Now, it’s been 9 months…

Boy does time fly when you have a 100k word novel draft to finish… and are working a full-time job, and leading a theology study group, and organizing young adult events for a parish, and acting as secretary for a school board, and spending time with friends and family, and taking care of kittens and a house….

I am, however, determined to get this article done before I get started on the second draft of METANOIA [2], so here we are.

Alright… where did we leave off…

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Last time I promised a break from the technical analysis and a dip into the philosophical. I intended that in a different way by going back to look at the question of “Why does man even desire to create artificial life?” But my unpaid labor friend pointed out a vital flaw in that first attempt, and I lost the motivation to rectify it at the time, so I put that specific topic on the back burner.

Instead, I’ve decided I’ve done enough teasing and it’s time to get a bit spicy and state the core of my position and argument on Artificial Intelligence.

Which is…

Artificial General Intelligence Can’t Exist

As due course of the fundamental relationship between information and matter. Current research and development into AGI is wasting everyone’s time and money, to the point that researching time-travel would be more productive and fruitful.

Until now, I believe I had kept the scope of my analysis pretty tightly on the popular computing devices of today—that is, computers built on the “von Neumann architecture”—and whether or not they are specifically compatible with the objective of replicating a general form of intelligence equivalent to, or surpassing, that of a human. Now, however, I’m going to speak broadly about all theoretically plausible “thinking” machines. In fact, instead of an artificial intelligence, I will be using the human brain itself to make my argument.

This shifting gears in the series is part for the sake of my limited time, and for another part because I think I’ve hit upon a way to make my argument (somewhat) succinct for a more general audience. Not a general audience, mind you, but a more general audience. Some of the words I’m going to use here are awfully pretentious, and I can’t guarantee all of my points will be fully contextualized, so I will apologize upfront. Nevertheless, I believe at this point it’s intelligible enough to spur on a conversation which will hopefully refine it, or else spur someone else on to deriving and even better argument.

The Argument

I’m going to try and keep this pretty dry and direct to start, as it has proven easy in my drafting to go off on a hundred tangents. The particular line of reasoning I want to touch on today is as follows:

1. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is an attempt to replicate powers of “mind” through natural means

   1. That is, purely by matter and energy—material reality

2. To create something through natural means, it must be a derivative of the fundamental principles at work in nature

   1. In other words, it must be a product of the laws of nature/physics

3. “Human powers of mind,” by definition, includes “consciousness”

4. Consciousness has observable properties which contradict observable natural principles

Therefore, consciousness is not a derivative of natural principles and thus cannot be created by natural means.

Now, let me elaborate…

Point 1

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is an attempt to replicate human powers of mind through natural means

This one may seem self-explanatory at first glance, but even here the explanation can start down rabbit holes. The tricky part comes in the question of whether or not the human mind is the only form of mind that exists which has all of the properties, or “powers,” AGI researchers wish to replicate. It helps to understand what I’m getting at by listing out and describing these powers. That is, provide a model of mind:

• Perception — the ability to “sense” information from various sources; this could be signals of external origin (sights, smells, etc.) or awareness of the mind’s own state.

• Understanding — the ability to translate raw information from the various senses into meaningful knowledge.

• Evaluation — the ability to determine the value of attained knowledge. That is, whether it provides a more complete and desirable understanding of perceived information.

• Expression — the ability to “write” or “project” information back out into the external world. Usually, in order to elicit new information.

You may wonder how I’ve drawn these categorizations of what composes “powers of mind,” and the answer is merely a matter of semantics. For example, you may say I’m missing “Reasoning” from my list, but I may argue that the movement from Perception to Understanding to Evaluation and back is “Reasoning.” At the end of the day, there is no one objectively correct model due to the nature of language. There are, however useful and useless models.

The important part here is that my choice of language imparts a clear enough understanding of the underlying principles I’m attempting to describe, so that your mind can then evaluate if the information I’ve expressed is more complete and desirable than your current understanding. And, hopefully, will prompt you to express information that I understand as “agreement.”

That’s the hope, anyway.

(Also, I use “Evaluation” over the more controversial term “Choice,” because I’m not going to start with the assumption that the “Will” is “free.” While it is related, it is independent of today’s topic.)

I will point out that an inability to define a model of mind that can be clearly “mapped” to natural phenomena, let alone one which is agreed upon by the majority of researchers, is a key problem facing the creation of AGI. But I digress…

Getting back to the question above, the more permissive answer is acceptable. That is, it doesn’t matter if there is another “kind” of mind besides a “human” mind. So long as it has the ability to make evaluations of information, it is enough of a mind for my argument.

Lastly, however, I will emphasize that my argument does not hold for any conceptualization of AGI which includes supernatural principles. That really should be obvious, but I will state that explicitly for clarity, and it will be relevant later.

Point 2

To create something through natural means, it must be a derivative of the fundamental principles at work in nature

This is just a rephrasing of the assumed principle “like begets like,” which underpins all of the natural sciences. Something formed from natural causes will itself be natural. Even if a specific phenomenon doesn’t presently exist in the natural world, it always has the potential to exist somewhere within space-time as a product of universal phenomena.

What’s worth noting, is that this puts a restriction on our methods to create AGI. Namely, we then have to assume that new “axiomatic” (or fundamental) principles will not suddenly spring forth in the universe when arbitrary patterns are formed from matter in space-time.

…Saying it that way is still a bit of a mouthful, so let me try it this way: We have to assume the laws of nature are constant in all of space and time, and that every power of mind we wish to replicate can be defined as a pattern of material occurring within space and time.

I considered this a non-controversial assumption, but it’s important and has its challengers to address. But later.

Point 3

“Human powers of mind,” by definition, includes “consciousness”

I’ll explain Point 3 by saying that the model of mind I presented in Point 1 is necessarily related to the phenomenon we call “consciousness.” Often described as a certain kind of “self-awareness,” consciousness is intrinsically related to at least the ability to Understand information, and most would also include in their definition the ability to Perceive and Evaluate.

This is probably where more controversy will arise in my assumptions, but I hold that Understanding is essential to Consciousness, and that without Consciousness there is no ability to Understand.

Well, I thought this might be controversial, but I checked myself against the Cambridge Dictionary after writing the above and the first result for “consciousness” was:

“the state of understanding and realizing something”

Since consciousness is intrinsic to “the mind,” and an AGI is one with the powers of a mind, it can therefore be said that an AGI is a conscious machine.

Moving on…

Point 4

Consciousness has observable properties which contradict observable natural principles

This is where I believe I really have to explain myself, and is where lies the heart of debate on the matter. I wouldn’t know if—and highly doubt—that my observations are novel, but I haven’t seen them expressed, much less related, in a satisfyingly clear way in current discourse. So, I say them myself:

Information in relation to space-time is proportional to “diversity.” Meaning, for more information to exist in space-time, there must be more “states of” space-time. There must be more matter in more possible arrangements, more “things” in which information may be encoded distinctly. Conversely, as the scope of observed space-time narrows towards a singular state, information is lost.

As a reminder, when I say “space-time,” “natural reality,” “the material world,” or the like, I mean the same thing. The plane of existence where physical phenomena are at play.

In any case, this property of space-time where information is “lost” as matter is reduced is precisely what consciousness contradicts. Consciousness, and thus “understanding,” synthesizes information into a unified (that is a “singular”) state, and the more information is synthesized, the greater the “understanding” is said to be.

If this sounds strange or esoteric (and I imagine it might), consider the following illustration of the principle:

Suppose there are two images: one of a yellow rubber duck, and another of yellow raincoat. If you saw (perceived) the full picture of each, you would easily be able to tell the difference because there is enough information to identify (understand) the subjects and make the distinction (evaluate) that they are different.

Now, suppose you were only ever given a small square cut out of each image. The two would still likely appear different, but with only a partial shape of “some yellow stuff,” there becomes a real possibility of misidentifying the subjects, or even incorrectly identifying them as part of the same subject.

Now let’s say you were only given a single yellow pixel (same shade) of each image. It would be impossible then to distinguish between the images, let alone the subjects of the images, through only the information those pixels give.

As space-time is reduced toward the “singular,” it gives rise to more “ambiguity” in the information which can be derived from it. That is, there are less opportunities to make the distinctions required for understanding the whole of reality. And yet, a “reduction” is exactly the result of understanding. Instead of holding on to the positions and kinds of the great many multiples of particles of matter that compose the “screen,” your mind ultimately throws out all of that as soon as it determines to understand an image.

The subjects are a duck, a raincoat.

Yet, unless you perceive those great multitudes of particles (or at least the photons therefrom), you cannot understand the singular subject of the image. You see only an individual yellow pixel no different from any other. The greater reality of the “duck” and “raincoat” still exists, but that cannot be understood without perceiving the multitude in unity.

Understanding is like a funnel which takes the vast information encoded in the natural world—the “raw data”—and synthesizes down into singular “concepts”—bits of “knowledge”—and ultimately into your “experience.”

And this difference between how the natural world and consciousness relate to information is how we know one does not exist inside the other, but alongside. Their movements are independent of one another. In the language of mathematics, you might call them “orthogonal axes” of reality.

Conclusion

The viability of AGI as a product of technology is predicated on the assumption that “General Intelligence” is a naturally occurring phenomenon, since it is assumed by many that we, the only known form of general intelligence in the world, are a purely natural phenomena ourselves.

This cannot be assumed, as the empirically observable relationships between the natural world (space-time), information, and consciousness show that consciousness must operate independently of fundamental natural principles. Therefore, it is impossible for purely natural methods to produce AGI.

Parting Ramble

Now, for those of you who have participated in meaningful debates on AI, you probably identified that my argument is the classic: “Machines can’t be conscious because consciousness is not a natural phenomenon.” But, hopefully I have shown that such an argument can be made rationally and not merely as some emotional reaction to discomfort begat by a threatened worldview. AI has never been a threat to my worldview. In fact, until recently I assumed AGI on par with human intelligence would exist eventually. It was just a matter of making sufficient progress in neurology and material science.

However, with the recent AI craze giving me distinct flashbacks to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I decided to start looking into the hardware and neurology myself and… then things started to click into place. Lo and behold, I was not the only one who balked at the kind of religious delirium that has taken many on the topic, whether for fear or longing. One of the great computing scientists of the 20th century, Edsger W. Dijkstra, likewise expressed his frustrations (of which AI was only a footnote):

(from his article “The threats to the computing sciences”; emphasis mine)

[…] Because computers appeared in a decade when faith in the progress and wholesomeness of science and technology was virtually unlimited, it might be wise to recall that, in view of its original objectives, mankind’s scientific endeavours over, say, the last five centuries have been a spectacular failure.

As you all remember, the first and foremost objective was the development of the Elixir that would give the one that drank it Eternal Youth. But since there is not much point in eternal poverty, the world of science quickly embarked on its second project, viz. the Philosopher’s Stone that would enable you to make as much Gold as you needed.

Needless to say, the planning of these two grandiose research projects went far beyond the predictive powers of the seers of that day and, for sound reasons of management, the accurate prediction of the future became the third hot scientific issue.

Well, we all know what happened as the centuries went by: medicine, chemistry, and astronomy quietly divorced themselves from quackery, alchemy and astrology. New goals were set and the original objectives were kindly forgotten.

Were they? No, not really. Evidently, the academic community continues to suffer from a lingering sense of guilt that the original objectives have not been met, for as soon as a new promising branch of science and technology sprouts, all the unfulfilled hopes and expectations are transferred to it. Such is the well-established tradition and, as we are all well aware, now computing science finds itself saddled with the thankless task of curing all the ills of the world and more, and the net result is that we have to operate in an unjustified euphoria of tacit assumptions, the doubting of which is viewed as sacrilege precisely because the justification of the euphoria is so shaky. […]

It’s hard to say if Dijkstra was trying to more than simply lament how the computing sciences were saddled with undue expectations. Expectations which have caused the once generalized discipline to be (in his view, seemingly) unhappily wed to a specific form of computing machine, which only deals with a subset of ideas within the academic discipline.

I, however, can’t help but turn my lament more broadly to the gross negligence of reason itself on display by many “thought leaders” of the last five hundred years, and especially many of those in positions of influence today. I could go on a much more colorful rant, but I digress.

I’ve wasted your time enough for today, so let’s leave the discussion here for now. If there’s interest, I may publish a collection of “defenses” for my position against the possible counters I’ve considered.

Otherwise, I’m frankly sick of the topic now and want to move on to other topics of philosophy, technology, and the arts (and finishing METANOIA [2], of course).

One Last Thought to Chew On

If consciousness is not “natural,” then we are left with an implication that some would find rather objectionable. If something exists which is beyond the natural world, then by definition it is supernatural.

You, therefore, as a “conscious being,” are a supernatural being.

In more ancient language, preserved in our more ancient traditions, there is a particular name for a supernatural being: a “spirit.”

You are a spirit.

So…

…if you want AGI—if you want the rocks to learn how to think—you cannot use natural means. You will have to figure out how to create a spirit and bind it to the rock. Essentially, you would have to learn necromancy, which I can’t recommend.

Personally, I will prefer to participate in propagating intelligence in the world the old fashioned way.

If you enjoyed this article, then please let me know and share it with others. You can subscribe if you feel like it, or just tip me on ko-fi. Any and all of the above is greatly appreciated.

If you didn’t like the article, then please also let me know and fight me on it. Please.

Give the Bird Some Bread

Photo unrelated. The beginnings of my Christmas nook over the mantle.

As I’ve warned before, it’s been radio silence around here for a while since I was spending my hobby time fully heads down on part 2 of METANOIA. Well, I’m taking a very brief breather (a breathe briever?) to announce an important milestone on that…

The first draft is content complete*!

[* There are a couple of small scenes I might still throw in last second while rereading to check consistency.]

…And my own immediate feeling about it is pretty good. This story is shaping up to be closer to the original vision than my original attempts ever were, yet at the very same time it has picked up depth and details I never thought I would have been able to imagine. I don’t know how much of that will be things my readers will pick up on and appreciate, but now I’m really hoping you all do someday!

Though, we’ll see if my excitement survives the first real scrutiny from my editing buddy.

In any case, this book starts with a “Prelude” much like the first part and I wanted to share a spoiler-free snippet of that as a teaser.

Spoiler Free Preview

Another Small Update

I got permanent employment now!! 🥳

What this means for Ars Corvi is that it will continue to be a mere hobby in my life, but that my writing efforts in general should continue at a stable pace. I will be thinking about writing a couple articles once I get closer to completion of M[2], but I’ve never liked splitting my focus more than three or four ways, and it currently is, so we’ll see.

I do think, however, that I will take some time to catch up on my backlog of audio articles that I need to get done…

Anyway… I appreciate all y’all who remember this place and wish you a Merry Christmas!

Business First

The next article I had planned was “On AI [0]” in which I was going to take a step back to discuss why people care about or desire AI in the first place. It is more philosophical and theological rather than technical, and it was going to be fairly concise. But the demo readers were left unsatisfied by the constrained scope and not quite understanding the significance of one of the points I really wanted to make. So, that article needs to “cook” a bit longer…

However

I don’t really want to write articles right now, I want to write METANOIA [2] & [3]. Which I have been doing when I’m not enjoying all of the other wonderful, edifying, and very time consuming things that the Lord has blessed me with.

The most significant of which, and worth sharing here is…

Cats

These little numbskulls are part of my life now thanks to the legendary cat delivery service. The short version: aunt and uncle’s old barn cat finally passed on, week later the winery down the road had a cat show up, asked if anyone needed a barn cat, aunt and uncle say yes, get cat, cat is suspiciously rotund, week later… kittens! Now there were 8 cats on the property. Hey Connor, we know you weren’t planning to get animals anytime soon but can you say no to this?

To which I responded, please give me two. That one has been aptly named “Sad Face”

And this wiggly one has been dubbed “Owlbear.”

The collective volume of braincells in my [new] house has seen no positive growth. The amount of adorable cuddles has risen by biblical proportions.

I would not say life has worked out in any way as I would have planned or intended.

And it’s quite wonderful.

The Lord is good. Let us pray and give thanks. I will be praying for you all.

Anywho…

Despite Claims to the Contrary, Everyone Wanted a Switch 2

At this point, loud, speculative complaints should be seen as a form of positive excitement around a product.

It’s when something is met with apathy that companies should be worried…

I, for one, will be suing Nintendo for stealing my “If I was President of Nintendo” diary entry.

• 120fps

• 4K

• HDR

• Mouse controls!?!

• GameCube collection

• Backwards compatibility with upgrade options on some titles

• AN EXCLUSIVE FROMSOFT GAME!?!?

• Nintendo brand Discord…

All without announcing anything about the Xeno series, which I have specifically been holding out on for the Switch 2 before I play. I couldn’t feel any more seen and yet utterly disrespected. What a time to be alive.

Putting the analysis cap back on, Nintendo really did do exactly what I was hoping they would: refine the Switch. It’s already a great platform which is standard enough that everyone knows how to do something with it, but open enough that people can do something weird if they want to.

This is exactly where Nintendo needs to be at this point. We aren’t in the 90s and 00s. Consumer computer hardware is pretty well “solved” at the fundamental level. What they want from their hardware is consistency and inherit flexibility, so they can do all manner of wacky experiments with smaller buy ins.

Like LABO. There are very things they can’t just release as extensions to the Switch platform if they wanna be fun, wacky Nintendo. And all their fans can buy into those little experiments ala carte.

Meanwhile, those of us who like a balance between traditional console experiences and the more creative side can now enjoy that with a modern standard of fidelity.

It’s perfect and I love it.

[Premium] PC Gaming is Dead

Yeah. Wow.

On the other end of the spectrum, Nvidia’s 50 series cards have launched and gone through rigorous evaluation since my last update. And, while I knew it wasn’t going to be a big release for raw throughput, I was utterly surprised by just. how. little additional horsepower that ended up being.

About 15% for the 5090 and 5080 on average… which comes with a 15% increase in power consumption. Not only is that the smallest generation increase we’ve seen on the high end to date, it’s also effectively a 0% power efficiency increase.

Why is it like this? Well, as far as I can tell, it’s because no progress has been made in terms of shrinking the processor nodes. So, effectively this is just a layout update at the processor level.

Now, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been a bigger update… but uh…. Well, I’ll say more after I get to AMD.

What about the AI Features?

The new AI features came out and… were exactly what they looked like, for better and worse. There is no magic with multi-frame gen, it really is only really useful if you can already hit a solid 60-90 frames per second. So, it’s only real reason to exist—it seems—is for people playing on 240hz+ monitors. Which is already a very niche product and experience.

It’s also… kind of a dumb one. I’ve had monitors that hit those framerates, and you get them when want them to play games like Counter Strike, League of Legends, Fortnite, etc. at a competitive level. Where you need as much visual information with as little input lag as possible.

Multi-frame gen gives you frames but for a slightly higher overall latency than playing without it on. So… it’s for primarily competitive players who occasionally want to play AAA games in high fidelity on their fancy monitors.

Except it’s also kinda not, because active competitive players are buying 1080p and 2k for their high refresh monitors, not 4k. Anyone with sense has a second 4k panel somewhere that’s 120hz tops for the “looker” games. And if they don’t care about the looks they’re probably playing without multi-framegen anyway and you know what you get the point moving on—

AMD Succeeded by Doing Nothing and I Still Lost

Those madmen did it! They made a card of equal performance to last year’s high end for 2/3rds of the MSRP!

…

Unfortunately, because Nvidia’s top end was such a dud, this means the sharks were hungry and swarming by the time this morsel dropped.

This is 2 months later. These are the cheapest listed and it’s still sold out even up to the $280 markup.

That’s the first one available.

Is the card everything I was hoping it would be? According to reviews, absolutely!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually exist as far as I’m concerned.

But here’s the really interesting part

Desktop graphics hit a ceiling this generation. AMD didn’t make a more powerful card than last year. They actually made a slightly less powerful one… just with a lot better features overall. The ceiling was softer in Nvidia’s case, but given their history as the top dog, even that’s a very dramatic thing.

15% is absurdly low for a generational improvement. 30% used to be considered “underwhelming” in the high end GPU market.

The promise of the modern PC gaming platform is that you’ll get higher fidelity sooner than consoles. That only works if GPU improvements are outpacing consoles. Which they were, and still are.

But while consoles take 7-9 years between generations, they come with at least twice the computing power, if not sometimes three or four times. And now, with mid-generation “pro” models being a consistent part of PlayStation’s strategy, and a consideration from the other two, it’s almost more of a 3-5 year gap in the fidelity race, albeit with only 30-50% increases in the middle.

…Which, thanks to this lackluster generation of GPUs, is exactly the cadence PCs just fell into. And while the highest tiers of performance are still only available on PC, the premium is now absurd to make it worth it.

For reference, a PS5 Pro is about $700 for the full package, and has a GPU about equivalent to a 4070, and once you really start optimizing for it being a console, the Pro can even duke it out with the 4070ti.

The lowest price for a 4070 right now on Newegg is $600. That’s without any other components. An equivalent CPU is gonna tag another $200-300 dollars. Motherboard: $150-200 (which is also absurd, but the state of things). RAM: $100. Fan: $40. Case: $40. Power supply: $80-100. SSD: $100-150.

So, just with the prices I remember from my last time building (last year), we’re at ~$1300-1550. And THEN we have to throw a minimum of $50-100 to start actually making it better. And since the PS5 Pro is hitting 4k 60 pretty easily at good fidelity in all but the most absurdly demanding games, we’re really aiming for something like a 60-100% total performance uplift to make it worth it.

Which means we’re throwing another $400 at the GPU and $150 at the CPU minimum, and now we’re down $2000 before your computer is actually got enough performance margin over the PS5 Pro to make it worth the money—for fidelity nerds like me.

I paid $3000 for a computer four years ago, when the PS5 was out and cost a mere $400-500, so believe me, I know this equation still works out for some people.

But that was when we thought there was no chance consoles were ever going to catch back up. Now the top end console is within spitting distance of the highest attainable consumer graphics card—that is, the 5080, seeing how the 5090 has completely left our atmosphere on the price wars (look it up if you don’t already know). And what’s more, there’s no longer that invincible guarantee that the next generation of PC hardware will have any improvement, let alone a significant enough one to beat out the PS6…

Which Sony is already openly talking about during their technical deep dives on the 5 Pro.

God bless Mike Cerny.

I need to take a moment and express how AWESOME it is that Cerny is doing these updates. This one was loaded with information.

Now, consoles are also in tricky territory with the current state of processor manufacturing, but consoles have headroom to work with, and thanks to AMD’s 9070xt and their partnership with Sony, they just proved that catching up is very possible.

If PC hardware is sluggish for just one more generation, that’s it. The fidelity race is over. No one in their right mind would buy a PC…

…for fidelity.

A New Form of PC Gaming Will Live on Strong

Remember that Halo Strix APU I mentioned last time? No? You didn’t read the last one?

That’s okay. I’m not going to cover it all here today, but the short version is PC’s have a route out of their existential hole. They can become consoles.

The main architectural difference between consoles and gaming PCs right now (to my knowledge) is the division between the GPU processor stack and the CPU. APUs throw that out. The thing was, though, that none of the processor manufacturers bothered to attempt a high end APU. Probably for several good reasons at the time (I’ll save that whole story for another time after I do more research), but now apparently those reasons have been assessed and thrown out.

AMD has a high end APU.

We don’t know what it’s going to be like in practice, yet, but based on products like the Steam Deck, which as a low-medium grade AMD APU, it’s gonna keep the PC gaming space relevant by providing a cost effective medium-high spec option for people who want a PC for the flexibility and variety, not the fidelity and convenience.

And it’s going to allow that power to exist in small-form-factor PCs, so that makes them even more attainable and desirable. Now a console is competing against the home work PC for those people who have limited budget and especially physical space in their home. It is the Ultimate Apartment Living Media Device.

If you even have a TV in that scenario, chances are, it’s next to your desk. You could get a $400 POS laptop and a $400-700 console and a $200-300 TV… or… you could buy a $900 high-tier laptop or mini-PC and that TV or a monitor. Obviously there isn’t a clear cut winner there depending on your seating and TV sharing needs…

But for a single guy on a budget this is revolutionary.

I don’t actually know how the prices will shake out for the AMD AI MAX+ 395 (rolls off the tongue), but I would be shocked if they shoot for much higher than 2-3x the current APU market at the top end.

Anyway, that’s all the ranting and raving I have time for this time. Of all the things I write, these B-side articles are me at my most unfettered, so if you’ve made it here—

Wow

That’s all. Have a nice day.

This article is a reaction to some conversation I was seeing in the Notes section of Substack around this article:

B. A. Clarke's Fiction

Why is fantasy allergic to guns?

In Brian McClellan’s Power Mage trilogy, one of the few names of any note in the ‘flintlock fantasy’ sub-genre, the traditional magic users are literally allergic to gunpowder. This was presumably intended as a metaphor for how new technologies usurp magic, a trope in the genre, and plays off the ‘fairies being allergic to iron’ folk-legend but relatedl…

Read more

a year ago · 44 likes · 25 comments · B. A. Clarke

The topic is fun for me and I’ve been wanting to do some writing-on-writing. So, I decided to take a quick break from other things to throw some thoughts in the arena.

