The archivist knew more than what she told the researcher that morning.

A man in the purple robes of a High Research Administrator strode into the anteroom of the Archives and range the bell on the counter. He had waited for months for the Archives to arrive in his home system and then had to wait for several hours in a security line just to get transport up to the ship. He had known that it was a privilege to do research at the Archives, it was the largest collection of knowledge in the Empire, but he wasn’t used to being treated like chattel. He was an important man, after all.

A small sigh rose from beneath the counter and a girl, looking no more than ten standard years, climbed into a tall chair and looked the man in the eye.

“Can I help you?” she asked in the tone children use when forcing themselves to be nice because they’re told to.

The man in purple robes looked down his bulbous nose at the girl. Even with the chair, she was over a foot shorter than him.

“I’d like to speak tot he Archivist, please.”

Be good, Cait. Said a warm and comforting voice inside her head.

The girl suppressed the urge to groan and forced herself to smile.

“You are speaking to her, sir.”

“No,” he said, “I am speaking to a child. Fetch the archivist, girl.”

“I am the Archivist,” the girl said.

“Of course you are, dear,” he said, “now go get an adult I can talk to and stop wasting my time.”

“I can assure you, sir,” the girl said with effort through gritted teeth, “I can help with any query you may have, I’m fully–”

You’re doing well, Cait. Just keep a level head.

“Child,” the man said, “stop talking and go get an adult!”

Oh no.

“Listen, you pompous screechbat cloaca, I–”

“Cait!” I sharp female voice cut the tirade short. The small girl immediately closed her mouth and sat up straight. “You will watch your language, especially when talking to Researchers.”

A woman with brown hair cut to a standard issue ear-length bob, a plain blue uniform, and a pleasant face stepped through a door which led deeper into the Archives. She turned to the researcher, whose startled expression had already begun to transform back into a mask of smug superiority.

“You’ll have to forgive Cait,” the woman continued, “she has a bit of a temper.”

“No problem at all,” he replied, “I have several nephews myself who share a similar…undisciplined attitude.”

Just let her handle this.

Cait remained at attention, but her cheeks visibly pulsed as she clenched and relaxed her jaw.

“Are you the Archivist, then?” he continued.

“Yes, I am,” she said, “My name is Nadine.”

“Excellent.” He looked sideways at Cait, “I knew she was lying when she said she was the Archivist.”

“Actually,” Nadine said just as Cait began to open her mouth in protest, “she is the Archivist as well.” She moved her hair behind her ear and her implant caught the light before her hair fell, as always, back into place.

Cait smirked at the researcher, who had risked a glance in her direction, and pulled back her own hair to reveal a similar shining implant.

Cait, there’s no reason to be smug. The voice said.

But he’s such a pompous– Cait started.

I know, but our job is to help them.

“Hmph,” he said as he resumed ignoring Cait, “I’d still never trust a child to help me.”

“And why is that, sir?” Nadine asked.

“Don’t you know who I am?” The Researcher drew himself up to look down on her.

“Of course I do,” she said as her eyes went out of focus as she accessed pertinent records, “You’re High Researcher Pedrick Nason, a specialist in the study of xeno-anatomy and military tactics. You’ve written twenty-seven articles in the last ten years and your research on the Plashaar (commonly called Digger Devils) was instrumental in the retaking of Indus VII and earned you your most recent promotion.” Her eyes came into focus again and she gave the researcher a warm smile.

High Researcher Nason swelled during the Archivist’s  recitation and smiled in a way he believed people thought modest.

“I can see you’ve done your homework, ma’am.”

She nodded once and Cait rolled her eyes.

“Now,” the Archivist said as she moved him to the door of the reading room, “what can I help you with?”

“I’m doing research on the mating habits of the Snow Stars on Berryessa II and I heard you had copies of the journals of Bixby Drax. Might I look at them?”

Cait furrowed her brow and opened her mouth to speak, but she was cut short by a hand on her shoulder. It was wrinkled and cold and attached to an elderly woman in an ornate uniform.

“Of course we have those journals. The originals, mind you, not copies. This is the Archives, after all.” Nadine held the door to the reading room open.

“Wonderful!” Researcher Nason said as he walked through the door. Nadine followed after and closed the door behind her.

Cait turned to the elderly woman, whose face looked as though it had known more than it was healthy to know.

“Hermina-ma’am?”

“Yes, Cait?” Her voice was warm and comforting.

“According to the Archive, Bixby Drax was only in the Berryessa system for a few standard weeks. Wouldn’t it have been better to check the field notes of Ix’tal Mar?”

“Firstly, not everyone can read Tu’naar. And secondly, yes it would have, but that’s not what he asked for.”

“But aren’t we supposed to help the researchers?”

“Yes, we are. And we’re giving him precisely what he asked for. Maker knows if he hadn’t been such a pompous screechbat cloaca, we’d have helped him a bit more.” Hermina smiled with the corner of her mouth.

Cait looked up at her in astonishment and giggled until her sides hurt.

