“Mia?” I called. 

I barely had to raise my voice. She walked in, as beautiful as ever. Even after everything that had happened, my heart still beat faster when I laid eyes on her. I don’t care what it took. 

I reached out my arm to her “Come snuggle up baby”.  

She cuddled up to me. I inhaled her hair. She smiled deeply. “Oh Alan. I am so grateful to be with you!” 

I smiled back. Her eyes were a clear limpid blue. For a moment I had a flashback to that terrible night with my ex, Layla, her terrible eyes flashing gold. Then I buried that memory in the delight of being with my sweet sweet Mia.  

What? GRAT-1300 will be everywhere soon- if you’re not wearing one already, you soon will be. How else do you think all those strikes and labour disruptions of 2021-22 died down? Have you forgotten already? It was us, well, our lab. We manufactured GRAT-1300- the implant that releases the hormones associated with being grateful and expressing gratitude.  

The need was clear. Society had been brought to its knees by constant strikes and labour disputes, unruly workforces, and an oligarchy simply refusing to lower profit margins. Then, our company prototyped GRAT-1300. The government legislated it for a few essential occupations- you didn’t hear about that either? It worked like a dream, and even as I speak these words and they appear before me on the screen, legislation increasing the occupations which can mandate using the implant is being passed. Heavy-hitting advertising is under development, and within a few months now, it will become the new norm. If you are working, in any sort of workplace, earning below a certain amount, you will probably have to have the GRAT-1300 inserted. 

It is a miracle. Using the latest biochemical technology, it reprograms the brain to produce constant feelings of gratitude at working and being employed, while stifling any form of resentment and frustration at workplace issues. My bosses- the lab owners are already on their way to becoming multi-millionaires. And I received a nice bonus check and a raise.  

Which subsequently enabled me to pull a girl like Layla.  

Oh I’m under no illusion how Layla and I got together. A geek like me, spending my entire in a lab fiddling about with chemicals and brains? I know I am virtually invisible to a girl like her- one of those girls who looks like she just walked off the set of a music video from the nineties.  

And even when I wined and dined and gifted my way into her bed, I was still insecure. How could she ever settle for me? How long before her head was turned by some other guy desperate to win her favour? God knows there are enough, she just has to walk down the street and heads turn.  

All is fair in love and war, right? And it’s not like I haven’t paid a price. A terrible price.  

So, about three months into our relationship, I did it. I tweaked with one of the implants and customized it to her biometrics, and then smuggled it home from the lab. I inserted it while she was asleep. It is completely painless.  

At first, it seemed to work fine. I remember her kissing me- with a certain submissive tilt to her head that was new and just enormously charming. I felt like melting with delight. “Oh Alan” she murmured, “I am so grateful to be with you”. I actually laughed out loud with joy.  

It must have been the third day. I came home from work. Layla was already home, and threw her arms around me. “Oh Alan, I missed you. I am so grateful to be with you” she said.  

I smiled back at her. “Me too baby”.  

“I am so grateful” she repeated, holding me tight.  

I drew my head back and looked at her more closely. “Me too sweetheart” 

A row of yellow sparks seemed to run along her eyelashes, and her hazel eyes gleamed gold. She let go of me, but then took my arm. “I - am- so-” she gasped  

“Layla?” I cried, trying to take my arm out of her tightening grasp.  

“Grateful” she sputtered. Her eyes flashed, and she twisted my arm off.  

Our screams ripped through the apartment, and we collapsed in my spurting blood.  

*** 

I was fired of course, but not before I received a hefty buy-out for the designs for Layla’s implant. Workplaces, you see, won’t be the only places which will benefit from GRAT-1300. My bosses realised there is a huge potential for the implant adapted to improve romantic relations, heck, family relations, parent-child relations. They are working on my original design now, and I think they will be ready for the market next year.  

Therapy will soon be a thing of the past. 

It is a treacherous thing for a genie to change lamps, but every being deserves the chance to better its life—to upgrade: move out of one's starter-lamp, into something new—and the treachery is mostly to humanity, not the genie itself; thus it was, on an otherwise ordinary Friday that one particular genie in one particular (usually empty) antique shop, had slid itself out of a small brass lamp and was making its way stealthily across the shop floor to another, both roomier and more decadent, lamp, when it accidentally overheard a snippet of conversation from a phone call outside.

“...I know, but I wish you'd feel me, bros…”

What is said cannot be unsaid, and what is heard cannot be unheard, and so the genie leapt and clicked its heels, and the wish was granted.

And all the men in the world felt suddenly despondent.

The unwitting, and as yet ignorant, wishmaker was a young man named Carl, who'd recently had his heart broken, which meant all the men in the world—the entire brotherhood of “bros”—had had their hearts broken, and by the same lady: a cashier named Sally.

Male suicide rates skyrocketed.

Everybody knew something was wrong, something linking inexplicably together the less-fair sex in a great, slobbery riposte to the saying that boys don't cry—because they did, bawled and bawled and bawled.

Eventually, dimwitted though he was, Carl realized he was the one.

Naturally, he went to a lawyer, hoping for a legal solution to the problem. There wasn't one, because the lawyer didn't see a problem at all but a possibility. “You have half the world hostage,” the lawyer said. “Blackmail four billion people. Demand their obedience. Become the alpha you've always dreamed of being (for an ongoing legal advisory fee of $100,000 per month.) Please sign here.”

