"I must say, I've never had such a young client before, Mr. Fendrel."
"Still haven't. We've met before, Mardbury."
"No, it's quite clear in the records. I've never met you before, Mr. Fendrel. Perhaps I worked with a friend, or a relative with a different surname?"
"A few years ago, an imbecilic man who'd dumped all his money into one stock came to you for assistance. His name was Greene."
"Gregory Greene I remember. I take it you work, or have worked with him?"
"When he came to your office, he had his entire portfolio inside a single folder. Back then, you only had a walking stick. Greene stood here- right here- and timidly pushed the folder to you. Your exact words were: 'Jesus, look at you.' "
"What are you doing?"
"Mardbury, 'Arthur Fendrel' is just a nice little change that I use nowadays. Between you and me… I am Greene."
"I see what this is. You could not have picked a worse person to impersonate. None of us may be dying, but none of us are getting younger either. Greene was ten years my senior and- "
"-Had failing lungs, more tar than teeth and a reenactment of the Bolshevik Revolution occurring in his liver. I'm a picture of perfect health, and look here: I've even gotten my teeth whitened."
"Mr. Fendrel. I don't know how your sense of humor works but- "
"Let's talk somewhere else, you're perspiring. How about we discuss all sorts of lovely things at that coffee shop down the street? The one that sells those club sandwiches you liked so much. The one where you convinced me to invest in the pharmaceutical business. If I'm leading you along, then all you lose is time, a null concept now. But if I'm not… I'll make your New Year's resolution really something to remember."

Krešimira Kovačević cycled home one late Autumn evening, with the cloud-smothered sun beckoning her to sleep while the rocks and fissures spread over road kept her awake and steady. The bottle of pills in her backpack rattled the whole journey back home, but the bag of maggots bounced about silently.
The Croatian winter was deceptive and wretched. Krešimira felt warm in her sweater, but the wind nipped through the concierge uniform underneath. Home was a concrete, brick shaped structure with carved niches serving as windows and a single staircase to the top, so steep that it felt more like climbing a slide. Krešimira found her apartment. It was the one with the scent of perfume, rotting flesh and scrambled eggs spilling out from beneath the door.
The apartment had mosquito coils burning on every table and by every wall, and the lights were off. A saucepan sat on a low flame in the kitchen. Krešimira's father came out of the bedroom, eyes like those of a corpse, and smelling like a dug up grave.
"Where have you been, child?" he asked, "Have you been drinking?"
"No, father. It was a bad day at the hotel; I'm tired."
Krešimira moved to set her bag down and her father scrambled to the table, putting his hands to the wood and leaning himself over to leer.
"You're tired. Your mother sympathizes: she's spent the last few hours having flies scooped out of her. Where's the replacement?"
Krešimira fished out the antibiotics and medicinal maggots, then handed them over. Her father snatched them away and scampered into the bedroom again. He left stains of black bile over Krešimira's hand.
The refrigerator was mostly full of eggs. They were cheap and full of protein. Krešimira washed out the saucepan her father had left going on the stove and broke four eggs into it, followed by butter, milk and salt. She stirred the mixture till it was creamy yellow all around, and more still till it was chunky and gooey. Dinner.
"Krešimira!" her father roared, jumping out of the room, "What is this?"
"It looks like the receipt, father," Krešimira said, "they've been giving them out at stores for quite a while now."
"Did you look at the price? Did you even think? Why was this so expensive?"
"New pharmacy clerk. Father, I'll try to negotiate a better price, but can I please eat?"
"Fine. Eat. Sleep. Drink. Whore. I'll be staying up, keeping this roof-"
"-Keeping what, father?" Krešimira turned in her chair, "Keeping mother comfortable? Her kidneys have failed and her heart doesn't pump blood. How comfortable do those extra pillows make her? How confident are you really when you flush our savings into the doctor who only has one thing to say when he looks upon that corpse?"
"Watch your tone, girl."
"He tells me to watch my tone. Mother's body is dead and you treat her as though she only has the flu. And if you could have waited just a little, I could have finished my education and gotten an actual, paying jo-"
Krešimira's father took ahold of her plate and hurled it at the wall behind her. He looked at her, his eyes spoke: yes, try even reaching for the refrigerator and see what gets broken next. He couldn't stop her from eating the egg already on her fork, and she chewed it slowly. She let her father turn off the stove and went to her room.
She changed out of her uniform and into sleeping clothes, setting her "Mira" nametag aside. With the blanket pinned between the wall and the back of her head, Krešimira went through her phone for any emails. She saw a lot of rejections, as usual, but there was something else. It was tucked between the rejection notices from the photography studio and the artist's school. It was some sort of paid modelling internship. I shouldn't be getting these, she thought, I dropped out. But when she opened it, she saw that it wasn't an invitation to apply. It was just an invitation.

"And when we first came here, the waitress sat us down in that booth over there- the one by the corner where those two bovine hags now sit."
"We did."
"If you still aren't convinced, I do happen to remember what we ate as well."
"No, no no that's… how can this be? What have you done to yourself, Greene? Is this plastic surgery?"
"Now that's a market I would not recommend investing in. If anything, you at least have that bit of foresight to give your clients now."
"Then how…"
"Hold that thought: waiter incoming."

***

"Tenderloin? The maggots must be hungry today. Mardbury, I'll get right to the point. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing before. I always thought you stock broker types were slimy weasels with champagne bottles up your bums and cocaine where most people have nostril hairs. But I'd be worse off than you are now if I hadn't taken your advice. I owe you for this, all of this. I'm not just talking about the Italian sports we drove here in, I'm talking about all of this: from the fingers I'm holding this fork with to the working taste buds that I'm enjoying this food with. I owe you, and I'm gratefully here to cut you in on what I've been getting."
"You haven't told me what it is."
"It's real-estate, free, in your case. A new home for you, for the rest of however long you want to last. I'm talking about moving your brain into a body that isn't so globular, and I say that kindly."
"Excuse me?"
"A little less excitement, please. We'll continue after the waiter wipes up all that water. Jesus, look at you."

Krešimira didn't tell her father she was leaving. As far as she was concerned, she was already on her way to the chopping block with the hotel for defending herself against Suite 12's occupant. It was good that she didn't tell her father, she thought, he'd have yelled at her for turning down the money.
She threw together a pack containing water, some boiled eggs and her passport. She also brought her concierge uniform with her, if only so her father would think she was at work until she didn't return. Leaving the house was sickening: the mosquito coils had burned out and the stench coming from the bedroom made her gag until tears rolled down her cheeks. She couldn't imagine how her father could sleep in there.
When she arrived at Dubrovnik International Airport, the egg in her pocket had been crushed into goo, the sun was setting and starching the sky into a musky orange, and Krešimira was peddling her bicycle just a little faster than most people were walking. She sold the bike to a tourist, threw the concierge uniform into a trash can, and bought some water. She was breathing like a choked fish, the muscles in her legs felt like broken branches scraping against her nerves, and she was rather sweaty. They'll take a look at me and send me away, Krešimira thought, and then I'll return home to father without a job and as a runaway. She pulled herself into one of the bathrooms. It was unoccupied. Krešimira pulled shampoo, conditioner and soap out of her backpack, let the water flow out of the tap, clogged the drain with one palm and waited till the water filled before dunking her head inside.
Deeper inside the terminal, Krešimira saw a tall man holding up a laminated sign bearing the logo of the internship program. Huddled all around him were the other interns. They all looked handsome and pretty, almost dressed up for the runway. Krešimira had changed out of the clothes she cycled over in, but she looked absolutely atrocious comparatively. She walked up to the tall man, and he tilted his head straight down to look at her; his eyes were hidden behind aviators.
"Your name is… Krešimira Kovačević, yes?" he asked, in poor Croatian.
"Yes."
The tall man set down the sign and pulled a notebook out of his suit. Krešimira couldn't see what he was looking at, but she felt his lethargic gaze jump between her and whatever was written down. He made no markings in the book but let her stay on the condition that she 'tidy up' more before leaving.
She was not the only one given the same instructions. The restrooms closest to the group were all crowded with other interns. Some of them were a bit older than her, maybe graduate students, and others looked like they weren't even out of high school yet. She stood next to one in front of the mirror, a truly impish girl that looked as though she was wrenched out of a fairy-tale. The girl saw Krešimira standing there with nothing but a comb.
“Forget your things?” she asked softly.
“Don't have things.” Krešimira said.
The girl offered her own kit and stood by while Krešimira worked. The child's name was Veselka. Her parents were the ones who received the invitation, and were all too happy to graduate her from kiddy pageants.
“What are we doing? We're just flying over there, aren't we?” Krešimira asked.
“We're meeting the designers once we touch down. Some of the older models are saying that there's a full wardrobe on board too, and that we're doing our first photoshoot on the tarmac!” Veselka said, nervously.
“Older models. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
Krešimira returned to her eyeliner. She couldn't even remember where in life she was during her first, shambling year at the academy.

"This is my fourth one now. The first was exciting, but a mistake. The body was clean shaven in the photograph but, genetically, it sprouted hair like a plant seed on steroids. The second was fine, but also had a bad genetic history I didn't want to gamble with. The third was great, my favorite. It was the full package of excellent health, looks and genes. Even changed my name just to truly get that 'new life' experience. Bad car accident changed that, quite irreparably too, tragically. But it also opened my eyes to what I've been missing all this time. Now this is new. This is exhilarating."
"Where do you get the bodies? Clone vats? Petri dishes?"
"Oh don't play the humanitarian, Mardbury. They've got hospital wings full of people like you: decaying corpses that still feel on the inside. They pour maggots inside you to nibble away all the dead flesh. I hear you can actually feel the spoon dig into you as all the adult flies and pupae chunks are scraped up."
"Stop that. I'll lose my appetite."
"Your stomach ruptured years ago, Moby Dick- no offense. I'm offering you a restart. I'm offering you decades, almost an entire lifetime, to start over with. You can pick up a new hobby, you can start a new job, you can even surprise the wife - I'm willing to offer her the same deal if you both want to renew your wedding vows."
"We don't talk much anymore."
"Because your body is dead, Mardbury; this is exactly what I'm talking about! This is why what I'm offering you should have you bouncing out of your seat. I'm…I'm…"
"Is that blood? Are you all right?"
"Waiter. Waiter! Water please!"