He almost said yes before he reconsidered.

It was 8 o’ clock in the morning and Andrew Apercrombie sat in his car staring at a screen which projected a question that would permanently alter the course of his life.

It had been a Tuesday morning and, like every Tuesday morning for the past fifteen years of his life, Andrew Apercrombie had woken to the sound of electronically reproduced ambient noise—recorded during the dawn chorus of a woodland glad which he had never seen—at precisely 5:58 am. He had slept for 8 drug-assisted hours and had, as always, awoken feeling refreshed an invigorated. His dream selection for the night has been algorithmically selected to maximize his decompression and happiness after the first day back at work.

After waking, Andrew had removed his disposable sleep clothes—which had been custom manufactured to perfectly fit his sleeping form and provide unparalleled comfort on Monday Nights—and dropped them on the floor. His floor cleaner would later scoop up the garments and deposit them in the recycle chute where they would be ground up and reformed into other, perfectly designed sleeping clothes for someone else. Andrew had then walked, naked, to his small shower which had pre-heated the water to the optimal temperature and had begun flowing at optimal water pressure as soon as he was standing under the shower head.

The walls of the shower had displayed colors and images designed to enhance attention and mental clarity. As he had washed his hair, pertinent news and information was read aloud to Andrew by a pleasant, genderless, computer generated voice. Afterwards, he had dried himself with his disposable towel—which would later be recycled by the floor cleaner—and shaved and brushed and lotioned and made himself as presentable as possible with custom designed disposable instruments. Just like everyone else.

After dressing in clothes automatically selected to be both fashionable and functional according to socio-economic status, career objectives, body type, and weather, Andrew Apercrombie had sat at a table for 1 and eaten his Tuesday Breakfast: whole wheat bagel, jam, a glass of orange juice, one egg, and a small cup of coffee. This breakfast had come, like all the meals before it, in a hermetically sealed container which was dispensed automatically at Andrew’s optimal meal time.

Andrew Apercrombie had finished his meal at 7:50 am and, on this heretofore extremely usual Tuesday, found himself at the console of the electric self-driving car—which had arrived to pick him up and ferry him off to work—faced with an altogether unusual dilemma. On every other Tuesday, the console had read:

ARE YOU READY TO LEAVE FOR WORK?

And Andrew would say “Yes” and be driven without incident or second thought to work. On this particular Tuesday however, Andrew was faced with a different screen which bore a different message:

DO YOU WANT TO GO TO WORK?

He almost said yes before he reconsidered.

Andrew knew that he should go to work. It’s what he had done every weekday since he had left college. And besides, he reasoned with himself, it’s just what people do. But being confronted with the question of it, Andrew didn’t know if he wanted to go to work. He enjoyed it well enough, he supposed. He had been working at the Hornsby and Co. Box Manufacturers Headquarters for the last several years as a Data Entry Engineer transferring information from one form to another. Very important forms, he knew. But, he had to admit, he hadn’t chosen that job. He’d been selected for it. Computer programs had assigned him the job based on his aptitudes, test scores, college education, and how well he’d get along with his coworkers. He’d interviewed, but he’d never applied. He’d merely shown up.

And the more he looked at the WANT on the screen, the more he wondered if it was really something he wanted to do. As he sat there, developing an existential crisis at an alarming rate (he realized that everything, from his friends to his career path had been decided for him by algorithms and computer programs), the screen suddenly changed. The blue screen with white letters was replaced by a rather attractive woman with glasses. She was dressed in a white blouse with a black tie and had her hair cut short.

“Mister Apercrombie?” the woman said.

“Yes?” Andrew replied.

“Is there a reason why you’re still in front of your house instead of on your way to work at Hornsby and Co. Box Manufacturers Headquarters?”

“Um. Yes, actually, there is.”

“And that would be?” She looked at him over the top of her glasses.

“I don’t know if I want to go,” he said.

“Oh?” she said. And while she sounded surprised, Andrew got the distinct impression that she was almost impressed.

“Yes. The car asked me if I wanted to go, instead of just asking if I was ready to go. And the more I thought about it, the less sure I was.” Andrew looked at his hands. “I suppose I’m still deciding.”

“Excellent,” the woman smiled. Her teeth were perfectly white against her very red lipstick.

“Excuse me?” Andrew looked up quickly. The seat belt of the car quickly buckled him in.

“You’ve made a very good choice today, Mister Apercrombie.” The woman smiled pleasantly as Andrew struggled halfheartedly against the belt. The car pulled itself from the curb and rolled into morning traffic. “It’s the first step toward a new world.”

“What new world? What do you mean? Where are you taking me?”

“Sit quietly, Mister Apercrombie,” the woman commanded. Andrew complied without realizing he had. “Everything will be explained in time. The important thing to remember is that you came to a realization today.”

Andrew furrowed his brow.

