I hadn’t thought much of the question when I’d first asked it, as a 9 year old. But it never left me and it’s all I can think about now. What do newborns dream about when they haven’t yet experienced the world? Chewing on that question is far more satisfying than ingesting the canned speech now competing for my brain space.

Some cognitive neuroscientists theorized that if we could only see a baby’s dreams, we’d see the essence of their personality before it’s corrupted by immersion in society. We’d get some sense of what they might become.

“Welcome to your future!”

The stadium was packed that day, despite the oppressively hot temperatures. The graduates were queued up, a chorus line of arms failing to mop foreheads with the puffy sleeves of their heat-absorbing but sweat-repelling robes.

They give this speech at every graduation ceremony.

“We discovered long ago that rationally accounting for equity does not work in a world of irrationality…”

Sounds true.

He had already come to realize that truth, both through limited but intense experience and an atypical amount of self-reflection for someone his age. He welcomed his future with arms folded, despite being at the head of the line.

“… random adjustments to opportunities spawned anger and rebellion…”

Well, that’s true.

His parents had fought for those opportunity adjustments and now he was alone. And he sometimes wished the weight of the scars he bore from the accident would bury him too. He had no one left from whom to accept love.

“… but a physical solution was deemed palatable. It was proven that humans deprived of sight and sound cannot walk or crawl or pilot in a straight line.”

So he led them, one by one, into the circular arena where they would be set on a straight path. And all assembled peers, friends and family if one had any, and supposed superiors, would watch as they wandered. It was random, but they felt they had control. To some, it seemed like an exercise in making the young look silly.

Okay, wheelchair ready.

“… so go forward, blindfold on, ears plugged, until you pass through one of the doors. There you will discover the level of wealth you will have at your disposal to initiate your future, and the associated placement.”

And, after some aimless ambling, I passed through a door and found… I would start my journey serving society as a member of the middle class, as an Idea Clerk.

They were queued up under the “Ideation Royalties Line Begins Here” sign where he sat, alone and lonely.

Today we have a twenty-something blonde, nose pierced with a sparkling blue-green stud, off-kilter rectangular cloth backpack, probably works at a fake food start-up, followed by a fiftyish woman, short, round faced, faint freckles, smiley, talking about her daughter’s successes despite her having been waitlisted at most colleges, and what is clearly an unsuccessful college professor.

They were all ready to let me jack into their skulls in hopes that some idea they didn’t even know they had is worth something on the open market. In the old days you had to think — think your idea was worth something and patent it. No need to put in that effort anymore. I suppose that’s good for preventing assholes from stealing credit for others’ ideas, but I wouldn’t want to deal with the pain. Some do it for the cash, but the odds of a big payday are slim. I can sell my bodily fluids instead and count on getting paid.

The sign turned green and the young woman stepped through the doorway with purpose, up to his plexishield.

“Hey there, can you jack me in?”

“Sure, turn to the right please, put your temple against the plunger, hold on to the handle, and don’t move till I say so or you could be permanently damaged. This is gonna hurt.”

“I know, dude, it’s worth it. Go ahead.”

The needle shot out, punctured skin and penetrated skull, luxuriated for a few seconds, then slowly retracted. The results arrived straightaway.

“Sorry, nothing for you today. I recommend some painkillers and a couple days rest.”

“F, you, dude.”

I’m so glad I wandered through that particular door.

“Next.”

The freckled woman shuffled up for her turn.

“Hello, young man. Will it hurt?”

“Sorry ma’am, it will.”

“Okay. I need this for my daughter. Go ahead.”

“Turn to the right please, put your temple against the plunger, hold on to the handle, and don’t move till I say so or you could be permanently damaged.”

She did as instructed, and when he told her to do so, she let go. And collapsed.

“Ma’am, please get up off the floor. Nothing of value for you. Sorry. Next.”

The academic was next, and looked to be last, at least for now.

“I am ready, my boy.”

Pretentious prick.

“Sure thing. Turn to the right, sir, and put your temple against the plunger, hold on to the handle, and don’t move till I say so or you could be permanently damaged.”

He did, without comment. At least this guy followed the rules.

“You can let go now.”

“Anything, son?”

You are not a father figure to all those younger than you.

“Well, yes. It looks like you once dreamt up a principle underlying the new physics that underpins much of our current tech. Lucky man.”

“I knew that my years of study would seed my thoughts! Finally, it will all pay off.”

“Oh, wait a minute. Turns out you dreamt that when you were just a child. Sorry, you were too young. You can’t claim it.”

“No, that can’t be. What is the principle? I’m sure it came from my studies.”

“Sorry, the machine doesn’t make mistakes. It traces the neural line back to its origin. And sorry, if you don’t know the idea, I can’t tell you. Better luck next time.”

“Next time?”I hope there’ll be a next time, but it’s cases like this one that keep the Discount Discorporation Depot next door in business.

I know I shouldn’t have jacked in. Turns out I got a tiny percent of the ideation royalties for that injectable peptide. Made me want to try it in hopes it would help my legs. Turned out it destroyed me. It didn’t help and it damaged me, and I didn’t feel it. But my newborn felt the consequences of the tiny genetic change. I hope she forgives me when she finds out.

I know I shouldn’t have created a child to try to find love. But it worked. She’s always unsettled when awake, but her love for me shines through when she sleeps next to me. I feel it.

His baby slept peacefully, purring.

I can help her till she turns twenty, but then she’s on her own.

That’s the law. The law mandates the resetting of status for each generation through a random walk. The law prevents parents from providing tangible resources. The law does not prevent resentment among privileged parents. The law does not prevent them from exerting inequitable social pressure.

Colors and contentment, not images and stories, floated through the baby’s dreams. These were associated with disconnecting from the world, with being alone, with being within, with forgetting all the people around her, with forgetting her father.

“John, just shut up and give me the fucking gun!”

He was screaming his taunts, unable to translate physical reactions into verbal communication.

“All right, I’ll give it to you,” I said to my close friend Carl, as I pulled my weapon from my side and pointed it at him, just before hearing the blast. Then the infinite swirl of stars and colors and life burst into our existence, and once more all of us were merely subservient victims of these things called physics and reality.

Always Back to Monday

“You’ll give what to me?” he asks over Monday morning breakfast.

“The maple syrup,” I grasp for words as I grab the bottle. “That’s what I’ll give you… because it’s only a Monday morning.”

“What day did you think it was?” Carl asks.

“It could’ve been Thursday,” I say. “Long weekends rarely end early.” My ears focus on the fading buzz of electrons and spatial plasma as my mind begins to assert control over the present situation and its numerous undecided aspects.

“You joke around breakfast time all you want,” he tells me. “Come Wednesday, if you aren’t prepared, if your memory slips a half second, if your reactions are worse than theirs, that means that you, and probably the rest of us, will be their victims; instead of them being ours.”

I’m reciting this conversation in my head, out of practice, while avoiding the important task at hand — to understand the bank heist we are about to perform. But it’s not like that really matters on Monday. You see, I’m the only one who goes back to Monday.

For Some, It is Always Back to Tuesday

“Oh, my god,” Joseph screams. “The lights! The fury! You all experienced that, right?”

“For god’s sake, Joseph,” Carl responds. “We’ve all experienced it together multiple times. Problem is we need to figure out, again, why everything went wrong. Why do we keep getting phased back in time with memories from the future intact?”

“You see that?” Rutger says in his vaguely unbroken German accent, “My hand, look at it.” His fingers go through acrobatics in the air. “That bullet surely ripped my palm in half. And yet it’s back to normal, like nothing happened.”

“We’re not going to make any progress here if you keep behaving like children,” Carl tells us. “You think we’re going to get back to a normal, linear flow of time by playing these ridiculous tricks?” He wipes a layer of sweat from his forehead and then turns to me. “What about you, John? Any new insights? You seem to be the only one coming up with clever ideas.”

“No, actually,” I reply. “Nothing new on my end.” I’ve decided not to tell them what I know. For now anyway.

Or, Is it Always Back to Wednesday?

Wednesday. Polished rubber clicks against a marble floor with its own particular resonance when you are wearing steel-toed boots. When we, as a team, initially entered the bank that afternoon, there was just one thing we kept in mind: we had come here to conquer.

That was our attitude the first time we broke into the bank. After we were sent through several cycles of the bank robbery, it became an event that was almost formulaic. “All right, you fucking assholes!” Joseph enjoyed repeating this particular line for some reason, every single iteration. “Put your fucking hands up!”

The rest of us could tell you what was going to happen by rote memory. I might angle my weapon differently in one cycle, watch the security guards react to the sheen of light in a slightly different position just to see if I could get an advantage. But Joseph would be just as taunting, Carl would be just as commanding, and Rutger would be just as professional. That was our team.

