CHAPTER ONE

  The unfortunate reality of life often entails a level of responsibility that is largely unreasonable, a disproportionate debt of time for an abysmal payout. This is an almost universal truth. However, for Dante, being woken up from sleep early so that he might engage in his recording duties was far from an issue. In fact, he almost took more pleasure in having more work than usual. Though recording was an important task, it was also a task rarely required urgently. Perhaps that was why Dante, though disheveled and appearing more awkward than usual, had an excited gait to his step as he half walked, half jogged to his office on the second stage of the government house in Stratum 999.

  Before he could enter his office, however, he was brought to a halt by the sight of Giovanni, his superior and someone he didn’t see often. Not in person, at least—typically he would communicate using a caster.

  To top it off, he was sweating bullets.

  “Good, you’re here,” he said, relief evident in his voice.

  Nearly out of breath from excitement and the mild exercise, Dante said, “Of course I’m here, but what are you doing here, sir? Is something the matter?”

  Nodding, Giovanni grasped Dante’s shoulder and pulled him aside as if he were worried someone might hear them despite being alone. No one but the busiest of government workers or the dredges of the stratum would be awake 0300 local.

  “Look, I haven’t got a lot of time to warn you but I figured it would be a lot worse if I didn’t at least tell you before you saw.” Giovanni licked his lips, looking ready to be done with the conversation before it had even began. “The man in there is no ordinary man. Well, okay, he might be. For all we know he could be lying. But the things he said, his manner of dress, they all just—”

  “Would you mind getting to the point?” Dante interrupted, less out of pity for his struggling superior and more for the sake of his diminishing sanity. His excitement could ward off the ache sleep put on his mind, but not for long.

  Checking one last time to be certain they were alone, Giovanni whispered quickly into Dante’s ear a phrase so irritating he at first thought it were a joke. “The man in your office is—claims!—to be Captain Pluto.”

  Dante wished to argue that such a thing would be impossible, that the man known as Pluto would have been dead for hundreds of years by that point even without taking into account any sort of time debt. But the look on Giovanni’s face said otherwise. The claim might have been far fetched, but it was a serious enough claim that it scared Giovanni, and that meant that Dante should at least try to take it seriously.

  Thanking him before he could run off, Dante sighed, exhausted from the other man’s energy, and attempted to reclaim that excitement he had lost before entering his office. Failing, he opened the door anyway.

  Alone, sitting front and center in the seat of interrogation, was a man unlike any Dante had ever seen. His hands were bound in standard cuffs, thick steel gloves that would allow for absolutely no movement using a strong magnet to bind the hands together. His clothes, however, were anything but normal, appearing as if they were straight out of some kind of historical substory you might find on the ether. Obvious muscle bulged beneath tattered sheets, and what may have once been a cape was still tied around his neck, though so little was left that it appeared a thick necklace without precious metals or diamonds. The face the man wore may have been the most intriguing thing of all, a face hardened by action and turmoil but with the shadows of his proper age still evident enough for Dante to know he could be no older than forty, perhaps sixty were he to have had any sort of anti-aging treatments done.

  Upon seeing Dante, the man smiled. “You here to free me?” he asked almost playfully. “Or are you here to finally end it so I might get on with what comes next?”

  Blinking, Dante moved with a tired yet habitual roboticism to his desk. As he pulled forth his recorder and his tablet, he spoke without making eye contact with those chilling blue eyes. “I’m here to do my duty as recorder… What that means is that I am here to record whatever you might be able to, uh, tell me about how you got here, your arrest, and, uh… right, anything at all about your home stratum.”

  “Hey, buddy,” the man asked, his nonchalance annoying Dante already. “If you’re recording all that, there’s no way you can get it done fast. How long have we got to do this?”

  Recording was an important job on Stratum 999. To Dante, his father, and his father before him, it was the most important job in all of Mobius, as it was a way to connect the cultures of the structure and help to divine some meaning from the history that was slowly bleeding away with each passing day. Dante had been recording for nearly two decades, and in that time he had heard many convicted men try to plead their case. That they had so much to say that they could never be locked up, not without getting their full story out and recorded. Yet none of those men had been able to prove to Dante that their story could be so endless. After all, everyone is finite, and if you boil everyone down to what’s most worth telling, they become an even smaller version of that finite existence, so small in fact it would make most people feel pitiful.

  Were Dante to say that though, it might influence the man before him, and he wanted him to record properly with as little outside influence as possible. Discerning lies in the tales is an easy enough task, but it could take Dante months to finely tune a record and be sure that there were no faults.

  “As is typical with these types of situations, we will have seven local days to record your story. Keep in mind, however, that this is not a court room. Do not treat this as a way for you to plead your case, as I am not a judge. This will have no impact on your sentencing. Understand me?”

  Nodding, the man asked, “How long are your local days?”

  “Stratum 999 runs on a time frame as close to standard as possible, but each day is roughly twenty five hours long. It’s as close as we can get to standard without throwing off everyone’s rhythm.”

  Still nodding, he smiled to himself as if he had heard a joke. “Well, I can’t possibly cover it all in that time but if that’s all we have then that’s all we have. I’ll try and cover the important stuff for you. Where would you like me to start?”

  Dante was finishing the set up for his recorder when he responded. “Start? Uhm… how about what stratum you were born in?”

  The man laughed so loudly it startled Dante, sending him jumping and dropping his tablet. “I apologize,” the man said. “You’re being serious. I should take this seriously too.”

  “Yes,” Dante mumbled, irritated. “Well, begin whenever you’re ready.”

  “Right now?” he asked, and Dante nodded. “Alright. I was born on Stratum 56. I never—what’s up? Why’d you stop?”

  Staring at those cold, blue eyes, Dante was searching desperately for the hint of a joke, the crease of a lie in the wrinkles on his forehead. But try as he might, the man before him appeared to be serious. Was he some kind of psychotic?

  “Sorry, you just threw me off with that statement. You couldn’t possibly be from Stratum 56. That would be a distance of roughly what? Seven planets?”

  Shrugging, the man said, “Well yeah, something like that. But it’s not as bad as it’s made out to be. There are a few ways to make the pilgrimage less time consuming. Still though, it does mean I was technically born before this place was even built. Strange thought, don’t you think?”

  “Indeed…” Remembering what Giovanni had said, he decided to ask him once he turned the recorder back on. “What’s your name?”

  “Oh, sorry! It’s been a long night so I guess I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Pluto. Some people call me Captain Pluto, but Pluto will do just fine with me.”

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  I was born on Stratum 56, roughly one hundred years after the creation of Mobius began. Some of the people I’ve spoken to place that at around 2700 AD, others place it a little earlier at 2500 AD. Regardless, I was born in the year 61 local, and my mother and father couldn’t have been less pleased. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t believe that they hated me. They hated that I had to be born into a life of servitude. On Stratum 56—at least during my life there—there were problems with maintaining enough rations for everyone to survive amicably. This meant that the small group of peasants had to remain small, and if there were too many then the remainder would be placed in servitude to Mobius.

  Don’t bother asking, I’ll explain everything as I go. Trust me, you aren’t the first I’ve told this to, and you probably won’t be the last.

