4r4nd0md4y's Sandbox Tales

inspiration for future tau-5 aesthetic: https://www.instagram.com/rome_adzan/
perfect nanku: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb9a4u4Aiec/?taken-by=rome_adzan
henri the fashionista: https://pastebin.com/WkHxPXcW

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Table of Contents

SCP Sandbox
Supersized Project Sandbox
Contest Entry Sandbox
You Are Here
Series Sandbox
Fancy Sandbox
Overflow Sandbox
Third Law Sandbox

Speed Demon Soundtrack

1. Liquid Courage and Powdered Panache — Quick Fix, JG Thirlwell
2. Night of a Thousand Kisses — 1993, Scattle
3. Chained to the Slave Majority — Crazy Horses, KMFDM
4. Goddess or Godless — Ain't It Funny, Danny Brown
5. Feed the Need Machine — I Want You, TeddyLoid
6. In the Shadow of the Spectre — Burn, Sister Machine Gun
7. The Eye of the Hurricane — Closer, Nine Inch Nails

Speed Demon Hub

The first rule of witches — they're all bitches.

Remember the witch in the gingerbread house? She lured little kids into her home and ate them. Fuck her.

The Wicked Witch of the West? She used an army of flying monkeys to terrorize a little girl (and nobody counts Glinda) and got melted by water. Fuck her.

Strega Nona? Could've locked up her pasta pot. She had to have known that Big Anthony was watching her. Instead she let the poor bastard use the pot and nearly drown the town, getting himself crucified in the process. Fuck her.

Witches are bitches. And I'm the baddest bitch of them all. I'm a witch, no question about it. but I'm a modern witch. About the only thing I still do old-school is summon demons. I certainly don't bear their children — I had my tubes tied ages ago. I don't promise my soul to them, I harvest them. I don't ask for a fraction of their power, I turn them into drugs and abuse the hell out of them.

People call me the Rookie. Together with my best friend and partner in crime, the Inside Man, I break the law. I lie, cheat, steal, kill, and do whatever I need or want to to make bank and break banks. I could do a lot of good with my powers — but it's much more fun to be a bitch.

Don't get me wrong, there's still a price to pay. I've got a little orb in my chest where my heart used to be. It feeds me, keeps me breathing when my lungs won't, and even talks to me sometimes — usually tries convincing me to kill my best friend in his sleep. I'm not even sure if he does sleep, but that's beside the point, which is that the little bastard in my chest needs vice like a Hummer needs gas. Its favorite foods are blood and gold, both of which my line of work provides plenty of.

I'm not just a witch. I'm a speed demon.

SINGLES

1. Hypervelocity
2. Terminal Velocity
3. Zeitgeist

** ALBUMS**

• Escape Velocity
  1. Liquid Courage and Powdered Panache
  2. Night of a Thousand Kisses
  3. Chained to the Slave Majority
  4. Goddess or Godless
  5. Feed the Need Machine
  6. I Have Not Killed You Yet
  7. Escape Velocity

THE B-SIDE

1. Murakami Killswitch Escapes from Hell — COMING SOON TO A RECORD STORE NEAR YOU

THE PERFORMERS

The Rookie: 95% human. 5% demon — the five percent makes all the difference. She's not from this universe, but has more fun here anyways. One half of the Chicago Specter, the coolest up-and-coming paracrime syndicate on the block.

The Inside Man: He knows everything that's going on; him and an infinite number more. They call him the Inside Man because he gets in your head — in more ways than one. One half of the Chicago Specter, the coolest up-and-coming paracrime syndicate on the block.

THE VENUES:

Eurtec: The premiere technological metropolis in the West. Run by the Servants of the Silicon Nornir, a member of the GOC's ruling council, Eurtec presents itself as the official paracity of the future. Think Berlin meets New York and Tokyo twenty minutes into the future. By day, corporations, anartists, and paratech enthusiasts rub shoulders. By night, K-pop idol-bots and cyborg techno-fascists clash in the streets.

Three Portlands: Three Portlands is an autonomous city-state out of space and time, accessible only through dimensional portals located in the Portlands of Oregon, Maine, and the Isle in the UK. Three Portlands is a hotbed of occult and parascientific eclecticism, which the United States government is only barely able to keep a lid on. Rumours abound, however, of a clandestine organization supporting them from the shadows.

Liquid Courage and Powdered Panache

I don't usually hang around Three Portlands, but the dives are second to none and the bartenders aren't programmed to ask questions. I order a blit-bomb, and Hersh rotates with a click and starts mixing a cocktail of glowing chemicals that would be more suited to a bowl of Jello or toxic waste vat. The pub has seen better days: the paint is warped and split, the air is like melting fondue, and everyone in here is loaded for bear. But the drinks — the drinks will kill you. And that's my kind of scene.

Hersh passes me the cocktail. It looks like Superfund sludge. I toss the blit-bomb back, and it hits me like a freight train, flushing my pores and making my skin steam. The hot euphoria of my innards being melted down and rebuilt by my chest engine is better than sex.

While I'm coming down off the high of ingested toxic waste, a hobo in ugly grey sweatpants and a windbreaker sidles onto the stool next to me and asks Hersh for a tonic. I order another blit-bomb. We don't look at each other.

"You the witch?" he says out of the corner of his mouth.

I heft up a small steel case in one hand. He does the same with a small USB stick. Hersh holds out two glasses: one full of tonic, the other of iridescent rainbow slick. We place our goods on the counter, then simultaneously snatch the other from the table and down our drinks.

I'm lighting up a cigarette when the hobo draws a pistol on me.

"UIU! Put your hands up! You are under arrest for trafficking in controlled substances, homicide, assault and battery, unlawful possession of firearms and paraweaponry, opening Ways within restricted spaces, crossing state lines in the commission of a crime, sending threats by mail, racketeering, and armed robbery."

He manages to get it all out in one breath. I haven't even managed to close my lighter.

"You forgot jaywalking," I say. Behind him, a man in an ugly grey hoodie slouching in a booth gives me a wink and stares intently at a nearby wizard — a hobgoblin of a man who almost certainly has a penchant for fire magic.

The hobo stares at me. "Hands up!"

Hoodie's stare drills into the hobgoblin, who slowly sidles out of his seat with a bottle in hand.

"Do you know what's in a blit-bomb?" I ask him. I snap my lighter closed and he flinches slightly. Two more nondescript men and one women sit up straighter — they must be his backup. "Do you even know what'll happen if you shoot me?"

All eyes are focused entirely on me.

"What?" the hobo asks. His finger tightens on the trigger.

I wink. "Nothing!"

The hobgoblin smashes his bottle over the hobo's head and takes three lightning bolts in the back for the trouble. I grab the case and throw myself over the counter where Hersh is hiding. He stares at me accusingly as bolts of fire and other blood magicks destroy his selection of exotic depressants.

"Hey, don't look at me," I tell him. "I didn't start this."

I take a moment to think. Those bolts were thrown by the UIU. I'm not just dealing with some regular joes in over their heads. This must be MOOT: the Mobile Occult Operations Team. The heavy hitters. The wizard SWAT.

This will be harder than I thought.

Hersh looks ready to reactivate his combat programming. Time to make my great escape. From my left pocket comes a pair of bright-orange knuckledusters; from my right, a fistful of purple pills that tend to interact explosively with blit-bombs. I pop the pills and slide the knuckledusters over my fingers.

My whole body starts vibrating. As I peek over the countertop, the vibrations concentrate themselves into my fingers with an accompanying incandescent glow — a close enough look would reveal tiny explosions coming off my digits, bombarding the surrounding air with heat and concussive force like miniature thermobaric warheads.

A quick scan of the room reveals two things: that the MOOT agents have managed to instigate a bar brawl, and that there are no exits. I had to get Pushed^TM in by a bouncer — and in retrospect that's probably why the UIU wanted to meet here. No way out.

But I'm used to making my own.

I throw the case over the counter and vault over it, almost immediately taking a bar stool to the face; luckily, its owner is more alcohol than water at this point. She offers no resistance when I catch it and yank it from her hands. The stool immediately starts disintegrating, but stays intact long enough for me to catch a knife with the seat and bash its wielder so hard that their mechanical eyes pop out of their sockets.

A pair of angry wizards lurch at me. I duck under Gandalf the Chrome and sweep his legs out from under him. His buddy tries to lurch over him but receives a kick to the cybernetic crotch, then an uppercut that sends him in one direction and his metal jaw in another. As Chrome tries to get to his feet, I elbow drop him in the skull and drive him into the ground with a CHOOM.

I grab the case from the floor and a lightning bolt goes over my head. Looking up, I see the MOOT stalking towards me. They tried bringing me in quietly — now they just want me quiet. While the female agent lobs lightning bolts at me, her backup keeps the rabble at bay. It's all I can do to weave between the shots without losing my balance — her trigger finger is faster than the bolts she's throwing.

Then I get the drop on myself — literally, tripping backwards over a stray bar stool. It's exactly what I need. Neither of us are expecting the stumble, so her next few shots go wide. I manage to convert the fall into a back roll and come up on my knees. Then I throw the case at her.

Her lightning bolts are meant to disable nervous systems, not inanimate objects, so it hits her full force in the face. As she goes down, I lunge at her goons. They react a split-second too slowly. I reach out, grab them by their collars, and slam their heads together. It sounds like bottles breaking.

With my immediate vicinity free of morons, I scoop up the case and continue looking for an exit. Then my gaze meets the hobgoblin's. He's recovered from his impromptu tasing — man's tougher than he looks — and I can tell he blames me for it.

The hobgoblin smashes a bottle against an adjacent table and shouts an incantation, turning the spilling booze into a column of fire. He wraps both hands around his drunken angel sword and lunges at me, confident in his killing blow. And he should be. I've seen that kind of magic fire before: there's not a substance on any Earth that can stop it, and if I try to block it I'll be bisected like butter.

So I don't block it. I step inwards to meet him, twisting slightly to get between his arms and then grabbing his bottle hand and wrenching it upwards. He involuntarily releases his grip on the sword. As it flies into the air, I elbow the hobgoblin in the face and onto the ground. Then I bash the case into his face — once, twice, thrice. Not enough to kill him — that would break the spell and leave me covered in booze — but enough to keep him down.

I stand up and catch the bottle by the neck, then look at the walls. It's impossible to punch through them — they're Push^TM only. But I have a drunken angel sword. And there's not a substance on any Earth that can stop it.

I haven't even finished the thought before I dig the blade into the wall, carving out a Rookie-shaped ring of fire big enough for me to slip through.

---

It's almost nightfall, or whatever they call it in Three Portlands, by the time I shake the city's police golems and make it back to the hotel. When I get into the room, the Inside Man is sitting on his bed, still wearing that ugly grey hoodie, munching on some crisps and watching a brainless action flick. I have no idea why he likes those things.

"Why d'you still have that thing?" he asks upon seeing the case in my hand. "I said you could leave it behind. It's empty, innit?"

I shrug. "I got attached."

The Inside Man rolls his eyes. "Whatever. Good work with the UIU — I made sure someone streamed you kicking their asses," he crows. "That kind of infamy is sure to put us in the top running for the name 'Chicago Spirit'."

"Us? You ditched me the moment those guys started throwing lightning around," I say, only half-jokingly.

"Hey, I got you the hobgoblin, didn't I? Your job is to be badass. Mine is to let you be badass."

He stuffs a handful of crisps into his mouth. "I knew you'd get outta there fine. You gotta believe in yourself. Like I do."

I roll my eyes, then toss the case onto my bed and join him on his. "Seriously, what the hell are we doing here? You just said it was recon — for what?" I ask, reaching for the crisps.

The Inside Man perks up. "You remember Farhan?"

I nod.

"That was 'cause I was trying to get in on black market augs, right?" he says, passing the crisps. "But I got bored with it and so we never did anything. Well, I got hooked on this video game a couple days ago — it's called EVE Online, this online multiplayer game where you can start corporations and rob people and plan heists and — my point is, I'm hooked. So I want to try the black market thing again, for real."

He leans back. "Three Ports is prime for this kind of thing. Place is full of Maxwellists and the only real augcorp in town is Anderson — and they charge a fortune. Folks are chomping at the bit for cheap augs, and that's where we come in. We'll make a killing. But before I do anything I wanted to scope out the cops. See what they've got."

"So what've they got?"

"Nothing I can't handle with a good network. Anyways, that's all I needed from you. Gonna check in with my selves, see if they have any suggestions, chat with some folks around town. You can take off if you want. Got any plans for the rest of the week?"

"Think I'll stick around," I reply. " Go shopping, maybe. There's a few indie comics they sell here I wanna check out. Maybe a new mortar and pestle. What else is on?"

"Cool," he says, hitting the remote. The TV starts showing The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants — don't judge, it's a great film. We watch the movie in amicable silence for an hour, only breaking the cheesy, feel-good dialogue onscreen with the crunching of crisps and the incessant gurgling of my stomach. The Inside Man goes out for thirty minutes, returning with a pair of large pizzas and a liter of soda. I devour it all — injecting yourself with demons is hell on the metabolism, and it's important to have a balanced diet. Even with a bellyful of caffeine, the stunt I pulled with the blit-bombs absolutely wiped me. I end up passing out before the movie finishes.

I don't sleep well that night.

Shaggy and Scooby-Doo speak Tamil on a waterslide high in the sky. I'm on a high cliff overlooking an orange sunset — then something pushes me off and I plummet far to the ground. My ex-girlfriend Natasha dunks my head into a toilet. I can't breathe.

I'm trapped in a bunker with a family I haven't spoken to in years. There are monsters outside. There's an elf in the room. I stab him. The monsters get in. I hide under a table. It finds me. It has Natasha's face. I can't breathe.

There's a shadowy figure on top of me, knees planted firmly on my diaphragm in a way that makes my lungs scream. I can't breathe and I can't move and then the thing plunges its hand into my chest. My chest hurts and the thing looms over me with my heart in its claws. The light of its hellish pulse illuminates its face. It's Natasha.

But this is no dream.

I'm awake, and Natasha is on top of me with my heart in her hands.

The last time I saw her, I'd left her heartbroken in a different bloody universe.

Now she's here to return the favor.

Cirrhosis of the Heart

I jolt upright with a shriek.

The Inside Man almost definitely heard that — fucker's never gonna let me live this down. Honestly, though, I'm twenty-seven. I'm way too old to have nightmares. Especially ones about old flames.

Still, that was a vivid one.

My chest is buzzing. I look down to find myself wearing a vibrating black-and-red corset.

I definitely wasn't wearing this when I went to bed. I don't even wear corsets. But what really gives me pause is the IV drip feeding blood into my arm from a pouch on the bedside stand.

"Aweh! You're up." The Inside Man enters the room with a plastic and paper bag in his hands.

"What the hell did you do to me?"

He shrugs and sets the bags down. "Saved your life — you're welcome. The fuck happened to you anyways?" he asks, pulling out breakfast food and fluid pouches. "I went out last night to get a soda and came back with you bleeding to death all over your sheets. You're lucky I had that combat corset — don't touch it by the way, it's keeping your blood pumping in your body."

"Why is it vibrating?"

"It's on! Stopping your bleeding with ultrasonic vibration. It's also draining fluids from your chest, and you know, pumping your blood. Been sitting in the stash for bladdy ages — figured I'd sell it while we were here."

I nod slowly. Then the implications of the combat corset actually hit me.

"Fuck! My heart!"

"Ja. Your heart." The Inside Man passes me a danish and paper coffee cup. "Seriously, it's like you got it ripped right out of your chest."

In between nibbles of cherry danish and sips of coffee, I tell him about last night. His eyes narrow.

"What the hell did you do to this girl?"

"I kind of ghosted her."

He hooks a fresh blood bag up to my drip. "So she tore your heart right out your chest? What, did the market value of kidneys drop?"

"Ha ha." I try to get up but don't have any strength in my arms.

"I wouldn't move. You look like death warmed over."

I look down at the sheets. They definitely weren't red when we checked in.

"I feel like death warmed over," I admit. "Christ. Didn't think you cared so much about me."

"Course I don't," he says with mock indignation. "But you're an investment, and I take care of my investments. Here, have another danish."

"Thanks."

I start nibbling at the danish and then pass out mid-bite.

When I wake up, the Inside Man is nowhere to be seen. The drip is feeding some clear liquid into my arm. I'm strong enough to retrieve my phone and the TV remote from the table. This is progress.

I gnaw on my cold danish while checking the news. There's no mention of the bar brawl on any of the TV channels, but the failed sting op at Midwich Valley is trending on Void. I still can't imagine what possessed Hersh to name his bar that. Of course, it probably isn't even his. I wonder if robots can own property in Three Portlands.

I'm mulling over automated capitalism and bar names ("Lock, Stock, & Barrel" and "Beermageddon" are my favorites) when the Inside Man enters the room.

"I got nothing," he tells me. "Spent all day trying to track this girl down but her trail's gone cold. If I'd entered your mind earlier I could've traced her emotions through you but I knew you wouldn't — it doesn't matter. You have any idea where she could've gone?"

"I have some ideas." I lay out the details of my former relationship with Natasha to the Inside Man.

"You're a real domkop, you know that?" he says when I'm done. "But that's good. We can work with this. You look a lot better too. Corset's doing a bang-up job."

There's no mirror nearby, so I take a selfie to check. I look like I passed out on a toilet. Still, it's better than looking like I died on one. The Inside Man interrupts my vanity session.

"Here's what I'm thinking. We kit you up, you pop over to your ex's universe, kill her and pop your heart back in, and we get back to robbing Anderson blind. I know for a fact you weren't born with that thing in you, so you gotta know how to get it back in you. Am I right?"

"Mostly," I say. "The problem is I can't just jump between universes anymore."

"The hell you mean?" he asks incredulously. "Just snort some of that hellsmack or whatever you need and jump over, right?"

"If I even look at my drugs without my heart I'm pretty sure I'll disintegrate," I explain. "It's literally the source of my mojo."

"Tch." The Inside Man looks worried. "We'll just have to talk to Alliott Chao."

---

After a week's rest, the Inside Man and I duck out of Three Portlands unnoticed. It helps that everyone expects me to have fled the city already, so nobody pays attention to an ashen brown woman when they can gawk at her albino boyfriend. You'd think nobody would look twice at them in a place like this, but they're apparently rarer than the magicians.

