Right. So she did.

And it wasn’t until after night fell on the final day of the Eighth Iteration that Melody Quick finally put down and stepped away from the controller for good that September—compelled to do so not because of any one clear screen, but rather because the rest of her night (month) boiled down to, she’d come to realize, especially with the sky’s purpling, darkening, a simple choice: one, continue making what she knew could only end up being minute progress in the Fetid Zyl’thyll Torture Chambers; or two, head outside and ensconce herself under the upturned summit of an otherwise very real city’s illusory curvature, where she could sit alone and gather her thoughts and perhaps (… maybe, possibly, just a little bit …) smoke a cigarette for the first time, while she waited, the city’s lights arcing out from under her in all directions, the whole of the resultant matrix adhering perfectly to the contours of the inverted dome whose underside it lined (lined: upwards, outwards; and continued to line, until it couldn’t, until city became night, became stars, without boundary, horizon), for the Void to come, and Somnhaven to fade away, which was if nothing else at least sure to be a spectacular view, one last experience she could try to savour (she was willing to take whatever few comforts she could get at this point) before she was sent some eight-hundred kilometres north to the dormitory bed waiting for her thirty days in the past—and stumbled light-headedly (“Prima Melody, you look terrible,” somebody—who was that again?—had said to her earlier that morning … or was it the afternoon? … or maybe it was the previous day …. “When’s the last time you slept? Ate something?”) up the stairs to the roof, where she once again found—(to her, at first, disappointment)—one of the two chairs occupied, this time by—(then, her stupefaction)—the shadowed yet recognizable figure of a certain somebody, the mere sight of whose back turned to her stirred up sentiments she had no names for but had to actively staunch all the same—(and then, lastly, the deadlocking of her own mind, by now queued up with more concerns than it could possibly process, not the least of which included, in addition to the implications of said sentiments, the sentiments themselves)—to keep from bursting into tears where she stood.

She crossed to the chairs. She walked pointedly in front of the person seated there, sidestepping the half-finished case of mulchbrew at his feet and the empty green glass bottles on the ground surrounding it, and then she took the other seat, and sat next to her brother.

“Hey, loser.”

“Meh-ell!” Noel threw his head back and polished off the last of his drink. “Dear … dear li’l si-sss …” He lurched forward, placed the empty bottle on the ground next to the others. “Whassh uh-p?” He wrangled a fresh bottle from the case and snapped it open. “Washh guh-d?” He thrust himself back against the lawn chair and drank. “How’sh your week go—o-ohh god-DAMN, what happened to your eye!”

“Oh, this? Looks pretty badass, huh? Like a battle scar.”

“Bat-tle … sh-car …” His face stiffened concernedly. “Mel … you know … it’s really important that you get enough fibre in your diet … Probiotics would help, too …”

Melody punched her brother in the arm. “No! I was playing … what’s-it-called … I found it in your closet … Hex-gestalt.”

“Ooh. That’s a good—that’s a good one. Real, uhh … real primo piece of ludo right there. Um … does that hurt at all?”

“Nope. Don’t feel it. Didn’t even feel it when it actually happened.”

“How did it happen?”

“Picture, if you will, an epic, decisive battle against the Dark Prince.”

“(The, uh … tutorial boss?)”

“Finally achieved victory after what must have been like, a thousand attempts. Got too worked up.”

“Da-amn … That’s crazy,” he said, slurring diegetically.

“Screamed so hard I lost my voice during it, too.”

“Yeah, you still sound a bit croak-y.”

“Yeah. I’m a … uh—I’m a rib-bit.”

“… What?”

“What?”

Noel took a long swig. “How far have you gotten now?”

“I’m basically at the start of the Torture Chambers.”

“That’s not far from the end, then. You’re probably got like, three bosses left, I figure. Five if you count the two optional ones. But they’re honestly meant to be done in the next Cycle.”

“What’s that?”

“You start the game again, from the beginning, but you keep your items and skills. My character is on the seventh Cycle already.”

“What’s the point of doing that?”

“You can replay the game with not only the best gear already equipped but also armed with the knowledge you gained from your previous playthrough: you know all the bosses’ moves, their weak points … you know where the shortcuts are, you know how to deal with the mobs … It’s quite cathartic to be able to wreck everything that gave you a hard time the first time. Plus, you can also make the proper branching dialogue choices, and do the quests properly—”

“Quests!” Slamming her fists down on the plastic armrests. “Don’t get me started on the quests … I haven’t completed a single one so far! I’ve been locked out of almost every one I’ve come across! So what—if I don’t talk to some specific NPC at some unknown specific time (like, after I defeat some boss but before I open up some shortcut or pull some lever or even so much as set foot in some specific-ass room), then I get completely locked out of one quest or another? Ridiculous! And who knows how many quests I haven’t even so much as triggered … or begun …”

“See? Exactly. That’s what the next Cycle is for. Get it right the next time.”

“I don’t know if I like that concept, though. You’re the Adventurer, aren’t you? The destined, chosen one. Once you save the world … restore glory to your homeland … slay the demons … feels like that should be the end of it.”

Noel, smugly: “Oh, that’s where you think you’re headed, huh?”