  Servitude to Mobius is comparable to being a government worker like yourself, only without any pay or benefits and your bosses are all Nanos, though I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of those is true for government work too. The Nanos would maintain the lives of the extras using a basic nutrition line. Some people from different strata don’t seem to be familiar with what those are, so I’ll explain. Essentially, it’s a tube that they stick into your arm that gives you all the essentials for life—vitamins, minerals, the works. See the problem with that, though, is that you stay hungry and tired, your body just won’t die. It’s a living hell, and each of us extras lived that hell together, a fact that only made things slightly easier.

  The Nanos would have us do much of the basic maintenance that they decided was too menial even for themselves. We would change fluids in the consumption bay, clean out the sewage pipes, even make sure the charging stations were functioning optimally for the Nanos themselves.

  Many of my days were spent with the other children, but due to our shared hunger we didn’t speak very much. One day that changed, however, and it was all my fault. I had done maintenance on a Nano charging bay the day prior, but for whatever reason I had forgotten to tighten one of the bolts underneath the area the Nano would sit. This meant that there wasn’t enough energy for that particular station and the Nano in question was unable to perform for a full local day as it should. When it was found that I was the one who had worked that station, there was a commotion among the Nanos, and they came to find me while I slept in the shared quarters of the extras. Awoken from my light slumber, I was taken out of the quarters and beaten using stunners set to a high enough setting that caused me to have an incessant tic for nearly a full two months, and when I reclaimed my place in my bed and attempted to return to sleep, I heard a few of the other extras stir, and I began to cry silently into my arm.

  One boy decided to hop into my bed with me and comfort me. His name was Thomas, and he claimed that he only helped me because the smell of my flesh wouldn’t let him sleep. I’m not sure if he was lying, but all the same we spoke much that night.

  The topic we discussed the most was our hunger.

  “I wish I could eat only just once,” I sobbed to him, doing my best to keep my voice down and not wake anyone else.

  Thomas bit his lip, looked around to see if anyone were awake. “Do you know of the place the peasants eat?”

  I shook my head, sniveling.

  “Tomorrow, make sure you work with me in my group. I can show you something.”

  Without saying anything else, he returned to his bed, leaving me with my thoughts and my pain, but with a certain excitement I had never felt before. At the time I wasn’t sure why I felt that way, and perhaps it was merely the residual effects of the stunner, but I believe I felt that way simply because in Thomas I had found what I thought might be a friend.

  The following day I stayed close to Thomas, making sure I was assigned to his group. Normally it would have been more difficult, but after my mistake the Nanos felt it necessary to reassign me anyway, and so from that day forth I was to work in what the Nanos referred to as the trough.

  Our job in the trough was simple enough. We were tasked with checking the levels of each of the devices there and making certain each machine remained full and ready for the afternoon. The afternoon job was for the children, and the night job was for the older extras, so at night we would be tasked with cleaning out the sleeping quarters before the other children came to rest.

  When we had finished our job, we were meant to leave the area in a single file line so that we might take our designated break, but Thomas held my wrist and put a finger to his lips, and we remained quietly hidden away in an alcove behind the machines. There were little spaces between the machines where we could peer out and see the trough. In only a few moments, peasants from village 56 came through and began using the machines at the trough. I stared, wide eyed and amazed as they pulled levers and pressed buttons, and rations dispensed from the mouths of those steel contraptions we had only just worked on moments before. The peasants would receive their food and sit down at one of the benches, waiting for their companions to join them.

  It was there that I first got to witness someone eating food.

  The whole process was miraculous to me. They would tear open the outer coating, then they would carefully remove the food and begin consuming it with their mouths. Saliva dripped past my lips as I watched, some eating slowly, others barely chewing the food before finishing and moving on. To me, the whole thing was this incredible, almost religious experience, something I couldn’t stop thinking about even as I went to bed that night.

  Thomas promised me we would see it again the following afternoon, and soon it became a part of our routine. We would hide in different areas from time to time, and often Thomas would chastise me for being a little too loud or peeking for too long, but the experience became a necessity greater than my own fill on nutrients during break, something which would eventually come back to bite me.

  One day, on our way back from watching the peasants eat, Thomas said to me, “You really like watching them eat, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said, without hesitation. “It’s a little weird, I guess, but for a while I didn’t believe eating was real, that it couldn’t possibly be something we do. Seeing it is a reminder I guess.”

  “That we’re human?”

  The way he asked it caught me off guard. Thomas—like the rest of us—wasn’t prone to using emotions. Maybe it was because we were constantly being surveilled by the Nanos, or maybe it was because none of our parents were in our lives. Perhaps it was just a combination of everything. Either way, when I heard Thomas ask that, his voice betraying his face with vitriol, I knew that I would get along well with him, that he was indeed the friend I sought.

  “That,” I said, “and because of something else too.”

  He pressed me, and though I was embarrassed I told him anyway.

  “I like… Well, I don’t know. I just like to wonder if the person I’m looking at is my father, or my mother. Maybe my sister or brother. I don’t know. Is that weird?”

  For a while, Thomas appeared to think it was as silly as I thought it was, and my face turned red. But he smiled anyway and said, “Not really.”

  After approximately one local month, Thomas approached me as we walked to do our night job cleaning the barracks. His voice was hushed, his face serious. “How would you like to try some food?”

  My heart skipped a beat but I shook my head, smiling. “That would be incredible, Tom, but we both know that’s—”

  “Impossible?” he asked, smirking. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got a plan that should allow us both to try some food tomorrow without us getting caught.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked him. I must have clarified it countless times more after that, but his response never changed.

  “I promise,” he said, each time without any hesitation.

  We spoke a little while we worked, certain to keep the conversation safe so that other children wouldn’t hear, but beneath the conversation lay this undertone of electric agony, a pining for tomorrow to be there already.

  When it came, time seemed to slow to a crawl. Each second we worked on the machines felt like an eternity, and Thomas and I would exchange furtive glances as the wait eventually paid off, and everyone went off to break, leaving us alone.

  “So how are you going to do this?” I asked him, still unsure how it would be possible.

  He shook his head. “Just watch. It’s going to be simpler than you think.”

  We got into our hiding spots as we normally would, doing nothing as the lines of peasants formed at the ration dispensers. Those getting rations at the dispensers near us were receiving food as normal, but the dispenser we were behind seemed to be acting up. Tom did his best to maintain his composure, holding both hands to his face so as not to laugh. I cocked an eyebrow at him, then nervously placed my own hands over my face when the person at the dispenser became frustrated.

  “God dammit!” they yelled, whacking the machine on its plastic front panel.

  “Yo, Dan, what’s the matter?” someone asked. “Your machine acting up?”

  “Course it is, fucking stupid metal Nanos can’t tell their metal ass from this fucking thing and they managed to break it.”

  The people around were snickering at whoever Dan was—apparently he was prone to outbursts, and they all found it amusing.

  “Alright, well don’t worry so much about it. Grab your ration from this machine and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Dan went grumbling over to the other machine, and this other man came over to the problem machine in an attempt to fix whatever it was that Tom had done. I can’t exactly remember what he said he did to it, but I think he had moved a piece that would normally push the ration selected out and into the slot the peasants would take from. Instead, it would push the food backwards, leading somewhere else.

  Stumped, the man shook the machine, hit it, pressed some buttons, but nothing seemed to work. Then he decided to rock the machine back and forth, and we heard the crinkle of plastic falling, and he seemed satisfied.