I will at times contradict ’s points, but I hope I come off as respectfully as I intend to. I read it and have opinions, but it was ’s comments that really brought to mind some things I feel are worth reiterating. Doubt I have any amazingly original ideas or anything, but maybe you’ll get some insight out of my way of stating things.

So, without pomp or circumstance…

Symbolism is the “First Cause” in Fantasy

Sometimes I feel too many people confuse Fantasy for Historical Fiction. But Fantasy is a far wider and more inclusive genre. A fantasy tale does not necessarily need to be based on or reflect our past—or any real thing at all. Fantasy is fantastical. Lewis and Tolkien’s landmark series and many of the other Fantasy heavy hitters draw from history to illustrate their worlds, but that is out of fittingness to their specific themes, not necessity.

When they use historical things, it is because of what those things represent to the audience of the time. They are, on one hand, there to anchor the imagined world to our own so that the audience may cross the bridge that much easier. The less of these connections you use, the more alien and strange that world becomes. In fact, you may even set the story in a different galaxy altogether… like Star Wars.

I’m certainly not the first one to say this, but it is relevant to be reminded that Star Wars is not Sci-fi. It is Fantasy. Space Fantasy. George Lucas threw out a lot of implicit assumptions with his choice in setting. Yes, there are a lot of real world analogues. There are of course humans all over the place, the Jedi Order pulls from several real religions (the closest I see being Taoism, but that’s my outsider opinion), many planets are exaggeration of some Earth biomes and cities, and the name Stormtroopers didn’t come from nowhere!…

But his humans aren’t our humans. They wouldn’t know what a horse drawn carriage is, and if they saw Christmas trees and lights, they’d have some wholly different explanation for what those things were (not that it has stopped some writers from putting those things in the world).

Lucas also doesn’t usually care to explain the science of anything. Not in rigorous detail, anyway. And often that science blurs with metaphysics. The lightsabers being a great example, as the crystals used to construct them very often have a spiritual element to their existence. They are often conduits of the mystical “Force” and take on characteristics of the emotions and events that occur in the space around where they form.

This is the other hand, and the main point here: Star Wars, like good Fantasy, is primarily concerned with the deeper truth behind the literal object of the story. They are symbolic stories. Yes, the lightsaber is also a very concrete gadget in the fictional universe, but it is also has an abstract or allegorical meaning. State quite explicitly, it is “an elegant weapon of a more civilized age.”

Serving both purposes is what makes it an effective symbol, which both pulls the audience into the imagined world while giving them something to take back to their own.

Guns are Symbols of Modernity

Yes, they arrived on the scene hundreds of years ago now, but humanity’s history is thousands of years old, and the largest cultures in the world have roots going back that far. Let’s take Egypt as an example. They can see and touch a piece of their history which is dated back to the 27th Century BC. And its mere existence points to a history that stretches back even farther, regardless of how much truth is in the stories and legends passed down.

The point is, people are old. A lot older than guns.

And through tradition, our memories do go back that far. When we learn and accept those histories, they become our memories. Maybe not as strongly, or vividly, but still in some small, real way.

That’s one half of the equation with guns. The other is that, while it came about gradually, guns do mark a distinct shift in the dynamics of the world. Even their earliest form, generally in the form of canons, redefined warfare in the regions where they were used.

Even a big stone wall wasn’t quite the invincible fortress it used to be when people could shoot balls of metal at extreme speeds into them. And if a wooden gate got hit, all the worse.

I am glossing over the finer technical details of how these things came and spread, but that’s because the technical details aren’t the point. The point is that everyone knows that the world changed when guns were born. Not as a matter of historicity, but as a matter of symbolic truth.

The fact that another fundamental change has since occurred—in the birth of information technology—does change the perception some, but it clearly has not been long enough to destroy it.

Not all Newer things are Equal

In his article, Clarke accurately points out that Full Plate armor, a staple of Medieval Fantasy, emerged and developed more or less alongside guns. He is absolutely correct in saying that technically it is as modern of a technology as firearms (at least in the form we usually think of it). And you could even argue that bows and crossbows are just rudimentary guns in the way leather and chainmail predate plate.

Fantasy does not, however, have to work within the constraints of these sorts of technicalities. Now, feasibly, there was a time in the 1400s (or whenever) where plate armor was an ultra-modern symbol of the day in the way I’m saying guns are now. But something important happened between then and now: humans wearing metal armor faded into antiquity and guns got bigger and better.

In the language of symbols, this proved that plate armor was the last parade of an old regime, while even the most basic smoothbore firearm was an infant king of the new world to come.

This line of distinction isn’t a solid thing. With the help of all the nice historical channels on YouTube, for instance, people are beginning to associate modern battle tanks with their lineage to plate-clad cavalry units. However, the gap between those two is still quite dramatic, given that the tank combines both with a third and even more recent technological invention: the combustion engine.

The inequality of these gaps in visible technological progress is a major element to why it’s easy for Fantasy writers and audiences to accept something new[ish] like plate armor into an older world like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth (even if that might have just been the movie adaptation), and why things that are actually old[ish] like guns feel a bit off in such a setting, even if it did have the same level of historical justification.

It’s not really about the historical or scientific technicalities, and it is the Fantasy writer’s right to do whatever he wants to address those as they arise.

What the Fantasy writer does need to mind carefully is the symbolic baggage that comes along with all the preexisting things he chooses to put in his world.

Ancient Science

On a slightly tangential note, because that newer sort of “Mistborn” trending Fantasy was mentioned in the article (I haven’t read it, but I know the kind from video games), I’ll point out that not every story with a dragon is a Fantasy. It is very often fantastical, but, if the primary purpose of the fantastical elements was to imagine in detail the possible technical truths of the world concept, and the “fairy tale” appearance is incidental or secondary….

Then that’s probably not Fantasy. That’s Sci-fi.

I would like to point out that the name “Science Fiction” has no word explicitly determining a “when” or “where” it must occur. Just that it is fictional and that there will be science involved.

Now, I know that by the same principle I described above, sci-fi does carry with it a heavy implication of futuristic settings grounded in scientifically observable reality and heavily focused around speculative technologies (believe me, as someone who wrote a very questionably “sci” piece of “fi” novel, I know about these expectations). Nevertheless, if a story happens to wear the clothes of one genre (Fantasy) but is written with all the sensibilities of another (Sci-fi), then you really ought to call it that other genre. At least primarily.

Genre can be based in aesthetic, but these two in particular are far too inclusive in scope, both in theory and practice.

It’s absolutely fine to write a Fantastical Sci-fi, of course, but guns are guns and cellphones are cellphones. That doesn’t change just because your magazines are full of magic crystals and your batteries are sourced from elemental essence salts.

Fantasy is the realm of dreams, myths, and legends

In practice, these things very often mix with the historical and the scientific. And even in theory there are no hard lines—even if they do have competing elements. But the stories that are called Fantasy come from a very different intention than other “speculative genres.” In such stories, the fundamental “meaning” of it all decides things long before history and science get a say.

And more than that, most Fantasy stories want to tell stories about smaller, more “personal” worlds in regards to the people, even if the physical terrain is grand in size. Such stories only get more popular as modern life has become impersonal and too grand in scope to comprehend, even as our physical space shrinks.

We have guns with us now in this age, if we want them (I do). And they have made longwords and plate armor utterly irrelevant artifacts of antiquity (sadly).

One of those things fits much better as a “more elegant weapon of a civilized age.” So, for dreams, myths, and legends, that’s what we’ll choose.

Well, hope someone enjoys this random little aside. Now that it’s out on paper, I can stop thinking about it.

You can now order both physical editions of the novel through my new Ko-fi shop.

Order one today!

This has the other great benefit of letting me sell the books for cheaper. No more middle man! (Besides the printer, but I can’t do what they do, so I’m good with that)

It does mean that I actually have to pass the orders myself to BookVault, but that’s super easy and I was already having to do it in some instances anyway. This way, though, you will all still have a normal online ordering form through a tested 3rd party with PayPal/Cash integration.

Which means we all win! Except Amazon! Who weren’t even giving you all Prime free shipping, so forget about them!

Shipping will still probably take 2-3 weeks, though.

But I want to read it now!

You can! The Prelude and Chapter 01 are now available here on Substack for free (as you might have seen me sneakily put up). If you’re a paid subscriber to Ars Corvi, you can access the whole book here for no additional charge. 😎

I live in Oregon and I want you to personally hand deliver me a signed copy

If this is you, for some reason, this can be arranged. Send me a message on Substack and we’ll go from there.

I live anywhere but Oregon and I want you to personally hand deliver me a signed copy

Let’s wait until I get a special edition made, then we can talk.

If you run into any issues ordering, though, that’s now probably my fault…

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Anyway, please enjoy and hopefully you learn something…

If you haven’t read the previous article, this one is a direct continuation. I won’t stop you from plowing ahead anyway, but just a fair warning…

I drew the thumbnail art this time for contrast. I’m not from Texas, but I have a friend who is. And he said Quacksimus, the Duck King of Texas, eats rattlesnakes, has a cowboy hat, is friend to beavers, and his symbol is both the Alamo and Whataburger.

And then my other friend sent a picture of the gladiator guy with a duck head photoshopped over him.

This is now clearly the TRUE Quacksimus.

…And with that very important point out of the way, let us move on…

The Two Major Barriers

You could perhaps take a more fine-toothed brush to the problem, but the way I see it, the two greatest factors keeping computers from reaching even a satisfactory approximation of AGI are:

• Defining a “Retina” standard of human intelligence to aim for

• Keeping the resource costs at an attainable level

The first pertains to our ability to even comprehend what we’re trying to build. While spontaneous inspiration is a common source of innovation, it is not until such inspiration arrives that the resulting technologies can be built. Engineering is what we’re doing and it goes very poorly when your plans are written by monkeys with typewriters. While the source of the plans may often spring up spontaneously, there’s still a plan.

We don’t have a plan for AGI yet. At least, not one with a well-defined endpoint. And if we can’t define our endpoint, we can’t engineer our way to it. But I will get into the details in a moment…

The second challenge has already been mentioned, but it really needs to be emphasized and explored in some detail. Despite everything I’ve said about the fundamental insufficiency of computers for modelling human intelligence, if an imperfect model is acceptable—as it often is—this is what I believe will ultimately keep computers from being even just “good enough.”

Now, let’s get into the details…

Challenge #1: Defining a “Retina” Standard for Intelligence

Explaining the standard

For technologies that are only interacting with humans at a sensory level—like electronic displays we’ve used as examples today—we can actually derive some pretty well-defined and universal standards for “good enough.” The physical senses, after all, deal with physical things, and we have good methods for measuring those. Thus, we test large and diverse samples of the human population to determine the limits of each of our senses (out to the third standard deviation to be safe, but practical), then set those limits as the goal for our technical specifications.

For display resolution, one of these standards is called “retina.” That is, the point where the individual pixels are smaller than what our retinas can distinguish (at the intended viewing distance). This is really nifty, as it is something can be defined by an objective metric which holds true for all of humanity—save perhaps the most extreme outliers.

…To mention the potential elephant in the room, yes, the specific term “Retina” display is an Apple trademark, and their definition given is actually a bit more relaxed than what some experts would agree with—that is, their “Retina” is about 58 pixels per degree of vision, whereas some would argue it should be as high as 100 PPD. Nevertheless, their arguments are not “whether or not the point exists,” but “whether we should set the standard at what’s good enough for 99.9% of the population or a full 100%.”

For human intelligence, we’re still at the point of arguing whether or not “the point exists.” Though, we have made progress.

An early attempt

The idea of “settling” for an approximation of a human intelligence is not a recent one. One of the most well known thinkers on the question of AI, Alan Turing, proposed exactly this with the test that came to be named after him: the Turing Test. For decades this was the most well known watermark for when a machine had reached the point of sophistication that it could be called “intelligent.”

The short and simplified explanation of the test is quite simple. You have a “judge,” and he exchanges messages back and forth with a machine and another person—anonymously, of course. If the judge can’t figure out that one of the two is a machine, then the machine has passed the test and is an “intelligent” machine. Or rather, as Turing puts it, a machine that can imitate a human.

GenAI can pass this test. And that is a tremendous feat. Yet, it became quite obvious once it did, that appearing intelligent is not a sufficient substitute for being intelligent—not enough to be called an AGI, anyway. It has proven to be sufficient enough to be useful for targeted, optimized use cases (more on that later), but there is no “generality” to it. It must be limited in scope to pass the test. That scope can still be as wide as a casual conversation, but much wider and the illusion breaks.

It turns out—as anyone would predict, including probably Turing, since generality does not seem to have been the point of the test—that the context of the conversation makes a very large difference on how difficult it is to pass. Even we humans will often fail such a test, and then we get labelled as “fake” or “insincere.”

In that way, I suppose, you could say computers can mark another notch on their belts for matching us. Unfortunately, matching our failures isn’t really the purpose of this exercise. We want them to match our best.

Regardless, since the Turing test has quantifiable target to aim for, only subjective assessments, it doesn’t work as a standard for what we want to approximate.

AIming higher

Our system can’t merely imitate a conversation or imagine up an image. We need to start the most complete picture of human intelligence and then work our way down. That is, we need to target the highest forms of reasoning man is capable of. Things like writing great poetry or inventing and proving novel scientific theories.

These are all intellectual activities that humans are capable of, and are expected of a true intelligence. While an approximation is afforded gaps in the details, the intent is that those line up with our gaps in perception well enough that we can’t effectively notice the difference… But it still has to complete a comparable task. If our attempts at AGI consistently spit out terrible poetry, then people are going to notice eventually—at least people with taste will. And if they never contribute independently to the body of scientific knowledge, then that also shows a discernable limit.

This leaves the prospect of a “good” approximation of AGI in a rather precarious place, as it will have to work with high-level, conceptual abstractions (like inventing mathematical formulae), but the margin of error there is… often quite low, and the ways to go wrong quite high.

As it stands, we with the best known hardware for those tasks tend to make pretty serious mistakes still. A machine with a fundamental limitation in its reasoning, trying to imitate us in those very precise tasks, is not likely to have much success at all, on its own—and independence is another necessity for “good enough” AGI.

Challenge #2: Scaling Woes

Approximation is a game of tradeoffs

As mentioned before, the thing that makes our approximations in engineering effective is that they are designed to maximize their effectiveness for specific tasks, rather than trying to “do everything right.”

If one thing is exactly the same as another thing in every way, then… they are the same thing. If one thing can do everything the other can and more, then the first is of a superior nature, and the other a lesser nature. If they have properties that are unique between each other, than they are simply of different natures.

Water and oil have different properties and different uses, but they are both liquids. If all you need is “a liquid” then either will do. If you, however, need an engine lubricant, then water may be slightly better than running dry but… It’s also going to evaporate far too quickly, among other issues (like evaporating into an expanding gas).

In fact, the oil is also just an approximation of what the car needs. Because, what’s needed, is the abstract concept of engine lubricant, not a specific material. But that level of philosophized engineering is for another day…

The first main point here is, the less your starting point looks like the thing you want, the more work it will take to get there. Pretty intuitive, yes?

And, another point, since the approximation is not the thing, there will always be a way to determine the difference.

Returning to our RGB light example, you can experience another quirk of their substitutionary nature by shining a bright “white” RGB light at physical objects. Unlike a true white light, the white composed of 3 individual wavelengths will bounce off of objects in an unnatural way that overemphasizes objects of the same specific color as those three lights.

While incredibly useful, the usefulness of an approximation is limited. RGB lights are intended to be looked at, they are not intended to be used to light a room naturally. But in the context of all the other requirements imposed by TVs, RGB light arrays are far more efficient than any light that could truly vary their wavelength and output.

And ignorance can be a factor in these efficiency equations. Research takes time and money, after all. And the process of picking and choosing between the features we need and the tradeoffs they come with, for a particular task, from a particular set of available resources, is at the heart of the discipline of Engineering.

Making our approximations as useful as possible for a given use case is the process we call optimization. It’s a topic I love to get into as a programmer, but that ought to be a topic for another day (or this article will go on far too long). So, I’ll relay on what’s been said already and the above example to stress the following principles of approximation:

• An approximation implies a substitution.

  • You are trying to use something of one nature in place of a thing of a different nature.

• No substitution is perfectly efficient, it will either have limits in usefulness or it was waste some number of resources, or both.

  • If the substitution was a “perfect” replacement, it would not be a substitute, it would be the thing.

• The limit or waste incurred by the substitution scales with the difference between the two natures.

  • If two things are already very similar, then little extra work is necessary to compensate the gap.

These points are related to concepts I have touched on before.

What this means is that engineering a better approximation is a bargaining game—both with people and with physics. And right now, we’re running very short on resources to bargain with. Not just with temporary constraints like materials, energy, and manpower, but also with knowledge in the form of bumping up against the harder limits of physics.

Where we’re at

I’ve already mentioned the kind of scale GenAI is working at in terms of training data volume, but I didn’t point out the fact that the volume of data alone is only a part of the equation here. That statistics based “guessing” method we looked at? It’s not exactly quick to do when you have 900 or more descriptors you have to evaluate for all of the unique “things” in those petabytes of data.

Imagine, if you will, going through your entire local library, reading every book, recording every mention of a duck, and then making notes about what kind of qualities a duck has (using a scale from 1-10 for some selection out of 900-ish available descriptors).

Yeah, that would take a bloody long time, wouldn’t it? Even if it was just 10 books, that could take a normal person a whole afternoon to scan through for every mention of a duck and then analyze the sentences around it.

So, the storage space part of the equation is pretty impressive. You know what’s even more impressive?

Requiring so many processors to handle that data that there aren’t enough even being made to handle your workloads.

“We’ve been growing a lot and are out of GPUs,” Altman wrote. “We will add tens of thousands of GPUs next week and roll it out to the Plus tier then … This isn’t how we want to operate, but it’s hard to perfectly predict growth surges that lead to GPU shortages.” (emphasis mine)

This is not “we can’t afford enough GPUs,” this is “there don’t exist enough GPUs.”

These GPUs are coming from Nvidia, who was at one point last year the world’s most valuable company because of the GPUs they design for AI processing.

Except, actually, the chips on these GPUs are coming from TSMC… as are some of Intel’s latest processors, and most of AMD’s, and basically everyone.

TSMC is currently the forerunner in semiconductor manufacturing by a significant margin, and AI needs the forerunner to operate at the scale companies like OpenAI require. So, with a few exceptions, all of these AI companies are gunning for the same supply.

Additionally, GPU’s are not specially made AI processors. They used to be specially made Graphics processors, but now they are General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) that are like thousands of little CPUs bundled together. Each little “thread” of processing not as powerful individually, but absurdly powerful in parallel.

This is to say, it’s not just AI who wants them. Anyone who needs to crunch a lot of numbers quickly does. The game industry. The movie industry (effects and rendering). Car manufacturers (”smart” car features).

To throw the geopolitics variable in for fun, TSMC’s best foundries are in Taiwan. But, of course, there has never been a potential international conflict brewing around Taiwan.

Making things more difficult, the computer industry has long counted on drastic improvements in semiconductor manufacturing every two years or so to alleviate our growing processing needs. This year’s generation of GPUs, however, was unveiled to be on the exact same “processor nodes” as the generation two years prior, ending a long streak of shrinking dies for that particular sector of the chipmaking industry.

As a reminder, smaller nodes effectively mean more processing for the same amount of power and heat.

Smaller processor nodes do exist, but being “possible to make” and “effective to produce” are two different things, and things are not looking very optimistic for production.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I will now: we’re at the point where quantum physics***, the one physical phenomenon we’re pretty sure is non-deterministic***, is wreaking havoc on our nanometer sized digital circuitry.

And as I definitely have mentioned before, computers don’t like non-determinism—particularly chaotic non-determinism—like quantum physics we can’t predict.

This is a major reason why shrinking the circuits of our computers further—what was at one time the single most effective method we’ve had for improving overall computer performance—will be exponentially more difficult. And that’s on top of the fact that the principles of electrical conductivity we’re relying on have a hard limit on minimum size, so that ship was going to hit land eventually anyway.

And to get a picture of the scale we’re already at, note that human DNA is 2 nanometers thick, or a little over 33 helium atoms. That includes not only the pairs of proteins that make up the “code”, but also the structural “rail” proteins that hold it all together. Meanwhile the smallest features of computer circuitry are getting to be about 2-4 nanometers thick. And that’s not even a whole transistor in a circuit (one of the main components), just some “part” of the circuitry.

It’s a measurement that leaves a lot of room for marketing to work with.

Don’t take this as me saying that DNA shows us the limit as far as shrinking circuits goes, as DNA’s overall mechanical structure is vastly different. But I do find it interesting to note how our biomechanical processes are at a similar scale, which means they also could contend with quantum physics. DNA, however, doesn’t run on electricity, so whatever effect that may entail is unclear (to me, at least).

For the record, it’s the misplacing of electrons that causes problems for computer processors. But we don’t need to get into that here.

The takeaway, for now, is that AI is stupid expensive to compute, we’re running out of computers right now, and the computers we do have might not get better than this.

This could change tomorrow, and we have plenty of other things we can do to “improve” computing beyond just manufacturing improvements. But the industry has been operating on the assumption that manufacturing will improve, and it’s looking like that assumption will come around to bite us sooner than later.

It may have been a bit unwise to operate off of the assumption that someone will have a spark of inspiration to solve one of the most exponentially difficult problems in engineering on a nice two year schedule. So, hopefully this is not what GenAI research is banking on.

Okay, but we’re already pretty close, right?

…Eh.

If you ask GPT, or, DeepSeek—or what have you—about something it only has a few outlier datapoints on, it will do better than you might expect (a true testament to how much data processing has occurred) but it will often have clear errors.

That becomes a bit embarrassing in light of all that information it is working with. For comparison, it’s not uncommon for a human to get through an entire career with only a single college textbook’s worth of relevant information as their basis.

To be fair to the machine, we do take in ridiculous amounts of information as well—if you were to account for all of the information our senses pick up over a lifetime. But it would also probably take you more than an entire lifetime to read, listen, and watch through everything in the Library of Congress, and any human who managed that would be expected to achieve far greater acts of intelligence than DeepSeek.

Such as attempting to summarize the qualities of a duck.

At first glance, this answer seems legitimate, if a bit overly generalized. But on closer examination, this is a summary that would probably earn an elementary schooler a B at best. #7 is pretty much a universal trait to all animate beings (but not the most offensive part about that answer), #1 makes it sound like we’re talking about a fish, and only 4 of them actually start to distinguish a duck from any other bird! It does at least consistently describe a bird after #1, so points there.

HOWEVER. The most damning failure of this whole response is that DeepSeek failed to even mention the two most IMPORTANT qualities of a duck!

• Ducks QUACK

• Ducks WADDLE

Utterly shameful performance.

We are not “most of the way there.”

We still have an entire ocean to cross.

Does this mean Approximation can’t give us AGI?

It’s impossible to say definitively one way or another, as one can always appeal to “hidden knowledge showing the way.” But, from what I can see and analyze…

And no, this isn’t about the duck thing.

We’re stretching the industry to its limits just to simulate a subset of one form of human reasoning optimized for certain use cases, and then we’re trying to use that simulated form of reasoning as a substitution for other forms. So, right off the bat we’re two layers of substitution deep, and that’s only at the highest level of analysis. And that kind of compounding cost increase hurts more when we’re already low on slack to work with.

That doesn’t mean that an “approximate” AGI is altogether an untenable idea. However, insisting on using computers (that is, arithmetic machines) as the basis for that approximation is perhaps doing more harm than good for many researchers.

With that said, it’s understandable why we would keep trying. Alternative technologies are in the works for a “someday.” But computers exist “today” and are powerful and mature today, and they sometimes do seem so close… today.

Just don’t talk to DeepSeek about ducks.

Thus, we keep trying to make them work…

…

…And to that end, we have other tricks we can try. Which I will cover soon.

The next article in this series, however, will take a break from the technical analysis to look at the philosophical relationship between man and thinking machines. Unfortunately, it will probably be a while before I can to it, but that will hopefully mean I’m getting some good novel writing in.

Lord knows I need to take a break from technical thinking for a bit. Golly, these last two were a labor to finish. I told myself I wasn’t going to get into academic writing, nevertheless, while writing this I kept going on hours long study tangents researching things like the precise biology of neurons.

In any case, thank you to all who have read this far. If you have any thoughts or comments on the matter or the way I’m talking about it, I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Sharing the Love

If you, likewise, need a break from brainy things, may I point you to Bruce Tomlin’s fantastic feed of pictures from Acton, Indiana?

I will note, I have finally decided to enable paid subscriptions. This series will continue to be FREE, as will all of my articles. But my novels and a couple extras can be read behind the paywall… or you can just chip in for the sake of supporting what I’m doing here. I won’t stop you.

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Anyway, please enjoy and hopefully you learn something…

Last time we covered:

• The physical principles computers operate on

• The abstract processes we try to model using them

• The subtle but significant differences between those

• And the problem that difference creates when attempting to simulate human reasoning

  • That is, to build an AGI

This time around, we’ll talk about one of the commonly proposed strategies to get around this problem: approximating human reasoning. This is probably the most relevant strategy in the field of AGI, as it’s the most fully developed and pursued.

