Estimated oxygen time: ???

The chamber was perfectly dark. There was not a single visor for illumination, and no way to tell the passage of time, though it was passing nonetheless, quicker than ever. The sounds of bag-on-bag friction resonated in the chamber’s air, meaning that someone was moving through the airlock. The zipper opened from the other side, and the pressure in the chamber dropped, popping my ears.

She entered, carrying an empty, folded suit, with a helmet already connected, but did not approach. She stood by the door, as far from me as possible, unscrewed her own helmet and rubbed at the bridge of her nose, her expression blank.

“You fucked up,” she said. “I almost trusted you, and you fucked it all up. I wanted to see if you would speak the truth, if you were actually trying to help, but as soon as I set you free you started conspiring against me. The little whispers, the silences on comm, the double speak. I thought that I must be paranoid from sleeplessness. I thought I had to trust someone, at some point, if I wanted to stay sane. But of course.” She shook her head, and passed her fingers through her dark hair. “Of course you used that trust against me.”

I looked for something to say; found nothing.

“Nothing? You have nothing to say? Nothing clever or defiant, nothing that will make me hate you enough to just keep you alive? Not a single word, huh?” She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her anger was warm, real. “Say something. Say something or I will fucking stab you.”

“What can I say? What is there to say? I lost. You defeated me, Vempress, or maybe you already defeated me as Diocletian, or as Yael. Not much of an achievement, though, it seems everyone along the way beat me. They threw me out of the world…. and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. They got exactly what they wanted, us killing and torturing each other. It must seem so funny to them that you’re doing this to me. And in all of this, I can’t find a single soul to help. Everyone around me’s going through the same torture, and I can’t do anything.”

She looked at me, disgust in her eyes. “Tell me why. I offered you oxygen, for the love of God. How could you refuse?”

“I met a woman.” The words rang in their simplicity, a contrast to the complicated circumstances we were in. “She tried saving my life, in her own way, when we were in prison. Even though we had so little time, she was kind to me when I was lost, saved me from falling apart. And I told her about this place as I remembered it. I told her that it’s great: a celebration of the human spirit, something you can take pride in having been a part of. Can you believe it? That I’d call this hellhole a celebration of anything? I could take one day with your boot on my neck, but I couldn’t live with myself if I let her come here, expecting Last Day Town, and finding this. Do you understand? Not that it would matter. She’ll die here just like I’ll die here, defeated and afraid and crushed with shame, and I can’t do anything to stop that.” I took a long, shaky breath. “But if I could ask you for one thing, if there’s any kindness left in you, if you could let Pythia spend a little time with the newcomers, anything, I’m begging y-“

“What exactly do you think I’m doing here?” She asked sharply. If she expected me to answer, I didn’t know how. “Do you think I’m having fun? That I chose any of this?” She spoke quietly, but in every word there was a fury I’d never heard before. “I didn’t even do anything to be here. I’m not a criminal, but I got the same treatment as you. And you dare to talk about how badly you were beaten? You chose this fight, you worm. You chose to come here, instead of minding your own business. You’re surprised there’s a price to pay for your actions, and you think it’s somehow my responsibility to save you. You really expect me to risk my survival so you can impress your crush, post-mortem?”

“That’s not -”

“Tell me,” she growled. “Is she innocent? Was she arrested by mistake, or did she do something to earn her place here?”

I thought back about the gesture Keren had made in the prison’s dining chamber, her hands creating a quickly expanding sphere, her lips mouthing a silent ‘boom’, eyes shining with glory. I remained silent.

“Thought so,” Vempress said. “And yet you expect me to risk my neck for both of you. For any of the killers and rapists and anarchists hiding in these caves, thinking up ways they can cause someone pain for the last time before they die. You act as if I’m the insane one, but you’re the one ignoring reality.”

“But it worked before!” I protested. “You’ve seen Last Day Town. It was real!”

“It relied on people being too scared of each other to act on their true wishes. The moment someone became strong enough to stop fearing the others, it was as good as broken. It was only a matter of time until someone like me showed up. It collapsed so easily, but I’ll build something more stable, this time. And you can take credit for being the failure that inspired the innovation. Something that will hold for as long as I wait.” Absentmindedly, she pressed her palm against her belly.

“What are you waiting for?”

She froze, maybe realizing she’d said too much, and shook her head.

“Tell me,” I said, but instead of that softness I’d practiced as Pythia, there was now a desperation in my voice. “What’s worth waiting for?”

