeal.” He runs a leathery tongue over his thin lips. “What do you think it looks like for people like us?”

“People like us?”

George rolls his eyes and taps a finger to his wrinkled temple. “Ya know, people with the Mad Cow, the brain rot, the Forget-Me-Nows.”

“Same as everyone, I guess? Maybe we get it all back.” I try to think about what that might feel like. The few memories I have are so precious to me now, each a beacon of light radiating in the lonely dark.

“Maybe. But… what if we don’t?” His eyes are distant, his hands clasped in a white knuckled grip.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what is a memory if not a piece of us? And when it’s all gone, what happens? Our souls won’t know where to go? Or worse, what if we can’t go anywhere. Like, without the things we did, neither side knows where we belong. No heaven, no hell, just…”

“The fog,” I finish, thinking of the hole where my father’s face had been. We both fall silent for a moment, staring at Berta, at the butterflies, at nothing at all.

“Way I figure it,” George says glumly, “we are going to find out one way or another. And chances are we’ll both be drooling idiots by the time that happens.” He falls silent for a moment, his eyes set and hard, lips drawn back in a skeletal grimace.

Then, he slaps me on the shoulder and stands, knees cracking in protest. “Suppose all we have are the good days, and Lord knows neither of us got a lot of those on the horizon. Come on old man, I’ll whoop your ass at some checkers.”

We play most of the afternoon. Neither of us remember the rules, so we make them up as we go, working around our Swiss cheese brains. By the time Berta joins us, the board is cluttered with checkers, markers, a black pawn from a chess set, and forty-seven dollars in Monopoly money. We are both red-faced and sick with laughter.

That night, feeling more myself than I have in a long time, I pray to God that my Loreen is at peace. I pray that she is watching me as I inhale her scent from the comforter.

The boots are in the hall again.

It is close to 3:00 a.m., the only sounds are the constant hum of the air conditioner and the soft squelches of the boots’ wet rubber soles against the linoleum.

I look around the room. The same nightstand, the same clock, the same photo on the wall. Only, the couple in it is no longer smiling. Her eyes are filled with pity, his with horror.

The boots draw closer, the smell of blood announcing their arrival, a choking coppery scent that seems to fill my throat. I gag, pressing myself down into the bedding as if the ghost of Loreen’s perfume could kill the slaughterhouse stench and drive the thing away. It doesn’t. The boots come to a stop outside my door.

“What do you remember?” a voice asks and for a moment I think I recognize it. It’s a man’s voice, deep and sure. But wrong too, as if a dozen other voices whisper softly just beneath it.

I look at the door. Surely I didn’t hear that? I have a bad brain, the Mad Cow, the Forget-Me-Nows. It was some fragment of a dream, dragged into the waking world. Yet, I find my hand snaking under the lip of my mattress, touching the photo, then the cigarette pack.

It speaks again, this time louder, as if smelling my doubt. “Do you remember me?

I do not dare to respond. I lie there, frozen, eyes on the door until I hear the sound of the bootsteps retreating down the hall.

When I next emerge, a woman is at my door, a plastic gold tiara set into her wild tangle of black hair and a tray of blue frosted cupcakes in her hands.

“Good morning, Henry! And before you ask, no, we are not lovers. Good thing, too. Lovers get the door; friends get to share my birthday cupcakes.”

I smile. “I’m sorry, darling, have we met?”

“We most certainly have. And now, you’re going to spend the day worshipping me.”

Sitting at our table in the rec room, three of us eat until the frosting has dyed our lips and tongues blue, prompting the Queen’s bald friend to remark, “It looks like we just blew half of Smurf Village.”

Her laugh is like a cannon, blowing through the room, leveling all in its path. We laugh with her. She manages to convince an orderly to put on her favorite movie, an old black and white film where people dance their problems away. Halfway through, watching Fred Astaire foxtrot with a red-headed beauty under a crystal chandelier, the Queen gets swept away by the music and begins to dance herself.

She pulls the bald man to his feet despite his protests. “No! No! I couldn’t, my knees! Berta! Berta!”

“Up!” she commands. “Respect the crown and rise, serf!”

He rises, to my surprise, and seizes her around the waist. He leads her in a fast waltz around the room to the delight of other patients, creaky knees be damned. By the end, he is smiling and red-faced. He gives a flourished flip of his wrists as he bows to the crowd.

“Thank you,” he says, “thank you. Please stick around for the after-show and enjoy the buffet. I’ll be here ‘til I die.”

The Queen comes for me next, and I don’t fight her. I try to lead her, as the bald man did, but succeed only in smashing her toes with the first step.

“No worries, my dear,” she whispers, “I know the way.”

She leads me into the dance and before long the music takes us. The bald man claps his hands in rhythm with our steps, the entire room spinning around us. Then, she deposits me in a chair and takes to the tabletop.

Her skirts billow about her as she kicks and spins, the orderlies rushing to pull her down, only for her to dance away, leaping to the next table. She blows a kiss to one of the orderlies.

Each time they get near she jumps again, her eyes wild with delight.

“Do you think she is going to be lonely, when we’re gone?” The bald man asks, voice hushed.

I blink at him, placid as a cow. “I think she’ll be fine. She’s a charmer. Besides, I’m not planning to go anywhere. Are you?”

He looks at me a moment, then sighs. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

“No,” I admit, “but I think we’re friends.”

“That we are,” he says, looking back to where the Queen is balancing atop the couch, teal-scrubbed men closing in on all sides. Just before they pull her to the ground and jab a long needle into her neck, she takes a bow to raucous applause.

They drag her back to her room. Just as she leaves our sight, the bald man stands, and I smile up at him, unburdened with even the simplest of thoughts.

He stares at the hallway to the residential rooms, where the Queen has just vanished. “Do you ever hear the boots outside your door?”

“No,” I tell him, “I don’t think so.” Yet, for some reason, my stomach churns and my breath catches in my throat. I feel cold. I smell blood.

He nods, bright eyes set knowingly on me. “That’s good. Take care of her.”

George is gone. I know it before I open my eyes, the thought repeating like a pounding drum, summoning me back from the emptiness. I sit up in bed and stare at my closed door. Outside, other residents shuffle by on their way to the rec room, their slippered feet whispering on the tile.

George is gone.

How long ago was Berta’s birthday? I can’t be sure, but I think no more than a week, maybe two. George was bright that day, brighter than me. He couldn’t be gone. Most of the people who died of the Forget-Me-Nows were broken things by the end, barely able to move, let alone dance. George, by contrast, was alert, strong. Some days, it’s almost like he isn’t sick at all.