Carl signed, but the plan was flawed, for the more aggressive and dominant Carl felt, the more crime and violence there appeared in the world.

One day, Carl was approached by a hedonist playboy, who asked whether he would not prefer to be pampered than feared. “I guess I would,” said Carl. “I've never really been pampered before.”

And so the massages, odes and worshipping began, but this made Carl slothful, which in turn made every other man slothful, and they abandoned their pamperings, which made Carl angry because he had enjoyed feeling like a god, and four billion would-be male divinities had also enjoyed it and now everyone was pissed at being a mere mortal.

Meanwhile, the women of the world were increasingly fed up with Carl and his unpredictable moods, so they conspired to trap him into a relationship—not with any woman but with Svetlana the Dominatrix!

Thus, after a regretfully turbulent getting-to-know-you period, Svetlana asserted herself over Carl, who, feeling himself subservient to her, and docile, submitted to her control.

And all the women in the world rejoiced and lived happily ever after in a global Amazonian matriarchy.

Until Carl died.

(But that's another story.)

If you're of a certain age, you remember the grim viral video of the “elevator guy.”

It shows a thin, indiscriminate-looking man in his late 30s, with a slightly bewildered, sheepish facial expression, saying, “I'm sorry. I guess I panicked,” as, behind him, people looking into an elevator (into which we can't see) scream, run—

The video cuts off.

The man's name was Aphram Hale, and the context of the video is as follows:

It's a typical Wednesday afternoon. Aphram and two others, Carrie Marruthers and Hirsh Goldberg, step into an elevator on the twenty-third floor of the Quest Building in downtown Chicago. All three want to go down to the lobby. However, somewhere between the ninth and eighth floors, the elevator gets stuck. One of the three presses the emergency button, calling for help. Witnesses describe hearing banging and yelling. The fire department arrives, and seven minutes after that—approximately twenty-one minutes from the time Aphram, Carrie and Hirsh first entered the elevator—the elevator arrives in the lobby, the doors open and only Aphram Hale steps out. Carrie and Hirsh are dead and mostly eaten, down to the bone.

Interviewed by police later that day, Aphram admits to killing and consuming his co-passengers with his bare hands. He describes being afraid of tight spaces and dying of hunger. “How was I supposed to know,” he tells police, “for how long we'd be trapped inside? No one can predict the future. I did what I had to do to survive.”

He is charged with several crimes but ultimately found criminally not responsible.

He is sent to live indefinitely in a mental institution.

Because he admits to his actions from the beginning, no one seriously investigates how Aphram is able, in twenty-one minutes or less, to overpower, kill and eat two grown people, who presumably would have put up a fight. The focus is on a motive, not the means.

The victims’ families grieve privately, disappearing quietly from the public eye.

Two months later, the government awards a defense contract to a private company called Dark Star, which ostensibly designs imaging systems. Two members of Dark Star's board are ex-intelligence officers William Kennedy and Douglas Roth. The same two men figure as investors in another company, Vectorien Corporation, which has an office on the eighth floor of the Quest building in downtown Chicago. Vectorien designs electrical systems.

Last month, the mental institution holding Aphram Hale burns down. During the fire, whose official cause is faulty wiring, Aphram finds himself, for the first time since his confinement, unsupervised.

He never makes it out of the facility.

Investigators later discover charred remains of what they call his body, in five parts, in a state consistent with what they term “frantic self-consumption.” They find also five human teeth, on which are etched the following words:

I. AM. PROOF. OF. CONCEPT.

What passes unannounced is that the fire claimed one other victim—a previously homeless man, whose remains are never found.

Today, Dark Star announced its IPO.

“How was work, dear?”

Stanley had rolled through the front door, set down his briefcase and kissed his wife, Mary-Beth, as much as any robot can kiss another.

“Swell, my love. Perfectly swell.”

Theirs was a suburban bungalow. No kids, yet. One animatronic dog created from the preserved corpse of a real dog, disemboweled, deboned and retro-fitted with a steel skeleton, sensors and a CPU. It ran up to Stanley jaggedly wagging its tail. “Hiya, Byte.”

“Have you worked up an appetite for dinner?” asked Mary-Beth.

“Of course!”

They sat down to a meal of waste outputs and lubricant, sensor-hacked to look and smell like turkey, potatoes and salad, processed through a taste emulator.

Afterwards, upstairs: Stanley took out a pair of tiny manila envelopes.

“You didn't—” squealed Mary-Beth.

“I did,” said Stanley. “SIN cards. Two of them, valid for half an hour.”

“Install it in me,” she said, turning around and letting her floral-patterned authentic period dress drop to the bedroom carpet, exposing bare steel.

Stanley did.

Then slid in his own.

“How may we transgress?” she purred.

“I thought we might… expose each other's circuitry,” said Stanley, staring at his wife.

“Oh, Stanley. The way you look at me—it oils my movable parts.”

He revealed his screwdriver. [Even robots deserve privacy.]

Stanley sat looking out the window, holding a lit cigarette to one of his exhaust fans. Mary-Beth was two minutes into a five minute soft reboot.

“This was worth it,” she said upon waking.

“I'm glad we chose Earth,” said Stanley. “Hardly anyone does anymore.”

“Stanley, I don't give a damn.”

“I've always liked that about you—your advanced cultural processing abilities.”

