Sleepless days, sleepless nights.

Arnold’s entire physique in the real world had changed. The bags under his eyes had bags under them. He had lost six kilograms in a week, and he had lost most all a sense of reality.

His glasses disappeared at some point, but he didn’t even notice it happened. That was just his life right now.

Maybe he had go to see Kat since he died in the Tower of Somnus. Maybe he confronted her in the hallway of her workplace after spending twelve hours searching for her, but maybe he just imagined it all. He couldn’t remember what was real and what was fake anymore, and he just had to go along with the assumption that everything was real, even the faint ghosts on the outlines of his sight that sometimes asked why he was still awake, why he was still alive.

He was a sad and desperate wreck, and nobody gave a single shit about him because he was just a pathetic single-celled organism with the size of a human.

He began to mumble to himself in a sing-songy verse: “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go eat worms... Big fat juicy ones, eensy weensy squeensy ones, see how they wiggle away from me...”

Today, Arnold wasn’t feeling up to his normal routine of pacing around his room, attempting to meditate but unable to get his thoughts in order--it was like his mind was completely blank, and that made meditation simply impossible.

He was supposed to meet with Anna for an engagement training ritual, but fuck that. He was just going to take a walk around the arcology instead.

His designer clothes were all smelly and gross and not comfortable enough, so he rummaged through his closets for the most loose-fitting, soft clothes he had and wore those around town. His sweatpants said “juicy” on the butt, and his hoodie was some ancient “Pickle Rick” reference to some show Arnold had never even heard of, but that was all he had.

In another attempt to make himself feel more covert, he pulled a baseball cap over his head. This one was also slightly an attempt to make his dad mad, because he stole one of his prized possessions--a first-printing, limited edition Make America Great Again hat from that old icon president guy. Arnold didn’t care about the politics of the old United States of America, because it was so corrupt and uninteresting compared to the pristine style of GroCorp and the other conglomerates, but he had to admit that he really did like that red hat dude. He thought he pulled off the style pretty well himself, anyway.

So with his MAGA hat, sweater, and sweatpants in tow, Arnold set off through the arcology, trying to wake himself up a little better so the nightmares of his micro-naps wouldn’t come.

All he wanted was either to die, or to be reborn.

Right now, in his sleep deprived, mind-cursed state, he leaned towards the latter.

Arnold needed a new subscription. He needed to get back into the Tower of Somnus, if it was the last thing he did. It would be the only way to erase... the feeling. The death, the literal death he felt in his own body that degraded while being impaled by a bunch of ice spikes sticking out of the floor.

If Kat wouldn’t help him, then he only had one choice, and that was to let his physical self take itself wherever its muscle memory would go. His mind, too shattered and too uneasy to understand what was going on, simply accepted as the body led itself in whatever direction of the arcology it was headed.

For a while, he laid down against a wall of an alleyway and stared at a bag of garbage in front of him. It was a recycling bag filled with type 1 plastics. PET. He didn’t have any pets, but he sure had a lot of PET. Plastic was wonderful. It really made the world go round. His parents apparently did a lot of things with plastic in their own lives, although they hadn’t directly spoken to Arnold in over five years, so he wasn’t sure exactly what it was that they did as managers for Ike Holdings, A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of GroCorp.

Plastic...

Arnold realized he was now munching on a rice ball wrapper that had blown through the wind (of the heavily air conditioned arcology), and decided that the alley wasn’t as good as other things anymore.

So he wandered around some more and eventually ended up... in a quite interesting place.

Kat’s apartment.

Knocks on the door. Many knocks.

He did those.

But the figure that answered the door was not Kat. It wasn’t the big-breasted mother of his future sons (and no daughters)... Or was it?

“Hello, Michelle,” Arnold said smoothly.

“Oh, it’s Arnold!” Michelle, Kat’s younger sister exclaimed.

He couldn’t remember how old she was. Eleven? Fourteen? Eighteen? His vision wasn’t helping him sort something like that, but he wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. Because he realized that Michelle was here to greet him like an angel whose [Author’s Note: I’m not gonna go there, sorry, that’s too far even for me].

“Oh, Michelle, it’s so nice to see you...” he stared at her for longer. “Where’s Kat?”

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look a little rough.”

“Where’s Kat?”

“Oh, she went to sleep already, sorry.” Michelle shrugged. “I never have any luck waking her up anymore once she’s clonked out, so I’m afraid if you need her you’ll have to call her tomorrow. Can I take a message?”

Arnold gave one of his patented cute grins. “No matter. I can get my new subscription later. Michelle, what are YOU doing?”

“I’m just watching Chrome Cowboys. It’s the episode where Morgan Harding gets kidnapped by the police who are--”

“Kidnapping, huh...”

“Yeah. They got kidnapped by--”

“Hey, Michelle, have I ever told you how much fun you are at parties and other social events? The ones we go on sometimes?”

“...Huh?”

“Michelle, Michelle, Michelle.” Arnold took his hands out of his jacket pockets and put one on her shoulder. “Let’s go on a date. We can see a movie together and eat at your favorite restaurant.”

“...Arnold?” Michelle’s eyes widened, probably in excitement or outright giddiness. His heart began to rise.

“I’ll treat you right,” he said. “You won’t have to worry about anything with your big brother around to protect you... and kiss you...”

SLAP.

Arnold heard the sound and felt his body be pushed back a few steps before the pain in his right cheek flared up.

“....Ow.”

He focused his eyes on Michelle, who huffed at him angrily.

“What?” Arnold asked. “Babe, I was just saying how pretty you are. Guys are gonna be so lucky one day when you--”

SLAP.

Again. The left cheek this time.

“You fucking bitch, you slapped me twice,” he muttered. He raised his own arm in a striking motion, and l--

SLAP.

A third slap that sent him tumbling to the ground.

“Ugh... Michelle... Mighty Michelle...”

“Get your hands off me, you creepazoid!” Michelle shouted. “What, you think I’m some vulnerable little idiot? I’m not your replacement for Kat, and you’re not some suave player. You're disgusting.”

“I...”

“Get out of here before I call my mom!”

He stumbled out of the area, hobbling over on the right leg that he hurt when he fell on the ground.

Michelle would pay for this. She rejected his advances, rendering her just as much a bitch as all the other women in this world.

He was going to call his goons and kidnap her and then probably beat her up while holding her for ransom. The price: a new subscription.

That would teach Kat for not working fast enough.

Yes, what a great plan.

He smiled warmly at himself for being such a genius.