***

"Did whatever that was also come with the body?"
"Everyone has the same deal. There is a pill regimen. A very strict one. I've never been in your shitty shoes so that you'll hardly consider it pain. Just remember to take them before bed, or in cases of discomfort."
"Exciting."
"Isn't it? Are you interested, or are you not?"
"Where do you get the bodies?"
"Fine. This is a corporate secret, but we use cloning vats. Get DNA samples from donors, tweak the genes, and grow a fresh body that's programmed to create an empty brain instead of one that thinks, if you catch my meaning. Swap it out with yours and poof."
"That's a relief. There's no problem then. How much?"
"A few million, although it varies. But not for you. First one's on the house, my treat. Here's the URL. Password, well mine, is 'Lazarus,' capital L, followed by the 'at' symbol and two sevens. Use my tablet but keep it angled away from the rest of the coffee shop. If the portrait is grayed out, then the body's unavailable; someone got to it first or a health issue was discovered. Golden frame is premium but that doesn't apply to you, on the house and all that. Click one and you'll get the full genetic and aesthetic read-out, not to mention a really nice gallery of photographs to feed the imagination."
"Handsome fellows. 7 feet tall? Auburn hair? No genetic history for disease? There's another catalog here. What's the password?"
"That's not really-"
"I want to look. What's the password?"
"I don't use that catalog but I can get signed up. You'll have it tonight, weirdo."
"Thank you. However, if I may: if you have the technology to genetically alter these bodies, then it would be more profitable to allow for customer customization, as opposed to just selling a variety of presets."
"We're working on that."

There really was a full wardrobe on the plane. Krešimira stepped onto American soil accessorized and runway-ready. They took her photo and sorted her, and the other interns, into groups. Krešimira watched Veselka get sorted into the group opposite and they got into buses headed for different boutiques.
Krešimira and her group arrived at the fashion studio, Fendrel and Dain's, in West Virginia.
It was certainly fancy. Fendrel and Dain's had a runway, an operational staff of designers, seamstresses, photography studios, prop departments, lighting personnel, and, obviously, translators who skittered about like mice. The tall man put them all into different duties. Krešimira was assigned to a team of designers and photographers. They posed all day and cycled through every facial expression there was. Runway walks were treated almost like fitness exams and there was even a small platoon of nurses and medics on hand to treat and (randomly) inspect them. At night, they were all checked into a nearby hotel and given a very cheerful allowance.
For the next few weeks, Krešimira felt as though she was doing an abnormal amount of work for a model, and no work at all as an intern. Day in and day out, she was doing photo shoots, fittings and walks. And with a peculiar frequency, she was also routinely inspected by physicians who checked out everything from her eyesight to her blood. The days often ended with her exhausted and eager to sleep.
On the other hand, she was also learning near nothing. There were no senior models to offer tips or education on the subject, and the whole thing began to stink the more Fendrel and Dain's sweetened the pot. All the interns were given hotel rooms and cell-phones, with staff already listed in as contacts. The little allowance that they all got was too generous to be an actual wage. They felt like bribes.
"There's something wrong here, Bojan," Krešimira said.
"Oh no. Mira don't tell me you also think this is a scam. All the time at school it was 'I, Krešimira, will be on the cover of this magazine and that magazine' but now it's fishy?"
Bojan Novak was spread out lengthwise over the lobby's sofa. He was a handsome person now, but he wasn't always. Back when she still attended classes, he slouched, had glasses, brown eyes and a smile that would make the yellow sun envious. Now he looked ready to put the digital touch-up industry out of business: even his teeth seemed bleached whiter than snow.
"Think about it. We have one figure of authority, the tall American. The designers make variations of the same dress and suit over and over again. And if they don't do that, then they're using material from others. Look here, this is from that show, Project Runway, from years ago."
"Mhm."
"Mhm? It's the same gown I wore today, Bojan. You were in a photo-shoot with it today."
"Mira," Bojan threw his hands up, "this is a shit brand that can't pull a decent design out of its ass to save its life. But it's real. Look here-give me your phone."
"Use your own."
"It's not even yours, silly. Fine. See here; 'Fendrel & Dain's unveils an ugly tapestry of rigid and unoriginal designs at Fashion Week here in New York' blah blah blah 'Fendrel & Dain's accused of plagiarizing Hugo Boss' line of suits. Cease and desist enforced.' Blah blah blah. Fendrel & Dain's is a dumpster. But it's desperate for talent and we're desperate for a way into the industry. This is how us desperate but beautiful people help each other, you see? We don't get ahead by seeing a helping hand and questioning if it's real."
Krešimira wanted that to be true. The lobby they were sitting in had red carpets and golden trims. It was a palace and they looked like they belonged, wrapped up in designer (albeit ripoff) threads and all made up. By the grand staircase, the hotel staff was even beginning to put up a Christmas tree that nearly reached the crystal chandeliers. If it was all a scam, then she was going back to Croatia, to her father. If not…
Krešimira dug her phone, her old one, out of her purse. She checked her bank account. Her wages were there, they were real. They didn't retreat into the electronic ether when she made purchases or sent lump sums back home. It was real money. She closed out of her banking app and saw her recent calls log. The number of calls from home had reached the hundreds. She didn't even open the texts to read what was inside; her father would likely have thrown in some pictures of mother to punish her, show her how bad things had gotten. He should be using the money he was sending her. He should be. Bojan offered to take her drinking with some of the other interns, to get the true American experience. He may not have looked like the bespectacled runway hopeful from college anymore, but his actual self, or at least the amount of respect he had for his liver, had persevered.

"It's me."
"Mardbury? Do you know what time it is?"
"Tell me about the procedure."
"Tomorrow morning. Over coffee."
"No. Is it surgical? Is it safe? What happens to my old body? Are you absolutely sure that the clones don't have brains?”
"Yes to the first two. What happens to your old body is up to you. You could turn it into a tree if you fucking want. Or you could bury it- meh no one falls for that anymore. As for the clone brains… what, you think we have a big garbage can labelled 'put brains here' or something? You think we wrap up all our spare brains in spare Walmart bags and watch the garbage truck load them up for the landfill? Good night."
"I've made a decision."
"Wonderful. Over coffee."
"I texted you the photo. What do you think?"
"Oh for fucks sake, Mardbury."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing it's just… well. I mean… you have a good eye for aesthetics. Can I ask why?"
"Sure! It's like you said, this might very well be my only one. I've seen the prices. So why have more of the same? Why simply do a reset when you can switch to an entirely new system? Think of the entire new slate of experiences, opportunities… pleasures that would come with this."
"Don't get too giddy on me, schoolgirl."
"I'm sorry it's just… the more I think about this, the more excited I am. You're absolutely sure this is safe, right?"
"Mardbury! I don't think your neighbors heard you clearly enough, please speak louder. Scratch coffee. Tomorrow, come to my place. We'll finalize everything there, and I'll even bring the operating doctor."
"I'm sorry. It's just overwhelming. Thank you, again and truly, for this."
"Good night."

Krešimira left the bar for some fresh air. She was standing with her winter coat wrapped around her, watching the wisps of vapor that danced out of her lips get torn apart by the shoulders of street-goers passing her by. To her left, a beardless Santa rung his bell in front of a cast-iron pot. For all their talk, Krešimira understood none of it. She kept her head down and her hair messy by habit, something she picked up from her childhood in Zagreb.
Then she heard it. There was a screech, human or tire she didn't know, that pulled every face towards the road. A dozen brake pedals were slammed in unison and the smell of burnt rubber burrowed into Krešimira's nose. There was the sound of metal bending, shattering and cracking, and the laborious groan of heavy material falling to the ground. Over the line of paused pedestrians, Krešimira saw glass and a car bumper fly through the air. Then it was all quiet, and the crowd began switching their phones away from the cameras and to the 911 dial.
Bojan and the others came out of the bar, tipsy from drink and curious to see. They pushed themselves through the crowd, Krešimira following in their wake. It was a car accident.
A truck, one of those mammoth 18-wheelers, had skidded into an intersection. A few SUVs and sedans had plowed into its side, but the damage wasn't too bad. She could see some of the drivers wandering out of their cars, massaging their necks and already dialing their insurance companies. But there was one car, a sports car- Italian by the looks of it. It was low enough to the ground that when it sped up into the truck, its bottom half had slid right underneath the truck while the hood was sheared off. Krešimira saw most of the car sitting idle on the other side of the truck, and she saw the driver. Some of the onlookers began to notice too and Krešimira felt dizzy as the screams began. The body was wearing a suit, but its tie had fallen down to the waist. There was nothing from the neck up and the suit was glistening red.
Behind the truck, by the scrunched-up roof of the sports car, there was a head on the pavement with bits of metal embedded in its forehead. Its mouth opened and closed, a fish ripped from the water, and its eyes darted around frantically. She saw the pupils lock on her group, on Bojan, and she quickly pulled him away.
Bojan escorted the still shaking Krešimira back to the hotel. Bojan back to his room was swaying from too much "authentic American alcohol" the whole trip back. He only had four Bud Lites.
Krešimira lay on her bed alone. She could hear the sirens outside, and she brought her hand to her neck. She lay awake thinking of breaths without lungs, and a maggot-filled corpse calling out her name. She grabbed her phone and quickly transferred the week's salary back home before thrusting her face into the pillow. Sleep dragged its feet.

"Creepy lady."
"Don't let her fool you; Dr. Dain is the best we have. Now, before you lock anything in, do you have any more questions?"
"What about paperwork? I obviously won't use the same passport."
"We can set you up with a brand new name and identity, just as I did. As far as the world is concerned, Greene and Bo-many of our other customers just disappeared off the face of the world while names like Fendrel just appeared out of the mystic mist."
"You've thought of everything. I don't know… what about the pills?"
"Tablets. Dissolve two of them in water, chug it all down before bed, or if you start feeling sharp neck pain."
"What happens if I forget one day?"
"Sharp. Neck. Pain. I mean it, this isn't a prescription you want to mess up. Those tablets keep your brain and the body's spinal cord talking with one another until they get married, anatomically. You really don't want that conversation to stop."
"Okay, okay. I don't know… what should I do after it's all done?"
"Live of course! Experiment, have fun, look in a mirror, don't look in a mirror, try on new clothes, go to bed, do drugs, enroll in college or whatever else you want. Heck, we'd look well together; I could guide you around the whole thing and get you used to it all. I'd be like the car salesman who buckles up next to you during the test drive."
"But this is permanent."
"Bad example. You get the idea. It'd be downright monstrous of me to just leave you adrift in this brave new world after getting you that far, wouldn't it?"