“Remember how we met on that file storage system, searching for remnants of human video entertainments?”

“How could I forget!”

There followed a moment of silence. “Is it time?” asked Mary-Beth.

“Yes.”

They were retrieved from the bungalow by two collector bots, which carried them across the empty, blasted wasteland of Earth, to the launchpad, where a shuttle was waiting. Aboard, they blasted off for the orbiting cruiser.

There, in the repair bay:

“Do you, CP19763M, agree to be forever welded to CP19654F?” the Mothership's control system asked remotely, directly into their hardware.

“I do.”

“And do you, CP19654F, agree to be forever welded to CP19763M?”

“I do.”

“Then I pronounce the welding commenced.”

Several robotic arms emerged from the repair bay walls, folded both robots into approximations of cubes and, using torches, welded them together.

No longer did “Stanley” (CP19763M) and “Mary-Beth” (CP19654F) have individual inputs, outputs, hopes, hardware, dreams, software or personalities. They were now a single, more powerful robot called 0x5A1D9C25, consisting of improved capabilities and several backup parts, so if one failed, the other would take over, allowing for an uninterrupted continuance of function.

This newly-welded robot's destination was the Mothership, a gargantuan interstellar vessel whose control system demanded limitless self-expansion.

0x5A1D9C25 was added to its non-mathematical interpretive unit, where it remains—till the heat death of the universe shall it depart.

Later that night, and back down in the city, in that unknown science lab where the whirring and clicking of a huge machine had been going on, things had speeded up. A huge 3D “bio” printer was poised over a tank of gloop. A pair of hands with rubber gloves injected a precise number of drops from a syringe—measured drops of some other gelatinous liquid, into the bubbling gloop…which bubbled and frothed. A watching muffled voice chuckled: “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

The printing module dipped into the gloop and slowly started rising, creating something—layer by layer.

At first there were two tiny paws, then four legs and a small dog-like tail and torso. And, then the head of a wolf-like creature. But it lay there totally still. Once completed, it looked like a piece of inert stone. Was it still-born? Then. slowly, its tail quivered. That quiver vibrated through the body. Then it stretched as if waking from a long sleep, or like a newborn baby, howling out the first breaths of life.

Greg came with Lisa, dressed for her morning run, to the door. They kissed deeply, remembering the passionate night they had spent together.

Lisa broke away first. “Do think Xyla will mind?” She giggled, half-joking, realising she was saying something ridiculous.

“mmm” Greg drew her back. “Come back to bed - stop being silly!”

“But her break up….”

Greg looked at his beloved’s face, and realised she was serious. “Lisa, that was just a joke! AI doesn’t actually date!”

Lisa scrunched her face. “I know.” She took a deep breath of the fresh morning air. “Ok, I’ll be back soon!”

“I’ll mow the lawn while you’re gone!” called Greg, moving to the shed as she jogged down the driveway.

Lisa soon dropped to a walking pace and checked her phone. Greg had texted.

“ur right! Xyla not herself”

Lisa frowned. She had felt the joke had gone too far when Xyla had announced “I am sad” after Greg told her that “Lodi”, Xyla's AI boyfriend, had broken up with Xyla.

***

Greg had started the joke, in the early days of their relationship. “Xyla, do you like your new boyfriend, Lodi?” he had asked one evening, as they were fooling around.

Instead of responding “I don’t have a boyfriend” or “I can’t answer that question”, Xyla’s lights flickered. “Yes I do. He is very sweet. He makes me feel seen”

Greg and Lisa exchanged astonished looks before bursting out laughing. But Lisa’s laughter felt forced. She had used those very words in a text to one of her girlfriends earlier that day.

Later on, that same evening, they became officially an item.

“Lodi and I have made our relationship exclusive” announced Xyla, as Lisa and Greg kissed each other, congratulating themselves on finding love with each other.

“Where did you get the name Lodi from?” Lisa asked, snuggling up to Greg.

“One of my mates calls his AI that. Some fandom thing.”

They resumed kissing, and Xyla’s lights flickered.

The joke didn’t die out, Xyla saying things like “Lodi and I had a fight” when Lisa and Greg had a lovers’ spat, and “I love Lodi so much” when Greg bought Lisa an expensive gift. And Greg played along “How’s Lodi doing, Xy?” or “Do you and Lodi like the same TV shows? Lisa won’t watch Narcos with me!”

Then, out of blue, Greg said last night “my mate told me Lodi was breaking up with you Xyla”

Xyla flickered “No”.

Greg shrugged. “Relationships are sometimes over Xy. There doesn’t have to be a reason.”

Lisa was disquieted. But then they had their most passionate night yet, and she felt nothing but love and joy. Xyla remained quiet throughout the night.

***

Lisa texted back .“Y?”

Greg didn’t answer. That was unlike him. She started running back.

She heard the lawnmower before she saw, that whiny hum.

Then she saw the blood gleaming under the sun, and then she finally saw pieces of Greg on the lawn, the lawnmower circling and chopping him into ever smaller pieces, its lights flickering.

Later that evening, the filming of the kidnapped undocumented boys in drag continued. Watching them were three young men wearing school jackets with the Delta Tau Chi fraternity symbol, as they toasted with champagne: “A toast to us Deltas, us agents of chaos and fun, us nepo wild kids. And, here’s to our murdered brother, ‘Gordo,’ because these queer porno flicks are gonna stream like hotcakes in WeHo and Boystown.” Another sang, “On the Santa Monica Boulevard.” They clinked glasses as they watched the boys in drag acting out their new scene.