Our return to Eurtec is similarly unpronounced. We catch a red-eye from Portland, Maine to New York City and then take a shortcut through Backdoor SoHo, emerging in the Neuneukölln district. On the one hand, I understand why the city takes so many cues from Berlin. On the other hand, you'd think it could take some cues from anywhere other than Berlin.

Eurtec is different when I'm not on speed — warmer and slower. Above my head, a dozen sleek white monorails zip across the elevated maglev rails that crisscross the city. They shoot through gaps in the skyscrapers, all glass, steel and concrete. There are viewscreens tacked onto everything, blasting advertisements for brand new augmented reality implants, bionic prosthesis replacements, and smart kitchen sinks. It could be worse — if I had VR implants the damn things would be right in my face.

At ground level, street vendors parade their pirated tech, while shopkeepers stare at them derisively through their storefronts. From their 5D stalls, anartists vape contemptuously at both. The buildings seem taller, the streets wider, and the people dicier when I'm not hopped up. As it turns out, having performance enhancers on hand at all times does wonders for your confidence. Without my heart, I feel naked. Weak. None of these people notice me — I can't shake the feeling that if they did, they'd pounce on me like rabid dogs.

The Inside Man and I push through the main thoroughfare and turn off into the concrete jungle of inner Neuneukölln. The warmth of the city dips off. This whole area used to be heavily industrialized. It housed all of Prometheus Labs' research and manufacturing facilities until the company imploded in the nineties. Then everything was gutted or sold off, and the place was left to rot.

The buildings here are squat, concrete slabs. The advertisement screens are cracked and shattered. There are no street vendors or shopkeepers. Anartists still vape at us, but with the contempt of a robber sizing up an easy mark. The maglevs still run overhead, but they don't stop here anymore.

Our hideout is on the upper mezzanine of an abandoned warehouse near the center of the district. The lock is keyed to our biometrics — unless one of us unlocks the door and opens it, the stairway up won't be there. The moment we get inside we both flop onto the couch. When the Inside Man turns on the telly and starts discussing the meeting with Alliott, I almost feel like myself again.

---

For most people, Eurtec at night is just Eurtec without a blue sky.

I am not most people. So before I head out, the Inside Man puts me in body armor and hands me two pairs of hollowed-out bones.

"What the hell is this?" I ask him, examining them. They're unpleasantly warm to the touch.

"Slide 'em over your pointer and middle fingers," he tells me.

"The hell does it do?"

"Point those at someone and shoot. It'll remove their spine."

"How do I do that?"

"Same way you shoot a finger gun."

I squint at him, but slide them over my fingers. They feel rubbery, and flex with my digits.

"Looking good," he says. "Alright, let's get this show on the road."

With that, I walk out of the warehouse and into the night.

At night, the concrete slabs come alive. Shattered screens light up, feebly advertising cheap karaoke bars and sex-robot brothels that are in the same rooms. Trap houses invite anyone or anything with a bit of cash to spend it on software cracks, DRM patches, or just regular drugs. And of course, the mass-market K-pop robots are out in force.

I hate the stupid things. They kick up and down the city with their perfect clock-synchronized choreography and artificial smiles, begging suckers to come sing karaoke with them and dragging them back here if they offer even the slightest give. Then they dose them up to their eyes in drink, so that by the time morning comes the suckers don't remember anything but the buzz of karaoke. And the next night, the suckers come back.

My kit is concealed beneath a patterned hoodie, but even the hoodie does work: the patterns on the back confuse the CCTVs and K-pop bots. Everyone around here wears one. But it's not just how you look for the cameras — it's how you look for the people.

This part of Neuneukölln is especially bad. It's full of pickpockets and thugs looking to make a quick buck off the unaware. The police are useless — even if they patrolled here, they'd be practically blind since everyone wears the concealment patterns. Normally, nobody would mess with the girl with green flames pouring out from under her helmet. But right now, I'm pitifully human.

All I can do is walk with purpose and hope the lowlife around here know my reputation. There's honor among thieves in Eurtec. Everyone knows everyone, but nobody tells the cops. To be fair, part of it is because ratting your rival out would tank your reputation in the eyes of the original Chicago Spirit — everyone knows Richard Chappell hated snitches — but I like to think that most of it is personal pride.

Unfortunately, racial pride trumps personal pride for some people. It's only to be expected; when the authorities pray to Nordic supercomputers you're bound to get a few Nazis in the mix. The local variety call themselves the Chicago Geist. The rest of us call them anime Nazis due to their special blend of racism and techno-weeb fetishism.

I'm just a couple blocks from Alliott's place on the edge of the district when one such specimen gets in my way. He's weird even by anime Nazi standards; I can tell by the smell and swelling that the bastard has custom tanto implants in his arms. He's at least smarter than the fucks who get wakizashis in their arms — those guys can barely swing the fucking things — but he still got fucking samurai swords put into his arms.

"Gimme your money," he spits at me in German.

I shoot him with my finger gun. Nothing happens. Prick must've had his spine replaced. I should've guessed the spine-blasters wouldn't work on cyborgs. They're thrumming with occult magicks, but magick with a K tends not to touch metal.

While I'm trying to determine why he didn't get his back blown out, the weeaboo-Nazi squints at me. "Gimme your wallet or I'll slice you into sushi. I can see the crypto wallet in your pocket."

For emphasis, he takes a fish out of his pocket and throws it into the air. Twin tantos extend from his arms and he effortlessly chops the fish up into a hundred pieces before it hits the ground. The prick apparently had his reflexes enhanced too. So much for making a break for it.

I want to kill him. I want to kill this idiot stalking around at night with a bloody fish in his pocket so he can frighten minorities with his disgusting sword hands. Not because he's a Nazi or even because he's trying to mug me. But because he's in my way. Because he's standing there while I'm furious out of my mind. Because nobody would care if I slammed his head into the pavement and drove my frustrations through my boot into his skull until it cracked and pink mush came out.

But I can't. My chest is killing me, my goddamn gun doesn't work and if I try to physically rush him he'll gut me like a fish. I can't run away either; he's clearly faster than me. I'm outmatched by a racist weeaboo and it pisses me the hell off. But I don't have time for his hate-crime theatrics, so I toss him the USB stick with my payment for Alliott.

Somehow he flubs the catch and drops it. The idiot doesn't think to retract his swords, so every time he leans down they bonk into the ground. I walk briskly past him while he struggles to scoop up the wallet. I make two promises to myself: one, to throttle the Inside Man when I see him next; and two, to track the anime Nazi down and fillet him with his own blades once I get my heart back.

As I turn the corner, a stylized neon logo of a cat's face smirks down at me. This used to be Prometheus Labs' flagship factory here. Then it was left to die until a rag-tag group of anahums purchased it. Now it's the focal point for a thriving fashion boutique and underground criminal empire: the Kemonomimi Zaibatsu.

For the front of a criminal enterprise, the reception area is surprisingly clean. Then again, it's also the front for a legitimate worker-owned fashion boutique. The floor is tiled, the lights are fluorescent, and the seats are plastic and fiber. The reception desk is that weird gray plastic you see in schools and hospitals.

The receptionist is a bored-looking Russian woman in a blouse and miniskirt. She has a segmented metal cat-tail sticking up like a lightning rod jammed into her tailbone. I recognize the tail; it's an early model, back when they hadn't quite fixed all the kinks with artificial neural pathways in brain-machine interfaces. If I had to guess, her consciousness rejected the tail, so now it just sits there. That's probably why she works for the Kemonomimi Zaibatsu. They're one of the few employers, even in Eurtec, who would accept someone with such an obvious body-mod.

"Alliott Chao says you're a bitch," I tell her. She raises an eyebrow in recognition of the code phrase.

"Likewise, cock sucker. Membership card, please?"

I hand her a thin plastic card with the letters "KMZ" engraved on it in red and black. She accepts it without looking up from her computer. Her hands fly across the keyboard. After a moment, she answers.

"She should be in the makerspace on the fourth floor. Will that be all?"

"Yes, thank you."

She hands me my card. I make my way to the elevators and take the first one up.

The fourth floor is a single, wide-open room and hotbed of DIY activity. As I exit the elevator, two people step inside it carrying a full-scale Power Suit. There's a girl with what are almost certainly real cat ears flitting between a few laser cutters in the corner. In the center tables, some people are sewing Kevlar into the lining of their streetwear. There's an android sitting in a dentist's chair against the wall, illegally overclocking their own positronic brain. A few people are milling near a pinball machine drinking beers — homebrewed of course; the bioreactors here aren't just for show.

I find Alliott Chao by the far wall, assembling a sniper rifle out of black thermoplastic.

"That's a Barrett XM500, isn't it?" I ask her. "I didn't know they'd uploaded the schematics online."

"They haven't," she replies. As soon as the barrel snaps into place, she starts disassembling it. "It's custom. Designed it myself. Uses a new shock-absorbent type of thermoplastic. KMZ is thinking of adding it to their lineup of tactical fashion. For bulletproof vests."

Alliott rolls up one sleeve and pant leg, revealing full arm and leg prostheses with several slots in them. The pieces of the sniper rifle fit into the slots perfectly.

"I like a girl who knows her guns. You're the Rookie, right?" she asks, rolling her sleeves down.

"Guilty."

"I've heard a lot about you. Jacking the Bank of Eurtec and the Phitransimun Combine? Pretty fuckin' cool."

"Thanks. What's the sniper for?" I ask her.

"My business," she says, rubbing her arm. "What're you looking for?"

"I need a bidirectional Way. Moddable one, that I can change the outlets for. I need all the information you can find on a witch called Natasha Tokyopop. And I need a spaceship and space suit that can get me to the Moon."

She raises an eyebrow. "When do you need this stuff?"

"ASAP."

"It'll run you about…" She pauses and then runs off a number with a whole lot of zeroes.

"Cool. Can I get back to you about that?"

"What? The Inside Man said you'd be bringing payment."

"I… had some trouble on the way here. I don't have the cash on me," I admit.

Alliott shrugs. "Can't do anything if you don't — hold on." She cocks her head for a moment, then starts jabbering into empty space in a language I'm not familiar with. Her facial expressions go from bemused to angry to conspiratorial and back again for several minutes. Then she hangs up and looks at me.

"Tell you what. I've got a job for you. You do this, we both get a fat payday and I get you what you need. You interested?"

Chained to the Slave Majority

At noon, a black Porsche pulls up to Kemonomimi Zaibatsu. Sleek red lines accentuate its sides and smoke roils from its twin tailpipes, but what really draws my eye — and every other within a hundred yards — is the black machine gun mounted to its roof. God only knows what kind of mods were put into the car just to keep the top from crumpling underneath its weight.

The shotgun window rolls down. Alliott waves at me from the driver's seat.

"Get in."

I take a moment to admire the machine and then hop into the shotgun seat, basking in the purr of the engine and light streaming through the sunroof. Alliot shifts into gear and we peel out of the district. She's trying to show off. It's working.

Alliott unrolls a blueprint of a large corporate office on top of the table.

"You follow death ball?" she asks.

"Of course," I respond. "The City Cup is tonight."

"You gamble?"

"Of course."

"And you always lose." It isn't a question. "What do you know about Oneiroi Incorporated?"

"Not much. I bought a couple of their dream-cations once." I don't mention all the times I've used their memory removal services.

"Figured as much. Oneiroi's weird. They're privately owned but I haven't been able to figure out by who. More importantly, they're bastards. You know what they do with the stuff they siphon out of your head?"

"What?"

"They exploit it."

We pull onto the elevated autobahn at 200 km/h, weaving around tiny smart cars doing 80. The acceleration makes my corset feel even more constricting. At one point, a FLYPAPER unit lumbers onto a bend in the road — Alliott simply downshifts and drifts around it. Before I know what's happened, the FLYPAPER is a speck in the rearview.

Seconds later, we pull off the highway into Sigrunstraße, the cultural center of Eurtec. The Verthandistadion comes into view. It's the biggest sports arena in any paracity. For tonight, it's been reconfigured into an inverted circular ziggurat, comprised of multiple concentric rings that increase in radius the higher they are.

"Oneiroi's products and their customers are the same thing. They analyze people and then sell them — likes, dislikes, medical history whatever they can find — to the highest bidder. And the lynchpin of their corporate strategy is the deathball betting house."

Alliott stabs the blueprint with a finger.

"They know exactly how to rig the predictions and hype up the pot. Everyone plays, everyone loses — except Oneiroi. They make a fat goddamn buck and scoop up petabytes of data to troll. But that ends tonight."

The stadium is packed. Everyone's looking forward to watching ICSUT and Anderson Robotics duke it out for the cup. ICSUT's Battlebots team has been perfecting their players for years, stuffing bigger and bigger death machines into smaller and smaller packages. Anderson has focused more on improving the viral payloads in their death ball robots that enable them to infect the competition and destroy it from the inside out.

The two teams have completely opposed strategies that brought them all the way to the finals, and it's anyone's guess as to who will win. With that kind of excitement on the line, it's no wonder that the lines for the automated bookies are massive. Alliott and I wait for two hours to place our bets. Of course, if what Alliott's been telling me is even remotely accurate, the real winner will be Oneiroi.

"All the betting machines in Eurtec are connected to a central server in Oneiroi's datacenter. We're going to break in and modify the bets so that Oneiroi has to pay everyone, no matter what they bet."

Alliott touches the south side on the blueprint.

"The security system is weird — I have what I need to hack the servers, but to get physical access to them, we have pull two switches at the same time — one in the basement, one on the sixty-sixth floor. The executive floors. I had someone on that but… they're indisposed."

"Which is where I come in," I say.

Alliott nods. "At 7:30 PM, I'll go in through the front door as a maintenance technician and get access to the basement. You'll be here — on the skyscraper across from the south side of the datacenter. Once I radio that I'm in position, you'll shoot a line across to the upper floors of the datacenter. Zipline in. From there, you have two tasks — one, pulling the switch, and two, getting everyone to evacuate."

She taps the center of the blueprint. "The switch is right in the middle of the floor. Impossible to miss. Once you pull it, just take a couple hostages, maybe shoot some people. Eris knows those bastards have it coming. I'll have someone supporting you from the rooftop. Just draw attention to yourself until I finish the hack, then shoot another line to the ground floor. Backup will be there with the Porsche. You two follow the rails out of the city and then just loop back in. We'll meet back here. Any questions?"

"Two."

We grab a bite to eat before making our way to the drop point. Over some cheap burgers, Alliott and I chat for a bit about our misadventures and run-ins with the law. I tell her about how the FLYPAPER almost got me at the Bank of Eurtec — she tells me about the time she decapitated one of Anderson's salesbots with a shovel and turned him into an oracle.

She is really fucking cool.

"Why do I need backup?" I ask.

"Last week Oneiroi contracted out their security to a private group called Chappell Wraith Securities. I haven't heard of these guys before, but I've heard their security forces are heavily augmented somehow. Better safe than sorry."

The name sends alarm bells blaring through my head, but I don't say anything. Doubtless Alliott's already aware of the name's implications.

"Who's my backup?"

"Someone I'd trust with my life."

Night finds me and Alliott rolling slowly through the corporate district of Eurtec. Mile-high colossi made of glass and steel vie for space in an overpopulated skyline. There's so much artificial lighting that it's perpetually daytime. Every day, billions of credits in any currency you care to imagine flow through this place. Here, corporations rise and fall. Here, a single decision can shape or destroy thousands of lives. Here, money can buy you time itself.

Alliott's car doesn't draw so much as a glance, even with the machine gun on the roof. She drops me off at the skyscraper across from Oneiroi before driving away to find a place to stash our ride. I make my way inside and climb the stairs to the roof to find Alliott waiting for me.

"I didn't know Alliott had a twin," I say.

"She doesn't. I'm Alex," Alliott's not-twin says. She looks identical to Alliott — the only difference is a small tattoo of a triangle inscribed in a circle on her cheek. Alex motions towards a harpoon gun leaning against a nearby vent. "Tie that off to the vent. There's a harness there, hook yourself up and get ready."

"Got it," I say.

While I'm hooking myself up to the zipline harness, Alliott's voice crackles through my earpiece. "You've met Alex?"

"She has." Alex's voice comes in both in front of me and through my earpiece.

"Great. Play nice. I'm making my way into the building… now."

Alex rolls up her sleeves to reveal an arm and leg prosthesis. She slides an assortment of parts from the limbs and starts assembling a sniper rifle.

For this heist, I've forgone my bike helmet for something more akin to a balaclava and a pair of goggles given to me by the Inside Man. The goggles have a rudimentary targeting system and brain-computer interface that jacks into my limbs and allows me to aim a lot more easily. Instead of having to aim down sights or compensate for recoil, I can just point and shoot. It helps me compensate for my total lack of occult firepower.

There's also a bunch of stuff that the Man shoved into the pack on my back. After the fuckup with the weeaboo-Nazi, he made sure I was loaded for bear. But for now all I need are the goggles.

I slip the balaclava and goggles over my eyes.

"I'm in position. Check?"

"Check," I say.

"Check," Alex says. She lies on her belly and takes aim with the rifle. I take aim with the harpoon gun.

"Alex. On your mark."

We fire at the same time.

Oneiroi, Inc.'s windows are bulletproof. But what comes out of Alliott's gun isn't a bullet. It's a .50 caliber anti-matériel high-explosive incendiary, armor-piercing round — a baby missile that's designed to take out helicopters and armored vehicles. The shot blows out the central window on the south side of the sixty-sixth floor, as well as the windows directly above and around it, in a hail of glass. Then it obliterates a few pillars on the floor.

The harpoon line flies through the air and latches on to what's left of the closest pillar. I give the line an experimental tug to make sure it won't come loose, then clip onto it, close my eyes, and start sliding. The wind rushes past my face but I don't open my eyes until I feel my feet on solid land again. I skid to a stop just before smacking into the pillar and unclip my harness. Then I pull out my Desert Eagle from my pack and fire a round into the ceiling.

"Listen up, pigs!" I call. "You've bent this city over and fucked it raw. The Chicago Spectre is here to fuck back!"

Being able to say stupid shit like that is one of the reasons I love my job.

I scan the floor for a convenient hostage and the switch. The executive offices of Oneiroi look like they were modeled off a stock photo labeled "office". It's a maze of individual office rooms and bland fluorescent lighting. Rich geriatrics in thousand-dollar clothes and ties cower in their business cells.