“Regardless … stories need to have an ending. Don’t they?”

Noel shrugged. “Not much of a story.”

“What?”

“All lore, no plot.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess.”

Throughout the rest of the siblings’ discussion—their what might’ve passed for bonding in another, more regular context—but was in this current one little more than a simple postponement of topics neither particularly wanted to be the first to bring up—Melody, who’d begun inching ever gradually, steadily closer toward Noel, did so while providing as best she could the proper responses expected from a proper interlocutor, nodding studiously along as she absorbed a more experienced player’s wisdom (N: “Don’t stick with the Paladin Set, you’re only making it harder on yourself. Wear cloth armour, like the Pilgrim’s Set, it makes your rolls longer, shortens your recovery period …”), grumbling as she aired several days’ worth of accumulated grievances (M: “Each new boss goes like this: I start off pretty good for my first attempt, usually. And then each attempt after that gets worse and worse and worse.” N: “But eventually you start getting better. Until you beat it. You realize that, right? I mean, that’s just the curve, Mel. It applies to basically anything where performance and practice are involved …” M, smugly: “Like what? Name one thing.” N: “Juggling. Public speaking. Parallel parking.” M: “How disparate …” N: “Well, I’m listing shit off the top of my head …” M: “Anyway, whatever. The act of it all, the song and dance—it’s all still so tedious, in any case …”), pouting as she let slip yet another facet of her own ignorance to someone who could hardly be surprised by its depths anyway (“Hex-gestalt … five?” “That’s a V. Like the English letter, V.” “I thought it was Roman numerals.” “It’s not.” “What’s a Hex anyway? Or a Gestalt, for that matter?” “I don’t think it means anything. Latin characters, just look cool, I guess. Mysterious. I don’t think Gestalt is even English anyway. And Hex … might be ‘Hex-a-gon’?” “What’s that?” “English for hexagon. Or maybe ‘hexadecimal’.” “What’s that?” “English for base-16.” “What’s base-16?”), until she was finally close enough—emboldened enough—by mere virtue of all the time that had passed without her brother’s interfering—the inaction she’d chosen to take for sanction—to make an attempt at the box, which, as soon as she did, Noel kicked out of her reach.

“Come on,” she said. “I turn eighteen in less than an hour.”

Noel, head tilted back, lips still sealed needlessly over the mouth of a freshly-drained bottle, one half of his vision filtered through the creeping and ebbing of his own green-tinted breath, peered sideways at his sister, and then—after some initial hesitation; the tacit concession that followed; his nearly sober taking on of an insouciance that he seemed to hope would credibly excuse any movement (… or, more likely, the effects of such a movement …) he might or might not make—like, say, what if his foot just happened to conveniently move a certain something a certain distance across the ground as he shifted in his seat to reposition himself?—slid the box back towards his sister.

He looked away. He looked to the skyline.

“Huh?” Melody, fetching a bottle. “I can’t hear you if you mumble like that.”

“I said, ‘It’s nineteen here.’ And even if it weren’t … The First is three hours behind.”

“Yes, yes—you’re right. You’re always right, about everything, and I’m always wrong, I’m just so stupid, stupid little sister, airhead little me, that’s me, la-dee-da-dee-da …”

“That’s not what I—”

“Don’t you have a … I can’t … where’s your bottle opener?”

“They’re twist-off.”

“Can you, uh …? Would you …?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.” She sniffed the open bottle, drank, made a face.

Laughing: “What the hell is that expression?”

Melody, mid-flehmen: “I, uh—I’m not too sure, actually.”

“Ever had mulch before?”

“I don’t … think I have. I’ve had, uh … beer? Tequila. Oh, and once Dad let me have a sip of wine at the dinner table, when I was in fifth grade.” She laughed. Then she stopped. Stone-facedly, she declared: “I’m a good girl.”

“Are those—are those cigarettes?”

“Yeah, I just remembered I had these.” She smacked the bottom of the pack repeatedly against her open palm, imitating what she’d seen in movies and public service announcements. “Mulch and smokes. That’s a good combo, right? Like bacon and eggs. Hotcakes and syrup. Um … Peanut butter and jam.”

“(Why all breakfast foods …)”

“Donuts and coffee. Cheesecake and coffee. Macarons and coffee! (Ooh! Macarons! Have you ever had a macaron, big brother?)”

“Okay, look. I mean—listen, tobacco pairs well with pretty much any type of booze, that’s not the point. Don’t start doing it, you’ll get hooked. It’s bad for you.”

“I found them in your drawer.” She drew a cigarette and placed it between her lips. “Ah, hold up … I need a”—miming with her thumb—“fire … clicky-thing …”

“A lighter?”

“Yeah. A lighter. What did I say?”

“You said, ‘fire clicky-thing’.”

“Wow. And I’m not even halfway through my first yet.”

“Sneaks up on you, don’t it? (Also, ‘first’? You’re not getting another one …)”

“Funny thing is, the more of it I drink,” she said, patting herself down (N: “What’s the point of checking your pockets if you know for a fact that you don’t have a lighter …” M: “What the fuck is—who the hell is this? Did you put a picture of this child on me?” N: “How and when could I have possibly done that … Why would I have done that?”), “the less it tastes like anything. Not even like water. More like air. Good stuff. Good—good shit. I can see myself—I can picture myself … enjoying a bottle or two … alone … spread out under a tent.”