When someone places the barrel of a gun behind your ear and asks whether you are willing to cooperate, you tend to evaluate your choices. As a rite of initiation to professional bank robbers, there is little else that can make you question them. Even if that little thing taunting your confidence is a sudden, random time travel loop.

So, Why the Time Travel, Then?

The first time we looped, Carl actually wanted to check to see if the time travel was added as an insurance option to guarantee our success. We all figured out that we go back to Tuesday while the rest of the world was oblivious; I kept my Monday secret to myself.

But we were raiding a bank, not a quantum physics laboratory. We were hired red-bloods, mere mercenaries with mostly up-to-date intelligence. Astrophysics and the Taoist Master standing behind the all-encompassing Universe — all of that was something we stumbled upon in our duties, and definitely not something we expected upon signing up.

So, what caused us to travel back in time repeatedly? None of us really knew. Having an extra day to research while the others were blissfully ignorant did nothing to help me.

A bank is the least busy on a Wednesday afternoon at lunch. We realized this as an opportunity. Insurance companies make the same bet. We just figured that a team of angry, skilled soldiers would be a bit more intimidating than a department of pencil-pushing administrators and their facon bacon cops. But every Wednesday, the same thing happens: we lose and go back in time.

To Fire The Gun Randomly

“Pack the bags with as much cash as you can.” Carl was always thorough on this point, every time the bank robbery occurred. It seemed to be the line with which he had most success and one he was most willing to rely on.

“Please don’t hurt us,” one of the tellers screamed as she struggled with the equipment. “We’re going as fast as we can.”

“Did you see him yet?” I asked. “Are you fucking looking?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Carl responded. I rescinded any doubts about him. “No, I didn’t fucking see him, but I’m fucking looking.” Sweat traced his hairline.

“You’re still looking for The Ghost?” Joseph asked, “I’ll tell you if I see an exorcist.” He turned around and moved out of vision forever. The next thing I heard sounded like the cracking of wood. By the time I looked, he was on the ground and there were an infinite number of assault rifle bursts. The Ghost had struck again. I was eliminated with the others.

To Fear Others Randomly

I loop back in time to Monday. “Give me the fucking maple syrup,” Carl handles his line quite well. He doesn’t know yet, and if I try to explain, he’ll just forget what I tell him, and I’ll go back to Monday again without gaining anything. I keep it to myself. No use having the same conversation for infinity.

So, it’s a quiet Monday. Tuesday comes. “You get a look at The Ghost, this time?” I ask.

“Holy fuck, I’m alive again!” Joseph screams out.

“Shut up, Joseph,” Rutger rubs the more circular parts of his shaved cranium. “You say that every time.”

“That fucking Ghost is always there,” Carl yells, finally showing his irritation. “Every time we prepare for every move he is going to make, and every time he kills every last one of us. I mean, after I saw red, I assumed the same happened to you all again, right? You were all blown away?”

“To the hilt,” I chime in like I might’ve been expected to. But that’s the thing, I did die again, just like them. You see, we don’t know who the Ghost is, but at the last moment of our robbery, this person suddenly appears, draped in black and cloaked in silence. What follows is a blood bath with our veins as the main pipes into the tub.

“To the hilt?” Carl counters. “You mean, like your lover?”

To Question Randomly

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“This is a heist, not a fucking charity dinner,” Carl says to me. “We’ve been in that bank at least twenty times by now, and so far I haven’t had a reason to question your abilities.”

“And you’ve given me plenty of reasons to question yours,” I respond.

“I’m with John on this one,” Rutger adds. “Killing civilians is sloppy. It makes the police want to hunt you all the more. It’s pure logistics. Do you want the money in the vaults, or do you want to commit some terrible act to prove you have a right to it?”

“Why can’t we have both?” Joseph asks.

“Because you are either weak and victimized by the situation, or you are strong and you overpower it,” Rutger says. “It is an anomaly to be both.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Carl adds. “No, John. I wasn’t criticizing you for being a bleeding heart. I think you knew the girl at the bank — from before we planned this heist.”

To Die Randomly

“What makes you think I knew her?” I ask.

“I saw you talking to her,” Carl replies. “You were speaking almost as though you knew some very intimate things.”

“Go fuck yourself, Carl,” I respond. “For all I know, you’re the one who was talking intimately to her.” And that’s just the thing — I did see him talking to her, and very closely. But it was several cycles ago. I’ve been trying to piece it together, fragment by fragment, moment by moment, but have gotten nowhere. The unexpected counter punch was enough to get him to shut up. I don’t need him quiet for the rest of my life — just until the next day will be sufficient.

Wednesday. Another blazing through of rent-a-cop uniforms and the bank suddenly fell within the sovereignty of our domain.

“You, Joseph and Rutger, you break the vault seals,” Carl handed out his orders. “For this time anyway.” The bank tellers gave each other quick perplexed looks.

“I’m on lookout with you, John,” he added, pointing to the front. “I’m on point, you stay back. I want to at least get a look at this thing when it kills me.” No more than a smile before his head exploded. His blood got in my eyes and I could not see. Struggling to get to Rutger and Joseph, I saw one of the teller girls, the one from before, with a faint whisper on her lips, “Carl…”

To Misunderstand Randomly

“Give me the fucking maple —”, I interrupt him, grab the bottle, and place it directly in front of him. Being resurrected in a rooftop restaurant with an infinitely warm sun may seem ideal, but it might not be enough if you can still see your nightmares right in front of you.

“You’re getting a little jumpy too soon, aren’t you, John?” Carl knows how to bother someone right at the moment they least need it. He’s good at being a boss.

Tuesday. “What the fuck, John!” his tone suddenly changes. “I told you to hang back. And not one fucking bullet of suppressing fire?”

“It was another bloodletting,” Rutger says. “We were all doomed, once again, without more than a half impulse of willingness to defend ourselves. I wonder, what are we after now? To get the money, or to end the time cycles?”

“Both,” Carl and Joseph chant together, before their seriousness subsides into non-threatening chuckles.

“Then maybe you should tell us,” Rutger replies.”About the girl. You went down first, then John, then Joseph, but, knowing my fate, I hid and waited. I listened to The Ghost walk straight up to the teller. He asked where you were, Carl, by name. So, why don’t you tell us what you really know?”

To Lead Randomly

“She’s just a fuckin’ girl,” Carl tells us. “Just one of the bank workers. I may have pushed her around, or I may have used force on her, or I may have demanded information from her. You all saw how I behaved with her, there should be nothing to question.”

“It’s the exact opposite,” Rutger replies. “Everything is up to question. Here we are, twenty or thirty time cycles later, and we’re still going through the same actions. I want to find a loose end, and so far, you’re the closest thing to it.”

“He makes a point,” Joseph mindlessness seems to dissipate when he can be made to finally recognize his own self-interests. I agree.

“So, what do you all have in mind?” Carl starts to panic. “Are you going to torture me? Beat the answer out of me?”

“No, that won’t solve anything,” Rutger says. “I want answers, not tears. Begin by telling me her name.”

“Angela,” Carl blurts it out. “It’s Angela. But I know nothing else about her. Not a fucking clue.”

“Next time around, then,” Rutger says. “You, John, are going to sit out, until the last minute, to enter the bank. Then you can tell us what you learned when you go back.”

To Follow Randomly

“It’s fucking impossible to take on a bank with only three heistmen,” Carl complains on Wednesday morning.

“Oh, yeah?” I look to Rutger’s lead.”And so far, it’s also been impossible to take it on with four heistmen, so things can’t be all that much worse for us.”

“Which one is Angela?” Joseph asks. “There were six bank tellers, four women, two men.”

“The one with the green earrings,” Rutger replies.

“Oh, the beauty, eh?” Joseph says. “I guess infinitely reliving the last, most painful days of your life would be at least worth her.”

“You’re all making a mistake, you’ll find that out when we go back to Tuesday again,” Carl protests.

“That’s all I ever wanted,” Rutger responds. “To find out. Let’s hope that’s what we get.”

To Kill Randomly

Watching the bank from a block away was like watching it through a time rift. The distance was alarming, even if I was armed with one suitcase containing sniper rifle components and another containing a submachine gun.

Just another Wednesday, where I was ready to kill, except this time there were toxic jet streams just overhead and an urban deli just beneath my feet. It was a nice contrast to marbled granite in every direction.

Our van showed up, just as scheduled. The three soldiers stormed the bank, there were shots for about one minute, and then all went silent. Everything must’ve gone without a hitch.

Three minutes passed, and I saw a black, armored vehicle come to a halt just out back of the bank. The time frame fitted The Ghost’s past behavior, so I slid down the nearest fire escape ladder. Running across the street, I heard a series of shots, from automatic to semi-automatic fire until I finally put my foot down on that first step up to the bank — then there was only one weapon that I could hear.