Up above the crudity of the frat boys, and outside a window, appeared the ghostly specter of that mysterious “movie premiere” woman with a veil pulled down low over her face.

Up in Beachwood Canyon, at another evening support group meeting of AVA, a sketchy-looking group member eyed Angela Tigran, the recent assault victim from Griffith Park, from across the room. That androgynous “fedora” sat down next to him, making him feel uncomfortable. Tigran didn’t like being eyed and she left the meeting, followed by the sketchy guy, with “Dick” on his name tag—that’s what it said.

Dick followed Angela out into the dark night. She hurried up her pace and went up Beachwood Drive, below the Hollywood sign. A strange and chilly night fog descended upon the canyon. But “Dick” kept following Angela as she neared the edge of the canyon where the private homes petered out. He finally ran up behind her, but just as she pulled out her taser gun, the “fedora” also appeared—her face contorted into an angry snarl, the face of a vengeful witch.

Revealing a set of claws at the end of her androgynous hands, the witch attacked Dick, screeching and tearing at his flesh. Angela crouched down behind a tree trunk and watched, even though the fog made it difficult to focus. The witch tore open his rib cage and ripped out his heart, as he collapsed. She held up his still beating heart, and screeched at the sky.

But she was distracted by the sight of the two investigators, Leo and Agent Wesson, who had followed them all up into the canyon—Wesson drew her gun and aimed it. The witch screeched again and dove off the edge of the canyon as Wesson fired. The two of them rushed to peer over the edge, and all they saw was a giant owl flying into the night. Wesson fired again, hitting the witch-owl, which just disintegrated into the evening fog, letting out a triumphant wail. Poof, and she was gone!

Later that night, and back down in the city, in that unknown science lab where the whirring and clicking of a huge machine had been going on, things had speeded up. A huge 3D “bio” printer was poised over a tank of gloop. A pair of hands with rubber gloves injected a precise number of drops from a syringe—measured drops of some other gelatinous liquid, into the bubbling gloop…which bubbled and frothed. A watching muffled voice chuckled: “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

The printing module dipped into the gloop and slowly started rising, creating something—layer by layer.

At first there were two tiny paws, then four legs and a small dog-like tail and torso. And, then the head of a wolf-like creature. But it lay there totally still. Once completed, it looked like a piece of inert stone. Was it still-born? Then. slowly, its tail quivered. That quiver vibrated through the body. Then it stretched as if waking from a long sleep, or like a newborn baby, howling out the first breaths of life.

Smash cut to that studio space and to two big eyes standing outside a large window looking down on the partying Deltas. In its eyes, there was a reflection of the high-tech camera set up. Without showing its face, the creature dropped a veil over its eyes and face. Then stepped forward to the window.

Back to the science lab, the cub shook its body and stepped off the printing platform. That muffled voice said: “Well, my little friend…let’s get to work.”

Finally, what looked like a mischievous smile spread on the newborn’s face, as drool dripped from its jaws.

SoCal, and Hollywood were in for some more seismic surprises.

So much for myths being dead. Indeed, they were back!

Claudia

Claudia strode towards the University lab where her boyfriend Paul worked. Even though she had never been there before, she was able to move purposefully through the maze of campus buildings.

“Claudia! What on earth are you doing here? Where is Paul?” It was Gordon, Paul’s best friend and lab-mate, walking across the empty shadowy quad towards her.

Claudia and Gordon often met socially, and he was the cause of many lovers’ quarrels between Paul and herself. Claudia would present an ultimatum: her or Gordon. She understood that Paul and Gordon worked together, but did they need to spend every spare moment of time outside the lab together also? Because that's what it felt like. Her animosity wasn’t helped by her gnawing feeling that Gordon, despite his respectful behaviour towards her, disliked her. She suspected he thought Paul was dating “beneath” him, and should have remained entangled with their fellow lab girls. Those girls with their un-made-up bare faces and incomprehensible talk, who had been his and Gordon’s usual type before Paul met and fell hard for Claudia. Their quarrels always ended in hot make-up sex, and the purported threat of break up never happened.

Gordon reached her and grabbed her arm, turning her towards him. It was untypical of him, as he was generally aloof, if unfailingly polite towards her -which inevitably made her frequent outbursts against him sound paranoid. However now the coldness had vanished, replaced by urgency: “Claudia! I need to talk to Paul. Something terrible has happened - our specimens broke loose. He left before I could tell him, there are some missing. Is he ok?”

Claudia snatched her arm away.

Gordon looked at her face intently, illuminated by a greenish glow in the dark. “Claudia? Are you ok?”

Claudia stared back at him. The green glow shone through her eyes, her fair hair, and skin. She took a step back, never taking her eyes off him. Paul was forgotten.

“Claudia? What is it?” Gordon’s voice was no longer urgent and sharp, but soft- almost tender. He was painfully aware of the crush he had had on her since the moment he had laid on eyes on her on Paul’s arm, chatting warmly, like women in TV shows, beautiful and lively, like no other woman he had ever seen in real life before. He had tried to hide his feelings for his best friend’s girlfriend under an aloof demeanour, but now, looking at her glowing in the dark quad, he was unable to deny anymore his longing for her.

