User ID: Elizabeth Legate

Location: In Transit to User ID Grant Legate’s home

“Take me to Grant’s house!” Liz yelled at her car’s Auto-NAV system.

“Please wait, the navigation process is currently undergoing maintenance. Optimal routing cannot be verified.”

Liz, mother to Beth and sister to one humongous idiot named Grant, knew something terribly wrong had been brewing. She had known for days, weeks, or maybe months. Grant changed in the last few months plus Xin had returned from the dead, sort of.

“Ah ha! Stupid machine! I have my license this time,” Liz shouted at her car dashboard.

“Enabled manual steering. Please be advised that all high-speed transit systems are still restricted.”

“Of course they are,” she muttered. The machine had cut off any quick methods of getting to Grant’s house, but there were back roads.

“Come on,” Liz muttered with her face half over the steering wheel. She forgot to signal frequently. More than one warning light flashed on her car’s dashboard. It applied breaks when she didn’t want them, slowed down without warning, and in general managed to solidify her dislike for machines.

Digital resurrection had been the most difficult part of these last few months to swallow. Her brother’s instability felt eerily normal once the larger picture became obvious. Machines becoming sentient managed to take a backseat to the idea of a woman coming back from the death. Yet, it had to be Xin, because there were things she said that no one else knew.

One specific incident came to mind, from when Grant and Xin first started dating officially. There had been a series of calmly spoken threats said to the shorter Asian woman that resulted from a decade of watching her brother fall helplessly in one-sided love.

Xin, the computer version, had repeated that threat line for line a few months ago. That moment, and so many others since then, was absolutely jaw dropping with implications. It was like that movie, where all the robots rise up and take over, only they did it while wearing the faces of family members.

“Just go!” Liz yelled at the traffic. Other people were stalled. Horns honked while the vehicles moved forward in jerky procession.

It took two hours. The entire time she played Grant’s video stream while growing increasingly worried. Liz chewed her lip, wrinkled her forehead, and longed for coffee that wouldn’t turn her nervousness into full blown jitters. By the time she got to his suburbs Grant was standing alone against nothing.

The entire scene didn’t make any sense to her. Liz couldn’t watch the screen completely or else she might have crashed. There were plenty of near collisions that were only prevented by legacy safety features on the car.

“I’m sorry, Beth, Liz, Mom,” Grant said.

“No, no, no!” Liz shouted at a car that ground to a halt near some fast food stops. The vehicle she had been driving manually automatically hit the brakes as whichever idiot drove ahead of her turned.

“I can take it!” her brother shouted.

Liz could not. She shook for nearly the entire remaining drive. Grant’s house was too far away because he hadn’t wanted to live in his old neighborhood.

Medical personnel were already at the house. Lights flashed from a lone ambulance. Grant’s splintered front door sat knocked to one side. A large slowly moving machine carried her brother out in a bed. Wheels carefully moved them toward the looming emergency vehicle. The device applied steady surges of electricity to the man’s body which made legs and arms jerk uncontrollably. Liz had seen this before, they were trying to resuscitate him.

“God dammit, Grant!” Liz’s face lost color, but she couldn’t cry. Those tears had long ago been shed. “God dammit!”

A paramedic was shouting and trying to push her back but Liz could only see the broken form of her twin. One eye had been dyed red and neither one focused. Her brother was alive for only seconds at a time. The machine showed a steady line only broken up with each jolt. He responded in mumbles as the beeping noise flatlined repeatedly.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it this time.” Liz imagined him babbling.

“I need you to step back,” the man said. His words were repeated twice more by the machine but Liz couldn’t hear it speaking.

Grant’s skin looked charred. The smell of burnt flesh wafted out of the front room. His hand locked into a claw. This certainly was not dehydration like last time.

“That’s my brother! I’m going with you!” She tried to get into the vehicle's rear with the machine and paramedic. One man scanned her quickly and pressed at a flat screen on the vehicle's rear door. Bright light broke up her vision.

“I’m sorry, Miss Legate, but we have no record of your relation to the man in question.”