Perhaps she was aching to say to someone, anyone, or maybe I was just too insignificant as a human being for her to care anymore, but she said, “The appeal. Maybe yours made it through, unofficial as it was. My family must have tried to appeal, or maybe someone who was at the proceedings and saw how unjust it all was. And when that appeal is granted, they’ll come back for me. All I have to do is survive until then.”

“Don’t you understand?” I said. “They’re throwing out everyone who even knows that this place exists. They can’t just have you back inside, talki– ”

She moved so fast I couldn’t even gasp. Her wide, terrified eyes were all that I could see, her teeth clenched as if she was about to scream. I felt where the blade was pressing against my throat by the distinct burning of frostbite. If she killed me now, I’d barely know.

Neither of us moved. Neither breathed. I looked at her like a rat looking at a hawk, awed. She breathed once, twice. Her teeth parted, her mouth closed, and her eyes narrowed again. She moved back, and the blade ripped my frozen skin, a spoonful in my bucket of pain.

“I’ll wait here for as long as it takes,” she said, very quietly. “Even if it means waiting for the prime minister to resign and the laws to be overturned, I’ll endure. That is what I believe. I will not warn you a second time.”

I tried to think of something to say to placate her, not because of what she would do, but just because she truly terrified me, but anything I could have said would only make her angrier. I kept my mouth shut.

She went to fix the suit she’d brought with her, pulled up the wrench and plugged in an oxygen tank; her movements fluid and well-practiced, unhurried. The suit immediately started swelling up, like a balloon.

“The suit you came with is almost out of oxygen, and I’m going to need you with at least twelve more hours in the new tank.”

“What for?” I asked, confused.

“I’m going ahead with my plan, and I’m going to need four highly loyal residents, no more. But I would like you to have a few words with them.”

“Me? Wouldn’t Davi-“

“Pythia will be there as an example of what happens to those who do as they’re told. I need you there to show them what happens to those who don’t. You will die there; you must be relieved to hear. Don’t start whining. I’m going to make you another deal, give you a chance to help her.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. The tears had, by then, pooled in my eyes, and I wiped them away with the dirty sleeve. The rough bag scratched my face.

“You do exactly what I say. No clever stuff. You give up your remaining hours, beg forgiveness for conspiring and praise me as the new King of this town. And in return, I’ll make sure your girl gets to spend her twenty-four hours in peace. No one will touch her under my watch. Diocletian will ask every female resident for their name, and if it’s hers, they’ll set her free. What was her name, again?”

“Keren. Her name is Keren.” I wanted to drop down and kiss her feet, but the tired look on her face warned against it. Also, I was still bound in a steel collar. “Thank you. Yael, thank you so much for this-”

She laughed suddenly, a change of demeanor so sharp a chill flooded me. “God,” she said. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

“What?” I mumbled.

“You betrayed me. There’s no coming back from that. I’m not giving you anything.”

“But... what you just said, about Keren…” We made a deal.

“Do you think anyone cares about you or your girlfriend? You’re in such a pathetic state that killing you won’t even serve as punishment. I’m going to have to get creative with you,” she said, and her face was filled with genuine, scientific curiosity as she added, “I have some ideas already.”

A rolling, barking breath escaped my chest, and it took me a moment to realize it was laughter.

“Do you think this is funny? Do you think I’m doing a bit? We’ll see if you have such an easy time laughing when I’m making you into a cautionary tale for the others.”

It only made me laugh harder, that she thought that I still had the guts to defy her. That there was still something left in me to crush.

She must have mistaken my despair for a sort of resilience, because she kept on crushing. “You think you’re beyond hurting now? I’ve seen that look, and I know that you’re cleverer than is healthy for you, so it’s a good thing you gave me Keren’s name, just now. Wrong me again, and I’ll make sure every Keren that gets here gets the royal treatment. What will make you actually afraid for her, hmm? Not to just kill her outright, no; I’ll even expend some of my oxygen to make sure she lasts long enough to really suffer. I’ll use this very chamber, so it’ll be easier for you to imagine her here, chained to this very wall, knowing that it’s all your fault, hating you more and more with every breath. I’ll even let my Residents play with her, as a reward for good behavior. Can you imagine how much steam they’ll have to blow off, living with my boot on their neck, day after day? They’ll need to take it out on someone. Isn’t that what Pythia would have wanted, that I take care of the Residents’ mental health?”

I’d stopped laughing. She leaned forward, bringing her face closer to mine, savoring the reaction that must have showed on my face. “How long will she last? Weeks? Months?” she asked, and I shivered with every word, with every image. I couldn’t speak. “Good,” she concluded, and burped, filling the air with the distinct, aggressive smell of a malnourished stomach. “Now don’t move. I’m going to weld you out of this thing.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, my broken voice like that of a sniveling child.