“You’ve realized that you don’t necessarily want what you’ve been given.” The woman on the screen smiled her perfect smile and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Now, you’re being taken somewhere safe. Please just sit tight and you will be tended to shortly. Until then, enjoy the scenery, Mister Apercrombie.” The screen went black and Andrew was alone in an automated car headed to an unknown destination for an unknown purpose. But, true to his nature, Andrew Apercrombie sat tight and looked dutifully out of the window of the car.

He was carried past familiar tracts of houses on the streets which he had traveled past on his way to work every weekday for the past 10 years. The car carried him toward the familiar freeway full of familiar cars heading in familiar directions. But when it came time to turn to the on-ramp which would carry him toward the Hornsby and Co. Box Manufacturers Headquarters in Downtown, the car passed under the freeway and into the world of manufacturing.

Andrew had seen it from on high, of course. The smoke stacks and squarish buildings had seemed quaint, almost picturesque in the light of the early morning and late evening. But down here on the streets among them, the buildings brooded over him. They turned the world into a shadowy place, even as morning turned into late-morning. He saw people on the street walking, something which never happened in his neighborhood. Their complexions were ashen and only a few turned to look at the small, single-seat car as it hummed down the road.

Andrew was taken on a labyrinthine path between buildings that looked increasingly similar. After several minutes of turns and trips down alleys and stops for poorly maintained trolleys, he was sure he’d never be able to find his way home again.

Eventually the car pulled to a stop in front of a nondescript building, much like dozens of others he had passed. The car made a strange series of beeps and noises which Andrew didn’t think were very healthy for a car to be making and a large door rolled open. The car hushed its way inside and the door rolled shut behind it.

The car came to a stop and Andrew found himself surrounded by darkness. The lights of the car shut off and he was left alone with the faint illumination of the black screen, which was still functioning.

“H-hello?” Andrew asked the screen.

Nothing happened. Andrew pressed the emergency button in hopes of contacting the authorities, but nothing happened. The screen continued to emit a faint light of projected blackness.

Andrew began to chew his nails in an attempt to calm his nerves, ruining his perfect manicure. After he had worried all ten fingers to the quick, the screen flickered to life and the beautiful woman appeared on the screen. She did not look pleased.

“Ugh,” she said to Andrew, “Do we have to tell you to get out, too?”

Andrew blinked at the screen in surprise with his pinky finger pressed against his lips.

“Usually the door opens itself when I get to work,” he said.

“Oh, for the love of…” the woman said as she rolled her eyes.

The doors opened.

Andrew stepped out of the car and into darkness.

“Hello?” he called into the blackness.

The warehouse lit up, revealing a middle-aged woman and a  man slightly younger than Andrew. They both wore plain jumpsuits and looked as though they were deciding whether or not Andrew had something on his face. The woman nodded to herself and stepped forward with a hand extended.

“Andrew Apercrombie?”

“Yes,” Andrew replied and extended his own hand without thinking. She gripped it more firmly than he had expected.

“I’m Priscilla and this is my colleague, Harold. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

Andrew was immediately reminded of the surveys he had quite enjoyed taking throughout school. Dozens of Yes or No questions which had decided a large portion of his life and which he had always found comforting.

“Of course not,” he said, which was the reply of a good citizen, anyway.

“Good,” she smiled, “Shall we sit down?” She gestured to a small table to Andrew’s right, and sat on one side with Harold. Andrew sat in the single chair on the other side of the table.

“Now,” Priscilla continued, “How do you feel about how your life has been going?”

Andrew, who had been expecting a good old-fashioned Yes/No question, was taken aback.

“I-I don’t know,” he said.

“Just take a minute and think about it.”

Andrew had had, until very recently, every minute of his waking life accounted for in some activity or other—surveys, work, mandated exercise, scheduled time talking with friends and family, playing games online—and was not used to being reflective or even being given that much time to think. He was so busy, after all. Everyone was, weren’t they?

But Priscilla and Harold were both smiling pleasantly and that put Andrew at ease. He thought and reflected and the more he thought about his life and the things in it, the more he realized that he didn’t have very many feelings about them, really. And he told Priscilla as much.

“I see,” she said and nodded. “And how does that make you feel?”

Andrew responded with the first and truest thing he could have thought of.

“Empty.”

“Good!” she said. “Would you like to find something worth caring about?”

Andrew nodded, still coming to grips with his own realizations.

“Excellent. That’s precisely why we brought you here, Andrew. You see, cities all over the world are filled with people just like you. They do what they’re told, given what they need, and perform their functions without a second thought. We want to give people a chance to think and make decisions for themselves. you’ve just become a part of a new Order, Andrew. What do you think about that?”

Andrew didn’t know. But he was excited to find out.

Author’s Note: Sorry this took so long to get out. I’ve had it for almost 2 weeks now and as much as I think the Thanksgiving Holiday is a good excuse for not writing, the truth is that I was dragging my feet because I don’t much like it. But I have to keep writing, right? So I hope you enjoyed it (even if I didn’t) and now that it’s out of the way, I’ll hopefully be able to get back on track. -CT

There is nothing to fear, but the mist in the night.