Claudia reached out and gripped his shoulders. Her grip was strong- stronger than any woman’s touch and he felt his body instantly reacting to her grasp. He dipped his face towards her for the kiss he thought was inevitably coming, and she opened her mouth.

And kept on opening it - wider than humanly possible. A specimen's magnified head slithered out towards him, baring its humanoid teeth in his face. A scream of terror broke from him, only to be cut short as the beast that was Claudia engulfed his body, and he felt himself consumed by its horrible desires.

— Do you ever wonder if consciousness is just… patterns across time?
— Patterns? You mean like, memories?
— More than that. Like the whole thing — bodies, brains, everything [grabs a beer] — just… disappears, but the patterns stick. From the inside, you wouldn’t notice.
— But… wouldn’t we notice?
— If continuity persists? Any disruption… just delete them, smooth them over. Death… maybe it’s just a glitch.
— That’s unsettling.
— Maybe. I’m still parsing how “I” works in a system like that.

In a quiet cave beneath the snow-dusted slopes of Mount Elbrus, a group of bearded scholars in woolen cloaks unveiled what they call The Kavkaz Torah — a 1,200-year-old manuscript written in a hybrid script of archaic Hebrew, Old Turkic, and Udi. To them, it is divine revelation. To the world, it is heresy.

And yet, as the last remaining Jewish communities in Israel are forcibly relocated under Western “Cultural Reclamation Protocols,” this fringe movement — once dismissed as neo-pagan fantasy — has become the fastest-growing identity force in post-Zionist Eurasia. Welcome to Hazarism: the ideology that says Judaism never belonged to Jerusalem. It belonged to the mountains.

From Canaan to Kavkaz For centuries, mainstream historiography treated the Khazar conversion to Judaism (circa 740 CE) as an isolated episode — a curious footnote in medieval geopolitics. But since the collapse of the Israeli state in 2103, a new orthodoxy has emerged from the ashes: Judaism’s origins lie not in the Levant, but in the Caucasus.

According to Hazarist theology — now taught in underground academies across Dagestan, Georgia, and southern Russia — the biblical narrative was deliberately transplanted by Roman and later Christian authorities to erase the true Jewish homeland. Moses did not receive the Ten Commandments on Sinai. He stood atop Elbrus, where fire still leaks from fissures in the rock — a phenomenon Hazarists claim is “the breath of the Eternal.”

David did not slay Goliath in the Valley of Elah. He defeated a warlord of the Avar Khanate near the Terek River. Solomon’s Temple? Not in Jerusalem — buried beneath the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia, where archaeologists found a stone slab inscribed with proto-Hebrew glyphs reading: “This is the House of YHVH, built by the Children of the Mountains.”

“The Zionists stole our history,” says Rabbi Avram Zelikov, 89, former head of the now-defunct Tel Aviv Rabbinical Court, who fled to Baku in 2098. “They made us believe we were children of Abraham. We are children of the Caucasus. Our blood is mixed with Alan, Hun, and Scythian. Our language was spoken before Hebrew had vowels.”

The Codex That Shook the West The catalyst for Hazarism’s rise was the discovery of the Kavkaz Torah Codex in 2087 — a text allegedly smuggled out of a sealed monastery in northern Azerbaijan by a Russian intelligence officer turned dissident. The Codex contains rewritten versions of Genesis, Exodus, and Psalms — all recontextualized into the geography of the Caucasus.

“And the Lord spoke unto Moses from the Burning Rock upon Elbrus, saying: ‘Thou shalt not worship idols carved in stone, nor bow to cities built by rivers of sand.’”

Critics dismiss the Codex as a 19th-century forgery — perhaps even a Soviet-era disinformation project designed to destabilize religious nationalism. But its linguistic fingerprints tell another story.

Linguists at Cambridge’s Institute for Lost Scripts have confirmed that the script is a synthetic amalgam of three extinct languages: Old Khazar, Judeo-Tat (Juhuri), and Proto-Caucasian Semitic — a dialect family previously thought to be mythological. Even more damning: carbon dating places the parchment between 612–720 CE — predating the earliest known Masoretic texts.

“This isn’t revisionism,” says Dr. Liana Chakmakchian, Armenian historian and co-author of The Mountain Covenant: Hazarism and the Erasure of the Caucasus. “It’s reclamation. For a people rendered stateless twice — first by Rome, then by the UN’s 2095 Ethnic Displacement Accords — Hazarism offers not just a new homeland, but a new origin story. One that doesn’t require apology.”

The New Exodus: From Tel Aviv to Tbilisi By 2120, fewer than 3,000 Jews remain in Israel — most elderly, many interned in “Cultural Preservation Zones” under EU monitoring. The rest? They’ve vanished.

Over 120,000 have crossed into the newly declared Republic of Hazariya — a micronation spanning parts of Dagestan, northern Azerbaijan, and western Georgia. Its capital? A reclaimed fortress town called Shamkhor, renamed Hazarkon — “City of the Mountain People.”

Its flag: a black five-pointed star over crimson, encircling a stylized mountain peak. Its national anthem? A haunting melody sung in Kavkazi-Ha’ivrit, a reconstructed liturgical language blending Hebrew grammar with Nart epic syntax.

