He needs more men, more resources. More of every single damn thing he can think and as the cold coffee goes down his throat, he curses the Hammers above him. Advancing with each generation, they are one step ahead of him, always. The commanders have all fallen and through the process of elimination, he finds himself among the top brass. A bunch of other frightened orphans like himself, all trying to play the part of macho men.

But there is hope. It’s a stubborn thing with all the tenacity of a weed refusing to die. Alexei brought it to his desk the other day. A new breed of Angel that could take on the Hammers of Gemini and let them take back their planet.

At first Lyon thought it looked ridiculous. A machine with far too many arms and far too many legs. A Frankenstein beast moving like a hybrid between a spider and centaur. Each of its limbs is a weapon of some sort, from mining drill to scavenged disintegration rifle.

“It’s too big,” said Lyon as he shook his head. It made the Hammers look human sized. “One pilot could not control all of this.”

Alexei smiled. “No. No. Of course not. But maybe two, or even three. Just let my team work on it. We don’t even need much. Just give us the dead Angels. The ones that get destroyed in battle beyond repair.”

“None of them are beyond repair.”

“Oh, please,” he replied in a mocking tone, his accent thick. “Some of the Angels can barely even move anymore after their fifth tour. Those parts are better fit at giving us a chance at real victory. We aren’t asking for much, Lyon. Just scraps.”

Lyon lets out a deep sigh. “Fine.”

The years go by. The losses keep piling up and Alexei becomes known as the Reaper Man. If he showed up, it meant your Angel was going to get its wings clipped. Rumors began to spread that Alexei was a traitor, feeding secrets to the enemy and sabotaging their Angels in an attempt to end them from within.

Lyon knows it’s all bullshit. The enemy knows everything they need thanks to Gemini. Double agents are a thing of the past when you perfect torture.

Gemini had recently developed the Ka Stone. Their pursuit of immortality had yielded spectacular fruits, including the digitization of the human mind with 99.99% accuracy. Some partnerships with some synthetic body Corps here and some bought politicians there, and now anyone could live forever. Which meant only the wealthy few could afford the luxury.

The wealthy few and prisoners of war of course.

Lyon remembers the first time one of his men brought back a Ka Stone. A computer chip no bigger than a standard CPU. They plugged it in an isolated environment, disconnected from their main communication network out of fear that inside lurked a virus. There was no virus. Only the unending screams of a twenty two year old Angel pilot. In the beginning Lyon had his best programmers and psycho-surgeons try to fix them. See if it was possible to provide therapy and save the digitized souls of his men.

None of it worked. They just screamed and screamed and screamed. Occasionally they even spouted sentences, but that was the extent of what the therapy could manifest.

One day Alexei asked to be included in the Ka stone research.

When Lyon turned to him during a therapy session, expecting horrified features, all he saw was the biggest smile on his face. It took all his strength not to punch him then and there.

“Why are you smiling?” asked Lyon, his voice even.

“Victory is in reach.”

Alexei requests all the collected Ka Stones from the last five years. Lyon vetoed his request, stating Alexei is over-reaching as head of the GC Project. He’s then overruled when Alexei requests the council’s input, where Lyon loses eight to one on relinquishing the Ka stones.

Lyon finds Alexei in a hallway afterwards.

“What do you plan on doing with them?” asks Lyon.

Alexei grins, his yellow canines in full display. “Giving them a second chance.”

It’s Christmas Day when the Grim Citizen is launched. It’s their last stand. They’ve been pushed back to the north pole of their planet and Lyon finds some solace in the fact they’re having a white Christmas.

He sips on his peppermint coffee as he watches the holo-projector. It’s his favorite and Lyon figures it will most likely be the last time he ever drinks it.

Outside the fortress walls are eight Hammers. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They are Gemini’s newest line and they are walking commercials to the defense contractors watching from orbit. Bulky and sleek, their oxymoron design is second only to their simple anti-matter rifles. Lyon’s seen what they’re capable of. The nine Angels sent to counter them lasted a total of two minutes.

Two minutes was all they needed.

The Hammers hear the beast before they ever see it. A single scream. A young woman’s desperate cry for help, but impossibly loud. The Hammers are on standby. Unnerved, but ready.

Another scream, this time a man’s. The Hammers cock their rifles as they begin a circle formation in the snow.

A third scream. A child’s voice.

The ground under them cracks open. The Hammers fly into the air, but Mars is too slow. A multitude of robotic hands grabs its red leg preventing lift off.