“We aren’t going anywhere,” she said as she pulled the torch from her suit. “I’m going to put you in a suit, and you’re going to walk back to the airlock by yourself. I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer, but instead went to stand by my damaged arm, out of my reach. I felt the breath of the torch on my neck, so hot I could feel it tanning my skin; Even Vempress stopped for a second to put her helmet back on.

I was soon free from the contraption, but it didn’t change much. I didn’t want to imagine how pathetic I’d look if I tried to overpower her, with or without the blade.

“Why what?” she said.

“Why are you letting me go free?”

“You’re not free, dumbass: I’m holding you by the balls. If you go anywhere else, if you even dare die on the way, Keren,” she pronounced the name sweetly, savoring it, “will pay for it. Do you understand?”

I nodded grimly.

“Peachy. Now strip.”

I unzipped the suit. I wanted to avoid moving my damaged shoulder, but there was no way to get out of the suit with one hand. She stepped in and pulled at my sleeve. I reached for the other hand. “Wait, I’ll do that one mys—” She yanked the other arm with joyful brutality, and the pain brought fresh tears to my eyes.

I turned slowly to look at my bare shoulder. It was bleeding jelly-like, congealed blood, and she taped the wound down with two more squares of tape, sticking so hard to the skin I didn’t think they’d ever come off. This sealed it completely, leaving no outward bleeding. Whether or not it was bleeding inside, I couldn’t know.

“Hurry up,” she commanded, her arms crossed, and I peeled the suit down to my pelvis. Removing a catheter isn’t easy when you have two hands, let alone one, but I hurried; I didn’t want her to help with that too. She watched, as I struggled to pull the thin tube out of my penis, in the same uninterested way you would watch a spider molt. After I was done with sanitation, I pulled down each leg sleeve.

She threw the new suit at me. I put my legs inside, and wrestled to draw the tight sleeves over my waist with one arm. I finally managed to slither my legs in, not bothering to connect the catheter, then put my good arm in its sleeve. I took a deep breath before moving the bad one, tried and failed to put it in a sleeve without grunting. I picked up the helmet one-handed and barely managed to put it on top of my head.

She grunted and moved closer, taking the helmet with both hands. I wished that I had thought of hiding a shiv somewhere on my suit; I could have stabbed her right there, between the ribs. I wished that my hand was iron, and I could puncture her lung with a fist. I might as well have wished to breathe in vacuum.

She screwed the helmet into the suit and clicked it into place in one confident motion. I watched the visor calculate the ratio between my body mass and consumption to the oxygen in the storage. Twelve hours, fifty-four minutes. I didn’t expect to last that long.

Vempress took one lunging step and opened both of the airlock zippers, and in that single popping of pressure she was thrown out of Pythia’s shuttle, jetting herself upwards. I stumbled through the door after her and fell onto the rock.

“One hour,” she said.

On my knees, I watched her fly away.

#

Estimated oxygen time: 12:24:55

The clearing outside the shuttle was quiet. Everything seemed like it had before I’d entered the chamber for the last time. None of the events David had told me happened here had left a single trace. I wished someone had left one of the sticks—anything to help me move. Every dragging step I took to the edge of the crater was painful.

One hour. That was the time it took me to get here with David, after his arrival, and I doubted I could move that quickly now. I took a deep breath, and realized that this suit smelled different—a flowery smell, like a woman’s hair, and sweat. Better not to think about that. I jumped down, landed perfectly against the first foothold, then descended farther, my good arm cradling my bad one. By the second step I had already missed.

I bumped against the rock with my back and bounced forward into a roll, managing to almost avoid any impact on my shoulder. I came to a stop with a grunt, and lay on the ground for a moment to catch my breath. Not much longer, I told myself as I started walking again, settling on a stride that was just slow enough to keep the pain from flaring up.

The sky was lit again, and I saw that there were bodies lying not far off, that looked as if they’d been thrown from the edge of the crater. Five in total, too far away to recognize, which was probably for the best.

I looked at the view, instead. A strange, oval asteroid hung low over the horizon. What kind of impacts had it endured to look like that? Where were the asteroids that had shaped it? The beauty of it all struck me—the stars, the asteroids, even the grey rock of the crater. Everything was as beautiful as it was painful. Far ahead, just above the edge, I thought I could make out the shape of the cliff-face above Anaxagoras’s cave, where I’d once seen a woman tell her fellows how proud she was of them, in the little time she had. To my right was Ctesibius’s cliff, a stark shadow against the sky, where a woman had apologized to me for risking my life, even though it was the only thing she could do to distract herself in her final moments. To my left, like a fracture in the face of Ceres, was the chasm. There had been a time when I didn’t know how far down it went.