“Like, camping?”

“Nah, I’m thinkin’ more like, a squatter commune, ya know? Free of possessions and material desires and, uh … free from … the shackles of … society.”

“Oh, no … No, no no …” Noel snatched the pack from her. “I’m confiscating these.”

“Whatever,” she said, enjoying an unlit drag. “I look so cool right now.”

“I don’t approve. Nuh. Nuh-uh. I emphatically object.”

“Look at it this way—at least … at least I’m not out smashing up cars with a bat.”

Noel laughed. “Yeah, I guess.” Then: “What?”

The unexpectedly on-point timing of which double-take she couldn’t help but suppress a smile at, even if another part of her—one less affected, presumably, by all that mulchbrew creeping its way through her bloodstream—was at that very same moment finally coming to terms with—and how had she managed to fool herself for so long?—because what she was only realizing now had in fact been the case all this time—only she hadn’t known it then—oh, but she knew it now—just how truly alone she really was.

And would be, for quite some time. At least until as far as her mind could envision. (Which, up until a second ago, used to be this conversation—the sole difference between the nothing she saw then and the one she saw now being her own once-placed, misguided faith in the former’s potential to become anything more than what it was.)

Which was fine. Wasn’t it?

Sitting here at the cusp of another September, under stars she couldn’t quite see, her brother at her side, her head swimming with her imbibing of their native land’s de facto traditional spirit, the whole of Somnhaven laid out and lit up before them—Hey! Wasn’t this better than stewing angrily alone? Friendless, family-less? Sleeping entire days away in a tiny dormitory room in some remote college town nobody had ever heard of, ending each iteration with societally-frowned upon activities whose consequences would have long since caught up to a regular person?

No, this wasn’t so bad. And as hard-pressed as she might’ve been to admit to herself what nothing short of a gun to her temple could’ve induced from her at that point—what it would take her losing everything much, much further down the road for her to be able to finally do—she was beginning to find that she didn’t mind so much her own present failures—her mass foregoing of all that she came here for in the first place—if it meant being able to stay like this for just a little bit longer.

Making it all the more regrettable that her brother would decide to ruin everything with his following dialogue tree, which he kicked off with a bottle raised limply to the sky, a sheepish grin on his face and the words, “Happy birthday.”

“Weak toast. A-and … say that to me tomorrow, why don’t you … (Plus, weren’t you the one who was just giving me shit about time zones …?)”

“Fuck if I’m not too hungover tomorrow to even remember my own name.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t really worry about that …”

“Listen, Mel.”

“What?”

“Listen.”

“What?”

“It’s important.”

“O-kay.”

“So, it’s—it’s gonna be October now.”

“Okay?” not liking where this was going. “So?”

“So you still have time.”

“Time for what?”

“The semester’s just started.”

“Uh huh …”

“Don’t you think it’s about time you headed back?”

“Mhrm.”

“What’s ‘mhrm’?”

“It’s, uh—yeah, sure. Whatever.”

“I’m being serious.”

“I know you are.”

“Listen: take it—take it from me. The coming autumn? It’s about to pass by so fast you’ll hardly even believe it. And the longer you put off going back, the harder it’s only going to be to catch up and … and it’ll be, uh—before you know it, it’ll be … it’ll all be over … it’s always over, much too soon … and, you’ll f—Ow! Fuck!”

“Noel. Please. Please.” (Hang on—when exactly did she move her hand over to his wrist? And why the hell was she gripping on so tightly? A-and … was she not aware of how much blood her fingernails were drawing right now?) “I would really, really prefer it, big brother, if you talked about literally anything else right now.”

“No, Mel. This is—this is important. Let go. Ow. Dammit, let”—pinching, twisting the skin on the back of his sister’s hand (“Ahh-hh! No-oel! Fu-uck!”)—“go. Okay? Now, see—I’d be remiss in my duties as … as your flesh-and-blood Prime … if I didn’t let you … let me … get through this.” (“I don’t care.”) “Thing is, how much longer are you planning on staying here?

“Look, I get it. I really do. You’re away from home for the first time”—(“You can’t be serious right now.”)—“and you’re all by yourself, in a new town, on the other side of the country”—(“Oh no. Oh no, this is so embarrassing …”)—“and I know, I know it’s perfectly normal to be homesick.” (“Stop. Just stop. Please.”) “I understand it all too well, trust me. But you can’t just be always thinking about yourself now. You have to think about how you’re impacting others. You’re not a kid anymore, right?” (“Guy at the police station begs to differ.”) “I mean, who’s paying your tuition? Room and board? Who pays off your card balance every month? It’s not easy for Mom and Dad, you know? We didn’t—they never—…”

“… What?”

Noel sighed. “Nobody ever expected that you would end up coming here all the way out east.” (Cheeks puffed out, arms crossed: “Hhmrph.” “Again? With the—why don’t you use your big girl words?” “Wow, cheeky much? What are you even angry at right now?” Through clenched teeth: “I’m not angry.”)