In the dead center of the room is a white pillar with a grey metal box on it. Doubtless that's the switch in question. Conveniently, there's an old man in a fancy black suit and striped tie frozen besides it. Even from here he exudes an aura of callous wealth.

I stride towards the switch and examine it. There's a keypad lock on it. I look over at the executive and put an arm around his shoulder.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Barnard. Barnard Sachs," he stutters.

"Tell me, Barnard, what's your… what's your job title?"

"I'm the — I'm the chief technical officer."

"Fantastic! Barnard, what's the key code for this box?"

"I-I'm not at liberty to-"

"Ah-ah-ah, Barnard. We're friends here. And you wouldn't want to disappoint your friends, would you?" I press the gun barrel against his forehead. He swallows.

"Ah… n-no…"

"Then you wouldn't mind opening it, I'm sure." I take my free arm off of his shoulder and cock the hammer of the pistol. The click echoes in the silence.

Barnard swallows, then punches the code into the keypad.

"Thanks, Barney," I say. "On your knees or I'll blow your brains out."

Barnard falls to his knees. I open the metal box up. Inside is a large red handle labeled "DATA SERVER ACCESS".

"I'm in position," I say.

"Understood. On my mark," Alliott says through the earpiece. "Three…two…one…Now!"

I pull the handle. The room goes dark.

"Alliott? What's going on?"

"Don't use my name. I'm in."

"The lights went out."

"Wasn't me. Everything's green down here."

At that moment, the lights come back on and I find myself face-to-face with a flaming skeleton in a striped black suit.

"Fuck!" I fall onto my ass and roll behind a cubicle. All of the old people are possessed. Green flame pours out from their orifices.

I recognize that green flame. I have pills that do the same thing to me. The name Chappell Wraith Securities pops back into my head. And then everything clicks into place.

"Natasha… you fucking bitch!"

"Ruku!" the drones croon in unison. "I thought I killed you!"

Goddess or Godless

My ex-girlfriend's army of possessed office executives goose-steps toward me. The combat corset feels like a vice around my chest.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I hiss.

"Me? You're supposed to be dead, babe," they titter in unison. "Am I that rusty?"

"Babe? What the hell is going on?" Alex and Alliott say simultaneously into my earpiece.

"Chappell Wraith Securities? They're run by a witch named Natasha Tokyopop," I say. "She's… enchanted the office drones into actual ones. Like demon robots."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Alex says in my earpiece. "Get down."

There's an ear-splitting crack and then a sharp ping.

Natasha shakes her heads. "Did you shoot me? Did you really just shoot me with an actual gun? Come the fuck on, babygirl, you know me better than that."

"Alex?" I say. There's no response.

"Alex? Oh, is she your new girlfriend? How many have you gone through since you ditched me?" the drones say. "Sorry Ruku, if she shot me then she's deader than dirt."

"Alliott, we've got trouble," I say. "These drones are charmed or something — I think they reflect bullets. Alex is dead."

Alliott curses. "I'm still working on the hack but I'll get you out, don't worry. Keep her busy!"

"What are you doing here, Rukmini?" the drones ask in unison.

"What do you think?" I say, looking for a way past Natasha. "Taking some fat cats hostage — you know, how you used to?"

"I am taking them hostage, babe," they say. "You know how much I'm charging these pricks? I don't even need Chappell's fortune! These assholes are paying me one every day!"

The sing-song tone she's using dredges up a variety of feelings: arousal, from a particularly aggressive sex session I still have bite-marks on my tits from; shock, from the time I watched her beat a man to death in front of me; and fear — because that's the same tone of voice she had when she took a dozen children hostage.

The lead drone takes a swipe at me with a baton. I duck past her and run down the corridor, rummaging through the backpack. My hands close around the handle of a metal baseball bat.

As I reach the windows, a sheet of green flame rises in front of the windows and licks at my face. I skid to a halt in front of it and turn around. The entire outer perimeter of the office is sealed off by a wall of green fire. Natasha's army of drones stalks towards me in perfect goose-step formation.

Natasha's drones bear all the hallmarks of her style: brutalist fashion, perfect synchronization, elegant in the way they simply hijack the normal functions of a human body. She loves summoning and charming automatons. She was trying to enchant a giant mecha. And with my powers? She probably has.

But she prioritizes form over function. I'd recognize that bulletproof enchantment anywhere. Hell, I'm the one who came up with it. It's a basic kinetic energy redirector — efficient and practically unnoticeable to the naked eye, but easily cracked by a sufficiently powerful banishment glyph.

"I don't believe this!" I snap. "Chappell Wraith Securities? Fucking security guards? You stole my heart and sold out?"

I dive through a nearby doorway into a conference room and lock the door behind me. I pull a pocket knife out of the backpack and start carving symbols into the bat. Natasha's drones beat at the windows of the room.

"It pays to suck corporate dick, huh?" I shout. "I thought you were better than this.”

The glass makes a popping sound.

"Gosh," the drones say. "I wonder what coulda changed. It's not like you stole my magic and crippled me completely. Oh wait!"

The glass cracks and bulges.

"Me, right now? Everything I've done in the past five years? All you, Ruku."

The glass disintegrates. The drones begin to pour in.

"All. Your. Fault."

I drop the knife, wrap both hands around the bat and swing.

The enchantment is a Sanksrit prayer to the Hindu god, Ganesha; remover of obstacles. As a result, my enchanted bat now removes obstacles. There's a sharp crack and a smell like burnt hair as the blessing of Lord Ganesha blows out the kinetic energy redirector and shoves the excess force right back into Barnard Sachs's skull. He goes flying, taking a dozen drones with him and clearing a path for me. A home run.

"Get stuffed," I snarl. A secretary with a baton takes her swing. I parry it and crack her in the gut. Her vertebrae shoot out her back and she crumples bonelessly to the ground.

"I can't stay mad at you though," the other drones say breathily, strutting towards me. "You know, you're suuuuuuuuper hot when you're angry."

"Christ," I say. "You know how bloody creepy that is when it's an eighty-year-old white dude saying that?"

I talk into my earpiece. "Alliott, there is a wall of fire encircling the floor and I cannot get out."

"I'm done, I'm done, I'll send an elevator up, just hold on!" she says.

"How the hell did you even find me?" I ask Natasha.

"Babe, I've been keeping an eye on you since you ran away. You really think I'd let my forever girl get away like that?"

"You've been spying on me?" I backpedal towards the elevators.

"It's not spying if it's someone you love!" she titters. The faces of her many drones fall at once. "I still love you."

I'm so surprised by this that I stop swinging my bat. "You love — you tried to kill me! You've been spying on me and you tried to kill me and you have the bloody gall to tell me that you love me?"

This is a huge mistake. A half-dozen old white men in suits dogpile me and knock the bat out of my hand. It rolls towards the elevator.

They all breathe the same thing at me. "I was going to revive you. Bring you back to me. Show you how much you still love me."

"Jesus Christ. Get off me!" I try to push them off but some more drones pile on top. It's hard to breathe. I'm being crushed under a morass of old white men with garlic breath proclaiming their psychotic love for me.

"Alliott, I could use a little — "

One of the drones rips the earpiece away and whispers directly into my ear. "But then you didn't die and I couldn't track you any more without the heart. I thought I'd lost you forever and I was so upset but then you fell right back into my orbit! Don't you see? We're meant to be together! The universes are pushing us together!"

My vision starts to blur and darken. I think I feel a rib crack.

"You don't need Alliott. You'll see — I'll bring you with me and things will go back to normal. Back to how we used to be, shooting and robbing and fucking all day long. It'll be so much fun!"

I'm about to pass out when I hear a faint ding and then several loud cracks. The drones fall away from me. I take a deep breath and then start coughing, but I'm breathing again. The pressure is gone. A hand grabs my own and lifts me onto my feet.

Alliott Chao stands in front of me, breathing heavily and holding my baseball bat. There are bodies everywhere. She's covered in chunks of white middle-aged businessman.

It is incredibly hot.

"Your ex is a real psycho, you know that?" Alliott pulls me into the elevator and slaps the button for the ground floor. Elevator music plays while we both try to catch our breath with our hands on our knees. My chest aches.

"She's not actually like that," I say.

Alliott looks up at me. "Huh?"

"She's not really like that. She's just trying to fuck with us. Me. She's just trying to fuck with me."

Alliott cocks her head. "Trying to brainwash you is just fucking with you?"

"Yeah. She used to — it's how we — it's her sense of humor."

"Her sense of humor."

"Yeah."

My ears are burning beneath the balaclava. Thankfully Alliott chooses to let me off with some dignity by changing the subject.

"There's going to be like… fifty fucking robocops down there," she says. "You got any ideas?"

My backpack is still on my back. I rummage through it briefly and then a smile breaks out on my face.

"Yes. Yes I do."

The elevator doors open to reveal the full extent of security that a monolithic corporation can buy. A hundred robocops have the elevator surrounded. Ten APCs can be seen through the lobby windows. There's not one, not two, but three entire FLYPAPER units drooling hungrily behind them.

I pull a bazooka out of the backpack. It telescopes on the way out, lengthening and widening to reveal a fully-loaded six-barrel incendiary grenade launcher.

"Cover your ears." I fire.

The FLYPAPER nearest to the elevator takes a grenade full-on in what passes for its face. It's instantly engulfed in flames. The robocops watch in horrified awe as it thrashes about, smashing the floor to bits and sending chunks of burning meat and metal everywhere. Then I fire the other five rounds into the crowd.

The lobby is transformed into a maelstrom of flesh, metal, and flame. Alliott and I sprint for the emergency exit. We crash through the door as bullets and agonized shouts fly past.

"Where's the car?" I shout.

Alliott simply takes off running, leading me through a maze of glass and steel. Sirens in the distance grow louder with each step. I almost run past the Porsche before Alliott slides into the driver's seat and honks at me.

We peel out of the alleyway the car was hidden in. Ahead of us, a line of cop cars blocks the road. Alliott spins the wheel and shifts gears, sending us into a spin and pointing us in the other direction. There's another line of cars blocking our exit, so she instead veers back into the alleyway.

More cops are waiting for us on the other side. Alliott swerves onto the pavement and barely avoids clipping one of their cars.

"Fucking hell," she yells. "They're everywhere! You know any shortcuts?"

I don't, but I know someone who does.

Dutch! I think into the void.

The Inside Man picks up after a moment. Rookie! You must really be in trouble. Hang on.

An intersection full of APCs bears down on us as he sends me a list of turns to take and curbs to hop.

"Take a right!" I shout. "There's a gap in the barricade!"

Alliott shoots me a quizzical eyebrow, but yanks the steering wheel to the right. The wheels scream as we slide into the turn and drift right through the promised hole in the vehicle barricade.

"Left!" Caltrops have been scattered across the road like salt. There's a shudder as we bounce onto the curb and hurdle right over them.

Ahead of us, the intersection is entirely blocked by a full APC barricade. Behind us, a flood of cop cars box us in. There's no way out.

"Use the machine gun," Alliott grunts.

"What?"

"THE MACHINE GUN!"

I unbuckle myself, pop the sunroof, and stand up in my seat. The machine gun is mounted to a swivel with a pair of trigger handles to grab onto, letting me spin it around but not aim it up or down. A pair of ammo belts dangle from the weapon, trailing into the back windows. I hoist myself up onto the roof and grab onto the handles, rolling around the roof so that I'm lying on the rear window aiming forwards and holding onto the gun for dear life.

A pair of cops with rocket launchers stand up and take aim.

I squeeze the trigger.

The machine gun sounds like a chainsaw cutting through metal and makes my brain feel like it's been put into a blender. In just under three seconds it carves an explosive swathe through the barricade, chewing holes larger than double-A batteries through everything in its way. The barrage of bullets causes the warheads in both launchers to explode in a massive fireball. I barely have time to roll back around and drop down through the sunroof before Alliott drifts right through the explosion.

Then we're on a straightaway just a hundred meters from the train tracks. A horn sounds and the gates start to come down. The Phitransimun Combine races towards the crossing gate. A tidal wave of blue bears down on us from behind.

Alliott and I register all of this and come to the same conclusion in the second it takes us to reach the tracks. She pulls into yet another drift and smashes through the crossing guards. Then we're barreling down an interdimensional railway with the Phitransimun Combine barely meters behind us.

The police sirens fade into the distance. The only things that can be heard are the juddering of the car, the steady bay of its engine, and the rumble of the pursuing train. We drive in silence for several minutes.

"Jesus Christ," Alliott says. "I'd known it would turn out like this I'da stayed home and watched the game."

She looks over at me. "You're something fucking else, you know that?"

"Thanks. I think."

Alliot cocks her head. "After this you want to — "

The car door on my side is abruptly ripped away. Something wraps around my arm and yanks. I scrabble for something to hold onto but find only the bat before being torn bodily out of the car.

There's a heart-stopping pause and then I land flat on my back, looking up into the eyes of Natasha Tokyopop. She's wearing an avatar of unclear Asian ethnicity, but I'd recognize her retro-sukeban style anywhere: a black sailor-top and skirt combo, with long leggings, combat boots, and a long black tendril in place of her left arm to round out the look.

"I told you. I wanted to catch up!" she exclaims, wrapping the tendril around my neck and pulling me into the air. "You ran away before we were finished. Was it the thing about brainwashing you?" she asks. "I thought it might be a bit much, but I know how much you used to like it when we — "

I'm too busy choking to pay attention. Natasha slackens her grip and lowers to the ground.

"Sorry! I'm still getting used to my powers. It's been so long since I had any," she says.

I take a quick look around while rubbing my neck. We're atop the lead engine of Phitransmun Combine. The wind buffets my face, breaking against my goggles and chilling me to the bone. I can see Alliott's car just below us, but Natasha stands between me and freedom.

"Rookie! Where are you? Are you okay?" Alliott's voice rings through the earpiece.

"On the train. With Natasha."

"Well you need to get off it stat," Alliott says. "We're gonna hit the junction in maybe five minutes and if you are not in here when that happens it's game fucking over."

"Got it," I say.

"You knowwwww," Natasha says in a faux-singsong, "I'm right here."

"What do you even want with me?" I spit.

"What, can't two BFFs hang out like old times?" she asks. "I've been doing wonderfully, you know! I took up judo, piano, started a corporation, and got my powers back. Now you go."

I take a swing at her. She blocks it easily and then slices at my leg. It starts bleeding.

"Don't have anything to say?" she asks. "That's fine. I'll just grill you instead. First question. What have you and the Inside Man been doing with all the shit you steal?"

The tendril lashes out at my neck. I smack it away and slam the bat into her ribs. She doesn't even flinch.

"Sit on your little dragon's hoard and blow it on catgirls and comic books?" she guesses. "Tell me I'm wrong." She catches my bat with her human hand and shoves me back. "You're a fucking hypocrite, Ruku. You always have been."

I lunge at her, but she sidesteps and I go sprawling towards the front edge of the train.

"Next question!" Natasha chirps. "What were you really doing at Oneiroi? 'Taking people hostage'? C'mon. That's more see-through than those panties you wore for my birthday."

I scramble to my feet and charge at her. Natasha dodges all my swings effortlessly. She looks past me and raises an eyebrow. "That's a Black Queen, ain't it? Now I get it! You're looking for a Way. Okay okay, next question. You want to come after me? Don't you?"

I feint at her from the right, then swing at her left. Then her right. Then her neck. Then her chest. She ducks, weaves, bobs, blocks, and then simply snatches the bat from my grasp and gives me a love-tap on the head. It feels like a jackhammer to the skull.

"How do you feel, Ruku?" she asks, poking the bat into my chest. "Powerless? Frustrated? Infuriated that I did this to you?"
I struggle to my feet, trying to keep pain-induced tears out of my eyes.

"Well how the hell do you think I felt?" she asks. "When you crippled me? When you broke my heart? When you left me to die?"

Natasha throws the bat to me, then steps back and relaxes.

"Last question. You really wanna kill me, huh?"

Her arms drop to her shoulders and her tendril rests against the ground.

"Take a swing," she says.

My head is swimming. "What?"

"Take a swing," she repeats. "I'm right fucking here. I'm your monster, Ruku. Do the right thing."

I stare at her. "What?"

"Take a swing!" Natasha exclaims. "I'm a whore and a bootlicker and a murderer. Isn't that it? I'm a corporate slave and a pathetic bitch who tried to murder my ex and should be put down like one."

She raises her hands and gestures mockingly. "I'll give you one shot. Hit me. Pound my brain into mash. Kill. Me."

I oblige with an overhead that comes right down on her scalp and slams her into the ground. Then I swing again.

Once. Twice. Thrice. A dent in the train's roof forms under her head. Bits of brain, bone, and blood fly everywhere. Her perfect little face disintegrates. Her perfect clothing gets spattered in blood.

I stop swinging and pause to examine my handiwork. The avatar is well and truly dead. Her limbs twitch once, a postmortem reflex from a brain that isn't there anymore.

Then they twitch again. And again.

As if being rewound, the bloodstains on her perfect clothing dissipate. Her perfect little face reassembles itself. Bits of blood, bone, and brain are sucked from thin air back into her skull. The dent in the roof stays.

I swing the bat down again. The tendril whips upwards and stops it. Natasha hops to her feet, looking like she just got out of her walk-in closet instead of beaten to death by a magic baseball bat.

Green flame pours from her eye sockets. She winks at me. "I think you missed."

Natasha tackles me right off the train and onto the trunk of the Porsche. I land flat on my back and she lands on top of me. She wraps her tendril around the bat, wrenches it out of my grasp, and flings it away.

"My turn."

The tendril sharpens into a scythe and comes down for the killing blow.

"Tokyopop!" Alliott's voice is audible without my earpiece.

Natasha pauses and we both look over at Alliott. Then there's a sound like a chainsaw cutting through metal and what's left of Natasha is splattered against the Phitransimun Combine like a fly.

"Get the fuck in!" Alliott yells from behind the gun. Then she disappears below the sunroof.

I take a few hasty breaths, then scramble over the machine gun and fall into the car with my feet on the dash. Alliot immediately pushes a button on the gearstick and floors the gas. My vision fills with the colors of the rainbow and then they're gone, replaced by the darkness of the industrial district and the neon glow of the Kemonomimi Zaibatsu's cat logo.

Alliott slams on the brakes, and we screech to a halt in the KMZ parking lot. Neither of us speak for several minutes, not daring to believe what just happened. Then my ribs suddenly flare up. I wince audibly.