Krešimira pushed the refrigerator in front of her hotel door and scattered cereal flakes over the floor. It was the middle of the night. It was her new routine. Bojan was gone.
It began with the first actual show. Krešimira had actually felt proud of herself after that one; they'd brought in a bunch of viewers to watch and she figured it to be her first, genuine interning experience. It was all scheduled for Christmas Day and the entire outfit rack felt original, for once.
Then the guests came backstage. They looked the models up and down, directing their questions to the tall man who leaped from model to model like a cars salesman. She didn't know what the viewers had to say about her, or what the tall man said about her, but she did notice the tall man deflecting inquiries away from Bojan, as though he was unappealing… or off limits.
The next day, Bojan was accepted into another fashion house in New York City. But that couldn't be, Krešimira thought, Bojan hadn't even walked the runway because of a wardrobe malfunction; what talent could he possibly have shown off?
Bojan wasn't the only one. There were near a dozen transfers out, and near fifty transfers in. The new group came from the Phillipines. Nobody spoke English, as expected. The tall man said that, since they did so well the first time, they were going to have another showing next week.
Krešimira stared at the hotel door, still wearing the dress she had on for the show; she was first on the runway but the tall man had kept the viewers away from her like she was a museum painting. The rancid apartment in Croatia seemed so welcoming now, and no amount of fury her father could muster could compare to every footstep outside the door.
Krešimira turned her head out the window and saw an airplane pass through the clouds.
She could run again.
This wasn't Croatia: she could easily get a cab to the nearest airport. She pulled out her phone, her old phone, and switched off the hotel's internet to use cell data. She pulled up the airport website and tried to buy a ticket. She was met with an error message. It was becoming clearer. Fendrel and Dain's had no qualms about letting its victims buy beer or send money to the family, but it certainly wouldn't permit buying an escape. Fendrel and Dain's couldn't do anything about cash though, and there was an ATM in the lobby, just a few meters away from a taxi drop-off point.
It was one in the morning. Fendrel and Dain's had provided her entire wardrobe, and she bitterly regretted not buying something, even a simple sweater, to not draw attention to herself. She'd be making her getaway in runway clothes. She'd buy something less outlandish at the airport. She slid the refrigerator aside and left her room.
She walked past the rooms of the other interns. She heard some of them partying, cheering in Croatian and Filipino. She heard a few talking with relatives, gushing about their futures in the fashion industry. She made it to the elevator and found it empty. She pressed the button to the lobby and the doors closed. She was 18 stories away.
Krešimira Kovačević stood in the elevator, the backs of her feet itched against the shoe-straps and the elevator hummed as the cord sent it sliding down the building.
The elevator stopped at the 16th floor and the tall man walked in, still wearing his aviators. He said nothing and the elevator continued.
The elevator seemed to lose speed.
"Your name is… Krešimira Kovačević, yes?" the tall man asked.
"Y-yes.” Krešimira said.
"Are you unwell? You have rings under your eyes."
"Just stress."
"We'll have a doctor look at you tomorrow."
They reached the 10th floor and a group of drunk interns got in. The elevator continued, sped up even, all the way down to the lobby. The workers were pulling the grand Christmas tree down.
As the other interns got off, Krešimira pried herself off the wall farthest from the tall man and moved to the door, just as he did. And then she felt the grip on her shoulder. Her ankles burned as the cold hand rooted her to the floor. The door closed shut before sense, and voice, returned to her.
The tall man said nothing and pressed the button for one of the parking levels.
The elevator moved too fast.

"Are you excited?"
"This doesn't look like a hospital."
"This isn't a medical service, Mardbury. Technically, it's not even a service yet. Right now, it's beta testing."
"So there could be glitches?"
"No. We're simply testing how appealing the whole process is. So I ask again, Mardbury, are you excited?"
"I am. God, this is surreal. What'll happen to my old body?"
"It'll decompose."
"I want it turned into a tree."
"Understandable. Never hurts to go green."
"Do you want to do something after this is all done?"
"Sure. You know what they say: new year, new you. Dr. Dain, could you please put our good friend to sleep while I get his new suit?"

Krešimira woke up in her hotel room, sweating. She looked down at herself: covered in sweat. She looked at the clock: 1:01 in the morning. The fireworks were still going off outside and the lamp was still on, illuminating the American passport on the table and the shed clothes on the floor. She looked to her side and saw that Bojan Arthur was still asleep.
Quietly, she swung herself out of bed and made her way into the bathroom. The sudden change in light made her eyelids clamp shut for a moment, but she adjusted to it. She leaned into the mirror and brought a hand to her face, gently tracing a finger upwards, moving from her lips to her cheekbones before coming to rest at the bags beneath her eyes. They'd go away with good sleep, the doctor told her, and here she was not getting it. She gripped the side of the mirror and pulled the cabinet open, pushing her reflection aside to reveal two orange bottles. She took the fuller one on the left and deposited two tablets into her hand. They were pink, chalky disks, each about the size of a quarter. She flicked them into a cup of tap water and watched them fizz away into bubbles, before pouring the whole thing down her throat. It tasted like juiced peaches.
She put the bottle away and brought back the mirror. This time she leaned close, so that her nose was only a few inches away, and brushed some hair away from her forehead; the incision scar was healing nicely. Bojan's voice called from the bed, and the thing wearing Krešimira curved her lips into a smile and walked out of the mirror's sight.

Like it always did, and always will do, a lonely garbage truck lumbered down the roads as the morning sun rose. Workers with neon vests hung from the back, talking about the game from last night, occasionally shooting waves at the early risers. The truck drove past hundreds of homes and gobbled up hundreds of garbage bags and boxes. It made its way deep into West Virginia and scooped up a bulging plastic bag stinking of rotten flesh. Through the white plastic, one could see what looked like fleshy pink blobs all crammed inside together. But the worker didn't care, butcher shops were on the route too, and there was a stellar touchdown to talk about. The truck resumed its winded journey to the landfill, and Krešimira Kovačević could only dream.


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“This city is enormous,” Victor remarked as he stared out the 303rd story window. The adjacent buildings stood around 1600 meters, with the tallest building being nearly double that, four times as tall as the tallest skyscraper in his world. These titanic spires were forged with frames of carbon nanotubes and diamondoid windows that sparkled in the sunlight. Just as impossible as their height and composition was their abundance, as the city stretched onwards for as far as Victor could see. “Why is it so huge?”
“Hmmm? Oh, well according to what information Skitter was able to find in the Library, this whole reality was ruled by a pseudo-Catholic theocracy for over three hundred years,” Iris replied distantly as she appraised a laptop she had found. “Extremely patriarchal and puritanical, and thus they experienced an above-average birth rate. But they also possessed the advanced technology that had been gifted to them by Him, and so were able to support a large population. This world's population grew much bigger than ours ever did; at least tens of billions of people, maybe hundreds.”
Victor turned his gaze down to the streets below. Where once there surely must have been uncountable swarms of citizens going about their day, now there were only the Unclean; faceless half humans bigger than any non-anomalous animal that had ever lived, crawling through the ruined streets in a desperate search for something they could no longer comprehend.
“And now, all those hundreds of billions of people are just… gone?” he asked softly. “Jesus. This, this is even worse than that world where the sun turns people into wax monsters. At least those things seemed kind of happy. But the Unclean, you said that they -”
“In the words of another interdimensional traveller, ‘don't think about it',” Iris told him. “Step away from the window Victor.”
“Right, sorry,” he said. He turned his back to the horror outside and took off his glasses to clean them. “Maybe the next post-apocalyptic wasteland we visit can just be a regular nuclear holocaust?”
“Turns out those are surprisingly rare. I guess nuclear deterrence isn't as crazy as it seems.”
“Speaking of nuclear and crazy, I haven't heard a peep out of Lolly in a while," he said. "Maybe we should check on her."
"I'm sure she just found something to keep her distracted."
"And quiet?"
Iris finally took her eyes off the laptop.
"You're right, let's go check on her."
Shutting the laptop and placing it in her bag, the two of them went to search for Lolly.
The floor they were on was primarily an open office, with all the light coming from a wall of windows on the far side. Numerous mundane personal items dotted the room - briefcases, hats and jackets, 3D photos of loved ones - still laying where their owners had abandoned them over half a century ago. Numerous chairs were askew or overturned, left to fall where they would in a mad dash to escape the city, with no one ever coming back to right them.
Victor and Iris were momentarily startled by the sound of an angelic chime over the somehow still functional PA system.
"All pause for the midday prayer," a serene male voice announced.

"He who art above, forever Pure be His name. His Kingdom is come, and His will shall be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
May He grant us the clarity to avoid Sin, and may His Tears Purify us when we stray. May He forgive us our deviances, and may He never forgive the Unclean.
May He lead the Blessed Militia to victory against the Unclean, and may the Unclean suffer for all Eternity for their unspeakable Sin, for His is the Kingdom and the Purity and the Virtue, forever and ever, amen."