“Well, why not? That’s what you did.”

“Yeah. I came here. I didn’t pack up to go to some backwoods—I mean, what are you planning on doing Uptown that you couldn’t back in New Circadia, exactly? Do you even know what you’re going to study yet?”

“No—no, not yet. But you know what? I’m planning to drop out a year shy of my degree, a-and then … and then give a condescending lecture to my little sister on what she ought to do with her life when she comes to visit me i-in my, uh—in the thirty-six square foot, uh, uh … shithole of a closet that I choose to call a home.”

Noel, after a sputter of plosives, a knuckling of eyes: “Okay. Holy shit. Hu-uughh. Fuck. Rude. First of all. You don’t have a little sister.” (“That’s ‘first of all’?”) “A-and secondly, I was—I was doing fine, okay? I was working for Syllabary. I was making my own money. Living my own life. Wasn’t bothering nobody. (And, come on, it’s at least—twice that, almost … maybe …)”

“Oh yeah, real glamorous work, bro-ski, real fulfilling life—what, sleeping your days away, waking up in the middle of the night just to … how did you put it? ‘Push a button when they tell me to’? I think that was how you described it to me?”

At which Noel, a little bit too eager, if you asked his sister, given how clearly frayed he was, and had been, for who knows how long now, to start pulling at threads, seemed to unravel almost completely, and all at once, with a sucking in of air, a squaring back of shoulders, the gestant hold, that forceful release, that preludial exhale so gutturally vocalized as to be the one fitting lead-in either could’ve reasonably expected from the now all-but-fuming (though not quite there yet) first-born Quick, who began: “Ha-aaagh! … Okay. That’s fine.

“That’s all fine. So, then, tell me, because you seem to have all the answers already anyway: Why are you here? No, really. I mean, look—questionable taste in future almae matres aside … you just decide to, all of a sudden, barely a week into your first semester, drop everything to come down to Somnhaven? Completely out of the blue? No reason at all? A-And to do what? You’ve been here for almost three weeks now and I’ve yet to see you do anything more than wander aimlessly around the city each day until dark. (No, hold on—that’s not entirely true. Some days you also sit in the shower for hours on end too, I guess.) Which is bad enough as it is. But considering how you were when you first showed up here, suitcase in tow, l-looking like … looking more worn out than I’ve ever seen you (or any other person!) look, and how you begged me later that night not to ’tell Mom and Dad about this’—your entire (what would you call this? an extended summer vacation? a fuckin’ … an exercise in protracted truancy?) time here just seems all the more baffling now, doesn’t it?

“Because what am I supposed to think, when you say something like that to me? Has that even crossed your mind yet, once? I’ll bet it hasn’t. I bet, even after all this time, you still haven’t—… see, that’s the thing, Mel, you never—… y-you’re just so totally, painfully … mystifyingly oblivious to those around you, always, all the time, off in your own little world, your own special one-way bubble where you’re oh-so-free to be as disengaged from your words as you want to be, not a single thought to how they might weigh on others! And yes, you’ve always been like this, okay. And yes, I probably should’ve known better by now. (I’d like to think I do know better by now.) But fuck me for giving you the benefit of the doubt this time, right?

“For actually worrying about you. For fearing that something serious might’ve happened to you—that you might’ve been i-in some trouble, o-or that somebody had hurt you … or something … and all you needed was some time to open up. Because clearly that was never the case. Nope. Turns out, you’re just here to be … here, I guess? I mean, I still don’t really fucking know. You’re certainly not telling me anything, one way or another. But hey, why would you? It’s pretty clear I don’t register enough as a person to you for you to show me that kind of courtesy.

“But hey, maybe that’s on me. Maybe you simply don’t know your dear older brother as well as I hoped you did. So let me take this opportunity to fill in some of those blanks for you. So that you’ll know exactly the kind of person I am. Wh-which should make the ever so burdensome task of empathizing with someone like me easier on you.

“Where to start? First off, you should know that I’m not—I’m not here, Mel. I exist but there’s no me. And it’s all the more aggravating when you try—when anyone tries—to treat me as a real human being. Because I can smile and introduce myself and talk about the weather but once people engage me beyond that, it’s like—th-they’ll sense something’s off about me. And there is. Because the things that should be there aren’t. Some catch on faster, more easily than others. But they all get there the same eventually.

“What can I say? Or do? I turned out exactly how the Rectifiers wanted. The Shadowlords of the Continuate. I never stood a chance. None of us did. Those caught in the void between the old and the new. Oh, yes. There are others like me. I’ll never know them and they’ll never know me but we share a common fate. We’re the victims of the change. Unlucky to be caught in that brief era-less window during our formative years.

“Those that came before it are unaffected. Because for them circumstance is, and has always been, a constant; what bearing could environment have on it? In the shared microcosm that bind together th-this … legacy group, the two are inextricable—they might as well be the same thing. How nice that must be. Can you imagine? To remain untouched, unfazed through to the other side.