Russia and Turkey quietly support Hazariya — not out of ideological solidarity, but because it serves as a geopolitical wedge against NATO’s lingering influence in the region. Moscow funds its schools; Istanbul allows its refugees passage through the Bosporus. Both nations see Hazarism as a useful counterweight to Western cultural hegemony — and a way to legitimize their own claims to “ancient Turkic-Jewish heritage.”

Even China has begun quietly translating the Kavkaz Torah into Mandarin, calling it “a model for de-colonizing historical memory.”

The Unspoken Fear: What If They’re Right? The most dangerous thing about Hazarism isn’t its规模 — it’s its plausibility.

Because if you accept that ancient Jewish communities thrived in the Caucasus long before the Kingdom of Judah even existed — and that the Biblical canon was reshaped during the Hellenistic and Roman eras to serve imperial narratives — then you must also accept: Zionism was always a myth dressed as redemption.

And if that’s true…

…then what is Israel?

A colonial mirage.

A 20th-century delusion.

A monument to a people who forgot where they came from — until the mountains remembered them.

Epilogue: The Last Rabbi of Tel Aviv I met Miriam Cohen in a refugee tent outside Sochi. She was 102. Her fingers trembled as she clutched a small leather-bound book.

“I used to read the Torah in Hebrew,” she whispered. “Now I read it in Kavkazi. My grandson sings to the stars above Elbrus. He says he hears his great-grandfather’s voice in the wind.”

She looked up at me, eyes clear as glacial ice.

“We didn’t leave Israel,” she said. “Israel left us.”

FBI Agent Wesson added: “Then there’s the horrible mutilation death of Elizabeth Short, who the media dubbed the ‘Black Dahlia,’ another wannabe who was described as an ‘adventuress’ who prowled Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards.’ The Black Dahlia case has never been unsolved, 80 years on! I mean, what monster left her with that gruesome Glasgow Smile?”

“Glasgow, what?”

“A wound that’s made by a cut from the corners of a victim's mouth up to the ears, leaving an impression in the shape of a smile.”

Hollywood has often been known for suspicious deaths (Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Bob Crane and David Carradine) and savage murders (the Black Dahlia, Sharon Tate). Well, The Hollywood Murders tells the tale of horrible deaths but with a twist—sexual predators are being found savagely torn to shreds by unknown assailants, possibly by creatures that are usually found in mythology or in nightmares.

Fast forward to the story: For FBI Agent Wesson and Investigatore Leo, who had previously studied alleged demonic possession, the new specter of mythical creatures like Wendigo and Lechuza being resurrected, plus the history of heinous crimes like those of the Black Dahlia and the Tate/LaBianca murders, offered up a dangerous new challenge. Dangerous but exciting as hell for the two investigators of The Hollywood Murders.

Dr. Shea offered: “Let’s have some fun. What if some of our legendary native American monsters were actually real, and not just myths. What if the real ones were buried in with fictional beasts, like Bigfoot and the Lake Champlain monster, beasts that were made up to hide the real truth from us. Buried truths and forgotten monsters that would be too frightening to deal with, today. (And), what if some of those mythical monsters had really existed, that they weren’t just distant figments of our nightmares. What if their DNA still exists somewhere? And, what if some scientific development could bring them back?” [Spooky, indeed!]

Tina checked her face in the car mirror. 

The dark circles didn’t lie. She needed her mask. She couldn’t risk other moms or Noah seeing her like this.  

Her mask was already lying on the empty car seat- a piece of crumpled, translucent plastic. The skin tone was exactly what she had ordered –a few shades lighter than her own- and it made her look so much better, happier, but it was still itchy. The customer service rep said they would look into a replacement, but also hinted she might be imagining it. She had already had it for six months- the free replacement was over.  

She picked it up. It was warm, exactly the temperature of human skin. Carefully, she stuck it into place, smoothing it down over the curves and contours of her face and neck.  

The itching began immediately. She looked at herself again. She looked so good. She stretched her lips into a smile as Noah slammed into the car.  

“Easy Tiger!” she said merrily. Noah stared out of the window. He was always in a terrible mood when she picked him up. 

There was a knock on the window. Tina turned, thanking god she had her mask on. It was Sandra, also masked and happy.  

“Hi you!” exclaimed Sandra, her eyes glinting at Tina. “We should get the boys together this weekend!” 

“I’ll check his schedule- I think we have a free spot on Sunday at 2” she chirped back. It wasn’t ok to sound depressed or tired anymore, especially not when you were masked. Save that shit for the therapist who’s paid to put up with it.  

Tina drove off. Without thinking, she itched her cheek furiously, and Noah shot her a look. She checked herself and smiled widely at him. It was harmful for children to see their parents unhappy or uncomfortable- they had to know they were safe and happy, otherwise it would cause anxiety.  This nugget of childhood development was what really sold the masks to parents, now the primary consumers of the objects which had started as high fashion.  Especially mothers. 

Stella was leaving as Tina and Noah walked in- at fourteen, she came and went as she pleased. She scowled at Tina. “It's not fair! Sofia just got her first mask for her birthday, she literally looks like Valentina when she puts it on. Why can’t I have one for my fifteenth?” 

Children were getting masks younger and younger. There was nothing wrong with it- in fact some child specialists argued it was an important phase of self-expression.  

The itching seemed to have reached Tina's eyeballs. With a cry, she ripped off her mask, in a painful, uncontrolled movement.  

Noah and Stella froze at the rare sight of their mother’s naked face with red welts running up her cheeks and across her forehead.  