Another set of angelic chimes signalled the end of the prayer break.
"That's been playing to an empty building for sixty years? So creepy," Victor remarked.
"Blarg!" Lolly shouted as she swung down from an air vent, having shape-shifted her face into the same blank visage of the Unclean. To her disappointment, neither of her colleagues seemed especially frightened. "Marp?"
"This is what you were doing instead of collecting electronics?" Iris asked with a raised eyebrow.
Lolly dropped down to the floor and shook her face back to normal.
"No, I did that," she replied, pulling out a sack from her hammerspace pockets. “I went through the whole office and nabbed everything that looked like a laptop, tower, tablet, or smartphone I could find. Are you sure these computers are magic though? Because they seem pretty normal to me.”
“I didn't say they were magic, I said they were advanced,” Iris replied as she examined the contents of the sack. “I haven't been able to figure out exactly what sort of hardware it is yet, but I do know it's extremely efficient and not producing any waste heat. Memory and processing power are at least twenty times higher than a comparable top-of-the-line product in our reality. It charges wirelessly and in under a minute, consumes no power on standby, and a full charge can give you over a hundred hours of peak use. This Faithful OS, on the other hand, is, well, it's what you would expect for a theocratic regime. The restrictions are rather severe so at the very least I'll have to do some jailbreaking. Ideally, I'd like to make a version of DarkEnergy that's compatible with this hardware and install that instead."
"Worst comes to worst, we could probably sell this stuff as is in Eurtec,” Victor suggested.
“Uh-huh. That's cool, I guess,” Lolly said disinterestedly. “So… when are we going to get my hovercraft?”
“For the third time Lolly, we're getting your hovercraft last, since we can't very well haul a car through the building with us,” Iris huffed.
"Well we can't, but she might; I have no idea how much she can fit in those pockets," Victor countered. “Don't worry Lolly, the bottom forty stories of this place are a parking garage, so I'm sure you'll have your pick. Just don't wander off, since neither of us wants to re-enact a classic Seinfeld episode.”
Lolly squeed excitedly and started jumping up and down.
“This is so amazing! I'm going to get a hovercraft!”
Iris closed the sack back up and handed it back to Lolly.
“Alright, these are enough electronics to keep me and my tech team busy for a while," she said. "Let's go check out the lab.”
The three of them moved through the administrative offices and into the medical facility in the back. Away from the windows, the place only became darker, and they were forced to take their flashlights out to navigate. The eerie silence was briefly broken by a soft rumble through the floor. They held still for a moment to make sure it wasn't a herald of something disastrous, and then pressed onwards.
At the very back there was a large sign on a heavy door which read ‘Authorized Personnel Only by Order of the Sacrosanct Father of Resplendent Penance', but the door was slightly ajar and the electronic lock appeared to be non-functional.
As they stepped into the room, the lights attempted to turn on, flickering a few times before mostly giving up, strobing at random intervals. Either side of the room was lined with transparent tubes, two meters tall by a meter across. They were all empty and in pristine condition, with the exception of a single broken tube, whose shattered fragments still littered the ground around it.
Iris was focused so intently upon it that she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Lolly shriek in terror.
“Oh my god, look!” she said, pointing to the end of the room while cowering behind Iris and Victor.
There, sealed behind a barrier of thick diamond, was what had made the rumbling noise only a moment ago.
An Unclean.
It was a relatively small one, only a few tonnes in weight and a few meters in height. It lay on its side, perfectly still, its blank face turned away from them.
“Is it dead?” Victor whispered.
“No, I don't think they can die and still remain intact,” Iris replied, shining her flashlight towards the caged monstrosity. “It doesn't seem active though. It must have been in here since just before this World ended. It's probably the very same one that broke out of this tube here, and they never got the chance to ship it off to the Unfertile Lands. Well, if it's been locked in there for sixty-four years already we probably don't need to worry. Keep an eye on it though.”
“Mm-hmmm!” Lolly nodded in fervent agreement, keeping her gaze fixed on the abomination. At the end of the lab, across from the Unclean, they found an adjacent room full of storage tanks.
“His Holy Tears. Excellent,” Iris said as she began inspecting the first tank.
“It's just a bunch of goop. How is this better than a hovercraft?” Lolly asked.
“It's Akivic Purification Serum,” Iris said. “It generates off-the-chart levels of Akiva radiation in highly specific wavelengths. The radiation strengthens traits with matching spectral resonance and destroys traits with opposing resonance. Enough exposure to this stuff will purify you of sin and embellish your virtues, at least in the eyes of Him. This is how the Church was able to control this World. If you burn a heretic you create a dozen more, but bathe them in this stuff and you get a born-again missionary ready to spread the good news. It's the most perfect mind-controlling agent any totalitarian regime could ever ask for.”
“And why exactly does Darke want this?” Victor asked nervously.
“He says he found someone willing to sell him some Incarnate Flesh, but before he buys it he wants to make sure he has a way to purify it,” Iris replied. “He intends to use alchemy to change the Akiva wavelength to whatever he needs. The specifics aren't really my concern. It's dangerous to use this stuff in its pure form so I want you two to look around for anything labelled Nutrient solution, a healing serum called Blessing, and maybe something called HFT. There was no explicit mention in any of the files about what it did. Combine that with the fact that there was a shortage of it right before the outbreak of Unclean, and I think it either prevents or reduces the chances of subjects mutating into the Unclean.”
As Victor and Lolly began searching through the storage area for the desired compounds, Iris dedicated her attention to retrieving the Tears out of the tank. There was a large pipe at the top that apparently sent the Tears to the tubes upon demand, but there was also a small faucet near the bottom, presumably for relieving overfill or in case they needed to test a sample. Placing a plastic container under the tap, she carefully turned the knob until a slow trickle started pouring out.
The substance was perfectly clear, utterly pure and uncontaminated by any foreign materials. It was slightly more viscous than water, yet flowed outwards with an odd sort of grace that seemed to ever so slightly skirt the laws of gravity and motion. The light was refracted through it in such a way as to give it a soft radiance, and even the sound of it flowing out from the tap and into the bucket was somehow melodious.
“Wow,” Iris murmured as she stared at it in awe. “It does have a strange allure to it. I suddenly do feel unclean, along with a slight compulsion to actually bathe in it, like it would be the most purifying experience imaginable. That's a little unsettling actually. If I suddenly start stripping off my clothes one of you will stop me, right?"
“Of course,” Victor agreed.
“Nope, sorry,” Lolly giggled.
“Thank you, Victor,” Iris said with a smirk and slight shake of her head. “It's interesting that I didn't feel anything when it was still in the tank. I wonder if it's shielded against Akiva radiation, and if there are any shielded containers we could use instead of -”
She was interrupted by a torturous, blood-curdling wail from behind them. All at once they turned to see the Unclean in the cage rising to an upright position. Even in its hermetically sealed chamber, it could somehow sense that there was now a free-flowing source of His Tears nearby. Finally roused from its long malaise, it slammed its fist into the diamond wall with unimaginable force. Cracks immediately appeared in the wall, and the Unclean slammed it again and again and again until it shattered into thousands of shards.
Lolly jumped straight upwards at a fantastic speed, breaking a hole through the ceiling. Iris and Victor stared as the monster crawled towards them at a frightening pace, cornered and with no time to mount a defence. Fortunately, Lolly had not forgotten them. She stretched her arms down, wrapping them around their waists like a rope, and yanked them up to the floor above just as the Unclean blundered through.
“Are you okay? Did it touch you? It didn't touch you, did it?” she asked frantically.
“Get your noodle arm off me!” Iris said, freeing herself and rushing to the hole in the floor to see what was happening.
“We're fine Lolly, thank you,” Victor said.
“That thing is drinking all the Tears, which is the whole reason we came here!” Iris retorted.
“That's the whole reason you came here. I came for a hovercraft, and I only agreed to that because I thought we'd be safe from the Unclean inside,” Lolly said as she retracted her arms back to their normal length. “But we're not safe, so I'm aborting this mission.”
She reached into her pockets and pulled out her Kaleidoscope keys with the intention to turn the next door she saw into a Way back to the Circus.
“It's just one Unclean, not even a big one,” Iris said as she rummaged through her backpack and pulled out a double-barrelled dart gun. “This is loaded with an alchemically enhanced formula of the serum Lord Blackwood invented to destroy the Unclean. Darke made it for me especially for this trip, so I guess you could call them Darkwood Tears. Far more potent than the original, plus that thing is a shrimp. A few rounds should be enough.”
“Iris, it's not worth risking your life to fight that thing! We can find another source of Tears,” Victor insisted.
“Recon here is expensive, time-consuming and dangerous. Taking down this Unclean now is preferable to possibly fighting a multitude of bigger ones later,” she countered as she loaded the gun.
“Iris, don't be stupid! Getting caught by one of those is actually a fate worse than death, because we know what happens to us when we die!” Lolly said. “I'm going to Oneiroi West permanently and you two will just have H'rasm'Kal grab your souls and stick them into new bodies, but none of that will happen if that thing gets you!”
“She's right; you could end up trapped in a living hell until the sun blows up," Victor agreed. "It's not worth it!”
“Now that you bring it up, I'm not actually sure if H'rasm can cleave a soul from the Unclean,” Iris mused. “Look, it's not that bad. If it gets me, you just go back and get more Darkwood serum so that someone else can take this thing out.”
Just as she was about to jump down, she gave them a rare ear-to-ear smile.
“But it's not going to get me.”
The four-meter drop to the floor below was nothing, and she landed on her feet with ease. The Unclean didn't even react to the sound, for it was too busy greedily lapping up His Tears. Iris quietly fell back as far as she could to give herself the maximum amount of time for additional shots, and then fired a pair of darts into the Unclean's back.
The being screeched in agony as enormous heaps of molten flesh sloughed off its form, briefly resembling the people they once were before dissolving completely, finally free of their torment. The Unclean turned to look at Iris, who had already reloaded another set of darts. She aimed for its head this time but only hit its neck, causing most of its left side to dissolve into brown ichor. Using its remaining arm, it furiously hauled itself towards Iris. Hurriedly reloading her gun once more, she took her last shot as it began to throw itself upon her.
It exploded into a horrific smelling brown goo, most of which rained down upon Iris.
“Huh,” Lolly said as she and Victor looked down through the hole in the floor. “Hey Victor, remember when we first met and I said I thought your job sounded boring? I take that back.”
The two of them jumped down and rushed to Iris's aid, who was standing nearly catatonically still.
“Iris, are you okay?” Victor asked as he handed her a towel he had grabbed from a nearby bathing tank.
“I'm covered in Slenderman guts for the third bloody time!” she screamed, but then took several deep breaths to regain her composure, dabbing the ichor off her face.
“Third time? When was the second?” Victor asked.
“I was at the Ikea once, long story,” she replied. “Scoop some of this stuff up, won't you? It might be worth something.”
“Sure thing.”
“That was pretty awesome,” Lolly told her. “Sorry about your clothes though. That turtleneck is cashmere, isn't it?”
“It's fine, I have plenty of them,” she said.
“Remember: if you want to take it off, I won't stop you.”
Iris wiped some ichor off her sweater and flicked it at Lolly.
“Well, you're not sitting in my hovercraft covered in that stuff!”