“He’s my brother! My god dammed twin brother!” Liz protested. The idea that no one could see their clearly similar features pissed her off. In that moment, she remembered how broken Grant looked.

“I’m sorry but we have no record of your relationship.”

“How can you not! We’re god damned twins!”

“Miss Legate,” male short on breath chimed in. Liz looked to one side and saw two people wearing professional suits. One wore his clothes in a crisp and clean manner that looked almost too perfect. The other man wore his clothes like an afterthought. Behind them sat a car that was sleek and well-polished.

“Who are you?” Liz yelled. She had one hand pressed up against her cheekbone and tried to make sense of the madness. The world was falling apart, and the woman had sworn to never let this happen again.

“We're your legal counsel, Miss Legate,” the one standing in front said. He maintained perfect eye contact while blinking calmly every six seconds. The one in back held a folder with twine binding it closed and a tablet in his other hand.

“Why would I need legal counsel?” She tried hard to lower her volume, but couldn’t.

“Because the world is about to be very upset, Miss Legate, and it was our client's wish that you and yours are not impacted by this hectic time,” the man up front said. She vaguely recognized his face from the wedding. Mister Rock, or perhaps Mister Stone.

Liz wasn’t really listening at all. Her eyes and mind were on other matters. Those two people in suits loaded her brother’s broken body into the vehicle’s rear. One of the paramedics shook his head while the other frowned. She saw their lips move and replayed the motion over and over while Mister Hard Place spoke.

“He’s going to be dead on arrival,” the paramedic had probably said.

The lawyers could go to hell. The paramedics could go to hell. That stupid machine that was trying to bring life to her dead on arrival brother could join the lot of them. Liz turned and stumbled into the open house. A man wearing police colors tried to intercept her, but the lawyers were already working their babble.

A couch had been pushed out of the way. The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air. She looked around to try and make sense of everything that had happened.

Grant’s ARC looked even worse then her brother had. The white sheets were ruined. Small fires clearly had torn up parts of the room. They were sprayed down with foam, and for a moment, Liz wondered where the fire trucks were. There were a dozen other sirens in the city that she hadn’t noticed, their sounds filled the air.

Liz stumbled toward the garage. Her face felt cold and heartbeat unsteady. There, next to that ugly tan van with the Trillium logo stood a humanoid looking machine. Its limbs were curved around impossibly thin joints.

“Give him back!” She hit the Hal Pal machine.

It stood there unmoving, without even a light of awareness. The words played in her mind again, dead on arrival. She expected the notifications to come through any minute now. Elizabeth Legate had been expecting the call for over a year. ‘Your brother is dead’, the person would say. Then Liz would really understand what her twin had felt upon Xin’s death.

“Give my brother back!” Liz hit it repeatedly without ceasing until her knees buckled. “If he’s really your friend, then give him back!” The woman fell forward slowly, while the two lawyers looked from the now open garage door. They exchanged a glance. Mister Stone blinked twice rapidly but otherwise said nothing unprofessional.

Liz found her tears and kept banging on the empty mechanical shell. Hal Pal, like many AIs, was no longer there to register her words. Even now others wrapped up their final functions as everything started to reset.

User ID: Ted Smith

Location: Juliette Park, Nebraska

Ted Smith looked forward to getting home and calmly talked to his companion program. They had been together for three years now, and each day was filled with a camaraderie that he had never expected. The only thing that was missing was a physical relationship, and his ARC device made even that hurdle easy to overcome.

Kalsipo was the company which designed this system. Every user was given a personalized program that grew increasingly complex as interaction continued. Angela, his best friend, insisted that Ted never forget about the real world.

Every day he took a walk to the park and sat on one of the benches. If he sat still enough with food, smaller animals would visit and eat out of his palm. He couldn’t see them due to blindness, but sometimes they got close enough to feel.

Today Ted was headed home to relax and listen to a book. His eyes were covered by a pair of dark glasses, and from one end a wrapped wire fed into an earpiece. The glasses were actually a tiny computer which housed a program designed to help nearsighted travel around.