Soon, I thought, and in the lonely quiet, there was nothing to mask the fear. But not just fear: relief, too. Soon you won’t have to worry anymore. Just finish this one last trial. You’ve been through worse. Never this wounded, sure, but there are worse things than internal bleeding and fatigue.

Remember what you’re doing this for. Keren. How she risked herself to help you, and held your hand, ignoring the punishment. What an idiot, huh? Just like you. How she worried that you might go into death afraid. Well, here you are, and she did end up giving you something to be distracted by. Maybe that’s enough. The way she smiled at you. The way her eyes shone. The way her hair flowed around her. The gentle curve of her neck, her back, the way her hair moves when she walks. There was that one time, wasn’t there, when you looked at her back, watching her go, and understood what she meant all along. You looked at her back, and you realized that you’d die at the end of that very moment. It made sense then, but now it seems like nonsense. If you died then, who the hell are you now? A spark, coming from the void to experience this torture and then disappear again. Who the hell does that help?

I saw a figure then, gliding across the plain toward me with a metal rod in their hands. It had only then occurred to me that there might be more residents that I may have not had the fortune to meet. Perhaps the one Vempress had tossed into the crater had somehow survived and was coming back for revenge. I lifted my hands above my head. “Please,” I tried to shout, but my voice came out a whisper. “Please don’t kill me. I know you want to, but I can’t die yet.”

“Yossi?” a cheerful voice said. “Is that you, slouching out there in the desert?”

“Alex?”

“Did you just say you can’t die?” He came to a stop just in front of me, still vigorous and beautiful like nothing had changed, but his expression changed when he looked at me. “Wow,” he said. “You look… fucked.”

“I feel fucked,” I said.

“I was sure you were a goner,” he said, as if it were no big deal. “How did you get free?”

“I’m not free. She knows Keren’s name,” I said, then, realizing it wouldn’t make much sense, added, “Someone I know from jail.” I shook my head. “She has a hostage, will have a hostage in the future. If I don’t do exactly as she tells me…” I shuddered, thinking of the images Vempress had described. “Keren will pay for it.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Ok. So what are you going to do?”

“I have to get to the airlock.”

“Need a hand?”

“I think I should do it alone. I might be in trouble just for talking to you.” I turned away, took one hasty step forward, slipped on a patch of dust, and slid to a fall on my side.

“But you’d also get in trouble for being late, wouldn’t you?”

How does he know? I got myself up. “I’ll make it.”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long did she give you?”

“One hour. Less, now.”

“You won’t make it like that.”

“I have to try.”

“You’ll be late, and you’ll get punished.”

“What do you propose, then?”

“Let me carry you. At least half of the way. You’ll have to limp the rest.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

“And what if she sees us?”

“From a distance, we might look like one person. And I’ll drop you off far enough from the airlock for you to make the entrance yourself.”

“Fine,” I said, not knowing if it was because I agreed with his logic, or just because I didn’t want to be alone again.

He picked me up on his back, like a cross. I put my good arm around his shoulder and tucked the bad one between our bodies, and he started hopping, using the long stick to propel us forward.

“Slower, Jesus; you’re going to rip my arm off.”

“Sorry. No need to shout, though. At this distance, you can whisper.”

We were silent for a while. His rowing motions were smoother now. “Alex?”

“Yossi?”

“Were you looking for me?”

“I was.”

“Why?”

He hesitated. “I wondered if you could help me with something.”

“I don’t think I can help anyone right now.”

“You could listen while I told you a story,” he whispered. “If that’s no bother.”

A confession? “Really?” Well, that, technically, I could still do. “You didn’t seem interested, back then. Also, I thought you and David…” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence.

“I hadn’t confessed to David, only made a prediction I didn’t want the others to hear—one that sadly came true. But I’d like to, now. I’ve always liked the idea. Appreciated that there was a reason that tradition was being kept around but didn’t get what it was. Also, I mean, when in Rome, right?”

“Right.” We had a deal, and I should stand by my word. “In the name of Line Pythia, I am your confessor.”

#

She slaps him across the face, opens the door, leaves, and closes the door behind her. Alex doesn’t move. He can almost see her getting away, then stopping, considering whether to open the door and slap him again, only to finally decide against it.

He sits for a long time, not moving. Then he gets up, as if nothing’s wrong, changes his shirt and goes to the casino to play cards. There’s a moment, before each time the cards are revealed, at the height of the anticipation, in which he can forget her, one moment at a time. He’s playing like shit tonight, but it doesn’t really matter, as long as he doesn’t know whether he will win or lose, he keeps playing. So, he keeps losing.