It’s a relatively practical and realistic strategy, as well. In no small part because it accepts that there will be limits from the outset.

It goes something like this…

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then… “close enough”—it’s a duck

While laughably naïve in some contexts—much to the disappointment of many 3-year-olds—this approach does actually have numerous practical applications across engineering. The screen you’re looking at now is arguably one of them.

Let’s run an exercise, if you have a low resolution or very large display handy (so not a smartphone): Turn it on to a white screen. Now get your eyes as close to it as you can while still being able to focus… (You may need a magnifying glass even on a large display. Pixels are just so darn small these days.)

…And you probably already know what this is about and skipped my demonstration. Yes: the screen is not actually as white as it appears when you’re at any normal viewing position. It’s actually red, green, and blue. And those red, green, and blue lights output just a single wavelength of light each.

That’s right, with just three fixed wavelengths of light in the approximately 380-750nm spectrum we can see, we can synthesize nearly the entire spectrum artificially. And that’s because, as far as the sense organ called “our eyes” is concerned, all of the necessary conditions to “see white” were met by our display’s lights. The correct cones of our eyes were stimulated in the correct proportions. If you compared it to a screen with a “real” white light, there would be no discernable difference—assuming correct color balancing.

Our “fake” white is “real” as far as the limits of our eyes detect.

There are some display technologies out there that are actually RGBW, but that white subpixel is usually used to increase the overall brightness, mainly.

What this approximation is taking advantage of to work its magic, is a “gap” in our perceptions. For electronic displays, that gap lies in the natural limits of human visual acuity—or the maximum visual “resolution” we can perceive, if you will. There are only so many cone cells in the human eye, and only so much sensory processing the brain wants to do, and yet there’s so much light to see.

This “overload” creates at least two exploits our technology can take advantage of—and boy do we. We exploit the fact that we have a limited number of different types of cone cells in the eye (small, medium, long) to manually reproduce the combined response the real wavelength would give. We also exploit the brain’s limited processing rate—that gaps of time between physical stimulus and mental imaging—to blend static images together and create the illusion of movement.

All of these tricks, and a few more, I’m sure [I hope] we’ve learned by middle school. So, that’s neat. But do similar tricks exist for our ability to reason?

Quite a few, yes.

Applying the principle to human reasoning

First and foremost, we are beings of limited knowledge, so there’s always a gap in what we know that can be taken advantage of to create an illusion. However, there are also gaps in our reasoning over things we do know. And specifically because we know them well.

Thinking is kinda hard, after all. It would save a lot of time and energy if we did as little of it as possible. Thus, the brain usually tries to do just that: as little as possible. Among the ways it does this is by “skipping” steps when thinking about things, because it detects that we’re treading familiar territory in our thoughts and we should probably hurry along to the important bits instead of resolving solved problems.

For instance, “fire” is an important concept for us humans. It is both life giving and life taking. Empowering when tamed, and destructive when wild. When it’s around, we typically need to figure out which case we’re dealing with—and the faster we do so, the better.

Luckily, fire also generally comes in pretty distinct shades of glowing yellow or orange. Which is great for our brain, as it then becomes simple to have a quick response system by wiring the visual perception of glowing yellow/orange to the idea of “fire” and thus “urgent attention required.”

It’s not certain that this is exactly how this particular set of instincts works, but you can read about Pavlovian behavior if you want more rigorous examples of this kind of cognitive associative response… I just really wanted to talk about fire.

This is a convenient little shortcut, but this kind of “efficiency” also creates a gap and thus a sort of “cognitive resolution” if you will. The brain now “assumes” by default that a certain kind of light means fire, but that’s not actually guaranteed to be true. It could just be a bright orange sign, but the mere presence of the color will have already turned our head before we’re conscious of the truth. At least until we’ve seen that sign a few times and given our mind a chance to learn the more subtle distinctions.

With all of these gaps lying around in how humans think, it then seems quite possible to “approximate” an AGI the same way we approximate the color yellow on a screen. While humans could theoretically think in an immense amount of detail constantly, the practical reality is that we don’t—that would take a very large amount of nutrition for little payoff.

Defining our target

For AGI, then, we need only to identify where we humans stop “paying attention” to the details of the logic and design a machine that can “reason” at least well enough to cover over those gaps. To do that, though, we need to establish a basis on what human reasoning is, otherwise we won’t know where the gaps are. To start, it’s classically understood that there are at least two major forms of reasoning which humans employ:

• Deductive reasoning: following a set of known rules and facts to a guaranteed conclusion.

  • The train left the station at 8:45am

  • I arrived at the station at 8:46am

  • Therefore, I missed the train (hypothetical example)

• Inductive reasoning: following a pattern of observances to a probabilistic conclusion.

  • My uncle’s cat likes bread

  • I left my Armenian sweet bread on the counter

  • Therefore, my uncle’s cat will [probably] eat my bread (real world example)

Some people include “abductive” reasoning as a distinct form, but to my understanding the only significant difference is in how high the probability is. If that’s not the case, I would love to hear a better explanation.

A standard computer program could be argued to be a close model of deductive reasoning, but since those are explicitly programmed, it can’t really be considered “the machine” reasoning, so much as “the programmer” reasoning remotely. Meanwhile, our current Machine Learning systems—the basis of Generative AI—model inductive reasoning.

And the way they do that, is through statistics.

How we made a computer “guess”

The “statistical modelling” that our current crop of AI systems is built around can be roughly explained as a set of “descriptors” (think “adjectives”), a bunch of “things” they can describe (words, pictures, etc), and then numerical measurements saying how well each adjective applies to each “thing.”

For an example, let’s imagine that we had 3 “things” to assess: a purple rubber ball, a red dragon, and The Hulk. Now, for each one of those, we assign a number between 1 and 10 for how “red” the thing is, and another for how “angry” it is. We might then score the objects as follows:

Ball:     Red = 5,  Angry = 2
Dragon:   Red = 10, Angry = 5
The Hulk: Red = 1,  Angry = 10

All of these scores are our “datapoints” from which we can then answer questions about the collection of things. For instance, we can determine the average redness of them, which is ~5.33.

And then someone can take that “redness” statistic, and without knowing anything about the objects it was derived from, logically conclude that they are all purple…. But bad statistical analysis is a conversation for another time…

This scoring process is (roughly) the kind of thing we’re talking about when we refer to an AI’s “statistical model.” Now, let’s take this model and use it to generate an ending of a sentence. For example, this sentence:

“I was beset by a great, red, and angry ______.”

A way to do this would be to look at our datapoints and see what we “know about.” Namely, the “Redness” of things and the “Angry-ness” of things. Then, we can look to see if the sentence has any references to “Redness” and “Angryness” or their opposites…

And hey, look at that. Both are explicitly mentioned. We could then conclude through very uncontroversial math that, of the “things” we know and the descriptors we can assess, the closest match for the sentence is “dragon.” So, our finalized sentence becomes:

“I was beset by a great, red, and angry dragon.”

Now… imagine the incoming sentence was instead just:

“I was beset by a great and angry ______.”

If we used the same math, the answer would definitively change to “The Hulk,” as the Hulk is higher on the one metric we have: Angryness. However, looking at it as humans, we can actually see that “dragon” is still a viable answer. And if you look at that word “beset” in the example, and note its more rustic, medieval-y tone (things our statistical model isn’t aware of), it would seem that “dragon” might still be the better answer, even if our math doesn’t reflect that.

So, how do we pick between “dragon” and “The Hulk” in a way that could compensate for what we don’t know?

Well, instead of just picking the closest match, we could pick randomly between all of the options that are above some threshold of “relevance.” Let’s say, at least “half angry,” or a “5” in Angry-ness.

That could work, but we still have to honor the hard evidence we have, so we should also give the “things” with closer scores higher chances. Between our two choices, then, we could give “The Hulk” a 55% chance, since it’s the closest from what we know in our model, and “dragon” a 45%.

Dragons being quite angry creatures, but not quite as angry as The Hulk

Now there’s once again a pretty good chance we could end the line with “dragon,” which we as humans can guess is the most likely better fit. And on the other hand, we’re not certain dragon was the best answer anyway. The sentence could be for a story where the Hulk was sent back in time to medieval England.

But, again, our statistical model can only objectively evaluate for “Redness” and “Angryness.”

So, let’s scale up.

Now imagine that, instead of knowing about just 3 things and 2 descriptors of them, our system had run this kind of analysis with a volume of information comparable to the Library of Congress. Analysts have speculated that GPT-4 was trained on 1 petabyte of data (1000 terabytes), whereas the LoC had a total of 3 petabytes in 2012, which included all of the backups and metadata.

While I can’t find any firm basis for the claim that GPT-4’s training data size was 1 petabyte, that value almost seems too low given how often OpenAI asks for more, and who they're asking. Certainly after two years of continued development and several high profile corporate partnerships since GPT-4’s launch, OpenAI has undoubtedly acquired multiple petabytes of information to work with—whether or not it all makes its way into a given version of the model.

It should start to seem reasonable, then, how that statistics based “guessing” method described above could start to make some really intricate and human-like sentences. If reading a handful of good books in a genre lets us predict what’s going to happen next in other books in that genre, then any system that has read everything, should at least be able to write a short story in a given genre just based on the statistically likely next words.

And the nice thing is, this process is based on deterministic, number based rules. Perfect for a computer.

It is, however, still a noticeably limited model of inductive reasoning

In one way, you could say that makes it a perfect model of inductive reasoning, since induction is, by nature, imperfect in its conclusions. If you stretch the logic far enough, you could even say the lack of certainty could be called a feature, not a bug. And, since we can [theoretically] scale a machine system arbitrarily—unlike poor little humans, stuck in their fleshy shells (as the robot overlords would say)—this statistics driven form of reasoning could be implemented to a degree of certainty a human cannot attain by following the same logic.

At least, for the things which statistics can know about…

However effective it may get in its domain, GenAI’s version of inductive reasoning is still fundamentally limited compared to human inductive reasoning.

For one, it’s statistical model is “static”—it doesn’t change. The datapoints within it certainly can, but the rules it reasons by are set by the programmer at the outset, and can’t adapt to further information about the world.

Whatever flaws were in the programmer’s statistics will be in the AI’s logic, no matter how much data it is trained on. It cannot reflect to analyze—let alone adjust—it’s own process.

Additionally, it is incapable of basing its conclusions on a “real” understanding of a given subject or its own prior conclusions. By which I mean it has (at least) the following specific limitations:

1. It can’t combine its process with deductive reasoning.

2. It requires a certain (high) degree of scale for both hardware and data before it works at all.

3. It can’t take advantage of more elusively defined—but very real—skills of human reasoning, like “intuition.”

Limit #1 means it can’t reliably extrapolate the information it has, either to narrow down the set of possible conclusions from its observations, or to generate additional “suppositionary” conclusions.

To try and put it simply, it can never properly “check itself.” It can try, but every attempt comes with the possibility of adding a new error. And when making a second conclusion based on its first conclusion, it not only has the initial error rate of its statistical model, but if that first conclusion was wrong, that will feed in as a new bad datapoint in the model, increasing the error rate.

Humans can also fall into this kind of negative feedback loop of incorrect conclusions, of course, but we also have the tools needed to escape it. The primary of which is deductive reasoning, with which we can determine if a conclusion necessarily contradicts our starting assumptions and should be discarded as a possibility.

GenAI can not make such definitive conclusions, as there is no concept of “definitive” in its reasoning. Not just objectively (as is still a point of debate for humans) but also relatively. Even the most staunch objector to the idea of “objective truth” accepts that some conclusions necessarily lead to others.

i.e. “if gravity exists, then two objects in a vacuum will move towards one another.” That kind of thing.

A Generative AI can sound certain when it makes this claim, but it never truly is. Not without a developer’s manual intervention.

In practical terms, this makes the system pretty unreliable at “theorizing.” Which is a pretty fundamentally important skill when competing with human reasoning, as theorizing is our first line of protection when stepping out into the unknown.

Say… when travelling to the moon for the first time in a giant metal tube full of exploding liquids. In that kind of scenario in particular, it’s very important to have as much deductive reasoning as you can manage.

Limit #2 is more of a practical concern, but no less important. If we want a thing to exist, it must be buildable in practice. On one hand, the last five years have demonstrated that a version of the concept is practical—in the most literal sense.

On the other hand, this last year has shown that we’re approaching a few different ceilings that would hinder us from going any further up this mountain. Both in terms of producing the hardware, as well as the data required to scale further.

More on that later…

Limit #3 (but perhaps not the last): it really can’t be understated how powerful skills like intuition can be. Even if it’s rather difficult to leverage those skills consistently in our own reasoning.

I’m sure many arguments could be made that the nature of our “unique” cognitive skills may not be as “mysterious” as we often believe them to be. Nevertheless, results speak for themselves on this. The best of human insight has discerned truths with several orders of magnitude greater resource and information efficiency than the best of our machine learning systems. And per the point on scaling, that efficiency means a lot.

With all that said…

We can work with these limits. Perfect efficiency isn’t the goal: effective results are. Like with the RGB lights, it doesn’t matter if our computer “intelligence” is fake or expensive, as long as it can hide its flaws in all of the gaps in our own reasoning… and as long as it’s not too expensive.

Unfortunately, those two points may actually be what hold computers back…

I wanted to cover this whole topic in one go, but this is getting too long for my tastes and I don’t want to rush my explanations, so I’m going to split this topic in two, with the second part scheduled for tomorrow.

In any case, thank you to all who have read this far. If you have any thoughts or comments on the matter or the way I’m talking about it, I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Sharing the Love

This time around, I’m want to shoutout and and their DOD-Powerpoint Core Sci-fi Anthology “Waybound.” If character driven tales of galactic warfare and astropolitics—served with a side of mid-century-military-industrial inspired art, and an occasional cup of satire—is your definition of a hearty sci-fi meal, it’s worth checking out.

I mean, just look at this sick poster they put together for this feature…

They got a fancy intro website here… if you’re on Desktop. They’re working on mobile support for that. Either way, you can find all of their stories on their Substack:

Waybound

WAYBOUND is a character-focused, world-driven sci-fi anthology set in the 25th and 26th centuries of a world not too far removed from ours, created by njmksr and Kirkkerman.

By njmksr

You can continue on to the next article here…

⮚ Skip to the story…

When I first decided to name this tale Metanoia, I will admit that I only found the word through a mix of thesaurus diving and translating things into different languages. Yet, lo’ and behold the meaning of the word not only fit the core theme of the story then but has also proven more and more relevant to my own life.

The word is Ancient Greek for a fundamental change in one’s thinking. It is often used in the context of referring to a spiritual conversion—particularly in Eastern Christian writing, to my knowledge. As someone born and raised in the Faith, who never has and never will leave it, I never really thought it would apply to me in that sense. I certainly have had many deep changes in my philosophical and political outlooks of life, but I felt my relationship with the divine was fairly static—in a good way, I thought.

I was, however, foolishly underestimating the depths of God’s Truth, and I realize now that Metanoia is something that anyone seeking to truly grow closer to God will experience several times in life. After all, if even the lower challenges of our present life—changing careers, getting married, moving to new places—if even that brings us constant change and development, how much more must our pursuit of higher truth change us?

For this story, that idea of “fundamental” change has many implications for the characters and the world itself. Wittingly or not, everyone is seeking that kind of change. Stagnation smells of death. This is a truth our instincts teach us. And so, anyone in love with life rightly flees it. But where should they run to? And is it possible to run too fast?

As a “sci-fi” I will admit it won’t always seem like one on the surface. There are clear futuristic elements, but you will find that the paranormal and timelessly human elements take the focus more often than speculation on the future of technology and our technical understanding of the world. However, as we’ve all heard, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And if you look at the history of science and math, many of our most mundane and fundamental concepts in math and science can be traced all the way back to real sorcerers and magi.

There’s much that could be said to that by a more learned scholar in a proper paper somewhere, someday (and likely already has), but I bring this up to explain the thought process behind the “speculative” part of this work of “speculative fiction.” This is not fantasy, but atypical to sci-fi, metaphysics are taken just as seriously as the natural sciences.

This is a story about the discovery of a technology beyond technology. It’s about a phenomenon that can be understood, but its mysteries run deep and through places that man can’t control with “systems” and “methods.” Like electricity and nuclear power, it is as unforgiving in its dangers as it is bountiful in its blessings, and many great and awe-inspiring things can come of it. But just as when Tsar Bomba was detonated, this phenomenon brings with it the revelation that there are certain futures that should never be pursued. Certain questions that ought not to be answered.

Finally—and most importantly—I hope you have fun with this story. It is often quiet—and sometimes tragic—yet, for whatever seriousness and attention to detail I tried to put into it, at the end of the day I wrote whatever wild ideas I thought were cool and interesting to me. I don’t see any point in putting all my effort into crafting a tale if my friends and family (any myself) are bored by its stale pretentiousness. So, think hard but not too hard and enjoy!

Next

About

Chapter Select

Available for free

• Introduction

• Prelude

• 01: A Primordial Induction

• 02: Hospital Stay

• 03: The Investigation Opens

• 04: The Vengeful Wreck

• 05: Formal Analysis

Requires an Ars Corvi subscription

• 06: The Miracle Arm

• 07: Important Names

  • Addendum: Maurice

• 08: Nakae Tourism and Extermination Services

• 09: A Biological Study

  • Addendum: Arvin

• 10: Warm Company

• 11: A Cold Night

• 12: A Lull

• 13: Misguided Acolytes

• 14: A Reset

• 15: Troubles Mount

• 16: The Matron of Aquila

• 17: Following the Lead

• 18: The Mediator Between Head & Hands...

• 19: Consolation

• 20: Taking the Lead

• END: A Shiver

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⮘ Previous chapter

The woman behind the bar poured three glasses. In each went the same pungent liquid of a clear, caramel brown over a single block of ice too flawed in form to impart the intended sense of class.

A man with dirty blond hair took one drink for himself and raised it. “To another young life, lost before his prime.”

The woman readily joined him and the clink of glass summoned the third mourner, John, out of his malaise just long enough to pay honors in languid reverence.

As the other two imbibed, he peered at the contents before setting it down untouched and fading from the conscious world once more. His behavior invited looks of pity, but the man and woman had already exhausted their consolations that night and so lingered stiffly in the memorial silence. Their expectations of the gathering had not been high, but it proved more difficult than they anticipated to see such dull eyes where there had once been such a bright spark.

Eventually those dull eyes settled on the dim, color-warped TV that hung off-kilter on the wall. John’s mind never quite registered the content of the changing images even as he sat fixated.

The man, however, had something to say: “They never actually show the City, do they?” He gave his friend a quick tap on the shoulder. “Hey… that offer still stands if you want it.”

John slowly breathed in. The bartender furrowed her brow in suspicion.

The man continued. “I know it sucks to say, but there’s nothing left for you here. Come to Joule—start fresh.”

“You’re not serious, are you?” the woman asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“There’s nothing there but corrupt trillionaires playing king—nothing but trouble, anyway.”

“Clearly, you’ve never been there,” the man dismissed. “There are wonders in that place you could only dream of.”

She shook her head. “They can only afford those ‘wonders’ by sucking us dry.”

The man grumbled under his breath. “We were like this before they spent a penny…”

“There’s something wrong about that place,” she assured. “Give it five years and all their shiny toys are gonna break down, too.”

The man said nothing more on the matter, though his deep grimace showed there was plenty more he could.

Nothing they argued was new to John. The young city was either a hedonistic cancer on society or the hope of humanity. Most believed the former.

He took his glass and swirled it about, watching the flow of the dark liquid around the clouded ice. He finally took a small sip and savored the nostalgia of the overpriced swill. The other two took notice.

“Everything about that place is excessive,” he declared. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already bankrupt and are just pretending as long as they can.”

The bartender wanted to nod in agreement… but she could see in his eyes that he wasn’t speaking in caution.

John downed his whole drink, then looked at the man offering a promise too good to be true. In the end, what more could he lose? “Might be nice to pretend for a while.”

The man grinned.

The bartender opened her mouth to speak, but the words stopped in her throat. She looked away, clutching at the breast of her shirt as a glint of light betrayed the damp of her ringed eyes. Though her concern was genuine, it wasn’t for John’s wellbeing that she held back tears.

Was the world she called home really so unbearable to so many?

As if to answer, the power cut out and left them to the dark.

It was so brilliant, John worried he might go blind.

An archipelago of glass and steel nestled within an evergreen sea. Upon dozens of white-stone islands, immaculate skyscrapers gleamed in the sun as they grasped at the heavens, each more grand than the last. Not content to merely rise to glory, they made war with gravity. Impossible overhangs, extreme angles, grand bridges dozens of stories high and hundreds of feet long. Upon the city’s most prominent surfaces were the beginnings of great murals. Imposing sculptures stood watch from its heights. Elegant patterns trimmed its edges. Lush plant life filled its seams and hung from its walls. The souls traveling its meandering pathways smiled and laughed. The air was so fresh, so full of energy. One could almost hear the city itself breathe in steady rhythm.

And at the heart of it all was its greatest achievement: a tower that had seized all the world’s titles and humbled every competitor—all before it was even complete.

John took a bite of the best sandwich he had ever had and relaxed into the most comfortable bench to ever grace a sidewalk as he leaned back to stare in awe. This new world was so far beyond the one he knew, yet even he could see this was just the start. The most defiant projects still waited for their final touches, and many new ones were still being planned.

The job offered by that taller, blond man—John’s old college pal, Ed—was thus: to build the tools the city needed to realize their ambitions, to bring the edge of what was possible within reach… and then, perhaps, to stretch beyond.

“They’re insane. This whole place,” John declared.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Ed was the very picture of the starry-eyed young businessman: hopelessly drunk on the wine of reckless optimism.

John laughed. Then he snatched that cup and drank deep.

All those years stuck in school, hearing about all the controversies from the sidelines, hearing nothing but jealousy dripping off their tongues. Then after he graduated, when he let “cooler heads” caution him into the “responsible path.” Enough of that.

There was lost time to make up for, but his fire was lit. If the job sounded difficult, that meant there were plenty more opportunities to prove himself.

And prove himself he did.

By that same time the next year, he had already completed his first project with the company to resounding success. Great work brought great rewards. As Ed predicted to him from the outset, the glory for singular engineering achievements belonged to John’s fellows, yet they all pointed to him when asked how it all came together. And, to John’s greater surprise, the company well understood what that was worth.

A raise, stock options, and a hefty bonus got him a lavish apartment with all the creature comforts he could want and more. Nearly every weekend became an adventure—usually following one of Ed’s plots. Bold concerts, stately dinner parties, spontaneous trips with new friends, or simply traipsing around the city to delight in its novelties which grew in number by the day.

He met some nice women. Had a good time. Suffered a couple heartbreaks. Broke a few more. Nothing ever stuck, but he was in no rush.

It was a good life, and he enjoyed it… for a time. Yet, somewhere along the line he was beset with a worry he could not put to words.

At the start of his fifth year in the city, his bosses announced the next big project… and John felt nothing. No interest, no excitement, not even a critique. It was a good plan—objectively measured—but that was all. Quite frankly, it felt too small to him for such fanfare. His coworkers clearly believed otherwise, as they applauded and took to their work with all the same vigor as ever.

John reasoned that he had expected too much, too soon. Or maybe he was just getting older and could no longer run on unbridled passion. He compensated with reasoned discipline. He needn’t let his fickle flame hold back the fellows who relied on him.

Ed received a promotion with the new project, and their nights out on the town became rare. Within a couple of months, John stopped going out entirely—save to wander the city alone and listlessly gaze at the sights. His upscale apartment started to bore him and the excessive cost of it began to offend. He downsized to a cheaper place and sold off all the junk that was just taking space. His hours he spent in the office increased week by week, even while his paycheck did not—nor was such devotion ever asked for.

Every day he felt himself slow down just a bit more, and so every day he reminded himself: he was one of the most fortunate people in the world; his work was something to be proud of; he was content and the high he had been running on those first four years was unsustainable, anyway. All of it was undeniably true.

Why, then, did he feel held back again by a heavy premonition?

Next

⮘ Previous chapter

September 3rd, 2057

Into the earth he descended. Smooth and silent, like a specter returning to its grave. Only that ever so slight feeling of one’s insides lagging behind gave any indication the elevator was moving at all. John rode alone, thoroughly detached from the present and looking the part.

The machine slowed to a stop without so much as a tremble. The doors slid open and John shambled out, beginning the trek through a garage washed into sterility by cold, electric light. Winding past pillars and dividing walls, he made way to the modest little sedan tucked in a far corner of that fourth floor down. When he had arrived that morning, there was hardly a space to wedge a bike in on account of some event in town he never bothered to ask about.

Now, late in the evening, there was no longer a car in sight save his own. Yet, as John reached out to the door handle, his ears caught the echo of a shout.

A sound nipped his ear like a drop of hot oil and snapped him out of the haze of his thoughtless routine, freezing him in place to listen. There were two voices: the louder he could guess was a man. Most of the exchange was made unintelligible by its own echoes, but the few words he could pick out from the man were… crude. Barely a moment later, the shouting reached another level of intensity.