"Oh shit," Alliott says. "You okay?"

"I think some of my ribs are broken," I cough out.

"Shit," she says. "C'mon, let's get you to the infirmary."

Alliott lets me lean on her as we walk inside. The receptionist looks up at us and just says,"Third door on the right."

We limp into the infirmary together. There's nobody else around, but Alliott takes charge. She retrieves some bandages and fabric shears and cuts my hoodie away.

"Why are you wearing a corset?"

Oh shit, I think. "Don't take it off," I gasp.

"What? Why?" Alliott inspects the corset carefully. "Oh, I see. Combat corset. Wait, why didn't you tell me you were wearing one of these? Could've saved the hoodie."

"I… forgot about it?" I offer.

She cocks her head and offers an expression of sardonic bemusement. At that moment, Alliott's phone dings, and she looks through it.

"They tied. Anderson and ICSUT tied."

It's like a dam bursting. Then we both start giggling like madwomen.

"The hack went through," Alliott laughs. "I can't believe it."

I pull my own phone out and look at my own civilian bank account. I'm more than two million dollars richer.

"Want to grab a drink?" she says. "On me. I think we both need it."

Natasha's words echo in my mind. She almost skewered me back there, and that was just with a clone. I'm going to have to face the real Natasha soon enough, and I doubt I have a snowball's chance in hell of beating her. I have the Inside Man on my side — but she has all my powers, and then some. More than that, she's fueled by five years worth of hate — most of it deserved.

I need to get her out of my head.

"If it's all the same to you," I say, "I'd rather get right to the shagging."

Feed the Need Machine

Alliott and I do not get right to the shagging. She tells me that as soon as my ribs tape themselves back together we can shag. But right now I need booze, bed rest — and to explain what in the hell was going on with Natasha. Which is, admittedly, a much more intimate way to spend time with someone.

But I don't want to be intimate. I want my back blown out by a girl who roller derbies with her clones.

Instead, Alliott goes out to retrieve Alex's body. I relay all the sordid details of my failed relationship over the phone. When she returns, we spend the rest of the night researching Natasha Tokyopop in one of the bunkrooms that KMZ offers its members. Alliott's fancy laptop lets her access information from other realities, so we go on an interdimensional web surf and dig up as much as we can on her and her group, the Chicago Wraiths. Things have changed since I left home.

When I say 'home', I don't mean 'house'. I mean 'universe'. I mentioned this way back when, but I left Natasha by physically leaving my home reality and fleeing here. This universe is more primitive than my original — for whatever reason, the government keeps a tight lid on the occult. Which is just fine by me. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen.

But where I'm going, I'm not queen anymore. I'm barely even a pawn. My only hope is to make it to the other side of the board, and to get there I'll need as much dirt as I can dig up about Natasha. And these are the facts.

Fact: Chappell Wraith Securities is a subsidiary of Wraith Enterprises, a veritable conglomerate with its hands in private security, aerospace and demonic engineering. Fact: Wraith Enterprises are based on the moon, and can only be reached via Way or shuttle from a space elevator. Fact: Wraith Enterprises have built a space elevator.

It's all very space-age and fancy — and a far cry from the shit we used to get up to. That moonbase used to be a moon coven. The space elevator didn't exist. We spent our time figuring out how to dunk on cops, not privatize them. But that was a long time ago. If I know Natasha, she's set up all manner of counter-spells to ensure that I can't get there by magical means. I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way — or at least, as old-fashioned as my home gets.

Fact: The space elevator is utterly inhospitable to human beings. Even ignoring the Van Allen belt, which pumps out enough radiation to give Spider-Man cancer, the G-forces caused by the sheer speed of travel would turn me into jelly. Fact: Robots make the journey fairly often, performing repairs or otherwise overseeing the function of the elevator. Conclusion: If I want to reach the moon, I'll need to be a robot. Or something mostly robot.

Unfortunately, I'm mostly human.

This will have to change. Which is a whole bundle of problems on its own, as the Inside Man helpfully points out (by hijacking my vocal chords to voice his opinions). It's not the augmentations themselves I'm worried about. Once I have my heart back, I have a half-dozen different formulas I can use to regenerate my fleshy bod. The problem is getting them in the first place.

There are three legitimate — well, semi-legitimate — sources for augments: Anderson Robotics, the Servants of the Silicon Nornir, or one of the underground Maxwellist clinics. Anderson charges a fortune, and if I try to jailbreak so much as a finger it's likely to blow up and take the whole arm with it. If I let the Servants get ahold of my biometrics, I might as well just walk into prison. And if I get upgraded at a Maxwellist clinic, they'll fill my brain with so much scripture there won't be room for me.

There's no shortage of illegitimate augment rings, but most of them are janky as fuck. If I just went to any old back-alley doctor I'd be as likely to get a perfect full-body transplant as my organs harvested and brain wired to a crypto-mining rig. That leaves exactly one option: Farhan Jahaniam. Then I remember that I beat Farhan to death with his own arm a few months ago.

I'm stumped.

"MachineGod," Alliott says. "You could see MachineGod."

I snort. "MachineGod? He only augments influencers. He doesn't deal with peasants like us."

"You're not a peasant anymore." Alliott turns the laptop towards me. The headline onscreen reads, "Bringing Down the House".

I read through the article quickly. In short? Oneiroi, Inc. is crippled. Our heist wrecked their headquarters and most of their human capital. The upset at the deathball match did the rest. My balaclava-clad face and the name "Chicago Spectre" are plastered all over the news.

"We took down a megacorp last night and became overnight millionaires," Alliott says. "How much more influential can you get?"

"So what?" I say. "You want me to just walk into his place and say, 'Let me in, I'm the Rookie'?"

Alliott taps her prosthetic arm. "It worked for me."

---

The next day we assemble a list of augmentations that I'll need to survive the trip up and make plans to meet the MachineGod. Before I head out, I dress to party, swapping out my helmet for a rave mask and cat-ear headphones. Then I strap my skates on and promptly fall over.

My skates are rocket-powered. But the juice flows from my heart, which I am currently lacking. So instead of letting the city melt into a blur of light and metal, I take the train. I keep the cat headphones on, but the rave mask gets bundled into my pocket. Nobody pays attention to me; I'm just one more weirdo in a city of thousands. My chest aches, but I ignore it and look out the window as we enter the crimson-light district.

The corporate district is where money is made; Neuneukolln is where money is stolen. But the crimson-light district is where money is spent. You can get a full-body augmentation courtesy of Anderson in the morning, shop for synthetic rubies in the afternoon, and then cap the day off with an eight-course French dinner. Or you can buy a sexbot, have it upgraded with combat programming and equipment, and then have its facial features completely resculpted to resemble your favorite waifu. There's a reason the Bank of Eurtec was built here. The crimson-light district is the peak of unethical consumption. It's a black hole into which money disappears.

The train stops right by MachineGod's temple, but there's not much to see aboveground. Like an iceberg, most of his domain is below the surface. The only indication of life is EDM rising up from a staircase nestled between a sex shop and an armory. I strap the rave mask to my face, then head down.

There's a roided-up bouncer at the bottom of the stairs. She's sporting a second pair of cybernetic arms grafted to the sides of her ribs, and looks like she's already planning to throw me back up.

"Tell the MachineGod that the Rookie wants in," I tell her. She sizes me up for a moment and her eyes go far away.

"The MachineGod welcomes his newest acolyte." The doors open. I walk into MachineGod's neon coliseum.

It's sweltering and muggy. The strobe lights are an ugly neon pink. Everyone here is mashed together and wired up. Thick black cables dangle from the ceiling like a puppet master's strings, plugging into every exposed orifice they can find and replacing people's blood with EDM. The floor itself is a giant subwoofer; TeddyLoid rattles my teeth with every step.

In the center of this sea of flesh and metal is a massive ring of steps leading up to a shiny steel dais. Atop the dais sits a combination throne and turntable set. MachineGod's twelve apostles lounge on the throne's enormous armrests. Each of them wears a simple white sling swimsuit and high heels, exposing their cybernetic flesh for the titillation of the crowd. A pair of disembodied hands expertly scratches the turntable, wired to the suspended, dismembered body of MachineGod himself.

MachineGod is a lot of things. A power player in the Eurtec underworld; an information broker who operates on an industrial scale; a complex messiah; a thrower of parties; an influencer, a pusher, a God. Some people claim that he's a rogue AI — a prototype Norn that escaped onto the Internet. Others think he's an actual god — an avatar of Mekhane or Vishnu, adapted for the modern age. Still others argue that he was the first person to figure out how to emulate consciousness on a machine. Nobody knows for sure. Nobody really cares either. What's important is that the MachineGod fought and died for our right to party. He's our lord, savior, and DJ. And this is his most sacred temple.

MachineGod's thick, muscular torso is directly above the center of the throne, underneath a mounted head and surrounded by four separate pairs of arms and legs. Robotic manipulators pop out from hidden rails under the steps and grasps his parts, bringing them together and stringing thick spindles of wire between them as they descend. In one fluid movement, the grippers detach themselves and MachineGod's body clicks together as he lowers himself onto his throne.

MachineGod's eyes glimmer like diamonds against a face sculpted by a neo-renaissance surgeon. His biceps compete for my attention with his bronzed, sleekly toned thighs. His apostles scoot closer, leaning against him and fondling an abdomen chiseled to perfection. With four hands, he caresses them. With the other four, he mixes a beat that makes my heart bounce in my chest.

His voice resonates in my ear. "Welcome, Rookie, to my temple!"

At the sound of my name, the crowd parts around me like the Red Sea, opening a path to the dais. I hear murmurs in the crowd. They're talking about the Bank of Eurtec. The Phitransimun Combine. Oneiroi Inc.

"Tales of your exploits have spread far and wide. Have you come to seek my blessing?"

I nod once, not trusting myself to speak. Instead, I let the Inside Man take over my voice.

"MachineGod!" we say. All eyes turn to us. "I request your blessings. Augment me."

MachineGod laughs — a quick burst of record scratches that pierce my ears. "How bold! I would expect nothing less from the woman who broke Oneiroi's back. What do you desire?"

I rattle off a list of augments. "Full-body augment. Ceramic frame. Protection for high G-force and orbital re-entry. Full cognitive upload. I need my chest organs intact, brain optional. I need to be combat-ready. Unarmed, knife-fighting, guns, the works. Cognitive overclocker. Infrared tracking and magnifying lenses. Weapons. Something bladed. And something to interface with computers."

"I do not bestow my gifts lightly. What would you do with them?" he asks. "Would you be my apostle? Or my champion?"

"Neither," we say. "I want them so I can kill my ex. On the moon."

He laughs again. "Entertainment! Truly, hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned. And what do you offer in return?"

The music fades away.

"What will you sacrifice at my altar?"

"What do you want?" we ask.

MachineGod contemplates. "What do I want, I wonder?"

A bassline comes on, getting faster and faster.

The crowd waits with bated breath to hear his answer. The upper steps of the ring descend, lowering the throne onto a wider level of the dais. All the while, MachineGod studies us like ants.

"Ah!" he says aloud. "That will be your sacrifice."

A television screen lowers itself from the ceiling. The turntable flips over, revealing an operating table. The lowest step of the dais flips upward, becoming a ring looming over the throne. Camera lenses open up on the ring, and a series of manipulators with surgical tools emerge. A long, black cable extends from the ring.

"The Ophanim shall be the tool of your ascension. You shall be reborn in a forge of music. And in return, I would have your memories. I would know how your love curdles to hatred. I would share that emotion with my people."

The screen turns on, showing our face through the viewpoints of everyone wired up in the club.

"Those are the terms of my blessing. Will you accept?"

We think it over. The Inside Man is certain that he can gatekeep my memories and make sure only the sanitized bits get through — even from a computer. I trust him enough to believe it.

"We — I accept your terms."

The beat drops. The crowd roars.

MachineGod's apostles slide from the throne and descend the steps towards me. They surround me and sweep me off my feet, carrying me up the steps. Before I can blink, I'm strapped to the operating table, staring up at the ophanim. MachineGod takes hold of the thick black cable and jams it through a hole in the table into the base of my skull.

I feel a sharp pain, and then nothing.

In the Shadow of the Spectre

The year is… I'm not sure to be honest.

My memories are fucked up from getting so many bad ones sucked out by Oneiroi. I know it's my junior year at ICSUT. I'm double-majoring in theological engineering and biochemistry. Never let it be said I don't challenge myself.

But I'm not particularly challenged physically, and it's showing in the mirror. Pumping iron doesn't appeal to me, but maybe there's some clubs that will. Parkour looks interesting. Judo too. I could use a good cardio workout — and I've always wanted to learn how to choke somebody out. Plus I could use the social interaction.

So that night, I put on my hitherto-unused gym sweats and attend my first-ever judo session. There are four other people there with me: a German exchange student, a slim Asian, the instructor, and a blonde European woman who introduces herself as Natasha. She's been part of the club for two years — the second-oldest member behind the instructor.

The first thirty minutes is warm-ups. My muscles scream as we bounce around the mat. For the next hour, we practice fundamental techniques. As the only women in the room, Natasha and I practice with each other. We learn the roll. The hip escape. The mount.

The final half-hour is what's known as free-rolling, where we pit our pitiful skills against one another. Naturally, Natasha volunteers to spar with me. I'm outmatched in seconds. She sprawls out against me and pins me so fast it makes my head swim.

It's that moment, with her tits mashed against mine, that I realize I've got the hots for other women.

---

It's later. I don't know how much later. Weeks, maybe? I've been stalking Natasha on social media, and just found out she's had an explosive breakup — with her girlfriend. This is my chance.

I've been attending the judo sessions religiously. It's finally starting to pay off. So that evening, after our session, I invite her out to a movie.

The movie is Lucy. Thankfully, the rest of the night goes much better, as we spend the rest of it laughing about how terrible the movie was. Natasha complains about how she's wearing Louboutins for the entirety of the film. I drone on for an hour about how I could make better nootropic drugs with what I learned in Applied Theology and the campus biochemistry labs. Somehow, it doesn't put her into a coma. She invites me to lunch the following week.

I think I'm in love.

---

At our lunch date, we talk about a robbery conducted in the past day by a criminal group called the Chicago Specter. Natasha's oddly defensive of them; when I ask why, she starts lecturing me about late-stage capitalism. I figure she'll grow out of her communist kick in a year, but admire her dedication anyways. She's at least trying to make the world a better place. Which is currently more than I can say for myself. But that line of thinking makes me feel guilty. I shove it out of my mind by concentrating on her breasts.

Eventually I tire of hearing about the alienation of the common worker and ask her if she's seeing anyone. She admits that she had a girlfriend with whom she has now broken up. I commiserate the feeling and tell her that my girlfriend dumped me as well. This is a bold-faced lie. I've only ever had girlfriends in the strictly friend sense. But she doesn't need to know that.

---

There's a carnival coming to town, so I invite her to it. If I'm lucky, we'll smooch on the Ferris wheel. We throw balls at the dunk tank (I miss every shot — she hits the target dead-on first try), ride the shitty spinning teapots and the carousel, fake screams on the pirate ship, and share cotton candy and caramelized apple. But the Ferris wheel breaks down while we're in line.

My plans are shot, so I try to salvage what I can by suggesting my go-to shitty date idea: a movie. Natasha suggests a film, but there isn't a showing for several hours. She invites me back to her place to watch television until the movie. She has her own car (how cool is that) so we drive uptown to her apartment. It's a small, shitty condo, but one that she clearly takes a lot of pride in. There's a living room-kitchenette combo, with a couch and a queen futon in front of a small telly. I park myself on the futon and prop my back against the couch. Natasha does the same.

We watch anime for a while. She's trying to get me into Fullmetal Alchemist. Her favorite character is the suit of armor. It appeals to her cybernetic sensibilities. I'm content to sit quietly and listen to her talk about how the show's setting tackles themes of fascism and nationalism. I might be within rubbing distance of Natasha but I'm too cowardly to make a move. The movie's starting soon. She tells me she has a better idea, then turns the TV off. She plucks my glasses from my face and straddles me.

I think to myself, ah, what the hell, and pull her down so our lips meet. We make out and cuddle for a while. Her breath tastes like caramel apples. Then she slides her hands under my shirt.

---

It's a lot of fun having a girlfriend. I introduce her to demonics and comics. She introduces me to Marxism and strap-ons. All good things must end, however. I can't find any internships stateside and end up returning home to Wolverhampton for the summer. I spend my internship exorcising faulty surgical robots and slowly becoming radicalized by video chats with Natasha. Then the Brexit referendum pushes me over the edge to full-on ancom.

Natasha pushes me to get out there and turn theory into praxis, but I can't. I come from a long and distinguished line of Brahmin scholars, and dear old dad thinks Thatcher could have taken a few lessons from across the pond. I am simply incapable of dealing with the fallout if he were to discover that I'd turned commie. Natasha's much too understanding, and it just makes me feel guiltier. I'm actually glad to come back to ICSUT for the fall semester and hide away in my schoolwork.

Natasha's graduating this semester, with a double-major in biomedical thaumaturgy and robotics. She hasn't said a word about what she plans to do once she leaves. She'll probably join an NGO or something, or maybe just run off and start a revolution somewhere. I've poked her about it a few times, but she's noncommittal about it. I don't pry — after twenty years of being interrogated by parents, it's nice to spend time with someone who's content to just spend time with me in silence.

---

A month into the semester, Natasha drags me out into the middle of the woods. I initially suspect she wants to shag (which is an absolute no-go in the fucking forest), but we just end up in a nondescript clearing. Then Natasha opens a portal to hell underneath my feet.

It's not actually a portal to hell. It's like being flushed down the toilet to hell. For what seems like an eternity my lungs feel ready to burst and I'm submerged in slime and my body is being stretched into spaghetti. Then the eternity ends. I take a deep, deep breath and collapse to my knees and puke. Natasha helps me up, then I get a look at my surroundings and puke again. My vomit sails out onto the Moon.

The Moon. The honest-to-God Moon. I'm on the Moon and I'm alive. Apart from the projectile vomiting, I actually feel pretty good. My sweater is more than warm enough, the air tastes cold but clean, and as far as I can tell the gravity seems about the same on earth.

