Hiro grabbed the teddy bear from Bianca and stuffed it into his backpack. “Sorry, Mishka!”
“What the hell?” Bianca asked, then caught a glimpse of what was coming their way. “Is that a moving wall of trash?”
“Throwaway culture,” Hiro told her—a phrase he couldn’t ever remember ever using before.
The phrase stemmed from 1950s America, a time when people stopped repairing things and simply replaced them when there was an issue. Hiro’s entire life had been defined by this way of thinking. He had even worked in a factory for a company that built its entire enterprise around the concept. But had he heard the term before? It must be the remnants of my {Terminal Lucidity}...
It made complete and sudden sense to him what he was seeing. Even as he scooped up a protesting Hachi, who actually yelped, and even as Bianca latched onto his arm and berated him with questions about what he was doing—it all made sense.
“I’ll explain it all when we’re safe,” he told Bianca as he bounded toward a roof. He landed a block away from the wave of trash. Hiro moved to the edge and watched as the wave rolled through the streets, taking everything it touched—except for the buildings.
“What the hell, Hiro?”
His phone buzzed again, but Hiro ignored it.
“Let’s feed Mishka,” he told Bianca after setting Hachi down. The dog moved to the edge and whined nervously. “It’s just for a moment.”
Hiro took the crying teddy bear out of his backpack. He held it in his hands for a moment and rocked it, which seemed to sooth the bear to some degree.
“That’s so fucking adorable,” Bianca said. “Finally, you start acting like the good daddy I knew you could be.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“What? You never wanted to have kids?”
“It never crossed my mind.”
Hiro was struck by a memory of his time with Monica, back when they had first been together, surviving. He remembered the excitement and the plans that came from their discussions. They had even talked about having a child, and at one point, Hiro had been open to it.
Why? he thought. Why would we bring a child into this? He took out the Survivor Tenders, only to be presented with a prompt.
[Survivor Tenders have been poisoned. Pay 500 Soul Cash to remove the poison? Y/N?]
“Yes,” Hiro said. The slightly green tint of the Survivor Tenders faded away, and he gave one to Mishka. The bear happily ate the tender and stopped crying.
Noticing that he was hungrier than usual, Hiro ate one as well.
“Hey,” Bianca said, her tentacled arms pressed onto what would have been her waist if she weren’t a shield. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or what?”
“A lot has happened.”
“Duh. I was there. Wait—you tried your Roulette Skill, didn’t you?”
“Not on purpose. I told myself to think, and it triggered itself.”
“Well, don’t ever do that again.” She laughed nervously. “No more thinking for you.”
“Exactly. It might just trigger on its own, sort of like my rage used to.”
“Great. First, you were edgy. Now, you’re brainy.”
“Something like that.”
“What were you saying earlier about culture?”
“The roaming waves of trash. Throwaway culture,” Hiro explained. “It’s a term used to describe our shift from a culture that repairs things to one that simply throws them away and replaces them.”
“Like my iPhone?”
“Sort of, but that’s more of a planned obsolescence thing. I never really thought about any of this, honestly. I don’t even know if I’ve used the terms before. Maybe? I had a friend in Kansas City who talked about this stuff all the time in a Discord group, but you know how those things go. If you aren’t part of the conversation that day, or you’re just checking the tail end of it, it’s hard to engage.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“So the Doom System is sending waves of trash through the City, and it’s supposed to represent throwaway culture? The system suuuuuckkkss.”
“Careful,” he told her. “And that’s just my guess. I’m not the Doom System.”
Hiro hugged the teddy bear in his arms instinctively. Only as the world changed around him did he realize the mistake he’d made.
“Whoa…” Hiro now stood on the very same building he’d been on mere days before the gates came. The city below bustled with life on a cold New York City morning. People rushed to work, and mysterious plumes of steam rose from the sewers—something Hiro had never quite understood.
“We’re here!” Bianca said. Her voice quivered. “I’m… here.”
Still holding the bear to his chest, Hiro took a quick look around to find human Bianca sitting cross-legged on the rooftop, staring at her hands. Tears came immediately. “It’s all okay. Everything is—” She looked up at Hiro. “This is what Mishka can do?”
“Yes, for a limited amount of time,” Hiro said as he noticed a timer floating in the air just above her head.
01:50
01:49
01:48
Bianca pointed to a spot behind him. “Even Hachi is here.”
Hiro turned to find the Shiba Inu peering over the edge and whining softly. We’re not going tro be able to do anything from up here… Hiro cursed quietly for wasting the power and released the bear.
“Okay, we’re back,” he said as the post-apocalyptic city stretched before him, illuminated by hundreds of glowing advertisements. “So you can come with me now. And you’re in human form there.”
“Apparently,” Bianca said, who was now in her fuzzy pink shield form. “We could, ahem, I could go see myself. You know, warn myself.”
“We only have two minutes there,” Hiro said as he started to rock Misha again, who seemed content, the bear ready to fall asleep. “We would have to find out what day it is, and what time it is, and you would have to know where you would be at that very time. Easy if you are in school, hard if you’re having winter break, which I’m guessing you would be at that time.”
“What about you? You could warn yourself of what is to come.”
“I don’t know where I’d be either but you’re right, I could. The only problem is, Mishka only works once a day.” Hiro examined the bear again and gave it a quick hug. There was a flash and he was back on the rooftop in the past with Bianca, the timer once again ticking down.
01:37
01:36
01:45
“You said—”
“I know,” Hiro told Bianca as he released the bear. “This is new. We have to use the power wisely. We don’t know if it will still reset when I rest.” Hiro pulled out his phone and spoke to it: “There has been a change to how Chronokuma—”
“Mishka,” Bianca corrected.
“There’s been a change to Mishka’s properties. It seems like I can now go back and forth as much as I want, based on a time limit. When does this reset?”
Hiro watched as a message began forming on the sleek black screen, only for it to flash away and be replaced by a different message. The first message disappeared too quickly for him to read.
“That’s not an answer. I’d like to know how long the cooldown time is.”
His phone seemed to “think,” reminding Hiro of trying to upload something on a spotty wireless connection. Finally, the words he was waiting for appeared.
Great, so I have to rest to reset it, Hiro thought. “Define rest.”
“Okay, in that case, what does the Doom System consider human rest?”
“Since I have you, I want to know more about the Remnants I’ve been tasked with killing. Where are they?”
“Look,” Bianca said, pointing a tendril toward the New York City skyline. Purple beams flared and then settled. From what Hiro could tell, most of them were in Manhattan, but one was further east, possibly in Brooklyn.
“Definitely,” Hiro told his phone. A subtle line appeared in his HUD. Whenever he turned his head away from it, the line faded. “Thank you. Can you tell me anything else about these samurai? I’ve never heard of them.”
“Thanks, anyway,” he muttered. “One last thing,” Hiro said to his phone. “You were buzzing earlier, but I was busy at the time. What were you trying to tell me?”
Hiro squinted at the screen. “You mean the roaming piles of trash?”
“Thanks, got it.”
Hiro put his phone away. “We need to stay clear of the piles of shit moving through the streets. They can have a gravitational pull.”
“Okay, then what now?” Bianca asked.
“Now?” Hiro looked out at the city, to the beacon he had set on the merchant who took cash. “Let’s go on a shopping spree. After that, we hunt our first Remnant.”
“What about visiting the past?”
“Later.”
“What about your friends?”
“Val and Samuel? I don’t know yet. I have no way to find them, and if we wait around, we’ll lose out on a number of things.” Hiro hated the words as they pressed against his lips, forcing their way out, but he said them anyway: “It’s how this fucked-up game is played.”