I dodged to a side entrance for employees, fired at the door’s locks, and kicked in the door. The Ghost was caught surprised, but not too surprised. Next to him was a woman, a bank teller. She was holding a brown briefcase. I heard a gentle whisper from her lips, “No.” I made out the numbers on the briefcase, ‘AX-4007’, and then, once more, I was basking in sunlight at a rooftop restaurant on Monday. She didn’t have green earrings, though — they were blue.

To Think Randomly

“Give me the fucking maple syrup,” Carl says.

“What do you think she meant by that?” I ask the air and beg the sky.

“What, that she turned you down?” Joseph breaks my concentration. A mild glance of irritation, as I think to myself, “Just wait till tomorrow.”

Tuesday. “Holy fuck!” Joseph screams, “We were brutalized by The Ghost. Not a fucking chance. Never a chance in goddamn hell!”

“John, did you find out anything this time?” Rutger says, “Did you get any information?”

“AX-4007,” I tell them, “I could only see that The Ghost entered through the back of the bank alone, maybe with a driver, but the opportunity of a clear shot never presented itself. When I broke in after The Ghost finished you all off, I saw him in the back, with a bank teller and a briefcase marked AX-4007.”

“The girl with the green earrings, right?” Rutger asks, “It was Angela.”

“No, it was actually the girl with the blue earrings,” I reply. “Angela wasn’t with The Ghost at all.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Joseph asks.

To Be Ignorant Randomly

“So you, Carl, know the girl with the green earrings,” Rutger says out loud. “And The Ghost knows the girl with the blue earrings.”

“Angela and our second mistress,” Joseph adds.

“The second girl is Patty,” Carl tells us, to the surprise of the rest of us, and then with a few grains of reassurance, “They all have name tags, you know.”

“And the briefcase? AX-4007? That could mean anything,” Rutger says.

“I know, but it’s an ocean of information compared to the few drops we’ve been able to squeeze out of the situation,” I reply. “At least we know that The Ghost is in the loop before the bank robbery actually starts.”

“We need more information,” Rutger says. “It’s information that is the key. Next time, I want you, John and Carl, to stay back and watch the bank. The Ghost can’t escape two snipers. Joseph and I will get what information we can from Patty and Angela while we’re inside.”

“What? Two heistmen against a bank full of security guards?”

“I’ve memorized the patterns of their footsteps and the time frames each one puts in between shots,” Rutger says. “I think we’ll be a bit more successful. Do you have any better ideas?”

To Be Consumed Randomly

Wednesday. I gave a very slow wave across 400 meters of urban sprawl to my comrade in arms, before gesturing a thumbs up. Carl repeated the wave, but finished it up with a middle finger.

We were both armed with Dragunov sniper rifles, effective and efficient, with a magazine clip big enough to make it an almost foolproof weapon. We were positioned such that one of us would have a decent shot when The Ghost emerged from his vehicle. And since that vehicle originally approached from the Northwest, that is where both of our sights were aimed.

I looked up from my scope and checked my watch. The Ghost was two minutes late. I saw Carl waving at me across the bank plaza. He pointed to his eyes, and then to the scope, closing the end of the rifle into his shoulder. Following suit, I stared at the road leading to the bank, until I heard the explosion.

A loud roaring blast of a car horn distracted me, as a bicyclist stopped short to scream at a driver and then pedaled away. I checked my watch. This hadn’t happened the last time; my time on the rooftop hadn’t lasted that long. I looked across the plaza to where Carl was positioned. He was gone. I pulled up the scope and zoomed in on his position. I didn’t see him, and I didn’t see his weapon.

I dropped the sniper rifle and fell back behind the parapet, pulling a pistol out from inside my jacket. A hand lifted itself up from the other balcony, dropping a grenade in front of me.

To Be Heroic Randomly

Tick, tick, tick — as the grenade bounced against the concrete, I pulled myself over the edge, holding on with just a few fingers, until the blast knocked my grip loose and sent me falling through to the unforgiving steel of a fire escape. I was completely unarmed.

I hoisted myself up and made my way to the ground level as fast as I could. I lunged through traffic to the bank. The grenade had made whatever weapons I had on the building useless, and the apparent absence of The Ghost from the bank had made it, for the time being, the safest place I could go to.

“Hey!” I screamed, coming through the bank entrance. “Rutger! Joseph! Carl’s dead!” I fell to my knees while catching my breath in an empty marble bank, with bodies of security guards scattered throughout. Silence. I was still alone.

“Please don’t let them come back. Please don’t let them come back,” I heard quiet whispering coming from one of the office rooms. I took a pistol from one of the dead guards and followed that soft scratching. Then I found her — another one of the bank tellers, but she didn’t have green or blue earrings. It was not Angela or Patty. It was… Lucia, I discovered from her name tag.

“Who don’t you want to come back?” I walked up to her, “What are you afraid of?”

Slowly, quietly, she took her hands from her eyes. “Well, nothing anymore.”

I looked down. It was Joseph. He was shot through the skull. Then, I heard the front door to the bank open.

To Be Sacrificial Randomly

Being a mouse to a cat is a lot easier if it’s the mouse that discovers the cat and not the other way around. I rose softly and sneaked through an office hallway to another office. I heard the clicking of a firearm, but there were no shots. That made me more nervous than bold.

In the next room, I stumbled on a body. I hardly had to look down to realize that it was Rutger. Security guards don’t die rushing through doorways; they die crying to themselves in a pool of blood while hostages are sacrificed. I looked past the body to the wall, and there she was: Patty, the girl with the blue earrings, Angela following close behind. Except, unlike Lucia, she was not terrified. She was standing, rather unintimidated.

“He’s in here!” she screamed.

I turned towards the rapid footsteps long enough to calculate their distance. Then I turned to her and raised my pistol for one final shot.

“No, don’t kill my best friend,” Angela stood in front of Patty. “You’ll have to kill me too.”

If confusion had distracted me, then it could also work on The Ghost. I fired one shot at the table in front of us into a vase, sending glass shards flying. It was enough for both of them to dive to the ground.

The Ghost entered the room with a lowered weapon. My arm was around Patty’s neck, the pistol firmly to her skull.

To Be Angry Randomly

“I want answers!” I screamed.

“You dumb, ignorant shit,” I heard The Ghost finally speak. It was a woman, “You were never supposed to take a hostage like this. You were never supposed to be on your own.”

“When you have no choices, then you have no choices,” I could hear Patty wince as my nervousness translated into a tighter grip.

“Now we’re going to have to do this thing all over again. You know that, don’t you?” The Ghost told me.

“Yeah, I do, but what I want to know is how you know,” I said.

“You mean you really understand the time cycles that have been going on?” My heart skipped a beat.

“More than you could possibly imagine,” I lied.

“Then you’re dumber than I thought. The government files on AX-4007 are explicitly clear. When a time loop is set up, the results repeat until the cycle has reached its nexus point, where it contradicts the setup.”

“What do you mean by that?”.

“Isn’t it obvious? What I mean is that the gun you’re holding doesn’t have any bullets left.”

To Be Dead Randomly

“Give me the fucking maple syrup…”

I can’t turn away from the glint of sunshine in our safe rooftop haven. “The time loop has not yet reached its nexus point.” There’s a moment of silence.

“What?” Joseph asks.

“I’m just thinking about why she said no,” I walk the line between reality and fiction.

“Typical idiot,” Joseph replies. “You mention time travel and nexus points to a girl, and she’ll walk away from you like the weirdo you are.”

“You’re quite sure of your abilities,” Rutger speaks. “I hope you don’t fail us when it finally matters.”

“Don’t worry about me. My talk comes with a delivery,” Joseph says. “Whether it’s with the girls at the club or plying my trade.”

Carl looks at each of us, and then without hesitation, reaches across the length of the table to pull the maple syrup closer. He doesn’t say a single word.

I don’t trust Carl.

To Be Suspicious Randomly

I make up some excuse for breaking my engagement that afternoon at the restaurant. A few calls are made, some equipment is acquired at a hefty credit rate, and by evening, I have tracked down Carl to a low-profile but classy restaurant downtown.

Since all I want is information, binoculars and an audio surveillance device are all that I need. But just in case, I bring my peace of mind.

“You want me to put the diamonds into your bag?” she says.

“Hush hush,” Carl mutters, using a cigarette to cover his mouth. Finally, after a few moments have passed, “Use words we have agreed upon.”

“The glass goes into your bag, the one with the blue sticker on the bottom,” she says. “And then the green goes equally into both bags.”

“That’s right,” Carl says. “The bangs we have set up, they’re going to take out the bolting mechanisms for all of the containers in the building, so it will be easy pickings”

I look closer. I see green earrings. It’s Angela. Carl is trying to sell us out.

To Be Curious Randomly

All he is trying to do is get a bigger cut. The antagonism and frustration he’s been showing as a leader isn’t because of an actual block he’s running up against; he’s just venting his inabilities.

