A plane zipping through the clouds above the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia, the flight's first-class cabin.
Pilots had vanished after the AI revolution, but flight attendants remained an aeronautical staple. Companies, in lieu of other outlets for competition, continued to distinguish themselves through the exquisiteness of the extras, the pampering human touch.
A flight attendant was barging down the aisle, his footsteps lacking the grace of his training and his hands balancing no beverages nor meals.
Earlier, he'd overheard their chef laughing with another co-worker about a teen asking her out on a date. Even though the chef had been amused by the solicitation, the kid hard to take seriously due to being a decade her junior, the flight attendant couldn’t ignore the issue. He'd mulled it over for several minutes, eventually concluding that it was unconscionable to stand idly by while a comrade was abused by one of the bourgeoisie - teenage or otherwise. A word of resistance was demanded.
He found the teen slumped back in a posture of slumber, sheltering within a sleeping mask, headphones, and lap-blanket. It was an obvious charade - the kid's face was twitching, and a stream of nervous sweat dribbled down his brow.
At least he had a conscience, thought the attendant. Most of the spoiled brats he dealt with were incapable of a feeling as subtle as remorse.
When he approached to prod the teen out of his fake sleep, a tablet propped up beside the boy detected the motion and flashed a warning.
'Snap fingers three times to wake. Don't touch; might attack. Bad habit from virtual gaming.'
The attendant snickered at the barricade. But, being professional, unwilling to gift any of these people ammunition against himself, he complied.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
At the signal, the headphones feeding white noise to the teen switched to an alarm.
His body suddenly shot forward, lurching with a life-clutching abruptness. In the same motion, he violently smashed his head against the air, flinging his headphones off and into the seat ahead. His arms also tried to snap out but were halted by something.
Like someone dragged out of the rapids of a river, the teen gasped for oxygen, desperate and agonised.
A moment later, the panic gone, he used a forearm to slip off the sleeping mask, revealing a flat gaze for the attendant of inquiry. "Yo?"
The flight attendant scanned the passengers around him, searching for external confirmation of the bizarre reaction he'd witnessed. However, the incident had passed with such speed that no one else had caught it.
When he looked back, the kid had already re-hidden his hands under his blanket.
His wrists had been restrained by handcuffs improvised from a belt.
The attendant, frowning, leaned in and whispered a question. “Is everything fine?”
The teen took a second to process what he was being asked. “Oh...no, I’m not a hostage. Tied this myself.” He raised the blanket and mimed biting the belt beneath. “Safety precaution against a bad habit. What do you want?”
What did he want? reflected the attendant.
Right, the rude solicitation.
"Earlier, you...with the..." he trailed off, unable to regrasp the emotional thrust of his complaint. "It's nothing important."
"Sure?"
"Yeah, forget about it."
"Cool." The kid, giving the attendant a wink, bent over to retrieve the headphones, clumsily picking them up through the blanket.
As the flight attendant trotted off, creeped out by the wink, his former grievance subsided against the many internal questions about what the hell he'd just observed. The hairs on his neck raised a little further when the teen behind spoke a word to himself, "Again."
Strangely, the tone wasn't of embarrassment, annoyance, or sadness. It was more like a command from a drill-instructor to an exhausted student, a mad exhortation to struggle on with the next impossible repetition.
A dreamless place, tens of millions of bodies stacked in a pile, all of them in various states of dying.
The bottom layer was composed of gargantuan monsters with tentacles split, wings severed, fangs smashed, eyesockets emptied. Above them lay the smaller monsters in no better state. Then there was the layer of soldiers, the elves, the dwarves, and the humans in armour pierced and crushed. Above them, there were the criminals with nooses around their necks, decapitated heads, and faces blue with poison. And the topmost layer was the citizens, the men, the women, and the children, whose skin had been blackened by the flames of the castles in which they'd sheltered, turned green from the plagues that'd swept their lands.
None were fully-dead, though. Stuck for eternity in the last moments of their lives, the dying squirmed and shoved, wailed and howled to be freed from the crushing mass of each other.
On the face of this mountain of the near-dead, a solitary figure would climb. Using the bodies as hand- and foot-holds, he would be forced to dig his fingers deep into their flesh to secure his grip. The closer he would draw near to the summit, the steeper would grow the mountain, the fiercer the gale winds that eternally threatened to knock him off.
He'd lost count of how many times he'd fallen and been forced to restart. This time, too, he would fall, he knew. Nevertheless, he could not stop the climb.