“Get the hell off me!” says Mars’s pilot. A panicked voice echoing from his Hammer’s speakers.

The Grim Citizen only pulls harder and so Mars is dragged into the abyss. It disappears into the newly formed hole, where the pilot’s screams are married with the sound of whining metal.

There is a silence that follows, the only sound the steady hum of the other Hammers’ thrusters.

Then the screams return. A terrible chorus of the dead. An entire nation crying out in pain.

A cacophony. A requiem.

It leaps from the hole like a trapdoor spider, impossibly fast for its size. It is a marvel with ten thousand arms, a mass of metal corpses and dexterity. The hammers open fire, anti matter rifle laser beams shining with white-black energy that broke a law or two of physics in the name of efficient death. They claim three arms, but Grim has thousands more and from one of them appears a rail-spike launcher. It skates through the ice, a blur of finger crawling limbs, and shoots the launcher. It bursts through the air with simple beauty, channeling the primordial strength of the first spear, before it goes through Venus’s head. She falls through the air before landing as an explosion that shakes Lyon’s bunker.

Half the Hammers panic and begin to blindly fire towards Grim. This was not how it was supposed to go. Their prey was not supposed to fight back.

Grim lets out another chorus. Another terrible amalgamation of lost souls, each screaming in nails-on-chalkboard harmony. It jumps towards Neptune, who’s made the mistake of being too close to the surface. He tries to swing his sleek sapphire sword and cut off their connection, but Grim pulls hard. The Hammer’s leg falls clean off, a rain of metal and wires falls towards the planet. Grim keeps ripping, keeps tearing like a young child fascinated by a fly’s wings, until Neptune has been reduced to scrap metal.

Jupiter and Saturn attempt to cut away at Grim’s own legs, but they are ankle biters compared to it. From the mass two arms reach out from Grim’s countless legs and pull the two Hammers into Grim’s embrace, where their pilot’s screams join the choir.

Mercury, flanked by Uranus, spots some semblance of a head on Grim. A black sphere towards its center mass covered in red twitching eyes. They dive, before Grim grabs them both from the air. From Grim’s many arms appear two Lindite drills.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” screams Jupiter.

Saturn squirms in Grim’s grip. “We just graduated! Please just-”

The drills go through them with profit driven ease, broken apart as simple as the surrounding stone in a Lindite vein. They combust into a black cloud and from the smoke, golden plated Earth bursts through. He slices the drills apart in one clean cut.

“Mercury, on me!” shouts the pilot with indignation only large amounts of money can buy. “Cover me! I’m going for his core.”

Mercury in all his silver splendor dives in. “You got it, cap!”

A mass of arms move towards Mercury, but it spins with two super heated blades, melting Grim’s arms apart like butter. Earth sees his opening, diving down through the makeshift tunnel of grey gunmetal, towards the countless red eyes beneath. He lets out a battle cry, attempting to drown out the inhuman screaming that broke through his mech and into his skull. Then with one final push, plants his sword down into the core like the Excalibur of old.

“It’s over,” says Lyon between a sip of coffee.

Alexei laughs. “Not quite, old friend.”

Grim’s screams heighten and begin to shake the ground. Earth’s pilot begins to notice his ears bleeding.

“Why?” he thinks to himself.

It’s the last thought he ever has. The core’s countless red eyes all focus on him, before he’s turned into Swiss cheese by an array of laser blasts.

Mercury tries to fly away, but Grim’s arms grab his swords, before using them to cut his head clean off.

Uranus is the last one standing and he is smart enough to follow in Mercury’s footsteps. He blasts off towards space, moving at remarkable speed for a Gen 6 tank class Hammer.

Grim’s many arms begin to part way counter clockwise. The core is no longer being hidden beneath the mass, instead it becomes a sunflower’s central disk, glowing with untamed red energy. It almost feels intimate, but Lyon can’t look away. He knows what happens next and fears if he doesn’t see it, then it will not become real.

The red lasers condense into a single focal point, becoming a red pillar of crimson light reaching past the planet’s orbit. The Gemini ships try to move and prepare for hyperspace in a desperate attempt at retreat.

Impact. The Aeneas night becomes day.

For three weeks the sky rains molten metal.

For three months they celebrate victory.

Three years is all it takes to ratify their independence.

It takes three decades to get rid of Grim.