“And on the opposite end, we have those that came into this world after the change. They were born into the Hellscape. They don’t know anything else. They’re like—what are they like? They’re like fish, born into the ocean long after it’s been poisoned. They’ll swim and they’ll keep on living and they’ll spawn other just as oblivious fish who will be born into poison that’s even worse and none of them will understand or even care how bad the water really is. How clean it all used to be. Which is all—everything proceeding according to the plan.

“But what about me? I’m the leftover. I was meant to fade into the background. And I already have. I’ve become—you know what I’ve become? I’ve become that faint hum, that under-the-surface ringing you can only seem to hear when you’re alone and there’s nobody around for miles and everything’s been turned off and it’s completely silent.

“Even now I’m … I’m in my room. At this very moment I’m in my bed. I’m still there. I stay there for days and sometimes I sleep, other times I just stay there and stare at the wall. You’re there now, too, Mel. With me. The floor mattress, the writing desk. You stand over me. It’s day but I’m in bed. I can stay there for days. I haven’t left the room for a week. I haven’t eaten in days. I sign in to work at night but it wouldn’t really matter if I didn’t. I don’t visit no one and nobody comes to see me. I can go for weeks without using my voice.

“You’ve asked me in passing long ago what I do in my free time and when I told you ‘nothing’ you laughed and figured I was just embarrassed about the truth or too guarded to answer honestly but you see now that it’s all real. You never imagined that anybody could even live this way. It’s such a shock to your system to see a life so opposite your own that the possibility of its existence never crossed your mind even once. But you’re witnessing it firsthand now.

“So you kneel down beside me. You’re so close you can hear that hum now, too, can’t you? You let it pull you in. You become part of it. You see that there’s nothing inside, nothing but an endless, infinite universe of white. We’re all there. Those like me. We are it. You are now, too.

“So who are you now? Who have you become? Now you’re just another random, run-of-the-mill, nocturnal shut-in, another abandoned child of Circadia unlucky enough to have grown up in that brief window between Reconstitution and Rectification, unlucky enough to know that there used to be something better than the Hellscape of the now; who, let’s say, hypothetically speaking (because you’re part of the hivemind now, remember), might be teetering on the brink of self-destruction, who by their own admission is one really, really bad day away from trying to cross the Undvided border without a permit and letting the armed guards do their job—(a really, really bad day, by the way, as a sidenote, might involve any one of the following: having to put down a beloved family pet; losing your life savings in what was in retrospect a very obvious multi-level marketing scam; getting abducted on the way home from getting a burrito with your little sister and being held for days by the government’s shadow agency which doesn’t exist and by shadow agency I mean what shadow agency I never said anything about such a thing and am certainly not implying that they exist in any sort of capacity …)—and who was already unvetted but can now also add Scrutinized to that list, wasting away in a job he hates but is about to lose anyway (because who the fuck wants to keep an Unvetted Scrutinized Loner around on payroll?), who had already resigned himself to living like this until the day an unpaid rent cheque or unsubmitted timesheet finally attracts the attention of his landlord or boss who would have to then come here and exhume his mummified shell from under a stack of ludo cartridges and empty mulchbrew bottles and empty junk food takeout bags—and with all that hanging over his head imagine who comes along all of a sudden but his own kid sister, who has to put on a forced smile and use words like ‘quaint’ to hide her disgust at how her brother turned out, and who he’s gotta now babysit as she throws away her future!

“And for what? For the purpose of bumming around Somnhaven all day? You can’t expect me to accept that, can you? That just doesn’t square with—with anything resembling a rational decision.

“So please, Mel. For the last time. I’m begging you. It’s not too late yet to turn things around. Because as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got two options here: Either hop back on the first train headed Uptown come sunrise, or convince me right now that you came to the city with some kind of a purpose. Any at all. Seriously. I don’t even care if it’s something stupid. All I want to know is that you did this as a result of, uh—… that there was some sort of thought process involved. You know? Really. If you have something to tell me, here’s your chance. I’m all ears.”

The perfect segue, no?