I listen to their conversation some more, but I get no good information out of it. I see the stud in town taking out his lady so that he can tell her how he’s going to rip his friends off. But I don’t see or hear anything about time cycles or loops.

Angela — she jumped in front of her friend, Patty, to save her. I saw her at one point talking with Carl in the bank, but I wasn’t able to follow up my questions on that.

My suspicion that Carl was lying has been proved. But the fruits of this proof are worthless. If I walk away from that bank with hundred million dollars instead of a hundred and fifty, I’d be almost just as satisfied.

Carl’s secret is self-interest and greed. I can contain him. But The Ghost’s secret — that one still eludes me — and she still escapes containment.

AX-4007? Maybe my credit’s still good enough to get some more information about it.

To Be Desperate Randomly

There are all types of midnight phone calls. “I need some information, government related, high confidential levels,” I say.

“Yeah, hold on,” I hear as the line goes blank. Thirty seconds pass. “You know where to meet me?”

“I do,” I reply.

“Be there in an hour,” the phone clicks.

Never doubt what you might find down an alleyway near an underground computer cafe. Maybe some acne-riddled teenage losers; Maybe acne-riddled teenage geniuses. I miss the days when I could commit crime in such a carefree manner, with the attitude of ‘I’m a juvenile; they can’t do anything permanent to me.’ But now I need help from someone like that.

I have enough time to order a coffee and sit down at a computer that is just sufficiently visible to anyone looking for me.

Someone is going around the room placing sticky notes on broken computers. They place one on the desk in front of me. I lift it up, seeing the warning about a broken machine, and then flip it over. “Traveling through time? Look around. I’m watching.”

To Be In Need Randomly

I look around the room and catch the gaze of one person watching me intently. Casually I walk up to him, “You know what time it is?”

He smiles, “Any time that you want it to be. Let’s talk outside.”

I follow him to the back alley, in between dumpsters with rotting food and trashcans overflowing with garbage and dirt.

“What you’re looking for doesn’t exist,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“The AX-4007 Project,” he says. “It was started five years ago, but just last year it was officially canceled. Budget cuts.”

“What was the project about?”

“To control the flow of time. Not to travel forward and backward, but for setting up loops. To control all time through all the universe is too god-like, they probably thought. May as well start small, the way mankind always has.”

“Can you tell me anything about the current time loop that we are in?” I ask.

To Be In Abundance Randomly

“The project was scrapped,” he says. “So, I doubt anything about it is still working.”

“But it could still be in operation, if someone got their hands on it,” I reason with myself as much as I question his story. “What kind of person would that be?”

“Anyone who was involved in the project. But even then, you’re talking about a lot of teenagers who worked shitty internships and couldn’t do anything competently, and a small handful of scientists in their sixties and seventies who couldn’t explain anything competently. The project washed out just like its workers. I’d tell you more if I knew, but that’s where the story seems to end.”

“Unless the story keeps repeating?”

“There is no story. There’s nobody still involved with it or anyone who could give a fuck about it. What’s there to repeat?”

“Only what was left incomplete.”

“And as far as I can tell, as far as the records say, that’s nothing,” he says. “Nothing is going to keep repeating.”

To Be Neglected Randomly

“You’ve been a great help,” I say. “Bill me what you think is appropriate.”

“That’s already done,” he says.

Tuesday. “Holy fuck, what the fuck!” Carl screams, lashing at his throat. “Someone cut my throat and left me to bleed out to the last fucking moment.”

“I didn’t get too far, either,” Joseph says.

“That’s because you can’t keep your fucking mind on the job and off of the girls,” Rutger says. “You lose focus, you fuck up and you die. Don’t fucking forget that next time.”

“What about you, John?” Carl looks at me. “Did you find anything? You’re usually better at taking apart the information from these cycles.”

“I remember looking across the bank and seeing Carl disappear,” I reply. “After that, I heard a loud explosion, and only remember choking to death on the heat and dust.”

“So, does anyone have a plan?” Carl asks. “Because next time, I think I should be the one who watches the bank. Last two fuck-ups were manned by John. Go with Team Carl and you’re all right.”

To Be Attentive Randomly

“Part one of research is information gathering,” Rutger puts it like it is. “Part two of research is information application. Why don’t we try this whole thing again from the start?”

Wednesday. We went with our original plans, all a bit wiser, all a bit more cautious. “Hey, everyone, this is a fucking robbery.” Carl announced loudly. “Shut the fuck up and do what I say.” He deliberately placed his back to the front of one guard who always hid out till the last moment, and with the quietest slip of rubber against marble, turned around and neutralized his target.

“You, Patty,” I said to the girl with blue earrings, “I need to speak with you, right now. Come with me. Rutger, you’re on lookout.”

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Ending this,” I said. A few muffled screams of help, and she was finally in the quiet solitude of a 3-foot thick, steel cage.

“What is going on?” I asked her. “The others, they don’t know. But you know. You know The Ghost. You’re going to give me information.”

To Be Soft Randomly

“I don’t know The Ghost,” she said. “I don’t know that person at all. How could I?”

“How could you not?” I asked. “I have checked out the story of every other person employed at this bank, but you’re the odd one out,” I half-lied and caught her believing me. “Tell me, or it’s going to be painful for you and The Ghost.”

“The Ghost is immune,” she said. “I know and believe that much. I’ve been in the cycle too. I went from the first cycle warning my manager and the police, to the last cycle where I know that I can’t get out, whether I come into work or not.”

“The Ghost is immune. Yeah, sure, but you aren’t,” I said.

“That is the problem for you,” she said. “I am the Ghost.”

To Be Hard Randomly

“You aren’t the Ghost, I’ve seen you both separately,” I said.

“I am,” she said. “The Ghost is me twenty years from now.”

“And Project AX-4007?”

“In five years, the project is resurrected again, with much of the help of the living members of the original team, but they’re all college graduates at that time.You can’t just bury research and expect nobody to find it.”

“Then what is the point of this? You’re going back in time to stop an old boss from being fucked over by some bank robbers? Really? That is your motivation?”

“I don’t know my other’s motivation. I only know that she is the one who really has power here.”

“I doubt that will be proven,” I said. Then I heard a quick, friendly knock at the vault door, and remembered that the vault acted as a sound muffler.

To Be Insensitive Randomly

“Come in!” I replied to the knocking with a glint of humor, before I walked over and began undoing the lock. It was too late at this point for me.

“John, it’s been so long, I hope you’re not about to blow my brains out,” I heard as soon as a crack of air was able to carry sound.

I disarmed myself and placed my pistol in the back of my pants. “Yeah, let’s keep that even then,” I replied.

Enough of the vault was open so that a human being could walk through it, but I did not see or hear anyone. I kept turning that one-ton door with the force of my body using the principle of levers. How stupid of me. Then I felt it — the metal barrel firmly placed against the side of my skull.

“The nice part about keeping things even is that it makes it so that things are always divisible by two,” I heard The Ghost’s voice.

To Be Strong Randomly

“Against the wall, now,” she said, her words breaking through the blackness of her mask like swords aimed at my heart. “I need to talk to you. This is not going to be simple, but you need to hear this.”

“Okay,” I accepted the situation and her demands.

“You cannot kill anyone in this bank. Not one. You take hostages. You hold them down to the ground with all your fury and might. The fury and might you’d expect of criminals with a plan, but not a slaughterhouse envisioned by a bunch of sloppy criminals who come for one thing and try to take everything. You do that, and we might escape the time cycles.”

“You’re trapped, too?”

“Yes, but not in the same way as you. You’re trapped on the bottom. I’m trapped on the top.”

“And what if the others don’t agree?”

“That’s the other thing, Carl and Joseph may not enter the bank alive, you kill them before that happens. Here, let me show you how.” She raised her weapon.

To Be Weak Randomly

“Give me the fucking maple syrup,” Carl asks.

I look at him. A moment of solitude and quiet goes by as I say nothing.

“Do you need a fucking hand, or am I going to have to walk over there, smack you up, and take it from you?”

I see the bottle, pick it up, and gently place it in front of him.

“Good, that’s what I expected of you,” he says. I turn to my thoughts as I stare at my empty plate.

“Carl, what the fuck is that?” I look up to see Joseph murmuring. There’s a red dot floating around the maple syrup bottle, just before it explodes with the loud burst of a sniper rifle’s gunshot.

We all jump underneath the table at our rooftop restaurant, and at that exact moment, look over to the corpse and realize that Carl’s dead.

To Be Uncertain Randomly

Tuesday. “Holy fuck!” Joseph screams. “I didn’t see that coming, not a bit.”

“Another cycle, another try,” Rutger says. “What are we even trying to do?”

Not a single sound can be heard from Carl. The others are on repeat between Tuesday morning and the evening of the heist on Wednesday. And now I see the repercussions of the previous day.