  “Just had to shake it up a bit, that’s all.”

  The excitement was over, and the peasants had moved on, everyone else grabbing their rations while the other one did what he could to get the broken machine working. Once everyone had sat down, Tom removed his hands from his face and smiled. He removed a screwdriver from his pocket and began unscrewing a small piece on the back of the machine, and when he was done I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were enough rations there to feed every child in our barracks. I was about to grab big handfuls, but Tom slapped my shoulder and shook his head, grabbing only two and as quietly as he could so the noise of the plastic wrappers wouldn’t alert anyone. Indicating with his eyes what I should do, I replaced the small piece on the back panel and as quietly as we could we scrambled away, down the empty metallic hallway and back to the nutrient charging stations for the remainder of our break. But not before we both had our first taste of food.

I remember opening the package and seeing the soft loaf, a strong scent wafting off of it and causing me to salivate. I was nervous and unsure what would happen, but I took a small bite and began chewing for the first time.

  Now you seem like the type of guy who eats a lot, at least three meals a day I would wager. And I bet they probably are at least decent reflections of what a proper human would eat back home. These rations I was eating, I came to find out long after, were mere blocks of nutrients, no better really than the nutrition tubes Tom and I were already used to, save the staving off of hunger. But I was having my first experience of food at the ripe age of twelve, after a long time of Tom and myself watching the process we were finally participating. These days I’ve had plenty of food. Hell, I’d guess I’ve even had better food than some of the wealthiest aristocrats on this vessel. But nothing has ever tasted as good as that loaf of garbage, that cheap, worthless food meant only to tide over the poor and destitute of Stratum 56.

  We both ran desperately to our stations and got our daily dose of nutrients intravenously, but we both knew that we couldn’t live without food. We had to eat again.

  I think it lasted for a week before we got caught.

  We were on our way back, in the middle of eating our rations, when a young girl caught us in the hall. Tom and I froze, and we all stared at each other hesitantly, unsure what we would do. I honestly thought Tom might kill her, the way his eyes were moving. Luckily, however, she was just as hungry as we were.

  “I want in,” she said, her voice a strained attempt at sounding commanding. “Otherwise I’ll give you up to the Nanos.”

  Personally, I’d have let her in regardless. It’s not like I wasn’t empathetic to her hunger. Tom was a different story, however.

  “You’ll do what?” he asked, incredulous. “Do you really think you can outrun the both of us? We’re both bigger and stronger. We don’t have to do anything you ask.”

  Her eyes became glossy, but I put a hand on Tom’s chest and said, “You promise not to tell?”

  Tom wanted to interrupt me but I gave him a look that must have been scary enough to quiet him. I don’t think he liked that.

  “’Course not,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “I just want to try it, that’s all.”

  Exchanging a look with Tom, we came to a mutual understanding and I broke a piece of my bread and handed it to her with the promise that the following day she could try more. She consumed that small portion so ravenously, so violently, I had to wonder if I looked so feral when I first tried it. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks, mixing with errant crumbs. We had her clean her face up so no one would ask anything and we disposed of our trash.

  “I’m Maggie,” she told us, and we all introduced ourselves.

  “Did you enjoy the loaf, Maggie?” I asked, trying to be as pleasant as possible.

  “Oh yes! It’s even better than I expected it to be.”

  There was much small talk, but as we approached the break room Tom pulled me aside. “We can’t trust her. She has no reason to trust us so quickly, so neither do we.”

  “She just wants food like us, Tom.” I was becoming annoyed with him. I couldn’t understand why he was being so unreasonable. “Just let her tag along, she’ll understand how it all works soon enough and then you won’t need to worry.”

  “Will I?” He glared at me, but he conceded nonetheless. And though I was happy to share rations with Maggie, I couldn’t help but wonder if Tom was right. That she couldn’t be trusted.

  With the introduction of Maggie into our group, something unexpected began to happen. It was slow at first, but eventually more children began to take notice that not only were three other children missing from break time every day, but those three children would return stronger and more rejuvenated than those at their nutrition recharge stations. So slowly we began to be stopped by other kids on our way back, asking to come with us. It was only one at first, then another, but soon enough it was at least half of our ward. Perhaps 15 children wished to join us on our excursions.

  For Tom, Maggie had always been one too many. Each interested child made him fume with anger, and though at first I was against his antagonism, I reluctantly had to agree. It was hard enough for just me and him to stay quiet and not get caught. For fifteen kids? It would be nearly impossible.

  “Absolutely not,” he said one day, as three more kids approached us about joining. “If you guys want to get food, do it on your own time. Don’t include us.”

  “But what’s the big deal?” one child asked, pleading. “Why can’t you bring us along?”

  Sighing, Tom looked more tired than angry when he said, “It’s hard enough for us not to get caught as it is. With you three we would have half of our ward with us. Do you understand how difficult that would make it for us to not get caught? The Nanos would terminate each of us, no questions asked.”

  At first it had looked like they still wanted to argue, but that last reason, the looming threat of Nanos, really drove home that any additional children would make it harder on us. Hell, it already had gotten harder on us. Maggie, sweet as she was, would always stifle a giggle at the worst time and nearly get us caught. Some of the other kids would trip, gasp, anything that could have gotten us caught. And, to top it off, there wasn’t nearly enough space behind those machines anymore. Some kids were off to the side already, peering at us in anticipation and nearly getting noticed by peasants.

  Just as the kids were about to walk away, an idea occurred to me and I stopped them.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Tom asked in a frustrated whisper. “You know we can’t help them!”

  “What if we could?” I asked, a smile playing at my face.

  Tom just continued to frown, waiting for my idea so he could say no.

  “Look, all we need to do is get the kids food, right? Well you and me have been doing it long enough that we can probably grab enough for everyone without getting caught. All we have to do is—”

  “If you’re so good at it,” he interrupted, “how are you going to manage to grab all of the packages without having them make any noise at all?”

  “It’s easier than it sounds. It’ll take some time though, probably a week.”

  Frowning still, Tom nodded then sent the other children away. “We’ll let you know if we have extra food,” he told them.

  For a moment, I thought Tom was going to hit me. He did something worse instead, though.

  “I don’t think I can help you out with this anymore.”

  My heart sank. “Tom, come on. It’ll work, I promise!”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t want all this to be a big deal. I just wanted to help you out.”

  “Don’t you care about the other kids? They have the same experiences we have, you know. The same problems. They deserve food, too.”

  But Tom wouldn’t yield. “Look, I don’t think it’s right for them to be subjected to what we are. I agree with you on some level, yeah, we should help however we can. But this? Come on, this is suicide. You’re going to draw too much attention to yourself and the Nanos will kill you. You won’t be the first kid to try and do something stupid like that, but it’ll be your last chance trying.”

  Angry, I yelled after him. “You think this is my last chance? No, this was your last chance to help. You can go crawl and hide away, I’ll be the one that feeds everyone!”

  I kept yelling, saying stupid things that I didn’t mean. Really, I just wanted him back. Even then though, watching him walk away, I knew he wasn’t going to return. Not then, and not ever.