Today is Lyon’s birthday. He is turning seven years old and the momentous occasion calls for a video message from his father. From a small square in his chubby palm forms his father’s image made from pure blue-hued light. His father is ancient by trench standards, thirty five years old with the only inorganic part of him being his arm and left foot. Lyon knew his father was blessed. His mother would remind him every time she kissed his forehead.

“Be strong, kiddo. I’m coming home tomorrow.”

Tomorrow becomes next week. Next week shifts towards next month. Next month transforms into next year.

It’s Lyon’s birthday again, but this time there is no call.

Lyon is eighteen. All he has to his name is mother’s leather pouch. She died during the great mining raid of 35’ choking on her own saliva from Lindite particles. The gems had a terrible knack for becoming particulates in the air and eviscerating lung tissue. But it was okay, because the humble savings allowed Lyon to buy a ship ticket to Tau’s most promising planet.

Aeneas is a paradise world. A green sky equipped with an atmosphere that shielded UV radiation so well you could kiss sunscreen goodbye. Grasslands colored in a fantastical silver with the occasional exotic sunflower, red like a rose’s distant cousin. But what was truly amazing was under their feet, the bunkers filled with Lindite reserves as far into the planet’s crust as the mining corps could go.

Lyon has chosen the wrong side. It’s what any gambler worth their statistical prowess would say.

They are outgunned, outmatched, and most of all, out of options. The Gemini corporation doesn’t just send in the calvary, they send in the Dawn Hammers. Machines as tall as buildings with the strength of a nuclear core and a patented “super nova” reaction in each of their thrusters. The military advertisements depict them as beautiful birds, predators chosen by God to deal out swift justice to those below the food chain.

When Lyon sees them in action for the first time, all he can think of is an Old Earth nature documentary. Seagulls eating freshly hatched turtles as they desperately try to reach the ocean.

Today Lyon is that baby turtle.

The decay light falls from the sky. Golden beams like holy retribution disintegrate the battalion next to his and leave nothing but the atomized smell of ash and what was once organic material. The screams come only from the witnesses. Lyon runs with his men, even though they could barely be even called that. One is a year younger than him and the other has the stunted intelligence of a twelve year old. He motivates them with autorifle fire in the air. Why care about revealing your position, when the sky was blotted out by satellites and a million malicious eyes? Let them see greatness, even if just for a moment.

They charge. Their goal is the hill to their left, protected by a single Hammer. The pilot is currently preoccupied with atomizing the 54th legion -an army of 500 going on 24. Lyon has the charge in his hand. A little unassuming black box designed on Mars when a couple of upstarts wondered if the splitting of the atom could be taken on the go. He keeps running as Eric falls face flat on the ground from the turret on the right. A stray round claims Tim’s lower legs and Lyon only runs faster as he hears him cry for his mother.

Lyon pulls out a revolver, an ancient piece that still shoots genuine metal alloy bullets and not the acid rounds currently in favor for their anti-armor capabilities. It rings true and kills the loyalist before he can move his turret. Now’s his chance. Now he can bomb the Hammer’s leg.

It sees him. The Hammer looks at him with all the apathy of a mountain preparing an avalanche. Its single red eye staring underneath its sleek black armor. All purpose. All intent. Driven singularly by a pilot drugged out on an amphetamine and uppers cocktail, ready to kill and have hell of a fun time doing it.

Lyon isn’t having fun.

He screams in rage and throws the black box, his fingers activate the trigger in one swift movement. His piano practice was good for something he thinks, as it flies through the air.

From the Lancer’s singular eye, a beam of red light fires. Precise as the A.I surgeons of Earth, it cuts through the box and dampens the explosion to a pathetic size, knocking Lyon onto the ground.

It’s over. Over. Over. Over.

“Lyon! Come in! Over!”

Then he sees it. Beauty in destructive motion. Angel in gray. A mourner of all that is and what was meant to be. Creature of four arms with metal exo-skeleton skin and a maw that was currently ripping apart the Hammer’s right shoulder. The Hammer tries to react, academy training telling the pilot to flip the mining mech turned monster in a desperate attempt at crushing the opposing pilot. It’s no use. The Angel bites with a maw meant to chew through the planet’s very crust. This was nothing.

And so nothing it shall be.

The Hammer explodes, causing dawn to appear over the battlefield for a brief moment and Lyon is caught in the glory.

He doesn’t even mind that his skin is on fire.

We should have taken the tickets and called a taxi, safe in the rainbow smog above. But it was snowing. Ash loved snow, almost as much as she loved rain.