The kind of golden opportunity she could’ve only fantasized about back during those lonely iterations Uptown—the type she would’ve pounced on without a second thought as recently as a few carriage returns back—back in that distant other time, that now separate, no longer recognizable era of her life which predated her brother’s soliloquy—back to which time she would never be allowed to return, no matter how many times the Void drop-kicked her back to the beginning of the month—maddeningly enough not the case for Noel, who would soon (very, very soon) be granted (quite undeservedly, Melody couldn’t help but shake her head at) the mercy of forgetting, of having not only his actions undone but his memories of them coincidingly wiped: another reality to be erased, another month-long false memory added to the growing stack of so many (seven! and counting!) other Septembers which never happened, just as this one would soon (not), all the events and interactions, the first-time introductions and awkward handshakes and meaningless conversations in the dining hall over late-afternoon meals she shamelessly chose to call ‘breakfast’ with people who no longer knew her face or name, all the day-to-day minutiae that otherwise would’ve long ago been jettisoned from Melody’s head had not each one been an ultra-transient (and therefore exceedingly precious) fragment of a larger though just as transient and irrecoverable whole—like that time she tried to clean the communal dormitory dryer’s lint filter after having just washed her hands and ended up with her hands all lint-y, or when she paced around the bathroom playing with the water in the sink and making faces in the mirror and trying to draw mental pixel art with the floor tile patterns at three in the morning, or all those sleepless hours in bed staring at the ceiling, agonizing about what had gone so wrong in the very fabric of reality that her existence and her existence alone had turned out the way it did—the gross, sheer futility they encompassed uncorroborable, affirmed by nothing save by those remnants only so within the head of that one Circadian girl we all love and know so well by now, that adorable scamp who had at one point struggled with the uncertainty of what awaited her in this noisy, crowded sewer of a capital so much that she would sit in the shower for hours on end fearing exactly the kind of situation she currently found herself in; who had nevertheless continued to hold out hope throughout all those Uptown Septembers that her brother would be able to offer her if not full-on answers then at the very least some form of consolation—a half-hearted attempt at sympathy, perhaps—or even just the merest suggestion of a recognition that she was hurting, that whatever she seemed to be going through she couldn’t handle by herself, that she needed him by her side, and that he in turn would be there for her as well; and who had, those hopes now dashed, her shower-fears justified, come to accept, sitting here beside the very person on whose mental doppelganger she’d placed, or misplaced, so many of her (in retrospect) totally unrealistic expectations, the reality of her future in Somnhaven—namely that there was none, that there wasn’t the slightest chance she’d ever consider returning to the city in any of the Septembers to come, because there was simply nothing left for her here, nothing that could help her, nothing that, let’s be honest, even wanted her here … a-and say, come to think of it, if that was the case, why didn’t he just say so?

“If you didn’t want me here, why don’t you just say so?”

“Are you—are you for real? Impressive. It’s like you weren’t even listening to anything I said.”

“Also, really? ‘Babysit’? You think you’re ‘babysitting’ me?”

“I might as well be talking to myself. Which I am, apparently.”

“Relax, you won’t have to ‘babysit’ me much longer. That’ll all sort itself out soon enough. I won’t be inconveniencing you anymore after tonight, believe me.”

“See, even now you’re not getting it. It’s not about inconveni—… that’s not the issue here. Sometimes I have to wonder if I’m speaking—”

“Guess this is what I get, for wanting to see the brother I haven’t seen in forever.”

“—another language entirely. This is exactly why I stopped trying to communicate with other people entirely. Every conversation is just two people talking at each other. Nobody listening. Neither understanding.”

“Hah. Yeah. Okay. ‘Understanding’ … Like you make it easy to be understood. You’re talking as if we grew up in different decades. You’re not even half a decade older than me. What memories could you possibly have of the Recon that were so good?”

“You wouldn’t get it.”

“Oh, a cop-out. Very nice.”

“It’s stuff you’ll never have to worry about it.”

“Then enlighten me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“So basically this is your way of telling me I’m too dense to be as miserable as you are.”

“Oh no, not you, Mel. The world to come was tailored for people like you.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Then you really weren’t listening.”

“Okay, well. Sorry I’m too dumb to get on your level. Too dumb to share in whatever grand insight you have into modern Circadian life. Too dumb to get accepted into the same school, which is why I had to settle for Uptown, I guess …”

“… What? ‘Same school’? What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Why do you think I wanted to come to the Third in the first place?”

“How— … How would I know that?”

“You’re gonna make me say it?”

“What?”

“(Wow, am I glad you won’t remember any of this.)”

“… What?

“Because I wanted to be close to you, Noel.”

“…”

“But I guess I should’ve known better, huh?”

In the uneasy silence that followed, a door opened and slammed shut somewhere in the house below them. Elsewhere in the distant night a dog barked.

“You’re right, Mel: You should have known better. Sorry to disillusion you but my life was forfeit long before they took me away. Even more so now.”

Prompting the million dollar question(s) on everbody’s mind: “Where were you, Noel? … What did they do to you?”

And his answer, which he spent, in her opinion, a suspiciously long time in formulating: “Nowhere. Nothing.”

“You were gone for an entire week. More than a week. I looked for you. I looked really hard,” said Melody, who had spent most of that time white-knuckling a controller.

“Well, do me a favour and don’t, next time. Matter of fact, just forget I exist. You’re better off forgetting about me entirely.”

Eyes to the skyline, away from her brother: “I don’t like it when you say stuff like that.”

The door behind them flew open. The opener’s voice, angrily: “You two have got to shut the fuck up.” Growing louder as the speaker approached: “I can hear you. The entire house can hear you. You’re both very loud. And incredibly drunk. We’ve all had to sit through this entire … what, argument? I guess that’s what you’d call it? I’m not sure exactly … from start to finish and now we need you both to stop and save us from the secondhand embarrassment we’ve been suffering through all this time. Please and thank you.” Laura Staples stood before the two Quicks, her hands on her hips. “Look at you two. Seriously, just how wasted are you?” Shaking her head, she bent over and reached for a bottle of mulchbrew. “I weep for the future of the Continuate.”

Noel, kicking away the box: “Get your own damn mulchbrew.”

Laura, walking over to where he’d kicked it, taking a bottle: “No.” She twisted off the cap and drank.

“That’s the last one.”

