RESETS: ?

  Everything sang backwards. What once felt like a narrated past life earlier became vivid memories. The four letters of Iker changed from a distant name to a lived identity; from letters made up of blue pixels on a black canvas to the image of a military man.

  Then a seated seventeen-year-old boy inside the void.

  However, the boy within a box with oblivion on every face did not have the luxury of linear and coherent memories. As Yesh he had neared having answers, and now as Iker he was nowhere close. The uncanny place became more fathomable, the outlines of a prison cell and unicode manifesting like digital scratches of chalk. Upon the empty corners loading with white tiles reminiscent of procedurals, the outside sandbox with blinking code artifacts faded away behind the two-sided cell.

  With no way to know who was the prisoner and who was the captor, Iker's father as a human began loading on the other side of the metal bars, both taking physical form.

  RESETS: 6

  "How about you Iker?" Alice asked. "How do you see your future after you leave Usher?"

  It had been years since sunrays reached past the smog above, through the big windows, and into the meeting room. Only its scanty remains lit up the black sky sometimes. None of the seated r0cbyte addicts by the vinyl record player; Iker, Dominic, Ameen nor Feechi; had seen the sun recently. So most of the lights inside the center, each and every single on every floor outside of the bedrooms, were always on. This Iker had no idea how much cozier the inside looked with natural light.

  "I have been thinking about what to say but I am afraid of rambling," Iker said. "Can you get back to me?"

  Alice smiled. "You're the last one."

  Iker sighed.

  "You don't seem so nonchalant anymore," Dominic joked. "This is stressing you out."

  "Okay," Iker said. "I am having a hard time with this topic cause I keep seeing images rather than coming up with words to say. Bad memories, worst case scenarios, fantasies."

  "Memories?" Alice asked. "But those would take place in the past."

  "Yea... but my parents were obsessed with the future. My future," Iker replied, his words tensing the mood. Winds brushed against the windows. "They made it clear to me that I had to pursue technology like they did... and this is relevant, because when I think about it after Dominic talked about what makes him wanna relapse... I have always relapsed while I had a job. Even right after work.

  "My fear that I was gonna ramble came because I only made these realizations recently. I have yet to make sense of everything... to make it concise in my head," Iker said while pointing to his left temple.

  "My immediate future seems fine based on old patterns, but it will be the more distant future that might pose a problem. I want a future where my own mind makes more sense than it does today... I understand now the world is just going to make less and less sense so at least I want my own mind to make sense. The manipulations my parents engaged in, especially them denying that things ever happened, culminated to me being here. From now on, I want my emotions, my moral compass, my thoughts, my subconscious to act as one and not be at war with each other, even if it means losing everything and everyone. I want a future with less dissonance, and I'll remove people from my life that get in the way of that.

  "Most recently I had to do that... and I have to call myself out here, but I was one of those people that said I don't want to make being gay my whole identity. But then, I was like, wait a minute. I realized that was manipulation too. Yea, there's a science fiction timeline where the label never had to exist and people just dated people, but now I am in a timeline that made it my whole identity. Then, when I point that out, they blame me by saying that I am the one that's making it my whole identity. So in other words straight people made a world that made it my whole identity by discriminating me based on it, so if they have a problem making it my whole identity, to the point that I went on sex fiend bender and shit, then they should take responsibility for that."

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Iker slouched a bit, his aloof eyes animating a bit upon a realization.

  "Not my drug use obviously," he said while waving both of his hands. "But the discrimination part. If straight people did not want me to make it my whole identity, then they should have made a world that didn't make it my whole identity. I want to be in that utopian timeline where people just fuck people, but I'm not fucking in it. I am literally not fucking in it.

  "So yea, I want a future where I can get all these subtle manipulations out of my head, and staying sober will help with that. Hopefully my future self remembers that."

  RESETS: ?

  Father loaded successfully.

  Both him and Iker had the round face, but Maverick's features were more serrated, yet half of his face remained hidden. They both had irises that seemed black when no light entered them, and light indeed functioned differently in this strange two-sided cell somewhere in digital oblivion. The emanations from the fluorescent lights above made little sense and the shadows below did not respect them. Iker could not breathe, but he did not have to breathe either. Attempts to suck in air into his lungs were only for comfort.

  Maverick stretched his long fingers onto his own lap above his dress pants. His lion form only had worn the upper part of the onyx and decadent suit leaving his hind legs bare, but as a human he wore both pieces. His face did not move at all upon speaking. "This is your last chance for us to join forces."

  Iker did not respond, getting Maverick to chuckle only once.

  "Do you remember what happened the very first time we ended up here?" Maverick asked.

  Iker stared at the floor instead of answering him.

  "Well, actually... I want to talk about the second time," Maverick said so casually, easing himself onto his plastic seat until his glitchy mouth finally moved. "The first time you did not know that it was me who killed Bastian's parents. During the second time you pretended to join forces with me. Why won't you do that again?"

  "Maybe if you got to know me instead of wanting me to be someone else... maybe you would have your answer," the older Iker replied.

  Maverick laughed. "I got you to talk. That's all I wanted."

  "Yea," Iker said. "Everything is a game to you."

  "But everything is a game," Maverick said. "You know what we exist in don't you?"

  "Was your name always Maverick?" Iker asked abruptly.

  Maverick's lips stopped moving entirely again. "Yes, but my nickname was Mav for the longest time before I lost control of my reputation. It was around the same time Dominic realized that even with his cybernetic enhancements, a hacker like me would be worth more than hundreds of strong humans as netrunners. I never found out how he had the premonition to see the biotech leap due to supersoldier research, but I am not surprised he kept that secret. We are in an information war after all. If someone figures out or knows exactly what you can do, you are as good as dead. Once Dominic saw me as a threat to his throne rather than just the mafia IT guy, he unconsciously began using my full name. He came to understand I would become some kind of eldritch virtual being, or perhaps an eldritch imagination being, if he did not kill me as a human."

  "Are you telling me the truth?" Iker asked.

  "I have no reason to lie to you. I have always been sincere in my desire for us to join forces," Maverick replied.

  "I wanted a dad. Not a boss."

  Maverick's head tilted ever so slightly after another laugh, his joints pixelating before becoming solid again. Without knowing why a fearful urge to get up overtook Iker, however his sneakers went through the floor. The chair he had been sitting on caught him from falling.

  And his father finally moved, revealing the other half of his human body drenched in illogical shadows while leaking data. Instead of an eye, nostril, and cheek on the other side of his face, radiating plasma was leaking out of his open skull that was brimmed with whitenoise. And within the distortion a portal was spawning.

  Manifesting on the dancing lights was a smoke and snake-like behemoth, its mouth revealing non-euclidean teeth. While it gained more size Iker tried to place his feet onto his chair to jump off from it, but his entire body noclipped through the chair, the summoned yedaliuth swooping through the concrete prison floor to shatter it, swallowing Iker whole before he fell into oblivion.

  This must have been how sleep paralysis was like.

  Except Iker's eyes were closed.

  He never experienced sleep paralysis, but this is what he imagined it to be.

  Vision granted.

  It was rather impossible to explain, but if it had to be done then waking without eyelids made Iker not feel human at all. Sleep paralysis was not the culprit at all because below him were nerve remains instead of a body. In every direction of this hellish aquarium Iker swam in he witnessed swimming brains connecting and disconnecting, too distracted to notice the human-shaped shadow past the glass until now.

  Upon the magical vision granted to him getting better definition, the shadow past the glass and bubbles revealed itself to have blonde hair and a black fur coat. Ember Comsa pressed both of her hands onto the glass, her admiral eyes peering dead towards Iker's brain.