Does he even prefer triumph to defeat? Yes. But that’s not the point—the point is that he can’t tell what’s going to happen. He takes a couple of loans, each of which from a different shady element, with an escalating degree of danger. It’s a gambling problem, Alex tells himself, and that’s not exactly a lie.

When the last game comes around, Alex changes attitude. He had his fun, managed not to think about his girlfriend - now ex - for most of the night, but now it’s time to take this seriously. If he loses now, he will never be able to repay it. He sees it happening already—the mafia will buy his debts from the school of small fry lenders he owes, for much less than what they’ve actually lost, and then they’ll own him.

Alex is the only one at the table without a hat or shades. He sits ramrod straight on an uncomfortable wooden chair in the small, dark room, his face impassive. He considers taking another glance at the two cards pressed between his hand and the table, but it’s an obvious tell, and anyway, he’s the kind of person who remembers what he sees. His heart is beating quickly from excitement as well as fear, emotions he’s no longer certain are separate things. He raises by just the right amount, showing enough confidence that others think that he might still be bluffing.

The other players take their turns. Fold; fold; fold; call. The room grows even hotter, even more tense. The caller stares at him through the shades, but Alex isn’t rattled. When you know the math, you don’t need to pay too much mind to other people’s expressions. If the calculations aren’t wrong, and they rarely are, there’s about a one in six chance that one or more of the hands on the table is stronger than his. As he raises again, he realizes that the situation is analogous to a Russian Roulette: A five to six chance of winning a lot of money, and a one to six of a lethal result. Why did he put himself here?

The caller calls again, his shades not leaving Alex’s face even for an instant, as if it might broadcast something useful. Alex finally peeks at the cards, which are naturally still the same as he remembered. The caller’s waiting for him to show, and Alex relishes the illusion that it’s only after they both reveal the cards that one of them will win, while the other loses. The haunting truth, the one Alex is playing these games to escape, is that the result is already there, in the cards in their hands even before they are revealed. It was there when the cards were dealt; when Alex’s older brother first taught him how to play poker, when the first boring machine landed on Ceres. There was nothing to decide, only to move along the track.

Sometimes Alex manages not to think about it. Sometimes he keeps it at an intellectual level, distant. But at that moment he feels it with all his being. Lives it. The universe happens once. It can only happen once, one way, and Alex is a part of the universe that’s also happening. He isn’t lost in the world. He is the world. The room goes silent except for a high-pitched tone in his ears. As he looks at his own thumb and forefinger, rubbing the two cards together, the image snaps into sharp focus. Yes. He is the universe, getting to see another part of the universe. He is happening, now. Everything is happening, and it can’t be stopped—only experienced.

He flips the cards. This is what he came for—the exhilaration that comes from believing the illusion, if only for a little while. Across the table, the cards are raised, brought close to the dark shades, and they prompt the kind of grin that comes from wanting to smile for a long time but holding it in. Alex doesn’t need to see the cards to know that, in this game of Russian Roulette, he’s not going to hear an anticlimactic tick. The beauty of Russian Roulette, he realizes, as he watches the cards placed gracefully against the table, is that unlike in this game, no one ever knows that they lost.

All the eyes at the table are on Alex now. He stoically pushes forward his chips, and the columns collapse into a shapeless pile. One of the administrators is suddenly standing behind him, blocking some of the light. He puts a slip of paper on the table, in the space that used to hold the bountiful towers of chips. Alex puts it in his pocket, knowing the information it holds.

“You come to the place that’s written, at the time that’s written, and we talk about how we proceed, ok?” the man says in accented Hebrew.

“Yes,” he says. “Ok.”

Alex understands his place in the universe, his lack of control, but he also knows a second, auxiliary truth: knowing doesn’t make it any easier.

The next day, he gets up on the couch to the sounds of his mother making breakfast in the kitchen, brushes his teeth, kisses her on the cheek, and goes to the address, a walking distance away. Ceres is so small the mafia doesn’t really have to worry about you getting away, he thinks as he walks through narrow corridors. Where would you go? There’s no border to Mexico to cross, like in the old movies, and if you had the money to go to Mars or Europa, you wouldn’t have any problem paying what you owed the mafia, anyway.

When he enters the little apartment, he does so with a calm smile, making sure to keep his legs from shaking. If he’s going to be tortured, the only control he can assert is over himself.

It’s just one room, filthy, with a kitchenette, a tiny bathroom with just a toilet, two chairs, and a couple of thick mattresses lying on the floor, the type he used to fall on when he practiced full-g gymnastics as a teenager.