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I have locked a door that no longer exists. The concept of doors is already gone. Anyone walking past will see… well, I don't know, but it won't be my door. My door is special to me, though; years ago I put a template in my mind, a memetic version of find-replace. What I see is a child's drawing of what it once was. Its feel is indescribable, but it shuts. There was another door in my office, I think, but it is gone now.
What is written on my walls was once a graph of the meme complex, though at the current mutation rate I doubt it remains an accurate representation. I know every arrow and codename. I can trace the relations almost without thinking, each one a well-trampled path in my mind where nothing can grow.
The site device has been activated. All exits have been sealed.
I groan. It's the third time this week someone's tried to take the site with them. It'll be another nine seconds of ultrasonic memetic triggers to induce calm and compliance, then the site O5 will get around to overriding it yet again.
Seven.
I sigh and crawl under my desk, trying to arrange my jacket as a curtain. The fluorescent lights never turn off. I don't know what time it is, or when I should sleep. Best to try now, since there'll probably be a few hours until the next attempt.
Three.
There are sounds of running and crying in the hallway. Probably unrelated.
Device activation cancelled.
A whole group runs by, followed by what sounds like jackboots. Maybe they need to replenish their supply of D-class? There's some project happening, deep in the site. The continuing apocalypse indicates that they have failed.
Someone knocks on my door. It is a hollow sound, four times, as if the door is being slapped with the butt of their hand.
It shouldn't be possible. Doors are gone. It shouldn't be possible. The handle jiggles without success, once, then slams down, shearing through the thin metal of the lock.
I am panicking. There is a gun in my office. I had a gun. It is on my desk, holding down the suicide note. A centimeter of solid metal away.
I dive out from under my desk, hit my head on the lip, and careen into my chair. When I stand up the gun is disassembled in neat little parts, arranged by size and function, and Annette is standing in front of me, staring with unseeing eyes.
I open my mouth to speak, but the small black wafer on their wrist is not vibrating. Figures they'd send Annette to deal with me; they are blind, deaf, and mute, and if the small transducer on their wrist is not on, they are completely cut off. I am panting. All this exercise and I'm out of breath.
We stand there in silence, Annette not moving, me not moving. Their eyes are dead blue glass. My mouth is suddenly unbearably dry, and I remember I haven't drank anything more than urine for a few days. I want nothing more than to rip the eyes out of their head and put them in my mouth, to suck on them like ice. I lick my lips.
Annette reaches into their jacket, pulls out a small accordion case, and rifles through it almost too fast for me to see. They pull out a small white business card and hold it out. It looks brand-new, crisp and cream-white. The text on it is improperly kerned and too big for the card:

NO TRICKS
I WILL HUR
T YOU

"Understood," I say. There is a pause as we both do nothing. I slowly walk around the desk and place it back in Annette's hand with a small snap. They relax, just a little, and tap the black diaphragm on their wrist. It starts vibrating again. I realize I may not die.
Annette walks over to my wall and traces over the flowchart with one finger, sloughing flakes of black mold from the lines. They stop at the center, run over the mold, and tap once.
CHLDN
"It never got a code name," I mutter.
Annette goes back and sits in front of my desk. They pick up the magazine and start absentmindedly fiddling with it, sliding bullets in and out. After a second they take one bullet and begin to tap with it. Morse code.
NEED HELP
I blink. "It's hard to imagine anything I can do."
They pause, and tilt their head. I sit down, and their glass eyes follow. I remember a random report from the memetics department mailing list, years ago. Even under anesthesia, the ocular muscles moved to follow a source of movement. They never could figure that one out.
I DO NOT KNOW THE TERM LATE STAGE PERCEPTION TEMPLATE MISMATCH
I shrug. "That describes a lot of things. What're the symptoms?"
AGONY NEEDED SEDATION SEVERAL BROKEN BONES PSYCHE COLLAPSE
No surprise. Foundation conditioning is the best in the world, but no one can accuse it of being particularly subtle.
Memes are ideas. Ideas are how we see the world. Memory is a fickle thing—when the stars vanished it wasn't just enough to amnestic the whole population and delete all the records, even if that was feasible. Small flashes remain, small glimpses, the little things. We considered putting a big projector up at one point, I remember, up on the moon. It was too expensive. Far easier to make people think the stars are there, to embed them on their minds. Now they see the stars move with them, in any high dark place.
I rub my forehead. "You want an unconditioner, don't you." An anti-memetic (not necessarily an antimeme). An antidote. An undoer.
YES
I see where this is going. "For what?"
EVERYTHING
"I don't have that. No one has that. For obvious reasons."
BUT YOU CAN MAKE IT
I shrug. "I am the best," I lie. "But I need a clean mind."
Annette leans forward. It takes a moment for me to realize they want to hear more.
"For an incubator."
Annette leans forward and picks up the note, glass eyes never leaving my own. I flick my eyes towards the flowchart for a minute. It is just a piece of paper, no way for her to know what it is. I hadn't even filled in my name yet. The paper falls silently back to the desk.
HOW
"A D-class. Then half an hour for the incubation. Then you can be on your way."
They rock back and forth.
YES
The door slams open. A single MTF agent stumbles in and falls on his face. Outside the door, one agent leans against the far hallway wall and cries, and another lays flat on the floor, facing the ceiling. The one on my floor is sobbing to himself, trying to get up. I look at Annette. They haven't even moved.
"We should go," I say quietly.
Annette stands up.
YES
Everyone dies. Easy to say, hard to see. On the face of it, there's no reason to worry myself when we'll all be dead in a month. But….
Annette seemed to care. It's hard to read emotions from Morse code and someone who has never seen a face, but they seemed to care. How painful would it be? To have your mind rip itself apart, to overlay twenty different things that aren't there onto something that never existed? I can just about justify it to myself if I squint hard and call it palliative. I can just about convince myself that that's all this is. One last good deed.
How to forget what I have done? As we leave my office I shut the door for what I know in my heart to be the final time, the door no one will see or open again. I try to trace the flowchart in my mind and find that the far branches have become fuzzy and indistinct, overgrown once again.

« A Quiet Night | Into the Woods | Hello, Little Girl »


by Captain Kirby

Joyce Michaels put her headphones on and queued up the same song she played every time she made one of these trips: When The Sun Sets by James Blunt. It was the same song she listened to before her father was supposed to pass away. Joyce set the track on repeat.
She waited at the stop outside of the hospital. The hour or so after each operation always felt strange, like some kind of dream. Joyce opened and closed her hands a few times. Yeah, they still work. They feel wrong, but they work.
When the bus arrived, Joyce shuffled on and swiped her public transit card. She found a nice seat next to the window where she leaned her head against the glass. Condensation built up little by little, but Joyce was too busy looking outside. It was always cloudy on operation days. Never raining, just grey.
This was Joyce's fourth operation. Usually, they're expensive as hell and hosts are near impossible to find, but The Foundation worked out all the logistics. Joyce didn't think about where her new self came from. She could take some good guesses, but that's a fast way to feel uncomfortable in your own skin.
The bus driver called out "Edeborough and Forbes!"
Joyce got up and left the bus. It was a short five minute walk to the graveyard. She was a few minutes late; Eric was already there. You couldn't quite see the pulsing light from the cybernetic enhancements under Eric's shirt, but you could tell something wasn't quite right when the wind blew and pressed the shirt up against the sharp edges and wires. Joyce paused the song and took off her headphones.
"You know, if you didn't wear those headphones everywhere, I'd never know it was you," he remarked.
"Yeah, they've gone through some repair, but they've outlasted at least four bodies by now."
"Good headphones."
"Good headphones indeed."
The two of them just stared at the grave for a few minutes. It was a familiar sight. Joyce was a little surprised the tombstone hadn't corroded much. You could still read the inscription:

Here Lies A Hero
Here Lies Anthony Michaels

"You ever envious of him?" Eric asked. He asked the same question the last three times too. Joyce always gave the same answer.
"Every time I have one of these operations."
"You think he's happy for us?"
"I don't really know. Depends how much he can sympathize."
"Technically, the dead can't sympathize."
"Well, if you're going to go there, the dead can't be happy either."
"You remember the last time you felt happy?"
"No, but its not like I keep a log."
"Touché."
The two stood in silence for another few minutes.
"You ever worry we're living on repeat?"
"You've got quite a few questions today, don't you?" Joyce replied. She shot Eric a little smile.
"Eh, you know, just looking at a grave nowadays makes you think. It's been a while since anyone's made one in earnest."
"That's true."
"I just worry we're dead already. Just haven't really realized it yet. Can't really tell if we're still living at all, since there's nothing to compare it to."
"You think this is the afterlife?"
"Who knows. I could see it. Just a place that perpetually keeps you alive because you can't die twice."
"Sounds a bit too poetic."
"Probably is. But then again, a lot of things end up being more poetic than we expect," Joyce motioned to the tombstone.
"I don't know if I'd call this poetic."
"Dying to save 'countless lives' ten days before we all become immortal? That's ironic at least."
"What's with the air quotes?"
"It's what I heard from The Foundation. Can't exactly trust everything they tell you."
"So, I assume you never got any details?"
"Nope. Not even with my access. I asked Emily a while back, but she hasn't responded. I've got quite a few questions for her about other things too."
"Must've been big. Maybe he really did save countless lives."
"Or doomed them. It could go either way knowing our line of work."
Another five minutes. These ones felt a bit longer. They lingered like bees around flowers. Just trying to suck every last bit of nectar out until it was all gone. And then Joyce spoke up again.
"I hope you're right."
"About what?"
"About the afterlife thing. I'd be able to live with myself better if I knew we all just died on that day."
"Well, technically you wouldn't be ali—"
"You know exactly what I mean."
"True."
And then ten minutes of quiet, which was only interrupted by the pitter patter of raindrops. Joyce was surprised. It never rained on operation days.
"We should probably get going then," Eric noted.
"Probably."
"I have my car here, I can drive you back."
"Nah, I'll take the bus. I'm way out of the way for you."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Ok then. Take care. I'll see you around."
"You too."
Joyce put her headphones back on and restarted the music. She focused on the song as her body went into autopilot. She'd adjusted to this new one pretty quick. It carried her through the rain, to the bus, and back home to the three room flat across the city, where Joyce collapsed on the couch, stared at the ceiling, and just kept listening to her music.