The lights of his Civic were blinking. Steam rose from where the hood had impacted a tree. The windshield was covered in a spider web of cracks. He was in the middle of nowhere, without car, without help, and all he could think about was the book. He had never cared much for reading. It wasn’t even his book. He was returning it, actually, and it wasn’t even very good or borrowed from someone he cared about. He’d just seen it fly up, at impact, and bounce out of his vision. He had no idea where it went. He looked to his right at the window that he had opened to let some heat out — his heater was broken in the on position — and assumed the worst.

He unbuckled his seatbelt, with some difficulty as the airbag had yet to fully deflate, opened the driver’s side door with a horrible metallic groan, and scrambled for the other side of the car. He checked the ground by the window (nothing), in the passenger seat (also nothing), on the floor in the front (nothing except garbage), and in the back seat.

There it sat, pristine and unbent like it had been set there on purpose.

“Good,” he said to himself and felt worlds better as he picked it up and moved it to the front passenger seat where it would be safe.

He looked around for the first time and saw that he was in an orchard. Or at least it had been one at some point. The trees were regularly spaced and looked like they might have been taken care of at some point, but it must have been long long ago. The trees were gnarled and overgrown with branches sagging with unharvested nuts or broken and dragging on the ground. The ground was littered with the rotting husks of old nuts. The shells covered the ground in a dark uneven mass that stretched out to the edge of visibility in every direction.

Not that that was very far. The fog in which he had crashed, and in which he found himself now, only let him see a few  dozen feet in any direction. And in all of those directions were more trees. He looked at his car and the direction from which he had come. A wide car-sized path between trees stretched from where he had come and ended in another field which was identical except that the trees in that field ran perpendicular to those in the other.

“I don’t remember driving this far before stopping,” he said to his car, which continued to blink its lights.

He reached for his phone, which he kept in the rear right pocket of his skinny jeans. It wasn’t there. He checked the car and, after several minutes of frantic searching, discovered it crushed under his seat. He clenched his jaw.

“Of course,” he said and sighed, running his hands through his hair as he stood. “I guess I’ll go find some help.”

He walked in the direction from which he had come, because where there’s a road there’s people. The fog became increasingly thick as he walked. The trees on either side of him continued to look gnarled and sinister. The only sound he could hear was the crunch of unharvested walnut shells under his loafers.

He walked for what could have been minutes or hours. It was impossible to tell. The light never changed. The trees never varied. And the sea of rotting walnut shells extended endlessly in every direction under the dark, overgrown canopy of trees. He whistled an unpopular song to himself and walked until his legs grew tired. At which point he stopped and looked around.

There was no way I could have gone that far through this, he thought to himself. Especially without stopping or hitting anything. But, he reasoned, swerving to miss a girl in the middle of the road could have shaken me up more than I thought.

“Though,” he said aloud to himself and the trees, “I don’t remember going very far at all before stopping.” Several of the trees creaked in the distance, though he could feel no wind. He shivered and looked down the uniform rows of trees stretching endlessly into the fog. The cold had begun to settle through his thin designer sweatshirt now that he had stopped walking. And for a second, he imagined cold spectral fingers reaching through his sweatshirt and sucking the heat from his body.

He shuddered and walked through a row of trees while looking behind him, where he imagined these fingers to be growing from. However, he failed to notice the large cobweb which was strung between two knotted, ugly trunks. As the filaments stretched over his face and got caught in his beard, he flailed about, screaming in the same way that his young cousins did when he jumped out from behind a corner at them during the holidays. He spun around several times and whipped his arms around, certain that a gigantic spider was lurking somewhere in his hair.

After several minutes of cursing and waving and screaming, he settled down and tried to calm his breathing. He looked around and realized that he had no idea which direction he had been heading. The ocean of rotting shells barely showed signs of his frantic struggle, let alone his long walk through the orchard.

“Fuck!” he screamed. How’d I let myself get lost? he berated himself. He kicked the trunk of a tree in frustration. A few branches swayed, more from an unseen wind than his foot, and a single stubborn, blackened walnut fell from a high branch and struck him on the head.

He blinked several times and gritted his teeth as he took a steadying breath.

“I guess one direction is as good as any,” he sighed, defeated. “I’m bound to run into something.”

He picked a diagonal out of spite and walked.

And walked.

The sky grew dark and cold. But a full moon shone brightly through the branches of the tree, offering enough light to see by. It got colder and the fog got thicker. His teeth started to chatter with chill and wished that he had brought a warmer jacket. Perhaps the pea coat would have been a better choice for this time of year. But he knew that he had never intended to be out at this hour. He had never thought he would have run off the side of the road. He never though that he would have had to avoid hitting a girl standing in the middle of a foggy road.

“Stupid bitch,” he said to himself, loud enough for trees even several rows over to hear. “What was she even doing in the road anyway?”

He had just looked at his phone for a second. When he looked back, she had been standing in the middle of the road, just staring off to her left. He swerved, slammed on the breaks, and drove off the road.