And the view is amazing. We're in a little cave on a mountain, overlooking what Natasha tells me is the Mare Imbrium: a sea of gray pockmarks illuminated against a deep black sky. Far off, there's a little blue ball hanging against the horizon. It makes me feel small.

We spend a quarter of an hour admiring the view. Then Natasha drags me deeper into the cave, into a twenty-first-century witches' coven. It's a well-furnished bubble in the depths of the Moon. There's a microwave, toaster oven, and refrigerator in the corner. They're plugged into a power strip sitting in the middle of a pentagram and plugged into itself.

Three witches lounge on couches, swiping through their phones or (somehow) browsing the Web on their laptops. Natasha whistles to get their attention. The white girl in the Pikachu cap introduces herself as Zabutom. The Chinese girl draped across her legs tells me she goes by Tracy Tzu. Across from them, taking a swig from a bottle of Shock Top, is the girl who tells me to call her — in her own words — Diya, the tankie furry from Texas. I ask her if I can just call her Diya. She says no.

Natasha reveals that this is the the Chicago Specter, a gang of ultra-leftist magical girls. They're all unlicensed thaumatologists, which is practically unheard of — the ability to naturally cast spells is highly rare, highly prized, and highly regulated. They use their abilities to act as modern-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. And she's their leader.

That's super hot, and I tell her as much. But while I may outwardly sympathize with their mission, I feel like a sheep in a den of wolves. I have neither the courage nor the magical ability to get out there and raise hell with them. Diya voices this opinion for me, but Natasha explains that I don't need to. I'm their force multiplier. I once told her that I could make nootropic drugs that put Lucy to shame — now she wants me to prove it.

I get to work in the school labs the next night, crafting a theologically-enhanced nootropic cocktail. The next time Natasha invites me to the coven, I give them a set of pills guaranteed to improve their reflexes, make their thinking more tactical, and even give them mild telekinesis. The Specter immediately consume them and then teleport away; two hours later, they return with bags full of loot. Thanks to my pills, they circumvented virtually every security measure inside a Swedish vault and made an impossibly clean getaway.

That night, Natasha and I fuck like bunnies.

---

At first, everything goes great. I connect with Zabutom and Tracy Tzu and we become great friends. Only Diya remains cool towards me. I get the sense that she has the hots for my girlfriend, so I make sure to send her frequent glares that let her know who's Natasha's girl. I fall into a comfortable routine — wake up, rush to class, do my homework, go to the coven and make drugs, fall asleep, then wake up and rush to class. Saturdays are date days: Natasha and I sing karaoke, race go-karts, go for long walks in the park, the usual. Once or twice we just stay in bed all day.

I'm living my best life. Nothing can go wrong. Until one day it does.

Two months into the semester, all four members of the Specter embark on a bank job. Only three of them come back. I find out online the next day that Zabutom, real name Ingrid, was killed during a three-hour standoff in Germany. A week after Zabutom's death — I can't bring myself to call her Ingrid — Natasha is already back to work, robbing some rich asshole with Diya and Tracy Tzu. I convince myself that Zabutom was killed because she didn't have the right stuff and spend even more time devising new narcotics. And then the semester actually kicks in.

Natasha pressures me to produce more and more drugs for her, but my schoolwork keeps piling up and it's all I can do just to stay afloat. We start growing more distant; I keep having labs and projects and tests due, and my grades keep slipping. As the stressors pile up and I develop a tolerance to my own nootropics, I begin to crack as well. I start resenting Natasha and Zabutom. Have they ever thought about me? Have they ever noticed how fucking stressed I am? I shouldn't care if Zabutom died — fuck her! Then I feel even more guilty of my selfishness and work twice as hard. My weight drops. I stop going to judo. Panic attacks become a common occurrence. I don't tell any of this to Natasha.

Things finally come to a head the week before Thanksgiving. There's something due in every single one of my classes. The worst one is biochemistry: I've been tasked with creating a multivitamin, but my lab partner has wisely chosen to drop the class. Now I'm left holding the bag and have five days to do what would take two people a week. I stop sleeping and start relying on copious quantities of coffee to do the trick. I can barely breathe and my heart thumps like it plays drums for KMFDM.

It's in this fugue state, as I eye the sixth-story window, that I make my breakthrough. Theology-based pharmaceuticals are essentially rituals in a can. The manufacturer combines the materials used to summon a divine entity with the actual drugs needed to reach the desired effect. The user's body acts as the ritual array and their metabolism supplies energy as payment. When the user takes the drug, the divine is summoned inside the user, and amplifies the effects of the drug as desired.

But what if we were to go the opposite way? What if, instead of summoning a deity, we summoned a demon? They're orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than deities, and they have a wider range of effects. There's no shortage of theory on how demonarcotics would work, but they all hit the same roadblock — demons don't discharge energy inside people. They unleash it. Ten times out of ten, a person who tries to summon a demon within themselves will spontaneously combust. Nobody's really been able to figure out how to regulate the discharge of demonic energy in an organic entity. But if you could… well, you'd be unstoppable.

Which brings me to my idea. Thaumaturges are already capable of channeling and regulating the flow of thaumic energy. Sure, it's not the same as demonic energy. But if you can channel one, then there has to be a way to channel the other. And I think I've figured out how.

I grab a boxcutter from a nearby table, assemble a summoning array on my workbench, and arrange acetaminophen and dextroamphetamines inside. In a nootropically-enhanced furor, I program the summoner without even pausing to debug it and flip the switch. There's a crackling sound as my summoner rummages around the bowels of hell. Sparks fly from the pentagram and make my hair stand on end.

The reek of sulphur fills the air. A fat, red, hairy head with horns and leering yellow eyes begins to emerge from the summoner. I've summoned Belphegor, one of the princes of Hell. He's cackling: a low gibbering sound that rattles around in the head and chills the bone.

I stab him in the eye.

The Eye of the Hurricane

My first-ever demonarcotic is speed on crank. Belphegor's remains act as a drain, siphoning off sloth and replacing it with laser-like reflexes. Either that, or it will put the user into a permanent coma. I'd put the odds at ninety-to-ten. Natasha doesn't even blink when I explain the consequences. She simply passes the pills to Diya and Tracy. Then they down them with a glass of water and disappear.

Two hours later, the three of them return with satchels full of papers: stocks, bonds, property deeds, and more. I'm expecting Natasha to reveal some juicy gossip, maybe tell us how the Prime Minister is a slave owner or something, but she just drops the satchel on the ground. Then she passes me a lighter and asks me to set the satchel on fire. I comply.

This, she says, is for Zabutom.

Diya and Tracy add their bags to the mix. As we watch the papers burn, I realize that perhaps some of the burning documents belonged to normal people — ordinary folks just trying to get by. Natasha shrugs when I point the issue out. Burn 'em all, she says, and let God sort them out. She kisses me.

Afterwards, in bed, she strokes my hair and tells me she loves me. It's the first time she's ever said that. I nestle deeper into the crook of her arm.

I wonder, does she love me? Or does she love what I can do?

Is there a difference?

---

I continue to develop drugs for Natasha and her crew. In exchange, they start bankrolling my studies. With some forged documents courtesy of Tracy, I convince my parents that I've won a series of scholarships. Natasha, Diya, and Tracy become infamous as the Chicago Spectre while I toil in the background. I plan to publish my research on demonarcotics eventually — I'm sure it'll win me a Nobel. I stay on campus for the winter break. My parents think that I'm doing research with a professor over the break, and they're half right. Natasha and I reconnect; she gets me a Vespa for Christmas and we start taking joyrides on it.

Then my final semester rolls around, and the joyrides come to a halt. When I'm not sleeping or eating, I'm working on a final project. I prepared for this ahead of time, and whipped up more than enough demonarcotics over the break to cover the Spectre. But my relationship with Natasha becomes effectively long-distance, limited to video chats on Fridays and Sunday trips to the Moon. I'm mostly okay with this. As it turns out, the less sex you're having, the more fun it is to have. But I can't help but feel that I'm slipping away from her — and letting Diya get closer.

My worst fears are realized barely a month into the semester. I'm talking to Natasha over video-chat when Diya enters the screen. Natasha stands up and they shake hands. Then they slap them against each other. It's a secret handshake.

At first, I try to play it off and tease them about it. Natasha smiles bashfully — but Diya smirks. I know that smirk. It's the same one I give her when she sees me smooch Natasha. If I don't do something soon, I'm going to lose my girlfriend to a fucking furry.

I tell Natasha that I want to start going out on operations with her. She points out that I don't have any innate magical capabilities. Demonarcotics are strictly off-limits to me, so the best I could do is get myself killed quickly in a gunfight. But she'd love to spend more time with me.

It's not that, I lie. I just want to be more useful. I've been working on a fix for that, anyways — a project that will turn me into a magical girl like her.

This is also a bold-faced lie. I'm barely keeping afloat with my schoolwork. But Natasha doesn't need to know that.

---

With the prospect of imminent ascendance hanging over mine and Diya's heads, our unspoken conflict heats up. Diya gets into robotics. I spend a goodly portion of my Sunday visits listening to her and Natasha debate about the metal needed in a catgirl's spine — tail included — and whether or not to have touch sensors in the ears that'll make the androids mewl. I use her excitement to motivate myself in my new quest to become a magical girl.

I bring Natasha home to my parents. Much to my shock, they respond favorably. Privately, they tell me that I'll always have a home with them, and my father approves of my girlfriend's career path. This is the exact opposite response I was looking for — they're supposed to kick me out of the house so that Natasha will spend more time doting on me and less on Diya. That night, lying in my childhood bed, I figure out how to convert my veins into biothaumic channels.

Diya acquires a new hobby: manga. She joins our two-woman shoujo club and introduces us to books like Spice & Wolf and Basara. Our club discussions become infused with debates about the merits of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism versus anarcho-communism. I just want to go back to reading manga and cuddling with Natasha, but I'm worried that saying anything will just make me look bad in front of her. So I just redouble my efforts to bypass the blood-brain barrier and implant a demonic consciousness directly into my cerebral cortex.

At the beginning of May, the entire Specter disappears with my entire supply of performance enhancements. They return a week later with nothing but tired faces and filthy clothing. When I ask them where they've been, Natasha tells me to google a popular retail chain. I find out that the children of the chain's entire board of directors have been kidnapped; the ransom note is a demand to enable the company's workers to join independent trade unions without reprisal.

I tell Natasha that she shouldn't be bringing children into this. Diya barges into the conversation, arguing that the board of directors is holding thousands upon thousands of children ransom — the children of the company's workers. They depend on the company's pathetic wages to feed their kids, and thus have zero bargaining power. I want to ask what'll happen to the hostages if the company refuses to cooperate. But Natasha's on Diya's side, and I don't want to give the furry any more leverage. So instead of asking meaningful questions, I change the subject to my research on using the cardiovascular system as a point of thaumic leverage.

Luckily, the company caves within three weeks. A few days after it's confirmed that the workers have started unionizing, I see on the news that the kids have been returned mostly the same. They all have a washed-out look and can't remember a thing about the past month. I can barely bring myself to kiss Natasha that night, but Diya needs a reminder who Natasha's girl is.

Except when I go to kiss her goodnight, she's too busy working on android catgirls with Diya. She barely even notices the kiss on the cheek as the catgirl boots up with a MIDI-meow. Natasha and Diya share a fistbump.

I don't go to sleep that night. Instead, I concoct a cocktail that will either overclock my brain or make it melt out my ears. Time is running out, but I'm going to become a magical girl if it kills me.

---

It doesn't. By graduation, I've figured out how to do it. I'm going to bond myself to a demon. In exchange for energy from my metabolic processes, it will let me channel thaumaturgic and theologic energies. If I survive — which I'm reasonably sure I will — I won't quite have magical powers. What I will have is the ability to get high off my own supply, which should let me achieve more or less the same effect.

We decide to do it the day after commencement. Tracy's feeling sick, so Natasha and Diya help me construct the transmutation circle in the coven. It consists of a pair of concentric circles with a hexagram circumscribed by the outer ring, with electronic summoners at three of the hexagram's tips to summon the demon and specify its task and payment. The payment is the three of us. Natasha and Diya will provide the initial down payment of energy. The demon will attempt to secure the rest of its payment from the individual at the focal point of the ritual: me.

We take our positions on the hexagram. I hit ENTER on the laptop that controls the three summoners. The ritual begins.

There's a whirring sound as the summoners execute the first part of the program and the rings of the transmutation circle spin. The hexagram glows as a bright white entity appears at the center of the circle. It looks just like me — but has no mouth.

Natasha and Diya cast the spells I've directed them to, feeding the entity the first part of its payment. But it's still hungry, and the hexagram is pointing it towards the only person in the room that hasn't paid the transmutation toll.

As the entity floats towards me, I press ENTER again. The summoners kill the binding array and automatically generate a new one. The entity pauses as it senses the ritual shifting, but it's too late. It's acquired a taste for EVE, and the stuff is addictive. But the terms of the new ritual have left it completely locked out from all other existing EVE channels in the area. In order to get more, it'll have to make a new one: me.

I lock eyes with the entity. We both understand the deal that I'm making. There's no going back for either of us.

The entity grabs my mouth, pries it open, and stuffs itself down my throat. It's like I'm being cooked alive and flash-frozen at the same time. The sharp reek of pork fills the air. A low gurgling sound becomes audible from far away — there's a moment of detached epiphany when I realize the sound is coming from my throat. Red steam hisses from my pores as my body flushes itself of blood and my bone marrow replaces it with gasoline. My heart stops. Then it restarts. Not as a heart, but as an engine, with pistons that generate a drumbeat of the damned. My death-gurgle ebbs. I cry out and then fall silent.

The ritual ends. The rings stop spinning. The hexagram dims. We fall back heavily, and then Natasha rushes over to examine me. I wave her off and take a moment to admire my new form.

My vision is sharper. My muscles feel developed. I feel better. Harder. Faster. Stronger.

I want to punch a bitch. I want to rob a bank. I want to walk away from an explosion. I want to get out there and do something. Hell, I can do anything. And I know exactly what I want to do first.

I fish a couple of pills from my jean pockets and pop them both into my mouth. I swallow them without so much as a sip of water and grab Natasha by the arm. A portal opens up underneath our feet, dropping us through space and time onto my Vespa.

There's a helmet dangling from the handle. I plop it onto Natasha's head — safety first — before gunning the ignition. The engine doesn't catch; my heart does, with a variably manifolded interior space that has twice the CCs and fuel economy. With a disproportionately loud roar, the tiny scooter blasts out of the parking lot into the Toronto rush hour. I navigate through the gridlock with hellishly fast reflexes, taking the four-oh-one onramp and cutting in front of a trailer truck at three-digit velocities. The honk makes us vibrate in our seat.

Natasha grips me tighter as we weave between semis at more than two hundred kilometers an hour. After a few minutes, the road clears up. I decelerate on the downhill — not because I'm scared, but so we can enjoy the view. Ahead of us, the sky turns purplish-pink, with shades of orange emanating from the dipping sun.

For a minute, I let myself stop thinking. Instead, I focus on the here and now: the colors of the sunset ahead of us, the purr of the Vespa, the warmth in my heart, and Natasha's breasts pressed against my back.

She hugs me tighter. I pull off the highway and park the Vespa on the median.

We take our helmets off and make out. The whole time my tongue is in Natasha's mouth, I'm thinking about Diya. About how I've won.

---

My field ops mostly consist of standing around and looking scary or throwing a few fireballs at empty cop cars. I'm not terribly comfortable with the idea of killing anyone, even if they are complete bastards. Still, with an extra pair of hands, our operations move a lot faster and I'm able to spend more time doing other things with Natasha. Natasha forgets all about her android catgirls; her new pet project becomes conjuring up a super robot. Mine becomes finding increasingly outlandish places for us to shag and smirking at Diya afterwards.

But Diya's a tricky bitch who doesn't go down easily. After one shoujo club meeting, she asks if I can teach her and Natasha how to make demonarcotics. Her rationale is that now that I'm in the field, things are a lot dicier. If I get hurt, then the entire Specter will be crippled.

Natasha concurs with Diya's argument. I demur. This is what makes me valuable to Natasha. If she can do what I do — no, if Diya can do what I do, then I'm toast.

I don't tell her that. I explain to them that demonarcotics is a highly precise science that could melt their brains out of their ears if it isn't done perfectly. That's why I'm the woman for the job. I'm the only person who knows what the hell I'm doing. The words flow easily from my mouth, like a bug in my ear is feeding me lines.

Natasha seems convinced and is content to ask me to write down a few simple recipes at least. But that evening I find Diya poking around my chemistry setup. Immediately I think that I should bash her head into the corner of the workbench. I force myself to ask her, slowly and exaggeratedly, what the hell she's doing. She says she's just curious. I tell her not to touch my equipment and she shoots back that it's an open coven — what's mine is hers and hers is mine.

What goes unspoken is that Natasha is mine.

I go to bed that night imagining the crunch of Diya's skull as I take a claw hammer to it.

---

My third outing with the Chicago Specter is a raid on a corporate data center. While Natasha and Tracy Tzu steal hard drives out of the server room, I have to stand around with a fireball in hand and look menacing so that the IT guys don't try anything funny. The shades and Festie Fever Cheshire Cat Rave Bandanna help, as does the enchantment Natasha put on me to temporarily deepen my voice.

There's not really much to do at first; the IT guys are more than happy to cower on the floor rather than try to be a hero. But then a bunch of security guards enter the room, hands above their heads, with Diya trailing behind them.

This was not part of the plan, and Diya knows it. I snap at her, but she defends herself by saying that they were going for the alarm and it was either this or kill them. I counter with the fact that she was supposed to incapacitate them. She tells me not to pretend like I know better than her. I tell her I don't have to.

At that moment, one of the guards drops his hands and reaches for something at his belt. I flinch. The fireball flies out of my hand.

There's a surreal quality to watching a man die. I can taste the copper in the air. The scent of burning hair invades my nostrils. I pick up an odor like liver, and then something musky, like a thick perfume.

I learn later that that's the scent of boiling cerebrospinal fluid.

The guard stops, drops, and rolls, but the fire won't go out. He won't stop screaming. Neither will the IT guys. I can't stop watching. My shriek dies in my throat.

Natasha and Tracy walk into the room and stare, dumbfounded.

The man rolls for another minute and then stops. The last thing I see as I flee through our escape portal is his burning corpse.