It was a good time to get out of there.

As he told himself that, he turned around to see if he could spot the source of the disturbance. The pillars and central elevator wells made it difficult to see much of anything on the other side in the dim, neutral light.

The lights were usually brighter than that, weren’t they? Maybe a power issue?

He left his vehicle and got closer. With every step, both voices in the verbal arena grew clearer and the seething anger carried thicker in the air.

John’s brain itched. It wasn’t his business, and no good would come of getting in the middle of it. It probably wasn’t anything too serious anyway.

His feet kept marching towards them. It was only proper to make sure nothing bad was happening, right?

A part of his mind felt like it was pulling away, left behind as he carried forward. It suddenly struck him how stuffy it was down there as sweat dampened the back of his neck. The summer had already begun to take its leave, but one final heat wave must have snuck its way in.

Halfway across the garage, John could finally see the ones shouting. Just the two men—as it had sounded before—both suitably white-collar in appearance. From where he was it didn’t seem that anything worse than shouting was occurring, but a few more pillars still obscured his view.

He stepped closer.

The man on the left, seething out accusations until his entire head went red, was an older gentleman: short, greying hair with a receded line; about average height; not particularly well-built, but he had done well enough to keep weight off—or perhaps, not enough to keep weight on. His face was sunken, boney, with the complexion of a life lived in apathy to one’s health. With neither jacket nor tie, and several buttons of his wrinkled shirt undone, he could not have looked a sorrier excuse for a working professional compared to the target of his curses.

A very sharply dressed man with a three-piece suit and a proud bearing stood to the right, always just out of the other’s reach. He seemed middle-aged, though with a lush head of black hair in a slicked side part. His air of self-importance deflected with impunity every complaint screamed at him until the older man had to take a breath. Then, with a dismissive quip, the proud man would wrest the opportunity to stab back. His words were keenly sharpened and keenly aimed, sending his opponent into an even deeper rage and continuing the cycle.

John was now certain it would be dangerous to get involved. He would have to leave this to the cops.

His feet disobeyed his reason.

He was about a car’s length away when the older man’s rants went downright hysterical and bled murderous intent as he took staggered steps forward. The suited man’s once untouchable poise finally cracked, and he backpedaled nervously. The arguing had reached its end, but the fight had not.

John rushed up beside the suited man, holding a palm out towards the other. “Whoa! Hey now! Let’s not do something we’ll—”

The older man snapped his bloodshot eyes towards John. “What the hell do you want!?” The man’s hand moved as soon as he spoke, knocking a pained gasp out of the meddler.

So quickly had it happened, John couldn’t even try to block. The pain was sharp along his lower left ribs—deeper than it should have been—and arrived with the sensation of a dull crack. He leaped back reflexively, pushing the suited man with him. “What was that for!? I’m just trying to—” The point of impact stung and he felt a spreading warmth around it. He clutched at the wound to find his shirt soaking through. The blood still inside his veins went cold.

Was it a knife? How? There wasn’t even a glint the whole time he had been watching.

John’s eyes went wide, those small muscles almost pulling hard enough to tear the corners.

Whatever “man” he thought he had seen before was fading away as if he were witnessing the shifting form of a dream… or rather, a nightmare.

A twisted abomination stood before him, its pallid features cast in heavy shadows by the somber, orange light. It wore the same clothes as the human that once stood in its place, but that was all they shared. Its mouth was snarling and savage. Long, pointed teeth protruded through the inflamed flesh of its blooded lips—those on the jaw more prominent than the top. Its eyes, set deep in its deathly gaunt face, were but mottled scarlet orbs with neither iris nor pupil. Its bony hands stretched out freakishly into thin, jagged claws—its right palm already traced in crimson.

A part of John wondered if it really was just a nightmare: a terror born of his fatigued mind. What he gazed upon was an existence wrought wholly from malice: a creature he thought utterly impossible to the mundane world he inhabited.

The sharp pain in his side; the heat of the thick air he forced into his lungs; the rapid, heavy pounding of his heart. Every sense told him it was all too real.

Before him stood a demon, and it held a singular purpose: to rend soul from flesh.

Such a sight should have broken John’s mind down to its most base instincts. He should have stood frozen in dread to accept his end or forced every muscle and ligament in his body towards an immediate escape.

Instead…

Behind John, the suited man turned and ran with all the urgency he could muster. The monstrosity’s eyes snapped towards its fleeing prey, and it gave chase with equal focus.

If John had possessed any instincts for self-preservation, they abandoned him that night. As the demon passed him by, John kicked—swift and firm. His foot found its thigh with just enough force to send it stumbling to the ground. However otherworldly it was, it still had a bipedal form and all the weaknesses that came with it.

John wasted no time watching it fall, immediately seizing the opportunity to run. He went the opposite direction of the suited man to force a choice in target between one or the other. It scratched the cement behind him loudly as it twisted about and recovered. A wretched howl stabbed at his ears, succeeded by hurried stomping of leather soles upon the smooth stone. Each impact closer than the last, the distance between them far shorter than John had hoped.

Adrenaline was already flooding his system as he sprinted. He had become numb to his wound. All he could feel was the pressure to keep out of reach of the murderous beast that dogged his heels, and he mustered every effort his muscles could give him to go faster, even to the verge of tumbling forward as his feet struggled to keep pace.

Still, those horrible claws drew closer.

John wished desperately for the means to turn and fight. One cheap trick had worked on the fiend while it was distracted, but he was unarmed and now alone. Any more bravery would see him helplessly torn asunder, so his mind raced to find an escape.

He was too far away from his car—the demon would catch him by then—and any other routes of escape were now behind him. In fact, he would soon find himself cornered, save one hope: a maintenance door that with any luck had a cheap lock.

He rushed straight into it, bringing his full weight and momentum to bear on the handle. Some inner mechanism gave way with a dull crunch that jostled the bones of his hand. He scrambled through the door and slammed it shut behind him. It uselessly failed to latch and clattered back open, but he had expected as much and never stopped moving. Three short, tense breaths later, he heard his pursuer crash through and turn towards him.

The maintenance tunnel was even dimmer than the rest of the garage and just as empty of any useful tools or debris. As John rounded a corner at the end of the first stretch, he looked for a way out before he could find himself in another dead-end.

Halfway across the next stretch, he reached a door leading back into the garage. This latch, at least, he didn’t have to break open as he hurried through. He just hoped the demon was too blood-crazed to operate the handle.

Only a moment later he heard an impact, then a frantic scraping of sharp bone on metal that faded as John’s legs carried him away. It likely bought him only seconds, but that alone was much more than he had just a moment before. And, more importantly, the demon was no longer between him and the way out.

The lights in that cement cavern seemed on the verge of burning out as he looked for his next good option to escape. Nothing but a faint reddish glow illuminated his world.

Yet, John felt as if he had never seen it more clearly.

His chest pounded as his heart worked overtime and lungs grew desperate.

Yet, he could barely feel the weight of his own body as he ran.

He had never felt so close to death.

Yet, an unbidden grin crossed his lips.

John spotted the man in the suit and turned towards him. He was rooting around under the hood of a car where he had been arguing initially. It seemed his fears had come to fruition as he swore deliriously at the sabotaged machine.

John shouted as he passed: “This way! Move!”

The suited man was startled but got the message and sprinted after, lagging behind only a few feet.

With at least one elevator already sitting at their floor, that could have been a way out, but the lift doors were relatively slow and all too willing to open for a “late arrival.” Plus, the angle of that path would cost them some of whatever lead they had. The only other ways up were the four long ramps up to the surface. If they tried by foot, however, John felt confident that the abomination would prove to have the best endurance between the three of them.

Thus he chose the long path all the way across that floor to his car. If that abyssal horror chased them mindlessly as it had before, John believed they could make it just in time to seal themselves in and take off… Except…

Shouldn’t it have been closer already?

Only their frantic steps echoed through the empty garage, and not a single shadow shifted in the thickening darkness as they passed pillar after pillar.

The outline of John’s plain sedan blurred into the cement around it, but he could once again see the reliable, old vehicle sitting exactly as he left it. Just a bit farther and they would secure their escape within its protective shell.

Then a pained shout erupted behind him, followed by the muffled thud of a body crashing to the ground.

Desperate panic grabbed at John. His body understood exactly what had happened and what it meant for his chances. Even so, he immediately skidded to a stop and spun around, barely keeping upright. He saw the suited man on the pavement, clutching his leg in agony as it walked up to him slowly. The sickly pale demon seemed to gloat over its helpless prey, its oversized mouth locked in a permanent smirk from the mess of razors pouring out. Its claws were raised and its fingers danced with anticipation.

Without hesitation, John charged at it, leading with another kick, but he wouldn’t manage to catch it off guard a second time. It braced a leg and pulled an arm back to block right before the moment of contact.

John could feel the damage he dealt as muscle dented and sinew strained, but it was so far from enough. He snapped his leg back to keep it from being caught in retaliation, but even with that right maneuver, the demon was on him before he could properly ready himself again. A claw flew towards his head from the left and he scrambled to block. Pain flared in his forearm on impact and he slid to the side.

He tried to grapple the demon’s veiny, translucent arm in retaliation and found some success. Yet, its skin was slick and slippery, and for its strength, it took both of John’s arms just to fight against the one. Under such odds, the end to that fight would be obvious.

When he saw the flash of pale yellow on his right, it was already too late to keep the unnatural blades from slipping into his lung.

Adrenaline kept John struggling, for what little good it did. The demon knew its victory and he could have sworn it sneered in derision at his weakness. Every inch its claws sank in felt deliberately drawn out.

John gasped uselessly as his lung flooded. He struggled commendably against the other claw as it inched towards his face, but his last wave of desperate strength was already fading. He stared into the pupilless gaze of his would-be murderer as a cloudy darkness began to swallow his world for good.

There was no promised slideshow of memories, no final reflection of his short life. For John, the coming of the end emptied his mind of all but one fervent desire: a violence of his own. One tempered in righteous indignation. A consuming fire to burn that evil which had visited such injustice upon him.

As the last traces of oxygen in his blood were consumed and the ember of his life faded, he felt something strange. An intangible sensation that swept through his whole being: a wave that crashed against his very soul.

On impulse, one arm shot up to grab at the demon’s head, sinking a thumb into its eye. In the blur of his remaining vision John saw a tremendous bright flash. A heavy, wet crack resounded even through his dulled ears. Warm liquid splattered his face. Black consumed all as he fell to the ground.

He could still feel pressure in his chest as the scent of burning flesh permeated the air.

Then, he felt nothing at all.

Next

⮘ Previous chapter

..02.01 | Resuscitation

September 5th, 2057

Red. Red and teeth and metal. Cutting… tearing… rending in violent delirium.

Was he the one the blade was turned against? Was he the one holding it? Was he angry or excited?

He was lying on cold cement; beside him a familiar man’s smoldering face, half of it missing or charred black. He had the urge to kick it away, a gross hatred bubbling up from the shadow of his heart. He was restrained by a great pity.

Pity. How piteous that soul. How pathetic.

Why look at it? Why not turn around and be rid of the sight?

John’s eyes lingered ever still.

When it happened was unclear, but there was eventually a shift and the world became nothing more than impressionistic blurs. His eyes registered bright lights and the presence of other people. These facts weren’t conscious observations, just signals from the most basic levels of his nervous system, yet that fact more than anything pushed them over the border into what was “real.”

More time passed, the voice in his head returned, and his vision became his again. He found himself neatly tucked into a pristine hospital bed. The morning sun did its best to try to shine through the window screen but could only steal in through a small gap at the sill. Those bright rays spilled onto his sheets and the framework of the bed to create a canvas of highlights and shadow.

John couldn’t help but stare in fascination at the horribly mundane scene. The sheet was a pale, uninspiring blue, but he appreciated how the light pierced through its thin materials to ever so subtly reveal the shapes and colors below. And the bed frame had no flair or frills, but its clean, matte finish made the modern manufacturing look all the more reliable and sturdy as it glowed brilliantly in the sun.

There really was nothing special about any of it. And he felt profoundly glad to see it.

He met a yawn with a restrained stretch of his arms, then took in a deep, slow breath to feel the air in his lungs…. Sharp aches in his side wrested his attention with a wince and a sputtering cough, which in turn set off a dull throb in his head. A pleasant reminder of what brought him there.

“Oh, careful now. You’re still not completely healed.”

To his right, a nurse had noticed him while she cleaned and prepped some equipment. With a few more careful breaths, he settled back down.

The nurse greeted him energetically—though with mind to her volume: “Good morning! How are you feeling?”

“Like—” His voice caught at first, prompting a quick clearing. “Like I got cut up.”

“Well, I’ll have some medication for the pain here for you in just a moment, so that should help. Good to see you’re awake, though, that’s progress.”

“How long has it been?”

“About a day and a half. It’s September fifth now.”

“Mmm…”

There was a brief pause. The nurse seemingly expected more of a reaction. “Um… It’s nice that you’re taking things in stride!”

“I was thinking it would be a lot longer, honestly.”

“I guess it’s all good news, then!” The nurse’s expression struck John as endearingly ditzy, with eyes closed as she smiled and her hands folded by her face. “I heard the surgery went very well, and we were able to use a newer technique for getting your lungs sealed up and drained. Thankfully, the punctures were relatively thin, and you were lucky enough that the cuts didn’t get too rough, so they sealed up nicely. You also lost quite a lot of blood and oxygen, and technically, you died at one point, but thankfully…”

She paused and looked to the side with eyes that said she had just caught herself making a pretty large error.

“And you probably don’t need to hear any of that! Everything’s great! Just get some good rest, and you’ll be out of here in no time, ah-haha…” She went on with a nervous smile and laugh, hoping to glaze over her little slip on her patient care training.

John allowed it, too happy about being alive to care about medical formalities already done and dealt with. He simply grinned in amusement as he asked, “Is my phone here and working? Any calls?”

“Got it right here!” She walked over to his bed and picked it out of a tray on a table within arm’s length of him—charging cable still connected. In her other hand, she held some kind of medicine. “Just bear with me a moment…” She set the phone back down, then went through a series of very well-practiced motions to administer the medication.

For all the bubbles floating in her words and expressions, her quick, precise movements with the medicine and equipment showed that her employment was no accident. John had known many nurses; the real airheads didn’t make it, not in that city.

“Okay, that’s it for now! We’ll be back shortly to feed you. Please don’t do anything strenuous. Oh! And a friend of yours was waiting for you to wake up. He said his name is Ed. Are you feeling up to a visit?”

“Yeah, that’d be fine,” John answered plainly, trying to suppress the smile forming.

“Alrighty! I’ll send him over in a little bit then.”

And with that, she left.

John retrieved his featureless black slate of a phone and got to work messaging the “need to knows”—or at least his direct team members at work. His parents were likely informed, so he sent them a message to play down the details and keep them from panicking—not that it would stop them from flying across the country as soon as they could to see him. Besides that, a few other expected people had tried to contact him when he never showed up for work the day before. He replied with some vague details. Sometimes with a shot of his sickbed view for evidence, complete with snarky comments to downplay the seriousness.

One person had been a bit more proactively concerned than the others:

Ed: Hey, I heard you weren’t here today. Something happen? - Yesterday 11:24
> Yoooooo - Yesterday 16:10
> I heard someone got hospitalized in the parking garage last night and I’m putting 2n2 together so if you don’t respond tonight I’m calling every hospital in the area. - Yesterday 20:03

John chuckled to himself. Then, feeling that the immediate tasks were out of the way, locked the screen. The dark reflection on black glass made him curious, and so he turned it back on to examine himself with the camera. He looked mostly the same as ever: short locks of raven-black hair, a neat goatee and chin strap, sharp facial features a flatterer might call “striking” in the right light, and those stone-grey eyes.

He was still a bit pale, understandably, and much leaner than that short hospital stay would warrant. When was the last time he ate a full meal? For a few moments, he let his head and arms fall back to rest and thought of nothing. A moment later, a wash of blissful comfort erased the subsiding pain in both chest wounds and relaxed his muscles—the work of the medication, no doubt. A rather wonderful effect.

As the minutes passed, his eyes slowly drooped shut.

Then a long overdue thought finally surfaced, and his eyes shot back open: What exactly did happen that night?

John knew he was usually a little too comfortable with abnormal situations. On more than a few occasions, his stoicism in emergencies had even unsettled a few of his friends—a trait he picked up from the men in his family. Even so, he felt it would be downright irresponsible to act like nothing had happened.

His memories were telling him that what had simply been a very angry, middle-aged man one moment was a flesh-tearing abomination of bloody fury the next.

Such a thing required some measure of contemplation, at the very least.

Where did it begin? The fight between those two men, yes? He never really did pay attention to what that was about. The older man was so deeply offended his blood vessels could pop, yet the haughty one seemed like he was barely acknowledging the other man’s existence—let alone his opinions. From the way he was acting, John would have put good money down that the prouder one frequently found himself as the target of his peers’ ire—just, in secret more often than not. In contrast, and though John only had a few short scenes to work with, his gut impression was that the haughty one was the sort of ambitious and cocky that had enough actual talent to keep him that way. When smaller men get on the wrong side of that, the envy can become a potent poison.

Playing back each moment that followed, John recalled the whole ordeal. Clear and vivid, his memories felt immaculate, but that alone couldn’t erase his doubts. The human mind—especially an imaginative one—is freakishly adept at creating false memories. Something he’d caught his own mind doing on more than one occasion back in his teen years thanks to frequently lifelike dreams.

However, he had enough material evidence to shelve the “nightmare” hypothesis for the time being. Mere nightmares can’t tear a hole in a man, let alone many. All of which matched perfectly with what he remembered: a chunk of his side, a scratch on the arm, and five nice punctures through the lung.

He felt his chest. He was never one for anatomy, but his heart was around there, wasn’t it?

He stopped thinking about it.

There was the possibility that he had experienced a drug-induced hallucination. However, even if the initial cut he received had been laced with some chemical, it would have been physically impossible for a poison or drug to affect his visual processing that quickly—or so he had to figure. He at least knew blood didn’t carry toxins thatquickly, and it had been hours since he had consumed anything, so the chance he had been drugged beforehand was low.

It was possible he had some kind of brain disorder that twisted his perception. He obviously hoped that wasn’t the case, but the only other possibility he could think of was that he had witnessed an actual demon possession, and that was… an idea that supported the brain disorder hypothesis. John wasn’t one to reject the possibility of the paranormal outright, but a lifetime of discovering mundane answers to life’s many “mysteries” certainly biased his thinking against it.

A knock on the door interrupted his internalized investigation. A muffled voice called through: “Hey, I’m coming in.” The metal latch gave a faint clack, and in strode a tall, familiar man with dirty-blond hair and outfitted in a preppy polo and tailored jeans.

Barely turning to face his guest on account of the medicine, John gave a friendly but very casual, “Sup.”

“Oh, man…” Ed walked over to the bedside, his eyes wrought with not-yet-relieved worries, his mouth trying to find words that his vocabulary didn’t contain and so settled for an expletive before saying, “How long have you been up? I’m sorry, it probably hasn’t been long at all, has it?”

John thought for a moment with a hum, then gave his phone a quick glance. “Maybe twenty minutes? But I’m pretty lucid now, so don’t worry about it.”

“That’s good, I guess. So, what…” Ed’s head bobbed slightly as he tried to size up the injuries on his friend. “What happened exactly?”

“Well, if I’m remembering correctly, I got cut bad over here…” John gestured to the spot on his lower left ribs now covered by a clean hospital gown. “… a little bit on the forearm here… and then I got stabbed right up here in the chest.”

“Stabbed!? What kind of psychopath did you run into!?”

John recounted the events as he remembered, substituting the clawed abomination with just a disgruntled, knife-wielding office worker.

“What in the… That’s some awful luck.” Ed plopped down into a guest chair. He rested his elbows on his knees as heavy worries brought his eyes to the ground. “This is insane… I mean, people are people no matter where you go, but it’s hard to believe someone here would go so far off the deep end.”

“It’s not that hard to believe,” John countered. “Yeah, this city’s thriving and new—like what? twenty years now?—but that means everyone’s still got baggage from their old lives.”

“Guess some people didn’t get the memo on what it means to ‘start fresh.’” Ed gave John a slight nod and a grin as if John had done something especially clever in the past.

He probably could have accepted that comment without shrugging a year ago, but now…

Ed’s grin yielded to the serious atmosphere as he was reminded of another topic they had avoided too long—and would again. “Yeah, I get it… I was probably just letting myself get a bit too optimistic.” He turned to the window, drawing up the shade to survey the expanse of buildings, roads, parks, and plazas beyond. John peered out as well as he could from his bed.

“The ‘Joule’ of the West and the Forefront of World Progress—as the promotional videos claimed…” Ed declared.

A claim so arrogant, gaudy, and grand that it demanded the whole nation’s attention and many eyes more. It was a shamelessly pretentious boast but had enough money and talent behind it that—when all was said and done—tens of thousands still flocked there on that promise of a better life. Or at least a more exciting one.

“… And every bit of it is true. But I guess not everyone can see it. I’ve actually heard a few other surprising stories this last month.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about this particular event being part of some trend,” John said.

“Yeah?” He tried to wear his usual, happy-go-lucky smile, but a doubt remained. “It’s not like I’m worried about the city’s future, but what makes you say that?”

“It would have been an… extremely abnormal situation, no matter where it happened.” He wanted to say more to Ed—no one in John’s mind deserved more trust—but he still had to convince himself.

Ed gauged John’s expression for a brief moment, then finally donned a cheerful mood and stood up. “Well, if you’re not worried about it, I’m not worried about it! Hope you heal up nice and quick—got a bunch of juicy political gossip to go over with ya. No rush, though.”

John huffed amusedly. “I certainly won’t then.”

Ed chuckled. “Alright, man. See ya! Get well!”

John barely had time to settle down again after his friend left when the nurse returned with food. Once again, she delivered efficient care with overly detailed commentary and a bubbly presentation.

Before she could take off again, John asked, “Hey, was there anything else wrong with me when they dragged me in? Any poisons or drugs in my system… or maybe brain issues?”

“Nope. Not besides the usual effects of oxygen starvation, but we treated you for that,” she tucked away her usual chipperness as she answered. “Is something wrong?”

He admitted outright, “I don’t think I’m remembering what happened properly.”

“I see…” She gave it some thought. “Well, there’s a good chance the recent trauma messed with your memories. Are you having problems remembering anything else?”

“No. Not that I can tell. It just feels like I was… hallucinating when I got injured.”

Another pause told John that she was being quite careful in considering the implications of what he said. “I’ll let the doctor know you’re concerned, and we’ll see about getting a psychologist. However, the other man who was injured was looking to talk to you when you were ready, so maybe that will help.”

“That would be good. Is he here now?” John asked.

“No. It might be a bit, I think. We’ll call him and let you know.”

“Great. Thank you.”

“Oh, and the police said some investigators would be coming by when they could. Don’t worry, though. They said you’re not in trouble, they just need your testimony.” Then, with the cheeriness she had greeted him with: “Try not to think too hard about your fuzzy memories for now and get some good rest. Bye bye!”

The little hospital room returned to silence and John immediately got to thinking too hard. How could he not when the cops were going to come knocking? There was one particular thought he had to check, though he was fairly certain of what he’d find. He grabbed his phone and started searching. Type, tap, parse. One site… then another.

Nothing. Exactly as anticipated. There were hundreds of stories about Joule being a nest of demons, thousands if he stepped out of the lines of the curated search engines. Each with varying levels of fantastical descriptions—all meaningless fiction.

While the internet had remained useful for referencing some kinds of information, it had been decades since anyone could trust the rest. Articles, images, audio, video; every kind of media could be—and often was—the product of some content generator. Countermeasures had been attempted. Laws were put in place and automated scanners were made. Yet, the laws were nigh impossible to enforce because the scanners rarely worked. The damage was done. The technology had spread too far too quickly and was impossible to rein back in. Any image could be fake. Any news story could be a lie. Any friend you made in a chat could be a robot. That became the assumption until proven otherwise. The only information that could be taken at face value was what came directly from a trusted flesh and blood friend. That kind of trust became a man’s gold, and anyone with a lick of sense would suffer all the shames of ignorance before yielding it.

For those with no gold, the world was a maddening place.

There were some trusted sources to be found—a handful of news outlets and personalities whose internet presence was secondary. But they fought tooth and nail for legitimacy, so who would risk that all to publish a story of a demon suddenly appearing? Demons don’t exist.

And that besides, Joulians didn’t care for independent news sources. If facts were found outside official channels, be it city council or an official company feed, it probably came from a snoop—and Joulians didn’t care much for snoops.

Even if a brigade of cops and ambulances had arrived at his workplace that night, only the handful of people still in the area who saw would have cared. If the responders saw the freak, they wouldn’t really want to share. If a photo got out, everyone would treat it as a gag. Demons don’t exist.

That made the other survivor of the incident John’s most reliable means of double checking his own memories. The cops… he might be able to ask… or they might say nothing.

On that note, another point came to John’s attention: if the other man from the incident lived, then that would mean either the attacker fled or…

John’s subconscious dredged up his last memories of the incident. His ears recalled a loud pop, and his arm the strain of reaching out and digging his fingers into flesh. He remembered a blurred burst of color, then the smell of cooked meat.