The climber was presently at the very base amongst the worst of the monsters. From the bottom, the peak was invisible and the breeze was so light it wouldn’t disturb a hair.
At the base, studying the shifting layout of the handholds, he was joined by a red-skinned woman. Tall, with sinewy muscles and a square-shaped face, her feminine side was visible mostly in her ornamentation, in a hibiscus flower threaded through hair grown to the waist and a sarong with a dye-pattern fit for a monarchess.
“Is this where I end up?” she asked the climber. “I suppose you'll wedge me near the bottom with the rest of these hideous things.”
Nothing’s decided yet, he mumbled grotesquely through lips sewn shut by barbed wire.
“So this is where I end up.” The woman surveyed the mountain with disgust, regret, and mutual respect. “How do I die this time?”
Nothing’s decided yet. The climber sprinted at a screeching beast, using its horn swiping at him as a launching pad to rocket himself upwards and instantly out of sight.
Canberra, capital of the desert nation of Australia, an airport.
By the year 2050, the tedium of airport processing had been done away with thanks to universal surveillance. Within two or three minutes of disembarking, international passengers would be amongst the strip of tour guide boutiques and overpriced cafes, their luggage puttering along behind them on automated trolleys.
All around the airport were signs of a virtual MMORPG that'd been commandeering increasingly more of the world's attention. At an internet café, many of the old gaming rigs had been discarded and replaced with VR equipment for addicts squeezing in dungeons between their flights. In the waiting lounge, grouchy middle-aged zoomers moaned at their sons and daughters absorbed by in-game streams as though they hadn’t themselves wasted their childhoods on 10-inch screens.
In an airport salon, a pair of students getting their hair styled were sharing a tablet depicting a battle in their zone of Aion Laisije.
The Tyrant's reformations had ended the former convention of month-long total wars between rival player-owned regions. Instead, guilds resolved their disputes in pre-scheduled pitched battles of armies exclusively consisting of players, where victory would go to whoever seized control of a designated area's Reincarnation Monuments or held the most at the elapse of the battle's agreed-upon duration. Veterans hated the change; newbies and casuals loved the streamlined fun.
The present battle was taking place in an evacuated riverland. Two alliances, each consisting of tens of thousands, were throwing their bodies against each other, Cutthroats slitting jugulars and Crusaders having holes blasted in their chests by magical missiles. Here and there could be spotted a disciplined platoon employing recognisable tactics, but, these two forces being amateurs, the majority of combatants scrambled through the bloodshed like headless chickens, half their guildmates missing in the chaos, half their armour lost and unreplaced from previous deaths.
When the tide seemed about to favour one army, the battlefield was set upon by a buzzing stormcloud of hornets.
"What's with the hornets?" asked one of the friends getting their hair cut.
"Karnon, maybe?"
Indeed, the player recording the footage tracked the sound of laughter to a tower overlooking the battlefield. On top, a blue-haired giant held a sack large enough to fit a tyrannosaurus, which’d been marked 'Bag of Live Hornets' to disabuse anyone of doubts as to the agent behind this blessing of divine mischief.
'Hohohohohohoho!' The God laughed at the screaming armies, both sides being ravaged by the insects, the scheduled battle and weeks of preparation ruined. 'Sing it louder, young saplings! The universe listens to the song of our souls! Hohohohohohoho!'
The two friends in the salon shared in his hearty laughter.
Oh, that Karnon, what a hilarious devil!
Near the pair, paying at the counter, was a teen in over-sized sunglasses with a fresh, oiled-up side-part quiff hairstyle and a scowl.
"Karnon," Henry swore.
Even in the real world, he couldn’t quite escape this trash videogame and its trash azure-haired character.
A character – that was the correct and healthiest view of the azure a-hole. Henry thanked his Digital twin for conducting such a thorough background check of The Trickster God, allowing him of the Flesh to catch a wink of restful sleep without fussing over these problems. Nevertheless, a big part of him considered the investigation futile. To truly, truly understand the blue bully, one should not put their eyeballs so close to madness but step back into real-life, where Karnon could be evaluated within the context of a video game, as a character beholden to the contrived dynamics of Saana's 'Cycle', a creation of it.
What was The Cycle? Well—
"Nope." Henry swatted away the intrusive thoughts like they were Karnon's unleashed ho—"Nope." He swatted his first swat. "No videogames; no videogame similes. Today's about living it up in reality, about two strapping young lads out together on the prowl. Isn't that right, Little Larry?"
