All of his flies. That's what it would take. All his flies. He was certain of it.

Every single test, every single time, one single subject was withdrawn for evaluation. Responsibility for the deaths of ninety-nine others lain upon its shoulders. Howard empathized with the plight of this unwitting creature. But if the math was perfect, it necessarily followed that the flesh must be the root of his failure.

A detailed mind with meticulous methods could accomplish great things in the field of biogenetics, and Howard was determined to do just that.

For science to help our world it needed scientists of quality; minds interconnected that, through reliable means, may discover and establish ways of knowing. Howard's diaries, were they ever to be reopened, would reveal a young, if frustrated scientist, seeking to rectify his curiosities about a world that seemed not care for them nor him. But Howard relented. It was his obligation to contribute, and he knew that his work, however alien to the touch, meant something at GenCo.

A passing reflection of his face held gaunt eyes that were not his own, not the ones he knew. The only thing that seemed to suffer impermanence at GenCo was him. The ashen emerald glow was gone, and darkness was now upon him. It was time to return to his cocoon and rest. As a means of circumventing his frailty, pangs of his will to survive were regularly employed side-by-side with his coffee. He would reach his goals no matter what. The taste of his dream job would be sweet beyond words, at first. It was more than enough to dull the knowledge seeping into his mind coalescing into a whisper, that a day would come for him to replay his bodily debt. To Howard, if any good can be drawn from being yanked out of an otherwise successless laboratory career, it was at least a change in pace. But at what cost. Howard packed up his things and left without a word, soon to be drenched in toxins.

The coming of the new rains were, at first, apocalyptic. Or so Howard had been told during his elementary studies. Now they were accounted for, a banal part of his day.

Checking the weather app on his phone was a pointless exercise but he did it anyway. As the app opened, a churning animation swirled into a replica of the earth that gradually telescoped into an image of the day's weather. Apps just like this one liked to give its customers the illusion of crunching the numbers, nothing more; Howard was certain of it. It would be far cheaper to contract someone else to feed in the data, the weather of a preexisting simulation of the Earth. Certainty supplied by a company just like GenCo, and embeded into an app display. Infinitely complex science reduced to a simple supply chain. He was certain this was why. Nothing was before him but the indication of something that he might encounter later. Once people may have sought guidance from intuition, reason, and no small amount of cult leaders, they now had a statistically significant relationship with reality.

If he was lucky, the daily downpour subsided just before dusk. For Howard, this meant a soaked commute, but just the one soaked commute. Greedily plodding through waste deep weeds as a child was as close as Howard thought he would ever come to the wilderness adventures embarked upon by his legendary icons. As an adult absent such adventure, Howard opted to forgo an umbrella. To tough it out is to be a real, rugged American Man. Technology, in the form of hydrophobic materials in his clothing, would thus answer his problem.

The city, originally constructed as just one of many, was now among a scarce few. Built during the early days of the Great Ecological Collapse, it was the very model of fungible brutalist architecture. The view from above revealed the perfect circle, but even a cursory glance at its data would unearth a mosaic of human achievement that included each branch of the scientific community. A comfort to those who lived within its labyrinth, to be sure.

Acid tainted water ate away chunks of cement with each passing rainfall. For Howard it came to its own rhythm in a way. He had never known anything other than the ever-shifting circle of the city.

It had once been a widely-held belief, so Howard had been told, that the changing of the Earth's climate would bring with it a cascade of catastrophic events that would cause a collapse greater than any that preceded it. Of course, they were right, but not exactly. The skies were quiet, and the oceans were full of everything but life, yet the world found a way. Certainty was a scarce commodity in those times, but companies like GenCo manufactured certainty. If truth was told, it was on the scabbed side of bleeding edge, but it was massive. What started as a nondescript bioinformatics firm rose to prominence by positioning itself over a key resource, despite the tumult, or perhaps because of it, GenCo has been able to survive the storms that have become the weather of the now.

If Howard were to drive a car or fly an exomobile, two modes of transportation uniquely tied to wealth and freedom, he could maneuver through the city's circuits without a drop of rain touching his body if he so wished. But both options were expensive, not to mention the costs in fuel and parking. So, Howard forged on through the rain to his nearest tram station. Walking through a torrential thunderstorm while being peppered by the occasional hailflakes made whatever happened in his lab or at home calm beyond comparison.

His commute, juxtaposed against his lab and home, would be his justification for his reputation as a homebody, but it was very much not the norm. Now was the time of the monsoon and the desert. People, especially the most social among them, have long since adapted; and the growth of the most capable and connected of these new gigacities created the necessity for massive transportation networks that lined the ring over. A few decades ago, these achievements were the stuff of mass marketing acclaim. First came the science, then the products, then the propaganda. For as long as Howard was aware, it had always been a clean process.

The rains first took the grass and whatever wasn't bolted down tight, and then most of the trees, and even the deer. Howard pictured it in his mind, it must have all happened so fast. All manner of life swallowed back up into the earth. Some of the fringe fanatic religious groups of the time named it the revenge of the earth; to reclaim that which was freely given and abused. Howard paid these people no mind. To him, they were of no consequence.

The arts and entertainment of the time depicted many of the fears of their time, of a future that was barren and lifeless. Despite what the surviving recorded interviews would indicate. But for a time, this came to be. A solution would be found in the most obvious but unlikely of places. It would be a form of irony that the cell would free humanity from an impending life sentence in extinction's prison. In this way, plants were commanded to quickly simulate a version of their previous form and to grow in poorer soil. Howard knew full well that the tall ghostly stalks of grasses and sickly trees were, in reality, nothing but fake plastic. The soils, drained of their agricultural potential, required structures to hold as much was left as possible. Designer Flora would be the savior and inheritor of the old ecology, and they grew everywhere.