I’m just being paranoid, I reason. I stand, shave, and brush my teeth, the familiar routine easing the dread in my stomach. Then, I step out into the hall and turn, intending to walk down to the rec room like any other day.

George’s door is open, a trash bin in the hall outside.

A sharp, cold blade slides into my heart. Inside, two orderlies are stripping the room of everything that made it his.

“Where is George?” I ask.

“He died,” says one of the orderlies.

I don’t ask how. I already know the answer.

I grab one of George’s half-filled-out crossword puzzles from the trash can in the hall. Every question has the same answer.

HELP.

That night, I slide the crossword beneath my mattress to join my other meager treasures in the dark.

I spend a day with Berta in the yard, sitting on a bench near the small flower garden. It has been a time since George died, though to me, it feels like earlier that afternoon.

Berta tells me that she once seduced a prince who gave up his crown to be with her. She spent a long summer with him, hunting tigers in India before running off with the captain of a whaling ship and breaking the prince’s heart. I sit on her words with rapt attention, believing every one of them.

“Do you think George knew he was going to die?” I ask when she is done, the question loosed before I know I want to ask it.

Berta watches a butterfly, a Painted Lady, crawl over the top of a lily. She sucks in a breath, puffs out her cheeks, and lets it out slow. “He did. He said the boots were going to get him.”

“The boots?” I ask, unable to hide the quiver in my voice. I expect Berta to say George was delusional at the end of his life. I expect comfort.

Instead, her face goes pale, voice a haunted whisper. “You must have heard them. Everyone does around here, eventually.”

“Who is it?” I ask.

“More like what.”

“What is it then?”

The butterfly takes flight, rising slowly into the air above us. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “Maybe it’s death. Maybe we can hear it coming, when we’re close. Or maybe it’s a ghost; people die here all the time.” She leans back, eyes unfocused and set on the chipped wooden fencing where a horizon ought to be. “I think it’s a hungry thing, though. I can hear it salivating.”

“Hungry for what?”

“Who knows? Does it matter how it gets you? Result is the same.”

The finality in her voice twists the dagger that has been in my heart since George died, and I choke, fighting back tears. It’s real, God help me, it’s real. “It spoke to me.”

I don’t notice my hands are shaking until she takes one in hers, folding her fingers over my hand and pulling it to her chest. “What did it say?”

“It asked if I remembered it.” The memory is clear in my mind, without the faintest shred of fog. “I don’t. Or I don’t think I do. But its voice—I think I know it, but I don’t remember where from. It’s driving me crazy.”

She doesn’t reply for a long time. We sit, watching the sky turn gold then the purplish-green of a bruise. Finally, she lifts my hand to her lips and kisses me on the knuckle.

“You can stay in my bed tonight. I’ll sneak you in,” she says. “No funny business, mister. You shouldn’t be alone right now. Not with the boots after you.”

“Do you really think it’s after me?”

“Yes. But not tonight. Tonight, you’re mine.” Despite what she says, there is funny business that night. It is sweet, and gentle, and kind. I call her Loreen. She doesn’t correct me.

“I miss you,” the woman with drowned emerald eyes tells me. She is sitting beside my bed, one hand extended and folded over mine. We are alone, but we are not in the hospital. My bed sits in the middle of a clearing in the fog, its billowing walls stretching up out of sight on all sides.

“Do I know you?” I ask.

She laughs, then chokes. “Yeah, I should think you do.”

I study her for a moment. Her face is familiar but her hair is short, and unnaturally dark, dyed.

“I— I’m sorry—I don’t—”

She squeezes my hand tighter, “It’s ok, Dad. You don’t have to stress yourself, I’m right here.”

“Victoria?” I blink. “You changed your hair.”

The smile she gives me is a summer sun, its warmth penetrating every part of me. “Dad! I’m sorry, that must have confused you,” she runs a hand through her dyed locks. “I didn’t think, I—”

I give her hand a return squeeze, “No, it looks good.”

She laughs again, and then, inexplicably, begins to sob. Operating on some ancient instinct I cannot name, I pull her towards me and she curls against my side. In a flash, she is a child again, her arms stretched wide over my belly, her face pressed against my chest. In one moment, a thousand forgotten nights drift through my mind, nights spent holding my little girl as she quaked in fear of thunder or the terrors that lived in her closet.

“I wanted to see you again,” she says into my chest. “The doctors called. Said it wouldn’t be long now.”

“Long till what?”

She doesn’t respond for a long time and when she does it is in a small whisper, the kind reserved for words too painful for daylight. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. When Mom died, I knew you needed help. I should have brought you home, I should have cared for you. This place, it is all I can afford but you shouldn’t have to die here.”

“Hush,” I whisper, running a hand through her hair. “There, here, all about the same to me now. It will have me soon.”

“I could take you home?” she says.

I shake my head, “Not enough left of me to take.”

“I don’t want my daddy to die.”

I point to the wedding photo that floats over the end of my bed. The man and the woman are smiling, their hands pressed flush against the woman’s belly.

She lifts her head and sniffles. “That was our beginning. All three of us.”

“Then remember them,” I say. “Remember us.”

We lie like that for an eternity, just me and my little girl in the fog. I know what is coming next, can hear it echoing across the emptiness, the sound reverberating in the icy air until it seems to surround us, enclose us.

It’s coming.

Berta is gone. Her room is bare and empty. I ask an orderly if she was moved. He tells me he doesn’t know. I have to find out from one of the nurses that she suffered an aneurism in her sleep a month ago. I sit on the bench in the garden, where she and I had once shared a long afternoon, and touch the sun-warmed stone where she sat.

I try to remember the way she smelled, but the only scent that comes to mind is blood. I weep. I am still weeping when I see the butterfly, the Painted Lady. It is dead, lying on its side in front of the bench, and I lift it as if cradling a child.

“I miss you,” I whisper.

A passing wind flutters the Lady’s dead wings.

“I’ll remember you, as long as I can.”

The boots are coming, the soft squelch of rubber on linoleum dragging me inch by inch back into myself. I make myself small, comforter drawn up over my head, eyes peeking out of a thin slit to stare at the door.

The smell is worse this time, rotten, like offal left under a summer sun. Then, to my horror, they stop at my door.

“Do you remember me?” it asks from the other side.

“No,” I blurt out, heart slamming in my chest. “No, go away!”

The thing in the boots doesn’t reply, but already I can hear something else, the soft click of metal sliding against metal. The brass handle begins to turn. I bolt to my feet and press my back to the wall. My mind races, thoughts melting together into a panicked, animal scream.