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
He had addressed a toddler beside him with the same haircut, matching sunglasses, and a handheld camera aimed up at Henry's face.
The boy nodded silently, saying nothing because he was Alex's mute offspring.
It was Little Liu!
Yes, yet again, Henry's affairs had been meddled with by his greatest of frenemies. Arriving at the airport in NZ from his office, he'd been greeted by Little Liu, his grandmother nowhere to be found. Alex, plotting away in the background, had been in contact with the grandmother, weaselling out info on the university-tour trip. The beaver-head, proposing an alternative, had given a sob story how a change of environment for Little Liu and the one-on-one with an older male role-model might be beneficial for the boy in breaking free of his silent shell. The suggestion then was to have the child monitor Henry in the grandmother's place, while she and Henry's assistant/Little Liu's nanny Mrs Withers enjoyed elderly activities. Obviously, Alex's proposal had been a cover-story for sabotaging the day's quest to pick up women, for what chick would want to hang out with a dude lugging around a toddler?
Weaponising an innocent child for a scheme...how despicable...
As the two were leaving the salon, Little Liu tugged at his uncle's leg and stretched out his arms to be picked up.
"Again, Little Larry?" Henry used a pseudonym to maintain the child's anonymity. "You have two functioning legs. Why insist on burdening mine?"
Little Liu looked down at his short toddler legs, back up at his uncle, then reached upwards.
From a speaker attached to the child's camera, the voice of Henry's grandmother at a speedway for human-operated vehicles came through. "Henry, carry him around. He's only 2."
"Fine." He scooped up the impertinent child. "But, Little Larry, remember this: you'll never develop the endurance to climb if you're always relying on others' muscles. 'Free' help, that's a noob bait - everything must be paid back eventually. Take me, for example. Your beaver-head of a father gave me one small favour years ago, and he's been using that to emotionally blackmail me ever since."
Mrs Withers spoke through the speakers. "Mr Lee, please…age-appropriate communication…"
Thus, Henry carried the burdensome child around the airport, and Little Liu, who lacked any sense of loyalty, diligently filmed their surroundings according to the instructions from Henry's grandmother. She still suspected he would attempt to sabotage his enrolment at university.
Passing a public toilet, the child signalled a wish to have his diaper changed. Henry disabled the camera for legal reasons of privacy, then, not going to the restroom but instead around a discrete corner, placed Little Liu down on a bench.
The pair exchanged a conspiratorial nod.
Grandma's suspicion had been correct.
"Great job, Little Larry!" Henry slipped the toddler a small can of seaweed cola. "So long as you continue to invest in my faction, the snack stream will flow uninterrupted, I promise you. Uncle's filthy rich and indifferent to your health."
While in the plane toilet, he'd instructed the mute child to search for these fabricated diaper-change opportunities whenever he heard the code word 'muscles'.
Alex thought he was so clever pulling this switcheroo. However, the beaver-head couldn’t have predicted that Henry would be much happier with the change in arrangements. A toddler was significantly easier to bribe than a grandmother.
Henry began pacing, signifying the start of that ancient, sacred familial discourse, the impartation of wisdom from uncle to nephew. "So here's the situation, Little Larry: uncle's been given you, a dud, for a hand, but with my genius and your compliance, we're going to snatch all the purses. We'll evade the distraction of college AND make some progress in ordinary love. Today, you and I will be performing a double deception play employing two enacted relational modes. Mode one, conventional non-blood-related nephew-uncle mode, for when we're around the ladies. This is our present mode, in which I am your non-blood-related uncle. We must make BOTH these points clear! Any confusion about me being a single father will diminish my value to women by indicating poor self-control in my youth and the pre-entanglement of financial assets, while connections with your actual father, if leaked, might invite the wrong crowd – uncle would prefer not to date someone associated with that trash videogame. For current marks, you're succeeding moderately well in the exhibition of the uncle-nephew mode, although you could work on the self-sufficiency dimension; the optimal nephew build is less needy than this. Situation two, son-father mode, for the university tour. Here, we're going to exploit the aforementioned defects of single teenage fatherhood and create the illusion that you're a child I had when I was 15. 'Underage parent, ooooh, bit of a troublemaker this Henry guy is, bit of a bad boy'. By presenting this character flaw, your fake father, me, Father Henry, will hopefully get his scholarship revoked on its moral clause and ejected from the program, thereby alleviating him of the time-wasting affliction of higher education."