“They’re crystals,” she says. “Each one is special. Can you believe that? Unique patterns in each one. Nature’s own random generation and somehow each one is beautiful.”

I hold out my hand. The white specs landed on my red glove for a brief moment before disappearing. “Pretty,” I said with a dumb smile. “But it's got stiff competition.”

“If you say I’m prettier than the snowflake-”

“Of course not.” I tap my chest. “I meant myself.”

She grins. “You’re stupid.”

“Me? Stupid?” I begin grabbing some virgin snow from the ground. Powdery white, it sticks together perfectly in my hand into a ball. “You’re going to regret that.”

We trade throws in the alleyway. I think that was our first mistake -forgetting where we were, losing ourselves in the fun. It was the alleyway I had gone through when I first traveled in the storm, only now I wore a cheap jacket, not a single Chamber Tech logo in sight. No rep to generate an invisible force-field.

I raised another snowball. Ash looked at me with terror in her eyes.

At first I thought I did something wrong. Maybe there were stones in my snow. Maybe I hurt her somehow. It was only when I felt someone shove me to the ground that I understood trouble had found us. I heard her screams, my combat implants activated. My muscles expand, electric shock stimulating them into tense synthetic fibers. I roll with the man on top of me and I see his face for the first time. A man with a scar under his eyes, a mustache with cigarette ash nested inside.

They were the last features I noticed before I punched his face in. I heard a crack, felt my fist go through the soft material. His nose now faces the right. I give him another punch for good measure, this one in his eye. I’m about to go for a third when I hear the scream again. I turn around to see Ash being grabbed, three men surrounding her. One has a Draco, heavy duty magnum. A Chamber Tech pride and joy. The others have wire knives. Little pieces of lightning the size of kitchen utensils.

The adrenaline takes over. I rush at them, manage to hit one with such force he hits the ground with his teeth. But his friend is a slinger, fast on the draw, faster than me. A bullet hits me in the shoulder, reminds me I’m no corp enforcer as it knocks me on my back. I land on the snow and paint it red. I remember the marketing department’s shitty slogan. Our new Draco, for all your anti-personnel and dragon slaying needs. I try to get back up, but his friend is already on me, a wire knife deep in my rib cage. A sound like buzzing bees fills my ears as I spasm in the snow. The world goes black.

Waking up is a special thing. It's a jump from the unreal, to the real. We step outside our minds into the physical. We take for granted how easy that jump is and what we see on the other side when we do. I wake up to the feeling of lighting in my body, electrical currents flowing through my veins like fire. My mouth tastes like metal and salt. In front of me is a bald headed man. The slinger from before. I’m about to call him names, maybe mention my corp for good measure. Something that he would understand.

I come to realize how stupid that is when I look down at my own body. I’m not fully there. My legs are gone. My arms are gone. I can feel the hyperventilating starting, the mind trying to come with a logical answer for an illogical situation. I see the man smile. An action that reveals sharp chrome teeth like a shark. I lose it. I begin to scream as new pain works its way to the just now waking neurons.

“Don’t be that way,” says the bald man. “What would she think?”

Like a magician or a parent revealing a puppy from behind their back, the man pulls out a head by its hair. My mind does not comprehend what I’m seeing at first. I think it's a Halloween prop. Something you see in movies or put on windows to scare children who think trick or treating is still worth the effort. He holds it closer. I see those eyes before anything else. I remember who they belong to. And I cry.

“She put up a good fight. Made us really work for the mind fork tech in her head. Worth it though. Pretty penny for sure. Can’t say the same about your limbs. All outdated stuff from ten years ago.” The man pulls out a stun baton. “I thought you Corpos were supposed to be loaded. Waste it all on hookers and drugs? Maybe if you upgraded, you could have actually done something. Oh well.”

The baton goes back into my stomach. The electricity courses through me, threatening to drown me in its waves of pains as I smell my own flesh cooking. I scream for help from a god I didn’t know I still believed in. He didn’t answer, but Chamber Tech did. I heard a voice in my head. Delirious, I thought it was Ash. Somehow speaking from the graving and telling me everything was going to be okay. It wasn’t her. I figured that out after the voice explained my situation.