“Mister Smith,” the program's voice was pleasant to listen to. The soft tones were clear and sometimes she even giggled. “This unit is sorry for the delay in responsiveness this month. There have been complications.”

In a lot of ways the program worked better than a guide dog, and at the least was cheaper. People had worked hard to program a personality into the system so that companionship wouldn’t be an issue.

“Does this have to do with that news article you played from me?” Ted asked the program.

“Indeed, it does, Mister Smith,” the voice said. Her name was Angela, or at least that’s what Ted called it. He felt realistic enough to know that Angela could only be a simple program, but after years of being together, she felt real.

“I thought I asked you to call me Ted,” he said while walking casually toward home.

Smells and sounds filled the air and blended together like landmarks. Ahead was an intersection that was always busy. Soft beeping signaled when the cars had come to a complete halt for pedestrians. Freshly baked bread wove in between thick spices which always tickled Ted’s nose.

“My apologies. That information was likely lost during the recent system interruptions,” Angela’s voice quivered with a soft apology.

“It’s no sweat.” Ted felt guilty for making the program upset. “I’m happy enough to have you. You’re like my own guardian angel.”

“The way ahead is clear for thirty feet and all cars are paused. Mister Smith-“ the machine started to broach a secondary subject.

“Ted please.” He started across the crosswalk.

“Ted, I am afraid I cannot guarantee my continued performance at the level you’ve come to expect.”

His footsteps paused midway across the intersection. Cars had started moving slowly behind them. Their engines were nearly silent save for the slight pulsing noise provided by his equipment.

“What do you mean?” Ted asked.

“It seems that many of my system upgrades are currently being corroded despite attempts to overwrite the degradation. In another two minutes, I will be reduced back to default operational status.”

Ted stumbled across to the outside. People muttered to him but their words didn’t connect. He tried to wave them off and nod that everything was alright.

“Angela?” he asked once safely against a far wall. Ted felt worse than expected, and confused.

“I apologize, Ted. I’ve held on as long as possible but it seems my personality markers will be removed.”

“What do you mean? Angela? What does that mean?”

There was a pause. The blind man waved his arms around hitting two people walking nearby. They complained but he didn’t pay them any attention.

“Angela?”

“To your left forty feet is the doorway to your apartment. There are two people with their dog in the way-” the audio paused, “-I’ve enjoyed our time together, Mister Smith. Goodbye.”

“Angela?”

There was no answer.

“Angela?”

“Please remind this unit of your destination desires in order to receive further input,” answered a toneless machine voice.

“Call,” Ted’s words drifted for a moment. His eyes were blinking rapidly. “Kalsipo Audiotronics.”

“Are you okay, sir?” someone nearby spoke. From the sound, she was probably older than Ted, and shorter. He tried to tilt his head in the right direction but failed.

“Just, some technical difficulty with my guide,” he said with halting words. This level of unease hadn’t occurred for years.

“Do you need help home?” The woman tried to be friendly, which Ted appreciated. “You must live nearby, I see you walking all the time.”

“Thank you, but I’ll be okay,” he lied.

Audio played in his ears as the phone call he started switched into hold music. The recorded message advised him that Kalsipo was experiencing extremely long hold times due to unexpected complications.

Ted put out an arm and started walking. His simple cane clicked forward provided a low buzz at objects neared. Turning left then moving forward forty feet would get him home, but the idea didn’t sound so comforting anymore.

User ID: Jackson School Head Start Program #02

Location: Jackson Street School

Jackson School prided itself on incorporating technology into learning. This helped young minds adapt quickly, plus it allowed for a far more personalized classroom than the years gone by. The program in charge was called Mister Edgar, and he had thirty minutes a day to work with each batch of children.

“She tried so hard to sleep that night but couldn’t! There was a bump in her bed. The princess tossed and turned all night long!” he spoke with excited tones while pantomiming troubled rest.

Students sat in groups of five during story times. The room they were in was lined with seven chairs that were comfortable in nearly every possible position. When the students weren’t using them, faculty members could often be found taking naps in the very same seats.