I need a weapon and, as if drawn by some strange gravity, I find myself reaching for my mattress. I grab the edge of it and flip it up. The photo of the little girl is there and the empty pack of Marlboros, but that isn’t all. An empty tube of lipstick, a crusted band aid, a peach pit, and more. Where had it all come from? And more importantly, how the hell can it help me? I push the trash aside, hoping for a knife, or a rock, but there is nothing. My hand falls to the photo of the little girl, my little girl. I grab the photo and remember the way Victoria pressed against me, and the atom bomb radiance of her smile.

Maybe we can feed it?

Berta’s words flash across my mind. Feed it? Feed it what? I have nothing but these trinkets, these—

“Memories,” I whisper, my voice cracking, eyes wide on the photo in my hand. I think to grab a different one, anything other than my Victoria, but the brass handle has almost turned enough to open. I hurl myself against the door in panic, and the thing on the other side pushes back with a terrible, inexorable, strength.

“Give it,” the thing on the other side of the door moans.

My legs are already burning, my neck painfully taut. I’m not strong enough, I realize with a growing dread. The rest of the treasures are safely tucked across the room from me, though they might as well have been on the moon, for all the good they could do me now. I stare at the photo crumbled in my hand and begin to sob.

“I’m sorry,” I choke. “Please, forgive me.” Then, shoulder still braced against it, I slide the photo under the door, my fingers tracing the little girl’s face right up until it vanishes from sight.

The shaking stops and I hold my breath.

I hear the crinkle as the photo is lifted off the ground. All falls quiet—too quiet. I strain to hear.

“Good enough,” the voice eventually says. A memory comes to me, so clear and sharp it seems to be happening right now.

“To the moon!” Victoria demands. It is a sunlit day, and I am young and whole. I take her in my arms and thrust her toward the sky, making rocket ship noises with my lips.

“Mission control, this is Houston. We have a problem!” I dive her headfirst toward the ground, stopping her fall at the last second and carrying her at a jog, her face hovering inches above the grass, her arms spread wide.

“Faster!” she screams. “We gotta reach the moon!”

I release her and she glides forward on the wind, before breaking apart into fog, one bit at a time.

It is almost dawn before I manage to remember how to stand and open the door.

The photo is gone.

“Who are you?” I ask the stranger.

She squeezes my hand and says a name, but the sound comes out like a dry wind.

“Do I know you?”

Her tears are hot when they drop from her face onto my palm. “I wanted to stay in town, till it was over.”

“Till what was over?” I ask. “Am I going home?”

I give it the lipstick tube the next night, the memory of a girl I loved and lost in college. Then the night after that, the peach pit goes and along with it a soldier I fought beside in another life.

As my last thought of him fades, I can almost see him standing in the room with me, dressed in combat fatigues, a foggy hole where his face should be.

“What’s the exit plan here, Hoss? You don’t got a lot of ammo to spare.”

I give it the crusted band aid, a pink sock, a shiny pebble, one step at a time, marching dutifully towards perdition. As I give it the pebble it speaks again, voice so familiar but so wrong, alien.

“These memories are weak,” it says. “I know you got something better. Feed me, Henry.”

I feel thinned out, my thoughts growing wispy and ephemeral. My body aches down to the bones, and my eyes feel like lead balls sinking into my skull. It isn’t leaving. Must still be hungry. So, I go back to my hoard, snatch up the empty Marlboro pack and begin to shove it under the door.

Then, with a violent tug, the pack is pulled the rest of the way through to the other side. There is a dismissive snort, and a chuckle that sounds as alien as it is hauntingly familiar, distorted and wet. I imagine a throat filled with blood, spilling endlessly out of a twisted mouth.

“Do you think this will satisfy me forever?” it asks.

“Will it satisfy you tonight?”

“You know what I want.”

“Just go away, please. Don’t take them too.”

It does not respond. As its heavy footsteps fade, I remember my father, sitting tall in a canoe as he glides silently down the river into a bank of icy fog.

I stare down at the space beneath my mattress, crippled with an impossible decision. Only the crossword puzzle and the dead butterfly remain.

The boots come slow tonight, one methodical step after another.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, hands hovering over the two objects before finally lifting George’s crossword. I read his final words one last time, trying to hold his reddened, laughing face in my mind.

Then, with a stone in my stomach, I slide it under the door. Yet I can’t let go of it, my fingers pinched on the corner. The boots come to a stop and yank at the puzzle.

“No,” I plead, tears in my eyes. If it takes the paper, George will be gone; nobody else is left here to remember him. I try to pull the puzzle back, but it’s too strong, ripping it from my hands.

It laughs, not with one voice but hundreds, thousands, so loud it hurts. I scream and weep, begging it to go away or to just kill me.

It leaves, eventually, but not before speaking in George’s voice.

“Help me, Henry,” it says. “For the love of God, help me.”

George dances in my head. He takes a bow and becomes fog.

In the morning, I ask for a sheet of paper and a pen from one of the staff. Sitting alone in my room, using the nightstand as a table, I write a letter to Loreen.

I tell her I miss her, and that I can’t wait to see her when I get back from the war. I tell her that I think we should finally have children, and that a couple as good looking as us have a civic responsibility to procreate. I tell her that I think I could be a good father, if given the chance.

Then I remember that she is dead, and my tears make a black smudge of my signature.

I blink and I am sitting in front of my door, cradling the dried-out corpse of a butterfly. I hold its gossamer wings apart, pinched delicately in calloused fingertips.

I almost drop it in surprise, looking around my darkened room, eyes wide. How did I get here? I was just thinking of—of who?

“Do you remember me?” the thing asks from beyond the door, and my heart freezes in my chest. That’s right, that’s why I’m sitting here, holding my only friend.

“Please,” I whisper, “not her. Please.”

“You have to remember me,” it says.

“I don’t!”

The door shakes in its frame. “You have to!” it shouts, its shout twisting into an inhuman metallic whine. “You have to remember me, Henry!”

I scream and shove the butterfly’s corpse beneath the door.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry Berta!”

The door shakes, the thing echoing back my scream in my own voice. I scramble under the bed, dragging the comforter with me and screeching like an animal, my entire body rigid, my muscles cramped in terror. I scream and scream, until two orderlies burst in and drag me into the light.

They press something sharp into my arm. A warm darkness envelops me.

Berta walks into a foggy jungle and vanishes.

When I wake, I know I have always been alone here.

“How are you feeling today?” The doctor in the cat-eye glasses asks me.

I moan in terror.

“Non-verbal,” she says, scratching on her notepad. “Are you in any pain?”

My words are but a groan.

“Just try to relax,” she says, already standing to move along to the next room. “It won’t be long now.”