He helped the toddler open the seaweed cola can.
"Yes, the chance of this whacky scheme succeeding is low, Little Larry, but trying times calling for trying moves. The terrain ahead is rough, and we're in a battle against a veteran of social manipulation. Look at my grandmother's anticipation of the resume ruining plan and her counter-offensive of preparing a second independent copy. There's no guarantee I won't get outflanked on the doppelganger manoeuvre or any of the others. Hence, we must pummel our foe with a barrage of attacks, assess the successes and failures, then reformulate and attack again. Hit, run, hit, run, hit, run, until, if nothing else works, our geriatric adversary succumbs to exhaustion. Never give up, Little Larry! They may have wisdom on their side, but WE have the vitality and perseverance of youth! Capiche?"
The toddler shook his head, having understood absolutely none of that.
"Forget about the theory.” Henry gestured dismissively. “All you need to know is what to do. I’m giving you two new code-words to memorise. First will be 'heaven'. When you hear 'heaven', that's your cue to switch on Little-Larry-The-Son mode. For a memory aid and more authentic backstory, your mother, my unwed girlfriend, went to heaven after ODing on dragon dust, both of us having troubling histories with stimulant addiction. That's the canon explanation for your muteness – fetal brain damage. In your performance, this tragic past should manifest as a general countenance of sadness. Nǐ dǒng ma?"
When the boy wasn’t getting it still, Henry re-explained in simpler terms. After two more simplifications, Little Liu seemed to grasp the rough outline of switching between pretending to be a son or nephew in response to the code-words of 'heaven' and 'earth'.
"OK. Let's practice." Henry mimed surprise at an invisible university staff member walking around the corner. "Is that you, chancellor? Good heavens, I didn't expect to meet you here. Oh, this child? This is Little Larry, my so—my nephew! HE'S MY NEPHEW! I'M NOT HIS BIOLOGICAL FATHER!"
Henry glanced expectantly at the toddler.
Little Liu stared back in deep concentration, his toddler mind grappling with the already confusing demands made worse by his uncle's false admission, his father's false admission …
Father…father…father…father…
The toddler's face flushed red, and he began to vibrate like an overloaded clothes washing machine, the seaweed cola almost spilling out of the can.
"Earth! Freeze!" Henry tossed an emergency candy bar.
Little Liu, getting popped in the forehead, froze.
The uncle tsked in disappointment. "You don’t have to call me father, Little Larry. To evade grandmother's detection, we'll be restricting our operation to subtle, non-verbal communication, i.e. the way you don't talk right now. All I’m asking of you is to exude the archetypal son aura, to express the charade in your actions, your mien, your feelings. For example, hypothetical, you're terminally ill and in need of a transplant to prolong your life cut short - how much can you demand? As my nephew, you could reasonably request a part that would regrow, like a slice of my liver or a scoop of my bone marrow. As my son, though, you could be brazen enough to make me take a permanent loss by stealing a full kidney. That's the essential difference between nephews and sons. Here, let me demonstrate the distinction from the father-uncle end. Earth. This is me who was already lecturing, nonconventional unrelated-by-blood Uncle Henry." Taking off his sunglasses, he cast upon the toddler an ordinary, borderline-indifferent gaze. "'Little Larry, my nephew.' Heaven. And this is me, Father Henry." His eyes, lighting up with an injection of sentiment, projected a mixture of paternal warmth and self-incrimination at the drug abuse that'd inflicted the child with permanent brain damage. "'Little Larry, my son.' Earth. Do you understand? Give it a go. Heaven. 'Little Larry, it's me, your father, please perform a son-congruent expression."
The toddler returned a blank glance for several moments, before pulling down his sunglasses, revealing a gaze for someone more affectionate and responsible.
Father Henry clapped in applause. "That's my Little Larry! I'm proud of you, so—woah, what have I been saying, chancellor. No, he's not my son. We're biologically unrelated. What on earth are you implying?" Uncle Henry became serious. "Magnificent acting, Little Larry. The childlike ignorance of the darker aspects of your fake parent's neglect was an inspired addition, one that uncle hadn't even entertained. What a disturbing contrast. VERY incriminating." His e-assistant beeped with a warning. "Our time's almost up. Have you pooped yourself?"
Little Liu shook his head.
"Excellent. Continue training to minimise episodes of waste expulsion; remember: you don't want to be caught by your enemies with your diaper off. Now, finish up your drink so we can go, and, as for that candy bar, you can keep it - it's yours now, buddy."