She hadn’t even flinched.

But he remembered, as he walked through the endless abandoned orchard, hat she had looked at him. Her eyes were dark, almost black. Her fine white-blonde hair was tied back flat against her head. She looked at him with interest, not alarm. Like he was some stray cat which had inexplicably come up and rub against her leg. And there was another emotion there, which he had not yet recognized.

With the sun fully set and walking only by the light of the full moon, he grew colder. Even walking couldn’t fight away the chill. And after another interminable time of walking diagonally through the rows of trees, he arrived in a clearing. Four wide dirt paths met in an area completely devoid of fog. The air inside was startling in its clarity after so many hours lost in the mist. The path dipped almost imperceptibly toward the middle, and he followed the grade until he stood in the center, surrounded on all sides by a wall of fog.

And as he watched, it thickened into a solid mass and he lost sight of the orchard completely. He heard what could have been a gust of wind, and the wall of fog began to roil and undulate. He stood dumbly and stared at the motions, hypnotized. It coalesced and dispersed in ways that almost nauseated him. He saw images made of shadow and mist. Images of figures that blew apart and came together in forms of animals and monsters that brought to his mind nightmares of his childhood.

As he watched, he sank to his knees in the gray dirt. He could barely bring himself to blink as the images in the fog stirred into a torment of gruesome shapes that devoured each other one after the other in an endless cycle of violent consumption. He began to notice grunts and moans of pain on the edge of his hearing. And as he listened to them, they grew louder while the shadowy curtain of fog formed a maw of darkness.

And from that darkness stepped the girl. Her skin was congealed mist and her frost hair billowed around her. Her eyes were the black of frozen asphalt. She slid closer to him and pulled back her lips in a hungry grin, revealing icicle teeth as white and cold as moonlight. He could feel the air grow chill around her;  his warmth being drained away. She slid close to him and breathed frostbitten words into his ear which left him motionless and without understanding. He watched the mist crash in toward them and screamed into the moonlit darkness, though only the trees could hear it.

He left his briefcase in the cab

The man slammed the door of the yellow cab, wincing slightly at the accidental force of it. He walked quickly to the front window and handed the driver a crisp $100 bill from his new leather wallet. The cabby smiled and revealed his slightly yellowed teeth.

“Let me get you your change,” he said in lilting accent.

“Oh, uh,” the main looked around nervously, “just keep it, okay?”

“Very good, sir,” the cabby replied. “Have a good day, sir”

The cabby rolled up his window and pulled into the hectic late afternoon traffic. The man stood on the empty sidewalk in the middle of the business park. He loosened his shiny silk tie and pulled at his collar. He checked his watch and knelt to pick up his briefcase.

But there was nothing there.

“Oh, shit,” the man said aloud. He must have left in the cab. He was sure that he’d grabbed it. He’d opened the door, pulled on the collar of his shirt because it itched and grabbed it. Right?

But the briefcase refused to appear.

The cabby didn’t even know that he had it and was long gone, anyway. It had fallen to the floor and, because this was the suburbs and most everyone had their own car, the cabby looked forward to a long, quiet ride back to the garage.

But the man in the new and uncomfortable suit was panicking. Everything was in that briefcase. His cell phone, his documents, his presentation and worst of all—-

The man rushed into the office building he had stopped in front of. Its exterior gleamed with white and brushed steel in a design that exuded downplayed but undeniable wealth. The man pulled open the glass door by the handle and rushed to the receptionist’s desk. But the desk immediately in front of the door was empty. The man turned wildly and saw another, identical desk, staffed by a woman.

The receptionist’s hair was impossibly shiny and her makeup was applied in a way that made her seem airbrushed. She typed on an ergonomic keyboard which was invisibly hooked up to a very expensive monitor. The desk was immaculately clean and devoid of anything resembling a personal touch. The receptionist addressed the man without taking her eyes from the screen.

“Welcome to Scalable Solutions LLC. How may I help you?” Her voice was pleasant and bland like distilled water.

“I need to use your phone,” the man responded, pulling at his collar in agitation.

—

The cab driver navigated the streets in silence as he made his way back to the garage. He didn’t like listening to the radio, preferring instead to focus his whole attention on the road and its may dangers. He had seen too may other cab drivers cutting people off and swerving like maniacs. He preferred to play it safe. The street hummed under his tires and cars passed going both directions. He listened to his squeaky breaks and the white noise of the road. And because of this, he completely failed to notice the low humming sound coming from his back seat.

—

“I’m sorry, sir,” the receptionist responded, “but we don’t have a phone for public use.”

“This is an emergency,” the man pressed. “I’m supposed to have a big meeting with Mr. B—– in twenty minutes and I left my briefcase in the cab.”

The receptionist typed rapidly at her keyboard.

“Are you the representative from Paralogis Industries for the three o’ clock appointment?”

“Yes,” the  man sighed in relief.