Then there was a vaguer image of a later time as he was lying on the ground.

If his other memories were broken, he hoped that one was, too.

..02.02 | Vincent

Midday

Despite how quickly everything had happened, John recognized the man immediately. A canine face with chiseled features, the marks of middle age worn proudly, and the prim stylings of a high-class professional. “Vincent Gauthier… Pleasure to meet my savior,” he said with lighthearted exaggeration as sharp eyes analyzed and evaluated. His tone was bereft of that bludgeoning superiority he had brandished before, but his words still dripped with confidence that carried right into the firmness of his handshake.

Between the man’s visage and demeanor, John felt as if he had just greeted a wolf. Savior or not, Vincent’s interest would last only as long as John continued to prove himself worthy of it.

“That’s nice you think that,” John replied. “So maybe you can tell me what I did, exactly.”

“Memory feeling a bit hazy there, eh? If I hadn’t heard the paramedics’ comments while they were retching over that thing’s corpse, I’d have assumed I was high.”

“‘That thing.’ So, it wasn’t…?”

“Human? The freak was like an angler fish with legs.”

Relief washed through John. “And I killed it?”

“Yeah, blew its head right up.” Vincent smirked at the memory. “Wished I could have done it myself, but… it was cathartic enough just to watch. How did you do that, anyway? No one found any guns or tasers around you.”

“That’s the part I’m fuzziest on. I was already losing oxygen fast, but I remember reaching out, and then… No. Before that there was something odd…” There was still something odd. With some focus it became defined. An intangible force that surged and receded like water on his toes as he stood at the edge of an ocean.

Vincent had a brow raised in curiosity as John drifted into his thoughts, yet he waited patiently.

John returned to reality. What he had to say was so vague he felt foolish trying to share, even more so to a man who seemed as critical as Vincent did. Yet, be it from a sense of kinship or some other subconscious signal of trustworthiness, John spoke freely: “While I was dying on its claw, I felt… something like a wave. It wasn’t anything happening with my body, it was… different. Then I reached out my hand and… I ‘popped’ it.”

Vincent was still understandably confused. “With what, though?”

“My hand.”

“That looked and sounded like electricity to me.”

“Yeah, to me too,” John admitted. “I could barely see at that point, but I can say quite confidently that I wanted the thing dead. Very dead.”

“Then your wish was granted,” Vincent snickered. “I suppose if that imbecile could turn into a living movie monster, I shouldn’t be surprised you managed your own bit of magic.”

John held his chin and thought a moment. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” He took a deep breath as he considered the implications. There was a sharp tugging in his chest and soreness along his left side. The last round of painkillers was starting to wear off. “I don’t know about you and your leg, but I’m feeling pretty certain this isn’t just a dream.”

“I’m doing a lot better than you, but”—for a brief moment, Vincent let his own lingering pain pull his grin down— “I’m gonna have to agree.”

When that fresh wave of pain dissipated, John wondered aloud, “If I really was arcing electricity out of my hands, what else is possible now? What isn’t… And, what will the triggers be…” Try as he might to think through it all, his guest and growing discomfort made it impossible to focus his thoughts. “Sorry, I got nothing else for now. Maybe once I get some proper rest I’ll have better ideas.”

Vincent couldn’t hide his disappointment well, but he was at least trying to. “All good. Didn’t think we’d find all the answers that easy.” He crossed his arms in contemplation, tapping his left fingers on his bicep while his eyes ran out the window. A curl in his lip said something thrilling was going through his head. “Hey, John. What are you planning to do now?”

“I’ve seen that face a few times in my life. You’re getting some ‘ideas,’ aren’t you?”

“One or two. So, what are you planning to do?” Vincent clearly wasn’t going to let this one go.

“Try to stay sane until they let me out of this bed so I can get back to work.”

“Not gonna try and solve this fun little mystery?”

“Of course I’m gonna try… on the side,” John answered.

“Good; that will do for now. I’m still working out the fine details of my own plans, but we should at least keep in touch—swap notes.” Vincent could barely hold his cool exterior intact under the building pressure of his excitement. “Feels like for the first time since I got here that we got something legitimately ‘new’ on our hands.”

John realized then that he had been thinking the exact same thing.

After nearly being murdered, an average man would have been fearful or angry. But Joule was not home to many average men—for better or worse.

Once they had exchanged the contact info they needed to, Vincent went his way. There was a satisfied smile on John’s lips as the nurse returned to administer the last round of medication for the night. It amused him that she ended up being more right than she likely realized. With the new dose of medication, every bit of anxiety that had built up since he woke had finally melted into quiet anticipation.

..02.03 | Interview

September 6th

Though already sure of his mental state, John went through with voluntary examinations the next morning. His mind may not have broken, but something had certainly changed—it had to have. That wave-like sensation was ever present once he realized it, though it had grown more faint overnight.

Its irregular push and pull was a thoroughly alien presence and he could not make up his mind as to its nature, be it material or spiritual or something else. Yet, when he was alone in his hospital room, there was something to it that brought comfort rather than fear. A feeling akin to having a blinder removed from the edge of one’s vision. His other senses felt much the same as before—if not, perhaps, the slightest bit sharper.

The doctor’s examination started with a simple quiz to check his short- and long-term memory. A nurse proudly declared that he showed no signs of issues there—a welcome confirmation after the physical trauma. Then they moved to tests of his other mental faculties and got equally positive results. More great news, but it wasn’t what he was looking for.

“I’d still like the full brain scan, if that’s okay with you,” John insisted.

The doctor responsible for him asked calmly, “Are your memories of the incident still troubling you?”

“Would it make sense if I said that my head feels different? And I don’t think it’s the medication.”

“If it will give you peace, we can have it done.” The doctor stood up and gathered his notes. “Our schedule for the machine is rarely at capacity—praise be—so we may even get it in before you’re discharged. For now, I must inform you that it is about time to speak to the police investigators. Do you have any objections?”

The suggestion caused John to tense up slightly, but a part of him was also excited to see what he could learn about the case—if they really weren’t pinning anything on him. “Sure. I can talk to them now if they’re ready.”

“Very well.”

The doctor left, and a half-hour later the door opened again for two new guests. They had clean three-piece suits—one brown, one navy—and ties with darker, muted colors.

The lead in brown was a taller, muscular man with buzzed hair who projected strict professionalism. All of which contrasted in a tickling way with his round, softer face.

The navy suited man was on the shorter side with a lean build, straight, black hair just long enough to tie into a knot, and a short mustache with a pointed soul patch. He had a look like a gentleman warrior, but his aloof smirk and relaxed stance spoiled the image.

For all their contrasts, the two at least shared in a strong air of competence.

John greeted them simply. “Hello, officers.”

The man in the lead replied, “Good evening. The doctor says you’re in high spirits. An impressive rebound, considering what you went through.”

“I was hopped up on adrenaline or numb from blood loss for the worst of it, so I can’t even call it the most painful experience of my life.”

The wily one in navy chimed in. “Great. Was worried we’d be getting nothing but half-delirious babbling from you today.”

“They have some real professionals staffing this place,” John said. “Fixed me up quick.”

“Indeed.” For just the briefest moment there was a thousand-mile stare in the eyes of the one in brown. “Well, to introduce ourselves, I’m Declan Malown, and this is Kagiso Okabe. We’re with the Joule Police Department, as I’m sure you’ve been informed, and we need your testimony on the incident.”

“Of course, but can I ask a question first?”

Declan nodded.

“How abnormal of a case is this to you?” John asked.

Neither man’s expression changed as they considered the question. John tried to meet their piercing stares head on… and he succeeded… mostly.

“Violent crime is an abnormal event in this city,” Declan claimed.

“Yeah, but this case had to be a step more stranger than that, I’d imagine.”

“… Quite a few steps more.”

“Jumped the whole staircase, I’d say,” Kagiso added. “Believe me, we’re prepared to hear a wild tale.”

John took a long, relieved breath. “I’d better tell you what I can, then, eh? About ol’ ‘Angler Tooth.’”

“If you’d kindly,” Declan confirmed, pulling out a paper notepad—a rarity in that part of the world.

Kagiso leaned into the wall and made himself comfortable for story time, laughing to himself about John’s phrasing. “‘Angler Tooth.’ Yeah, I see it.”

Unlike with Ed, John gave the detectives the full account of what he remembered right up to when he blacked out. He included every detail exactly as he remembered it—no matter how outlandish—watching intently for their reactions. The investigators listened without objection even as John described the abomination that attacked him. Through the whole telling, neither man so much as raised a brow in skepticism.

“Then I woke up here,” John finished.

“Has anything else happened since?”

“Nothing.”

“What about that electrical pop you heard at the end? You’re sure you don’t know where that came from?”

“As I said, I’m pretty sure it happened when I grabbed the thing’s head, but… I mean, I’ve never had a taser and I don’t know how you’d get one that powerful.”

Declan thought for a moment, then asked, “Can you show me your hands?”

“Sure.” John reached out, palms up and fingers stretched. He, too, had thought to check that detail earlier. but his hands were unmarred. The investigator took another note, then went quiet for a time.

John took that opportunity to ask a question of his own, “What did you think of the body? Was it the way I remembered?”

“I’d say your version was a little toned down,” Kagiso claimed. “Declan actually gagged when he saw it. Mind you it was just one quick ‘Mmph!’ but that’s saying a lot for him.”

“I’m surprised you’re being so candid about this.”

Declan responded, “You the type to watch all the old, cloak-and-dagger detective shows? Great stuff, but you know how information flows in the ‘modern age.’ We don’t need pomp and circumstance to keep this lid shut. Of course, that makes it harder to gather info as well. So…” Declan leaned forward and asked sternly, “Are you sure you can’t remember any other details from that night?”

John ran the mental treadmill again, but nothing was coming to mind.

Kagiso urged him on: “That angry balding man. He ever cover his mouth at some point? Slip in a little something extra? No chance he injected himself with something?”

John shook his head. “Wouldn’t there have been a needle mark on him?”

“There might have been at one point, but he was also human at one point.”

“What about the moment you lost consciousness?” Declan added. “Think again real hard about what else you might remember.”

“I’ve been trying. There was this ‘wavelike’ sensation just before the electrical shock—or like a breeze, you could say.”

“Hmm… a breeze on the fourth basement floor? Would you say that you felt a chill?”

“No, not a chill. It didn’t feel ‘physical’ at all, if that makes sense.”

If Declan was more skeptical after that claim, he didn’t show it. “And you think this might be related?”

“Possibly. The timing seemed meaningful, and then…” He was going to claim that he still felt it, but then realized he no longer did. “… I don’t really know, actually. Those memories are the fuzziest and it’s been hard to concentrate between the pain, painkillers, and visitors.”

“Understandable.” The investigator rose from his seat. “Well, if that’s all, then we can get out of your hair and let you rest. If you remember anything else, give us a call.” With a few swift motions, he pulled out his own phone, tapped away, then John’s buzzed in receipt of the contact info payload.

“Sure. I’ll let you know if I remember something.”

Kagiso waved. “Take care, now!” And then they were gone.

With the return of silence, John sank into his bed and tried to rest, but his mind would not yield; he was stuck on that auspicious absence. Despite what he had told the investigator, he was beginning to feel quite clear about his memories. There was another inexplicable phenomenon alongside the transforming man and the electrical shock, and he had felt it again the day before. Nevertheless, it was true that he was having difficulty focusing, so perhaps his mysterious “waves” were obscured by the noise of his mind.

First, he tried to meditate, empty his mind, and listen. He felt… something but was that it? It was too faint to be sure; it blended in with all of the other novel sensations of his circumstances. Sighing in frustration, he took a different approach. He had always had a rather detailed imagination. So much so that he could sometimes trick his senses. Perhaps he could take advantage of that.

He tried to recreate that last struggle in as much detail as he could: the impact of his kick on its wet, sinewy frame; the feeling of its writhing muscles as he held its arm back; the pooling of fluids in his lung and the choking and sputtering that caused. His right hand flexed subconsciously as his past self shot a hand up at the demon’s head. There was strain in his battered arms, pressure in his chest as its claws slipped through, the vomit-inducing discomfort of having one’s ribs scraped by a jagged nail, then the desperate, stabbing struggle for air as no amount of coughing and spitting would clear the fluids from his lungs.

All of it so vivid, so real—just as it had been, just the way he needed it to be.

John grabbed his chest and gasped for air. To his own nerves’ surprise, there was plenty of oxygen to be had back in the present. Nevertheless, the sudden jolt upset his tender, healing wounds, creating a not-so-imaginary pain and triggering another coughing fit.

It took almost a minute for John to calm himself and a lingering nausea argued with him not to try again. He tried to heed the warning, but he couldn’t find the peace he needed to sleep. He had to feel it again, he had to prove to himself that it was real. It was neither intellectual curiosity nor obligation that made his obsession, but a primal belief: if he could summon it again, then that mysterious, intangible breeze would bring him something of immense value.

And so, he threw caution to the wind and continued to relive the sensations in his memories in all of their grim glory. His body protested, but his obsession pushed him through. His lungs ached, but their sacrifice bought him progress. Then, finally, his suffering bore fruit. There it was, fainter than the day before, but in the absence of any distraction he could let that weak energy permeate his being.

On a whim, he raised his arm to the way it was the moment the killing blow was dealt. To his nervous system, there was a red-eyed horror with fangs from the abyss alive before him. It was a detestable thing, an evil—something that needed to be removed from the world just as quickly as it had come to be. It wasn’t fear John had felt that night as his strength drained, it was revulsion. Even if he was to die, he could not allow that thing to live.

His heartbeat raced, pupils dilating. There was a quiver of anticipation in his mind as a flow of intangible power ran through his hand. Something in his head convinced him it was electricity, but his nerves were un-assaulted and his muscles calm. And it mattered little to his instincts what the form of that weapon was; all that mattered was that it was a weapon.

A pale-blue flash lit up the dark hospital room with a sharp crack. Eyes wide, John sat frozen as the scent of ozone wafted through the air.

He smiled.

Next

⮘ Previous chapter

..03.01 | Inspiration

September 7th-28th, 2057

After a few days of uncomfortable sleep, injections, physical therapy, a visit from his parents, and the occasional stop-by from Ed and one or two other coworkers, John was finally released from the hospital. The life he returned to appeared nearly identical to the one he had left. The only surface-level difference was that John became much less involved at work. His coworkers noticed but attributed it to lingering trauma and were supportive of his change in pace.

In reality John had been using his evenings to experiment with the phenomenon he stumbled upon: his “taser hands,” as he called it endearingly. The endeavor consumed nearly every free moment of his thought. The phenomenon proved more stubborn to control than he expected—albeit an expectation born of baseless optimism after only his second success. Try as he might to summon electricity with the ease of flicking one’s fingers, he instead found he could only manage it by fully reliving that moment. The more vividly he could imagine it, the more clearly he could recall that wavelike sensation, and the stronger the resulting spark.

How immensely frustrating that was. Not because invoking all of the pain deeply ingrained in his memories was persistently unpleasant—though it was—but because there’d be considerably less uses for his new trick if a near-death experience was the only way to trigger it. If that was to be the end of it, he could take consolation in how it saved his life at least once already. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t accept that so easily.

A few weeks passed with John trying everything he could to work out the mechanism behind his strange bioelectrical weapon, yet he felt hardly any closer to the truth of it. Though, since he could trigger it intentionally, he was certain it wasn’t some divine intervention. There had to be some kind of cause and effect rule behind it. Unfortunately, he found himself fatigued easily ever since the incident, so the amount of useful testing he could do in a given period of time was limited, slowing progress considerably. As for the bigger, philosophical questions about his situation—like “why me” or “where does it come from”—such questions seemed irrelevant until he could at least figure out how to use it properly.

At the end of September, three weeks since the incident, he took a pause on his stress-inducing trials and began again to wander the city from the moment he left work until late in the evening, lost deep in thought all the while. He didn’t entirely remember where he went, nor did it ever matter to him. After five years in the city, he was familiar with the whole of it—save each month’s latest additions. Thus, he simply picked a direction and set off, always happening to end up back home by some way or another.

Joule was laid out in a peculiar way. Rather than a square grid, it was arranged as a cluster of circular city blocks of varying size called its “islands.” Most sat around the average of a thousand feet in diameter; the largest was twice that, though it was an outlier by a wide margin. Most had just one road around the perimeter of the block while the buildings were predominately laid out in ringed patterns within. The shortest were to the outer edge and they rose up exponentially as one progressed inward. For half of the islands this culminated in a grand skyscraper at the center, a showcase of wealth and glory for the sponsoring person or organization that brought that slice of the city into existence. Others were more culture oriented in what they featured: a concert hall, an arboretum, a college of arts… to give a few examples.

Invisibly linking this metropolitan archipelago was a network of underground arterial roads. They snaked around and below the islands, feeding into the main freeway that cut across the length of the underside in a slight curve—the city’s hidden spine. On- and off-ramps fed directly into the edge roads of the major islands to get traffic to and fro. Some of the smaller, adjacent islands instead relied on short surface connections to their fully-networked neighbors.

With its peculiar geometries and with most of the major roadways hidden away in the earth, the gaps between the islands were plentiful and left for managed greenbelts full of the local flora and fauna—even some concerningly tall pines.

What was actually John’s favorite feature of the city was the web-work of suspended bridges between the taller buildings. Joule’s “skyways” were far more ambitious in design than the simple, enclosed hallways anyone would have passed through in any other part of the world. For one, the average Joulian skyway was hundreds of feet in length, and the lot of them—chained from structure to structure—formed a commutable network of footpaths through most of the major islands. Additionally, nearly all of them were open-air, and some were parks in all but name, furnished as they were with benches, lights, plants, and other small things one might expect walking down an urban trail.

Their construction had been spurred on by “trends amongst the wealthier patrons of the city”—supposedly. That story explained how they bypassed any reasonable cost-benefit analysis with only one toe left in reality, but John had a hard time believing something requiring so much coordination could spring up so spontaneously. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for their existence to be justified by popularity, and many found them efficient enough for regular trips—whether by foot, bike, or some other fashionable personal transportation device. Most were built just high enough to clear the minor buildings of the islands they reached across—somewhere between eight to sixteen stories—sometimes using those lower buildings as supports and branching points. The more ambitious skyways were built as high as their anchor buildings would allow. One—not available to the public—was a thousand feet above street level.

Late into a clear but otherwise unspectacular autumn night, John found himself staring out into the city from one such recently finished skyway. It was on the higher end, at around thirty stories, and at that time was the furthest out from the city center. From there, the fullness of the city’s engineering marvels filled the eye. The great towers with all their impressive architectures flanked him on all sides and loomed large overhead like a congregation of Titans out of Greek myth.

But John doubted any man in history, no matter how reverential, ever imagined a Titan would be as tall as that one. At the geographic center of the city—and peculiarly the lowest point of elevation—the largest of the islands sat throne to the greatest skyscraper ever built: The Emperor.

Its base swept the whole of its territory into a rising, terraced spiral from which emerged four spires—each sizable enough to make a modest skyscraper on their own. They wrapped like vines around and around a central column as it rose higher and higher and higher. Even after the structure had taken every respectable crown and record in the world, they continued to build, its lead measuring in hundreds of feet. Would they not stop until it grew to a thousand? How did the weight of those twisting spires not cause the whole mass to sway treacherously with the wind? John could not make sense of it, and it never ceased to fill him with awe.

It was a mythical feat of engineering, and the fashion of its exterior invited one to believe it had been pulled right out of an ancient age. Though made of the most modern of materials—of glass and steel and composites—its façades were composed of innumerable, thin, tall arches like palaces and monuments of antiquity and trimmed in graceful patterns of abstracted flora. On some levels there were rooftop parks and proper gardens adding a feeling of natural life to the tower. And on that night, it was given a subtle, enchanted glow by tens of thousands of soft, weak lights behind portions of frosted glass at the tops of nearly every window. It was a creation that held a great hubris in its heart and covered itself in gentle elegance.

In just about every way imaginable, it tried and succeeded in being the most important and awe-inspiring structure in a town full of novel, eye-catching achievements. It even assumed the responsibility of housing the facilities for all major utilities in its district, where possible. The man who commissioned it shared its personality: the biggest, most self-important person you’d ever meet, but one who had arguably taken on enough responsibility to justify his attitude. Or so Ed had argued. They called him “Old Man Nivar,” and if he had a proper name, it had been forgotten to time for your average Joulian. He was an enigmatic fellow who rarely appeared in public or the news and so few had ever actually seen him. John himself had only gotten close to a sighting when he and Ed got an exclusive invite to a higher floor for a party hosted in the Emperor, but even when only five floors down from the top, they were several social circles removed from sharing a room with their host.

Whoever that man really was, he seemed to only truly exist to the city’s greatest. To everyone else, there was only the tower he had built. In that respect, his influence was astoundingly palpable even in its mystery.

Perhaps that layer of mystery was why it struck such a profound chord in John as he gazed upon it again from that fresh angle. He could see the fullness of the detail in its architecture and craftsmanship in a way that was impossible when one was right next to it or even on one of the closer skyway bridges. With the complex elegance of its form and vast height, the term “superstructure” didn’t seem enough to describe the impact of it. And with all of its disciples around it, there was no better way to describe the scene before him than pure grandeur.

John felt a surge of awe at the effort and ingenuity of it all. There was a nostalgia to that moment, a strange thing to experience in a land so new, but it was the same fascination that had gripped him the first time he beheld Joule’s expanding skyline with his own eyes; it was that desire to pursue goals far beyond what he believed the world would allow to exist.

And, as his heart flooded with that rediscovered inspiration, that other strange yet now familiar feeling swelled as though he had been tossed into the ocean.

John stretched out his hand and breathed deeply. His mind filled with novel ambitions and plans for things he had barely once considered. An ethereal energy drew into him. A trickle at first, then a deluge that ripped the air around his limb with crackling arcs of glowing azure—some jumping out several feet into the space before him. His face could feel the superheated air, yet neither a single hair nor thread on his body was singed. After just a moment, the feeling subsided and the air sparked no more.

He grinned proudly, thinking himself a few steps closer to the true nature of that “soul wave.” One thing he was now sure of: the phenomenon was no freak mutation triggered by a survival instinct; it was something much greater. Many, many questions remained unanswered, but John was content for the evening, pleased to have discovered as much as he had through such spontaneous means.

As he felt the oncoming of another migraine, he decided to—

“Du—de!”

John froze. He had thought himself alone but realized that quite some time had passed since he had actually checked.

“That was absolutely righteous! How’d you do that!?”

“What? You can’t? That was a pretty basic trick.” John turned around as he bluffed reflexively to see a scraggly man of average height with spiked, bleached-white hair. With various metal piercings and a punk-rock getup several decades out of date, John would have considered him particularly odd. But the city attracted many eccentric personalities whose high standard demoted that particular example to merely “rather” odd. Perhaps his didn’t-quite-make-it look was popular again in the city’s more trendsetting music scenes.

The man’s eyes gleamed as if they still reflected the light of the passing spectacle they had just witnessed and his whole face beamed with the excitement of a child on Christmas day. He was a man quite certain of what he had witnessed and his nature left no room for doubting his own senses—exactly the last kind of person John wanted to encounter at that moment. He would be a tricky opponent in the game of misdirection and coverups, but… John felt he could manage it.

The man’s expressions fluctuated wildly between disbelief and wonder at John’s claim. “Hell no! That’s not a thing, are you serious? No one told me that! Can you show me?!”

“You just gotta feel the ‘Wave of Creation,’ man. Once you’re in tune, it all just flows out.”

“Bull.” The man’s immediate reaction was thoroughly skeptical. That façade lasted for not even a breath before it gave way to a slack jaw and a look that said his understanding of the world had just shattered. Were there any better lighting to see by, John would have sworn he saw the color drain from the man’s face. It seemed he was buying into whatever John was selling.

Yet… why did he seem so sad all of a sudden. The man became transfixed and engrossed in a somber contemplation—like the moments of reflection spent around the last flickers of a campfire.

John hurried his mind, desperate for an excuse to make a clean break.

Too late. As if someone had dropped fresh tinder, the man’s spirit reignited into a blaze of determination. He shot his fist into the air and shouted, “Alright! How do I start?”

John was nearly paralyzed by the number of emotional changes occurring in such a short period of time. His conscious mind kept at its task while some lower circuit of his wit took the reins of his body, and he pointed out towards the city. “You see all this?”

Confused, the man confirmed, “Um, yeah?”

“This is your key. Look out on the city. Drink in all its detail. Feel the collective efforts of its people and their dreams and desires. When you can feel their thoughts, you’ve begun your path.”

The man was awestruck.

“Good luck.” And with that, John walked off as fast as he could without breaking into a run. He only looked back once he was nearly to the end of the bridge. To his surprise, the man actually seemed to have accepted everything he said and was taking the pose of one out to challenge a giant as he stood right where John had.

John chuckled under his breath. Then he grimaced. Though his fake explanation was a bit distorted, it really wasn’t that different from what he himself had been doing, was it? The gears in John’s mind spun a few nervous cycles, then he gave up on the thought and shrugged his shoulders.