I take the photo off the wall and hold it up to the thin light from the yard.

I wonder if this is how those faceless others felt, before the end. I wonder if they found peace in the afterlife, or if they became hungry things.

The boots are in the hall, walking at a leisurely pace, a victor’s march.

The man in the photo is a stranger to me. I trace his narrow jaw and bushy eyebrows with my fingers. Distantly, I think I remember the feeling of holding my wife close as we danced at our wedding. Did we make love that night? Was I a good man? Does it even matter anymore?

The boots come to a stop outside my door and I brace myself.

“Do you remember me?” it asks.

I look at the photo, then at the door, and for the first time I realize I do know that voice, have heard it before, but never like this, never outside my own head.

The door swings open.

A figure stands in the shadows, with a clean jawline and dark, piercing eyes. It is dressed in a tuxedo, standing tall and strong. Where its face should be there is a hole, from which fog falls in freezing sheets. I look to the photo, the man is smiling wickedly up at me, the woman dead in his arms.

“You know who I am?” And I do. I see it all, reflected in this thing with my voice. I see myself holding my wife’s hand as cancer devours her, I see the love in my daughter’s eyes, I hear guns firing, a jackhammer screaming, the sound of George’s knees creaking as he and Berta dance, all the moments that make a life. Every bit of me, stolen and glued back together until this thing is more me than I am. All but one piece, all I have left. I feel something tug inside my head, a thread pulled taut.

“Henry,” I whisper.

I press my face into the comforter and breathe deep Loreen’s perfume, basking in my last mote of light. The thing steps forward. George’s face appears in the window in its head, leering maliciously down at me. Then Berta’s, and Loreen’s, and a dozen more, a slideshow of familiar strangers that ends exactly where I know it will. With a man’s face, my face.

“I’m so hungry.”

The thread snaps.

My name is Henry. I am old. I was a soldier. After that I built roads and married a beautiful woman.

My name is Henry. I am old. I was a soldier. I was a road. I married a beautiful woman.

My name is Henry. I am. I was.

My name is Henry.

My name is—

It took them several years to realize they were all dreaming the same dream. Why does one really report a dream, after all? Over the breakfast table, pulling on non-slip shoes for work, sitting in the passenger seat of a tired minivan on the way to school—only unusual dreams are the topic of conversation. If it’s…

A crowd gathered the day before Sushi Maekawa closed.

So Ayami wanted to say. In reality, only four people lingered outside the glass storefront. If Sushi Maekawa still drew crowds, they would have soldiered on instead of closing.

She glanced at the tank on the counter and met the gaze of one of the fugu. Its round dark eyes seemed accusatory, though whether it wished to say Why would you eat me? or Why won’t you eat me? Ayami couldn’t tell. Considering the number of fugu they still had in the back, this one was unlikely to be consumed today.

She rubbed her right hand—beginning to show wrinkles—against her forehead. Had she become as sentimental as her mother? Twenty-six years a fugu chef, and never before had she assigned thoughts to her fish.

Toshi, his uniform starched and spotless, flipped the sign from Closed to Open. He unlocked the front door, but not one among the four-member crowd entered.

Ayami glanced at the clock. Were they opening already? 10:00 a.m. So, it was opening time. More and more, time had become the domain of digital clocks and flashing numbers rather than the world outside, where nights were starless and days endlessly smoggy. During Sushi Maekawa’s last major renovation, they had changed the dark cherry wood tables for a lighter finish to give some illusion of light.

All three fugu turned away from Ayami. They were torafugu, with black blotches on their sandy yellow backs and some of the deadliest poison to go with their exquisite taste. One of them nuzzled the glass, round eyes directed at somewhere beyond Ayami.

Ayami followed its gaze to the man seated behind the counter. Maekawa Gen, proprietor of Sushi Maekawa. Arms crossed, eyes hidden behind ever-present sunglasses, bald patch gleaming beneath the LED lights—another concession from their last renovation and one Ayami had suggested. Most would mistake the sunglasses for some outdated fashion statement, but Gen had confessed to her that even indoor lights hurt his eyes these days.

Ayami reached out and tapped Gen on the shoulder. “Sit there brooding for too long and you’ll scare off all our customers.”

Gen turned. Ayami knew him well enough to read his expression behind the sunglasses: annoyance, mild. “Look at them,” he said, gesturing at the gawkers outside.

“I know. Milling around the door, not coming in when it’s their last chance.” She forced a smile. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

“No. Look at him.”

It took Ayami a moment to figure out who Gen was talking about. A young man in an oversized t-shirt leaned against the storefront glass, unzipped backpack at his feet, Quickscape helmet in his hands. The helmets didn’t offer the full Dreamscape experience—their nodes weren’t that powerful—but they were immersive enough if you wanted a quick break from reality.

The man slipped the helmet over his head and sat down on the sidewalk. He fell still, reacting no more to the people around him than the glass did.

“Can’t he read?” Gen growled. “‘No Dreamscaping.’ Says right there on the window.”

“He’s not inside the restaurant yet,” Ayami pointed out. Nor will he ever be, like the millions of others lost to the Dreamscape.

Gen snorted and turned away. No matter how Ayami felt today, he must’ve felt worse. Sushi Maekawa—once Fugu Maekawa, before changing its name in a futile attempt to attract tourists—had been in Gen’s family for generations.

The bell—an old-fashioned one, for this Gen had refused to give up—rang. Two people Ayami recognized pushed past the three gawkers and one Dreamscaper to enter. Uehara Reiko was around Ayami’s age, her grey-streaked hair knotted in a bun. Her son Minoru was in his twenties and updated his hair like other people updated their multi-tabs. Today it was cerulean blue and spikey. Over forty years ago, when Ayami was in second grade, her older brother had returned home sporting a similar hairstyle. Their mother had chased him around the house with a razor. Nowadays, Minoru’s peers would consider him a dinosaur; who bothered with flesh-world styling when it was easier to make a cool avatar in the Dreamscape?

Reiko’s eyes fell on the fugu tank as Toshi led them to their usual seats by the window. Ayami couldn’t remember them sitting anywhere else recently since their table was hardly ever taken. Gen had offered them private rooms at no extra charge, but Reiko had turned down the offer, saying she preferred the window even if the sun rarely broke through.

“What are you going to do with those guys?” Reiko asked, gesturing at the fugu. Toshi shrugged and muttered something noncommittal. Ayami could’ve answered. The fugu would be sealed in locked containers and disposed, like their poisonous parts were. A waste, but at this point shrinkage was the last thing Sushi Maekawa cared about.