“This shit wouldn’t be happening if Carl was here,” Joseph argues with himself. They don’t remember about the innumerable cycles where Carl had been with us, and everything went to hell just the same.

“Goddamn, even if we wanted to walk away, we can’t,” Rutger says. “Half of the police department has been bought off, so that they’re going to be busy somewhere when the robbery finally goes under way. You can’t just ask for a refund on a million dollar city-wide bribe.”

If Carl is gone, that means he never met with Angela last night. She may or may not know that he’s dead yet. But I can imagine that The Ghost knows.

To Be Unknown Randomly

Wednesday morning. “What makes you think this will work this time?” Rutger asked.

“Easy,” I replied. “I met The Ghost.”

“You met him?”

“Her. This is the only way. We have no other choice.”

“Kill Joseph? Right after we use him to break in?” he asked, and then began chuckling. “You’ve seen too many mobster movies. This is a team effort. We do this together.”

“We have been doing this together. Over and over and over. In the beginning, the very first time, I had perfect confidence — Carl was ruthless enough, Joseph was crude enough, and you were methodical enough — but now I know Carl was just selfish and Joseph impulsive.”

“What do you mean? Carl’s been dead since Monday morning, and that was another huge bribe to get the authorities to look the other way.”

“You don’t remember that first time? “The very first cycle?” He gave me a blank look. “Just shut up…”

“… and give me the gun,” he completed Carl’s sentence from our first cycle. It had been his response when I had found him talking to the girl with the green earrings.

To Be Unaware Randomly

“But how?” he asked. “How do I remember that, and also remember that Carl was never there?”

“I don’t know that,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Are you sure that killing Joseph will end the time cycle?”

“That, and nobody can die in the bank. That’s something I was overlooking, in terms of the professionalism of this team and possible changes to history we were responsible for.”

“You think someone in that bank ends up curing cancer or establishing world peace or ending poverty? It might just end up being the son of some influential politician, ready to bend and pervert the law for their own personal purposes.”

“You know, there’s only three of us. If you’re so worried about contingencies, we can make sure that Joseph isn’t in a position to know about the fact that it was one of us who pulled the trigger. Any shot we fire at him that he doesn’t see, we blame on The Ghost.”

“I’m sick to death of these endless time cycles,” Rutger replied. “We may have entered a particular territory where the experimental method will prove more fruitful than the technical one. I’m in.”

To Be Open-Ended Randomly

Wednesday afternoon. Normally, we just charged the bank and killed anyone who stood in our path. “3, 2, 1…” I counted down a synchronous time established with the others. A small, tin cylinder bounced off the walls with its clicks and tinks, catching the attention of all of the main lobby guards.

And then a sudden blast of noise and light made them all deaf and blind. A flashbang, standard police stormtrooper tactics. In a matter of 10 seconds, we stormed the lobby, forcing guards down to the ground and disarming them. But, no matter how slow those seconds passed for us doing the raid, and no matter how fast it was for our hostages, it wasn’t enough.

“I count 8, er, 9, guards taken,” Joseph said.

“There’s supposed to be 12.” Rutger said.

I saw an arm outstretched from a normally vacant hallway door, pistol hoisted and all, just to the left of my shoulder. Latching on, I grabbed his wrist and, forcing my shoulder into his ribcage, I flipped him over. A single shot was fired.

I grabbed the gun. Nehind him were two other guards, who readily gave themselves up and surrendered, sinking to the marble floors.

I turned around. Rutger was bleeding.

To Be Cautious Randomly

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine, just my shoulder,” Rutger said.

“The shoulder you use for firing your gun,” Joseph said. “You’re worthless now. Come on John, just you and me now.”

“You, give me your shirt, right now, or I’ll kill you,” I said to a guard. I wrapped a makeshift tourniquet above Rutger’s wound with the shirt.

“Open the vault, right now.” Joseph screamed at the bank teller. It was Patty. She followed his orders precisely, unlocking the vault with the bank manager’s key.

“You’re okay, right?” I asked Rutger.

“Yes, I am fine,” he replied. “I’m left and right handed, I can fire with either shoulder. In Germany, as a child, I had once lost the use of my right shoulder from farming equipment wounds. Trust me, I am fine.” He stood up, looking like he was about to faint.

“You!” Joseph got distracted, and pointed to Angela. “I want to see you in closer quarters.”

To Be Angry Randomly

My vision drifted from Rutger trying to keep standing to Joseph closing in on his prey. I lifted my gun and fired. One single shot, and he fell to his knees and then to the ground. A pool of blood slowly expanded from his where his head rested.

“Anyone fucking moves without my say so, and I will kill you just the same,” I screamed like a man trembling with his only friend nearly dead, and after having executed my only bought-off ally. Nobody questioned my willingness to end a life after that.

“Your money is in the bags,” muttered Patty from across the room.

I helped Rutger lean against a wall as he readjusted his tourniquet and his pistol grip.

“Perfect,” I said, taking the duffel bags and throwing them over my shoulder. An entire security team, disarmed and harmless, lay just below me, each guard feeling the tremors of my footsteps, each of them smelling the friction of the sweat drawing down my forehead.

I took Rutger on my shoulder, and we made our way to the back where our ride was waiting for us. I kicked open the backdoor and saw The Ghost, standing calmly and without worry, as I struggled balancing a human being, a rifle, and two sacks of cash worth up to two hundred million dollars.

To Be Resolved Randomly

“Need a ride?” she asked. “Your getaway contact wasn’t worth the price you paid. Get in now.”

I put Rutger in the backseat and climbed into the shotgun seat, noticing the internal armoring of the vehicle. As we drove beyond the bank plaza, I realized that there were going to be no more time cycles.

By late evening, we had been traveling through the offroads without a soul for miles. Rutger’s wound had stopped bleeding and the near endless supply of water bottles had brought him up to standard consciousness. But for all the water, there still wasn’t a drop of conversation.

“I should’ve explained, but I couldn’t,” The Ghost spoke. “You see, I love Angela. I’ve always loved her. I didn’t know it then, but I have learned it since. And there are decades where she only speaks about the horrible things that Carl and Joseph did to her. No matter how light it appears to criminals, it is oceans deep for someone who can feel. This was the only way I could end her suffering.”

“And, what about AX-4007?” I asked.

“When the project was brought back online, I was first in line for a position. Once it reached its final level of sophistication, I, a former intern, knew what I could really do with it without anyone discovering. It was a risk I took to end the pain of someone I cared about.”

As we drove into the night I looked out at the road and thought about all that had happened over the past few endless days. How do you even count time?

How much money had we spent on bribes, equipment, and how much time? Too much. All of it was too much. If you don’t have the right people for the job, then it doesn’t matter how much money you sink into a project. Make that mistake and it will haunt you until the end of your days. In the worst cases, it may haunt you infinitely.

Kasy prayed the List of Gratitude as she and her mother left the high gate circling the compound and walked the sidewalk to the clinic. Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful day. Thank you, Lord, for my life on Earth. Thank you for my sight, my smell, my ears, my skin, to witness your Creation. It hadn’t been but a few years since He had seen fit to reset the world. The compound sat on Turkey Mountain, where the inhabitants could see the overgrown mess where Tulsa used to be, know that other American cities had had a similar fate, thank God for sparing their flock, and thank Him for punishing them.

They turned at the broken stoplight that swung and spun on its wire. On the left side of the road where the park used to be was an encampment—all snapping blue tarps, smoke. Blanket-wrapped huddled masses queued for soup at a stand near the road. The wind shifted. A moment later, the odor smothered them: unwashed armpit, crotch, ass, and burning garbage and leaking propane. Kasy and her mom stepped into the road to go round the tents rippling in the breeze. Further on, someone lay in the road with a filthy pink blanket over them. Their feet were bare. Further on, a man chopped at the air with a metal spatula and yelled at the empty sky. Each shout gouted cloud-breath into the frigid air.

Thank you, Lord, for leading us out of there. Thank you for leading us to our Shepherd, Robert. Thank you for a roof, for beans, squash, and bread, for hot water at the lift of a handle.

Kasy stopped her silent prayer to look over the line, in case her aunt was there. Her mother put her hand on her cheek and gently nudged her face forward again. Her mother’s expression was sorrow overlaid with determination. It felt like a betrayal of her mom to search for her aunt. Besides, her aunt had chosen to no longer be her aunt when they parted ways. Kasy looked away. They had to focus on those who wanted to be saved.

The clinic was in the strip mall tucked between the pizza parlor and the DMV. A message had been slashed with deep red paint over its mirrored doors: The Shepherds are Wolves that Learned How to Use a Crook. Like you would know, Kasy thought. He welcomed me and Mom into the fold after the Summer of Storms and gave us food, shelter, community, and purpose, when so many people had lost theirs, and never regained it. She prayed God would open their mind, by a transformative event or by crushing open their skull.