A small man sits on one of the chairs by the wall of bare spongy rock, a cup of black coffee in his hand. If you were to build a man out of bundles of steel wire and drape a loose shirt over it, you’d probably get a similar effect. He doesn’t look like an “Elisha.” He does, however, look like someone who can take a serious beating and not make a big deal out of it. Like someone who can watch another person endure a great pain and not lose a single minute’s sleep over it.

Over the next week, Elisha beats the knowledge into Alex. The arts of killing another person with your hands were outlawed on the dwarf planet, and the ones now being taught were slimmed down, stripped of their robes and bows and Japanese terminology, and left lean and efficient, in practice as well as theory.

For the first time in Alex’s life, his willpower is tested—but he doesn’t complain. Not out of some great principle, he knows that Elisha didn’t choose what part of the world he gets to play, just like Alex didn’t.

It takes three days for Alex to realize that Elisha is actually making an effort to teach, that he could have beaten Alex much harder if his own amusement had been the goal. They practice the same moves—choke, defend, wrestle back into a rear headlock, choke, defend, again and again and again. By the time he learns how to hide his face in the back of his victim’s neck, his entire face is swollen from being elbowed. By the time he learns how to hook his legs around the victim’s, his back is already hurting from being thrown against the floor.

On the last day of that hellish week, he finally manages a perfect choke. Elisha taps twice against Alex’s forearm, more of a congratulating formality than any type of submission, but Alex’s arms don’t loosen. After a week of defeat, doesn’t he deserve to win, just once?

Elisha taps again, and Alex tightens his hold. Elisha must have started feeling the horrible and sadly familiar sensation one feels when oxygen runs out, and carbon dioxide floods the bloodstream. Alex is just beginning to consider letting go when Elisha wiggles, a complex motion of the hips, something completely foreign to everything they’ve practiced. Alex doesn’t understand the mechanics of what’s happening, but he finds his hold broken. His body tumbles through space and he lands painfully on his head and shoulder.

He sits up as Elisha rolls into a standing position and laughs. “You’re good to go,” he says. Alex wonders if that statement is correct.

That day, Elisha teaches Alex about all the different things one can use as a noose, if they wish to make it look like someone’s choked themselves. “It doesn’t have to be medically accurate,” he explains. “Pathologist takes the one look at the belt around the neck, writes down ‘suicide by hanging’, and everyone’s happy. But the pathologist’s sympathy is finite. No stabbing, no bashing head with hard object unless you don’t have the choice.” Then he gives Alex a pack of sleeping pills and sends him home.

Not a day passes before Alex gets a message—on paper, no less, delivered by courier. A name, an address, a printed photo, a code to the apartment’s door. It feels antique and special, like a sword.

What would happen if Alex refused? Easy. They’d find another like him, a loser, a thrill seeker who found the ultimate thrill, and they’d send them a slip with Alex’s address, Alex’s picture, and the code to Alex’s apartment, and he’ll be dead in a matter of hours. It’s not like he’s going to grow old either way—at some point the police will catch up to him, throw him in a cell and then out into the vacuum. He obeys, paying with the lives of others for a couple more days of life—the time in prison, plus how long it would take the cops to decide to catch up to him. He is surprised at how much the idea of dying at some unknown point feels more manageable than dying today.

He brushes his teeth, dresses, then sneaks through Ceres’ corridors, minding the map of areas not covered by police cameras—the poorer the area, the less it is covered. Alex doesn’t ask himself where the mafia got this information from.

He punches the code to his first victim’s apartment door, expecting to be jumped in an act of desperate self defense, but to his surprise the man just sits there on a stool, staring at his hands. He has long, oily blonde hair falling over a patchy stubble, and he smells bad, or maybe the entire apartment smells bad. Not much of a difference, with an apartment so small.

“Are you here to kill me?” He asks as Alex closes the door behind him.

“Yes.”

“Do you think you can?” The man’s sleepwalking tone hints that it is not a taunt. He brings one fist closer to his eyes, slowly twists it around, as if there is something to glimpse between the clenched fingers. “Now I’m one configuration of atoms, and I can think, and now I’m another configuration, and I’m still thinking, so we say I didn’t die. But if you kill me, and my body gets flushed down the great toilet of Ceres, fed to the fungi that nourish the colony, my brain will turn to rotten mush, then steak-flavored, tomato-flavored or wheat-flavored fungus substitute, then eaten again to make other brains, who are still thinking. One sentient arrangement transitioning into other sentient arrangements. Hard to say I’ll even be dead.” He breathes out loudly through his nose. “Are you real or am I hallucinating you?”