“Have a seat, sir,” she gestured to a metal bench that managed to look both very expensive and wholly uncomfortable. “Mr. B—– will be with you shortly.”

“No!” the man burst out, his voice echoing through the cavernously modern reception area. “I can’t see him without my briefcase. Could you please let me use your phone or something so I can track down the cab I left it in?”

The receptionist stared at him blankly for several seconds, almost as though she were listening to orders only she could hear. She then reached under the desk and pulled out a sleek phone that was obviously designed to be looked at more than used.

“Here you are, sir.”

—

The cab driver had veered off course. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had done so. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he should be going to the garage before heading home to his wife and little girl. But somehow, this didn’t matter to him just then. He felt it was more important to keep driving. He drove onto the freeway and out of town. His dispatch radio blared annoyingly so he turned it off. He was enjoying the sound of the world around him and he rapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time to some unheard tune.

The cab driver listened to the sound of other cars fading into the distance as he drove down a little-used interstate that passed through an empty expanse of land. His world was filled with the sound of his engine, his wheels on the road, the wind whipping past his cracked-open window, and the increasingly loud hum that emanated from the briefcase in the back seat.

—

The man in the uncomfortable suit had called eleven different cab companies and none of them had been the one he had used. They just lined up at the airport, he had thought to himself, how hard could it be?

The simple answer was very.

On the twelfth call, however, the man found the correct company.

“Yes, one of our cars went to that address earlier,” the man on the phone said. “He was supposed to come back here, but he has taken off.”

“What do you mean?” the man in the uncomfortable suit rasped desperately.

“He’s driven out…” the man on the phone paused as if reading something, “onto Highway 257?”

“Good! You know where he is?”

“Yes, yes, we have GPS on all of our cars.”

“Can you send another cab here to take me to him?”

“Of course, sir,” the man on the phone said, “it will be there in 15 to 20 minutes.”

The man in the uncomfortable suit hung up the phone and pulled his tie loose before sitting on the very fashionable metal bench.

Exactly 24 minutes later, a cab pulled to a halt in front of the building. The man leapt up from the exceedingly uncomfortable metal bench and ran do it, climbing inside without hesitation. The cab driver adjusted his mirror to better view his passenger.

“You the man looking for Amir?” he said in heavily accented English.

“Yes, and it’s an emergency, could you please hurry?”

“Yes, boss,” the man responded and pulled away at a brisk pace.

—

Amir, the cab driver, was pulled over to the side of the road. He had stopped several miles outside of town, he removed the briefcase from the back seat — even as he was surprised to find it there — and began walking. He crawled through a barbed wire fence and walked several dozen yards into a cow field. He had always found cows to be beautiful in their way. He smiled and waved absently to a small group of them as he walked past. The hum of the briefcase was loud in his ears. The cows sauntered lazily away.

Amir stopped, still in sight of his cab. He dropped to his knees and placed the briefcase on the ground. He was unsurprised to find a pair of complicated locks holding it closed. But, with a surety he did not fully understand, he input the right code and the locks clicked open.

The humming stopped.

A gust of wind brought the smell of cow dung and freshly cut grass to Amir’s nose as his ears rang. He took a deep breath and calmly, even reverently, opened the briefcase.

—

The man in the uncomfortable suit was swearing under his breath. He had missed his meeting, lost the briefcase, and he would probably lose his job. And that, he knew, was just the beginning. The cab pulled up behind Amir’s taxi. The man exited before the cab had fully stopped and ran to the other taxi, hoping to see Amir, or his briefcase, inside. But it was empty.

“Shit!” he shouted as he banged his fists painfully on the roof of the car. He turned and ran his fingers through his hair. He scanned the distance for any sign of Amir and noticed a large brown spot in the middle of the field. The man pulled at his shirt collar and walked down to the fence. He climbed, clumsily, over it and jogged toward the dark spot. Several times he stumbled and stepped in cow patties. When he came to a halt he was sweating and breathing heavily.

The man stopped at the edge of a small clearing. The grass looked dried and dead. In the middle was a pile of what had once been brightly colored clothes. They were now colored gray and brown and looked a little dirty. Other than the clothes, there was nothing. The man gingerly stepped into the clearing and brushed the clothes aside with the toe of his right shoe. They moved stiffly to one side and revealed the briefcase. It was closed and latched, but unlocked. The man carefully knelt and opened the latches of his briefcase without lifting it.

It sprang open.

Inside was a cell phone, several stacks of what had been very important documents, several pens, and a stack of folders containing informational material. The case made no noise and nothing moved. The cell phone began to vibrate. The screen displayed a familiar logo and a familiar phone number. The man in the uncomfortable suit picked up the cell phone and answered.

“Hello, sir,” the main said shakily into the phone. He listened to the voice on the other end and blood began to trickle slowly out of his left nostril. “Yes, about that. There’s been a bit of a problem.”

Why am I here?

I got to thinking last week that it might be helpful to give a bit of context to me, Collin, and why I’m doing this.  Thankfully, it’s not only helpful for you, as a reader, but also for me, as a writer, to explore why I’m writing in the first place.