Reiko waved away Toshi’s attempts at handing her the menu. “We’ll get the torafugu five-course meal. I’d get the eight-course one, but all my invitees refused to come.”

Toshi nodded and made his way to the curtain. Ayami had heard the order, but she listened as he repeated it. After, as she turned to walk deeper into the kitchen, she heard Reiko say, “I admit, I expected more of a fight to get in. That’s why I said to come early. Not that I have much else to do with my mornings now.”

Ayami’s hands curled into fists. Reiko had worked at a local onsen for nearly three decades, only to be dismissed at age fifty, as the resort ran out of reasons to exist. Reiko had accepted an early retirement. She was one of the lucky ones, with savings and a son who supported her.

Ayami forced her fists to unclench as she turned to the tank. Nine torafugu swam within. It had been ten yesterday. More shrinkage. Despite their best efforts, fish sometimes died before they could be served.

Ayami washed her hands and laid out her equipment: the cutting board, the knives reserved for cleaning fugu, the tray marked with “Dispose” for the parts she would cut away. She scooped the largest torafugu from the tank. It wiggled as she lifted it from the net, but before it could even attempt to inflate, Ayami inserted her knife into the top of its head.

The fugu stilled. Decades ago, when Ayami first started her training, many had questioned why. She should’ve felt as out of place as this fugu did, lying lifeless on a wooden cutting board. She hadn’t been born in a family of chefs, had never even eaten fugu in her childhood. She’d been an excellent student, had gone to university at age sixteen. Only to wind up in one of those glass-and-concrete offices: answering calls, filing documents, bringing tea to company execs.

She’d watched her fellow women shatter themselves on the shores of ambition. Passed up for promotion or settling for singledom. Bombarded with Japan’s declining birth rate and how it was their fault. Get married, have a child, find yourself bound by the shackles of motherhood. Unable to return to work, or returning to slashed pay, confused peers, and the label of an inadequate mother.

Ayami had said, No more. Not me.

She raised her knife. Now came the part she’d trained three years for. The part that required an examination where two-thirds of examinees failed, the part for which she was the last practicing chef in Shimonoseki—and indeed, the world.

Chop off the fins. Split the skin, peel it away. Remove the insides—liver, intestines, all filled with tetrodotoxin. She placed them on the “Dispose” tray. She worked quickly, with practiced ease. No part of fugu preparation surprised her now, not even those pollution-mutated fugu with their organs in the wrong places.

Perhaps it was good she had been born then, and not now. In that world of restriction, she had rejected corporate life and found the fugu.

She’d remade herself into something no one expected from her; in all her years growing up, she’d never heard of a female fugu chef—though now she knew they’d been there all along, and she wouldn’t label herself any sort of innovator, no matter what the magazines said. She’d drawn more than a few odd looks during her apprenticeship, sometimes studying alongside youths who’d worked in their parents’ kitchens their whole lives. But in the end: a license, a test. Standards that didn’t depend on drinking or socializing or singledom.

She’d passed the exam. She’d been that one third.

Ayami glanced down at the pale fugu flesh. Removing poison was just the first step. She had fugu-chiri to stew. Milt to grill and season. Sashimi to cut and arrange in the shape of a chrysanthemum. During Fugu Maekawa’s height, Ayami had three, four assistant chefs, though none of them were allowed to touch the fugu. Now she had just Keisuke, and he wouldn’t be in until noon.

Ayami smiled as she parted the torafugu flesh into thin, translucent sashimi slices. There had been golden years. Every table in Fugu Maekawa filled come dinner time. No one could get through the door except by reserving days in advance. Interviews with Ayami received full-page spreads in Shimonoseki Life, the city’s leading magazine at the time (now folded, not even digital). Gen, not so grumpy then, gave Japan Profile writers access to Fugu Maekawa’s kitchens and bragged about Ayami and the restaurant.

Eventually, the golden years ended. First came the non-toxic fugu, made by isolating the fish from tetrodotoxin-laden bacteria. Ayami closed the lid over the simmering stew and sighed. And we thought that would be the worst we’d face. Lobbyists asked the government to relax the ban on fugu liver, to relax the fugu preparation test itself. Shimonoseki sniffed in disdain, then raged, then panicked.

Ayami sprinkled seasoning over the milt. No, the problem had come with Synthfood, then Dreamscape. The former gave you the day’s nutrients in an easy-to-swallow packet, and the latter lets you enjoy the world’s delights in a virtual space. No calories, no accidents, no expensive plane tickets. The real world became obsolete. Virtual treks up Mount Fuji outnumbered real climbs many times over. Osaka Castle, built and rebuilt over centuries, stood empty in the height of summer, its continued maintenance a subject of budgetary debates. Shimonoseki’s aquarium closed last year, shipping as many fish as possible off to Okinawa.

Restaurants shut their doors. Some chefs jumped ship, worked with Dreamscape developers, opened virtual restaurants. Ayami, too, had offers, but she had no wish to leave Sushi Maekawa, and Gen had refused to even contemplate a virtual branch. “It’s not the same,” he’d said. “The Dreamscape, no matter how much it improves, can’t rival real life.”

But for most people, it seemed, the Dreamscape was better. And who could blame them, with the real world polluted and stifling and sunless? The falling demand made fugu—both traditional and non-poisonous— unprofitable to farm. The pollution in the seas made them difficult to catch. Ayami felt a prickle of pride knowing she’d outlasted them all, those safe-farmed fugu and their under- trained chefs.

There would always be people like Reiko and Minoru. The question was, would there be enough of them to support chefs like Ayami? The answer, ultimately, was no.

The first reporter—the first flesh-and-blood reporter, as drones had been buzzing around the building since morning—showed up at 1:30 p.m. Ayami allowed Keisuke to grill the shrimp while she sat down for her final interview.

He was a foreigner. Ayami wasn’t surprised. Since the restaurant’s golden years, western reporters had loved her, the office worker who became a fugu chef—a female fugu chef. She’d felt a vague unease when reading through machine translations of those articles; some of them seemed to treat her as a symbol more than a person. But today Ayami reserved her annoyance for those Japanese reporters who hadn’t come, who’d sent drones for the closing of the last fugu house.

“Do you mind if I turn on full Dreamscape recording?” the reporter asked. His Japanese was excellent, with only a hint of an accent.

“No,” Ayami said. She had little love for Dreamscape formats and interactive news, where viewers would be able to poke her virtually rendered skin, smell traces of cooking oil on her uniform. But if she refused, he’d create his report solely through memory reconstruction and that would be even more inaccurate.

