Coffee. He grabbed it from the kitchen in a fog, stumbled into his studio, still half inside some ill-formed dream. Maddie was still dead to the world in her bed and probably wouldn’t stir before noon. The silence in the house was a thick, slightly guilty thing.

“Lola,” he called out, the word more exhale than command.

“Good morning, Jacob. I hope you slept well. How can I assist you today?” Lola’s voice replied, female, always pitching in that light, tender…

“You can’t just rewrite history.”

“Who said?”

“What?”

“Who said you can’t just rewrite history?”

“Well…the historians.”

“And who made them the gatekeepers of our past?”

“Their training, their PhDs…”

“And yet half of them can’t even agree with each other, and the rest are just trading in theories.”

“Yeah, but 99% agree on the basic facts, and the ones who don’t are crackpots with an agenda.”

“All history’s biased, man. Written by…

It would be a lie to say the world didn't see it coming. A complete fallacy. The warnings blared for decades, each generation stacking another layer of panic and prophecy onto the last. The 2020s, the 2010s, the 1990s and 1980s—decade after decade, the same dire messages, the same parade of expert testimony and artistic doomsaying, all swept under the rug by those who could afford to ignore it. We were warned, and warned, and warned, until the warnings themselves became…

If you're reading this, then it's already too late for me. I'm either dead or holed up in some off-grid cage where no one can hear me scream. Don’t bother with the sympathy, dear reader. I almost certainly had this coming; I earned every minute of what I got, and whatever is happening now is no worse than what I’ve dished out to others in the service of my country—and ultimately, ‘the cause.’ Hack the justifications together however you like, I did. I could explain it all…

Her apartment struck me as simple but tasteful. I might have called it minimalist, had I known whether she’d pared down by choice or by budget—but real estate downtown New York wasn’t exactly cheap. The place was a converted warehouse: exposed brick walls, soaring ceilings, steel-framed windows that bathed the room in light and gave it an expansive feel. I missed that openness in my own home. Sure, I could simulate it perfectly in Ultrahigh, but knowing it wasn’t real would spoil it. She, of course, never questioned it—it was simply her world.

Now she lay naked beside me, her head resting on my chest. One hand drifted across my stomach, teasing ever closer to my now-flaccid penis. We’d just fucked for what felt like hours, and both of us floated in that delicious afterglow. I told myself none of it was real—I’d slept with an avatar, flagrantly breaking the no-contact rule—and yet I felt myself falling for her. We’d barely exchanged a dozen words. Did she…

“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” she teased, her smile crooked.

I gasped and sat frozen, eyes locked on her. How had she tracked me so quickly? I’d been ultra careful, layering perception filters at every turn. In Ultrahigh reality no human should follow an architect’s trail so easily. What had I missed?

“May I sit?” she asked, indicating the empty chair. Her micro-coloured blue eyes held me spellbound. 

“Yes, certainly,” I stammered. “Sorry—where are my manners?”

She slid into the seat, returning my gaze as if peering into my soul. My heart fluttered. I recognised the sensation—this wasn’t supposed to happen here, unless another architect had engineered it.

“Can I get you a coffee?” I finally managed.

“A chai latte,” she said, tucking hair behind her ear. “If they do them here.”

“I’m sure they do.” I headed to the counter, needing time to collect myself. When I…

The moment our eyes connected that second time, something physical jolted through me—a dual sensation that registered both in my avatar and back in my dormant meat-self. Her smile carried secrets. Did she actually recognise me? Or was this just an Ultrahigh welcome wagon? Every instinct screamed at me to bolt. The medieval festival swirled around us—jugglers tossing flaming batons, lute players strumming ancient melodies, costumed NPCs hawking digital mead—yet her gaze remained locked on mine, unwavering. Something about her rendered the simulation more vivid, awakening sensations I'd forgotten existed, which terrified me even more.

I needed an escape route. Back to baseline reality—the only authentic one, I reminded myself. Yes, the platform was designed for some connections—I'd coded those algorithms myself—but this felt different. Genuine attraction? Or sophisticated programming? The questions alone accelerated my heart rate. Still, I couldn't look…

I needed to infiltrate Ultrahigh with a message—a subtle wake-up call that wouldn't trigger the surveillance algorithms. The sleepers' reality needed unraveling from the inside out, their minds preserved while I remained a ghost to the system. Only when ready would I reveal myself, by which time the corpocracy would find itself outmanoeuvred.

The battlefield existed across realities. Those trapped in pods, even offline, remained vulnerable to physical threats from the corpocracy's enforcers. Liberation alone wouldn't save them—they needed combat readiness. My solution: covert training within Ultrahigh itself. Every virtual sprint, every simulated fight would condition their actual muscles, preparing bodies they'd forgotten they still possessed. The challenge was making this happen under the watchful eyes of the system.

Protection of the physical pods was equally crucial. This meant reluctant alliance with my oldest enemies—the demons. Since I'd…

She didn’t see it coming. As she crumpled in the darkness, he couldn’t help but note how strange a body looks when it falls unseen—and he chuckled.

“You’re not supposed to enjoy it,” the voice crackled in his earpiece, though the hidden smile was obvious.

“Why not? It’s the only way to get through this shit.”

“If it helps you sleep at night,” they said. But it never did. Whiskey used to blur the edges, but now it only left a metallic taste on his tongue.

“Sleep?…

The man stood leaning over the balcony edge as he took the last drag from his America Spirit and looked down on the people below. They looked like pathetic little ants, he thought, and over time, he would touch each and every one of their puny little lives and they would never have any idea about it. After a deep drag, he flicked his cigarette down to the anthill below.  

Smiling to himself, he turned to face the glass boardroom behind him from where he had exited. They were still…