So first, a bit of context:

Back in 2009 I finished up my undergraduate education and received my BA in English with a focus in Creative Writing. I’ve been born and raised in the California Bay Area, so I know that Creative Writing would likely mean becoming a Starving Artist, and I’m really not that into suffering for my art, though believe me — I adored creative writing (and still do, coincidentally). So in order to find a way to support my own artistic leanings, I tried to get a practical degree and entered into the lucrative field of Librarianship (mind you, I had applied to school in 2008… great timing).

I finished my degree in 3 years, wrote a thesis on Web 2.0 technologies and their utilization in Archives, and tried to enter the workforce with a full-time job. I’d been working part-time in libraries since 2007, so I figured 5 years of experience would be worth something. I quickly found out that reality was a bit less… shall we say, rosy? But I found a full-time job that utilized my skills and is still related to the larger world of libraries. However, I wasn’t particularly happy. The commute was (is) long and I felt like I should be doing something more.

So a while back my wife, then fiancee, called me out on why I didn’t write anymore. I confessed that I usually worked much better having prompts to guide me. Even something as abstract as “Love” got the cogs in my head turning when I was in undergrad and I’d churn out my 3 to 5 page story inside of a few days. It seemed so easy then, but after several years of grad school, I felt rusty and wasn’t sure I’d be able to do things the way I used to. So, my wife used one of her Moleskine notebooks and at the top of each page wrote a single prompt of a line or two to help fuel my creativity.

And, being the upstanding individual that I am, I thanked her effusively, put it in my bag along with a notebook and pen, and did absolutely nothing with it for several months.

So, after the wedding earlier this year, I decided to try to take control of my life a bit more. I’ve started dressing better — much to my wife’s relief — and applying myself more. I’ve decided that I want to do something with my writing because, damn it, I enjoy doing it. So I started this blog up and got to writing. I’m plugging away at the prompts and trying to just get into the habit of writing again. I want to feel the effortless fount of creativity I had when I was in undergrad. I felt like I could spin a story out of anything.

Will I be able to recapture that spark? Probably not. And in truth, most of what I wrote then would probably embarrass me now, but I plan to keep writing.

I’m hoping to get a new prompt out every week or so.. though I’m not nearly confident enough to put money on it; this editing stuff takes time. That’s my goal, though: 1 story/week.

But that’s why I’m here, I guess. To get the wonder back; recapture some of the creativity that I felt sure that I had before. And hopefully entertain a few people in the process, including my wife. 🙂

See you next time.

The day she found out was the day the first star exploded

Christine closed the apartment door behind her, dropped her keys into the nearby bowl, slipped off her shoes and  set down her purse and lunch bag. She hung her coat in the closet and breathed deeply. The silence was a blessing after the hectic commute and stressful day at the office.

She went into the kitchen to pour herself some Diet Coke over ice in a pint glass from where her sister had gone to college. It had been a gift from her mother. However, the glass was in the sink and had dried milk in the bottom. It sat atop a haphazard pile of dishes, unfinished food, and dirty cooking utensils.

Jerry hadn’t cleaned the dishes. Again.

She struggled to suppress her annoyance and began to rinse and wash the dishes which her boyfriend had left behind.

Several minutes later, while Christine was scrubbing the last of the dried oatmeal from one of the large bowls, the door opened and shut and Jerry unceremoniously dropped his things on the floor before silently walking back to the bedroom.

He hadn’t even said hello.

“Welcome home,” Christine called back to him, failing to keep the annoyance from her voice.

No response came for several seconds. She was about to call out again when she heard Jerry’s voice, muffled by the distance between the kitchen and the bedroom.

“You say something, babe?” Christine felt her jaw clench.

“I said,” she called more loudly, “welcome home.”

“Oh,” he responded. And after a moment continued, “Thanks, babe.”

“How was work?” Christine called back while continuing to scrub and rinse the dishes before carefully setting them on the drying rack.

“Uh,” Jerry said distractedly, “it was okay. We had the usual rush around 3 and the new guy messed up a ton of orders which made my life hell.”

Christine finished the dishes and began preparing some food for dinner.

“I’m sorry, hon,” she called back, though she wasn’t really.

Silence once again engulfed the small apartment as Christine cut vegetables, cubed beef, and boiled rice. It was a bit much for two people, but that just made sure there would be enough for lunch the next day. As the meat seared, Jerry, now in a faded T-shirt with the logo of a college he had attended for a year, basketball shorts even though he didn’t play, and a pair of sneakers she had bought him a few months ago just because, emerged from the bedroom and unceremoniously grabbed her butt while nuzzling her neck. His evening stubble grated against her skin.

“Mmmm…” he cooed, “What smells good?”

“Stir fry,” she responded coolly and shrugged him off so she could focus on finishing dinner. Jerry snorted quietly enough that he didn’t think she’d hear and backed off. “Are you hungry?” she continued forcing a cheer she didn’t feel into her voice.