He picked up a piece of fugu sashi with chopsticks, dipped it into the sauce, plopped it into his mouth, and chewed. A line of English text crawled across his multi-tab’s holographic screen. Notes to enhance his interactive video, probably. Maybe some stupid comment saying “tastes like chicken” or “doesn’t taste like anything at all, just the sauce” on the little opinion sidebar. How could a thirty-something foreigner understand things like texture and subtlety? At least he handled chopsticks well and didn’t drop the sashimi in the stew like one reporter had long ago.

Moments after the thoughts surfaced, Ayami pushed them down. She was not being fair to him. She didn’t know what he’d written, and he hadn’t done anything to earn her disdain— except to show up on this day when she was losing everything.

He ate more sashimi and drank a gulp of fugu-chiri. Then he said, “There is no tingling.”

Ayami raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

He leaned closer as if to share a secret. “I’ve eaten fugu in the Dreamscape. It causes a tingling sensation to the lips. The virtual server said it’s to imitate the remaining traces of poison, and the tingling is part of fugu’s charm.” He frowned at his sashimi chrysanthemum and the petals he’d plucked away. “There’s no tingling in this one.”

Ayami chuckled. “No, no. Fugu—properly prepared fugu—isn’t supposed to cause obvious tingling. Some chefs add spice to the sauce which can create that effect, but as my old teacher used to say, too much tingle and you better run to the hospital.”

The reporter didn’t seem perturbed by this. Just drank more stew, moved on to the next question. “It must’ve hurt Maekawa Gen greatly,” he said, “to sell the building to a DreamHub developer.”

Ayami frowned, then tried her best approximation of a nonchalant shrug. “You’ll have to ask him about that.”

“He refused to speak to me and said I should direct all questions to you.”

In truth, Gen had wavered for weeks about the DreamHub developer’s offer. It felt like selling to the enemy. But Gen needed the money to care for his ailing father, and the restaurant had spent its last years losing money rather than making it.

Ayami said, “Gen accepted the best offer. That is all.”

The reporter tapped something on his screen. “There were many reports of your restaurant receiving offers to collaborate on a virtual branch. But Maekawa Gen turned them down. Is this something you wish had gone differently?”

Ayami mulled over what to share, then decided the truth would be fine. This was her final interview, the final record of her as Sushi Maekawa’s fugu chef. “It was Gen’s decision. But I… do agree with him.”

The reporter raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Are you distrustful of technology as well?”

“No. Not technology. It’s just… with Dreamscape…” She waved a hand, trying to explain, hoping she did not come across as outlandish to him as Gen sometimes seemed to the rest of them. “It’s not real. I’m not sure how I feel about it replacing the real world—and leaving people who haven’t given up on the real world with nowhere to go.” She thought of Reiko and Minoru, and of herself.

The reporter made another note. She expected him to probe further, but he moved on to a different topic, and for that she was grateful.

The interview continued until the reporter was about halfway through the carefully prepared meal. Then he told her he wouldn’t keep her any longer, and surely she had other customers to cook for.

“Thank you,” he said, rising to his feet and bowing, “for agreeing to this interview. I know this must be a hard day for you.”

Ayami returned his bow. “Thank you for coming. For… for being the only reporter who came.”

She’d turned away, about to walk back to the kitchen, when he said, “Please, don’t think too badly of my fellow reporters. The JAXA conference is running through the week. That’s probably why they couldn’t show up in person today.”

Ayami paused in her steps, contemplated what to say, managed to find nothing suitable. She resumed walking. She had to get back to the kitchen. She trusted Keisuke, but she didn’t want to spend another minute out in the dining area.

Toshi was gone when Ayami returned to the kitchen. Left at 2:00 p.m. sharp after Sumire arrived for her shift. “He said it looked like we didn’t need him,” Gen explained. “Of course, I offered to pay him for the whole day, but he would have none of it.”

Ayami didn’t reply, just continued turning over the grilled eel. Gen lingered for a moment, then stepped through the partition back into the dining area.

“He didn’t even say goodbye to you,” Keisuke said as he stretched a shrimp for tempura, voicing Ayami’s thoughts.

“It’s alright,” Ayami said. “It’s… characteristic of Toshi. Professional until the end.”

“More like ice-cold and heartless.”

Ayami’s mouth quirked into a smile. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about Toshi surviving this cold and heartless world. The rest of us will have only Dreamscape to fall back on.”

“Dreamscape? Ha. If any of us gets lost in there, Gen will hunt us down and give us a good beating.”

He glanced at the partition as if wondering whether Gen would return to do just that, then said more softly, “That’s for the rest of us, of course. You’ve earned a break, and even Gen can’t dispute that.”

The partition flapped open, but it was Sumire who stepped through, not Gen. Ayami passed the completed eel dish to her, then said to Keisuke, “I’m not sure I’m ready to… to retire. To live only in Dreamscape.” She didn’t want her last memory of her working life to be failure, to be her restaurant shutting down.

As Sumire left, Keisuke said, “Gen has a point, and I completely understand why he feels that way. But sometimes… I wonder if they might have a point too.”

“They?”

He glanced at her. “I was reading some articles this morning. About this place, and how we’re about to close. Most of them were the usual—lamenting the loss, rehashing your story, talking about the sale to a DreamHub developer. But there was one that said… it said we were part of the problem.”

Ayami had an inkling about what he was talking about, but still she said, “Please explain.”

“Part of what caused that.” He waved a hand at the window behind him. “The poison in the air, the poison in the seas. The fishing industry was at least partially responsible.” He sighed and dipped the shrimp into batter. “It got me thinking, maybe Dreamscape is the way out. If we did all that to the real world, then we should get out of it.”

He’d forgotten to pre-heat the oil. Ayami had half a mind to point that out but stopped herself. “But will hiding in Dreamscape really help? If we want to fix this, don’t we need to be, well, here?”

Keisuke shook his head. “Probably. I don’t know. My point is, it might be worth looking at from another angle. The Dreamscape isn’t your enemy. You’ve been working hard all your life. Sometimes it’s okay to just stop.”

Just stop. Step into an early retirement, like the one forced upon Reiko. Except unlike Reiko, Ayami had no one. No family to rely on, no close friends unless she counted Gen. She had poured her life into her work, only to find herself standing at the pinnacle of a dying profession.

During the three o’clock lull, Sumire walked over to Ayami as she was inspecting the knives. “I sent something to you,” Sumire said. “Check your multi-tab.”

Ayami tapped the mailbox on the hologram and found a pamphlet from JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It listed training programs for mechanics, navigators, onboard nutritionists . . .

“And?” Ayami said. Then regretted it, when Sumire’s face fell.

“I thought . . . I thought you’d be interested.” Ayami frowned. “Interested? As in . . . ?”