  After that, everyone sort of split off. Most kids stopped asking about the rations and continued receiving their nutrition from the designated stations. A few kids, like Maggie, kept asking me if I’d help them but I gave them noncommittal answers, saying I wasn’t sure and that I’d think about it. Myself, I stopped eating for about a week. The whole thing had left me uninterested in the food, not because I was worried about getting caught, but because I was worried that I’d just lost my friend.

  Tom continued to work in silence. I’d stay close to him during our work hours, even attempt to talk with him when the chance would arise, but he never responded. It was going to take a lot to repair our relationship, and I didn’t have the patience for it at twelve. Instead, I had a hero complex and a hair brained plan.

  I had told him that the plan was simple, but it was a lot more complicated than even I had anticipated. Some ideas sound better in your head, where they aren’t given the chance to vibrate against your eardrums and be truly processed by your mind.

  The plan was this. I would sabotage a vending machine so that it would stop working, after which the Nanos would remove it and place it in the junk pile. As far as I was aware, they would leave the rations inside the vending machine, and all junk was processed on the same day, middle and the end of every month. That gave me a decent amount of time to plan how I was going to enter the waste tunnel, and I’d be able to find a container for the food. In total I’d need around thirty rations—I’d decided that I would bring back food for every single child, Tom included, as opposed to just the ones that had asked. Hopefully, I had thought, that would be enough to get me back in his good graces. Return our friendship to its rightful place.

  It had to wait, though. I had to wait until the day of waste processing so that I would have the most amount of time to get everything done. That meant that I needed to wait a week before the plan would be set in motion.

  By the time the week was up, I wondered if I should even go through with it.

  Everything was set. Though I hadn’t checked to be sure, the waste from the previous two weeks had just been processed. I had the tools I needed to break the machine without it seeming suspicious, and I even had a container so I might hold the rations later when it became necessary. I had chosen a bucket typically used for used rags and hidden it beneath my bed. I wasn’t sure if it could hold all of the rations, but I hoped it would be enough.

I hoped I would have the guts to go through with it, too.

  Within a weeks time, I had successfully convinced myself that there was no way I could fail, that the plan would go off smoothly and everyone would appreciate my actions, and Tom would be my friend again. The Nanos would never find out, nothing bad would happen. But late the night before, I stared up at the bed above me and began doubting everything. The plan had so many moving parts that it was bound to fail. I could have asked another child for help, sure, but I doubted that any of them had the skills required to pull it off. Save for Tom.

  The day of I found my hands shaking, my stomach twisting like the used rags in my bucket, wringing out any excitement I previously had and replacing it with pure nerves. The screwdriver in my hand kept slipping between my fingers, my palms coated in sweat. I still wasn’t sure I was even going to go through with it. Even as I knelt down behind the machine and began unscrewing the back panel, I wondered if it was worth doing, if I was making a mistake.

  Reaching my arm through the hole, I found another panel and began unscrewing that one, doing my best to maintain my grip. I only had a few minutes to do this before peasants came in to get their rations. I had to be quick. My hands weren’t cooperating, however.

  Suddenly, I felt the tool slip free of my hands, fall to the bottom of the machine with a rattle, and roll across the matte plastic with a loud echo that sent my heart beating into my throat. I was sure someone had to have heard it, the noise was so loud. Still, I was this far, I couldn’t run now. I reached in as deep as my physiology would allow me and grappled for the screwdriver, causing more clattering noises and nearly giving me a heart attack with each and every clatter, every errant twitch. I was able to eventually regain a grip on it, and with little time remaining I finished my job, scrambling out of the room but remaining close enough so that I might see if my plan was going to work at all.

  The peasants entered the room and got in line as usual. My sweat was so strong it was all I could smell, nausea creeping as I watched the first one attempt to get their rations. They pressed the button, tapped the screen, yelled, hit the machine in aggravation, and soon a few others did what they could to get the machine to work. When no rations fell, one of the peasants tapped a device on their wrist and a Nano blaring a siren burst into the room through a hatch in the ceiling.

  “What is the problem?” it asked the room in its metallic mimicry of human language.

  “This unit here isn’t dispensing rations,” the first peasant said, his annoyance palpable even to the Nano.

  “Allow me to inspect it,” said the Nano, and I felt my stomach flip. If the Nano were to suspect it had been tampered with and gone after me, I knew that I was as good as dead. Worry though I did, the Nano inspected it quickly using a scanner protruding from its “head.” Once finished, it turned once again to the crowd and said, “This unit will be replaced within a few days. We will dispose of it for now, and we apologize for the inconvenience.”

  There was grumbling in the group of peasants, but a quiet acquiescence as the machine was lifted off through the hatch the Nano had used to enter.

  I left before anything else could happen. There wasn’t any reason for me to believe that the Nano would be after me, that anyone had suspected anything. Knowing that didn’t make my paranoia any easier to over come, and I left as fast as I could, barely having enough time to receive my nutrients before moving on to barracks cleaning.

  Later that night, once everyone was asleep, I gathered the bucket and screwdriver and quietly left the barracks, hoping that no one would hear me.

  And as far as I’m aware, no one did, but it didn’t matter.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Tom asked me, startling me and nearly sending my materials flying through the air.

  “You should be in bed, Tom,” I stuttered, voice trembling. The nerves from the day were so great they were inescapable; nothing I did or said was unaccompanied by a tremor.

  “So should you,” he said, looking at the bucket in my hands and shaking his head. “You know that won’t hold enough rations. What are you trying to accomplish with all this?” When I didn’t say anything, he frowned and asked, “Do you want to die? Is this some kind of suicide mission?”

  Shaking my head, I said simply, “I just think it needs to be done.”

  Tom looked at me with some mix of emotions I’m sure even he didn’t fully understand. We were both still very young, both still becoming who we would be, and we had grown up in a hostile environment. Everything I was doing made no sense to him. To be honest, it would make little sense if I found someone that age doing it now. The level of danger I was putting myself in for bad food is laughable to anyone with any sense.

  “You’re stupid,” he replied, shaking his head. “Well, if you’re not giving up, let’s go.”

  My eyes widened, but before I could sputter up a bunch of heartfelt thank yous he waved a hand. “Look, if you start babbling like an idiot I might change my mind. I’m not doing this out of the kindness of my heart, I just don’t want to see you get yourself killed.” I was about to say something again but he stepped forward and put a finger in my face. “And I need you to promise me that no matter what happens, whether we get through this perfectly fine or not, you will never, EVER, do this again, alright? This is unnecessary. If we slip up even a little, the Nanos won’t hesitate to kill us. Got it?”

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  Harsh as he was, I understood where he was coming from and nodded. I was just happy we were on speaking terms again.

  “Now then,” he said, leaning down to pick something up from behind him, “let’s get going.”

  We started walking in silence, but when I saw what was in his hand I started chuckling. Though I did my best to stay quiet, he got angry and shushed me. I couldn’t stop laughing, though. He had brought a bucket with him himself. Tom had always planned on joining me.

  Tom had a better understanding of the hallways within the walls of Stratum 56 better than anyone I knew, so getting to the disposal room wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. The Nanos were on a strict schedule, and Tom had it mostly memorized. We were able to avoid detection and enter the room unnoticed, a huge relief to me. Unfortunately, we were quickly presented with something that neither of us were expecting.

  “How the hell is this room already packed?” There was a sea of waste, trash piled high in peaks and valleys, and the machine we were searching for was buried in there somewhere, out of plain sight.