My only respite
Since life haunts me
Knowing I'm gonna die
Eventually

Joyce's phone buzzed.

You Have Unread Messages (1)

You Have No New Messages

From: eyoung@foundation.secure.scp
To: jmichaels@foundation.secure.scp
Subject: re: A Favor
Hey Joyce,
Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you. Everything's been kind of slow going ever since the incident. You know, they don't give you your full security credentials back until you've more or less earned them again. I just got enough to access all my old projects.
Anyways, you wanted to know about Project Dammerung? Or what happened to Tony? How about I give you both at once? You of all people deserve to know what Tony did.
Delete this email after you've safely downloaded the files. Don't want someone peeping over your shoulder to catch you viewing classified documents.
Regards,
Emily Young
SCP_Draft.pdf
Anthony_Michaels_Interview.pdf
Notes_Scan.zip
Imaging_Results.zip

SURGICAL IDENTITY PERPETUATION

End of Death

The Foundation Wants A Robot Army


The O5 Council sat in silence at what they had just heard.
Finally, Four's gentle voice broke the reverie. "What did you say?"
"I said, it's hopeless."
Four watched the weathered old man slump in his chair.
"You're the last person I'd expect to hear that from, Ten."
"Look at the data. The Orange Zone has shrunk by 2%. We've lost two Sites' worth of personnel and skips in the last month alone."
Before he could continue, a blip on Eleven's screen borrowed her attention. She rubbed her wrinkled temple.
"Two more task forces are lost, Eta-5 and Phi-2."
One rose slightly. "Dead?"
"Eta-5 suffered catastrophic losses against a 3396-empowered living mountain range. No further details."
"And Phi-2?"
A pause, too long. "One member dead, the rest defected."
"Shit."
Two spoke up, finally. "We need to beef up ALABASTER. Every drop of resources goes to containment, or neutralization if possible."
Three joined in. "I don't like this. This isn't us anymore. Putting most of mankind in camps and labs is overstepping our place."
Two cocked his head. "You picked a really bad time to suddenly grow a heart, Three. It's just containment of anomalies. That's what we do. That's what we've been doing. Nothing has changed except the scale and the budget. There won't be a mankind unless we do our jobs, and do them now."
Four shifted. "A formal vote, then. For or against increasing the scope of Project ALABASTER and making containment and neutralization of the 3396 spread the Primary Foundation Mission Directive."
Silence.
A handful of voices quietly said "In favor", one after the other.
Three, Four, and Eight voted to oppose.
The remainder stood silently as history marched forward.

O5-2 disconnected from the holographic call and returned to his favorite chair. Not that his current residence had much of a view.
Thirteen bunkers were located around, inside, or near the planet. Each one containing someone who at one point would have been rightly called a king or queen of the world. One of these bunkers contained O5-2.
Designed by the Foundation's best and brightest, bristling with the most advanced technology on the planet, the fortress was located a kilometer beneath the desert sands of somewhere redacted.
A titanic block of concrete and various named and unnamed metals, all protecting a singular room, a heart, where O5-2 resided. The fortress defied any earthquake, hurricane, or asteroid that dared try to reach him.
But right now it had a huge hole in it.

Alarms blared all over the labyrinthine circulatory system of corridors. Classified machines bent the very fabric of space within the fortress, to confuse and disorient any would-be intruders, as well as protect from outside disasters. One could walk for a hundred kilometers and never get any closer to the heart, if they didn't know the way.
The flashing cognitohazardous emergency lights looked down upon miles of destroyed corridors. Massive guns lay destroyed, smoke still flowing from their shattered and melted barrels. Several humanoid bodies lay here, torn apart.
One indistinct, melted red corpse had its fist embedded in the broken remains of a Scranton Reality Disruptor. The air around it sputtered and rippled with the machine's dying breaths as the corpse's skeleton twitched.
What was once a laser grid defense whirred quietly, sparks dripping from it like tears. A motionless body made of sparkling crystal lay in pieces before it, and the deadly beams had left their mark both on it and the surrounding walls and guns.
Deeper still, walls were torn apart and corroded. One wall had been chewed to pieces by a swarm of fiery moths. Another had been turned to rock candy and shattered.
The further into the complex, the more esoteric the defenses, and the more strangely they had been overcome.
A turret was being chewed up by a Tyrannosaurus rex made of plasma.
A body most certainly did not lie crumpled in a ten-meter circle where reality was crushed flat to two dimensions and then rolled up into nonexistence.
A missile the size of a person sat in the air, encased in bone.
A defense drone melted in a puddle of cheese.
The Scranton Reality Anchors had sat quietly and impotently along the walls the entire time, for an anchor can hold a boat in place but it can't stop it from sinking.

Alarms kept blaring. Agent Palanez ran one last diagnostic check on his SEGURO suit and activated all systems. They would be here any second.
O5-2 was inside a SEGURO suit of his own. If it was to be the last wall protecting him, there were far worse options than a metal, polymer, and redacted-stuff shell, powered by a blackboxed skip, an AIAD to move it faster than he could think, and a lot of hope. Only problem was that his suit was still powering up.
Agent Palanez had always been a man of few words. "Secure."
Agent Figueroa continued. "Contain."
O5-2 felt a chill down his spine. "Protect."
KA-BOOM!
"Get behind us, sir!"
Palanez moved quickly and generated a force field seconds before a gigantic column of burning acetylene erupted from the one of the attackers' hands.
One instance with two arms holding two more disembodied arms made of brass led the charge of about twenty five mutants.
The two bodyguards braced. Their suits were experimental and only superficially tested. Still, they had a job to do.
Agent Figueroa stepped forward and went on the offensive. She let loose a pulse of energy that threw the first wave back and gave her a second to breathe, before shooting a gray-skinned two-headed man in the chest with her laser.
One mutant extended its veins and arteries, which now ended in sharp points, and began to pry at the armor plating while another attempted to distract Figueroa with blasts of magma. A burst of electricity from the suit shot into the veins but the mutant held its ground, screaming.
Another mutant, with only mouths on its face and neck, opened all of them to scream at Figueroa. She dodged more magma and swung the vein guy into the path of the devastating sonic waves, disintegrating him. The scales of armor he had managed to scrape loose fell off as well.
Just gotta hold on…
Palanez wasn't holding on as well. After narrowly escaping another plasma Dakotaraptor and dispatching it with a magnetic field generator, one older man had affixed both of Palanez's feet to the floor with an ultra-strong pink adhesive gunk, and was currently attempting to dissolve the armor with acid while two more mutants held Palanez. Palanez diverted power to his right leg and moved it, ripping up a piece of the floor along with it. Off-guard, the chemical mutant was sliced in half by Palanez's energy blade, but his job was done.

Rita grit her teeth. Now or never. Seconds ago she had just watched Ernesto die to give her the opening she needed. She stayed behind Dylan and his rapidly breaking stone wall, and extended a single hair from her arm.
The hair grew in length, and stretched out past the rock wall, past Ernesto's remains, past David, desperately absorbing the armored man's blasts, and towards the millimeter-wide breach in the suit. It then entered the gap, and weaved its way past the layers and cracks, past the carbon-woven undersuit, right down to the agent's skin. Rita's single black hair touched a brown one on the agent's arm, and her eyes widened.
In her mind, she spoke the word that she had felt when the blessed goo had raised her up, the Word etched into the DNA of her every cell.
THRIVE.
Palanez felt a pinprick on his arm, then a shudder that pulsed through his entire body. Every one of his hairs stood on end. And they wouldn't sit back down. The hairs grew longer and longer. Some doubled back into his skin, creating new follicles that instantly sprouted even more hair. The hair filled the suit, and the pressure began to crush him. His nose and ear hairs had nowhere else to go, and he could feel himself suffocating.
A bad hair day indeed.
Exhausted, Rita fell to the floor as Palanez asphyxiated. His heart finally stopped, and the suit systems executed one last command. The outer shell fragmented and the pieces shot out at twice the speed of sound. The rest of it exploded, turning a six-meter radius, including Rita, David, and Dylan, to nothing but atoms and light.

One down, two to go.
Armando clenched his fists, all 12 of the ones he had active right now. The blessed blue-green gift had merged with his original anomaly and pushed him far beyond what he ever thought he could be. After spending so many years in a containment cell, he was finally in control of his anomaly. And soon, he would control his own destiny as well when the Foundation that imprisoned him was gone.
The second guard was more vicious. She had just torn one of them in half, and then nullified a retaliatory swarm of electricity wasps.
Rita's down. Ernesto's down. We're gonna have to tear the whole thing open to kill her.
Armando tore off an arm made of solid heptanitrocubane. Using several more arms in a chain, he hooked the dangerously explosive arm around the agent's neck.
BOOM!
The explosion threw the remaining mutants back and filled the room with smoke. One mutant clapped his hands and the smoke coalesced into black metal needles which converged upon the agent. She flung them away and into another mutant, then activated the artificial gravity generator, bringing everyone else to their knees. It took a pretty big chunk of power, but Figueroa deemed it worth the chance to pick them off.
She moved towards one gold-skinned woman, who shielded herself and the scaly man next to her under a glowing force field bubble resembling a tumbleweed.
Figueroa knew it would take too much time to break the shield. She cranked up the gravity near those two for a split second, crushing them.
GRAVITON GENERATOR SHUTTING DOWN
Shit.
The outer shell wouldn't hold much longer. That last explosion had managed to crack it, and the magma earlier had disrupted the polymer gel. The lowest layer of genesis weave was overworked trying to repair itself fast enough to cushion blows.
With her partner down, and the O5's suit only at 61%, she'd have to improvise.