“Real. Both. How high are you?”

“As high as it gets.”

“Will it dull the pain?”

“On the contrary. I wanted to be awake for this; present. Sobriety, by design, is dull.”

“Aren’t you going to defend yourself?”

“What for? They’ll just send another one, indistinguishable from you. If I were willing to kill just for another day of life, I’d be standing where you are.”

Alex likes the guy, unfortunately. “It won’t take long.”

“That’s what she said,” the man smiles, still not looking at Alex. “Come on now, no point in hesitating. You’ve already made up your mind. The funny thing is that if we all refused, they’d have nothing to threaten us with. But you missed your chance of being the guy who refused, to reincarnate that role. Now, if you change your mind, you’re going to be the guy who bitched out halfway. And you don’t want that, do you?”

Alex’s arms are now wrapped around the man’s neck. He doesn’t really remember having made the decision to do so, but the man is right. He can’t back away now.

It is very late when he opens the door to his apartment. His mother is in her pajamas, by the kitchen table playing solitaire. She didn’t see him for a week now—he made sure they wouldn’t be home at the same time, and when he couldn’t he made sure to sleep with his face down until she went away.

She takes one look at him and gets back to the cards. She quotes:

Why does your sword so drip with blood?

And why so sad are ye, O?

And he answers:

The curse of hell from me shall you bear,

Such counsels you gave to me, O.

“That bad, huh? You’ll feel better in the morning,” she predicts.

He doesn’t. But the next time is easier; the one after that, easier still. He gives up on trying to sleep without the pills Elisha gave him. It’s a different kind of sleeping, heavy and without the playfulness of dreams. He used to be so good at sleeping. He regrets letting them take that from him.

One morning, while he is still shaking off the haze of the unnatural sleep, a message comes up on his screen, with the picture and address, and door code. Even if they wouldn’t have explicitly written it, the fact that the information isn’t sent on safe paper would have been enough to testify to the urgency of the job. The girl in the image doesn’t look like a terrorist. Neither plain nor beautiful, but there is something in the way she smiles at the camera, a confidence that is free of any doubt or pride. She’s cute, Alex admits, and suspects that he would have liked her, too, if he had any choice but to kill her.

He hounds down the streets, letting the masses overcrowding the halls hide his face, but the corridors he is being led into are so narrow and short he would be surprised if the cameras worked there at all. He gets to her apartment just as she is opening it to get out, a suitcase in her hand. She sees him, and immediately recognizes him – not his face, but his role. She tries to get back to the apartment, to close the door, but he’s quicker, slamming her down into the floor of her single room apartment. He expected her to try gouging his eyes out, but instead she goes for the suitcase, fumbling with a valve in its side.

The suitcase makes a loud hiss, and something very strange happens to Alex. The woman crawls out of his grip easily. It’s not that his limbs don’t obey him, as much as that he doesn’t know how to command them. He doesn’t understand where she went; tries to get up; makes it halfway.

There’s nothing wrong with his vision, but he can’t really grasp how far the floor is from his foot, barely blocking the floor coming up to him. He decides to stick to the safety of the lying down, and looks up at the woman. He finds her looking down at him, and she is so beautiful that he wants to cry. Whatever happened to him, she seems unaffected. “First time, huh?” Her voice slithers smoothly into his brain, unfiltered.

First time of what?

He manages to bring himself up on all fours, though the touch of the rug against the palm of his hand is intensely distracting. She crouches beside him, like one does when talking to a child.

“Are there more? Do you know where they sent others, after me or my partner?” Her almond shaped eyes scan him with such intense worry that he worries with her, not knowing for whom.

It takes him a long time to remember that he is an assassin, that she is asking him about other assassins. He goes over his memories with horror and disgust, as if they were someone else’s. “I don’t know,” he mumbles, or just moves his lips silently, he’s not sure. Her face, a phenomenon so complicated he could study it for lifetimes and not be done, nods with understanding. She looks towards the door, the muscles of her neck sing about the need to escape, and with great effort turns back to him. Her eyes are the only thing in the world.

“Sometimes we do something bad, and instead of regretting it and say that we’re sorry, we keep doing bad things to justify the bad things that we have already done. But we can always regret and be good. Will you try to be good?”

He cries. “I will. I’m sorry,” he either says or thinks. Then, to his absolute astonishment, she kneels and hugs him. She is the entire world, she is the mother of all things, and she is hugging him. It hurts, a knife under his heart, tearing him open, but the pain is freeing and he lets it wash over him. Like an egg being cracked open, he releases everything.