  “Damn,” Tom muttered. “Either you planned your weeks incorrectly or its been a heavy day for garbage. I’m inclined to say you were simply wrong.”

  Groaning, I nodded. “I’m inclined to agree. Dammit!” I looked around, desperation rising in me. “Alright, alright… How about I take the right side and you take the left? They took the machine only around ten hours ago. It should be close to the top, I would guess.”

  Wordlessly Tom agreed and we were off on our search. Climbing the piles of scrap metal was a loud, dangerous process that required us to stay balanced and on our toes constantly. I can’t remember how many times both of us nearly tripped and fell from those mountains, but it was a lot. The worst part about that would have been if either of us had fallen from that height, we most likely would have broken a bone or worse, and if the Nanos found us we would have been killed—but if they didn’t find us, we’d be tossed out of the hatch door, into deep space where we would die painfully, floating endlessly around Mobius. I’m not sure I thought about that then, but whenever I think about it today I often think of that possibility now, wonder if that would have been better.

  Every few minutes we would call out to each other, and the other would respond that they had found nothing.

  After about an hour of that, I was beginning to feel like the whole thing was hopeless.

  I was digging around in the fourth pile I had climbed when I found something special. It wasn’t the machine I had been searching for. This was something strange, something that even to my untrained eyes was obviously not supposed to be there. Underneath the rubble was a shimmering weapon, something akin to an old world pistol. In my time as an orphan I had heard a few tales periodically about such things, but never had I seen one. They were typically the weapons of Nanos, something they would use to administer judgment. Turning it over in my hands, I saw that on the right side was a knob that stopped on a number from one through six. It was sitting at one when I found it, and a dim, neon green light flashed every ten seconds or so, making me wonder if it was still functioning.

  “Find anything yet?” Tom called from his spot.

  Flustered, I shoved the weapon into my pants. “Not yet, no.”

  We continued digging, though I was now preoccupied with the weight pressing against my stomach, a cold reminder of possibilities I couldn’t conceive.

  Both of us were ready to give up, but we decided to try searching one more pile. Unfortunately we were met with an image neither of us were prepared for. Instead of a pile of garbage—or at least, garbage as you or me might see it—we were greeted with a pile of people. They ranged from peasants to children, some as young as newly born, all recently deceased, their scent overpowering the iron in the air. I’m certain both Tom and I said something when we found them, but I cannot remember what was said. In the moment, all words were meaningless. We had found the secret fate of all who lived there. Not only were we born into a world we could hardly survive in, but the end would result in us being spit into the vacuum, becoming one with the great river surrounding Mobius. Perhaps someone with a level of mysticism might see it as beautiful. In fact, I’ve met a few people who have argued with me that a fate such as that was what we were meant for, that we should return to the stars in glorious fashion.

  There is nothing glorious about being cast among the refuse of peasants, of people seen as less than. Tom and I could see that at twelve, plain as day in front of us.

  “We should leave,” I said, and with Tom’s quiet acquiescence we began running out of there. Our hopes of not being discovered were quickly dashed. The ceiling peeled open with a quiet shunt of metal, and we both hid as swiftly as possible behind the nearest pile of debris. A loud noise followed, accompanied by the heavy vibration of force beneath our feet, then the sound once again of metal above us. Tom and I peered out from our vantage point and we couldn’t believe our eyes.

  The machine we had been searching for lay atop a new pile, a small one from the previous day.

  Neither of us could help but smile, and we began the process of hoisting our buckets up the pile, breaking open the already cracked glass of the front panel, and rummaging around for rations, of which there were plenty. By the time we were finished, both buckets were stuffed with roughly fifteen rations each. Heavy as they were, they would be simple enough to carry back on our return.

  Tom and I looked around one last time to be sure that we left nothing incriminating, that no one was around to see us, then once we were satisfied we ran off, doing our best to keep our hauls from making too much noise as we returned to our quarters. We didn’t speak much on the way back. If Tom was anything like me, he was too excited and worried to let a peep escape his lips. Sometimes we would exchange looks, though, showing that we would talk in the morning.

  Before that, though, we made sure to place a ration in the bed of each child so that they would wake up with it beside them. There weren’t any for Tom or myself, but neither of us needed it. If we wanted some we could always get it in a much easier, reliable way.

  With everything set, we both went to bed, though I’m sure neither of us slept. My eyes stayed heavy, but my heart was filled with excitement. The next morning would be great.

  There is little information on emotions here on Mobius, wouldn’t you agree? Plenty of documents on general health and wellness, sure. And certainly most ailments and physical dilemmas can be resolved by a competent Nano physician using those documents. Still, in all of my time spent traversing the strata I have yet to find any concrete information about emotions save for my own personal experience. That morning, in the dim light supplied by the morning ceiling, I was surrounded by so much happiness that it felt like something greater. It was as if the feeling became stronger with each child indulging in their first meal; some were laughing hysterically, unable to contain the joy they felt; some were crying, sobbing at the thought that they ever existed subsisting off basic nutrients through a tube; others were quiet but obvious, their excitement plain on their crumb covered face. It was wonderful, and I could see that Tom felt a little proud as well though he tried desperately to hide that from me.

  I sauntered over to him with a grin on my face. “Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

  Tom shrugged, eyes searching for purchase anywhere but with mine. “For now. But you realize what you’ve done, don’t you?”

  “Don’t sour my mood, Tom. Just enjoy the moment.”

  He was about to speak but shook his head, thinking for a moment instead. “I just worry that things won’t be the same after this. It was a lot easier when it wasn’t a well known secret.”

  The way he said it got me wondering how he had found out how to get rations in the first place, why he would go out of his way to try something so risky. The more he spoke on the subject, the more it seemed like he took a risk on me despite himself, not because he was a naturally nice person.

  I was about to ask him about this when the door opened. Two Nanos were there, staring at us.

  Staring at children consuming food.

  One thing that you should understand about Nanos, being that you’re a native of 999, is that earlier strata house earlier models of the Nanos. As time has wore on, they’ve enhanced themselves and become better, stronger, more intelligent. But the earlier models run on less sophisticated software, which meant that when the Nanos caught everyone eating food they reacted strangely at first.

  Everyone stopped when the Nanos saw them eating food, and while everyone was processing what was happening the Nanos collected the half eaten rations, stowed away loose wrappings, and then they turned to leave. One of them must have sensed we were attempting to leave as well, as they spun around and said, “No one leave until I return.”

  The children, as you can imagine, were in a frenzy. They began pointing fingers, at first hysterically amongst themselves, then of course to me as I was the one who stole the rations for them.

  “If you never showed us what eating was like, we never would have asked you to get us these!” one child sobbed, another consoling him silently.

  I of course had nothing to say. It wasn’t like they were wrong, after all. I knew the risks getting the food. The only reason I had followed through with it all was because I thought it was the right thing to do.

  Tom could see it was bothering me, and he came to my defense.

  “You can’t place all the blame on him.”

  “Why the hell not?” someone cried out, others chiming in.

  Sighing, Tom said, “Well for starters, it wasn’t him who first learned of the rations. It was me.”

  An uproar ensued, but Tom waited patiently so that he might continue while I stared at him with confused awe.