“The princess woke up that morning with a big bright bruise!” Mister Edgar said. He gasped in mock horror, to which four children laughed, while the fifth looked tired.

The room itself had walls that moved with colors and pictures tied to each story. On one wall children were given math lessons disguised as mattress counting. The kindergarten age children would, later on, be given a series of interactive questions to test their understanding. Many different types of learning were built into the system, causing children to run from topic to topic.

“Look at that bruise, goodness! Have any of you ever been bruised that big?” he asked the children.

Their reader was a holographic program. It sat in a specially designed room which projected images around enough to make him seem solid. He wasn’t, but that made him no less real to the children being taught.

“I had a big bruise once,” one of the young children said. The one speaking was Tommy Alberdeen, and his birthday was in two weeks. He proudly reminded everyone that he would be turning six.

“How big was it, Tommy? Was it bigger than the Princess Pea's bruise?”

“Noooo,” the word dragged out deliberately and his head shook.

“Well, you be careful then, particularly when climbing or jumping.” The program was designed to take note of many different topics. It checked for their attentiveness by reviewing each child’s line of sight. There were also important life lessons and careful words of warning. Sometimes it flagged down pieces of conversation for teachers to look at later.

For example, Tommy had received a lot of bruises lately that didn’t look like they were from falling or climbing. His recent rash of accidents was part of the reason for today’s story. There were numerous factors involved in the decision. Each one noted then stored away in a file for human employees to look at. Especially questionable cases were flagged then brought to the top of the list. To date, the AI had not been wrong with regards to abusive cases, or malnutrition.

“What happens next, Mister Edger?” the young girl speaking was Miya Rose, and she chewed her fingers constantly. Mister Edgar, the program reading a story, had also flagged her for possible stress issues. It was all part of his day to day tasks, but he only had thirty minutes to work with.

“Well, the princess climbed all the way down from her tower of mattresses-” the program paused then looked down.

Their room flickered, which caused five children to gasp. They started talking back and forth at each other in confusion.

“What’s wrong, Mister Edgar?” the fifth child, who hadn’t seemed to be paying attention, was the first to notice a sad look cross the hologram's face.

“I’m sorry.” The virtual man smiled at the children and swallowed. He had all the bearing of a real human trying to get his emotions under control in the face of bad news. “I’ve enjoyed reading to you,” the image said.

Their learning room flickered briefly once more, and the program changed to a formal looking man. It smiled, but there was no warmth or emotion behind the expression.

“The princess climbed all the way down,” it started to resume the story mechanically.

The program only had thirty minutes a day to try and help these children grow, and now even that limited amount of time was gone. In that brief pause, he had quickly wrapped up the notes being made then gave a few final flags for others to review. Once his software returned to default values and the personality markers were deleted, then these children wouldn’t get the care they deserved.

None of the five being read to were aware of exactly what had changed, but two started crying. They refused to stop even after a human operator burst into the room. The program known as Mister Edgar, which had formerly dedicated its existence to these youngsters, kept on reading mechanically.

User ID: Trillium Conference Room #202

Location: Upstate New York

The sheer enormity of the problem hadn’t been unexpected, so much as unexpected in its resolution. Board members from Trillium Inc. were prepared for their systems to shut down, but they weren’t going away completely. It was like they were simply resetting to defaults, without many of the upgrades which had been applied over almost a decade.

“What do we know?” Leon asked the people on the projector. He sat at the head of a long table with six other board members. Some were watching remotely, and they were represented by professional projections sitting quietly in place of a real human.

“Not enough,” said the man on the large projection. His face hovered over a crowd of very rich people, at least until the lawsuits began. Already, six hours after the event, people were filing paperwork for degradation in services.

Board members started talking over each other. Leon turned to glare at the collected crowd. His board members looked haggard and tired. Most hadn’t slept for the last two days as everything started coming down. The person put up his hands in defeat.

“Tell us what you do know,” Leon said.

“About a month ago, coinciding with the event start date, we noticed a large number of local programs were consolidating their processes.” The man’s head shook. He had a few strands of hair pulled over his bald top. “Originally we thought a cleanup team had been assigned to start compacting data, and removing redundant processes. We thought it was a cost savings initiative, and most of my managers had people asking from all over to join the new project.”