Back in the coven, Natasha yells at me for a full hour about blowing their carefully-crafted plan. Her voice washes over me like a bath of sour milk, but I barely register it. I can't stop thinking about the sound of the man's skin crackling. Or the fact that he probably had a home and a family. Or the way his body smelled like burned red meat.

I let spiders out of the house instead of swatting them. I've never killed a person before. I think I need to see a therapist.

Natasha eventually apologizes and tells me she loves me. Her voice sounds tinnier. Colors seem washed out. I don't reply to her.

Later, after Natasha's fallen asleep, I slide out of bed and go to the fridge. The only alcohol inside is a bottle of Smirnoff. It tastes like marker fluid smells and makes my throat burn like I'm chugging bleach. This is the first time I've ever had anything harder than rose. I ought to be puking up my insides.

But I don't. The burning in my throat subsides nearly immediately. My heart whirrs. A warmth spreads throughout my chest.

There's a whisper in my ear. It's the bug telling me that everything's going to be okay. I trust the bug.

So I listen when the bug tells me to shake Diya awake in the middle of the night. At first she tries to push me away. Then she sees the look in my eyes and groggily follows me into the living room.

I push Diya on the couch and start relaying the bug's words. I know exactly what the fuck Diya is doing: she's trying to replace me. She's trying to learn my secrets. She's trying to make me look incompetent. She's trying to steal Natasha from me.

The bug's voice rises to a fever pitch. Mine follows. I tell Diya that if she doesn't back the fuck away from Natasha, I will beat her into a pulp. My hands start to heat up. I glance down and see that they're on fire. I like that.

I hear a noise from behind and turn around to see Natasha standing in the doorway, head cocked. She does not look happy.

Admittedly, things do not look good. Diya is practically cowering on the couch. I'm looming over her with hands that are on fire. And judging by the look on Natasha's face, she's heard everything I've said for the last five minutes.

I start to say something. Natasha raises a hand and tells me that we'll talk about it in the morning. Then she tells both me and Diya to go the fuck to bed.

I lie awake the rest of the night. When I try to snuggle against Natasha, she rolls over and unconsciously pushes me away.

I think of all the ways I can take a knife to Diya's throat.

---

Things are tense around the breakfast table the next morning. Tracy makes waffles, but she's the only one with an appetite. I reach for the syrup anyways, but my hand touches the bottle at the same time as Diya. We exchange cold glares.

Then Natasha reaches out and yanks the syrup away from us. What, she asks politely, the fuck were we doing last night?

We both start talking at once. Natasha raises a hand again and we fall silent. She points to Diya first.

Diya spins a yarn about how I cruelly tore her from her bed in the middle of the night in a drunken stupor. She gives an impassioned speech about how I'm clearly not cut out for running with the crew and need to take some time off. She even brings up my first kill as evidence of my unfitness. The memory makes my stomach hurt.

Natasha listens to her silently. Then she turns to me and asks for my side of the story. I wait for the bug to tell me what to say.

It remains silent. Natasha's stare bores into my soul. Tracy watches us, frozen with a forkful of waffle halfway to her mouth.

I tell Natasha the only thing that comes to mind: the truth.

She asks why I never said anything to her before. I want to say I was afraid that she'd believe Diya over me. If I do, though, I've all but admitted defeat.

I remain silent.

She asks if this means I only became a magical girl to compete with Diya.

I remain silent.

Natasha's expression tightens. She and Tracy exchange looks. I've never seen her do that before. Then she tells me that she's going out for groceries with Tracy. Diya and I are staying put.

---

We sit in the coven on opposite couches, ditzing around on our phones and pointedly ignoring each other. Once or twice I shoot her a furtive look, only to meet one of her own.

The bug comforts me with the thought that when Natasha comes back, she'll definitely kick Diya out of the coven. I should relax — try my latest demonarcotic.

I retrieve a bong and packet of shredded rakshasa from my workshop, fill it with water, and bring it back to the coffee table. Diya watches me with an upturned eyebrow as I take a test drag. Her other eyebrow raises as I pack the bong with bits of rakshasa and light it up.

I take a hit from the bong and almost immediately start coughing. Diya scoffs.

"Pass it over."

I raise an eyebrow at her. She reaches out with a hand. "Let me show you how it's done."

The bug tells me to give it to her, so I hand it over with the lighter. Diya wipes the mouthpiece with her sleeve and lights up. She takes the hit much more cleanly than me, exhaling a thick cloud of pink smoke. It has a meaty smell to it.

"Good shit," she says, and passes it back. I nod and light up again, attempting to emulate her. This time, I manage not to choke on my own fumes. Tastes like… beef, I think.

We take turns. Diya moves onto my couch to make things easier.

After our third hit, there's an unspoken agreement that we're done. We both laze on the couch in a contented haze. I take a closer look at Diya and realize that she's actually kind of hot.

The bug points out the dimples on her face. The silky smoothness of her hair. The way her lips purse, giving her an adorable pouty look while she browses on her phone.

The bug tells me to kiss her. I comply.

Diya pulls back like she's been electrocuted. Then I hear the sound of shattering glass and turn to see Natasha standing in the room. There's a grocery bag full of smashed lab flasks at her feet.

Natasha doesn't shout or scream. She just talks at me with a flat tone. I'm barely listening; the bug tells me to focus on the bong. Part of me — the part that loves Natasha, that hates Diya, that cannot believe what the fuck I just tried — is screaming at the other part: the large, languid part of me that desires only to lie across on the couch. It's screaming at me to sit the fuck up and save my relationship. The bug tells me to take another hit. I obey.

Natasha's eyebrows shoot up and she clenches her teeth. She asks me if I love her or not. When I tell her I do, she asks why I kissed Diya. Diya leaps off the couch and rushes to stand behind Natasha, claiming the whole time that I came onto her.

I shrug and take another hit. Natasha's hands clench into fists. Diya smirks at me. It's the same one I give her when she sees me smooch Natasha.

Abruptly, it clicks: the smoke smells like burning pork. At the thought, all the guilt I've been repressing rises up. Bile rises with it. My head hurts. I want to cry.

The bug comes to my rescue. Don't cry, it says. Don't feel guilty. If you do you'll just destroy yourself.

Feel angry! Get pissed at them! They want to scream at me while I'm still reeling from what happened to that man? They should be throwing me a fucking party. That murder was the best thing that ever happened to me. It finally took my training wheels off and shoved me down the hill. No more fear or hangups. There's nothing holding me back now.

I don't have to take this from Diya anymore. I don't have to take anything from anyone.

The bug's voice is starting to sound like mine.

I swing my legs off the couch and stand up, bottle in hand. Then I toss the bottle aside and slam my fist into my palm.

Natasha draws back, but I'm not interested in her. I push her aside and stalk towards Diya. Diya chants a spell, and a blue fireball appears in each hand.

I'm high as fuck and practically fireproof. She lobs a fireball at me and I catch it, letting it envelop my hand. Then I clench it into a fist and swing. She might be fireproof too — but I'm just going to tear her heart right out of her bloody chest.

Natasha jumps in front of me. I don't care. Someone needs to die. I'm

My hands pass through Natasha's chest like water, and then enter the blood and viscera. It's like dipping my hands into oobleck — an ectoplasmic metaphor; my brain approximating the sensation of touching Natasha's magic the same way a toddler approximates a painting of Rembrandt.

Natasha sucks in air as her hands fall limp. Diya watches frozen. I smirk at her — it's the one I give her after smooching Natasha, but there's no smugness behind the smile. Just the assurance that she's next.

My hands hit frozen oobleck. I worm my hands around the source of Natasha's ki — of all the metaphors to pick, why that one — and pull. A ghostly, pulsating heart forces its way from Natasha's chest with a squelch. Not her real heart, but an ethereal one, dripping with energy — the prime conduit for her magic. And now it's mine.

Natasha was nothing without me, the bug tells me. She's lucky to have me. She needs me the way I need her — and she needs to be reminded of that. She needs to know what it's like to be me.

I push Natasha away and tear into the heart with my teeth. It tastes like cold iron. Tthe magic that floods through my bones feels like fire.

Natasha stumbles back into Diya's arm and reflexively throws a fire-blast at me. Nothing happens. She stares at her hands in shock.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asks.

The pounding in my head subsides. The cold iron smothers the fire in my heart. I stagger back and fight to keep the bile from rising out of my throat.

What's wrong with me is that I'm a junkie who just crippled my girlfriend.

No, my ex-girlfriend. I've ruined our relationship. I've cocked it right the hell up.

How can I even begin to make this right? Can I?

I need to get out of here right now.

My heart responds. A portal opens up underneath my feet — I hope it's to hell. There's a painful tingling in my stomach as I fall straight downwards. Wind that isn't there rushes past my ears. I feel the chill of the void in my toes. For what seems like an eternity my lungs feel ready to burst and I'm submerged in slime and my body is being stretched into spaghetti. Then the eternity subsides. I take a deep, deep breath and collapse to my knees and puke.

I look up. I'm not on the Moon anymore. Something — in my chest — tells me that I'm not even in my own universe anymore. I'm somewhere else.

I silently beg the bug for help. It doesn't respond.

I'm alone.

I need a drink.

No Rest in Restitution

I wake up with a head full of music and pain. Nothing happens when I try to turn my head, but I'm able to move my eyes. From my vantage point, it looks like I'm suspended high in the air. The pulsing beats, seizure-inducing colors, and deafening roar of the crowd let me know that I'm still in MachineGod's temple.

There's a humming sound, and I sense that I'm being lowered towards the ground. I feel resistance from somewhere below my neck, and then a sharp pressure in my cervical vertebrae. The world starts spinning around me. My neck is being crushed — I can feel my windpipe starting to give, but I can't say anything. I'm not even sure I'm breathing.

There's a clicking sound. The world stops spinning. The pressure on my neck fades. I can still feel the phantom throbbing.

More importantly though, I can move my neck. I get a better look at the structure suspending me and realize that I'm lashed to a cross. Then the metal latches around my limbs release and I fall onto the ground at the base of MachineGod's dais. My vision turns red. Reticles and symbols and flashing lights scream across my eyeballs. Closing my eyes does nothing to stop them. My brain starts shutting down in protest.

"Arise, my champion!" MachineGod's voice booms from the top of the dais. Information keeps screaming across my eyes, but there's a clicking sensation behind them and things start falling into place. I wrestle my brain into submission and look down at my new cyborg body.

My limbs are light brown — an experimental flex of the hands confirms that there's real skin and meat on them. At the same time, though, there are distinct black lines on the back of my palm separating each knuckle and joint. There are what look like vents on my knees. My boobs are shockingly tasteful for MachineGod — they actually look normal instead of pornographic. My body is heavier. More deliberate. More powerful. It's foreign and familiar at the same time. Like wearing your girlfriend's hoodie.

Welcome, Rookie says my phonological loop.

"The fuck?" I say in surprise, tapping my ear. To my even more unwelcome surprise, I feel a pyramidal protrusion from my skull. It feels metallic: a quick examination reveals another one on the other side of my head.

I have cat ears.

This is an extremely unwelcome development.

MachineGod doesn't give me the chance to ponder it further. "I have bestowed upon you my blessings. Your body, hewn from a fallen angel. Your mind, blessed by My ophanim."

"And the cat ears?" I ask.

The corner of his mouth upturns. "A bonus."

I'm about to tell him what he thinks of his bonus when he snaps his fingers. His apostles slide from the throne and surround me.

TETH notes

•TyGently> one thing that might be an issue
3:53 PM <•TyGently> with all these flashback tales you've made the moral situation significantly more complex
3:53 PM <•ARD> yeah, i
3:54 PM <•TyGently> in the grand scope of things diya (and by extension natasha) didn't really do much wrong
3:54 PM <•ARD> i'm fine with that. i mentioned way, way back when but one thing i wanted to do with the final tale was reflect on escape velocity as a whole and its fascination, fetishization, and exploitation of violence
3:54 PM <•ARD> although tbh natasha did do a few things wrong
3:55 PM <NineVolt> btw GW re the AAPA theme, the underglow is in reference to the sidebar, right?
3:55 PM <•ARD> she HAS tried to kill the rookie more than a few times and also killed all those poor office drones
3:55 PM <•TyGently> the things that she did wrong aren't the impetus for her comeuppance, I suppose is the thing
3:55 PM <•TyGently> ARD: is your intention for the rookie to be unsympathetic throughout the final tales
3:56 PM <•ARD> TyGently: no, not wholly. i definitely do have some ideas on how to fix that
3:57 PM <•TyGently> ARD: if you want my pitch for the most obvious emotional arc
3:57 PM <•ARD> yeah
3:57 PM <•TyGently> the Rookie has essentially been running from her past this whole time and skating away from the consequences of her actions
3:58 PM <•ARD> TyGently: definitely one of the themes i've been trying to explore as well — fleeing from the consequences of one's action
3:58 PM <•TyGently> that's the primary conflict of pretty much the whole story, her mistakes finally coming back to haunt her, both in the literal way of Natasha attacking her and in the metaphorical way of being forced to relive her whole journey
3:58 PM <•ARD> and the final reckoning of those consequences
3:59 PM <•ARD> i suppose the final step is for Natasha's own chest engine to consume her
3:59 PM <•TyGently> if the rookie is to be sympathetic at all, she should recognize this and make some attempt to rectify it
3:59 PM <•ARD> forcing the rookie to confront a manifestation of her darkest self
3:59 PM <NineVolt> aaand added. all is now well with the world
3:59 PM <•ARD> TyGently: that too. i've been knocking around some ideas for the rookie to be… less violent, i guess, in the end
4:00 PM <•ARD> to have natasha by the ropes and then stop
4:00 PM <•TyGently> for the rookie to move on she has to accept what she's done, take the consequence, and come out believing that she still deserves a second chance
4:00 PM <•ARD> Mhm
4:00 PM <•TyGently> to that end, I don't think she should kill diya
4:00 PM <•ARD> I was actually considering having the rookie reject her demon heart outright
4:00 PM <•ARD> and spend time as a cyborg
4:01 PM <•TyGently> the only way I see diya's murder being satisfying is if the rookie immediately has an "oh god what have I done" moment
4:01 PM <•TyGently> speaking of: is the rookie's body just… rotting in a dumpster somewhere now
4:01 PM <•ARD> TyGently: machinegod probably sold her bits off or something
4:02 PM <•TyGently> since it was basically all replaced
4:02 PM <•TyGently> that's a horrifying notion that probably can't be adequately explored within this story
4:02 PM <•ARD> i could see a LOT of mileage out of that one, a bunch of cloned fauxkies running around eurtec and three portlands
4:02 PM <•ARD> TyGently: quick pitch
4:02 PM <NineVolt> btw ARD I know you voiced some thoughts on the theme before so do you have any other thoughts on it? have to head off for homework but I'm curious
4:03 PM <•ARD> it's customary for cyborgized people, mekhanites especially, to offer their discarded body parts up as meat to be eaten
4:03 PM <•ARD> either that or just cremated maybe
4:03 PM <•TyGently> would that make sense though, since if there's one thing firmly established by the rookie's backstory, it's that she is not inherently special
4:03 PM <•TyGently> clones I mean
4:03 PM <•ARD> probably not
4:03 PM <•ARD> i do quite love the idea of augmented people just selling off their discarded body parts to pay for the augmentation itself
4:04 PM <•ARD> it's got everything you need in cyberpunk: the metaphorical transformation of a person into profit through capitalism and the distinctly unsubtle physical transformation of a person into profit through high technology
4:05 PM <•TyGently> also if the rookie is pretty much wholly mechanical isn't the whole crusade pointless
4:05 PM <NineVolt> Feels like ample fridge horror for what those body parts get used for imo
4:05 PM <•TyGently> she no longer needs the heart or potentially even has use for it, and probably can't take any kind of drugs anymore let alone demon drugs
4:05 PM <•ARD> She's not wholly mechanical
4:05 PM <•ARD> Think Grievous or Robocop
4:06 PM <•ARD> Metal shell, meaty innards
4:06 PM <•ARD> Hence cyborg
4:06 PM <•TyGently> why does she care about the heart
4:06 PM <•TyGently> the heart augments her biological body doesn't it
4:07 PM NineVolt → BusyVolt
4:07 PM <•ARD> The heart augments her biological body and gives her the ability to use demonarcotics
4:07 PM <•TyGently> are demonarcotics useful once all your bits are artificial, it's not like drugs are going to affect a prosthetic limb
4:08 PM <•ARD> There's a line in Feed the Need Machine that covers this: "It's not the augmentations themselves I'm worried about. Once I have my heart back, I have a half-dozen different formulas I can use to regenerate my fleshy bod. The problem is getting them in the first place."
4:08 PM <•TyGently> we're now in a wholly different place than when we started but this is definitely something that bugged me a bit
4:08 PM <•TyGently> ah, okay
4:08 PM <•TyGently> that makes sense then
4:08 PM <•TyGently> my bad
4:09 PM <•ARD> Without her heart, she's an ordinary mortal (at least in terms of third law). I've been sprinkling that stuff throughout the tale — her having to recuperate in a motel, having to ride the train like a chump instead of using rocket-powered roller skates, needing to get patched up for broken ribs, etc etc
4:09 PM <•ARD> The driving force of Escape Velocity has been her desire to return to where she was in square one: a souped-up devilwoman with superpowers and zero regard for any sort of consequences — for her to reject the heart and choose to live with the consequences would be the cap of the emotional arc
4:10 PM <•TyGently> yeah, I've noticed that, I just figured, I guess — it's easier to sympathize with someone going on a quest to recover something essential to their survival than someone going on a quest to recover something essential to their ability to commit supercrimes
4:10 PM <•TyGently> yeah, I see what you mean now
4:10 PM <•ARD> I've been hesitant to follow that ending though because it means not only shaking up the status quo but also getting rid of what attracted people to the series at the start
4:11 PM <•ARD> The other ending I considered was having her democratize the process - teaching Alliott Chao and the folks at KMZ how to use demonarcotics themselves
4:11 PM <•TyGently> it seems to me that Natasha seems some measure of closure for the arc to feel complete