The clinic looked like a DMV, a place to process people, rather than a sacred place. The “take a number” ticket machine by the door was empty. So were the eyes of the receptionist. A massive picture of downtown Tulsa pre-Summer of Storms with domino-like buildings colonized a wall. There were women older than her mother, with snowy hair. There were women her mother’s age, with gray-streaked hair. The group Kasy herself belonged to—with people who      could be called women, but her Shepherd called them “on the cusp”—was the largest. One of them had brought a girl, a child, who sang softly to herself and drew stars on her arm with a blue marker. The scent of synthetic blueberry fought the stale, bad-breath smell of the clinic air.

Now, that girl is clearly not a woman, nor almost one, Kasy thought. Perhaps she’s special.

The receptionist slid a clipboard under her window, and Kasy’s mom wrote Kasy’s full name, flock number, and more. The little girl sat on the floor and doodled and sang, and the mother sat in a chair and ran her daughter’s hair through her fingers. The mother was Kasy’s age and her throat was unblemished: a small woman with a flat mouth and luscious seal-brown hair. She wore jeans and a nice pine-colored polyester blouse too thin for the weather, and a ratty parka too heavy for the weather. The little girl wore pink pajamas with purple cuffs.

No Ascension robe, Kasy thought. And she brought her daughter to the procedure. Her flock had pecked at her mother for doing the same, but that’s how it was when circumstances demanded it. Since joining the flock, Kasy had mucked stables, baked bread, scrubbed floors, beat rugs, wrung laundry, and raised chickens from egg to oven. She had calluses so thick she could grip a smoking skillet without potholders. When her mom had the procedure and then a fever from it, Kasy swabbed the surgical wound, lifted soup to her lips, wiped the shit, piss, pus, blood and did her mom’s work too. She watched the little ones and taught the older ones. Soon she and her mother were indispensable to the flock. She let herself feel a little pride in her hard work, her ambition, as a treat. That’s how it should be. Kasy joined the rest of the women in giving the new woman an approving, encouraging smile. God loves initiative.

The digital sign over the door blinked. Selena Cruz.

The girl and her mother rose. The leftover women watched her ponytail switch her shoulders with a kind of hungry softness as she went through the door. Kasy’s mother watched the door and her thumb and finger pinched the beads of her rosary. The beads passed through her fingertips and there was no noise behind the door. Kasy’s muscles clenched.

Then, the little girl screamed.

The women shifted, crossed themselves, and signed, “What a pity.” Kasy’s mother touched the scar on her throat. Kasy’s mind frothed. Her body felt galvanized with the screams. Move! Don’t move! Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Selena’s cries weakened, as if she had heard. They suddenly cut.

Kasy felt something like a pillar fracture within her. Inside her head was a tinny ringing as if her eardrums had burst and a static feeling. Her heartbeat prayed OGodOGodOGodOGodOGod. Maybe she had misheard. The doctor, surely, wouldn’t have taken her. If he Lifted them high, then what would Kasy’s Ascension mean?

It wasn’t that bad of a trade. You’d swear your faith and loyalty and do the procedure. You and Mom would be taken care of, Kasy thought. But you’re an adult, even if you won’t admit it, even if the Shepherd won’t acknowledge it.

Shut up!

Thirty minutes later, the girl, Selena, and her mother emerged wet-eyed. Selena swallowed, winced. Tears slid down her cheeks. The bandage around her throat had a dot of red where, if she were a boy, her Adam’s apple would be. She held a small blue satin box like a ring box, which her mom took from her and put in her purse.

They really did that to her, Kasy thought with an eerie serenity. Her spirit detached and bobbed to a level above her head. It took in the scene of the women and the girl who they had made one of them. The mother hoisted her daughter to her hip and slung her purse over her shoulder. She made no eye contact with anyone, not even the receptionist, as she signed out.

As she passed, making for the door, Kasy leaned over and pinched the woman’s sleeve. The woman started. Kasy whispered, “Soft serve.”

The other women rustled. Kasy didn’t have to see their hands flurrying to know what they were saying. Kasy kept her eyes locked on the mother’s startled eyes, as if willing the memory to transfer telepathically. Icy-sweet numbing swirl from the gas station. The hand signs for soft serve had not been invented yet, and Kasy could not wait for them to be, nor did she expect the woman would know them. She was just guessing, but she didn’t think the woman would know why soft serve mattered. The woman at the gas station would tell them. Kasy would not let the woman and Selena go, unless they understood everything she couldn’t say.

The woman pulled out of Kasy’s pinch and exited the clinic doors. Moments passed where Kasy wondered if she had said enough. Then, her mother slapped her. Its sound seemed to jolt Kasy awake. She had broken the six months of silence before Ascension. Her mom breathed in rapid puffs, and her eyes were ringed with white. She raised her hand again.

The receptionist hit the silver bell and rose behind the glass partition.

“Who spoke?” she signed. “Raise your hand.”

Kasy would have to start the six months of silence over—if the Shepherd would forgive her and allow her another chance. “The devil is unusually loud within you,” he had said after the previous failure. She had screamed for help when a young boy had fallen from a tree and seized on the roots, bleeding from the ears. She had suggested that maybe this time it was a guardian angel. But her Shepherd’s eyes were cold and remote, and his sermon the following day was about gratitude and duty and the sinners begging outside the walls, and he referenced Corinthians 14:34.

Yet God abhorred a liar. She slowly lifted her hand.

As she did, so did everyone else in the waiting room. Her spirit made a great shout.

The receptionist looked round, astonished. Then, with jerky angry hand motions, “I’ll end the appointments for today and send you home to your Shepherds.”

Hands stayed in the air. Eyebrows slanted and furrowed. Who needed hand signs when veins throbbing in their temples could speak more eloquently?

The receptionist threw up her hands and sat back in a huff. Hands lowered back into laps. Kasy’s heart felt too swollen with neighborly love and relief. But she still thought about Selena. She shouldn’t have Ascended at all. Why hadn’t the doctor stopped them?

She soothed herself. It’s done now. They might be able to join a flock based on the strength of their offering. It is what it is.

Immediately Kasy hated herself for that thought, because she always hated it when her mother said it to her. She had hated it after they had to leave their tornado-smashed home in Verdigris for Tulsa. She had hated it after the city cut disaster funding after they got there. She had hated it when her mom got the procedure to get them accepted into the flock. She had forgotten that she had hated it. If Kasy had been a boulder, it is what it is was the river that would wear her down to a pebble before carrying her with it.

The sign over the door blinked: Casy Hernandez.

Kasy was used to her name being misspelled. Today it felt like evidence for the devil. Her mother crossed herself as Kasy stood and went through the door.

The room was small, low-ceilinged, cave-like. There was a chair like the one at the dentist’s, and a young nurse on her knees, wiping the floor. The nurse held up one finger—the first and oldest and most recognizable hand sign—and continued wiping up the fine spray of blood. Her eyes, too, were wet.

Kasy plucked a sanitizer wipe from the tube by the door and knelt. The nurse waved, shaking her head, but Kasy shook her head back. She threw the pinked sanitizer wipe into the trash and beat the dust off her robe. I’m already here. It’s too late.

She eased onto the chair. There was a ghost of warmth on the vinyl. On the counter, the scalpels, slicked with girl-blood. Suddenly she hated that nurse.

She asked aloud, “You’re going to get some fresh scalpels for me, right?”

The nurse blanched. Kasy insisted, “You do use clean ones, right? God may have invented germs, but he also invented soap.” Her voice had gone hoarse after not being used for six months. It was a voice she wouldn’t want to hear in the dark. But how that nurse nodded! Her hand spidered towards the doorknob.

Childishly, Kasy thought, You’d tell on me? But the Shepherd would make her do more than stand with her nose in the corner. She should have been dismissed when she first spoke. Instead the nurse gathered the dirty scalpels and set a tray of fresh ones on the doctor’s cart. She was red.

Kasy lifted her arm to sign, sorry. But when she peeled her arm off the armrest, there was a scent of blueberry. Her forearm was smudged with blue ink.

“For God’s sake.” Her disgust was made dreadful by her voice. The nurse snatched another sanitizer wipe and offered it to Kasy. Her eyes pleaded. Kasy snatched the wipe and rubbed down her forearm and the chair arms. A lemon smell replaced the blueberry. The nurse slipped out of the room.