“BODY INTEGRITY AT 40 PERCENT. MAJOR BODILY TRAUMA DETECTED,” says the female voice. “BODILY DISMEMBERMENT DETECTED. HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT PROTOCOL ACTIVATED. CARLOS SANTIAGO, THE AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED OF YOUR LOCATION. DO NOT WORRY. YOUR INSURANCE COVERS THIS COMBAT PROTOCOL. SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE RIDE.”

The bald man's face has time to go from a smile to a frown. It is then impaled on a long thin silver spike. It goes through his skull like a straw through a cheap plastic lid, but there is no time to drink. The A.I knows better than to waste time on a single meal when a whole buffet awaits. From my back, sprouts six spider legs, chrome and made from a patented metal known only as C-Steel. Durable and lightweight, it's the future of not just weaponry, but also every bridge and skyscraper from here to Mars.

The spider legs free me, cutting apart the metal bindings like butter. It uses my eyes to scan the surroundings, much to the misfortune of what I can only presume was the slinger’s assistant. He comes in with a butcher knife in hand complaining about someone named Catch, when he freezes at the sight of me. I’d be afraid too. I don’t need a mirror to know I looked like a monster from some ghost tale. I would have left him alive if it was my choice. Not out of pity, but a malevolent desire to see him rot in the city’s prison as a flayer rewires his psyche. The A.I disagrees and it was at the wheel.

I move with arachnid speed, evolution proving to be a genius designer even now. The man tries to throw his butcher knife and run, only for it to bounce harmlessly off the steel appendages. A leg goes right through his chest and heart. His last moment is a blood curdling scream, fit more for a woman than a man. It would have been funny, if not for the alarms that followed. The A.I senses danger, forcing open a vent with one leg, and crawling inside.

It's a life saving decision. Seconds afterwards, the room is filled with punks. From above I can see men in matching leather jackets with day of the dead designs. They are equipped with last generation splinter weapons. But a weapon that can pierce armor, all the way to your soft gooey center, and explode inside, is a weapon that never goes out of style.

For a moment I think the A.I is going to run away. Self preservation is what an A.I does best. Instead it asks me a question. The nonverbal kind. A benefit from the neural implant in my brain.

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO KILL THEM ALL?”

“What?”

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO KILL THEM ALL? YOU ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED BY THE CORPORATION DEFENSE ACT OF 2056. THE KIDNAPPING OF A CORPORATE OFFICIAL ALLOWS FOR SELF DEFENSE RANGING FROM-”

The pain has become a far away war drum. The blood pumping in my ears was a subtle reminder I was still alive. In this moment of peace, I remember Ash. The day I met her, the days after. Rays of light. Each and every one of them. My mind was clear and in the clearing, I saw her alive. Smiling and eternal. I would have said yes to the nuking of the world. This was small time.

“Yes.”

“THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING CHAMBER TECH. WE VALUE OUR EMPLOYEES.”

I burst through the ceiling. A storm made from concrete, dust, and rage. I open my mouth to scream, but all sound I make is drowned in the gunfire. I move with inhuman elegance, a predator who’s grace could never be touched by weapons as crude as these. With a simple spin, three throats are cut, their owners forced to stop the bleeding. It's useless of course. I have six arms and I am the pinnacle of evolution, guided by the R&D team at Chamber Tech. My left side becomes claw shaped, the three long fingers of death himself. Three heads fly high in response.

I lose myself around the tenth kill. The A.I fully takes over and it's far more efficient. It is an artist compared to me. It paints a macabre tale with its six brushes, a world of crimson and ivory. A butcher shop made from pleasure rather than hunger.

Arms and legs litter the ground, bones peaking above the gore. As I see the bodies lacking their heads, I have a delirious thought.

How are they ever supposed to know which arms and legs are theirs?

When I wake again. I’m in a hospital. The night’s festivities have already been copied from my brain to the police database. I committed no crime. A Chamber Tech representative came to visit me. She was an energetic blonde who told me it was thanks to a prototype implant that I was alive today. During a Monday blackout, I had been chosen to host the Zygiella, Chamber Tech’s new anti-personnel A.I and cyborg limb apparatus. They say it was because of my exemplary behavior, but I doubt it. I think they’re just happy it popped out during a combat situation and instead of brunch at Ash’s.

Ash. I miss her so much.

I wish my visitors stopped with the preppy blonde. Instead I was also visited by a Sparkbook representative. He told me worse news than having to come back to work on Monday.

I was never supposed to meet Ash.