The toddler stowed away the snack that'd struck his forehead into a pocket, then the non-blood-related uncle and nephew, slipping back on their sunglasses, shared one last conspiratorial nod.
Yes, theirs was going to be a bright day of academic failure and love.
Vancouver, Canada. The den of Septic Rose, leader of The Garden of The Grotesque and one of Saana's most intimidating assassins.
Her uptight mother not permitting room modifications, Rose had taken to decorating her inner sanctum using a system of projectors. When she was alone, her drab surroundings transformed into a brilliant collage of a certain reaction-impaired, love-impaired duellist. On display was a history of one person’s public life in Saana. The ceiling stirred with clips from the most exciting duels of his legendary series, The Way of Fighting Alone, including their own that'd moved them from the tundra to The Skinny Guy's realm of shadows and back. A laundry hamper hosted a map time-lapse of The Schism of Tyrants campaign, her brother's hijacked strongholds in the Western continent falling in quick succession. Amidst walls, lamps, and bedside tables of duelling fan-art, the headboard of her bed was a sketch she'd drawn herself of him behind the counter of his bookstore, squinting handsomely back at her in suspicion.
While Henry had been having one crazy one-sided conversation in the planet's other hemisphere, he was unwittingly engaged in a second here.
"But why pick the alpha-pleb? Cripple-gege, this choice was illogical."
Rose, lying on a bed littered with tissues, was maintaining her features in a robotic calm and talking with a tablet. On the screen looped a clip. It showed the ruins of a city, the ground soaked maroon from thousands of fan-spectators who'd ambushed The Cripple in his 8th and decisive match against Mrtyu, an Indian Qi Master and Saana's then-reigning duellist champion. The victor had been panting, finally catching his breath after the arduous climb, and he'd been marvelling at his slain foe's soul-motes floating around him. Suddenly, his eyes, piercing through the sparkling cloud of lights, flicked towards the camera, to his number one admirer hiding in the skeleton of a demolished church. His lips parted into a beatific smile - pure, clean, strong, and wide, the likes of which hadn't been seen in many years. Unaware that this wasn't the end but merely the start, he gave her a friendly wink and shouted a celebratory line of trash-talk.
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
The footage had been edited to replace his original avatar with his Saana III one based off his real-life appearance.
Rose disagreed with an imagined reply. "Who cares if the silver bitch's potential exposure attracts your old enemies? Bring those noobs on! You can beat them all up no problem with your amazing new style! Don't worry, Cripple-gege. If you'd be so charitable to share your secret technique to this underserving wretch, I can offer some assistance."
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
"Cripple-gege, you can't be so calculating. The core point is that fans must always be picked over enemies."
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
"You can't be indifferent to your fans either. This mindset is why so few have been able to appreciate your invincible genius. Cripple-gege, remember, we've been loyal to you for years while this ugly stuck-up bitch hag cow only started following you around after you'd been exposed as rich and super handsome. We loved you for your most important quality! We loved your achievements!"
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
Rose's expression cracked slightly, a hint of alarm sneaking through the robotic façade. "'Super handsome'? Cripple-gege, I don't believe I would say something like that. No. Sounds uncharacteristic. In the highest altitudes, there's no oxygen for the plebeian distraction of human attraction. Everyone knows that."
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
"Of course not, Cripple-gege! I meant the love that all devotees should have for their idols, the inescapable spiritual pull of the inept towards the skilled!"
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
Her hands shot up to shield her blushing cheeks. "I'm reacting this way because I'm shocked. No one likes being accused of something so humiliating and untrue."
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
She stared blankly for a couple loops while her imaginary interlocutor, his suspicions raised by one incongruity too many, entered his Mental Library to dissect and re-examine her years of stalking.
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
Rose, finally exposed, receiving an imagined speech of rebuke, gave up. The robotic mask disintegrated, and her features softened, her eyelids widening and fluttering with the animation of teenage nerves.
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
She couldn't hold eye contact anymore; she glanced down and away.
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
Her lips began to tremble.
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
She swallowed a painful lump in her throat.
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
"That's not true...a person doesn't only have to be married to the climb…you don’t have to go at it solo…I can help, you know…I'm strong, too..."
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
'Good fucking game; EASY!'
“But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!””
Rose, her fantasy also ending in rejection, buried her face in a custom-made Cripple bodypillow and gifted the soaked object a few more millilitres of tears.