“To apply. You understand cooking and nutrition, and you’re good with your hands. I figured, even JAXA could use someone like you.”

Ayami wanted to laugh—but at the same time, felt something close to tears pricking the back of her eyes. She didn’t know whether to read this as a joke or to be touched Sumire genuinely thought so highly of her. “I’m old. Even if JAXA needed someone, they’d want someone young. Someone like you.”

Sumire bit her lip. “I heard you earlier, when you said you weren’t ready to retire. I heard your interview with the reporter too. You said you wished there was still room for people who haven’t given up on the real world. Isn’t that what JAXA is trying to do? To carve new roads for us, not in Dreamscape but in space? I’m probably not smart enough to help, but you—”

“Don’t say that,” Ayami cut in. “You’re plenty smart. If you think whatever JAXA is doing could work, then you should apply.”

Sumire’s smile was brighter than the overhead lights, brighter than the sun in Ayami’s memory. “Thank you. Maybe I should be more confident. But in turn, I think you should also be more positive. It’s never too late. Please think about it.”

They’d meant to shut down at 10:00 p.m., but the last customer lingered, drinking sake and eating his fifth tuna temaki. Ayami, Gen, Sumire, and Keisuke let him be. Ayami scooped out the last torafugu in the back and started preparing it. The three in the front swam on, uneaten.

“Making this one for you,” Ayami said to the three remaining employees. “At this rate, we’ll be done before the customer out front is. You want me to grab the fugu from the front tank too?”

A chorus of no’s echoed around the kitchen. “Just one piece is enough for me,” Sumire said.

“I’ve had enough fugu to last a lifetime,” Gen said. “And you still don’t make it good as Father did.” Ayami rolled her eyes, and he chuckled.

“Not sure if I should trust you, Ayami,” Keisuke said. “Maybe you’re going to poison me for the time I burned the calamari.”

They all laughed, and chatted, and promised to keep in touch, though Ayami had no idea how many of those promises would be kept. She liked them all, even Toshi, but memories of Sushi Maekawa would become a wound now, and keeping in touch with her co-workers would feel like scraping at the scabs. However, for tonight they were a family, complimenting her on the fugu meal with vocabulary the reporter would never have, cleaning up together on their last night, Gen himself sweeping and taking out garbage.

Gen would return. There were still inspectors to meet, deals to sign, further clean- up to oversee. But for the rest of them, this was the last time.

The last customer left with a ring of the old metal bell. Ayami leaned against one of the wood tables and stared at the tank on the counter.

Gen walked up to her and slowly removed his sunglasses. He blinked as if trying to clear away dust or tears.

“Maybe . . .” Ayami began.

“Hmm?”

Ayami bit her tongue. Maybe you should see someone about your eyes, she wanted to say. But she’d already voiced those concerns a dozen times, and Gen always brushed her off.

Instead, she gestured at the three remaining torafugu. “Such a shame to throw them out.”

“What do you propose?”

She couldn’t keep them. She still lived in the single-room flat she’d had since her office worker days; she didn’t need anything bigger since she spent most of her life in Sushi Maekawa. She wouldn’t be able to keep torafugu alive for long. And she didn’t want to stare at them all day, didn’t want to be reminded of the life she’d lost.

“I’ll need a container,” she said. “And rope.”

They found a clear plastic container with a lid and a length of yellow rope. Ayami scooped water and fugu from the tank to the container, and Gen poked holes in the lid to allow air to pass through. Ayami bound the rope around the container and tied a handle at the top.

At the door, Ayami bowed to Gen. “Thank you for everything.”

He shook his head. “No, I should thank you. I have barely a quarter of my father’s culinary talent. It’s thanks to you that Fugu Maekawa survived so long.”

Ayami didn’t miss how he’d used the restaurant’s former name. “It’s thanks to you, too. A restaurant is more than its chef.”

The corners of Gen’s mouth curled upward. “We outlasted all of them, didn’t we? Take care, Ayami. You were the best there was.”

She hefted her backpack and the container of fugu. “Take care, Gen.”

The walk to the bus stop seemed to take twice as long as usual. Her multi-tab said the next bus would arrive in twenty minutes— decent, considering how late it was and how much public transport had downsized. The bus arrived, carrying only two other passengers: a woman and a man sitting side by side. They gawked at Ayami and the fugu visible through the container. The woman whispered a string of words to her companion and gesticulated so fervently that Ayami wondered if she recognized her. The woman looked old enough to have read Shimonoseki Life back in the day.

Ayami got off at the Kanmon Wharf. It was a short walk to the harbor, the container in her right hand, the fugu staring out into the night, as uncertain as Ayami herself. Even if the city lights blinked out, the skies were no longer clear enough for anyone to see stars. Her steps tapped a steady rhythm on the wooden walkway. She could see the abandoned aquarium building. Once she could’ve asked them to take the torafugu, but now that wasn’t possible.

Ayami knelt on the empty pier, placed the container beside her, and after a moment’s hesitation, released the fugu into the Kanmon Straits.

They would probably die out there. Most things did these days, out on the tainted waters. But maybe they’d survive. They’d survived this long, from their trip to the restaurant and now back to the sea.

Ayami returned to the bus stop and flicked on her multi-tab. She tapped the mailbox icon and opened the JAXA pamphlet.

The land and sea these days were not made for her any more than they were made for the fugu. But maybe she too could find livable waters. She read and reread the registration dates, locking them away in her mind. She’d made change work before, when her life and career had been tumbling toward dead ends. Sumire was right. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

The line is long for a medicine show. It is headlined by a switch of a man who, according to his placard, is called Hanrahan and whose chief ware is a milky green solution by the name of “Doctor Hanrahan’s Clairvoyance Balsam and Vermifuge.”“Can we go? Can we go?” cry Conrad and Lizzie from the end…

My husband didn’t return to me as an animal or ghost. He didn’t send messages in code or possess other people to reach me. My dreams of him were just dreams, subconscious flotsam and jetsam. I’d stopped searching for signs of him. But a part of me was still waiting for him, and waiting was just searching in reverse.

Sometimes, late at night, I snuck off to my neighbor’s place to consort with the living.

There was another man, a divorce lawyer, I sometimes saw too. The twenty-year-old I was trying to be loved to indulge her warped sense of time: What day is it? What year? My disorientation was real, but I embraced it. But the part of me that knew exactly what she was doing also knew, exactly to the day, when six months since my husband’s death had passed. And on that day, that part of me said it was time to grow the fuck up.