Kasy imagined the mother adjusting her daughter on her hip outside and walking towards the gas station. It didn’t sell gas anymore—no point—but sold caloric encouragement. Greasy pizza slices, hot dogs, plump, sweaty, brown, rolling alongside dry yellow taquitos. Donuts with translucent glaze. Coffee—not the real stuff, not anymore—but the soft serve was real, cool and soothing and soft. A sweetness sliding down tongue to belly. For whatever change could fit in a child-sized pocket, you could get a spoonful of strawberry or cherry preserves from the lady who ran the register. If you hung around tonguing the swirl’s point sideways, she’d tell you about how ice cream used to come in a thousand flavors, but the most common flavor came from a rare orchid far away. How ice cream now comes plain, and they had to make their own flavors. It was most unbelievable that ice cream could be better, Kasy had thought then. Her mom had last taken her when she was ten, before she had gotten her own procedure.

But that’s enough fairytales, said the gas station woman. I’ll introduce you to a good Shepherd. Just come back here when you Ascend. It’s tradition. Ice cream makes everything better.

The nurse returned with a doctor in his dirty white coat.

He said warmly, “Kasy Hernandez, sorry for taking so long. Lean back, lamb. I can’t get at your throat if you’re sitting up.”

Her mind howled the same words her aunt had howled about joining a flock, This isn’t right, nobody sane would make you to do this—

What else can I do? Kasy prayed. She imagined prayer rays beaming out of her body even as she leaned back in the chair. What can I do now? She wanted her mom to hold her hand—no, she wanted her aunt to take her hand and pull her out of the chair and run. She wanted to run back in time and pull the little girl out of the chair, and her mother, and every woman who had lurched away with their voices in satin boxes, and all the women waiting with their ears turned towards the door.

The scalpel had just penetrated her throat when she let out a monstrous scream.

And then one day, I earnestly set out with the resolve to rescue my mother, and hunt and kill the monster.

That was my childhood, an age that would transform the harmless, ruinous mansion at the edge of the huge lake owned by the Ghosh family, where I would spend many an afternoon, fooling about, into a ghostly palace, brimming with cruel secrets at night. My father was the caretaker of that mansion. He earned a monthly wage courtesy of the old Ragendra Narayan Ghosh without having to really clean and maintain the large garden overgrown with weeds, alongside the cold eyes of the dark forest and the primitive, deep, inky waters of the lake. Ragendra Narayan was the only living descendant of that mansion. He had no room for affection in his voice that was housed in his large, formidable six-feet frame. His visage was marked by a thick, curling moustache and an irascible temper. It was rumoured that during his service in Patna, he had shot and killed a servant during one of his spells of violent temper. Although the case went cold with help from the authorities, he couldn’t save his job. He came here after that and his old ancestral mansion swallowed him whole, like he was some weak, ailing animal, in the few cognizant moments before his very last breath. He didn’t venture out of the house much, but his savage temper was infamous in the locality. The boys in the neighbourhood would call the old man ‘Angry Man’. Growing older, it was rather heartrending to realize that he was not even that old.

My father slowly faded away in his job as a caretaker, running small errands, going to the market and the bank as part of his daily job. But even after cooking for Ghosh Babu the entire day, my mother’s smile was like that of a golden moon. I would grab my mother’s long hair and swing, searching for my own pond in her deep eyes. As a matter of fact, my mother’s long, thick hair, that ran past her broad shoulders, down her waist was my playground, and my mother, even after a day’s hard work, didn’t have an ounce of indignation. She used to play with me every evening, looking for surprising finds such as nuts embedded in the frozen soil. She would enthusiastically frolic in the waters of the lake, keeping up with me, collecting neglected, unripe mangoes, scattered here and there in the garden along with fallen bird nests. My father would lie inside the room, in the pale light of the bulb, and looking at us with resentful eyes, he would mutter, “Fallen woman! Wasted womb!”

My father was like a distant island. Even the sweat on his forehead was unfamiliar. Ma had never been able to cut through his mountainous displeasure and indifference, that dwelled atop our little home in a corner of the garden, and fill it with soft tenderness. Baba couldn’t tolerate us. He would return home drunk in the evening at times and push me out of the house and close the door and windows. I used to listen to Ma’s screams, her tears, her silence, used to get a whiff of the black mark below her lips, the blooming remnants of kicks in her waist. But I wasn’t moved to tears because I knew that the time for play with my mother as well as my father’s beatings was limited. A mad darkness lay hidden beyond Baba’s weak outbursts, that would take Ma away some day like a cursed princess in some fairy tale into a dark unknown, just like it did every day. I would feel pity for Baba, even at that age—thin, middle-aged, his head progressively balding, his lack-lustre gaze and dirty teeth. I had heard the people of the village jokingly call him a cuckold, laugh throatily and, in their comic laughter, fall on each other. But I didn’t know what the word meant, and felt pity for Baba even without knowing what it meant. He seemed like a stunned giant who wasn’t competent or selfish enough to protect his own garden.

The Ghosh family, who owned this ruined mansion, were the descendants of a zamindar clan. They used to rule their land in the daytime and at night used to hunt and kill helpless passers-by and loot whatever they had. This addiction had seeped into their blood. All that was left now was the mansion, with its fading glory, whose bricks, stones and beams lay exposed, where poisonous cobras lay on broken stairs counting hours, where disobedient banyan stems reared their heads breaking the walls. Still, a few rooms were whole, with frescoes in the ceiling and broken chandeliers, that reminded one of that glorious lordship, murderous and cruel, and in one of these rooms, stayed Angry Man. He didn’t mix with outsiders. Sometimes, he strolled in the back garden and groaned crossly upon spotting an unwanted visitor. But he had never reprimanded me for anything, merely looked at me steadfastly, enough to turn my blood to water. Angry Man didn’t venture outside even when the house was leased for a shoot. He used to stay cooped in a room on the first floor the entire day. I would observe the boisterousness of the shooting party that would ask my father to get booze for them. When Ma used to knead the flour to prepare luchis, white flour lumps would ooze out from the gaps in her fingers like pus. One of the cinema folks would sit beside Ma and chat, smoking cigarettes, leaning towards her at times, and I could understand Ma’s smile then. And in the barbeque would smoulder the glorious neck, insolent rear and lively breast of the country chicken.

But all of this was till the evening. That was the allotted time. When night descended, she would cook for us, feed me, keep Baba’s food covered, lay me down in bed, and then leave for the mansion. She didn’t return at night. I used to cry a lot initially, grabbing hold of the border of her saree, refusing to let her go. And then, after I was asleep, Ma would steal away, opening my fist gently, and Baba would toss and turn beside me the entire night, like a burnt lump of coal. Many a time, I would wake up from sleep at dawn, when I would understand that Ma had quietly entered the room. She would leave silently like a thief, and come home similarly. I would press my face to Ma’s freshly bathed hair because it smelled of the fresh earth.

I had asked Ma many times why she went to the mansion at night, but never got a reply or an explanation. The answer was revealed unexpectedly one day. That afternoon, I was picking unripe fruits from the Jamrul tree near my home with a long stick. Ma had finished cooking early, so she had joined my game a little before her usual hour. The sunlight slipped off the rain-washed, blue sky into the secluded environment. A snail waddled past on the wet earth near my feet, its snout gently brushing my heel, butterflies flitted around wildflower bushes, and I sometimes looked over to the lake yonder to see if the wings of the birds had coloured some of its black waters. When Ma called me, a dense army of termites fell across my hands in dust — “Raju, look! There is a beehive on the wild Jujube plant. We will break it after a few days.” 

I lifted my head, and suddenly, it seemed as if a drop of blood rose from my throat. I saw a terrifying face looking at me steadfastly from the high terrace of the mansion. ‘Ah!’, I cried out and put my hands on my face. Ma came running and clutched my hand — “What happened dear?”

“There. On the terrace. A monster! It was looking at me.”

Ma looked up. “Where? I don’t see anyone there.”

I saw that the place was deserted, as if freshly washed. Still, I became aware of its presence. Ma’s eyes were like the sky, thick dirt inside her nose, her pitiful, white fingers would have a dent if pressed for too long, she had two deep folds on her neck, hidden within which lay a field full of secrets. When all of these laughed together, the monster seemed like a lie. Ma laughed freely and said, “You are scared. What a silly child!” But what if it came when she was not there?

And it did. Ever since that time, it would stare at me in the desolate afternoons from the roof, quietly, unwaveringly. It wouldn’t say anything, just look at me with that horrible, yellow face, baring sharp, knife-like teeth. Ma wouldn’t have believed me, and Baba would have scolded me, so I couldn’t tell anyone anything. I didn’t have any friends, because the children in the locality would tease me, calling me ‘cuckold’s son’, pulling my pants down. And in that innocent, loveless childhood, if a monster would follow me around with its eyes, where could I have got a reassuring banyan-like support, within whose trembling breath I could lie muddy and unafraid? Even when I looked in fear at the terrace at night, I wasn’t able to see anything in the dense darkness. Ma would be inside the mansion by then. But I knew that it was there, somewhere nearby. And I realized subsequently, that the mansion was the monster’s palace, that Ma, with her long hair, had to enter, helpless, every day. That was the monster’s condition. Perhaps it would imprison Ma like some captured princess in a secret chamber or inside the Ghosh’s lake, whose entire body was blue with the touch of Death’s silver stick.