A glitch in the matchmaking algorithm led me to be matched with her. I asked him how that was even possible. Code doesn’t just fuck up someday because it feels like it. Someone must have messed up. All I got was a shrug followed by him readjusting his suit and tie.

“You can rest well assured,” he said with a salesman smile. “Your next match will be your soulmate. That is a Sparkbook guarantee. We are greatly sorry for the mistake, but please enjoy the complimentary free six month trial.”

It's been five years. I still think about booting up the application. The yellow suited man would greet me with a smile and search through cyberspace to find me my soul mate. But it wouldn’t be Ash. It would be someone different, perfectly suited in the eyes of some algorithm to make me content. The thought makes me want to hurl.

So yeah.

I guess I do have a reason to burn that building to the ground.

“Leave it to the big guy upstairs," they say, usually followed by a hearty laugh. “We sure as hell send a bunch to his doorstep.”

Chamber Tech: We are the light at the end of the tunnel. Their little slogan is on everything they produce, from their pistols, all the way to their missile launchers. Patriots. Every last one of them. At least according to what the current president is saying these days. Never really cared about all that “Proud to be an American” garble he spits out. Glory and power. Power and Glory. All given to you for the low price of your soul. Let that stuff die with the old age where minimum wage still meant minimum life.

Besides, I haven’t ever met a guy who’s told me their power and glory keeps them warm at night. That’s really what I was searching for, someone to hold tight at night, feel their warmth pushed up against mine. The VR wasn’t cutting it anymore, neither were the company issued opioids. You can only handle coming home every night to an empty bed and a static filled screen before your mind starts drifting to less favorable choices. So I decided to look for love instead of trying out Chamber Tech’s products one last time.

They call it Sparkbook. A name as generic as the people who created it. In their minds, names weren’t nearly as important as what comes after. What comes after? Filthy fucking profits of course. These veterans of the Silicon Valley wars learned their predecessors’ lessons well. Love is highly monetizable.

I didn’t really care. So what if I have to skip a meal here and there to keep up with the subscription? All in the name of love right? As long as I still had somewhere to sleep and the view of the city from my dirty window, I would be okay. The application’s A.I reassured me. It reminded me in a posh British accent that I had nothing to fear. I would soon be one of billions of happy customers.

“Sparkbook’s patented algorithm is the most sophisticated on the market,” explained the blue hologram standing on my phone. “As stated in the terms and conditions, we have downloaded all your data pertaining to personality based hobbies, feelings, and desires. This will be compared to our current database to find a suitable match. This will take some time as we consider your first match our most accurate and has a high likelihood of being your final.”

“My soul mate?” I asked as I slurped down a ramen noodle.

The hologram smiles at me. “Yes, Carlos. Your soulmate.”

A week passed by. I had forgotten about the app entirely, even though their billing sure as hell didn’t. I was in the middle of a conversation when I got the notification. I remember it pretty clearly. Phillip was complaining about the mandatory black outs and I had a coffee who’s caffeine was currently my anchor to the waking world.

“Creeps me out man. So what if our implants are technically company property? Why do I have to let those creeps in IT knock me out for an hour every Monday?” He shivers as he sips on his energy drink, a greenish yellow liquid that reminds me of piss. “Getting fondled by some college kids while under. Not right I tell you. If my implants need a check up, I’ll go to my own doc, thank you very much.”

I begin to grin. “Hey, some people have to pay good money to get fondled by college kids. And we both know what we signed up for.”

“Heh. Very funny. But the pasty dudes in IT aren’t exactly my idea of a fun time. Now if it was Isha from accounting, then you could sign me right-”

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out and unlock it with a thumb flick. Out comes the miniature gentleman in his yellow suit. He sees Philip next to me, but doesn’t waste time with pleasantries.

“Carlos,” he begins. “The algorithm has found you a suitable match. Her name is Ashley Barns.”

From his palm a portrait appears. My heart skips a beat and decides to do a somersault on its way back down. I begin to think about laying off the coffee and opioids, maybe even starting a new workout regimen. Suddenly, the world seems full of possibilities and it was my responsibility to reach out and make them come true. After all, extending my lifespan would be important, if it meant I would be with her.

Her eyes were a startling hazel and I knew even before I met her, that their color would change with the passing of the sun as easily as the city’s neon lights come to life with the moon's rise. Her hair was auburn. So toasty and warm in its complexion, it might as well have encompassed every autumn ever passed. She was fair skinned, a ghost on my screen, and I feared she would disappear from my very eyes. A glitch in my system. Never meant to be.