  “Secondly, everyone here is aware of the way the Nanos operate. We all knew that if any of us were caught, we would be dealt with. Had you all some decency, you could have waited to eat later. Or you could have staggered yourselves and left so that suspicion wouldn’t be raised. None of you did any of that though, you all saw the ration in your bed and began eating without stopping like gluttons.”

  No one said a word.

  Then the doors burst open and the Nano had returned.

  “It has been determined that the punishment for all of you should be death. Stealing food is a direct violation of your status as extras. This cannot be tolerated in any way. All of you shall be executed now. If you would please enter a single file line and follow me.”

  Before it was even finished speaking there was a massive cacophony of sobs and anguish. Nausea enveloped me and I felt as if I should run.

  “Excuse me,” Tom said, stepping forward. “If anyone should be punished, it should only be myself.”

  The room went silent.

  “Oh?” the Nano buzzed, turning its attention to Tom. “What makes you think that? Were you every child eating rations in here?”

  “No, but it was me who got all of them.” I tried to move, to add in that I helped, but Tom glared at me and pushed my chest firmly. “I was the one solely responsible for this. When I was working one day I found I could tamper with the machines in the trough, so I did and waited until it was taken to the waste room. Then I stole a bunch of these rations and handed them out to everyone. It’s not their fault I gave them these.” When the Nano didn’t respond right away, Tom added, “It would be a bad idea to remove all of the extras in here. Nanos would have to pick up the slack once they were all gone, right?”

  A strange chugging noise emitted from the Nano as if it were considering. “You raise a good argument. Logic dictates that it is correct. We accept your admission to guilt and sentence you to death. Now please, no more interruptions and follow me. The rest of you get to work or your fate shall be the same.”

  Wordlessly, Tom submitted to his fate. I grabbed his wrist and tried to stop him but he yanked it free.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to me, his voice lost in the noise. “Just try to be safe, okay? Don’t let this be in vain.”

  Then he was gone, and in what felt like an instant I was alone in the barracks, staring at my hands through tears, wondering what I’d done, what I should do.

  One local hour later I was in that same spot, unable to move. The whole thing had left me sick in a way that was unlike anything I’d ever felt. Have you ever heard of karma, Dante? It’s an old world concept, something lost among the riffraff on Mobius. Essentially it dictates that those who do bad things will have bad things done onto them, and those who do good things will have good done onto them. A concept so simple and yet so true. For me, I could see that I had done something wrong. What it was, I couldn’t surmise with the frame of mind I was in. Even now, I suppose it would be difficult for me to judge myself. In any case, at the time I knew I must have done something horribly wrong. Of all the children I had met, Tom was the only one to treat me as an equal, as a person. We had an actual relationship built on more than just our desire to eat. It was a true friendship.

  My best friend was about to die because of me and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Worse, when the rest of the children saw it happen they all just left, ready to move on and do their jobs as if nothing had happened. Whether it was because they didn’t care for Tom or because they felt there was nothing they could possibly do, I can’t say. Still, the feeling of seeing them all move on so quickly stung, made it all feel even more terrible.

  I began to wonder if it was worth me living, at that point. How could I possibly do anything right in a world run by monsters? I had no parents, no friends, no food, no purpose other than to make the work of a bunch of unfeeling assholes even easier than it already was.

  The cold steel pressed against my waist burned my skin, aching for attention.

  Without thinking I pulled the weapon free, stared at it. Wondered if maybe I should use it.

  Placed it to my temple.

  For an instant, the thought crossed my mind. Not of pulling the trigger. Instead, I thought of what I’d look like. My head eviscerated, my flesh burning at the neck, the smell of grease and iron in the air. The children coming in, screaming, followed by dutiful Nanos dumping me in the waste room. My headless corpse sent to drift among the trash for eons until all that remained was scorched in a burning star, my dust drifting across space until time collapsed.

  The weapon was at my side, trembling against my waist.

  I still wanted to use it.

  I just didn’t know how.

  Thirty minutes later a Nano came to find me.

  It was rare, but whenever a worker was gone for an extended period of time or didn’t report to their post, a Nano would come to find them and reprimand them. I had never personally had it happen until then, as the latest I’d ever arrived at my post was a half hour or so. Tom’s fate put lead in my shoes.

  Just as the Nano was about to speak, its red camera fixated on me like an angry eye, scrutinizing over the object in my hand. There was a strange noise, and suddenly an alarm began sounding from the Nano.

  I froze.

  In a more lifeless voice than usual, I heard the Nanos speech twice as it blared over the loudspeakers across Stratum 56. “WARNING: An extra has been sighted armed with a Hellwhip! All units report to sector 309, room 88B. Apprehend the weapon! Apprehend the weapon!” The Nano became a siren then, repeating the message to broadcast across the entire stratum.

  For a moment, a war raged inside me. Every neurotransmitter fired at once, and I couldn’t figure out if I should think about what to do or simply act on my instincts. As I raised the weapon now known to me as a Hellwhip, I pointed it at the Nano and wondered if I could escape somehow. My right hand steadied the weapon, and my left hand turned the setting up to three as I questioned whether it was worth me living in a world without Tom. The Hellwhip shook in my hand as I desperately attempted to steady my hands, palms sweating so badly I was already becoming dehydrated.

  The trigger was heavier than I anticipated.

  The blast was bigger than I expected.

  Everything went black.

  When I came to, I had no idea how long I had been out. With hindsight, I can estimate that it was maybe ten minutes, give or take, but at the time it felt like anywhere between seconds and days. My elbows were pulsing, throbbing with the pain from the Hellwhip’s recoil, and my shoulders ached as I pulled myself off the floor. There was no time for me to worry about whether or not I could shoot the weapon again, no time to wonder if I’d made the right decision in the first place; I had to find Tom and escape if possible.

  I gave a cursory glance to the destruction I’d created—the Nano was completely demolished, charred metal in an ugly disarray that gave off none of the disgust gore would but all of the chills—then I headed down the hall, without any clue where Tom might be. Every stratum is roughly the same size at around ten million square kilometers, and Stratum 56 is no exception. On top of this size, however, was the issue of layout. Stratum 56 had a large section in the middle with little in the way of room or even floors, a place where gravity was lower and the Nanos would commute. On the outskirts of this area were rooms hidden behind the thick Mobius steel, the only areas the Nanos deemed worth housing humans in.

A far cry from your elegant human metropolis of Stratum 999, wouldn’t you say?

  To continue, I had no real sense of where Tom might be, but I knew where he would end up; the waste room with all the other corpses. With that grim detail in mind, I did my best to head that way.

Unfortunately, the siren the Nano had let off had gotten the attention of many, many Nanos. It’s difficult to say how many were on Stratum 56, but I would wager roughly one million Nanos minimum worked the area. More than enough to apprehend me if they could reach me. Speed, thankfully, was never their strong suit. It helped that as I said, the rooms we were kept in were essentially a labyrinth within the steel walls of 56. Even with my location known it would be extremely difficult for them to find me and destroy me.

  At the time, I thought of none of this. I only thought of the directions to the waste management room. Take a left here, stop, run a quarter klick this way, another left, stop, run five steps forward and enter this room.