Angry Man would walk around at that time, swaying in the blue mist of the darkness, sometimes screaming, annoyed at Baba about why there were snake skins in the garden. Baba would digest his expletives silently, with a bowed head. Angry Man would look at me fixedly and I wouldn’t understand the meaning behind his stare. But it would pale in comparison to the fear of the monster; the poor fellow wasn’t even aware that by some cruel magician’s hand, his mansion would transform into a monster’s house at night. I played in the same manner every afternoon and evening. When I chased butterflies, pollen would fall on my hands. I would scoop dry berry seeds with my hands from rabbit burrows, watch small fries and anchovies, whose bodies would scatter rainbows once touched, move hypnotically in the corners of the lake. And amidst my games, I would lift my head to see the monster staring at me constantly. There was no way I could reach the terrace because the stairs had long since broken down. The roof was damaged in parts as well. Sometimes, in the quiet stillness of the night, when the incessant coughing of Angry Man would reach us, I would feel assured that the roof of that endless mansion was intact. Then, were the movements of the monster restricted to only that part of the house? But I could spot him at different points of the roof, even the ones that were damaged. It slept the entire day and, in the evening, pulled down the hapless princess to hell. What kind of a monster was this? Didn’t it fall on me therefore to slay this monster? To save my mother?

A few days passed as I thought about these things. A tanned fox in the garden informed me that a flight of stairs descended from the ghat that was strewn with broken stones. On reaching the last step, one could see the palace of hell, decorated with diamonds and precious stones. A group of poisonous snakes guarded that hellish palace. Their breath would stun and freeze the wayward fish. And that palace apparently met the mansion at some point. A rabbit, who was my friend, showed me a long thread that trailed along the dew-sodden grass and went into the lake. The old woman of Time, who dwelled below the water, used that thread to spin quilts. As I observed, I realized even more that the monster’s life lay in the wings of a bee, or in the body of a black cobra, or in the deathly seed of some unknown fruit. That is why I decided to follow Ma and discover where lay the seed of its life.

And then one day, I earnestly set out with the resolve to rescue my mother, and hunt and kill the monster.

That night, Baba had again come back home drunk. He attacked Ma coarsely, pushed her around, groaned crudely. But all of that didn’t affect me. When Ma was stealing away at night, I followed her quietly with a small knife in my pocket that I used to skin fruits. Baba pretended that he didn’t notice anything because he didn’t actually care about anything.

The mansion’s huge door would usually close behind my mother, but this time I entered noiselessly along with her. Ma didn’t understand in the darkness that I was right behind her in the shadows. The last speck of light on my shoulder faded away when the heavy hinges latched with one another in their rightful places.

Although I had entered the place often in daylight, this was my first time here at night because Angry Man had strictly instructed Baba and I not to enter after sunset. It was a little difficult for me to adjust to the darkness, so I walked supporting my hands on the wall. Ma walked at a little distance, unhurried, swaying past the narrow passage. Ma’s body dispersed in the dark waters like salt; I had to walk slowly and cautiously.

Then Ma suddenly turned right, and I couldn’t control myself and went and collided with the hard wall. Hearing my inarticulate cry, Ma looked back surprised. Feeling her way in the darkness, Ma stood before me, her eyes enlarged in shock, she sighed deeply. “You? Why are you here?”

“I — I mean — I’m here to kill the monster,” I stammered.

I saw Ma’s eyes fill with dread. Clutching my hands, she hurriedly whispered, “Leave Raju, go. Things will get bad. Why are you here?”

I was stubborn, and I, who was always easily frightened, firmly held on to the knife in my pocket, “I won’t leave, take me to the monster.”

“Why?”

“I will kill it. I won’t let you go anywhere at night anymore.” I lowered my head.

Ma was quiet. Then she let out a suppressed laughter, “Will you kill the monster?”

“Yes.”

Ma sighed after being silent for some time. She looked up cautiously. So, did the monster stay there? “Come with me. Let’s roam around the house a little.”

I roamed around with Ma through many a secret and forbidden passage and hidden chamber inside the mansion. When I almost lost my way, I stretched my hand and touched Ma’s dense, dark hair. The fragrance emanating from Ma’s skin enveloped me, and I strolled around and saw scary masks, spears, withering swords, tiger skin, buffalo heads. All the secrets of this large house lay bare before me, little by little, when Ma familiarized me with the unknown tunnel inside the dilapidated mound of sand, treacherous passageways, the yawning emptiness of the old rooms. I saw the butterfly, that had been suffused with pollen that morning, lying dead on the cold, pitiless floor. I felt bad, but I couldn’t see Ma when I turned back.

“Ma?” I called out twice. I was scared.

Suddenly, Ma startled me and came from my right. Laughing, she said, “Were you scared?”

“What if I got lost?” I was angry.

“Oh, my brave man!” Ma laughed throatily and then pointed up at the wooden beams, “Look Raju, people were hung here. Now, cobras nest in the ventilators.”

I looked up, afraid. I couldn’t see anything, but if I listened carefully, perhaps, I could hear a hissing sound. When I turned back, Ma was missing again. Laughing, she again stepped forward from the darkness after I called her.

It gradually became a game for the two of us. Ma would hide intermittently, I would try to find her and then give up angrily, she would then step out suddenly from behind the broken pillar, or the raised platform in the distance. My eyes became used to the darkness while I was roaming around in this delusion. I had grown tired. I finally sat, supporting myself against the wall.

There was no sound anywhere. All the four corners were still. A little later, I called out, “Ma!”

No one replied. I called out again, “I want to go home, I’m sleepy.”

A rough wind permeated my bones and circled around a little. My head felt heavy, my throat was dry. The wind had made me uncomfortable. The surroundings turned quieter. The insides of my chest thrummed unevenly. I moved ahead slowly through the passage. I didn’t believe that anyone had ever come to this part of the house. It was not even as ornamented as that palace of hell. My feet brushed against something. Bending down, I noticed after some time that it was a dead rabbit, the friend who had told me about the old woman of Time. My chest felt empty, I called Ma twice. But I could hear neither Ma nor Angry Man’s cough, and neither did the monster step forward. Throwing away the knife in my pocket, I ran across this passage and that tunnel, the dance room, the verandah where people were hung, the secret chambers. I searched everywhere but I didn’t find Ma’s familiar smell anywhere. My eyes became clouded, and there was a lump of pain in my throat. Looking at the buffalo’s head in the darkness, my chest grew heavy and numb because I didn’t know the way back. I didn’t even know if I would ever be able to find Ma again. I also didn’t know if her lost redolence like dewdrops would douse the cruelty of the mysteries that pricked my body, or if I would be left to roam indefinitely in this primitive house for the length of my life.

But I still believe that Ma, my sleeping princess, was trapped in that darkness for life, and the monster, pouring all his hoarded love, had turned blue this elusive, fascinating being.

> Beloved sophonts, dearest beings,
>
> You do not know me, but I greet you from my dreary
> exile. I am the persecuted relict of a once-
> admired and honoured warrior and statesman. Envy
> and corruption brought him low, secured his sad
> discorporation, leaving me with all his wealth — his
> myriad possessions: weapons, knowledge, precious
> metals, gems, and all the rest.
>
> Yet I am watched and hounded by my enemies; I have
> no haven where I can enjoy my rich bequest — I need
> your help. Please send a starship to me, fully fuel-
> led, and with the details of your planetary location.
> I shall come with all the riches that my late depart-
> ed brother-uncle-husband left me. For this aid, I’ll
> give to you a fifth of all I have.
>
> May the wise and loving spirit of the cosmos guide
> you and protect you.
>
> Mrs ∇∷⌣⋑∦ô

Buff Patrol

                                        sublunar but above the Kármán line
                                                                  around the spinning Earth
                                                                            there’s surreptitious motion.

                                              in darting spacecraft — little more
                                                        than bulky suits —
                                                                  the vandals creep in darkness,
                                                                                  running silent:
                                                                                        taggers, writers,
                                                                                                  activists,
                                                                      all scrawling on the sky,
                                                          their heaven spot.
                                              countless tiny bots, they spray,
                                      invisible until they flare
                                                    in glaring, star-eclipsing brightness.

                  but it’s not my job to hunt them down,
          to tangle-field them,
                        reel them in;                                                          
                                  I venture out,
                                          my craft no larger,
                                      no more capable than theirs,
                        and scrub the sky clean,
              sweeping up the photopellets,
    buffing back to blackness,
                              making sure that those below
                                        can gaze at constellations,
                                                  wish upon a falling star,
                                                                  make love in moonlight
                                                                            navigate the trackless seas by night.