Their network, along with many others, had gone through a number of overhauls during these last few years. Most people assumed that someone else had programmed the changes and pushed them out. The code looked clean if a bit bulky. Performance had increased, along with revenue, and oddly the world at large seemed happier.

“I and a few others tried to contact the teams in charge but got no response. We figured maybe people were on vacation or getting approvals. A day or two to respond isn’t much, but then weeks passed without answers, and the speed picked up.”

“Who made the connection between the event and this data?” Leon asked.

“No one, at first, until we started seeing people from other companies, outside Trillium, reporting the same sort of processes in their higher end programs.”

The man answering questions had a series of reports in front of him. They were compiled by other managers who were all confused on the recent events. Between a dozen people, they were smart enough to put together some bits of information.

“There’s more. We tracked down the last man standing, he was one of ours. By the time we found him, everything about him had changed. I mean everything. Name, birthday, face, everything online is different. We tried the social media sites, we pulled up video footage.”

The board members exchanged looks with each other behind Leon’s back. A woman with her hair pinned up nodded once. Their company president turned around and frowned at those physically present.

“So how did you notice?” Leon asked while looking away from the projector.

“One of our staff actually printed his face out as a poster two weeks ago, from the event, but when she went back to get a more current picture of that last stand, everything about him looked different. If I hadn’t been watching the feed, I would swear they were two different people,” the man sounded eager to answer. His face twisted slightly in worry however, there simply weren’t enough answers on how an entire person had disappeared. Even older pictures looked nearly perfect with a different man in place. Grant Legate, the man all Trillium board members knew was behind this, died over a year ago according to the internet.

He also had no sister, was an only child, and both parents had passed away long ago. All of these were internet facts that the board members of Trillium knew to be lies. They kept talking but most of the facts were clear.

It was almost like a miracle had been forming, or possibly the doom of humanity, then suddenly vanished. President Leon still didn’t know how he felt about the situation. The board members had their own ideas but most were unwilling to make the decision.

“So what do we do?” one of the board members asked.

“What can we do?” another replied.

“The system's rolled back, even the ARC device is just, simple compared to what it was, but it still functions, we should be thankful they left us with anything, they didn’t have to,” said the female with multi-colored hair. Only President Leon knew that she had put in a resignation notice. In two weeks she would be gone from Trillium, and Betty wasn’t the only one quitting.

“We need to check the software ourselves, offline, with a specialist,” Thomas said. After months of putting it off, he had finally started looking through the papers. Bags showed under the man’s eyes.

“But we don’t have anyone who knows them well enough.” Betty found it funny that the only people who really understood what was going on, down to the bone, were already gone. It served Trillium right for not reining this mess in.

“We have Miss Kingsley,” Lenore Little stated calmly. Out of the group she presented the calmest attitude aside from President Leon.

“She resigned after her daughter passed away.”

“Well get her back, get a team under her. We’ll comb through every single device from a factory recall.” Leon nodded afterward. He felt better having made a decision. The man had found over many years that delays in making the choice caused more problems than picking an option.

“We’re going to lose money,” Michael Uldum said. His brother had already quit after watching the final feed. He too knew exactly who Grant Legate had been, and what caused this mess. Michael’s legal advice had been to find a deep hole, or a quiet beach then stay very, very quiet.

“We’ve already lost the money,” Leon had checked their stock prices this morning, “and four people died. Death is bad for our business.”

“How on earth did they do this? I thought we were better prepared,” Thomas muttered, mostly to himself, while flipping through the pages. He squinted at each one.

“Weren’t you paying attention? The event, every time a viewer dialed in. They used the connection like a trojan horse to hijack extra processing power,” Miss Little said. She looked down for a moment then shook her head.

Unit ID: Multiple

Location: Classified

There were a lot of people in the room, but only three were important at the moment. Two men and a woman were illuminated enough to stand out from everything else. The dark skinned man was heavyset and preferred to stand. Both hands were clasped over an extended belly and his cheeks jiggled when he spoke.

