Estrada’s first, somewhat unhelpful recommendation, was to quietly assassinate either Rousseau or Voltaire. After some back and forth, she conceded it was probably safer to kill both. When we moved on from the idea of murdering philosophers, the conversation became much more useful.

But it had the overall effect of highlighting to me exactly how difficult my position was. Other than Daphne and—I assumed—her father, I didn’t know any of the major players or factions. They would be forming soon, if they hadn’t already. And to pull this off, I would need to know all of them, better than I knew myself.

And that meant I needed all the help I could get.

I stepped inside the apartment. Ellison was quietly snoring, sprawled out on the couch. Iris sat at the edge of the couch next to his feet, quietly doodling in her notebook.

I thumped twice on the wall. They both stirred and looked over.

Iris looked up and gave me a little wave.

“You’re just going to walk in all casual-like, as if the world’s not falling apart again?” Ellison asked.

“It’s the second time in a week, figured you’d be used to it. Anything in the dumpsters?”

“No. All the bottles were bone dry.”

“Okay, don’t worry about it. Family meeting in fifteen minutes.” I signed the words “Family Meeting” in case Iris had missed the lipread.

She signed back in excitement, “Are we working on something together again? Is it something to do with the screens?”

Ellison rubbed the last of the sleep out of his eye. “Don’t get too excited. It always gets complicated if Matt’s calling the shots.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” I said. I rifled my inventory until I found a gallon jug of water and pulled it out.

“We’re not gonna talk about how you literally just pulled drinking water out of your ass?” Ellison said.

“Later.”

He’s being all cagey again,” I heard Ellison convey to Iris. Then, “Wait, where are you even going?”

“Dealing with mom,” I said.

/////

Mom wasn’t doing great. The shaking was mainly in her arms and shoulders, though it seemed difficult for her to sit still. It was possible the level of enthusiasm she was displaying was disguising how bad it really was.

“As you know,” Mom continued, “the internet’s been unreliable.”

“Putting it mildly,” I said.

“And we need it for almost everything. So, I was searching for alternatives. Anything that the local government might have thrown up to keep vital services online. Anything that we might be able to piggyback off of.”

“And?”

“I found something thoroughly different. It’s local, but stupidly advanced.” She pointed to the screen with a single, trembling finger. I bent down, trying to get a look at the multi-colored text. It was almost entirely greek to me. Except for one, single word embedded deep in the code.

Flauros

“I think you’re on the right track.” I said.

Mom stilled, then typed something incomprehensible into the boxes. “It’s too fast to be anything normal. As far as I can tell, it’s designed as a replacement for the internet. And it looks as if it’s still updating. There are several features that haven’t been implemented yet. Some I can’t parse at all. But others are fairly obvious, some sort of overall ranking. something for text and voice communication…”

The communication alternative stuck out to me. I remembered what the Allfather of Chaos had said about the transposition. Whatever it was, whoever was driving this, the goal wasn’t total destruction. It was a change of some kind.

“How do we use it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Mom admitted, then picked up speed again. “I couldn’t force implement any of it. There’s a whole layer of this that’s completely untouchable, but another section that looks like it’s designed for hosting. “So I started working. The coding language is…” again, she ascended into the higher level of IT that I could only blankly nod at.

I waited until after an overly obtuse description to chime back in. “So… what exactly does that mean for us?”

She balled her shaking hands into fists, and held them up to her face. “It means I got it running!”

“Holy shit.” I couldn’t believe the level of progress she’d made. I’d expected her to take a look, poke around at the very most, then talk about how it was too difficult.

“Only one problem.”

Ah. There it is.

She pulled up a string of numbers that looked suspiciously like an IP. “This is the address. But I can’t access it.”

Hold on. I pulled up my system screen and sorted through the tabs. There were several that were non-functional, but only one that was non-functional and opened a blank window. There was no way to input text, but maybe…

The numbers appeared as I thought of them into the screen itself.

“Do you have a little, circular ouroboros on your system screen?” I asked.

Mom looked at the computer, then stared back at me in confusion.

“The one in your head.” I prompted.

“Oh! Let me look. To be honest, I’ve kinda been ignoring it. Thought I was hallucinating until Ellison asked me about it.”

I waited for her to catch up, then, one mental command later, and the mock-up site appeared directly in front of my face. Mom stood up in shock, likely seeing the same thing. I high-fived her.

“You’re an actual genius,” I smiled. She grinned back. Then her smile ebbed.

“Matthias, I…”

I sighed, coming back to the reality of it. “Yeah, I know, you dumped everything.”

“How—”

“Ellison told me.”

“I just think it's the best way—”

“It’s not.” I grabbed both the gallon of water and the small glass cup and placed them on the table in front of her. Then I pulled one of the bottles of gin from my inventory. Her eyes went to it immediately, though she wrinkled her nose.

I rolled my eyes, and poured half a glass. “Yes, I know how you feel about gin. No, I don’t care. This isn’t for your personal enjoyment. If you want to change, it starts here.” A queer feeling settled in my stomach as I handed it to her. It felt wrong. The dark part of me wondered if maybe, if she went through withdrawal the way she wanted and survived, the memory of the discomfort would be enough to drive her from it.

But I’d never liked that part of me, much.

Mom sipped, then gulped. Her eyes grew glassy, more relaxed, and the shaking in her arms slowed. “Tapering’s never worked before.”

It was a subtle request for encouragement. She knew better than to ask for it. I knew how this would end. Yet, I found myself speaking anyway.

“Well, maybe you’ve never been properly motivated.” It was hard to keep the words from sounding bitter. I looked down. The light around her ankle monitor had turned red, indicating a lost connection. I fished around in a nearby drawer, drawing out a pair of scissors. “Our world is about to change in a big way. Everything’s getting reset. You can be whoever the hell you want to be. You’re always talking about how you’ve never had a chance, since the hearing. Since Dad. And that, if you were given that opportunity, you would change. Well, this is it. I have a line on something, and—no way around it—It would be easier with your help.” I leaned against her desk, folding my arms. “So, you have two options. Either I give you the rest of the bottles now, and you go on a return bender for the rest of the apocalypse—”

Mom was already shaking her head.

“Or we do this right. Tapering. Then meds to deal with the cravings. And you help me, Iris, and Ellison make sure that however this thing shakes out, we all land somewhere better than here.” I hesitated, then held the scissors out to her, keeping my face neutral.

This is the last time.

Mom reached out with a shaky hand. She took the scissors from me and snipped through the elastic strap of the ankle monitor. It clattered to the floor.

/////

“Alright kids, planning time.” I maneuvered the rolling base slowly, careful not to scrape against the wall. The nearby ‘community center’ where we held family meetings was decrepit enough as it was. It was usually closed this late at night, but Ellison had picked the lock, letting us in.

I’d barely gotten into the room before I heard Ellison groan. “Oh god, he’s got the whiteboard.” Iris punched him, and he grumbled at her incessantly. Then I saw them both fall silent as Mom entered behind me, carrying the laptop under her arm.

“Is she… uh… helping?” Ellison asked.

”Be nice,” Iris signed.

“We’re going to need some extra hands on this one, yes.” I drew the words “OPEN FORUM,” at the top of the board.

Then everyone but me jumped as a blue door appeared in the wall.