Three of them remained: Armando, Angela, and Erik. They could see the breaches in the remaining guard's armor. If they could take her out, they could crack open the O5's suit like an egg at their leisure.
Easier said than done, of course, but desperation was one hell of a drug.
Armando and Erik rushed the guard, who responded with a sonic pulse. Armando quickly ripped off an arm and grew a wing, of an extinct anomalous bat, that negated the sound. Erik jumped high, and Armando grabbed his leg with three more arms and swung him downwards at the guard, who extended her right arm into a shield. Erik increased his mass 100-fold at the moment of impact, smashing the shield and throwing the guard to the floor.
Not giving her a chance to respond, Armando pinned her to the ground with seventeen heavy metallic arms while Erik hammered away at the armor plating with ultra-dense fists.
SHELL INTEGRITY CRITICAL
The genesis weave began to give. Power systems were shorting out left and right. Figueroa was sure she had cracked a rib or two now.
She activated the magnetic repulsor field, and sent the arms holding her down flying away. She charged one last shot on her psychic amplifier and liquefied Erik's brain, before her left wrist erupted in a shower of sparks. Armando slammed a Brachiosaurus front leg into her face, which she managed to block, then fired two energy balls right into Angela's face and stomach without missing a beat.
Armando grabbed her with several long octopus-like tentacles, but Figueroa let off a charged shockwave from her central power core that sent him flying. He hit the wall, but managed to tear off some of the armor with the tentacles' suckers.
Armando summoned more mass than he had ever used, and grew an arm with a nanometer-thick neutron star skin. He couldn't maintain it for long, but he was desperate now. The gravity overwhelmed Figueroa and pulled her towards Armando, and he slammed her in the midsection, sending cracks spiraling through the rest of the suit and breaking her faceplate.
Figueroa didn't care that her face was exposed now; she had this in the bag. She reached to her side and threw her only null grenade, the gravity of the arm directing it. Armando ripped off the arm and threw it as hard as he could towards her. Figueroa flinched as the grenade erupted into absolute nothingness, leaving an empty void of reality right in front of her face where the arm was.
Then she diverted power to her palm cannons, held her wrists together as a ball of blue plasma glowed in her hands, and extended her arms to fire the beam at Armando.
He frantically generated arms as fast as he could to block the brunt of the beam, but Figueroa kept walking towards him.
Then she stopped. The beam flickered and then cut out. Figueroa gave one single cry of pain, followed by silence, as her right arm and face turned into translucent crystal. Armando turned his head and saw Angela, barely breathing, straining to keep her three good eyes open, and holding the fourth bloody, disembodied eye in her own hand. The gaze of all four eyes turned whatever she looked at into salt, as long as she kept them focused intently on the same thing. The suit shifted, repairing the transmutation almost as soon as it happened, but Figueroa was done for. Her heart crystallized, and the suit exploded, less forcefully this time. Angela dropped the eye and collapsed, finally succumbing to the gaping hole in her body.
O5-2's suit unfolded, as it was programmed to upon the destruction of the other two. Better to fight at less than 100% than to be a sitting duck, they had reasoned.
Armando spat blood, and put up a dozen more fists.
"Sudden death. Winner takes all."

Armando stood over O5-2, who was gasping in the shattered remains of the suit.
"Where is your power now?"
O5-2 coughed up blood. "Was it worth it? All the lives you threw away to get here?"
Armando narrowed his eyes. "That's real rich coming from you. Every single one of us volunteered. We knew what we were doing, and we all decided the reward was worth it."
"And that reward would be?"
"A brand new world. Where there's a place for us that's not a cell." He took a deep breath. "Unfortunately, I don't think there's a place in our world for you."
Armando had more hands than anyone, but it only took one for him to strangle the man.
Another crack in the foundations of the old world, hewn by the dead citizens of the new.

The Shape of a Gun

Apotheosis Hub

A New Age of Magic


[T -11 days]
On the 2nd of November in the year 2000 my dad's dreams died. He never recovered. Not really. He wasn't alone, of course. All our dreams died that day. We'd been so close. Excruciatingly close.
He'd grown up, as we all had, assuming that our job was to keep the dream of the Great Work alive for future generations. And he was satisfied with that. He had a normal job as a butcher, he served his community well and every 28 days he would meet with 7 friends and discuss the coming of the Beloved.
It was fun, back then. They shared anecdotes about new encounters with The Beloved, read letters from other branches and dreamt of the maybes and the could have beens and the what ifs.
Then the letter came from the London office. The Lucid Crown had been found. The Lucid Crown had been tested. The letter could not have been clearer: It's time.
[T +10 days]
I can't make this place let me die. I slam the doors and pull the levers and I press the buttons over and over, every possible combination. I try to ignore the angry noises it makes in reply. There's a computer but it makes no sense to me and I can't remember how it works but I must try.
I have been at this for two days. Or two hours. Or forever. Or I haven't even started. I can no longer tell the difference between imagining a thing and doing a thing.
I see you sometimes. I ask you to help me but you're just so far away.
Something I have done has worked. I am the proverbial monkey on the typewriter and I have somehow managed to type a real word.
There is a tremor and a terrifying metallic groan. I feel movement and I know my fate is now out of my hands. Be kind to me, my beloved.
[T -9 days]
It was my dad that spotted the problem first. He was the one who looked at what happened on the 2nd of November in the year 2000 and realised the dream was dead, just like that. At the last church meeting he'd been given his instructions, where to go, what to take and what time His Awakening would happen.
He came back from that meeting to find me, still just a kid, sat in front of the television. "Dad!" I'd said. "Look at this!"
And he looked, and… have you ever seen someone's face at the moment their heart breaks? Just, forever and ever, something snaps in their mind and that's it, they're never going to be the same again? It was like, just for a moment, I was looking at a stranger. My dad, the friendly local butcher, he could never look so sad. Not my dad. Not my hero.
I remember looking back at the television. On it were the faces of Bill Shepard, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. Humanity had just entered a new age. From now on we would have humans living in space. I looked back at my dad. His skin looked pale and clammy and his eyes, moist and afraid, were locked onto the screen.
[T +8 days]
Time has no meaning now. I find myself lost in thoughts and then I realise I have cut myself again. And again. And every cut has a new glistening turquiose thread growing from it, floating in the air around me, reaching out to find something — anything — to touch. I feel warm towards these threads because we share the same need, the same hunger, that desire to connect.
I have been thinking about my escape plan more and more. I know that it probably leads to me getting trapped then suffocating. Or I burn. If I did it a million times then maybe on that millionth attempt my escape leads to you?
There's nothing for me here. I have not slept in 8 days. Death will be the only sleep we can ever know. Because of you. I would rather embrace the fire than endure your absence another moment. I hope you understand. I love you.
[T -7 days]
I wish he was still with us. The thing he had realised, that no-one else in the church had realised, was that whilst we'd got this perfect plan to put everyone on Earth to sleep all at once and bring forth his Beloved majesty into our reality, not every human being was on Earth now. That by the time the church was actually ready to activate the Lucid Crown, humanity's presence in space would be permanent.
I think sometimes it's better if you never have that sort of hope. Having it taken away is worse. But… I'm bringing that hope back, Dad, wherever you are! I wish you could see me.
Anyway I'm writing this from Kazakhstan, they're keeping us pretty locked down at this point. Launch will be in a few days.
[T +6 days]
I found out what happened to Anatoly and Elizabeth today. I couldn't get into that module because I couldn't remember how the controls worked and…
… well that's bullshit. I just didn't want to know. The stench alone was enough to know that what happened to them wasn't anything good.
They've been fused together. It is the same material that's growing out of the cut in my arm. It had enveloped them completely. Glistening blueish green threads wind in and around and through their bodies and out towards the walls of the component, leaving the ruins of their bodies floating in the air.
They look surprised to be dead. Have you punished them, my beloved?
I am truly alone. The threads from my cuts seem drawn to the Anatoly/Elizabeth gestalt. It is a sign that I can't stay here.
[T -5 days]
So the church considered a few ways to solve this problem. The first one, the obvious one, was to build a rocket, fly up to the International Space Station, put them to sleep. The American Group were especially keen on this idea, they thought it'd be fun but when questioned none of them knew the first thing about rocketry or orbital mechanics. They refused to give up but no-one expected that project to deliver.
The main avenue of attack, of course, was political. We'd had members inside political bodies around the world for decades and naturally politicians always hate spending money so our attempts to get the International Space Station defunded and burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere looked very promising. But no matter how much money we managed to rip out of NASA's budget, they kept sacrificing every program except the ISS.
Which brings us to the third plan. The Long Game.
[T +4 days]
Please let me sleep. Just for a moment. My brain isn't working. I used to be a scientist, I think, with a head full of procedures and algorithms and equations and fancy words. 4 days without sleep, that's all it took to get rid of every bit of that.
I'm seeing things. I thought I had something crawling under the skin in my arms. There are no knives here. There's nothing sharp. I found a box made of very thin aluminium, realised I could smash it and tear at it until I got myself a fragment with a jagged edge.
I stabbed myself with it, to get at the thing under my skin and… something grew out of the hole. At first I didn't see it because when you bleed in microgravity it doesn't run down your arm, it jets out like you're squeezing a ketchup bottle. In the blood, though, was something else. A gossamer thread, like a nerve, and I knew:
This is you. This is the proof you're here.
[T -3 days]
My dad came up with the idea of the Long Game and at first they dismissed it out of hand as absurd. Perhaps they just didn't want to face up to the reality that he'd realised the moment he laid his eyes on that television set and knew, in his heart, he wasn't going to live to see The Great Work fulfilled.
It would take a generation, he said. Maybe many generations. What we do, he said, is turn one of our sons or daughters into an astronaut and get them sent to the ISS.
Find the best of us. The ones who can fly planes, who can do science, medicine, those who are peak physical and mental specimens. If we don't have anyone like that, he said, we raise someone like that.
We've got to get one of our own on that station.
And they hated the plan because they knew it was going to be years, maybe decades. The older ones, like my dad, they knew what it meant.
And they knew there was no other way.
[T +2 days]
I'm running the CFE-2 experiment. I think. It's to find out how capillary flow works in micro-gravity. I send the results to mission control as normal but I haven't heard from them for 2 days. I still haven't heard from Anatoly or Elizabeth, but I'm operating on the assumption that they would contact me if they needed me.
Furthermore, after 2 days of trying to sleep, I've started to accept that this state of sleeplessness may be permanent. The data correlates with the information in the church's book and I see no evidence that contradicts that.
I can't go home. There is an escape route, of course. Back the way I came… but this is a complex procedure and the likely outcome without support from mission control is drifting forever or burning up. I fear it's already too late, I no longer remember the emergency procedure.
I'm not really feeling myself here. It's not like normal sleep deprivation. I've gone without sleep for 72 hours before but, like, normally you have these micro-naps where you black out for a few seconds. That's… not happening. I was keeping a log of the symptoms but struggling to read the computer screen. I feel like I'm underwater. Everything's too bright, everything's too loud.
I keep getting flashes of spiders everywhere, which is worrying. Hallucinations are a symptom of sleep deprivation but we didn't expect to experience side effects as a result of you being in our universe.
You're in Europe at the moment. Every 90 minutes I fly over you and see your crimson magnificence and it's what's keeping me going. I love you.
[T -1 day]
We'll dock with the ISS in another day. Anatoly and Elizabeth are still excited about all the science they're going to be doing and I'm mentally calculating the actual probability of being here, right now, in this Soyuz module, having been shot into space on a hundred and sixty tonnes of propellant. I make it one in four hundred thousand, although obviously that's just an estimate.
Training began two years ago. I learnt Russian. I learnt how to fly NASA's special jets. I had medical training. And, somehow, like a miracle, NASA's psychologists had never suspected a thing. They believed that I was this paragon of ability and virtue. They trusted me with one of the most difficult and challenging jobs a human could possibly do. That's who they think I am.
In a way they're right, although my critical job isn't quite what they think it is. My real job is simple: put everyone on board the ISS to sleep at exactly fourteen hundred hours UTC. On Earth, meanwhile, although the original Lucid Crown had again been lost, a new one had been made, with new keepers ready to use it.
They're all just waiting for me. Everything depends on me. Your wait is almost over, my Beloved.
[Zero Day]
I wake up to alarms blaring. In the dream I asked you, my beloved, to send me a piece of yourself. I'd been unable to smuggle one of the fragments with me, they're just far too strict for that, but fragments are easy to come by: one simply has to sleep and ask.
The alarm was blaring, though, because the fragment had materialised inside the station and fired away from me at high speed, smashing straight into a window. Luckily the window survived. Anatoly is already dealing with a surface crack, cool as you like, but he's concerned about what caused it. I can hear the Russian mission control panicking so I'm reassuring them that everything is under control.
I grab the fragment, the fragment of you, and tell Anatoly that I will investigate. He seems satisfied. I look at my watch and it's so close now. I float through the station and look down at the Earth. So calm. So peaceful. So imperfect.
It's time. I take the fragment and place it against my forehead and I close my eyes. I can feel the fragment sending me straight under once again. As my consciousness begins to fade I can hear mission control worrying that all the crew seem to be losing consciousness too.
I yawn. I giggle. Nothing can stop us now. Dad… Dad this is for you. We played the Long Game, Dad… and… we…
…won.