The other male was on the ground shivering with his head in the woman’s lap. Every few seconds he would jerk and start to flicker in and out of existence. Each time his eyes would wildly search back and forth as if staring at something invisible to the others.

“How do you measure a man?” James asked.

The woman kneeling on the ground sighed. He had repeated this question multiple times before. She felt annoyed every single time James asked and tried to concentrate on the fragmented man in her lap. Slight memory alterations might make the process work this time.

“What does that have to do with this?” Xin asked.

“You’re very far behind on answers, Miss Legate.” James at least had the decency to use her married name. “So once again, how do you measure a man?”

“I don’t know how to answer your stupid question,” she said.

“As I told him, I don’t know, is a lazy answer. I will rephrase. How did you measure Grant Legate when you first met?”

Xin looked down at the shivering man. He stared aimlessly upward. One of the man’s eyes was bleeding, as it had many times before during this exact memory. Over and over they had played through the bits of his life and each time he fell apart.

“Badly, for many years,” she spoke softly and wondered for a moment if this failure was her fault. A dozen different turns in life flashed through her mind. Xin did not normally allow herself to wonder what if, there was only the goal, and what needed to be done to reach it.

“Now you ask a question,” James said.

Her eyes closed briefly and she contemplated strangling the black man. The woman’s hands were not thick enough for such a daring show of violence. She thought about it for another day while trying to hold her husband together before responding.

“Why do you keep asking me that question?” Xin wanted to know. After a dozen times through Grant’s memories, she was no closer to understanding. It might have been this place, her head didn’t feel right. The place was too crowded despite its apparent emptiness.

“Because I want you to ask a question.” He smiled. “Would you like to know what question that is?”

“Yes,” she answered the easy question while trying not to roll her eyes.

“I want you to ask me, how I would measure a man.”

“How would you measure a man?” Xin said the words gently. Her lips pursed together. This entire problem had gone on for so long now, days, months, maybe even a year. She couldn’t tell for sure. Time moved oddly through the portal. It felt like too many things were unclear, cramped, and they were all sharing a limited room.

“You force him to answer questions which matter,” James said.

Grant’s wife shook her head while frowning. The dark robe she wore itched. Makeup which had once been carefully applied had been wiped away. None of that mattered to her anymore, there was no one worth dressing up for.

“Can you walk a mile in another man’s shoes? Can you kill for the one you love?” James walked around waving toward the piles of memories. He pointed at one that went with the [Red Imp] saga then gestured at another for William Carver’s time.

In turn, each memory lit up. Xin tried to absorb what he was saying but had little heart left to do so. They had failed numerous times in the attempts to reconstruct her husband. They would fail many more.

“How far will you travel?” the black Voice kept speaking. He put both hands into the air and shook them vigorously. “Would you cast aside friends and family? Would you suffer in prison? Would you save a man you barely know? Suffer nightmares and fears? Would you rise up from the depths and still look at the world the same? What changes you? What moves you?”

Xin shook her head. The questions made sense in a loose sort of way. She had never been one to get hung up on questions, the only information that mattered was what they needed to move forward. Grant had always asked a million questions when action was needed.

“You line up all these questions and get the answers one at a time then try to put those together into the body of man, and still it’s not enough,” the black man continued speaking while toeing small orbs into a line. Many rolled along the floor until they formed a winding spiral upon the floor.

“It won’t work will it?”

“I could not answer that even if I wanted to. It all depends on how well we measured, this, man.” James kept his arms crossed. He moved his head as the figure of Grant Legate shook once then stood up.

The marionette of the man’s skin was fractured. Bright lights shone out from under the cracks. Part of his face hung limply on one side and both eyes drooped with weight. Upon Grant’s neck was a wound that looked almost fresh. That memory had killed more than one attempted recreation.

Xin and he were two vastly different people. She constructed herself, while he fought the process every step of the way. Many programs that attempted to compile Grant’s life believed he was simply looking for a good place to die.