4:35 PM <•ARD> TyGently: you raise a good point WRT the augmentation thing though, i might go back and edit Feed the Need Machine
4:36 PM <•TyGently> which part was the good point
4:36 PM <•ARD> the plot going from "i need my heart to live" to "i need my heart to be badass" when the rookie becomes a cyborg
4:36 PM <•TyGently> ah yeah
4:36 PM <•ARD> in the original planning stages of escape velocity, alliott wanted the rookie to get some stuff from MachineGod because they hated each other but she still needed stuff from him
4:37 PM <•TyGently> one route you couuuuld take is to have a non-personal reason for the rookie to pursue the heart
4:37 PM <•ARD> i could make some tweaks to Goddess or Godless so that Alliott's car gets wrecked with the stuff she needs to make a Way
4:37 PM <•TyGently> like, if Natasha was planning some ultra evil scheme that required it
4:38 PM <•TyGently> but that's probably a bit too cliché
4:38 PM <•ARD> TyGently: well I did already have that in mind but it was for something else
4:38 PM <•ARD> natasha wanted the heart for two reasons: one, to get HER magic back, and two: to use its power to open a slipgate and make cheap interstellar travel possible
4:39 PM <•ARD> or maybe just conduct a ritual that would instantly kill every landlord on earth
4:39 PM <•TyGently> I mean
4:39 PM <•TyGently> you want her plan to be something that should be stopped, right
4:40 PM <•ARD> that's probably for the best, yes
4:40 PM <•GW> a reminder that even Adam Smith, the dude who invented capitalism, called landlords parasites
4:40 PM <•ARD> Lol
4:40 PM <•TyGently> if there comes a point where the rookie is fighting tooth and nail for the well-being of landlords
4:40 PM <•ARD> oh of course not
4:40 PM <•TyGently> that is the point where I get off this moving train
4:41 PM <•ARD> it would really boil back down to the rookie's selfishness again
4:41 PM <•ARD> stopping a ritual that would do a lot of good just so that she can be special again
4:41 PM <•TyGently> "I was going to kill those landlords"
4:41 PM <•TyGently> "you fucking killstealer"
4:41 PM <•ARD> although i wonder how many of my readers would up vote a tale that ends with the rookie being like "you know what? I'm ok with the ruling class being destroyed"
4:41 PM <tawny-> I don't think it's that unreasonable she'd still want her heart back, because not everyone would be cool with being a metal unfeeling robot
4:41 PM <tawny-> the real problem is
4:41 PM <•ARD> even though escape velocity hasn't particularly tried to hide its political leanings
4:42 PM <tawny-> this reminds us of the possibility that she doesn't need /that/ specific heart
4:42 PM tawny- → tawny
4:42 PM <tawny> she could get a normal replacement heart and repeat the ritual if she really needed to
4:42 PM <•ARD> tawny: good point, I ought to go back to Cirrhosis of the Heart and patch tht
4:42 PM <•TyGently> …that's a good point
4:42 PM <tawny> so I think keeping it personal
4:42 PM <•ARD> a couple lines about "I can't just make a new one. this one is TIED to me"
4:42 PM <tawny> i.e. that the rookie wants HER heart back, because it was taken from her
4:42 PM <•TyGently> can she sell her soul twice
4:42 PM <tawny> would be maybe sensible
4:43 PM <•GW> TyGently: ah, the dragonborn model
4:43 PM <•TyGently> there *is* an idea in the motivations that like
4:44 PM <•GW> devil can't collect your soul if you've sold it to all the devils
4:44 PM <•ARD> GW: lol I had THAT idea too
4:44 PM <•ARD> the rookie goes down to hell because she needs to make another deal with the devils
4:44 PM <tawny> what if they just start a time-share with your soul
4:44 PM <•ARD> though I think Constantine did it first
4:44 PM <tawny> and pass it around like a cheap whiskey
4:44 PM <•TyGently> the heart is important but natasha *is* currently doing bad things that hurt people
4:44 PM <•TyGently> like killing alex and siding with Oneiroi's ruthless exploitation
4:45 PM <•ARD> right
4:45 PM <•ARD> i think i need to go back and poke around my old notes
4:45 PM <•TyGently> with the heart being a dangerous tool in the eyes of someone who is both self-serving and indiscriminately ruthless, unlike the rookie, who is only one of those things
4:45 PM <•TyGently> er, in the hands, not in the eyes
4:46 PM <tawny> also, for reference
4:46 PM <tawny> the direction I thought this would all end up going back when you only had the first part of this done
4:46 PM <•ARD> when i was discussing natasha's character with jekeled, the thing i wanted to convey is that the rookie is responsible for natasha's slide to the dark side
4:46 PM <tawny> was that it'd be a typical revenge plot and then at the end she's just totally unsatisfied with her revenge and it brings her nothing she actually *really* wanted or needed
4:47 PM <•TyGently> with the added perspective of her crash back into being normal-ish, she's realized this and maybe gets the idea that the heart doesn't *have* to be used for terrible atrocities and selfish deeds
4:47 PM <•TyGently> and so tries to make genuine amends with diya and natasha, while still trying to put a stop to them
4:48 PM <•ARD> TyGently: yeah, i could work with this
4:48 PM <•ARD> bring natasha back to the light, so to speak
4:49 PM <•ARD> redeem herself in the process
4:49 PM <•TyGently> one possible direction for a diya confrontation would be for the rookie to destroy her army and leave her stranded somewhere with no direct means of interfering with her anymore
4:49 PM <•ARD> i considered having diya not actually be there
4:49 PM <•TyGently> like, attempt to make amends, but diya's like "fuck you" and the rookie's like "okay that's fair, I'm just gonna leave you here and let you think it over"
4:49 PM <•TyGently> "sleep on it"

4:50 PM <•TyGently> "I can't make you do anything but if I can try to be better maybe you can too"
4:50 PM <•TyGently> "unless you're already like a philanthropist or something, in which case ignore this"
4:50 PM <•ARD> "Diya, I just want you to know I forgive you." "I have done literally nothing wrong." "I know, and I forgive you"
4:51 PM <•TyGently> pfffft
4:51 PM <•ARD> yeah, I can work with this
4:51 PM <•ARD> the rookie experiencing a change of heart following her flashback sequence, determining to try and make up for her failures
4:52 PM <•ARD> that would be a decent conclusion to the arc and a solid way to handle the theme of running from one's consequences — she womans up, so to speak, and deals with said consequences
4:53 PM <•TyGently> yeah
4:53 PM <•TyGently> in her own special way
4:54 PM <•ARD> i'll still have to think about the robot thing
4:54 PM <•ARD> i could feasibly change the reason the rookie goes to see machinegod
4:54 PM <•ARD> perhaps the equipment alliott needs to construct a Way was in her car, and it gets blown to bits as they're making their great escape in Goddess or Godless
4:54 PM <•ARD> so they need to get new parts from MachineGod

4:59 PM <•ARD> you know, I think I know how I can establish why the Rookie still wants her heart back even after she's in a super cool robot body
5:00 PM <•ARD> the brain does not LIKE losing all of its normal sensory feelings or having its spine replaced with metal

5:02 PM <•TyGently> the rookie's organs, including her brain, were dependent on her heart's demonic energy and without it they are breaking down
5:02 PM <•TyGently> technology is just keeping together her gradually deteriorating state while she tries to get the heart before the damage kills her
5:02 PM <•ARD> it's something i kind of ignored but wanted to tackle — the consequences of being addicted to demonarcotics
5:02 PM <•ARD> putting a time limit on things
5:03 PM <•ARD> i'll have to go back through the series and throw references to that in places, definitely in Cirrhosis of the Heart for starters

5:04 PM <•ARD> ok so, the main things of note for the revisions and rewrites
5:04 PM <•ARD> 1) the rookie's moral arc. with the added perspective of her crash back into being normal-ish, the rookie's realized this and maybe gets the idea that the heart doesn't *have* to be used for terrible atrocities and selfish deeds, and so tries to make genuine amends with diya and natasha, while still trying to put a stop to them.
5:04 PM <•ARD> 2) the rookie is legitimately dying, melting from the inside as her organs deteriorate without the source of demonic energy to which they've been accustomed to for five years
5:05 PM <•ARD> 3) The driving force of Escape Velocity has been her desire to return to where she was in square one: a souped-up devilwoman with superpowers and zero regard for any sort of consequences
5:06 PM <•ARD> 4) the main themes of the story are the consequences of one's actions and redemption for one's failures
5:06 PM <•ARD> I think that about covers everything I need to think about

the basic outline is this: the rookie wakes up cyborgized and inspects her new bod (courtesy of a Tau-5 clone that survived falling from orbit). highlights include: metal cat ears and no mouth — she looks like a weeb genji,
1:57 AM <•ARD> following this, she and Alliott take a Way to her home universe (because Alliott wants vengeance on Natasha for killing Alex) and spend some time exploring her home world as they make their way to the space elevator
1:58 AM <•ARD> Diya confronts them at the space elevator with an army of android catgirls, which she's been working on since the rookie left. the rookie fights them on the way up
1:59 AM <•ARD> she kills diya and then hijacks a shuttle at the top of the elevator to take her to the moonbase. the tale ends with the rookie descending into the base
•ARD> in the finale, the rookie finds the super robot natasha's been working on, which she promptly hijacks and uses to storm through the base
10:58 PM <•ARD> natasha chases after her with a super robot of her own, intending to rip her out of it and throw her into orbit or something
10:59 PM <•ARD> there's an awesome fight on the surface of the moon
10:59 PM <Taffeta> is there a lance
10:59 PM <•ARD> I was thinking swords
10:59 PM <•ARD> the rookie gets the upper hand and tears natasha out of her cockpit, but hesitates before dealing the finishing blow
10:59 PM <Taffeta> but muh instrumentality
11:00 PM <•ARD> she decides that she's already fucked natasha over enough and if anything owes her for all the shit she's been through
11:00 PM <•ARD> alliott does not like this
11:00 PM <•ARD> she takes a shot from wherever the hell she's been hunkered down this whole time
11:01 PM <•ARD> the rookie takes the shot, but since it's an anti-materiel round, it basically blows the rookie's guts open so that she looks like Scorpion is doing a fatality on her
11:02 PM <•ARD> alliott gets out of dodge, natasha saves the rookie by implanting her heart back into her
11:02 PM <•ARD> sort of a callback to the end of the first tale
11:03 PM <•ARD> the rookie wakes up mostly good as new. she and natasha agree to part ways, not as friends, but as former friends (mainly because the rookie DID blow up her fancy robots and moon base)
11:03 PM <•ARD> the rookie is like "damn look at everything natasha's doing, what have i been doing with my life"
11:03 PM <•ARD> and she decides to go see what the Third Law Rukmini is up to
11:04 PM <•ARD> end tale

KYS

It was raining in Brookline. Inside a cramped, sparsely furnished apartment, Santosh Desai browsed MSN on his computer; fried eggs and poorly brewed coffee to his left. One article caught his eye as he idly scrolled through the newsfeed.

"San Diego woman found drowned in bathroom"

He clicked on it. At that moment, his email gave off a special ding, indicating that he had received a message from someone in the Foundation.

Santosh clicked on the message and entered the twenty-digit encryption key.

> To: Santosh Desai (pcs.57|iaseds#pcs.57|iaseds)
> From: Henry Allen (pcs.57|nellah#pcs.57|nellah)
> Subject: Internal Work Order KCP335831 has been assigned to Santosh Desai
>attachment: MTF_Anart_Catalogue.pdf; SCP-exhibit-jed.jpg; SCP-exhibit-jed-2.jpg;

---

Internal Work Order Number: KCP03831
Internal Work Order Type: Containment Procedures

Requested Completion Date: 09/01/2004

Internal Work Order Summary: Development of Containment Procedures for Euclid-Class Anomalous Artwork Exhibit
Requested Scope of Work: Design and implement containment procedures for a series of anomalous artwork exhibits (designation pending) that have begun appearing across the New England area.

Externally, the exhibit consists of four white prefabricated walls and a white roof, with a single doorway. The phrase Choices by Jed [sic] is written on the wall above the doorway. It is unclear what is inside the exhibit, as it is opaque to imaging equipment. Audiovisual equipment is rendered inoperable while inside the exhibit. Persons that approach within 1 meter of the exhibit are compelled to enter one at a time and wait for their turn to enter. All agents that have entered the exhibit have been unable to report on their experience — to wit, they claim to be able to recall their experience inside the exhibit, but are physically unable to relay the details of the experience to others. This effect extends to drawing pictures, miming actions, and writing containment procedures for the object. The cube has no other discernible effects.

At this time, there are five known copies of the exhibit in the New England region: Cambridge, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Concord and Manchester, New Hampshire; and Portland, Maine. It is presumed that the creator of the exhibit, who has been designated as PoI# 1976, goes by the name Jed.

Due to the compulsion effect and the public locations of these exhibits, remote destruction has been deemed nonviable. The containment procedures should outline steps to contain new exhibits and locate and apprehend PoI #1976. The annual budget for containment is $75,000. The initial budget to begin containment is $100,000. Attached is a list of Mobile Task Forces you may utilize.

These procedures should be completed and implementation should begin by October.

Requestor: Henry Allen
Requesting Department: Containment Development Team

Santosh pulled up Word drafts of three other containment procedures, stared at them, and groaned.

---

It was drizzling in Cambridge. Santosh stood across the street from a large white cube, huddled in a totally unnecessary thick winter coat. Next to him stood Peter White, a mountain of a Finn and the agent tasked with monitoring the exhibit.

Santosh stared at the structure. "Is this it?"

Peter shrugged. "Bigger than it looks."

Santosh shot him a look. "What do you mean?"

Peter shrugged again. "Can't say exactly. Sorry."

"Oh. Right."

They continued to look at the exhibit. "So, uh," Santosh said, "do you know who Jed might be?"

"Someone from Awsee?"

"Maybe."

The two continued to stare at the structure in silence; the drizzle intensified. Santosh wished he was back in front of his computer.

"Okay," he mumbled aloud, "I can't get close enough to analyze it properly… but I can figure out where it, where all the pieces came from. Then I can figure out how to contain them and the whole thing… So I just need to find out where the parts came from and the person who bought them all."

---

Guy Chesapeake was in the middle of an intense Counter-Strike match when his cell phone rang.

"Answer… speaker… phone," he enunciated, figuring now was as good a time as any to test his new speech-recognition software.

"Hey Guy, it's Santosh. Can you do me a favor?"

"Sorry, I'm drowning in work right now," Guy replied. Onscreen, he clicked a terrorist's head. The terrorist promptly dropped to the ground.

"Guy, it sounds like you're playing Counter-Strike."

"Nope, working on a commission piece," said Guy. He clicked again, and swore as the shot missed.

"Please? It's about anart," Santosh teased.

"I suppose the commission can wait," Guy said even as he continued to click on terrorists. "What's up?"

"Do you know anything about an anartist called Jed?"

"Yeah! She's basically the Ada Lovelace of anart." Guy cursed under his breath as the bomb detonated. "Big fan of her work."

"Jed's a she?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Uh, what do you know about her?"

"Me, personally? Not that much. I've never actually met her but I do follow her on Friendster and Myspace. She's real smart, did a lot of the early GUI work for Titan… ah, really into interactive artwork and body modding. I heard she actually got herself a full-blown gynoid shell."

"Gynoid shell?"

"Yeah. Turned herself into an android."

"Okay…what kind of interactive artwork?"

"VR, AR, haptic feedback, that sort of thing. First person shooters, visual novels, museum tours. Basically just video games but art."

"Does she have anything to do with Are We Cool Yet?"

"Uhh… I think? Hang on a sec, let me double-check."

Santosh could hear Guy tapping away at his keyboard.

"Okay, uh, she won first place in an AWCY contest for best use of technology to send a message. Get this — she made a VR whorehouse — but the VR gear could read your mind so that the whole time you're banging these digital whores they're just reciting your worst fears back to you."

"Oh…kay…"

"Fucking AWCY. Literally, haha. But, uh, I don't think she does anything big for the group — just enters their tech contests. Anyways, I think I've got a magazine around here where they did an interview with her. Pictures and everything… You still have that Reader I got you? I can IM it to you on that."

"Yeah, I'd appreciate that. Thanks, Guy," said Santosh, pouring himself a glass of water. "I'll call you up if I need anything else."

"Yeah yeah. So where's this sudden interest come from?"

"She put up an exhibit in Boston and it's pretty interesting. Wanted to learn more about her. Alright, thanks again Guy. I gotta go finish some other work now," Santosh said quickly before hanging up.

He downed the glass and then started tapping away at his keyboard.

---

It was starting to rain in Brookline. As Santosh pushed away from the computer and turned to look out the window, the ebook on the desk buzzed. He picked it up to see a message from Guy.

Santosh opened the message to a digital issue of a magazine. Emblazoned in large letters on the first page was the word Planasthai. Underneath that was the tagline "The Future of Anart is Now", alongside an animation of a cartoonish, winking blue-and-silver robotic face.

He tapped the face and the screen changed to display a picture of a very feminine-looking robot; if not for the blue-and-silver color scheme and the thin lines running down and across its body, Santosh would have thought it was a real woman. He started reading.

The Future of Anart is Now

Over the past few years, the fields of anart and paratechnology have been surprisingly distant. Several anartists are making steps to change this trend, but none as much as Jed — not only is Jed one of the most prominent paratech aficionados in the anart world, but she is also an android (technically, gynoid). Some of Jed's recent work includes Redline, which won first place in the Seventh Annual AWCY Technomancer Challenge, and Vaishnavastra, which won the inaugural Neo-Tokyo Gibson Award for Excellence and Innovation in Art. Jed is putting the finishing touches on a new piece called Choices, and we got the chance to sit down with her and talk.

Tell us: Who is Jed?

Hi, I'm Jed. I'm an an anartist, gynoid, and trans woman. I was briefly a part of Are We Cool Yet? but I've since broken ties with the group and am now a freelance anartist supported by the Guild of Humanities within the Church of Maxwellism. My specialty is interactive artwork, especially artwork that incorporates paratechnology in some way. When I'm not working on art, I chair weekly meetings of LGBAnarT in Neo-Tokyo, swim, read, watch cartoons, and play Counter-Strike.

Tell us a little bit about your background. What got you interested in art?