Surely a man that eclectically minded would grow bored, give up, and go home in a few minutes.

..03.02 | Will

But a breath later…

A short expletive escaped John’s lips as he turned back around.

The wannabe rocker, it seemed, was not the last person he wanted to encounter that night; that honor went to the older-looking gentleman with unruly grey hair smoking by the doorway to the access elevators and staring at John with a grin as suspicious as it was aloof. He was wearing shorts, sandals, and an unbuttoned, red Hawaiian shirt over a white tee—an outward appearance that screamed “carefree beach bum.” Yet, the look about his face was that of a hound tracking a scent.

So, which was he, John wondered. “Some kind of con artist or very blatant creep?” the man voiced. “Take a guess.”

“Psychic.”

“I wish. Would make my job easier.” The cigarette never left his mouth as he meandered up to John.

“I’ll bet it would…. So? What’s your deal?”

“Take another guess.”

If there was anything that unsettled John the most, it was the eyes. They told John that only one person was a stranger in this exchange, and they delighted in letting John know this. That gave John some good guesses, but the way he was asked tugged at his rebellious side. “You’re a delusional entrepreneur here to proposition me about your latest genius business venture.”

“Warm. Try again.”

“Enough. Just spit it out.”

The man chuckled. “Sorry. Can’t resist with people like you. It’s too fun watching the hamster wheel spin in panic.”

Despite the playful delivery, John’s guard only rose higher.

“I did come to give you a job offer, actually,” the man started. “Just one for a very well-established organization, not another hot-mess startup looking for unicorns.”

“Is that so?”

The two men sized each other up before speaking another word. John tensed reflexively as he tried to gauge what exactly this old hound was hunting for. Any more careless words and he would find himself in a bad place quick, he reckoned—and not for what the man could do to him right then and there.

However, it was a one-sided mind game. This random old guy didn’t just understand John, he knew about him. He had revealed himself right after John slipped up and made a show of his strange new ability. Was that coincidence or intent? Coincidence was unlikely, judging by the confidence in his grin. Intent meant he knew something; probably even something about the incident in the garage. Then was this casual old man a cop? He didn’t look the part, though that would be a well-established “business” of a sort, but the city police were too new to deserve the emphasis….

And the old hound had his amusement again.

John relaxed in resignation and sighed. “I don’t take job offers from strangers.”

The man presented a badge. “Will Caulfield. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Looking to get your help on a case.”

“Uh-huh…” John’s skepticism was unrelieved. “What would you need me for, exactly? Got a wiring diagram important to a lead? Need to consult on some haywire construction bot? The station’s power go out?”

“There is some electricity involved, yeah. You see, I just saw a guy pull lightning out of thin air. Seemed pretty dangerous, so it’s a matter of national security to find out everything we can about that.”

“Oh. Interesting. So, you wanna drag him to some military lab for ‘research?’ Sucks to be him I guess.” John delivered the remark as if it were a joke, all the while beginning to backpedal away.

“Hah! Maybe if someone else found you first, but you lucked out. Since I got here first, you get to assist in fieldwork as a ‘consultant.’ See, several odd things have been happening around town lately and I need to look into them. Sounds fun, yeah?”

Several? “Not really,” John lied egregiously as he stopped again. “But you look like you’re already having too much fun for a fed as it is, so I doubt you’ll need me.”

Nothing about their meeting seemed very “official.” Will didn’t exactly seem… outright malicious, but how was John supposed to verify the authenticity of that badge card? Fake IDs were a dime a dozen.

The man called Will picked up on John’s concern. “I take every chance I can get to ditch the tie and jacket, but here—a printout of your own account of the parking garage incident. Only someone working with the JPD should have that, yeah?”

Will tucked his badge away with one hand and, with the other, retrieved a folded stack of papers from his back pocket. With a quick flick, he tossed them forward, sending the spinning bundle right into John’s chest. He caught it awkwardly and began to read.

“We can stop by the nearest police station to go through the nice… long… full confirmation process too—if you really, really want to,” Will added.

John ignored him as he flipped to the next page. Sure enough: it was his own words verbatim. The last page even included a handwritten note describing the conversation after the recorder was turned off.

“I doubt that confirmation would take more than a few seconds,” John concluded. “Yeah, I’ll bite. You’re a fed. But it’s still going to be a ‘no’ from me on the job. I already got a nice gig in a field I’m actually proficient in. Not interested in switching careers at the moment.”

Will pointed his chin up as he scratched its wispy hairs in doubt. With some played-up disappointment, he said, “Oh? You looked real interested in figuring out your whole Zeus act there just a minute ago. I thought maybe a good supernatural mystery was what was distracting you at work recently.” Raising his hands to the side, Will bowed his head in an exaggerated yielding motion. “Ah, but what do I know. I’m sure you need something nice and secure for your family and all.”

John glared cold and hard as he caught the sly grin that followed that last remark.

“Them’s the breaks for me, I guess.” Will continued, entirely unperturbed. “I’m sure there’s another bright, unflappable person out there who’s already gone toe-to-toe with the unknown and come out the other side with his mind intact. Easy pickings, I’m sure… Might be tricky finding another one that comes pre-packaged with some brawling experience, but I’ll live.”

Now this man was crossing a line. “Good luck with that and good night. I really oughta get home now.” John hurried towards the door past Will.

“Yep, yep. Good night,” he said while putting out his cigarette in a small container he drew from his pocket.

As John went through the door towards the elevators, he shot one last, menacing look over at the ever-amused older man. He got a sinking suspicion that would not be the last they saw of each other.

There was at least one other person who had encountered that demon and was none the worse for wear psychologically: Vincent. But John had a feeling that the obvious difference between the two was the real reason why Will was there.

It was going to be a long month, it seemed.

..03.03 | Coerced

September 29th

Not even twelve hours had passed before John was forced to reconsider the surprise job offer as the security gate to his office elevators buzzed in denial. At first he hoped it was merely a small error in their security system—a defect in his ID card. After a visit to the desk and a call to his manager, he discovered that he was on an “indefinite leave of absence due to health concerns.”

In other words: terminated. Doctor’s orders, supposedly.

John was upset but not surprised, and so opted leave without a fuss and head home. Chances were good that he’d have a “guest” arriving there soon, but he felt not even the slightest bit of shame in making them wait a bit. There were, after all, a few errands John needed to run in his newfound free time as of… right that moment. The weather was nice enough. Perhaps a park visit would be refreshing. A new restaurant had opened as well that he was interested in.

Regrettably, his guest would likely have to wait a long while.

Late in the afternoon, John finally arrived back at the parking garage under his apartment. He grabbed his small bag of goods out of the passenger seat and made his way up the stairs to his apartment. Sure enough, Will was leaning on the wall outside his door, smoking away. “Oh my, a visitor! What a surprise. Whatever could I do ya for?” John wielded the insincerity of his exaggerated tone with all the elegance of a club.

“Don’t mind me, I was just in the neighborhood and thought to ask how your job went today.” Will was grinning mischievously again. It seemed to be a permanent fixture of his face.

John took a nice, deep breath and resisted the urge to throw his bag…. After exhaling: “You should consider smoking less and bringing more food when you show up at someone’s home. Might help make a better impression.”

“Eh, well, if you were a chick, I might have considered it.”

John walked past Will and into his flat—quite definitively shutting the door behind him. After a few well-padded minutes of putting things away and tidying up, he came back out. Will hadn’t moved an inch.

“Alright… let’s get this over with. We going somewhere? Or do I get to telecommute to this job?”

“That all the fight you got?”

John briefly wondered just how long he could make that old man wait out there. It was supposed to rain later that night as well. He scratched his cheek and admitted, “It’s not like I’m completely against this… sketchy looking as you are. Besides, if your opening salvo is faking a medical diagnosis to get me fired, I’m not up to wasting my time finding out what other tricks you would pull.” He shot a fierce glare at the man. “Just know that if you think I’m doing this pro bono, I’ll find a way to make you regret this.” He wasn’t entirely sure he convinced himself with that threat.

“Oh, that won’t be a problem. Never you mind that.” Will pushed off the wall and headed toward the elevator. John followed him to a black sedan and got in—despite his better judgement.

The ride was good and silent for half the trip as they floated effortlessly down the busy yet un-congested roads. Will weaved his way along the curving streets and subterranean highways with the smoothness and certainty of a long-time resident. It was really a trivial thing, but that proficiency counted towards just a little bit of respect in John’s eyes. The city was infamous among outsiders for its non-standard road layout, and even more so for the city’s requirement for all human drivers to pass a very rigorous exam before they could drive in the city—regardless of whatever state licensing they held. Even the self-driving cars and buses, which were the majority, had to meet a certain standard of technical confidence—a standard usually only met by the systems programmed in the city.

Road standards in the city generated no small amount of controversy, but John found the complaints to be all hot air. Personally, he had never met a person who hadn’t fallen in love with their system within a year of moving there—if not within the first month.

Will finally broke the ice: “I think I know exactly who we need to investigate first about these supernatural occurrences—”

“The Joule City Roadways Department.”

“Tch. Overused joke, huh?”

“You think it’s a joke, but some of us seriously consider the possibility they dabbled in some kind of magic. The real crackpot theorists—the ones trying to claim the civil engineers set up the roads in giant summoning circles, or something like that—are going to have a field day if any of the witness accounts of ‘demon possession’ make their way to them.”

Will chuckled. “Those were some pretty entertaining people to talk to. The information brokers around here don’t take them too seriously, but the… self-motivated are good to have around when you need to kick up dust. Seemed like every day another person came in to their ‘closed’ forums with another bombshell update. Most of it junk, of course, but”—Will furrowed his brow and the edges of his lips dropped— “it really is hard to believe a city road could flow this smoothly without a child sacrifice or two.”

“Hard to accept, isn’t it?” John grinned. “Personally, I’ll stick with the mundane explanation for my conscience’s sake. If I question the dream too much, it might end.”

..03.04 | Job Description

Evening

They soon arrived at a district on the edge of town, one of the very few exclusions to the island-based structure, which was dedicated to storage and light industry. Will drove up to one of a set of smaller, unassuming buildings off a side road, retrieved a tucked away remote, and pointed it vaguely in the direction of two garage doors at the end of the unit. A faint click ordered one door to open and Will slipped his vehicle in before the whirring overhead motor could finish its work.

It was a simple space inside, best suited for a small-scale distribution business or a budding manufacturing operation. For its current tenants, the barren interior space housed only a black van, a few temporary desks, and some black plastic storage containers. The far wall had three doors and one large interior window with its blinds closed: likely an office, bathroom, and break room, in that order. The final feature of note was a loft above those rooms where there looked to be makeshift living quarters.

“Welcome to your new workplace! Just finished setting up yesterday.”

“So, how long were you living in the van while you ran recon?”

Will was already reaching into his pocket to pull out another cigarette as they stepped out of the car. “About a month. These bones put up a bit more of a fuss than they used to, but gotta do what you gotta do.”

“I’m glad you were so dedicated to derailing my life.”

“What better way to spend one’s twilight years than using all your time to throw wrenches into everyone else’s plans?” He casually walked towards the door by the interior window.

John followed, smirking. “The truth behind the FBI comes out. They are a cabal of bored old men just trying to make our lives miserable.”

“Does feel like that most days.”

It was subtle, but John caught a somberness hidden in Will’s remark.

“Alright! Let’s meet your new mail-order bride!” As Will reached out to open the door, it suddenly cracked open, and a hand stuck through to slap a sign on the front.

NO SMOKING

Will clicked his tongue and turned right around. “Fine. I’m going to step outside for a minute. She can do the whole darn orientation herself if that’s what she wants.” He grumbled the whole way back to the open garage door.

Ignoring him, John twisted the handle of the newly christened office door and stepped in. The decent-sized room had a few more temporary tables, this time furnished with computer equipment and desk chairs.

While one of the two ready stations was home to a mere laptop in front of an at-least-decent-looking camping chair, the other served as a stage to an intimidating array of monitors and a sizable computing rig that subtly exuded its potential processing power through the even whispers of a multitude of unseen fans. The decadently ergonomic chair paired to that station spun around to reveal a young, petite woman with wavy, sandy blonde hair that fell just past the shoulders.

“Did he tell you anything useful?” The woman spoke in a soft and even but completely disinterested tone.

“Just that he wants me to help investigate that freak I stumbled into last month—and related matters… It seems your little sign has derailed him for the day, though.”

The woman rotated towards the window and stared intently for a brief moment. John couldn’t see any cracks in her bored expression, but the implication was enough to imagine sparks flying out of her eyes.

She turned back. “Fine. I’ll explain what we’re doing, but I’m giving the short version.”

“Great. Wasn’t interested in hearing all the bureaucracy of it anyway.”

“Alright…” She paused a moment and looked to the side, assembling the pieces of her explanation and whittling it down with concentrated effort. “…Your encounter in that garage was the third known case. Similar incidents have been happening for a few months now.”

That was news to John but not a revelation. He had been considering that possibility since he met Will. “And the FBI thinks they’ll continue,” he extrapolated.

“No. Just us and some of the Joule Police Department. The FBI… Will can tell you more when he feels like it. For now, only you, me, and that crazy old guy will be actively investigating.”

“Is he that bad?”

“Sorry, I misspoke. He’s reliable. Just expect a lot of annoying remarks.”

“Uh, huh.”

She promptly returned to the main topic: “When there are no active leads, Will and I will be here or following up with connections to find some. When that’s the case, you’re free to do as you wish. Just be ready to respond if we contact you—so don’t leave the city. Once we have a lead, you and I will follow it.”

“I’m essentially your assistant detective, then.”

The “mail-order bride” comment began to make some sense to John—not that it did that man’s sense of humor any credit…. And wouldn’t John be the one on mail-order in that scenario? And it was less mail-order and more a kidnapping….

“Not as an assistant,” she corrected. “You’re the field leader.”

John stared at her in disbelief, expecting another one of Will’s ill-humored jokes.

“My main job is analysis and observation. As Will puts it, I’m ‘smart and have good eyes’ but he’d ‘rather have a robot do the talking and planning.’” Her phrasing implied she took some offense to Will’s explanation, but her tone had not perceptibly shifted up or down, and though her mouth began to pout in protest, she couldn’t quite shake her sleepy expression. “And he’s an old coot. So, here we are.”

As wrong as it seemed that they would suddenly put him in charge of any part of this operation, Will had a point…. There was a certain endearing quality to her attempts at proving otherwise, however.

She set her grievances aside and returned to her briefing: “We’ll be giving you some training, but this is… an improvised investigation. Our risk tolerance is higher with all the unknowns. There’ll be gaps in what we can teach you. Will thinks you can handle it, though.”

The amount of responsibility the two were casually throwing at him was anxiety-inducing, to say the least. Normally, he’d be ecstatic about minimal micromanagement, but given the circumstances, it seemed like outright negligence on his handlers’ part.

She continued, “If you run into any trouble with local authorities, we can try to bail you out if we deem that your actions supported the investigation and the interests of the nation. Do anything malicious and… um… just don’t get on Will’s bad side. We’ll leave it at that.”

He couldn’t not ask. “Have you seen that before?”

“I’ve heard it hasn’t happened much since I started working with him, but yeah, there was this one guy. Did a lot of little things Will didn’t like—then let some really bad things happen. His career and reputation fell apart quickly enough, but… Will didn’t leave it at that.”

“…I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yeah.… Um…” The woman appeared to be struggling to think of what else would be relevant. “Any questions?”

“Your name?”

“Oh. Right. Mia.”

“Nice to meet you, Mia. Hope we work well together.”

“Same.” She lazily swiveled back and forth for a moment, keeping her eyes on John. “Well? Any more?”

“Not really. Just gotta go poke around for info and try not to die in the process, yeah?”

“That’s an extreme simplification, but sure… You’re more agreeable than I expected.”

John shrugged dispassionately. “Last month I woke up in the hospital with multiple stab wounds and the ability to shoot lightning out of my fingertips. Starting to think this is just going to be the way of things.”

“Mmhmm. The perfect conformist attitude for government work. You’ll do great.”

It was to be a trio of snark, then. Perfect, John thought. It would be a small wonder if they made it through the rest of the year without one of them getting shot.

Undoubtedly, he would be the one when the time came.

The door clacked and swung open, then a freshly cigarette-free Will poked his head in. “Done with the wedding planning?”

Mia responded reflexively, like it was part of an overplayed gag between the two of them: “We’re eloping. Going straight to the courthouse.”

“Efficient. I like it. Hey John, come here.”

John followed Will over to a sturdy black case on one of the tables in the open space of the warehouse.

Will gave the case a nice pat. “How you feel about guns?”

“Plenty comfortable with them if that’s what you’re asking. Used to go to the range with my family growing up.”

“Perfect. But I knew that. What I mean is how do you feel about this gun?”

Will snapped open the latches of the case and lifted the lid. Inside, a handgun sitting right on the razor’s edge of “large” and “practical” sat nestled in foam beside two extra magazines and a modernized, tanto-style knife. John picked up the gun and ensured the chamber was clear; it was everything he wanted in a sidearm: an elegant frame shaped to line up with the natural pointing motion; a balance that made it easy to handle, but with a decent heft to keep it stable; and no flashy ornaments or gaudy paint, just a clean, matte-black finish—as one would expect from government-issued equipment.

It was love at first sight.

“Hah! I’ll take your slack jaw as proof I was right.”

“Your ability to read people is creepy as hell,” John said as he pored over the details. “But… I can’t deny you’ve used your power for good here.” The gun wasn’t inscribed with a logo he recognized but still had clear serial numbers. The barrel also baffled him, as it was considerably narrower than he expected from a law enforcement weapon. “What… is it, though?”

“A little piece of local culture I found.”

“Here? Joule has a gun manufacturer?”

“They’re not open to the public quite yet,” Will answered, “but you don’t need to worry about the details.”

John set it down, then fiddled with one of the empty magazines. “Okay, but what does it shoot?”

“That’s custom too, but it's basically a modified five-seven. Packs an even bigger punch when it hits the fleshy bits. It can fire a standard five-seven, too, so I don’t have to burn all my savings just to see if your handling is up to my standards. Which…”

Will grabbed the lid of the case and tapped expectantly. John woefully put everything back and slid it over.

“…You will be doing before I let you carry this baby anywhere.”

“Of course… No less-lethal tools, though?”

Will smirked. “You already have a built-in taser. Use that if you really need it.”

“You’re assuming it’s something I can do at will.”

“Ah, you’ll figure it out soon enough. Besides, you’re not going after money launderers and rioters. If you encounter another ‘Angler Tooth’ with Mia tagging along, I won’t be the one who left you with bear spray and rubber bullets.”

“I’m sensing some fatherly instincts kicking in,” John quipped.

“You’ll be sensing a whole lotta nothing if you let my one good subordinate get injured.”

“… Understood.”

“That said, she’ll be carrying a rifle of her own. It’s not escort duty, but she’ll have it stowed in a case until needed, so it’s on you for first response if any uglies show.”

Unable to reconcile the mounting expectations in his head, John blurted out, “So, what? You think you can pluck me out of an office, take a few days to ‘teach me on the job,’ then suddenly I’ll be ready for this?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Then why?”

“Because we might not even have a single day to train you before something else happens. When it does, I don’t wanna roll dice on someone who’ll wet their pants and run screaming when they see one of those things. We haven’t shown you the other ones yet, but they ain’t any prettier. You, however, have already proved you’ll go in mano-y-mano with the things if that’s what it’ll take—and it’s not because you’re a meatheaded moron…. So yeah, I’m willing to bet you’ll learn the rest on the job…. Oh, and we both know a civilian college wasn’t your original plan,” Will added.

The fingers on John’s right hand stretched and then curled tight. He sought satisfaction with an allegation instead. “I still find it hard to believe you couldn’t get one other person from the Bureau to do this.”

Will knit his brow. “You got Mia.”

“Two other people.”

“Two? Not a chance. Not in my circles, and those were the only ones that would have given this case a second thought. Maybe I could have poached someone from somewhere in the organization, but it took me years to find one, and… well… her employment might not be one hundred percent HR-approved….”

John could only shake his head as his doubts multiplied.

Will casually pulled out his phone to check the time. “Heh. Only five.” Then, with more snide than valor, “Take heart, young warrior, you’ll get at least a half day of training before the enemy is at our gate.”

A retaliation for wasting time earlier that day, most likely.

They spent a few hours on the baseline expectations for John’s conduct and setting up a new phone for secure communication. The dark of the autumn evening arrived well before they concluded their business for the day, and it settled in with a heavy rain.

Will at least had the honor to give John a ride back home after dragging him out there. As they pulled up to the front entrance of the apartment complex, he had one last question for the night: “Forgetting something?”

“Huh?”

Will rolled his eyes in amusement. “I can never take people like you seriously when you try to act money-motivated—not for one second. And after you made such an aggressive statement about it, too… Ah, kids… Check your bank account, nimrod.”

The full weight of his foolishness pressed down as John realized he had never once pushed any sort of pay negotiation. He might as well have been an old door mat at a house party. In complete defeat, he pulled out his personal phone and up his account details. In what he could only attribute to divine protection, a considerable sum had been deposited into his account that day from some generically official sounding entity.

He said a quiet little prayer of thanks in his mind.

“Good for you that I’m such an upstanding pillar of society,” Will said with a nice helping of sarcastic hubris. “You won’t have to worry about rent or groceries anytime soon—not that you did anyway—but consider this the first of many lessons on how to survive in this line of work. Always look for leverage and never give it up for free.” And with a wink, “Reciprocal relationships are the ones that last after all.”

“I always thought the Feds were just stingy, not cutthroat.”

The mask of humor fell. “Any place can become cutthroat if you’re clumsy, and it’s not Mia and I you have to worry about now.”

It was a roundabout lesson, but it reminded John of an important truth: his new employer was not one to brag about in that town.

“Duly noted.” John climbed out of the car and lazily made his way through the rain as Will sped off.

Next

⮘ Previous chapter

..04.01 | Instability

October 30th, 2057

The following days made crystal clear that the little team John found himself in was not the kind of hyper-standardized government operation he worried it might become. It was almost the opposite problem, really. There were no official training manuals or courses. Everything Will and Mia covered was either coming right out of their heads or prepared a day in advance with some hastily assembled slides.

There was a possibility that John was witnessing standard procedure for the Bureau those days, but it all seemed rather unorthodox to him. What did he actually know about government work, anyway?

Despite the… generous flexibility, it was far from chaotic. While often carefree to a fault on the surface, Will didn’t waste his breath. Every step seemed intentional, even if it wasn’t immediately clear what the intention was. And, if the pieces he laid out were a jumbled mess, Mia was quick to straighten them into neat patterns.

John was particularly surprised by Will’s high standards for the paperwork side of the job. In seeming contradiction to every other part of their work ethic, every logistical detail was documented in some way, and any significant activity or observation was to be logged. “We’re in uncharted territory, after all,” he explained. “What we see today will be tomorrow’s lifesaving info.”

It did make sense, once contemplated. An investigator’s job was to untangle the convoluted plots of reality and interrogate a narrative out of them. One could never expect things to start in an orderly state, but the work was never truly done until every hanging thread was neatly tied up.

To that end, John compiled everything he learned about his new, supernatural ability as he practiced. There wasn’t much. He had made no new observations since that night on the skyway, except that it had become even more difficult to evoke than before. His standing theory was that the change in career was making it very difficult to focus.

Vincent also received copies of his observations, as promised and with Will’s consent. The agent reasoned on the grounds that the connection could prove useful, so long as John stuck to phenomena talk and kept sparse on their actual operational matters. Vincent was a bit surprised but not at all perturbed to hear of John’s new “job,” saying that it would “probably lead to more interesting opportunities.”

After a month, John’s training had covered a fair number of essential topics: what actual authority they had and when to exercise it; tips on getting useful info when questioning civilians; what counted as self-defense in the off-chance they had to deal with normal humans; how to avoid most fights in the first place; then, a good amount of “hard fought” veteran advice to round it out.

All the while, Will and Mia had been digging up leads in the background. The basis of their search was admittedly a weak one by the evidence, and they admitted it, but the old agent seemed confident enough in his intuition. Of the three known cases, all of them led to some level of violence, and of the two human-turned-demons who could be identified, both were in “unhealthy social and mental living conditions.”

“Isn’t that a rather mundane search criteria?” John questioned. “Shouldn’t you be looking for occult involvement? Have you checked if they were getting involved in some sketchy religious group?”

“Of course I did,” Will answered, “but there was nothing interesting. Occasionally attending some hokey branch of a mainstream religion was about as odd as it got, and I checked those guys out—they are just the boring kind of hokey.” And so, they kept to fairly traditional methods of profiling. On two occasions, they thought they had found a potential case in the making. However, one ended up being nothing and the other was ultimately handled by local police with no supernatural occurrences.

At times, Will would have John observe their methods; one thing he learned was that there was a fundamental difference in how the layman and a seasoned detective saw the internet. While everybody had grown to distrust open channels, few people were savvy enough to properly secure theirs—especially not from a Master of Social Engineering and his digital savant underling. Combined with access to government stores of verified information on each known person in the country, and the two of them were a formidable duo in gathering personal information—all before setting a single foot out of that improvised control center.