“Nah,” he said as he pulled out his phone. “I had a big lunch with the guys out at Quarter Pounder.”

Christine sighed and set the spoon down harder than she had intended.

“What?” Jerry exclaimed defensively, looking up from checking Facebook.

“Nothing,” she sighed and turned back to her dinner preparations.

“No, tell me,” he pressed forcefully.

“You could have told me,” Christine said in irritation.

“You still would’ve had to make something.”

“Yes, but I was making this for us.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” he said offhandedly, “I have plans tonight.”

“What?”

“I told you I had plans earlier.”

“When?” She crossed her arms and turned to face him, having grown tired of that trick.

“When we were talking… this morning…” he trailed off, looking caught off guard. Christine pursed her lips. “But either way, I’m a grown man,” he recovered. “I don’t need your permission to go out.”

“Warning,” she said exaggeratedly, as though explaining something to a child. “I just need warning so I can plan things. Things like dinner.” She gestured to the half-finished dinner around her.

“Why does there always have to be a plan?” Jerry threw up his arms and stomped away. “You don’t have to plan every. Little. Thing.” His face contorted into a scowl.

“I just like to plan things, Jerry,” she spoke loudly. “I have plans. Do you have plans? Are you gonna stay at the coffee shop forever? Do you have a plan?” She paused for a moment.

Jerry opened his mouth to respond but Christine continued. “No, I didn’t think so.”

“Why do you have to make a big deal out of all this?” Jerry yelled. “I’m just between things right now.” He brooded silently for a heartbeat before adding, “You’re such a drama queen.”

“Excuse me?” Christine’s voice rose with anger.

“There, see?” Jerry turned toward her. “You just get all hysterical over the littlest shit. I’m not the one worried about missing out, am I? You’ve been at your job for, what? Three years now? And what exactly have you accomplished?”

Christine felt a tightening in her chest. Jerry pushed his advantage.

“You’ve never gotten the recognition you think you deserve. You say it’s because other people take the credit,” he stalked closer to her as she turned away from him. “You complain that people play favorites or whine that you’ve just not been recognized yet. But admit it, it’s a dead-end job that you’re shit at. Everyone knows it. Even your mom.”

Christine felt like she had been punched in the stomach. It fact, he was wrong. Christine’s mother thought the world of her, even if she didn’t show it as well as she could, but it was a fear that had always been there. A fear that had lurked in her heart since her sister was accepted to Cal and got a great job right out of undergrad where she made a ludicrous sum of money. Christine knew she was a failure, even though nobody else did. She could have done more. Should have done. But she’d drifted instead. Tried to date, with mixed success, and wound up here. With a guy who worked in a coffee shop for  living telling her that she was a failure in a dead-end job.

But instead of getting angry or indignant, Christine bought it. Because Jerry had just told her exactly what she’d told herself every night when she couldn’t sleep and the light from the clock seemed too bright and her brain just wouldn’t stop dwelling on everything she’d done wrong.

So she shut down and began to cry.

The smug smile faded from Jerry’s face, slowly, while the rice in the pot began to cook itself to the bottom. He stomped off, disgusted with Christine in a way he’d felt with other girls before.

After several minutes, Christine moved to the sliding glass door of her balcony and looked through her tears into the night. She stared out at the world outside her window and into the orange-white haze that passed for darkness in the sky. A hazy void met her gaze.  In that moment, she hated herself.

But her attention was caught by an explosion of vibrant light. She opened the door and walked entranced to the railing, never taking her eyes away from the halo of color that pierced the light-polluted darkness. Christine knew, in that very instant, exactly what the light was. She knew that somewhere out there, in the void of space, a star had just exploded and died. Its death was brilliant and almost burned away the insulating haze of city night and, for an instant, Christine knew — really knew, with more certainty than the fact that she lived and breathed — just how insignificant she was.

She was a single creature on a single planet in a cosmic void of infinite scale whose entire lifetime was not even worth calling insignificant. Her life didn’t matter. Her problems didn’t matter. Her job, her status, her useless boyfriend who she didn’t even really like that much — none of it mattered.

But instead of feeling terrified or nihilistic, Christine smiled. She felt lighter, as though she had never taken off the lead vest the dentist had put on her during her last visit and it had suddenly disappeared. She breathed deeply the autumn air, with all of its car exhaust and cigarette smoke from her neighbors across way, and planted her feet firmly as though bracing for an incoming wave.

When the door slid open behind her, Christine didn’t flinch, but neither did she turn to face it. She heard Jerry shuffle his feet to stand behind her.

“Hey, I’m sorry about what I said,” he managed with some difficulty. “Can we, maybe, forget it happened and just go back inside? I mean, it’s not the end of the universe, right?”

Christine turned to him, smiling with the streaks of foundation still on her cheeks. At the sight, Jerry looked confused but relieved. She felt sorry for him, really, and she let it show.

“You’re right,” she said finally, “it’s not.”