  The Hellwhip was heavy in my hands, and I kept fiddling with the setting on it, unsure if I had maybe set it too high before. Would two be enough? One would certainly be too low, that much I had figured. And based on what I had already experimented with, four was absolutely unnecessary to defeat a Nano. But at this point it was less about their destruction and more about the health of my joints, or even the charge of the weapon. It was obviously an EPL, but I had no real indication on it regarding its level of charge or how much energy was utilized on certain power outputs. For instance, if I set it to level six, would I have two shots? Three? How many shots did I have at charge level three? Twenty Thirty?  Unfortunately for me, I had no answers, only blind faith that I would have just enough shots to keep me safe on this suicide mission.

  As I turned a corner near the waste management room I was greeted with the sight of four Nanos barreling towards me, each of their cameras immediately focusing on me and then the Hellwhip. Quickly I raised the weapon and shot off once, hoping that the blast would be powerful enough to take all of them out at once. This was not the case. Level three appeared to be enough to handle one, maybe two Nanos at a time, but four would require more. There was no time to think this through, however, so I adjusted my aim and shot the next one, then adjusted again and caught the last two with one laser. Running through the debris, I prayed I would find no more around the following corner, a prayer which went unanswered.

  I will not bore you with all the details of the myriad of skirmishes I took part in during my search for Tom, as not only would it be time consuming to relate all of that information but even right after the event it would have been difficult for me to recall each detail; my adrenaline was so high that it kept me going despite my mind being lost. To make a long story short, I incurred a few minor injuries of cuts and bruises but nothing serious, the Hellwhip remained well charged and I began getting more comfortable with it. Still, its power was phenomenal, and I worried about the health of my arms. With each and every encounter, it became more difficult to tell my hands to rise up, to point, to pull the trigger, simple tasks that were so arduous it was a wonder I was alive at all. As you can plainly see by looking at me now, my body has adapted to what I’ve put it through, but at age twelve I was no more prepared for the usage of such a weapon than I was prepared for all the running around I had to do. And to think I did it all on nothing but poorly conceived rations and a daily nutrition drip. Merely the thought gives me nausea.

  Upon reaching the door to the waste room, I believe I had shot and destroyed forty Nanos, a fact which was little comfort to me as even then I knew how great their numbers were. The Hellwhip was hot in my hands, and without understanding I knew that there could be no way it would shoot and destroy every last Nano.

  Not without recharging.

  With little hesitation I entered the waste room and was greeted with the same image as before. Piles of garbage towered all around me, each tower reaching up towards the ceiling like strange spikes. Seeing no Nanos in the room, the first thing I knew to check was the pile of corpses toward the back. If Tom were already dead, he would be there.

  The pile of bodies appeared the same as it had before. Confused feelings rose up in me, and I couldn’t figure out what to do or where to go. Tom not being dead yet was good—or rather, his corpse hadn’t been delivered. So it might have been good, might have been bad anyway. But I had no leads anymore, I was at a dead end in the most literal way.

  When I exited the area I was surrounded by Nanos. But instead of bringing the Hellwhip up, blasting each and every one of them, and continuing onward, I hesitated; what if this was all for nothing? There were no leads on Tom’s location, and even if I knew it was impossible to know if he were alive or dead. With the sheer numbers of the Nanos there was no guarantee that after rescuing Tom the two of us could escape together. In my hesitation, my weapon remained at my side, and I put up no fight while the Nanos grabbed me by the shoulders and hoisted me off, taking me away. There was a prick in my arm despite how docile I was being, then everything went black.

  Consciousness returned to me as if it had never left, leaving me to speculate how long I had been knocked out. The more my mind returned to normal, the faster I began to take inventory of my situation. To my horror, things were not in my favor.

  My arms and legs were clamped down at the ankles and wrists, my body raised off the floor as if I were on a torture device. The Hellwhip I had stolen was on a table far enough away that had I been free to move I still would not have gone to grab it, as I would have been cut off by any of the eight Nanos lying in wait. To my left and to my right were other children from our barracks. It was difficult for me to see very far so I couldn’t be sure that Tom was there, but I assumed he was. Hoped he was. There wasn’t enough energy in me to call out to him.

  The children weren’t just tied up like I was, though. On their heads were these hoops attached to wires, a frightening contraption of unknown design. Worry set in as I saw it on everyone but me, and I tried to speak but noise came out without language.

  “It will take some time before you can form words again,” a man said, someone I hadn’t noticed immediately. Whatever drug was in me, it was strong enough to conceal a man who was merely fifty feet from me. His back was turned, and he hunched over the desk where my Hellwhip was. I tried to speak again, but once more my mouth made noises incomprehensible to the ear. “Bah!” the man huffed. “Just accept you can’t speak. That noise is disgusting.” He continued to tinker at his desk, with what I knew not. “Allow me to explain,” he began, his voice the mutter of a man too concentrated to multitask. “You’ve committed a crime. That much, I’m sure, is obvious. The punishment isn’t, though, as you’ve done enough damage that I must be involved. You extras don’t know who I am, so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Poe, and I am what you might consider a doctor here. Typically I work only with those in the village, at least when it comes to you humans, with the majority of my work being relegated to Nano repair and improvement.” I must have made a noise that came off as a gasp, because he waved a hand and laughed slightly. “No need to worry. I’m no sympathizer. My job is chosen through a series of tests run by Nanos upon the birth of children. They groomed me, placed me in this position, and if I ever refuse to do what they desire then I am dead. Now why they choose a human for this, I can’t be certain, but I think they were programmed this way as some kind of failsafe. They can only run things themselves to a certain degree. Being man made, they still look to us for guidance as we do to God. Therefore I am a stand in for such a creature, an idol created by idols. Understand?”

  I nodded, though I didn’t fully understand.

  “Now I’m going to explain what your punishment is. If I made it too lenient, I fear the Nanos would decide that I am not fit for the position and remove me, replace me with a new doctor. Still, I can understand why you did the things you have done and wish to avoid making your punishment something too much for you. Think about that while I do what I’m about to do.”

  His words felt heavy, as though he were already guilty. I attempted to ask him something, and he somehow understood it was a question based on the inflection of my voice alone.

  “Well, I’m assuming you’re asking what your punishment is,” he said, rising up out of his seat. He turned to me and I saw his face for the first time. Despite obvious use of treatment, he still appeared to be older, perhaps in his fifties, and his wrinkles were mixed in with scars from horrible past injuries. And yet he still seemed to be a sad man, not a scary man. “You’ve been given a mission from Stratum 56. You must traverse Mobius and reach the end of it. The Nanos wish this so that you might use this,” he pulled a small chip from his coat, “to relay information from further strata back to 56. I myself have a different mission for you.” Poe pressed something in his wrist and all the Nanos powered down, the red cameras pointing to the floor. “You must reach the end of Mobius so that you can find something. Somewhere in this structure, it is said that there lives the one who creates Mobius. It could simply be an AI or something greater, something more, but I have no sense of what. Only that it is, and that it must be stopped. You will seek and destroy it. You must stop Mobius from continuing at all costs.”

  I had so many questions but no way of asking them. Then Poe pressed the button on his wrist and all the Nanos powered back on as if nothing had happened.

  “Your punishment also involves the other extras as it was you who pilfered the rations. You created issues for all of these children. You destroyed their ability to live peaceful lives as extras, uninhibited by the responsibility Nanos and those higher in the village must be burdened with. Now you will receive your own burden, one you may never escape.”