John couldn’t say he was a fan of that part of the job. Regardless, it eventually got results. On one Monday in late October, Mia finished the preliminary investigation of another new lead.

“John, you’re driving. I’ll explain on the way.” She marched out of the office, carrying a stainless-steel case.

He dropped the documents he had been pouring through, holstered his gun, and sheathed his knife—both well concealed. Then, with a half-hearted send-off from Will, they were away and following the route Mia programmed into the navigation system.

“So, what’re we up to?” John asked.

“Will found someone with a similarly unstable psyche profile as the people who changed in the previous incidents. Middle-aged man, reclusive, spends most of his free time in chat channels. Name is Elwood Horton.”

“That describes a lot of people. What makes him ‘unstable?’”

“In a few of the channels he and his friends make a lot of jokes about shooting politicians and bomb-scaring events… A lot of ‘jokes.’”

“Ah… yeah that’s pretty messed up,” John agreed, but it brought another question to mind. “Sounds more like counterterrorism, though. Why are we checking on this?”

“There already was a counterterrorism sting on a related group,” the monotone agent explained. “They tried to assassinate a political figure last month—Luan Hoch—but were stopped and arrested.”

“I remember hearing about that a bit. So, what about our guy?”

“He was never a part of that group, but he talked to them regularly. Usually other topics. The original investigation wrote him off as a sympathetic onlooker. Will had a hunch about him, though, so I dug into his recent activity. After the assassination attempt, he visited the forums more, commented less. Made a lot of searches for private info on state politicians, weapons, improvised explosives, et cetera. Tried to hide it. Didn’t do a good job of it.”

“He’s thinking of carrying the torch, then?” John asked.

“Probably.”

“So where exactly are we headed?”

“His apartment. The longest he’d been away from his computer in two months had been seven hours. Now it’s been two days, so we don’t really know where he is. Might already be carrying out his plan.”

“Does the JPD know?”

“Yes. We’re hoping to intercept him before he does something, but if we can’t, he’ll still likely get caught. Worst case is he gets killed resisting arrest.”

John corrected her: “Worst case is we end up with another murderous abomination.”

Mia glanced away, fidgeting slightly. “Maybe.”

Small as it was, John hadn’t expected that kind of reaction from her. “I assume you’ve seen pictures?”

“Yes.”

If John’s eyes weren’t lying, Mia seemed legitimately disturbed.

She relaxed again—mostly. “That’s your job to deal with.”

“I’m suddenly some kind of professional demon hunter?”

“No, but if you have it distracted while getting stabbed again, that should give me a clear shot.”

“Let’s keep that as a last resort, please.” John grimaced. “Back to more immediate concerns. Any warrants issued yet?”

“And approved.”

“We’re able to delay the notice in scenarios like this, right? How does that…”

“Will can handle that. Focus on finding Horton.”

They found themselves at one of the city’s cheapest apartments a few minutes later. Anyone from out of town might have thought otherwise at first glance: the paint was cleanly applied, the windows were large and clean, and every visible inch of the place had been kept clean and orderly. By Joulian property codes, that was the bare minimum to stay operational. By Joulian taste, it was lacking in “splendor.”

John parked halfway down the block, and the two exited the vehicle. Mia chimed, “Apartment three-oh-six,” then positioned herself to follow his lead. His apprehensions resurfaced, but there was no room to get hung up on the matter. For the time being he could only decide on a course of action and follow through with it, come what may. As they notified building management of their arrival, he made his first decision—to keep things simple. To begin, all they needed was to confirm if the target was home and attempt to contact him if he was. With any luck, they’d talk him into reason, he’d drop his plans, and the matter would never come up again.

John gave some thought to their attire as they made their way up the complex. If Horton was home, it would be ideal if he wasn’t spooked the second he laid eyes on them.

Mia, regrettably, could easily fit into the role of a government agent. She wore a formal blouse and suit pants with serious confidence. And, where there could have been some cute or classy handbag fit to the style of the season, there was instead a suspiciously-sized equipment case. There were only two disarming features about her to offset this. The first was her pretty face, which was no small factor in the equation. The second, for what it was worth, was that she was quite short at an inch or two shy of five feet. She was an immaculately professional-looking woman… but not in the least bit intimidating.

With John’s casual assembly in contrast—a t-shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket—he hoped he would complete the image that they were just any random odd pair of Joulians as he knocked on Horton’s door, firm but polite.

Mia leaned against the wall off to the side. A few moments passed without a response.

He knocked again a bit louder: still nothing.

“About what we expected, I guess,” John noted plainly.

He pulled out the key he had received at the front desk and entered. The ceiling lights were off, but enough of the sun streamed through the blinds of the windows to illuminate the room. It was a small flat; not particularly dirty, but hardly organized.

The two immediately began scanning for info on what Horton was planning and where he might have gone off to. Nothing glaringly suspicious popped out, but John took notice of a single piece of paper on the kitchen counter. Paper mail was mostly defunct in Joule and the only people who regularly used paper for information did so out of an aesthetic preference or to keep it out of digital networks. Either case piqued John’s interest as he flipped it over.

Dad’s coming to town tomorrow night. He’d appreciate a lunch visit. Oh, and make sure you’ve cleared the spiders out of your place.

“What do we know about Elwood’s family?” John asked.

“Parents live here in the state. Has a deceased younger brother.” Mia came up alongside and read it as well.

The message was typed, so there was little else to be gleaned about the origin of the document. “Could have been his mom… and the spider reference some kind of old family joke… but it’s also been a couple of days since he was on the ‘web.’”

“Tip off,” Mia declared. “There was evidence of a third party in the original case. Might be the same person, but that’s probably beyond our concerns today.”

“Think ‘Dad’ is the politician?”

She thought about it for a moment. “I don’t see who else, but Luan’s been instructed to stay home today.”

“Let the police know, then we’ll see if we can figure out what his plan was.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir?”

“Seemed appropriate.” It took her no more than a moment to do as asked and then move on to Horton’s computer. As the desktop lit up and monitor turned on, Mia was met only with error screens. “John, check the trash.”

He opened a cabinet and flipped the lid of the bin inside to find it mostly empty save for a cracked hard drive. “I don’t know how clever it was to leave it here, but I’m guessing it’s going to be hard to check what was on it now.”

“Yep. Completely useless without special equipment… and a lot of time.” Mia sat in the desk chair, thinking of what else to try.

John walked over and examined the various decorative objects on the desk. Mostly little souvenirs which didn’t seem to point to any particular interest of his own. More like the kind of random gifts one would get from family over the years. There were two framed photos among them: an older one with all four members of the family; then the two younger men were featured again on their own in another, striking funny poses with bright smiles.

John picked up that second photo and looked it over. As the reflection of a sunlit window gleamed across the glass, he noticed a plethora of finger smudges. He brought it closer to his face and angled it to catch the light better. The distortions in the glare highlighted blotches as though a mineral-rich liquid had fallen on it and dried frequently—tears, John figured.

“When and how did the brother die?” he asked.

“Two years ago. Opioid overdose.”

An old melancholy creeped its way into John’s mind. “Know why?”

“Only that his habit started after losing his job.”

“Well, I think it’s safe to say the elder brother hasn’t come to peace with it yet.” He handed Mia the photo. “Not that the parents would be doing much better.”

After twisting it around a bit herself, she found what he was referring to. “Fair assessment. Might be tied to motive.”

John thought for a moment. “I’m going to try to talk to a neighbor. Keep searching for something in here if you can.”

He didn’t have to search long. As he left the apartment, he spotted one of the residents walking his way out of the corner of his eye.

John rubbed his face and donned a weary look as he went to lean on the walkway railing. As the resident got closer, John turned to look at him directly. The resident noticed the open door and a concern grew in his eyes as they bounced between John and the apartment.

John called out: “Hey, uh, sorry to bug you, but you wouldn’t happen to have spoken to El much, have you? Elwood, I mean.”

“Why, what, is… is something up?”

“I’m not really sure. He sent me a key the other day and asked me to look after his place for a bit, but I haven’t been able to call him since.”

“Oh… snap. That sounds… man…”

The resident, a trendy but not-all-too-bright-looking guy in his mid-twenties, was genuinely surprised at the news, though not so personally affected.

“Did he maybe talk about anything… weird recently?” John asked.

“Well, I, um. I mean, we didn’t talk that often. Maybe like once a week. But he was… he tended to get pretty heated about some politician or other.”

“Do you remember who?” John asked, careful to be too emphatic.

“Some state politician. I think it was… Denez Ranjah’men or something like that. I-I-I’m not really sure. I didn’t pick up the details too well when he started ranting. Seemed like a pretty nice guy otherwise.” The resident kept rambling, unsure of how best to respond. “I get the ‘being angry at politicians’ thing. I mean like”—he gave a goofy, nervous laugh— “they’re always screwing us over, you know?”

The man sobered up again as John lamented a counterfeit past: “Damn it. He’s still mad about that? Well, I don’t know if that means anything right now, but thanks for letting me know. I’m going to clean up a few things for now. Have a good one.”

“Yeah, you too, man. Hope everything works out.”

John walked back inside and closed the door.

Mia stared at him intently. “That a trick Will taught you?”

“What trick?”

Mia kept staring.

“W-what?” he stuttered under the intensity of her glare.

“Nothing.”

John struggled to discern her obscure emotions. Logically she would be judging him for his act of deception, but his gut told him it was… jealousy?

He coughed. “Well, I got something to check on. Do you know of a politician named Denez Ranjah’men?”

“Deneb Rahnjimaan. High ranking state official. Doesn’t have anything to do with the original assassination attempt, but he came up in Elwood’s searches.”

“Involved in any scandals?”

“Mm… Hold on.” Mia drew her phone and tapped away. “No, nothing major. Pretty clean for a politician. He did make a big push for a controversial bill a few years back.”

“What made it so controversial?”

“The purpose of the bill was to significantly raise the minimum hazard pay for a lot of construction jobs. His supporters liked its social benefits. His detractors say it accelerated the push to automation that phased out a lot of jobs. Long term: the total number of jobs didn’t dip as much as expected over time. Short term: a few dozen independent contractors and small firms defaulted, and the larger organizations got bigger.”

John glanced towards the photos on the desk again. “Was the little brother in construction?”

“Let me… Yes. He owned one of those firms,” she confirmed.

John began to see a rather concerning trend, but another connection still needed to be made: “What’s Rahnjimaan’s connection to Joule?”

“…No direct connection, but his son, Mitra, lives here.”

“We need to go. Now.” He turned sharply and ran back out, pausing only briefly for Mia as she scrambled to grab her case and catch up to him.

“Get the son’s address on nav. I’ll call Will.” As they rounded a corner, John caught sight of the elevator door closing. “Gah! Missed it.”

Mia passed him and pushed a door open. “Only two flights.” As the two rushed down, she tried to get John to explain the sudden change of plans. “So you’re thinking ‘Dad’ is Rahnjimaan?”

“Exactly. Horton was watching the guys who went after Luan Roch, but he never had a personal connection to that mess. I’ll wager he’s been plotting his own mission this whole time and the devil in his ear said today’s the day.”

Mia gave a silent assent.

..04.02 | Ogre

Late Morning

“Anything on the scanners?” he asked.

“No,” she answered.

“Let’s hope it stays that way.” The day had given in to the dreariness of a drizzling rain. In spite of the urgency that gripped John, the city remained still and peaceful under those grey skies.

It was a short drive before they arrived at another, slightly nicer complex. They pulled into one of the few guest parking spaces near the entrance and an entryway brought them into a courtyard that followed the gradual curve of the island’s outer ring. Above them, the stacked units leaned slightly towards the center of the island, ten stories high on the side closer and eight on the side further. Pathways on each floor created a silhouetted mesh against the clouds above.

The space was empty as John and Mia passed through, with most residents either out for the day or electing to stay dry indoors. Their man was in unit two-twelve, so they climbed a staircase with peach granite steps and wrought iron railing. Nothing of particular interest was—

John’s attention was pulled to a unit on the seventh floor, well to the right and above the one they were headed to.

“What is it?” Mia stopped and turned as she noticed him slowing down. “…John?”

“Huh?”

“What are you looking at?”

He pointed. “You see anything odd with that apartment?”

She looked carefully. “No.”

“Oh.” Now that she said it, John didn’t see anything strange about the apartment either. “Never mind then.” He cleared his head and continued on to two-twelve.

Of all the thoughts that could have come to mind, he wondered if Vincent lived here. Seemed too plain for a man like him, however.

Mia’s gaze lingered for a moment before she joined him.

Once they reached Mitra’s door, John rang the bell. A half-minute passed with no answer. He rang again—

“They’re out on a walk!” a friendly voice announced from behind. John turned to see a man with brown hair in loose, unkempt curls and horn-rimmed glasses sitting on a bench in the yard below. The man pointed to an exit. “Been out for a bit, so they should be back any minute.”

John thanked the stranger, then he and Mia started towards it. The high walls of the complex and the glowing rain clouds swallowed every incidental sound of the world. The earlier urgency all but dispersed in the face of such a sober atmosphere, and took John all that bit longer to parse the echoes that disturbed it.

A shriek of pain and horror colored the air as another voice cried for help.

John launched down the remaining steps, across the property, and out onto the roadside sidewalk. In the wooded area beyond the edge of the island, through the thickening mist, he saw vaguely humanoid figures. With every step closer they gained definition; foremost among them were a woman and a giant of a man locked in a struggle. The man had the woman’s wrist firmly seized in one of his gorilla-sized hands as he pulled her in. A steel glint followed her free hand as she swatted at his arm. Whatever effect she intended, the man was unfazed as he yanked her close and grabbed her throat. Unable to get a clear shot, John kept running right at them, and the rain fell heavier as he closed in.

The hulk of a man began to lift the woman off the ground, to which she kicked and struggled and slashed, yet no matter how many cuts she made with the kitchen knife she wielded—even as she turned it towards his face—the brute would not flinch. It was an utterly inhuman display of strength and toughness.

And inhuman it was as John finally stepped close enough to see it had not the face of a man but an ogre. Its jaw was enormous, protruding, and deformed; set with an extended row of bared teeth. Where its eyes should have been were instead dark recesses pierced by a faint white glow.

Without a second glance, John jumped to wrap around its neck with his left arm and shoved the muzzle of his gun into its side with his right. Four shots rang out in dissonant chorus with a roar of pain. The ogre dropped the woman to twist about and grab at that fresh nuisance in retaliation, but John let go of its neck and tumbled to the ground, landing in a growing puddle, then rolling to a safe distance.

Or so he had hoped, but it was already looming over him as he got up to his knees. It reached down, grabbed him by the base of his arms, and lifted him up until his feet dangled uselessly.

Wet ropes of dark hair fell across its hatred-twisted face and flowed around its freakishly protruding muzzle. Unnatural shadows veiled its eyes, but its solid white pupils shone through with an eerie light that reflected off streams of water and blood cascading down the sides of its face and the deep grooves carved into it. It seemed entirely unhindered by its nearly liquified gut and myriad oozing cuts as its massive arms bulged in an attempt to pull John apart through sheer brute force. Amidst blearing pain, John instinctively grasped at his captor in a desperate bid to free himself, but he couldn’t find a hold. Every inch of his muscles desperately fought against the pulling as he yelled out in agony.

Right as he thought he’d snap, a bright, golden flash passed through the creature’s neck. Its arms dropped and John landed on his feet, only to crumple backward. The creature’s body fell forward, and its head tumbled back, cleanly severed at the neck.

The rain died back down to a trickle and the mist thinned until it had gone completely.

The woman the ogre had first tried to strangle was standing behind its corpse. For a moment, John thought he saw a sword in her hands, stopped at the end of a swing. He blinked and once again saw nothing but a kitchen knife. He took a better look at her as she pulled her long, rain-soaked, auburn hair out of her face to reveal fine features. Her deep blue eyes were bloodshot and glistening with the tears that had been choked out.

“John!” He glanced back the way he had come to see Mia running up to them, rifle in hand, short hair fluttering, and wearing some kind of electronic eye patch. She stopped a few feet short of the corpse, looking at it warily—nearly frozen. She asked, “Was this—?”

“Me,” he interrupted as he pointed to the whimpering man nearby. “I’m good for nothing with first aid, please check on Deneb. I’ll radio the backup.”

Mia nodded then got to it while he pulled out his phone and started the call. As he waited for it to connect, he looked at the woman with the knife who was staring at him with a mix of appreciation and suspicion. He gestured to a nearby bench. “Sit and rest. We’ll talk in a minute. Also… might want to put the knife down now.”

Within a few seconds he got Will up to speed and they had the emergency services coordinated. He announced to Mia: “Ambulance is on its way!”

She replied, “Deneb is stable, but he shouldn’t move until they get here!”

John gave an acknowledgement then walked over to the auburn-haired woman. Her eyes had never left him even as she was tending to her neck and wrist gently, still letting out the occasional cough. He took a seat next to her and spoke calmly, careful to not let Mia hear: “I saw how you did it—exactly how you did it. You’re going to want to be careful who finds out.”

“Wha—!” The small burst of excitement set off another fit of coughing.

“Hey, hey. Easy. Try not to talk for now.” John looked at her with concern as she collected herself. He realized it would be prudent for him to get some actual first-aid training sooner than later.

As soon as she could, the woman tried to ask her question again in a hoarse, weak voice: “What did I do?”

“Well… the ‘how’ I’m not entirely sure, but I can say a similar thing happened to me two months ago.”

“It was like,” she spoke in a whisper with equal parts awe and confusion, “like I could feel all of their hatred. That they needed to make everyone… feel their loss, I think? But that’s not fair, it’s not right, and they were going to kill you, so I…”

Her hands reflexively grasped at the hilt of a blade that wasn’t there.

She was almost exactly like John in how it started, then. An intense, emotional instinct after getting attacked by some hallucination plucked from a horror movie. It manifested in such a different way for her, however. It really must be—

An unexpected tug at his arm pulled John out of his mental labyrinth. The woman was holding his arm and staring at him. Graceful azure eyes searching for a hint of insight into the otherworldly mystery she faced. John suddenly felt a bit flustered.

The blare of sirens resounded, reminding John of more immediate concerns. “I’ll need your contact information. We’ll need to talk about this more once you’ve been treated and had some time to think. For now, if anyone asks, I was the one to cut off its head, but you couldn’t see anything but a flash of light. Got it?”

She nodded.

John pulled out his personal phone, started a new contact entry, and passed it to her. She took it, tapped in her info, and passed it back.

The name registered to the contact was “Freya.”

“Like the Norse goddess?” he asked, unintentionally.

A defeated look of embarrassment washed over her. An old song and dance she had learned to live with, but never accepted. She whispered meekly: “Yes, my parents were going through a phase.”

“I have cousins who can sympathize. It might have been a somewhat eccentric decision on their part, but at least they chose something beautiful.”

She looked away bashfully. The corner of her lip began to curl up, but then she winced and coughed, rudely reminded of the context of her situation. John tried to think of some comfort to give.

Then a small fleet of emergency vehicles pulled up to the end of the alley, demanding his attention.

04.03 | The Assistant

A Little Later

The cleanup was quick. It seemed the crew sent over were a reliable bunch. Though the deformed corpse was still met with deep grimaces by the lot of them and gagging by a few, John guessed that those medics and police officers were largely the same that dealt with the aftermath of the prior incidents. No questions were asked, nor any unnecessary comments raised. The ogre’s body was quickly tarped and hauled away.

Will had explained to John that after the second abomination phenomenon had occurred, the city police set aside a group of responders they could trust to handle things—for expediency and accuracy more than secrecy. With the incident taking place right outside the windows of so many, there was a high chance of there being a few extra witnesses, but so long as they cleared out quick and fuss-free, the whole ordeal would become like a strange dream. The siloed nature of communication in the modern world would handle the rest.

Deneb was hurried out on a stretcher into an ambulance, while Freya was checked by a medic who found no severe injuries. They relented immediately when she insisted on staying home, only making her promise to get a full checkup the next day. Overhearing part of the conversation, John learned she was taking care of a younger sister.

When the crew had finished their part, John and Mia returned to his car to head back for the day. Not a word was spoken for the first half of the trip. Desperate to fill the air, John finally said, “Not a clean success, but we survived.”

“Yep.”

The uncomfortable silence returned.

John tried again: “You were a lot of help. I think we’re going to work well together.”

“Thanks.”

John gave up. The ride continued noiselessly.

Then, as they got to the final stretch, Mia asked, “How are you so calm?”

John looked at her, puzzled. At first, she appeared to have the same disinterested demeanor she always held, but he could finally see the subtle details. Her eyes were wider, her mouth had a slight tremble, and her hands were tense and clenched in her lap.

John recalled her reaction earlier in the day, then the image of the rolling head of the “ogre.”

“How can you just brush that off?” Mia looked at her lap. Her wavy, pale gold hair fell around her face, veiling it. She whispered, “Its eyes were still glowing…”

“I’m…” John struggled to think of an appropriate response. “Well, this is my second time seeing something like it.”

“I read the report. You ran at that one too.” She paused briefly. “Will was right about one thing. You’re not normal.”

Her voice remained steady and disinterested on the surface, but there was an undertone, almost jealous as if she believed John was holding back some secret trick.

And there was apprehension.

He picked his words carefully: “There’s probably a lot of things I’m not even aware of, but… I’d probably chalk it up to my family more than anything. They made sure I knew how to block out my fear when I needed to.”

“I can just ‘block it out,’ too. Will wouldn’t send me with you if I couldn’t. I don’t think that’s what you’re doing. The hospital record said you were perfectly calm when you woke up as well.”

When she put it that way, he did start to sound like a bit of a freak. Why wasn’t he afraid of those things? One had ripped through his lungs and the other was a second away from tearing his arms off. Then there was Vincent. For all his excitement over the phenomena, he looked quite terrified back down there in the garage. Deneb was scared into paralysis. The paramedics and police all looked disturbed as well and they were the most experienced with ugly accidents.

Will didn’t seem bothered by the sight of them, but that was a low comparison as he was a special case all around.

There was one other person like him, however. That woman, Freya.

A curious consideration for later.

“I… guess I’m just not afraid of monsters,” he tried to claim. “We all have the things we can and can’t handle, right? I definitely still have claustrophobia, for instance.”

She didn’t react with any particular satisfaction to his generic explanation. She couldn’t refute it either—the benefit of generic responses. It seemed she would simply have to accept a simple answer, and so eased up just a little.

“We could just stick with your plan A,” he joked. “I play pincushion, and you stay nice and far away with your rifle.”

There was a sharp, nasal exhale of a suppressed chuckle. “I’ll handle the crawlspaces, then.”

John grinned.

Next

⮘ Previous chapter

..05.01 | Debrief

Afternoon

Once back at home base, the field agents set about their less glamorous tasks of the day: checking in with Will, then writing reports. It was the early afternoon by the time they squared everything away, but before they could even consider what to do next, Will rolled a chair up to the two of them.

“Alright, meeting time,” he declared.

An inexplicable dread echoed in the far reaches of John’s psyche. Ignoring it, he asked, “What about, exactly?”

“The exact thing we’re here for: answers. By now, we’ve learned quite a bit, haven’t we?”

Mia shrugged.

“Let’s start with our observations on our freaky demon friends. John, you’ve read about the two incidents before yours, right? Summarize them for me.”

“Sure. First, a few weeks before, a woman caused havoc in a restaurant, then got shot after attacking a cop who was sent to restrain her. When they looked at her afterward, the deformations were subtler than the ones I’ve witnessed but they were there, and the cop claimed that he saw something weird about her before she attacked.

“The next one, just a few days before mine, was the worst of the four by a mile. A grotesquely warped ‘man’ went on a rampage, killing five. Its body was too disfigured to ID, and no one who saw the thing at the moment of the change is alive. Officially, it was reported as a freak mechanical failure.” He leaned back and looked at his boss. “That cover it?”

Will nodded. “It’s not a lot to work with for the amount of questions raised, but I see enough commonalities to pick out a few patterns. For instance, all our shapeshifters attacked after changing, or at about the same time. We got no witnesses for that second case, but all wounds matched up to the claws and deformed teeth.”

Mia added, “I see a weak connection between the level of violence and the level of deformation. The woman at the restaurant who barely changed didn’t appear to intentionally harm anything until the cop attempted to restrain her. Then the two John encountered were incredibly violent and more… wrong… but still recognizably human-like. The one from the massacre was… not.”

“I think you’re right,” Will said. “The question is: was it the change that made them violent, or did they change because they were looking for a fight? Of course, you know my hypothesis.”

John said, “I think it’s obviously the latter. Every single one of them not only looked different but acted a bit different, like their transformation was ‘unique to their personality.’” He smiled cheaply at the grisly satire. “Each person we know of was acting ‘unstable’ well before they looked the part.”

“Great. We’re on the same page, then. So where do you fit in?”

John tapped his right foot on the floor as he deliberated. He didn’t need time to come up with an answer—only to make sure it was the one he wanted to give. “While the… end results are very different… Yeah… I think my ability is part of the same phenomenon. I have a hard time believing two impossible things happening at once could be unrelated.”

“Oh? So, you’re saying I should be worried you’ll sprout a lightning rod any minute and attack us?”