“I’m saving you from alcohol poisoning. You’re welcome.” She drank some more and Ahh’ed exaggeratedly. Looking down at the Quicks: “What happened to you two? You used to be so close … sleeping in the same bed … not that I approve of such an activity … bordering on that forbidden love between”—affectatiously demure, blushing theatrically—“a brother and his sister … oh, it’s not right, no no no … that kind of thing is no longer permissible under modern Circadian societal standards … it being current year Rectified and all …”

N: “Are you quite finished?”

M: (“No, like I told you already, we take turns …”)

“What’s the next step for you guys? Kiss and make up? I recommend couples counselling.” Laura’s smile faded. Disapprovingly: “Melody, are you smo-king?”

“No, no, don’t worry, it’s not lit. I’ve just been chewing on the filter … (Why do they make them look like corks? …)”

“I … see. What happened to your eye?”

“Video games.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Say Laura, you’re the same age as Noel. What was so different about the Reconstituted years?”

Laura thought for a while, then shrugged. “I dunno.” Listing things off the top of her head: “CRTs? Paper maps. Video game arcades in malls. People actually going to malls. And, uh … They used to air cartoons on Saturday mornings. Oh, you had to return videotapes to the actual, physical store. And there were no mini-computers in the palm of your hand offering you access to the entirety of human knowledge, every little thing you could ever want to know a single search away.” (At the mention of the service supplied by his possibly former employer, Noel silently raised a hand as if to signal his role as de facto representative, a gesture that went completely unnoticed by the other two.) “That’s about it.”

N: “Also, all of our consumer electronics were encased in translucent plastic. They used to have soul. Now the only people who get those are inmates. (Sure hope they appreciate all the cool retro aesthetic they’re getting. Lucky bastards.)”

M, ignoring her brother: “Do you have any particular fondness for that time?”

“I think that our current culture has found a way of commodifying the idea of nostalgia. A better time, shipped and packaged as a product.”

Melody, nodding as if she understood Laura’s statement. “Yes, yes, I see. I understand completely. A better time … A simpler time.”

“The youth of today will be nostalgic for this current era, too, some point down the line.”

Noel, scoffing: “Hard to imagine.”

“It’s true, whether you want to believe it or not. In fact, when you’re an old man, you’ll probably pine for the days when you were still single with no responsibilities, free to sleep all day and stay up all night.”

“Yeah, I don’t plan on living that long, thanks.”

M: “Hey, so, crazy thought—What if we never get there, though?”

L: “What, like if the world ends, you mean?”

N: “Asteroid collision.”

L: “Please. I’d sooner place money on one of your company’s AI creations rising up and wiping us clean off the face of the earth.”

N: “Too many Recon-era sci-fi movies, this one.”

Melody: “No, nothing like that. I mean … What if time just stood still from now on? Theoretically, of course … What if we were just stuck in this same month? Assuming you keep your memories.”

Laura, not betraying any hint that she still remembered their last interaction: “If time stood still … If time never continued on …”

Noel: “I’d probably just do the same thing I’m doing now. Without the ‘signing in to work’ part.”

L: “Okay, well, unlike Mr. Fun-Haver over here, I’d try and, you know, enjoy life. Learn a language, read books. Read a lot of books, actually. Do some traveling. Meet new people.”

“(Yeah, people who’ll forget you shortly.)”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Where would you go, Laura?”

“I’ve got my own bucket list. Angkor Wat. Machu Picchu. Uh … The Moon.”

Melody, an idea beginning to take root in her head: “Have you done any traveling inside Circa—the Continuate?”

Laura laughed. “What traveling is there to do here?”

“Well … the Undivided, for one. The First and the Third make up such a small portion … There’s all that land in between them.”

“Good luck trying to enter unless you got a good reason. You have to work there, or have relatives living there already.” (Melody, to her brother, wordlessly: Do we? To which her brother shook his head, no.)

Melody, jokingly: “Something’s gotta be done about that. We’ll take back the Undivided! By force!”

Laura, not laughing as Melody had hoped she would, quite earnestly: “It’s the other way around. Those living in the Undivided are the true inheritors of the Circadian land. Case in point, we’re not even calling it the Second Division. And the Rectifiers have tried to make it stick, believe me.”

Noel: “You two are killing me with this talk. Bordering on treason here. I don’t wanna go back …”

Laura downed the rest of her drink as Melody watched in amazement. “How are you still standing?”

Laura winked. “Guess I’m not lightweights like you two. Must run in the family.”

N: “‘Lightweight’? I pretty much tanked that entire carton by myself …”

Laura pulled out her phone. “Melody, I don’t have you on Syllabus, do I? Add me?”

Melody, enthusiastically: “Yeah!”

“Uh, Noel … I’d add you, but you probably don’t have a profile.”

Noel: “You’re right, I don’t. And no, you wouldn’t’ve. You just said that because you’re pressured by what you think is proper societal etiquette. Which I could give two shits about. We’ve been housemates for years, you oughta know me better than that by now.”

“No. No, I don’t know you at all. We’ve never talked before your sister came along.”

“Yes, and doesn’t that alone say enough?”

Melody, regarding her brother’s (again, possibly former) employer: “Isn’t it bad that everything related to the internet in our country—social media, e-mail, search engine, everything—is consolidated under one single company?”