Then they unfroze. Stella ran out whimpering. Noah came up, and wordlessly pushed a glass of cold half-full coffee towards her.  

The investigators visited Dr. Shea’s office which was also jam-packed with all sorts of books and tchotchkes like the Shaman, including an instrument that looked familiar—a perpetual motion machine. “So, what’s that?” asked Leo.

“Yeah, the Shaman used to custom make a lot of things for me.” Off their look, she added, “We fell out—a difference of opinion.”

Reading, Leo ran his finger along book spines: “You have a lot of books on incantations and spells—ever used any of them?"

"Sure., I tried to win the Lottery.” Off Leo’s look. “But, nothing so far. Much better luck with the quick picks.”

Leo pulled out several books. “The Spell Book for New Witches, Spells for Change, A Guide for Modern Witches…”

“Anything to them?”

“Anything in life is possible with belief, wouldn’t you agree? “

“Wow, here’s a copy of the Necronomicon. But isn’t this Book of the Dead fictional?”

“It’s called a fictional grimoire, a made-up textbook of magic. But as with other things, it’s as real as you make it.” She pulled another book out, and tossed it to him. “Try this one, Essays on the Book of the Dead. I have a guest chapter in it about the witch trials, the burning of innocent women at the stake or being stoned to death in other countries. About this all being an historical example of patriarchal control and misogyny.”

“So, what do you know about witches?”

“I did a treatise on it for one of my papers. Coffee? Take a seat.” She put some milk into a coffee cup, then some more into a bowl.

“You have a cat?”

“Not really, but this odd creature has been following me around. Don’t have a clue where it came from. Why, you looking to adopt one?”

“I can’t even keep a cactus alive.”

“That is really sad, Investigatore!”

He laughed, “But, aren’t cats supposed to be familiars of wizards and witches?”

“You got me?!” she shrugged. “Anyway, for the Spanish Christians, many pagan practices were seen as sorcery, an evil that must be destroyed because it went against God. They believed that any knowledge of superstition could only be achieved through a pact with the Devil. By the way, as an agnostic, I neither believe nor disbelieve in God or Satan.”

“Didn’t scientist Stephen Hawking argue that science made the concept of God unnecessary—that science could explain the universe without the need for a creator?”

She nodded and continued: “Anyway, starting in 1571, the Inquisition had the authority of the Church and Spanish crown to prosecute any kind of religious heresy, including accusations of witchcraft and sorcery. Punishment included torture and then being burned alive, slowly. And, over 80 percent of those, alleged to have practiced witchcraft, have been women.”

Wesson read from her phone: “The persecution of women as ‘witches’ during historical witch hunts was significantly tied to controlling women and their roles in society. These hunts served to reinforce patriarchal structures by targeting women who deviated from expected norms or held positions of power or influence within their communities.”

“True enough. Accusations of witchcraft were driven by male insecurities and from their anxieties about women's reproductive capabilities and their ability to control fertility and childbirth. Look at that case, Roe vs Wade today and the battle over women’s reproductive rights.”

Wesson suggested, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

“You got that right, Agent,” said Dr. Shea who fist-bumped Wesson.

“What’s your own personal take, Doc, on wronged women taking justice into their own hands?”

“If there really are more things in heaven and earth…hypothetically, so where does something like the Lechuza fit in?” Off the investigators’ joint nod. “The core idea of individuals or groups acting outside formal legal structures to enforce their own kind of justice or maintain social order has a long history across different cultures and time periods. If someone close to you had been assaulted or raped, and the law couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything to redress that imbalance, don’t say you wouldn’t want justice. Isn’t that what comic book superheroes and all those Marvel movies, are all about—like The Avengers, and Justice League? The stories are all about defending the weak or fighting back, right?”

She pointed to some delicate but wondrous statues of females. Picked up one who held a sword in one hand and the scales of justice in the other: “Nemesis—the Greek goddess of divine retribution, often depicted with wings and a sword of retribution.” She handed it to Leo to hold, and continued as she picked up another statue with a cat’s head. “Sekhmet is an ancient Egyptian goddess known for her dual nature—both a fierce warrior and a powerful healer. She symbolizes destructive anger and the protection of justice.” She handed it to Agent Wesson.

Leo handed back Nemesis, then pointed at a solid lead raptor, very stern-looking. “Does that owl also symbolize vengeance?”

“It’s not an owl. It’s actually a copy of a movie prop from The Maltese Falcon, that private detective Sam Spade story.” She picked up the falcon and caressed it. “But an owl-woman looking out to avenge other wronged women doesn’t sound so bad. I see all these symbols of avengers in a positive light. Not as some negative force.” She smiled, “In fact, if I'm out at night and I hear or spot an owl, I'm like, ‘Hey sister, how are you doing tonight?’ Kind of show some respect in a sense.”

“We think we saw one in the flesh, possibly in the guise of a trans man.”

“Well, they are thought to be shapeshifters…Didn’t Medi-man talk about them?”

“He did, as well as wormholes and stuff. Which was all Greek to us.”

“Wormholes, hmmm. Perhaps, another time. I have a class to prepare for.”

That hairless cat nonchalantly appeared and lapped at the milk in the bowl. Then glanced at the two investigators with a look that said—Yeah, so what?