“Frankly… yeah. I doubt it’d be that random, but it’s a possibility.”

John figured Will had already guessed as much, but as the words left his mouth, he realized Mia may not have considered it. He glanced over. If that idea unsettled her she wasn’t letting it show—not this time.

Will leaned back. “Well, this would be a good time to go into more detail on exactly what it is you ‘experience’ when you do your little parlor tricks. You come up with a better explanation for that yet?”

“A little clearer, maybe. When it starts, it’s like… being a radio receiver. Or if that’s too abstract, it’s like getting hit by waves in an ocean. You don’t feel it in your nerves, though, it goes right to your consciousness—like when you feel something in a dream. The next part is even weirder; I haven’t exactly figured it out. It’s like I can think of the general idea of what I want, but I don’t have to say exactly how it’ll happen.”

“How’d that work when you killed ol’ Angler Tooth? Were you thinking, ‘I’m going to bust his head open,’ then somehow that turned your hand into a hundred-amp taser?”

“Something like that, yeah. However, I don’t know if I’d say the taser was so unintentional. It wasn’t something I consciously thought of, but if you asked me the most effective way to kill a monster, the first image that would pop into my head would be frying it with a good shock.”

“Must have had some interesting thoughts up on that skyway, too, then,” Will said with an eye boring right into John’s memories.

John waved a hand as if to swat away a prying hand. “Something like that. Point being: whatever the result is feelsright.”

“Mm. Maybe your automatic cognitive processes worked out the details—like a Graphics Processing Unit,” Mia guessed. “The CPU sends the draw order and any relevant information, but ultimately the actual rendering is handled without any further input from the main processor.”

“Yeah, I think that sounds right,” John affirmed.

Will scratched his head like someone had given him directions in another language. “Uh… sure. Back on point. John, do you have any idea what the limit is?”

“Best guess is it’s based on how I’m feeling and how strong that ‘wave’ hits.”

“And the strength of the ‘wave’ is based on?”

“Not sure yet.”

Will sighed. “Okay, so, coming back to our mutant freaks. That would mean your ‘wave’ has something to do with them, too? It lets you bend reality to make lightning, and they get to ‘be bent’ into reality-defying body horror. Why? You trying to say they want that?”

“Who can say what exactly they wanted. Clearly nothing wholesome, but who knows. Maybe I’ll stop one and ask next time.”

Will chuckled. “Well, there are people who will mutilate themselves with their own hand and a sharp piece of metal, so it’s probably a similar kind of thinking—or lack thereof.”

A shadow crept over the back of John’s mind. He dispelled it with a question. “What about the ‘where’ of this phenomenon? None of your records mention anything happening outside of this city.”

“There aren’t any,” Mia said. “It’s only been here. With four incidents in a month all here, we’re statistically guaranteed it’s a problem unique to Joule.”

“… for now,” Will added. “Which would say a lot, but there’s a lot of ‘unique’ things in this city. Might take us years to find a root cause, and it could be a mix of several things.”

John rubbed the side of his head as he considered what that could be. “We know ‘unstable’ people are at risk of becoming those demons, but where does that leave me? Is this whole thing some kind of disease I contracted from that freak in the garage? Is it someone’s mad experiment gone loose? A cabal of cultists invoking a demonic rite?”

Will put in his two cents: “If there is a malicious actor behind it, it could be another country. If it were to become widespread, it’d be the perfect kind of crisis to destabilize a region.”

“If it’s happening in other countries, surely the most pervasive intelligence network in the world would have found out about it?” John countered.

Will rebutted, “Who the hell knows what the CIA knows—including the CIA. Besides, I’m not saying it’s likely, but we can’t rule out the possibility another country has already seen this happen.”

John thought for a moment. “Okay, well, what about the fact that I can manipulate it now, even if just a little? Let’s say some third party knew enough about the phenomenon that they could have ‘planted’ Angler Tooth. Seems most likely to me that they’d already know of its tendency to spread to bystanders. Using it as a biological weapon would be like shooting your opponent in the foot only to give them the loaded gun right after.”

“Hmm, what makes you think you’re not a unique case?” Will’s mouth curled into a wry grin.

John panicked internally as he realized Will might have caught on about Freya, but he kept his calm on the surface.

“Putting that aside,” Will continued. “It’s a good point. No one would use tactics like that unless they were hopelessly desperate.”

“It could still be a less… forward-thinking, local actor,” John conceded. “The occult angle might be worth looking into.”

“Well, I don’t see you wearing spirit crystals or sacrificing goats to do your little storm-hands trick. So, if that’s the case, whatever they did is already set in motion, I’d think.”

“That’s a terrifying thought.”

Mia got out of her chair, stretched, and walked away.

“Eh? But we’re just getting to the good part,” Will teased emphatically. “We were about to pull out the tarot cards and read star signs!”

She left the room without another word.

“Are you sure you should be teasing her about that?” John asked.

“Ah, she’s just bored. Not interested in intangible things.” Will held up a hand as John started to open his mouth again. “Before you say it, I know these deformed monsters make her uncomfortable, but that’s something different. I’m just boring her with ghost stories like I usually do. She can’t even pretend to imagine supernatural things as being possible, for better or worse—usually. Soon as we walked into that autopsy room, though…” Will trailed off somewhere into his own thoughts.

He sighed. “Well, she’s not one to let her emotions stop her—or drive her in any way at all—so I’m sure she’ll be fine. If she’s not, she needs to get over it. Though… if the worst-case scenario happens, it’s critical that you—”

“Play chew-toy while she shoots. Yes, our iron-clad and outstandingly fair strategy has been worked out.”

Will grabbed John’s shoulder with a heavy pat and smiled. “Just don’t let them hit the vitals. I’d have a hard time finding someone as sheepish to replace you.”

John scowled.

Will grinned wider.

Then he grew serious again. “I think we’ve put together as much as we can today. We need more information before we get wrapped up in making conclusions. Experiment with that ability of yours, see if that gives you any more insight. Frankly, I’d rather you didn’t have to. Maybe that makes you go crazy as well, but the possibility that someone less sensible than us could figure this all out first is—”

“Bad. I know. I was thinking about that.”

“Good.” Will nodded. “If you’re thinking ahead like that, then I’ll assume you realize that there’s a possibility that some less savory characters—yes, worse than me, shocking—there’s a possibility they’ll start recruiting anyone they can find who can control this… Damn it, I need to make a list of terms for all this nonsense. This… ‘supernatural influence.’”

“Understood.”

John rose to leave, but Will pressed him back down.

For once, the old agent sounded almost sympathetic. “I get that you want to keep that woman uninvolved, but to people in power, people like you are resources to exploit. And they’re not going to leave resources just lying around. Whether that’s our government, someone else’s, or any number of other factions.”

John gave a half-hearted confirmation. “Yes. I see what you mean.”

Even as his grip tightened, it was the grim intensity of Will’s eyes that locked John in place. All sympathy had been wiped from his tongue. “I hope that you do.”

John broke into a cold sweat. It was the utmost foolishness, complete childish naivety for him to think he could hide something important from that man. His mind still reasoned there was a limit to what Will knew—that he was just being bluffed by an untrusting spook. Yet, a voice deeper inside—a primal circuit—insisted this hound had the scent of his blood. There were no holes the fox could escape to.

In that moment, John was reminded of a concept he had once forgotten: authority.

“And who knows?” Will’s wry smile returned and grip loosened. “Maybe if your little ‘private firm’ gets a few more employees, we can renegotiate your rate… So you can keep your people paid, of course.”

“… How generous.”

“Downright saintlike.”

..05.02 | Freya

November 1st

Two days later, at the opening of the new month, John found himself waiting in a faux-antique chair in a quiet corner of a fair-sized café. The kind of place where he imagined people met for book clubs and discussed their favorite Victorian-era dramas.

His attention, however, was almost entirely directed towards the array of strange equipment behind the counter. The various machines and tools were decorated with intricate, brass engravings of angels and abstract depictions of the sun and moon and stars. Each device clearly mimicked historical designs, with the larger pieces resembling a pipe organ in some ways, but it also had the tell-tale signs of modernity, like machine-milled metals and precisely shaped rubber caps and gaskets. As for each piece’s purpose… They were definitely for making coffee. That seemed to be the objective. Or at least, he had seen coffee come out of a few of the contraptions. After twentyish minutes, he was able to identify a select group that were directly involved in brewing, but nothing seemed very intuitive or efficient.

Hot water didn’t just pour through the grounds and a filter. An employee pressed a button to engage a pump, which sucked the water and grounds into a vat and swirled them around as the employee fiddled with a dial very precisely. After some time to brew, the employee came back and pulled a lever, causing the mix to drain into an opaque pipe for further processing involving a few more dial fidgets and switch flips. Two feet to the left of that is where an employee finally placed a cup for the coffee to pour into. On an assembly in-between was a tall, narrow, and slightly angled hatch with three latches. After each brewing, an employee would come by, undo the latches, open the hatch, then pull out a tray with all the old grounds and dump it into a bin.

And that was just one route for the coffee to take. There were two other different but equally obtuse stations to keep up with demand. The rest of the tools were just as busy for no apparent reason other than to be busy. It was a sight far, far removed from the increasingly streamlined machines he had watched growing up.

John guessed that some connoisseur could tell him how it affected the flavor. Or it could be that the ritual of it all was the purpose itself. Everything moved so smoothly that it didn’t seem that much slower than the normal process. It simply required more attention.

A lot more attention.

A buzz from his work phone slapped John out of his observational trance: a group message from Will.

Will: Finally decided on some terminology for everything we’ve seen so far. We’re going to want to annotate some older reports later to keep it consistent.

John grumbled quietly, dreading the prospect of additional paperwork.

The violent deformed people
    => Ghouls (formal) or Demon F***s (informal)

John’s Voodoo Magic “Waves”
    => RDF (Reality Distortion Field)

Effects created by manipulating the RDF
    => Distortions (formal) or Magic (informal)

People(?) who can manipulate the RDF
    => Conductors (formal) or Wizards (informal)

Ergo “conducting” is when a “conductor” “conducts” the “RDF” and creates “distortions.”

Simple, yes? Good.

This is final.

“Informal” meaning: “the words I’m going to say out loud, but if you write them in a report, you’ll be sorry.” But what John couldn’t figure out was why Reality Distortion “Field?”

“Hey!” A soft voice greeted him. John looked up to see Freya had arrived. “Sorry to make you wait.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I just tend to be early. Besides, I got to admire this very…” John looked towards the coffee machines again. “…unique system they have here.”

“Isn’t it fun? A lot of people come here just to quietly sip their coffee and watch.”

“Mm. Well, I’m curious to try the stuff. Must be alright if they have regulars.”

At the counter, a calm and collected woman with a long black ponytail put her current task on hold to get their order. “Hi, Freya! Who’s this?” she teased kindly.

“This is John. He’s helped me out with… some… stuff.” Freya responded, remembering to mind her words mid-sentence.

But did jack-all to be subtle about it.

Thankfully—in some sense—and inevitably, the barista perceived it as the harmless kind of suspicious. “Ooh. I see… Nice turtleneck.” She smiled and winked, spinning some romantic narrative in her head.

“Ah… thanks…” Freya laughed nervously while avoiding eye contact.

The exchange amused John at one level, knowing the barista meant it innocently. Yet in the back of his mind, he felt a tinge of lingering anger knowing the real nature of what that fabric covered.

They gave their orders, then returned to their table. Looking at Freya more closely, he could see that her eyes had cleared up and her skin was flush with life again. All around, it finally, fully struck him how beautiful she was. Neither tall nor short, she had a fit figure and abounded with excited grace. He was almost tempted to think her full of innocence, but in the subtle details of her movements was the weight of confidence. There was no question that this was the same woman from before.

“Do you see something?” Freya asked, fidgeting slightly with the slightest bit of a curl on her lip.

“You look like you’re recovering well. Any lingering pain?”

“Not much, just a little sore. I went in for a proper checkup yesterday, and they said there was no permanent damage…. Just some bruising. So… thank you…” Her eyes glistened, sitting on the verge of tears. “Thank you so much for helping when you did.”

John scratched the back of his head and dodged eye contact, overwhelmed by the sudden display of sincerity. “Just, uh… just glad I could help.”

He took a moment to refocus himself, then looked around to make sure their corner of the café was still clear. “Well then, I believe I owe you an explanation for what happened. Not that I have all the answers myself.”

“Whatever you can tell me is enough. I’m happy you’re telling me anything at all.” She dabbed her eyes politely to regain her composure and began listening intently.

“First off, I should let you know that my boss caught on that I was withholding some information in my report. Knowing him, he’s probably already assuming that you’re like me.”

She gave a puzzled look. “Like you?”

“Do you remember the blade you cut the… ‘ghoul’ with?”

“Ghoul? Is that what that horrible thing was? But yeah, I remember everything.”

“I went through something similar two months ago, only instead of a blade I generated a lethal amount of electricity from my hands.”

John gave a brief recounting of his first run-in with a ghoul, his recruitment as an FBI “contractor,” then the events that led up to him finding her and Deneb in the park behind the apartments.

In turn, she explained that she saw Deneb being attacked from her window by what looked to be a normal person at the time, so she rushed out to help—through the window… with a kitchen knife…. A very bold response, John thought. Bold and immensely amusing. She also mentioned again the “voices” she heard before she conducted.

Once she finished, John caught her up on the latest by explaining what they’d determined about the nature of the RDF. Then there was a brief break in the conversation. They sipped at their drinks while Freya processed what she heard.

“Wow. I was half expecting to wake up yesterday and find out it was all some dream. But… here we are.” She subconsciously held her hand to her neck. “So, you wanted to keep my, um… What did you call it?”

“‘Conducting’—as of fifteen minutes ago.”

“Right. So, you wanted to hide the fact I can ‘conduct’ so I wouldn’t get involved in whatever the FBI’s doing in response.”

“Them and whoever else eventually tries to take advantage of all this. Seems that plan was just a pipe dream, though.”

“I see. Well, thanks for looking out for me, but I’ll be alright.” She spoke confidently as if she had a foolproof plan.

“I don’t think it’ll be that simple.”

“I could just join your investigation team, right? Then I’ll have you and the FBI looking out for me, and I can help out in return.” She smiled innocently like she was working out the details of a picnic.

“But that’s… Why? I don’t even know if—”

“You said yourself it wasn’t a normal FBI operation, and you’re not actually part of the FBI either. So, what harm is one more ‘contractor?’ We’d be running around dealing with these ghouls when they show up, right? Well, I already killed one.” She sat up straight and puffed her chest proudly.

John silently cursed that old man. Was he just guessing at this outcome, or did he already figure this woman out as well?

John sighed, already defeated in a battle on two fronts for something no one else wanted. “Alright. Yeah. If that’s what you really want. My boss told me to look for more ‘contractors,’ so I can check if you match his standards.”

She beamed.

“Are you sure this won’t be a problem for you? I can make sure you’re paid, but I can’t guarantee the timing will be convenient.”

“Well, I’m not attached to my current job, and my little sister doesn’t need to be micromanaged or anything—as long as I keep the groceries stocked and pay the bills. So yeah! I’m all clear!”

It was quite adorable to him how excited she was, but he tried to pretend he wasn’t thinking that. “Okay… Guess I should explain what we’re currently working on, then. We need a firm grasp on the nature of the phenomenon and when and where it might manifest. We have one micro-pattern down, but you and I prove there’s more to it.”

“Mm. I see.” She rested her chin on her hands as she thought about it. “So… do we need to find more information to work with?”

“Pretty much. Right now, my focus is on figuring out the specifics of how conducting works.”

“I can help you with that, then! How do we do that?”

“That’s part of what we’re figuring out.” John clarified.

“Oh.” She looked a bit disappointed with herself.

“You did remind me of something that might be important, though. Do you remember how you ‘heard’ multiple voices when it happened?”

“Yes. Very clearly.”

“Do you still hear them now?”

“Yes.” She didn’t even pause to listen or think about it. “They’re quiet, but I’ve been hearing them ever since.”

John nearly laughed at the disparity in their experiences. Regardless, it gave him an idea. “To start, then, I think we can run some experiments with that.”

She nodded in acknowledgement, eager to go with whatever he suggested. “Where should we head first?”

“Oh, not immediately,” he corrected.

“Right. Right…”

“I suppose I should introduce you to our handlers first. Do you have time today?”

“Yep! Let’s go!” She seemed about ready to jump out of her seat until a wave of self-consciousness brought her back to earth. A touch flustered, she rose calmly as John did.

They made their way to the door and Freya waved to the barista: “Bye, Hanako!”

“Have fun!” she replied with a wink, blissfully unaware of the trouble her customer was diving into headfirst.

After leaving the café, John formally announced and introduced his new ‘employee’ to Will and Mia. Neither were surprised.

The rest of the day was spent getting Freya started on the same training he had just finished. On the following day, they started dedicating some of their hours to the investigation of their conducting.

..05.03 | Experiments

November 2nd

The experiment John cooked up was simple: Go to a few different places and see what happened to the “voices” Freya heard. To start, they went to a busy part of town: a nice, warm shopping center sheltered from the deepening cold. The two found an out-of-the-way corner within and started their observations.

“How does it sound?” he asked.

“Busy. When I’m at home, it’s quieter. Kind of peaceful, actually, but really noticeable. Here, it’s a lot noisier but faint. Feels like a thousand children trying to whisper to me, or something like that.”

“Interesting.” Almost immediately the results he was hoping for. Now the question he wanted to answer was whether or not the “waves” he felt were the same sensation.

Perhaps it was because he had another near-death encounter with a ghoul recently, but John found it relatively easy to focus on that supernatural sensation they now called the RDF. It still took some effort, but it was a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

Compared to when he was on the skyway the month before, the number of waves John could feel was a dozen times greater. Yet each individual one seemed smaller, insignificant, clear but distant. When he was staring in awe at the whole of the cityscape, it was like standing in the ocean as each pulse of water crashed into him. Now, it was as if he were watching from a boat; he could feel the evidence of the waves, but it was dampened and indirect.

He described that to her, then attempted to conduct. A small flash of light and a sharp crack emanated from between his fingertips. It worked—if only barely.

“Oh!” Freya gasped. She had been told what to expect, but it still caught her by a bit of a surprise when it actually happened.

“Can you give it a try now?” John asked.

“Sure… yeah… I just have to focus on the voices and think about swinging a sword?” She looked around. “Or a maybe a knife? Little easier to hide.”

“If it’s not working immediately, try recalling the memory of the first time it happened as—”

Bright golden lines formed in the air above her hand and the air between gleamed like glass, but it faded before a tangible shape should crystalize.

She gave a disappointed pout in response, but John couldn’t have been more impressed. It had taken her mere seconds to produce any result, unstable as it was.

“Nice!” he said enthusiastically. “It took me a lot longer than that the first time I tried.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, took me like half an hour just to keep that feeling in focus and I kept having minor panic attacks when it reminded me of getting stabbed.”

“Ah. I just have to try and concentrate.” She grimaced. “Wait, you got stabbed!?”

“Eh? Oh, right. Must have glossed over that part. My first encounter wasn’t ‘almost lethal,’ it was. Had to get a lot of blood put back in and flatlined once or twice in the meantime, according to the nurse.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you think about it.”

John chuckled. “Too late for that. I’ve been experimenting with this quite a bit since it happened, after all.”

“Right,” she said softly. “You did say that’s how it was for you at first.”

Her expression was hard to read. A bit shocked, for sure. Sympathetic, likely. Then some kind of aversion, yet no desire to recoil.

“Do the voices sound distant to you?” he asked plainly.

She snapped back to the present. “No. Nope. Ah… hmm… It’s like they’re whispering right in my ear, just very softly.”

“Interesting.” He grinned. “Seems like this isn’t going to be that straightforward, then. Not that I expected it to be, but it does seem that there’s at least one predictable effect.”

“How many sounds—or waves—we noticed, right?”

“Exactly. Let’s move to the next spot. See what changes.” He started to leave, then quickly stopped and turned to her again as he remembered. “And make sure you’re tracking it while we move around town.”

“Roger!” she responded with a playful salute.

He gave her an empty, heavy stare.

“It… seemed…”

“No.”

“… Right.”

She snickered quietly as soon as he took his eyes off her.

John brought Freya to the skyway where he had met Will. As he drank in the view again, he had a similar feeling well up inside him, yet that distance he had noticed at the shopping center remained. More noteworthy to him, however, was how minimal Freya’s reaction was.

As she put it: “It’s like there’s one, big voice, so that matches what you were saying, but it’s not very… pronounced, I guess. It’s just… there.”

When they tried to conduct, their conditions reversed. John’s hand sparked with trivial effort while Freya could barely get a trace of gold to glimmer in the air. This was evidence enough to John that the voices Freya heard were the same in nature as the waves John felt as it dictated the ease of their conducting, but he didn’t expect it to be so subjective in effect.

They tried walking through a few parks as well. The results were similar to the shopping center but “quieter.” Trying to think of someplace that would get more interesting results, John chose his old office as their next location. Or rather, a bench on the skyway three hundred feet up the seventy-story building, putting them at roughly the same height as his old office.

“It’s like sitting next to a beehive,” John remarked.

Perceiving the RDF at that spot was the easiest it had been yet for John. Though the feeling of distance persisted, it felt like he was at least dipping his toes in the water again. The distinguishing factor he could determine was the activity the people around him were engaged in. He reasoned that, perhaps, that was even more important than their physical proximity.

The way his and Freya’s distortions manifested so differently had made him consider that he could probably do more than just shock things. However, since then, he had been struggling just to do that much, so he hadn’t had the opportunity to properly experiment. So, rather than trying to remember what he had done before when he focused on the wavelike sensations again, he imagined a new outcome: cutting through some invisible object.

A bright flash erupted from just above his hand, searing his eyes and making him flinch in pain. As he instinctively raised his other arm for cover, the faint smell of burning air clued him in on what just happened. His “knife” had been a short-lived jet of hot plasma. While he had been picturing something more like Freya’s glasslike blades, he realized he had no idea what those were, so it made a kind of sense that his subconscious once again used electricity to solve his invented problem.

It wasn’t quite the effect he had been looking for. Still, he had made one important discovery: he knew now that he wasn’t limited to just the electrical shocks he had produced before. It wasn’t “anything he could possibly imagine,” but all he was hoping for was some flexibility with what he could summon into reality.

His mind set off to ponder what other tricks he might be capable of. Then he immediately lost his appetite for such thoughts as his head began to ache. He heeded the warning and gave up on the heavy thinking with a long yawn. Perhaps all the recent activity was catching up with him. An afternoon nap sounded like a good idea.

He looked over at Freya, who hadn’t reacted to anything he did, and indeed, had been quiet for some time. With eyes closed, she sat deep in thought. If she was on the verge of figuring something out, it’d be counterproductive to interrupt, so John remained still, waiting.

Keeping watch.

Her lips gradually formed a contented smile, and she finally opened her eyes; smooth and slow, like one waking up from a peaceful slumber.

“Have you reached enlightenment?” John inquired in serene sarcasm.

She blinked, her expression static. Then… “Huh?”

“You look like you just found peace with the world.”

“Oh.” She giggled cutely. “Nothing that profound. I wasn’t feeling much at first, but then I started wondering about what everyone in the building was doing; what kind of accomplishments they were making. Maybe there was an incredible breakthrough just now that will change everyone’s lives and we don’t even know it. That kind of thing.”

She continued more seriously but still with a gentle smile. “That’s when the feeling changed. It was like a window opened up. Not a big one, but it was still kind of exciting, you know?”

“I do.” He smiled in turn as pangs of nostalgia bubbled up.

“Actually, it reminded me just a little of when I got invited to a friend’s church when I was in middle school.”

John’s brow fell as the connection eluded him. “How so?”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I remember a feeling of awe I had back then. The pastor had given a very… powerful sermon, and everyone started singing after. I don’t know if I’d call myself a believer in anything like that, but I was pretty moved by how passionate everyone was. I guess you could call that a religious experience?”

John nodded. “I think I see what you mean. Maybe we should go to one?”

“Yeah, that should— Oh! I got the perfect thing! A friend of mine was telling me about a technology symposium that opens in a few days. It’s hosted by one of the bigger churches in the city, I think. Let’s go to that!”

“What kind of technology are we talking about here, exactly?” A church hosting a technology symposium wasn’t something John had ever heard of, though it wasn’t unfathomable—especially in Joule.

Freya sorted through her memories with little success. “Umm… Prosthetics or something?”

John pulled out his phone and started a search, then asked, “Do you remember what church?”

“Trinity Church, maybe? It’s the really, really big, triangular one.”

Because of course it was. “Let’s see… There’s the Church of the Holy Trinity.”

“That’s it!”

Front and center on the church’s web page was a banner for the symposium. It was an organization that John was very familiar with, which dealt not only in prosthetics, but bionics of all kinds, including the body enhancement variety. Now that John found unfathomable for a church to host.

And here they were, considering attending to investigate a paranormal phenomenon….

As a Christian of no particular denomination himself, and with a “grounded, intellectual” view towards miracles, even he started to fear a little spontaneous combustion. Curiosity, however, demanded he still go at all costs.

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