“It’s like that everywhere else, Mel. The Continuate is just more transparent about it. Oh, not to our benefit, of course. It’s yet another way to give you the finger, as if to say, ‘Yeah, you don’t have a choice. What are you going to do about it?’”

Laura, back turned to the siblings, faced the city. She stretched her arms back and her body upwards, vocalizing loudly (“Nnnggghhhh …”) as she strained. Then, yawning: “Nice night. Nice view.”

M: “Yeah. It’s about the only thing I’ll miss about Somnhaven.”

“Those Technocrats were really amazing …”

N: “What’s that gotta do with anything?”

Laura turned back to face Noel. Pre-defensively: “The Bending is because of the Technocrats.”

“What? What the fuck is the ‘Bending’?”

Exasperatedly: “The—The fact that we can see the entire city from here! That! Look at that! All that!” She gestured wildly, arms flailing, at the view before them.

“No. We’re—we’re at a higher elevation. Are you touched, lady?”

“You don’t think the Technocrats could pull something like that off?”

“No, I’m well aware of the kind of stuff they were capable of. I’m just saying that there’s no such thing at play here,” he said, earning himself a bewildered scoff, a protracted look of disdain, and then the heated overture to an extended, impassioned diatribe that would go on until at least the end of the night from the frenzy-procced Laura Staples, interjecting whose increasingly personal, venomous attacks was Noel Quick’s own brand of refutation, three-fifths reason, two contumely, he steadfast in his position, and she hers, neither budging or willing to cede any kind of ground to the other, while Melody Quick, legs crossed, eyes closed, hands clasped behind her head, no longer present on the rooftop except physically, leaned back and savoured the last of the euphoria of the mulchbrew still in her system, her mind floating somewhere above kite-wise in the Somnhaven night sky, rising steadily higher the nearer midnight drew, altitude kept in check by the occasional accentuated insult or stressed syllable, the spikes in volume her only remaining connection (“Holy shit, Mel—are you okay? Your entire body jerked just now.” “Mmmrrgh.”) to the world below, the city she resolved to never visit again, the people who would forget her shortly, all of which she knew she could escape from entirely if she could just find a way to free herself fully from that audible tether, without whose grip she’d be free to pursue even greater heights, to travel even further beyond, away from Earth, past the Moon, out of the solar system, to the outer edges of the galaxy, then to all the places beyond that whose names Melody didn’t know because she didn’t pay enough attention during her classes but whose locations must be remote enough, surely, that even the Void wouldn’t be able to find her again.

But the Void did find her.

And when it came it did so recognizably, arriving right on time, eliciting the same responses it usually did from those witnessing the Void for the first time, in this case Melody’s uninitiated companions, who behaved, their argument put on hold, much like all the others had before them: the panic, the awe, the same sudden inarticulation; and unfurlingly, the swallowing of whatever mechanism the Technocrats had put in place triggering a mass flattening-out, the city appearing as though it were being ironed out outwards from all directions, the mesmerizing sight of which Melody knew would be the last she would ever see of Somnhaven, and which spectacle she watched, and continued to watch, until there was nothing left to watch, until nothing remained of the Eighth Iteration but a lone, houseless rooftop, and those atop it, each assuming configurations two believed to be their last, the other part of yet another routine disintegration, which they were, until they weren’t—Melody gasping in surprise at a sudden warmth pressing up against her, her eyes opening to see the back of her brother’s neck, her proximity to which she barely had enough time to register before she was shoved even deeper into it by another, separate warmth, that of Laura’s back pushing against her own, the dual opposing forces enveloping Melody and sealing her tightly within the two-person phalanx into which Prime and Prima had instinctively arranged themselves around the younger, smaller girl, her defenders’ arms outstretched protectively in a futile attempt—and it was futile—as they must’ve known it would be—to shield her from the encroaching cosmic wilderness against which neither had the means or even right to defend but into whose bleak and alien un-light they were willing to throw themselves headfirst anyway if it meant being able to demonstrate, whether they were conscious of it or not, their willingness to fulfill those unwritten obligations that perhaps they would never quite fully comprehend but which had nevertheless been placed on them since long before even the precursors to the first of their bloodlines left their stinking homes in the putrid proto-Circadian dirt to step out dumb and blinking into the sunlit overworld regarding what to one was the little sister he treasured so much (and did she know that? did you ever tell her, Noel?) in all the ways he felt he didn’t deserve himself; the other a somewhat eccentric but nice kid who was clearly holding back so much (though exactly of what she couldn’t quite say) and, what’s more, was tired of it; and to both a helpless, vulnerable little thing who desperately needed to be protected at all costs, which aura Melody was keenly aware of exuding but which misimpression she left unaddressed, for fear of losing not only what she’d found at last, what she’d been unknowingly yearning for all this time—what it was she lacked—that she even lacked it at all—all laughably obvious only once she had it—but as well all that to which it owed its existence: the layers of comfort in which she stood swathed, the sensation of being nestled between them; their originators who had so readily marked her as a pitiable little thing, a feeble child who longed only to be cossetted.

Which she was.