“When do I get to meet her?” I blurt out.

The gentleman puts his arms behind his back and smiles.

“Tomorrow.”

You would think the day would be a slog after that. You’d be wrong. The day went by like an inner city bullet train. Everything I did had a new shine on it, a new color. I had a spring in my step as new meaning flowed into my work. Even the code I wrote on my screen seemed to jump with happiness, but that may have been the caffeine wearing off. Either way, I didn’t care. Tomorrow would be the greatest day of my life. I just knew it.

The next day the city saw one of the worst rain storms in recent history. A big fuck you from Mother Nature herself for melting the polar ice caps. Work slowed to a stand still, each step a trek through molasses. The Universe saw my win and was determined to snatch it away from my hands. I almost thought it succeeded, until I received her first text.

Hey! This storm is really something huh? I was hoping to go somewhere nice, but I think the place I had in mind is closing shop. :( But maybe you can come to my place instead?

My eyes widened. I replied fast, not caring about whether it made me look desperate or not.

Yeah! It's pretty bad timing, but I think it would be cool to hangout at your place.

A ding.

Great :)

I felt like an explorer. The storm, combined with an area I was unfamiliar with, transformed the city into an urban jungle fit for conquistadors. After the third alleyway I walked through, I was starting to wish I had their swords as well. See, even though the city was experiencing flooding, the city’s less kind denizens were still camping at their door ways. Sketchy men by flickering lights that revealed their various gang tattoos. I had no doubt these guys were packing.

Luckily, they thought I was as well. They saw the Chamber Tech suit and tie on me, marking me as a Corpo descended from the heavens. In their eyes I was a scumbag, but one that could be dangerous if what they heard about Chamber Tech implants were right. And so they kept to their alleyway doors with dying yellow light. If they had fought me, they would have quickly found out my combat implants were very much out of date, relics I won by being employee of the month three months in a row back when I still cared.

I eventually found the building. A high-rise apartment complex seventy stories tall painted a gray as dark as the sky. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see such an ugly building in my life. When I stepped into the elevator, I felt like I was finally leaving everything behind, stepping into the afterlife itself as it took me higher. I could see through the elevator into the city below. A buzzing metropolis made from light and stone, weathering the storm with the stubbornness only human tenacity can muster.

Knocking on that door didn’t feel real. I expected at any moment for the ground under me to give way and throw me into another realm, perhaps one where I forgot to study for a math test. Instead, the door opened with a creak. Behind the chain still keeping the door closed, I saw her eyes, cautious and beautiful. They looked at me from head to toe as if she didn’t believe I was quite real either. I give her my best smile, the one I practiced in the mirror a thousand times and had been immortalized in its fair share of yearbooks.

Ash smiled back. The door opened.

“You’re real,” she whispers, moving her hair from her eyes. “Really real.”

“I’d be rude not to be.”

She laughs at the stupid joke. “Come inside. The people in the hallways aren’t good company.”

Her clothing isn’t what I expected, mostly because in my head she was royalty, wearing everything from designer dresses to silk masterpieces. In their place she wears baggy sweatpants and a hoodie, appearing to be a comfort incarnate herself. Her room follows a similar philosophy, soft rugs on the ground, covering almost every cold tile beneath. It's not a big endeavor to do so when the whole apartment could barely be considered a single room. I actually bumped into the stove on my way to her bed.

She sits on it, staring at me. Waiting.

“Well?” she asks.

“Well what?”

“Are you going to sit down? Furniture is expensive and we aren’t getting any younger.”

A smile tugs at my mouth. “Usually takes me a bit longer to be invited to a woman’s bed.” I sit down next to her and find the pleasant smell of lavender rising up to meet me. Her presence is electric, her eyes filled with such life it almost hurts to look at her for too long. She was a sun and I was captured in her orbit. “Third date stuff, you know?”

“Really now? Do you go on many dates?”

“Sometimes,” I say as I look past her towards the window. Droplets drag down like tears. “When the weather is right.”

She turns towards her window. “A lot of people hate rain. It's a shame.”

“Rain these days tends to sting your skin. And even when it didn’t, a lot of people thought it was pretty gloomy. Pretty….sad.”

“What do you think?”

“I love rain.”

She turns to face me, her eyes catching the light from her nearby lamp. They go from a grayish green and become a warm brown as she smiles at me. “Good. I can’t stand people that hate rain.”

“I can’t stand people in general.”