  Poe was a malfeasant figure, striking this image of villainous tragedy, a bad God with reasonable ideologies but poor morality, an absurd hypocritical dichotomy . Gliding over to his computer, he did a few swift keystrokes before pressing a button off to the side. Suddenly every child other than myself began convulsing, their bodies violently struggling and banging against the sheer steel wall behind us. I felt their agonizing vibrations against my back as the metal reverberated around me, and I could do nothing but whine unintelligible noises and would-be goodbyes while tears streamed freely down the rivulets in my cheeks, Poe staring at me in a strange melancholy.

  When it was over Poe pressed another button and I fell to the ground in a heap, bruises quickly springing onto my knees. Two Nanos came and lifted me up, brought me to the table and dressed me in clothes I had never seen before. It was a skintight suit of black, with lines traveling across the body like runes. Poe explained things to me while this was happening.

  “That suit is lightweight and should help protect you on your journey. It is powered by your own body so you won’t need to bother with charging it, as it takes your movements and turns them into energy. You’ll still feel immense pain if you’re shot, for example, but you will probably not die. The suit isn’t very warm though so I would still recommend wearing something over it.” Poe held my Hellwhip in his hands, examining it with mild admiration. “This weapon should be suitable for taking you all the way to the end of Mobius. It can charge through the port on the bottom using any basic charging station, something which should continue to be available widely throughout Mobius. Charging stations are usually used for utility devices and Nanos, but they can still plug into a Hellwhip such as this when necessary. Be warned,” he said, his voice low, “this weapon is powerful. Immensely so. Were you to set it to level six, you could easily demolish half a stratum, maybe more. Not only that but even with that suit on it might rip your arms clean off your body.”

  I’m not sure if I nodded or my head shook, but he took the tic as a sign of acquiescence. Placing the chip he had held up before in the hands of one of the Nanos, I was flipped over and they began working on the back of my skull. Before I could say anything there was a painful pinch, a tremendous pull, and a loud snapping noise. There was no doubt they were working on my body, yet for some reason I couldn’t feel any of it. An anesthetic must have been used, though I’m not sure when.

  “When it becomes necessary,” Poe said, “the chip will be there. We’ve just installed a CMP to the back of your head. This is more colloquially known as a slot or a dome port, in case you’re more familiar with those phrases. The CMP will house the chip that we have given you without any detriment to your general movements. You can still sleep on your back if you so wish to do so and continue to do activities as normal. A headache in your occipital lobe might persist for a day or two, giving you fuzzy vision or vision confused by black eye floaters. If this persists,” he continued calmly, my head beginning the ache as if on cue, “take a few of these. At your size two every four hours should suffice. There’s enough in there to last you around two weeks if you take them sparingly. Still, if the ache continues I suggest finding a doctor or lab worker to fix the CMP. There is also a second slot in your CMP which you may use for secondary storage in the event you come across anything important in your journey to the edge of Mobius. Lastly, I must warn you; in the event you are struck in the back of the head, or you forcibly remove the CMP yourself, a failsafe will be activated. All of Mobius will assume that you have ended your pilgrimage prematurely and you will be neutralized.”

  Energy was slowly returning to me and I nodded, sitting up awkwardly in the black skinsuit.

  Poe handed the Hellwhip to me and gave me a once over one last time before folding his arms and asking if I had any last questions, his tone dark.

  “Do you know where Tom is?” I asked, my voice coming out like mush. I had to repeat myself before he gave me an answer.

  “Tom? Was this an extra friend of yours?”

  I nodded.

  “Then look behind you. Search the many faces of your compatriots, I’m certain his visage will appear to you.”

  Poe said it so matter-of-factly that it almost didn’t register to me that he had essentially announced to me that he had just killed not only Tom but everyone else who was in the barracks with us, the entire group of extras wiped out in a moment. Simply because I had decided to feed them. I searched the faces of everyone there, recognized many but couldn’t find Tom. My vision had already become hazy, unreliable. I couldn’t see what was in front of me for what it was.

  Despite all that, I knew Tom was there.

  “Go,” Poe commanded me, speaking the phrase with whispered violence. “Be off now, waste no more time with this place.”

  Staggering and bumbling about in false inebriation, I found my way to the hall outside. My mind began racing, however. None of this felt right. Why was I being so obedient? They had just murdered everyone.

  I struggled, my thoughts bouncing around so fast I could barely hang on. Coupled with my unstable mental state from the CMP device as well as the poor vision, it’s a wonder I was able to do anything at all, let alone what I did next. Though I had already walked far, intrinsically knowing where to go somehow, I turned around and faced where I knew Poe to be. I raised my Hellwhip.

Cranked the setting up to three. To four.

  To five.

  Pulled the trigger.

  “Setting the Hellwhip to five was enough to blast through the entire stratum, perhaps even reaching Stratum 55 in the process,” Captain Pluto elaborated, appearing slightly exhausted from the recollection of his past. Dante fiddled with his sleeves, habitually folding and unfolding them as he listened intently to the tale. “Both of my arms snapped, but the suit protected them enough that they didn’t break completely—just hairlines in my forearms. Surprisingly, too, I wasn’t knocked out. Though it was extremely difficult for me to find my way, I was able to navigate to the end of the stratum without too much difficulty and move on.” Captain Pluto moved his head as if to indicate the back of it, his hands still cuffed. “The chip Poe put in my CMP had many things installed on it, including a mapping program. It’s part of how I’ve been able to navigate so far, even in the times where my sight was unclear.”

  Dante nodded, tightening the folds of his sleeves. “Remarkable,” he said, forgetting he wasn’t supposed to speak during a recording.

  “Not so,” Captain Pluto said, but before he could continue Dante halted the recording with a satisfying click.

  “That’s enough for today. I have to make a few reports and get some rest, but I’ll return here tomorrow for you to continue with your tale.”

  As Dante turned, he heard the prisoner chuckle at him. “You don’t believe a single thing I’ve said, do you Mr. 999?”

  Furrowing his brow, Dante turned to face the man. “I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. Is that an insult?” They locked eyes a moment, unblinking. A stalemate of misunderstanding. “At any rate, my feelings harbor no influence over your freedom, so it’s a foolish question to ask.”

  “I don’t think so,” Captain Pluto said, a smirk on his face. “Maybe you hold no influence over my sentence, but as I’ve told you I’ve been imprisoned since before I got here. Hell, it was before you even existed as a subconscious thought in your father, let alone as a wandering daydream by your great-great-grandfather. So tell me, why do you think I’m lying to you? Is it because I’m a prisoner, or simply because you can’t face the facts?”

  Dante didn’t wish to indulge him, yet he faltered anyway. “Facts?”

  Still smiling, Pluto said, “Well, look at me. We both know that the moment you walked in here, you recognized that absolutely nothing about me was recognizable. My manner of dress is otherworldly, there are no records of my birth on any stratum immediately prior to this one or above this one. And even aside from those facts, I scare you.”

  “No you don’t,” Dante barked, finding himself irked. Recomposing himself, he said, “Ahem, I must go. We will continue this tomorrow.”

  “Do you believe what I say, Dante?”

  Glaring at him, Dante groaned slightly and turned on his heel. “Tomorrow, Mr. Pluto. Prepare yourself.”