She must have gone at some point, because he is alone now, in her apartment. Some sense of normality returns. He can walk straight enough no one will give him a second look, he can hold a straight face, but inside something is changed. He knows that they will kill him for letting her go, but that’s not it.

He has no more excuses. He has to go and talk to her, even if it means getting slapped again.

He walks straight to her house, and doesn’t give himself a chance to hesitate before buzzing at the door. From the time it takes the door open, he knows that she is going to tell him to go to hell (he always loved that about her, that she never used ‘fuck’ as a curse word) but the moment she sees his face, her expression softens.

“What happened?” she asks. “Were you injured?”

“No. It’s not important. I came to apologize.”

“For sleeping with another man?” That offbeat burst of anger would have surprised anyone else. “Is that what you came to apologize about, or for lying to me about it?”

“Neither. I’m sorry for not talking to you about it. We would have had a big fight, but eventually you would have accepted it as something that we do.”

She almost disagrees, but she learned long ago not to argue with his predictions. “What were you thinking?” How beautiful is her anger, the curving of her brows and lips, dangerous and warm like wildfire.

“I truly am sorry.”

“No, I’m literally asking you. I want to understand—what went through your mind?”

“That it’s a gamble, whether or not you’re going to find out.”

She sighs. “And you just had to take it.”

There was no other way, he wants to say, but doesn’t. It would just make her angry.

She looks to the side, taking no joy in having figured him out. “Do you remember when we first met?”

“Hard not to. You caught me by the collar and you said that you’d respect it if I didn’t fall in love with you right then and then there, but you’d be disappointed.”

“And what did you say?”

“I don’t remember. I just remember falling in love with you right then and there.”

“That’s when you fell in love with me? I was literally trying the worst pick up line I could think of.”

“You surprised me. I couldn’t know what’s the next thing that you were going to say or do.”

“Until you did.”

He shrugs. There was no stopping of the expansion of the border encompassing all of the things he could predict, nor the intense boredom that came with it.

“Will I see you again?” She asks.

“I don’t know,” he says, and feels freer than he can remember ever being.

#

Alex is afraid. He sits on the sofa, still not quite sober, and looks at the palms of his hands, astonished that something can be a part of him and foreign at the same time. He knows that it’s only a matter of time until the mafia will come for him. They might have forgiven him for fucking that one job if he returned into the fold, worked twice as hard, but he simply doesn’t want to. He promised that he wouldn’t. But if he is so afraid, why is there a smile on his face?

He has never let superstitions have a place in his heart, but today he does, just a little one. It used to be considered good luck, before going on a trip, to sit down quietly for a moment. Alex had always known that the reason for the tradition is to give everyone a chance to remember if there’s anything they forgot to pack, but today he allows himself not to think like that. It doesn’t work if you think about the trip itself, he remembers being told. You need to let your mind empty, not thinking of the future or past, and this will grant you a successful trip.

But the memories come unbidden. He thinks about high stakes card games, about lying to the woman he still loves, about sneaking off to find his lover, tracing the veins on his beautiful arms in the darkness.

The real tragedy is that it wasn’t even that great. He sinned not out of hedonism—the sins’ only purpose to distract him from truth; artificial surprises to help him forget, if only for a moment, how predetermined it all is. A rebellion, but against whom? God, what a piece of shit he’s been. It doesn’t matter, because soon death will wipe him clean, like a sand mandala. Reshuffle his particles from the old form to strange new ones. Whether the forms are beautiful or corrupted, they’re gone just the same when the sand is flattened, aren’t they? More importantly, is he the sand, or the mandala drawn on it?

But something warns him not to find comfort in that. Alex’s passion for the unexpected dragged him through many different texts, different religions, and he remembers anything he finds meaningful, let alone terrifying. It takes him an instant to recall the certain passage from the Mishna that changed his life:

Don’t let your own desire promise you that afterlife will be your sanctuary;

Despite yourself you are made and

Despite yourself you are born and

Despite yourself you live and

Despite yourself you die and

Despite yourself you will be judged by the king of all kings, the Holy One Blessed Be He, God Almighty.

He curses and opens his eyes. He had in him the tools to live a proper life. Why didn’t he? That isn’t an accusation, but an honest question. He knows the shape of the universe was determined at its genesis. But why did he happen the way he did?

He doesn’t blame himself, can’t, but he regrets, and for the first time in his life, for a reason unknown to him, he prays.

God, if you were to grant me just one more day in this world, I swear to you that I would live properly, and if, in your great wisdom, you permit it, that one righteous day shall stand against all of the wicked days of my life.

The door opens. To Alex’s surprise, the men at the door are in uniform.