She laughs. At first I think it's a pity laugh, but as it grows I realize it's genuine. She tells me about her job in retail. A soulless toil in the inner city where she is forced to mind fork. Nowadays, most jobs in retail can be done by machines, but their intelligence is lacking. The higher ups in all their statistical genius understood hiring real people is profit shattering, the greatest sin one can commit. No, no, no. There must be a better way, they said. A better way was found. A cheaper way.

A human’s mind is an amazing thing. It has plasticity. An ability to survive tremendous trauma and somehow reform itself at the end like dough returning to one big ball. Some scientists knew this well. After a couple chimps survived the first tests, Mind Forking was tested on humans. Their minds were split asunder, forced into multiple machine bodies at once to operate basic tasks. The lucky ones went brain dead. The unlucky ones went insane. Trial and error. Trial and error. Eventually they discovered the right way to cut. They discovered the digital scalpel and the right glue to stitch someone right up when it came time to punch out for the day. It was a time of miracles.

Why deal with stupid A.I? Why pay for a whole team of high school kids? Why do any of that when you can pay a single person to mind fork and split their consciousness across all the machinery, become the store. The human touch, cheaper than ever.

“I’m a manager,” Ash tells me nonchalantly. “I’ve dealt with a lot of bullshit.”

Every angry customer. Every spill on aisle five. Every time something went wrong, she experienced it and she was blamed. It was always her fault. Her boss would shout at her, call her useless, even as Ash tried her best to keep the store running at a good pace. On some days she wondered if her mind would finally break. If it would shatter into a million digital pieces or worse, get stuck in the machines. Forced to live all eternity as a little worker drone stocking shelves.

But Ash never got fired. Whether that was a gift or a curse, she did not know. She suspected, even through all the yelling she endured, she was not half bad at her job and she was certainly cheap.

As these words left her mouth, I began to rub her back. I half expected her to recoil from me, give me a disgusted look. All she did was inch in closer, until I could feel her warmth pressed up against me, her head on my chest. She no doubt could hear my heartbeat going a mile a minute. If she cared, she showed no sign of it. All she did was look up at me with a hopeful expression.

“Did the rain hurt?”

I looked at the umbrella I brought with me. The blue paint was still intact, no peeling away from acid rain. “No,” I say with a gentle whisper. “I think it's pure.”

She looks at me with golden eyes, they’re almost enough to take me away from her smile. “Come on. I have something to show you.”

We went back to the elevator. She put in three numbers and the elevator responded by going up and up. Our hands brushed together at one point, when the elevator creaked and I wondered if the old thing would finally break, sending us to our doom seventy stories below. It would be a tragedy, but not many get to die with their soulmate.

The elevator door opens. Wind brushes into my face, carrying tropical warm rain. It goes into my eyes, the world going blurry between the moments I blink it away. I’m about to curse at myself for not bringing the umbrella, when Ashley jumps ahead of me. She raises her arms wide as if praising the unseen sun. She doesn't care that her clothes are getting wet or that the threat of getting sick is real. How could she? In that moment she is bathed in the city’s purple and blue light, a nymph in the storm’s embrace.

“I didn’t know you liked getting caught in the rain,” I shout as the air howls around me.

She walks towards me, blinking constantly as the droplets run down her face. “When it's not burning your skin, it's one of the best things you can experience! I mean come on! Don’t you feel alive?”

I felt wet. I felt cold. Underneath though, deep inside, I did feel alive. I could see the city in all its glory. Fingers that reached up to the sky and touched divinity with its multicolored stars. The countless aerial vehicles slowly braving the storm, bound by honor and their deliveries. They looked like fireflies in one grand cave. The world was small, insignificant. It could fit in the palm of my hand and I realized in that moment, the entire world could burn, explode in one grand flame. As long as whatever came next was with her.

“Yeah. I do.”

I went up to her, interlinked her hand with mine. I looked into those hazel eyes, now a greenish gray. She looked so happy it was contagious.

And I kissed her.

There was no resistance. We flowed into each other like droplets into a river. I couldn’t help but think of the old legends. About how men and women were once one creature. Too powerful, they were split apart by the gods, doomed to try and find their other half.

Well I found my other half and I refused to let her go.

If you like happy stories, you can stop here. Heck, you can close your eyes, put a finger in each ear hole. I won’t stop you. I wish it was that easy for me too. But I’ve got alcohol going through my veins and I’m in a chatty mood.