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Howard's commute walked him along what was a first built to be a simple cement walkway connecting his lab block to the tram station but had now grown into a ghostly tunnel. Not enough to keep out the water but enough to encourage his mind to wander towards daydreams of the wilderness adventures of old. To doubt that the old world was dead and dusted was to doubt the rising of the sun; yet he dreamed that he could one day brave the vast no man's land. Traverse the land consumed with the overgrowth that ravenously replaced the barren earth before it and make it to paradise.

To prove himself amidst this wilderness would earn him a place in one of the Oases, he was sure of it. Howard tried to shake away the fantasy, but even the fantasy of a prospect of looking up to see a perfect recreation of the old blue skies, unmarred by waste and wanton destruction, would make all of this worth it. Everyone knew about these biodomes though exceptionally few inhabited them. Ostensibly due to their slim carrying capacity, they were still a dream as impossible as enticing; they were perfect reconstructions of the old ecology. Safely hidden away from the ravages of time. To ensure the safety of these prized jewels for those who can afford them, they were kept in locations undisclosed to all but those with a membership. Howard had even heard rumors online that a few had gone missing, but this was impossible. He was sure of it.

As a child his gentle constitution afforded him ample time alone that was often filled with studies of capable navigators locked in a desperate struggle for survival in an unknown landscape. It was easy for him to obsess over historical recreations of the voyages of ancient humans to the north pole. The men looked more like aliens on a foreign asteroid than earthly explorers. Whether Howard would see his heroes in another light had he been illuminated to their true historic legacy would be a question lost to churning history. Howard felt his mouth begin to salivate as his apartment complex neared. It was time for him to feed and rest and return reinvigorated for success tomorrow.

This night Howard's dreams were as they most often were, nothingness.

They were not nightmares, although he was known to have many of those, but they were not the absence of a dream itself either. Howard felt slothful awaking from these wasted dreams. He preferred to use his time wisely and was determined not to let the time and resources he had sunk into lucid dreaming training go unused. Howard desired a dreamscape that was his to control, perhaps this was among his fatal flaws.

The glowing radiance of his morning commute was a jarring sensation to walk into every time he did it. His eyes never quite adjusted, and his sensitivity to light seemed to worsen with age. But after lengthy arguments with his medical advisor, he dropped the issue.

At last, Howard had arrived. The time had come to prepare his last sample was near. One last chance to prove his worth to the company that bankrolled his lavished lifestyle. With a determined look in his eyes, Howard strode into his lab and over to his containment units. He only had a short time for observation while Howie warmed up, he would need all the time he could get to process this sample. The flies were massive, he was sure of it. Still, a few smaller, more nimble subjects, unaware that despite their talents they were not long for this world, could corrupt his whole sample, mistaking an exception for his rule.

Oblivious to the hot coffee brewing onto the ground, he was transfixed by his prize. Howie must go faster. He could feel his heart begin to race. This was his last chance for him to prove his value, and he had done it. But he was not out of the woods yet.

Howie's main loading screen slowly evaporated into his usual workflow. Howard slipped his hands into the warm keygloves that connected up to Howie's main mass in delicate veiny growths. He was drenched in sweat now and anxious for his sample to be returned and confirmed, but he knew he would have to be patient. Howie would be no help, which is to say he tried to be helpful.

"Good morning, Howard. You seem more haggard than usual. Did you decide to take my advice?"

"No Howie. I am not going away for any length of time until I get my W. And good morning. Please prepare all samples for processing." Howie, as if he had not heard the instructions, persisted.

"Howard, you should take some deep breaths"

"I am not going to be told what to do by my computer! Now prepare the damned lab samples!"

He stepped back and away from the console, realizing his coffee had now covered a whole section of his lab floor. His returning awareness of his constant surveillance crept down his spine with another wave of perspiration. Was he yelling at a computer? Howard took a deep breath to chase the reality of the moment.

"Howie, I really appreciate your concern here, but I have some new instructions for you. I've included the schematic request in the shared codebank. I want you to analyze all of my lab specimens this time, okay? Do you understand?"

"Howard, I am sure that action would not comply with the Better Data practices policy, you should know- "

"Every GenCo policy has its purpose yes Howie I know, but all this does is give us more information to work with. We should be looking at what my code is doing to all of them not just one of them. Leaving this up to chance violates good sense."

"For you, I will comply. But be aware that these interactions have been logged and I cannot guarantee what the return will look like."

"It's going to work. Clearly you haven't even looked at these flies yet because one look and you wouldn't even ask me that."

Howie dutifully brought forth over two dozen thick appendages to do the work asked of his lab partner. Howard removed his hands from what his peers called 'the glovebox' in school and began to clean up the consequences of his wasted coffee. Waste was almost as bad as failure.

The coffee stain was gone but the smell was there to stay. Howard joined the advancing pink tendrils at his containment complex. Side by side stood ten miniature habitats, each equipped to hold one hundred flies through their full life cycle. It was the perfect environment. And now he would use it to its truest potential. Before working at GenCo, he would never have imagined this vast tank of flies being his last connection to the world, and the sight of row upon row of death filled him with the determination to see this through, all the way.

With the chilling coordination Howie's tendrils explored into the tank, each opening to expose a leaking fanged maw. Striking out with the speed and certainty of a of a chameleon, it's venom to be injected or sprayed onto deceased or living subjects, digested into a soup-style data. Howie's tentacles joined together to rip apart and liquefy his specimens. He would make this worth it. He was certain.