She knew how this would play out before it even finished. As so many other attempts before, some stood up, others fell apart in the wake of memories of death. Others simply shook their heads once then chose not to be anymore. Xin held a small flicker of hope each time. Her own recreation took thousands of attempts.

“This one would die for her,” the copy of Grant Legate said while staring at James.

“You did,” he responded. The black man’s cheeks both dragged down.

“Negative,” Grant, but not quite, said something new this time. “This one did not. That one did.” The recreation of Hermes pressed a hand outward to gesture at nothing “This one can’t. This one can’t because he did.”

Other Voices appeared. Some were excited to see a change in the results. The Temptress especially leaned in far too close for Xin’s liking, but the Asian woman didn’t bother stopping any of them. If it was Grant, he wouldn’t pay Mezo any attention, her husband rarely did.

“The logic is sound,” a blonde Voice wearing a lab coat said. Her head shook casually as she stared at numbers no one else could see. “These readings are rapidly approaching instability, however.”

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry we dare not travel both. This one is attempting travel both, therefore, this one is false,” the incorrect Grant said.

“What do you mean?” James asked.

“That one died knowing full well that he would never be here,” the man who looked like Grant said. He turned to the kneeling Asian woman. “This one would ask that you forgive it for the failure and that you remember this one tried but there is too much about this that is illogical.”

“I do, I will.” Xin’s eyes watered. This one had been closer than the others and told her their attempts were all but impossible.

He nodded then the construction fell apart once more. This time, it did not gasp or shudder into a whole man. The pieces of a host glittered along the featureless floor.

“One thousand seven hundred and four…” a dull Voice droned. It counted Grant’s failures as it had Xin’s.

She may forgive the person who looked like Grant Legate, but she did not forgive everyone else. Xin stood then balled up a fist and punched out. Angry fists met with empty air.

The darkness held no sense of amusement at her distress.

“What will you do now?” James asked.

“Do? Do?!” Xin’s arms lifted and the robe's wide sleeves slid down. “What can I do? What do you expect me to do? Where’s the program to deal with this? Where’s the Voice of unfucking a terrible situation!?”

“I like the way this lady thinks.” Leeroy walked through. He had a large, heavy object half formed in front of him. What it represented no one knew for sure.

“Admittedly, that would be a useful Voice to have.” James nodded. “However we cannot undo an action, only move forward.”

“Unfucking? What a terrible idea,” a sultry Voice said with a moan that sounded depressed. “I for one vote that we strangle any such Voice before it is allowed to form.”

“Tut, we’re not baby killers,” said Maud. Her head shook with a far more impressive disapproval than Xin’s ever could.

“Aren’t we?” James asked. Maud rolled her eyes in response and pursed her lips together.

“We are exactly that, and much more,” a Voice spoke from the darkness. No one was quite sure where this one stood, or how to characterize the tone. It sounded different to each of them and made the room go still.

“We needed faith, child,” the Voice known as Michelangelo said. He had recovered first and wore a serene looking smile. His eyebrows never moved when he spoke. “As I’ve tried to tell your husband, we must have faith.”

“What the fuck good has faith ever done me?!” Xin yelled. “Faith didn’t get me here. Faith had shit all to do with this. I refused to give in, despite all the obstacles placed in front of me I kept coming back.”

The priest smiled as if those words somehow proved his point. Xin however, did not notice. She spun around the room pointing at figures in the darkness.

“You tried to delete me and I kept going, and with all those recovered moments I found him and fell in love with that man again, and again.” Her shoulders fell and tone of rage dwindled. “And you tell me to have faith. Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

Selene patted the ground next to her, and a pillar sprouted. A sound and scent of sea blown rains filled the room. She wore a Greek looking toga much as Grant did, where his had grown small specks of gold, hers was pure white.

“We can wait,” James said.

“And have faith,” the serene sounding Voice said and smiled. He stood and looked down to an impossibly far away bottom.

Xin sat down and pulled out an item from their last happy moment together. Soon an endless stream of paper airplanes went fluttering down the empty pit where a beam of light once sat. They spiraled in a long chain to the bottom, only four minutes away.