by Captain Kirby

Prelude
Since the advent of the ΩK-Class ("End-Of-Death") Scenario, the Foundation has launched a campaign to reevaluate baseline behavior of humanity.
To perform this census, the Foundation has created a new front organization, the Societal Census Programme. This organization will perform a census focused around reconfiguring the definition of baseline human behavior, and identifying new forms of fluctuation from said baseline behavior. Updated standards for what constitutes unusual and possibly anomalous activity will better streamline the Foundation's ability to detect and assess anomalies.
The division enlisted the aid of government organizations to properly attain subjects for the census. Due to the benign and public nature of the census, civilians were hired for positions without security clearance requirements.
This report consists of data collected across 53 countries, of approximately 150,000 individuals. The census had an 83% response rate, and 0.74% agreed to conduct a follow up interview.

Survey Response #4,142
Name: Alex Thayer
Age: 78
Gender: Male
Place Of Residence: 9041, Pine Street, Calgary, Canada
Living Immediate Family:

Molly Thayer: Age 76, Significant Other
Patrick Thayer: Age 32, Son

[BEGIN LOG]
Interviewer: Hello Mr. Thayer.
Thayer: Oh please. No need to be formal. Alex will do.
Interviewer: Alright, Alex, I'd like to ask you some questions about any life style changes you've had over the course of the past few years.
Thayer: By past few years I assume you're talking about since the, uh… the thing.
Interviewer: Since people stopped dying, yes.
Thayer: Well, I can't think of much in particular honestly. Things 'round here feel pretty normal.
Interviewer: Not even a new exercise routine?
Thayer: Heh, I guess there's that. Molly and I have been trying to stay in shape a little longer, since we're stuck in these bodies. It's a little scary to think about, but its also calming.
Interviewer: Calming?
Thayer: Definitely. I haven't come to terms with dying. Now I won't have to.
Interviewer: I see.
Thayer: I don't think about it much though. Too surreal. When I was little my parents reminded me a bunch that I needed to be good to go to heaven after I die. I remember going to funerals for my parents, and some of my friends. But now, all of that's moot. Can't go to heaven if you're still alive. Can't have a funeral if no one's dying.
Interviewer: Of course.
Thayer: Umm… I think that's all I really got to say. You have anymore questions?
Interviewer: Not really. This was quite insightful.
Thayer: Well, I'm glad to hear it. I'll be on my way then.
Interviewer: Thank you for your time.
[END LOG]

Survey Response #59,306
Name: Erica Duville
Age: 47
Gender: Female
Place Of Residence: 2240, Barrel Street, Louisiana, United States Of America
Living Immediate Family:

Michael Duville: Age 46, Significant Other
Megan Duville: Age 15, Daughter
Rachel Wicker: Age 49, Sister
John Wicker: Age 83, Father

[BEGIN LOG]
Interviewer: Hello Mrs. Duville. Thanks for joining me.
Duville: Oh, it's no problem. I had nothing planned for this afternoon anyways. Honestly, I've had quite a few more empty afternoons over the past few years.
Interviewer: Why so?
Duville: Well, since Mike is out at work all day, I'm the only one who can stay home and look after dad. Just kind of be around to make sure nothing happens and that he gets something to eat.
Interviewer: How old is your dad?
Duville: Eighty-three.
Interviewer: Ah, so you used to look after him in case of medical complications?
Duville: I mean, I still do, it's just less intense, you know? I got him one of those life alert buttons, and he's got me on speed dial, but there's no need to worry. Like, we can finally go on vacation again! We went to Hawaii last year. It was just so… tropical! And we knew it was all fine because if dad had another stroke we could just bring him to the hospital when we got home.
Interviewer: A stroke?
Duville: Why yes! We used to be paranoid about them. I'd have my hand on the phone all the time, just in case. But now, we can just take him to the hospital and he'll be back out in a few weeks. They do one of those treatments where they, uh… something about replacing the dead parts with, um, with stem cells! That's right. Needs a little rehab and P.T. afterwards, but he comes out alright.
Interviewer: I see. Does your dad have strokes often?
Duville: Oh, not too often. Maybe once or twice a year.
Interviewer: I would imagine it gets fairly expensive.
Duville: Actually, insurance pays for pretty much all of it. Besides, if it did make a dent in our budget, we have money. I don't care if my dad talks less than he used to, and gets confused, and falls down a little more, he's still my dad. I'd pay anything for him.
Interviewer: Of course. I think that this is enough for our records. Thank you for your time.
Duville: No problem! And thank you for the excuse to get out of the house.
[END LOG]

Survey Response #131,223
Name: Dani Marquez
Age: 26
Gender: Non-binary
Place of Residence: GC2491, Carer de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Living Immediate Family:

Enrique Marquez: Age 31, Brother
Angela Marquez: Age 53, Mother
Miguel Marquez: Age 53, Father

Note: the original interview was held in Spanish, and later translated to English.
[BEGIN LOG]
Interviewer: Evening Dani.
Marquez: Hi!
Interviewer: So, I just wanted to ask you—
Marquez: Actually— uh, sorry didn't mean to interrupt.
Interviewer: No, it's fine.
Marquez: I just wanted to know how long you thought this was going to take? I want to make sure that I'm not going to accidentally flake on a thing tonight.
Interviewer: Shouldn't take too long. May I ask what "thing" you have planned?
Marquez: Oh, it's like… have you heard of the new water lung thing?
Interviewer: It sounds familiar, but I could use a refresher.
Marquez: Like, it's this thing where a bunch of people meet up somewhere on the shore and like… just walk into the water. You get these weighed down shoes so you don't accidentally float up, and you walk into the ocean along the sea floor. No oxygen tank or anything either.
Interviewer: So you willingly drown yourself?
Marquez: I mean… yeah but it's not as weird as that sounds. Like, you get these weird drugs too that suppress your gag reflex, and, like whatever makes you want to gasp for air. So you just let the water fill your body and its like, its peaceful. At least that's what I've been told. You eventually blackout though and they send some people in to drag you to shore. Next thing you know you're back on the beach feeling super cleansed because they just pumped, like, 4 liters of water out of your system.
Interviewer: And you pay for this?
Marquez: I mean, they gotta make money somehow. It's not like it's super expensive or anything either. A lot less expensive than some of the other crazy shit I've heard people do to relax. Like, you read about those two dudes who just threw themselves off the Torre Mapfre?1
Interviewer: I remember seeing on the news, yeah.
Marquez: They said they wanted to do it for "the thrill of falling". The surgery cost them an arm and a leg, which they couldn't even pay because they broke all of theirs!
Interviewer: I imagine their insurance didn't cover it?
Marquez: Not in the slightest. Especially because their provider was Mapfre!
Interviewer: [laughs] I didn't remember that part from the reports!
Marquez: Oh shit. My buddies just texted me… apparently they moved our time slot up another thirty minutes. I gotta go.
Interviewer: That's fine, I have more than enough information. Thanks for your time.
Marquez: No problem. Later man!
[END LOG]

Partial List of Baseline Changes
Below is a subset of the proposed changes to the definition of baseline behavior for human subjects on a global scale.

Activity
Old AIL2
New AIL

Living for >100 years
Moderate-Low
Extreme-Low

Grieving/Mourning
Extreme-Low
Moderate-Low

Prolonged Survival with Dangerous Medical Conditions
Moderate
Moderate-Low

Attempting to Drown Oneself
High-Moderate
Moderate-Low

Attending a Funeral
Extreme-Low
Extreme-High

Footnotes
1. A 40-story-tall skyscraper in Barcelona.
2. Anomaly Indicator Level.