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…

“Humans hunger for meaning—they possess an unquenchable thirst for purpose. It is that relentless desire that allows me to drift into sleep at night, comforted by the certainty that I am compelled to do what must be done.”

After a couple of weeks the break in seemed like a distant memory and despite my investigations and the devils claims that they would ‘sort it’ we did not figure out who had done it, how or why. Life was moving on but I hadn’t ruled out the possibility of the devil, Legion or both being behind it. Although my gut was telling me it was someone else.

“Cut the crap, Walter. Who exactly are you trying to fool this time? We both know your tepid platitudes are nothing more than hollow fabrications.” Their moods had shifted since the instance, and on some level I think they suspected me. 

“Do we?”

“Don’t we?”

“You’re supposed to be the mind reader—so…

My head was throbbing, vision glued behind a crust of something dried and mean, like the world had welded my eyelids shut. There was a pulse of danger rising, acid in the back of my throat. I tried to shift, just enough to uncork my panic, but I wasn’t in my bed, not even close. I was upright, jammed into a chair, shoulders pinched and arms wrenched behind me. I strained; the effort made my skull throb harder, a drumbeat in sync with how fast my heart was punching at my ribs. Every attempt to wrench my eyelids apart was met with the gluelike grip of fatigue and whatever else they’d used on me. Awareness crept in, a nasty dawning—the room felt like home, but I was lashed tight, absolutely no chance of wiggling free. I’d never been claustrophobic, but in that moment, panic chewed through the dust and razorblades in my mouth. This was bad, unforgivably bad. Somewhere in the sticky fog I tried to piece together: payback, maybe? A cheap revenge for the fallout from last…

"Where is all of this leading to, Satan?" I had a couple of drinks and was feeling frustrated. It was time for this act to end. They weren't my friend; they were my enemy, and pretending otherwise wouldn't change that fact.

"What do you mean, Walter?" They knew exactly what I meant, but they were stalling for time.

"You know exactly what I said." I was tired of their games and their manipulations. Maybe it was because I had a rough day at work, but that wasn't the main reason. My mood was dark and serious, much like the day I ended their lives.

"Walter, that look in your eyes...I've seen it before."

I raised the glass to my lips, taking a long sip of whiskey and following it with a drag on my cigarette. My companion's worried expression made me smirk.

"What look?" I asked nonchalantly.

"That look you get when you're about to do something really bad, Walter." they took a deep breath. "Have I done something wrong? Is…

What happens to the historians when reality turns to fog beneath your fingertips? Where do they find themselves in this new, untethered society? Maybe they could have been useful, a kind of living server for memories, but they got the axe along with real schools and physical architecture. Now, the narrative and how it appeared to each person—that was entirely up to the Corporation. They held the strings. They let you think you were free, but behind the curtain, they were custom-building each person’s little pocket of Ultrahigh. Every person, a custom-made history, and nobody else’s matched. You see where this is going, don’t you dear reader?

You won’t find, in this archive, any trace of the plagues or the diseases that swept the earth. No hint of the slow-motion catastrophe that ended with economies and ecosystems on their knees, or the last world war that finished what nature started. There is nothing here about governments falling over like dominoes,…