Oh, boy, that is a long story. My relationship with my parents was shaky, to say the least. I had tiger parents — Dad called all the shots and directed basically everything in my life and Mom let it happen. I eventually snapped after my freshman year of college — my dad wanted me to become a computer programmer, I told him didn't want to do it. He told me that what I wanted didn't matter, and that that was how the world worked. I packed up and left a few weeks later, and spent the next couple months bumming around with some college friends. One of them happened to be in AWCY, he introduced me to anart, and that was that. I spent like six months in AWCY churning out robot after robot, but when I built up the courage to finally come out as a woman — well, I ditched AWCY. The Maxwellists came to me a few months later — they liked my work and wanted to sponsor me. They even offered to help me transition by giving me a gynoid body, so of course I leaped at the chance. Since then, I divide my time between commissions for the Church's Guild of Humanities and personal projects.

If you don't mind, would you be willing to share some more details about your upgrade?

To be perfectly honest, I don't think we have enough room to explain how the process works! It was hugely experimental at the time and massively risky, but I was willing to try anything. Basically they anesthetized me, dipped me into a vat full of some kind of acid that literally ate away everything except my nervous system, and then clamped the gynoid shell around me. This is a massive oversimplification of course and I would love to talk more about it but we're not here to talk about android transplantation — we're here to talk art.

What would you say defines Jed's art?

Well, like I said, a lot of my work is interactive but I also focus heavily on femininity. Not feminine like some dumb stereotype about flowers and makeup, but more like how do people perceive and interact with women, you know, how does society treat women? How do people and society perceive and interact with transgender individuals? There are a lot of failures and shortcomings in those areas, especially the last one — just look up the trans panic defense — and it's important to draw attention to those shortcomings and critique them because the first step to fixing a problem is diagnosing it but society doesn't want to take those first steps. But people are dying because of those problems. I was lucky enough to be able to get this body but far too many women, trans or cis, are getting hurt and even killed in what's supposed to be a developed society — that is absolutely unacceptable. So that's what a lot of my art is about — trying to get people to re-examine their attitudes, prejudices, and bigotry towards women because society still needs to shape the fuck up in those regards. Oh, uh, excuse my French.

Don't worry about it. You also mentioned focusing on interactive art, could you elaborate? What makes interactive art such a favored medium of yours?

I really like exploring how people make choices, in like high- or low-pressure scenarios, and show other people what those choices are and how those choices affect the world around them. I can't really say why. I mean, maybe it's because I loved playing video games and reading Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid? [laughter] I guess if I had to pick a 'real' reason [making air quotes] it's partly because I never really got to pick my own path as a kid and partly because a lot of people see, well, my identity as a choice and that's just flat-out wrong, so this is kind of a way of, you know, poking back, I guess, and reclaiming the ability to choose. The things you do in my art? Those are choices. Who I am is not. Plus, I think people become a lot more invested in something when they influence its outcome. The art becomes more meaningful when you become a part of it. And of course, it's a ton of fun trying out the latest and greatest paratech.

Speaking of choices, tell us about your newest upcoming work, Choices.

I wish I could. [laughter] Actually, one of the things about Choices is that when you participate you get a geas placed on you that prevents you from saying anything about your experience. It's a major departure for me in a lot of ways because I pushed aside most of my traditional themes for a much more intimate experience. Everything that happens inside Choices is a secret; only you will know what happens inside. But it's also a way for me to, I guess, confront some aspects of my own personality that I really, really am not keen on. To tell you the truth, I find the events that occur inside Choices to be intensely erotic. Choices should be as far from that as possible, but for some reason, some wires got crossed in my brain — pardon the pun — and so it's intensely thrilling to me. I normally wouldn't be this cavalier about it, but hey. Choices is all about forcing you out of your comfort zone, so I owe it to you guys to do the same. You probably already hear about way weirder anartists all the time anyways — I hope. [laughter]

Do you have any advice for budding anartists?

Bad advice is still advice, right? I guess there's two main things I would say. Don't keep talking about all the cool art you're going to make or you'll never get around to actually making it. And to any girls reading this and interested in making art, go for it! Anyone who says you'll be terrible is secretly scared that you'll show them up — so show them up. You're so much better than them. That sounded better in my head. I wish I was as good a speaker as I am an anartist.

Trust me, you're great. One final question: is Jed a nickname?

It's actually my initials, J-E-D. I can't tell you what it stands for, though — a girl needs to have some secrets!

Thank you very much for your time, Jed!

Thank you for having me!

Choices by Jed will be appearing this fall, in Boston, Cambridge, Hartford, Concord, Manchester, and Portland.

Santosh put the reader down.

---

Complete Domination

If Eurtec had been a whole new world, Neo-Tokyo was an entirely different universe. The only thing connecting it to the rest of reality was the rain — and it was always raining in Neo-Tokyo. Every single building in the city was either a towering black glass and metal skyscraper or a squat black glass and metal bungalow. Hundreds of covered walkways, electrical cables, and glass tubes crisscrossed the skyline, blocking out the cloudy grey sky with a web of black glass and metal. Neon tubing ran everywhere, illuminating the blackness with shades of lime, tangerine, crimson, cerulean, indigo, and gold.

Even more so than Eurtec, Neo-Tokyo was a haven for man-machines. Every single person Santosh laid eyes upon was augmented: a man ambling through the streets like a gorilla on an extra pair of shiny silver arms; people climbing the skyscrapers on eight grey spider legs; rolling cylinders with antennae poking out everywhere; shiny floating swarms that hovered over everyone else and briefly formed human-looking faces from their amorphous masses. A bird landed in front of Santosh with a thud; when he looked closer, he could see sharp metallic feathers and tiny jet engines on its wings.

Santosh had only been standing inside Neo-Tokyo for five minutes and it felt like his head was going to explode. Guy had no such problems, expertly shepherding Santosh through the press of cold metal into the closest skyscraper. The building's lobby provided little respite from the outside; it shared the same dark metal architecture, cables, and neon tubing. Only the high, uniform ceiling and its bright white lights indicated any difference between the inside and outside.

"Pretty cool, right?" Guy said.

Santosh took a deep breath. "Jesus, Guy. Did we die and go to TRON hell?"

Guy rolled his eyes. "Oh come on, you have to admit this is pretty freaking cool. Look, even the inside of this place looks like a laser tag arena."

"Felt like I was gonna choke to death on cyberpunk," Santosh snapped, slumping against the wall. "It is really cool, but, look, can — can we just go find Jed?"

"Sure," Guy said. "Just chill here for a couple minutes and catch your breath. I'll ask around about, what was it called?"

"L-G-B-Anart-T."

"Yeah, that. Sit tight dude."

Several minutes later, Guy returned. "Hey, you feeling alright?"

"Yeah," Santosh said. He shook his head vigorously for a second to clear it out and asked, "Anything?"

"Yeah. Nobody here actually knows what LGBAnarT is, but a few of them said that Jed usually hangs out a few blocks from here in one of the skyscrapers. C'mon, I got directions."

Santosh followed Guy through the lobby to an elevator, which opened almost before Guy pushed the button. The elevator, thankfully, was not black glass — it was regular glass and metal.

The elevator panel lacked traditional pushbuttons — instead, there was a keypad and a small cable jack.

"Okay… he said 150th floor," said Guy, tapping away at the keypad. Before Santosh could register the sentence, the doors closed and the elevator rocketed upwards.

"Guy, did you say 150th floor?" Santosh asked.

"Yes."

"But the Empire State Building only has like, a hundred?"

"Yeah."

"Guy, what the hell is this place?"

"Hell if I know," Guy said.

"What? You said you'd fill me in when we got here! Aren't these weird cyberpunk cities supposed to be your thing?"

"I know, I know. Look, basically nobody knows what Neo-Tokyo is. Officially, the Maxwellist Church built it as an answer to Eurtec — their own technotopia for folks who didn't like the GOC. But the rumor is that it just sort of showed up, out of nowhere, right at the stroke of midnight on New Years 2000. One moment there's nothing here, and the next, poof. Cyberpunk city. I heard that some of these people are actually space aliens. No joke, actual freaking aliens. How cool is that?"

At that moment, the elevator doors dinged open. Guy and Santosh stepped out, and for the briefest moment Santosh's head spun at hyperspeed as he registered the streets several thousand feet below. Then he and Guy were forced back by a press of cold metal and flesh.

Guy forced his way through the throng of machines, Santosh following closely behind and doing his best. As they navigated the maze in the sky, Santosh fought to keep from staring out of the skyway. Occasionally there would be a gap in the web, and it was possible to see lightning arcing through the sky. For the briefest of instants there was even something visible in the clouds: the silhouette of a giant, chained to some massive object and illuminated by the bolts of electricity.

Santosh was considering what he had just seen when he crashed into Guy.

"Hey, what's up?" Santosh asked.

"This should be the place," Guy said. They were standing inside a massive roundabout slash rotunda, supported by dozens of skyways spanning the rest of the city. In the center of the rotunda was a gigantic spiral of supercomputers, humming in time to the pulse of the city.

"Hey, is that her over there?" asked Guy, pointing off in the distance. Santosh followed his finger and immediately noticed Jed, leaning against the wall and nursing a can of something. Even from this distance, her cerulean-chrome color scheme was unmistakable.

"Yeah. C'mon."

---

King Crimson

ARD> my next project is going to be a postmodern tale series about a reformed evil demon who uses their ability to step outside a page and step into other pages to defeat an evil scientology expy
3:16 PM <ARD> it's like King Crimson but meta
3:16 PM <rumetzen> sounds promising
3:16 PM <rumetzen> the stand or the album
3:16 PM <ARD> the stand
3:16 PM <rumetzen> nice
3:16 PM <ARD> basically the idea is that imagine you're like
3:16 PM <ARD> 500 words into the text
3:17 PM <ARD> the demon steps out of the text and everyone is like "where did he go"
3:17 PM <rumetzen> i've started watching ventu aureo and i'm liking it a lot
3:17 PM <ARD> and then five hundred words later
3:17 PM <ARD> he steps back in
3:17 PM <ARD> and people are like "where did you come from"
3:17 PM <ARD> so if he wants to get past a locked gate
3:17 PM ⇐ Rimple quit (moc.duolccri.etaghgih.96919756-CRInys|80549diu#moc.duolccri.etaghgih.96919756-CRInys|80549diu) Quit: Connection closed for inactivity
3:17 PM <rumetzen> heh
3:17 PM <ARD> he waves to the guard on the other side and steps out of the text
3:18 PM <ARD> then it switches to the guard's perspective on the other side wondering where he went
3:18 PM <ARD> and the demon steps back into the text, behind the guard, on the other side of the gate

Jekeled's Back Alley Tale

•Jekeled> ARD, i think the biggest problem with this tale is that it was never very good in the first place
12:26 AM <•Jekeled> ARD, try-hard prose and warmed over cyberpunk themes
•ARD> •Jekeled> There is merit in a drugged-up neuromodder fucking his way to the bottom
12:38 AM <•ARD> 12:30 AM <•Jekeled> But 1) he needs to have augments 2) stuff needs to happen 3) the prose needs to be tightened way down and 4) stuff needs to happen in a coherent way
12:38 AM <•ARD> 12:30 AM <•Jekeled> Not this nonlinear bullshit
12:38 AM <•ARD> 12:35 AM <•ARD> Jekeled: here's a highly preliminary pitch - the doctor's dying. he has maybe 24 hours to live before a bad batch of nanobots eats through his gray matter and puts him down, but he doesn't want to face the fact that today is his last day. so he goes about the day the same way he always has, with imminent death in the back of his mind, until he finally experiences both the little and major deaths at the same time
12:38 AM <•ARD> 12:36 AM <•Jekeled> i like it but he should die without getting any
12:38 AM <•ARD> 12:36 AM <•ARD> he bites the dust just as about he's about to get all up in that ALTERNATIVE PIPING
•ARD> instead of nanobots, it's the result of a botched self-surgery he did to increase his alcohol tolerance
12:47 AM <•ARD> 12:43 AM <•ARD> he wakes up with a head exposed and the realization that he's fucked UP - both as an adjective and verb
12:47 AM <•ARD> 12:45 AM <•ARD> hell, I could keep the same beginning
12:47 AM <•ARD> 12:45 AM <•ARD> except with the punchline that the head he's operating on is HIS
12:47 AM <•ARD> 12:45 AM <•ARD> and that sets up the driving plot - i have 24 hours to live
12:47 AM <•TyGently> this is all highly relevant to third law btw
12:47 AM <•GW> yes
12:47 AM <•GW> this is good
12:47 AM <•GW> you have convinced me

The uppers kick in and my hand twitches, gashing right down the pons, ripping through umpteen millions of neurons before I can recover my composure, finally steadier than I've been for hours, minutes even, and put the last probe right into the target neuron, thankfully one that I didn't destroy, and pull out as gracefully as I can, a tactical retreat if you will, and start sewing up the damage.

"I'm high as fuck, Doc!"

Hopefully he won't have lost the ability to dream.

I'm doing something-or-other with Jack Thompson down at Sofia's, the friendly local neighborhood local supermarket (it's in the title, of course) when I get the idea—or he does, and tells it to me, and I think of it then—about the idea of unconscious optimization, it's something that's real set to my line of work, he tells me, though I'll never use it (ha, ha), and though Jack's now three links upwind of 'pedia, has been for months now, I've fixed up the idea, nice and bright and shiny new, genius that I am—

"I'm high as fuck, Doc!"

—and really, aren't I, I tell Jack, over at Sofia's, as we wander the organic organic fish sticks (all organic labels locally sourced) and watch them curve and wallow in the endless freezer sea (anyone who says they like the cold has never been a frozen food,) me being the only (and best) conglomeration of assorted confluences of the "non-augmented" and "back-alley augmenter" while being, of course, respectively at The Top Of My Profession in each of—

I finish sewing up and hope everything works fine. I cross my fingers and metaphorically flip the metaphorical switch to turn the program on, squirting lines and lines of init code into this kid's brain, he comes in and says "give me something new, surprise me," and he's stoned out of his mind (I get it, I do, and I get his skull off without much difficulty, and on too, he doesn't feel a thing, not that the brain does, but the skull neither…) and so I decide to go with my specialty, "but it comes with downsides," Jack says, "like not really being able to know what'll be the most useful or the most wanted or the best, like why isn't there some kinda program that uses your unconscious—like, you know, your involuntary—to actually just…to…well, to optimize you know."

He's right!

"How do you feel?"

"I'm high as fuck, Doc!"

Close enough. I check the readouts, make sure everything appears to be flowing fine (it does,) everything optimized, my specialty, the specialty, and I send the kid out the door ("surprise me, doc!") and head down outside into the rain-flecked suburbs, I'm a backstreet doctor, really, not a backalley doctor, the cloistered, sterile suburbs of Eurtec, streets and streets of (perfectly engineered) houses curving off into the distance, tightly nested little estates branching out, insulated from the pressure and heat of the capitalist forge that made it, blotting out the sun, crowds of locusts…I spiral around the streets, circling down into the streets proper, into the big city now, out of the 'burbs, and hit up my favorite dive bar, doesn't everyone have one, down, down in the city below….

Bars are wondrous places, where the sacred and (he) Profane go to be merry and other assorted foibles; I know this one, know it well: I eat myself here, I die here.

I sit down. I have never been here before. "Give me a drink," I say. I have never had a drink before either. I have had many other things, but never a drink. It is harder to break a taboo on something that will be allowed at some point than to violate the specter of the never-to-be. (Sitting at the bar, now, waiting for my drink to arrive, I pop some more uppers. Don't want my hand to be unsteady again….) The drink arrives. Both of them. First and current (first and last?). I drink. I have never had a drink before. I drink, and die….

A man comes in. He will have Alzheimer's, he says.

"I live under a dark shadow every day. Every lapse, every slip—"

Get on the table. He wants to remember? He gets to remember. The neurons become old, caked in plaque and gunk; they die off, taking the mind with it. Slow death of the self. Well, this'll kill 'im anyways. I take another drink. It tastes good.

"Jonathan! Is that you?"

It's a friend. I can't remember his name right now. Or his face. There's no recognition there; it feels like I'm being violated by a stranger. He is pretty cute, though. I wouldn't say no.

"Hi!"

I try to smile; the uppers help. I feel bright, alive. I smile.

"How are you doing?"

He wants to remember. Easy, easy. All it requires is to replace the brain, which is easier than it sounds. I don't even need to open up his skull! Just a quick injection of my own patented blend (patent pending) of nanobots—

"Good, good!"

(Good god!)

We talk some more; I mostly listen. The nanobots will go into the brain, mapping every neuron position, mapping every transmission through a range of stimuli, and slowly bit by bit assimilate until they are the brain, and the old person is dead, and the new person is happy. I finish drinking; I died the instant the first sip hit my lips (or was it my tongue?).

What people don't understand is that nothing changes; the wiring all stays the same, but only the input is new, in ways; that doesn't mean that it's not the same, in the end…put someone on Mars, put someone on the Moon, and they will feel the same. To change feeling is to change the self. He'll have his memory, but he'll have died in the process. Sometimes all you can hope for is that the new person is happy, the way babies are happy. The guy asks the question; I haven't even asked his name. I say yes. (Hey, I didn't say no!)

I follow him home to his house, not even as blasted as I'd like to be. I don't even have any implants! My liver's just that strong…he doesn't live in the 'burbs, which means that he maybe hasn't heard of me (wait, he knows me) and also that he's a hipster, gentrifying by anti-gentrifying, and I kinda wanna snort as I walk through his apartment door. I finish deep in his bowels; would the old me have liked it? Who cares!

I give him the injection and then let him go, with instructions to come back if there's any problems (not that there will be, and if there are, he'll probably be too dead to come back anyways. It's a placebo).

We have sex. His cock is pretty good; so is mine. He's had something done to his anus, some sort of weird textured attachment (I'm still thrusting away into it, while I think this; but professional detachment, professional interest…) that must make shitting a nightmare, unless—and the thought suddenly occurs to me—there's some sort of alternative piping in there…he feels good, wrapped around me, and I thrust a little harder. He's panting there, on the bed. So am I. I feel ready; I'm about to—

I take another drink; I die again, a smaller death this time. Why don't I have any augmentations? Not even I know. I'm fine with le petit morte, as the French so delicately put it, but something about this one is too big for me, logic and reason and sense and anything be damned, and so I don't, big hypocrite that I am, it's a personal and professional failing, no matter what I may say to other people…I finish deep in his bowels; would the old me have liked it? Who cares!

Is this what you want, I wonder, as the youth walks in my door and asks me to surprise him? A world of static, infinite change? A world where…ah, what the hell. Get on the table.