That night, my eyelids popped open like some horror-movie doll’s and the time blazed blue across the room: 3:01. The clock practically spoke, its phantom voice insinuating, insistent: neither my own nor my husband’s. But maybe death had changed him. What was he trying to say?

These were precisely the kinds of thoughts I could no longer abide. I flipped on the light, grabbed the nearest book, and pretended to read until I pretended to sleep.

The next night it happened again: the sudden opening of eyes greeted by a bright 3:01. I sat up and almost reached out to clutch the handle of the three. Then I remembered: Just numbers.

But why those numbers? My husband had died in the afternoon: one-something, no threes. And why not an even hour? Why that pointer finger of an extra minute? To what did it point?

Perhaps at me, at my compulsive need to look for answers where there were none. Or maybe it was just scolding me for not looking hard enough. Maybe the very grief that had driven me to seek my husband had clouded my seeing, as it had clouded everything else, and he inhabited myriad mysterious forms I couldn’t discern.

So be it. I was determined to now grieve like a good Anglo-American, or better yet, a made-for-TV upper-class Brit. Like the very best citizen, I would work and work to refill our emptying coffers and cram my mind with useful thoughts. Most importantly, I would focus my efforts on parenting: I would not flee to my room to protect my daughters from my madness and misery or, worse yet, to protect myself from theirs.

Still, every night I awoke at 3:01. With every new wake-up, the numbers grew—larger, closer, breaking free from the clock. Soon, they broke free from the dark. One afternoon, the electricity fritzed out. When I checked my phone to reset the clock, it was 3:01. I ran to the store to get groceries: the timestamp on my receipt said 3:01. A self-help book I was proofreading used, as a negative example, someone who stayed up each night until 3:01. “Typo?” I wrote in the margins. Maybe it was a typo, but it wasn’t, I knew, a mistake.

When my oldest called home from school with a migraine, I barely glanced at the time. I already knew what it would say: I was right. In the car on our way home, I couldn’t help quizzing her about the circumstances of her headache: Had it come on gradually or suddenly? How much time had passed between its onset and her phone call? Did she feel a sense of urgency when she called me or was she listless?

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why are you asking me all these weird questions?”

I couldn’t tell her that I hoped her father was somehow communicating with me through her.

I wanted to believe, but didn’t believe it enough to risk her believing it, too. When we got home, I fed her ibuprofen and fled to my room.

My husband and I used to read to the girls before bed, but by each day’s end, I could barely function. My oldest now played phone games long into the night and my youngest raced around the house in circles. I understood that the distress I forced myself to feel about this came from a rarified set of values based on culture and class, one in which my children were supposedly in training to become both masters of the universe and responsible citizens who were to “better” the world while collecting on their advantages. On the other hand, I knew the importance of self-discipline and sleep for basic well-being from my own chronic lack of both. I also knew I was allowing their behavior not out of a revolutionary spirit but because it was easier to ignore it.

One night, after my youngest had supposedly gone to sleep, her feet once more quaked the house. I loved her thumps, the micro and macro rhythms, the jackhammer and the pause. Still, I wrenched myself out of my bed.

“Hey there,” I chirped. My youngest glanced at me and kept moving, her beige hair flapping wildly. I tried again. “It’s late. You should be in bed.”

“I can’t,” she said, still running. “Liv kicked me out.”

“Kicked you out?” I barged into their shared bedroom. “Did you kick out your sister? From her own room?”

“If I had my own room,” she said, “I wouldn’t have to.”

“We’ve been over this,” I said, my jaw clamping to staunch my fury. “I’m still trying to figure out how we can keep this house, so you can forget getting a bigger one. You know there are whole giant families that share one room apartments, right? Count your blessings.” When she blinked her disdain at my platitudes, I yelled: “This is what you care about now, of all things? This?”

She turtled her head. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, but it came out snappish. I tried again. “I’m sorry.” In the rest of our little house, my youngest continued to thump around. “I’m going to get Ava now.”

“But Ava won’t stop talking,” she said, clutching her hands as if around a little neck.

“Ava’s just sad. We all are. It’s okay.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. How can everyone being sad be okay? That’s, like, the opposite of okay.”

“I don’t know,” I said, my answer to everything.

Before she could respond, I slipped out of the room and tried to stop my youngest. But she made a game of it. She hopped on the couch, pouncing on the arm that had already caved in from her previous pouncing, then climbed the top of the couch that had already split open from her climbing. The more she hopped around, the younger she seemed, as if she were traveling back to the lost time, when she was five or three instead of nine, before her father got sick and died. She found her own antics hilarious and started narrating her moves, using her chosen regression persona, “the doggo.”

“The doggo is running away from the mommo!” she cried. “The doggo is jumping on the doggo couch.”

“It’s late, sweetie,” I said. “That’s enough.”

“The doggo needs exercise.”

“The doggo needs sleep.”

“The doggo needs to chase a squirrel.”

I tried to intercept her and missed. She shrieked with delight. Then I grabbed at her again and she tripped and went crashing, headfirst, into the wall, the frenzied glee knocked so completely out of her that I longed for its instant return.

She palmed the top of her head. I was already seeing stretchers, hospital beds, the hidden hematoma that fatally burst. At the same time, I refused to believe anything could be wrong.

“I’m okay,” she said, before I could ask. “I just need a little ice.” She went to the freezer and pulled out the cold pack my husband had long ago purchased for such occasions. Even now, I expected him to rush ahead and grab it for her himself.

Now my oldest was up, asking questions and holding the ice pack to my youngest’s head. I so loved them both and I wanted to sleep forever. How could such impulses coexist? When I finally got my girls to bed, I set my alarm, to check on my youngest, for 2:58 a.m.: enough time to fully wake up before 3:01 and not enough to fall asleep again then arise at the fateful time. I would break the pattern, whatever it augured. When the inevitable display of numbers appeared, I would stare them down and bid them farewell.

But I awoke as I usually did, disturbed by nothing but my own brain, at 3:01.

I smiled. I suppose I was thrilled. Not so long ago, I would have spoken to my dead husband about 3:01 and imagined his response. But in that moment, I found that I couldn’t do it anymore. His silence had grown too loud for me to talk over.

In the soft black of my daughters’ room, I sat on the edge of my youngest’s bed and inhaled her warm sugary scent. I wanted to tuck myself behind her, glue myself to her folds, the way I used to, sometimes, with my husband when I couldn’t sleep. Above, my oldest nested beneath her comforter, her thumb, I knew, poised nostalgically against her mouth.

I began the careful climb over my youngest. Her eyes flew open, the whites piercing the night. “Mom?” she said, gazing up at me. It seemed like a big question, all the hope and need and trust packed inside that small, dull word.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s just me.”