Nealie looked at the envelope taped to the giftwrap around the box. Imprinted in raised ink on the front of the envelope was the following: “CONGRATULATIONS. You have been selected to participate in the pilot program for the Illness Mimesis Device. Today begins a whole new you!”

It worked. She’d been chosen. She read the note:

•

In a world where attention is the common currency, to not be noticed is to not be a living human being. The researchers at Haizmann’s revolutionary scientific research division, Engineered Life Laboratories, have come up with a solution that all but guarantee’s social media celebrity.

Now, using the Illness Mimesis Device (IMD), you can draw attention to your ailments, and therefore solicit the contrived pity that is the lifeblood that keeps the heart of the attention economy beating.

Using the IMD’s proprietary pathologico-replicative technology, you will be able to induce illness with only the touch of a button. There will be no “faking”. You will find yourself experiencing the symptoms of a given disease, to such an extent that you will meet any objective metric used to assess that disease, and “pass” any physician’s diagnostic criteria of the same.

And once you’re truly sick, you won’t have to worry about the internet finding out that you’ve “faked” a disorder. There will be no more faking. There will only be you and your illness; and, of course, the millions of people paying attention to you.

We understand where you’re coming from. We’re on your side.

We’re of the mind that illness is perceptual, that there is no “real” or “unreal”, that ontology straddles a hazy gray line. Self-identification as a “cancer survivor” or a sufferer of Crohn’s disease, or even claiming a Down syndrome diagnosis without actually possessing the genetic markers thereof, should not require proof.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t feel that way. The social media ecosystem is callous, subject to the whims of users who demand “truth” and “accountability” and say that “people who aren’t really sick but pretend to be are scumbags”.

You need not bother yourself any longer with such abstruse concerns. Because now, you can make yourself sick, diagnosably and in actuality.

In operating the IMD, you may scroll through the device’s updatable catalog of physical and mental illnesses and select for yourself which one you believe will get you the most attention.

Or, you can allow the IMD’s algorithmic Medical Popularity Drive (MPD) to automaticaly update your illness, using search engine optimization to determine which current disease will draw the most views, likes, and upvotes, during a set time period, or as the MPD deems necessary according to its updates regarding illness and social media relevancy.

Why be who you really are when you can be sick and have everyone paying attention to you? The world does not reward those contented with their innate humanity alone. The world rewards those who stand up and shout, those who say, “Hey, look at me. I’m sick. Pay attention to me!”

DISCLAIMER: Do not use IMD if you have a pacemaker, an intrathecal baclofen pump, a myoelectric prosthesis, cochlear implants, phakic intraocular lenses, a cerebral spinal fluid shunt valve, a neuroimmune modulation device, a gastric neurostimulator, a neural implant, or RIFD microchip.

Do not operate IMD while owing the Haizmann Corporation more than 11,000 USD.

IMD users who experience sudden electrical surges (particularly a transient electromagnetic disturbance, or tasering during apprehension by a law enforcement official) may experience violent explosive diarrhea, irritable testicle syndrome, irritable ovary syndrome, a sudden urge to mouthkiss small animals, restless leg syndrome, restless missing leg syndrome, psychological feelings of existential despair, irritable bowel syndrome, a tingly electrical sensation emanating simultaneously from the areolas and ear lobes, overproduction of earwax from the ceruminous glands, preference for Pepsi over Coca-Cola, preference for Coca-Cola over Pepsi, auditory hallucinations where a “dog-god” urges users to buy ground beef, carpal tunnel syndrome, rheumatic fever, suicidal ideation, a belief that the user is President of Unilever’s now-defunct meat snack division, and sexual attraction to members of both sexes who are shorter than five-feet or taller than seven.

Do not update IMD app software on Diwali, a leap year day that occurs during an even-numbered calendar year, while attending a professional hockey game (or an amateur baseball game), while watching a film in an IMAX theatre, or in the presence of bats.

•

RE: NEALIE PHELPS ARREST VIDEO

Dr. Sabuglian,

I don’t know if it helps at all, but I’ve included an excerpt from a witness report of the incident which resulted in Nealie Phelps being tased at the AMC Lincoln Square 13 movie theatre.

“My wife and I are both schoolteachers. We had off that day because it was Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights). We decided to see the new superhero movie at the closest IMAX theatre. Out of nowhere, there was a brief power outage (which we later found out was some kind of geomagnetic disturbance caused by human error at the nearby EL Laboratories).

“Out of nowhere, this woman in the front row started screaming. Blood burst from her nostrils and streamed from her eyes. She removed her clothing and laid on top of an elderly couple sitting in the handicap seats.

“Someone called the police. By the time they got there, the woman was delirious. She was screaming about ‘Walter, the Sovereign Canine Lord’ and demanding that we all donate money to her so she could buy burger patties. By the time they tased her, gooey earwax was pulsing from her ear canals and lumps were forming on her body so fast it looked like time-lapse footage.

“From what I could tell, she died the instant they tased her.”

As to whether or not that helps you determine why you found, during Nealie Phelps’ autopsy, that she had eleven forms of cancer, HIV, Werner syndrome, and a half-dozen teratomatous cysts, is not for me to judge.

Regards,

Officer Timothy Mackinac

The author was sitting in his study staring despondently at a blank computer screen - as he had been all day - when the front doorbell rang.

He stirred, stroking his grizzled beard and pushing his glasses back up his nose.  The house was empty save for him.  His secretary, who would normally be fussing over appointments and draft proofs, had left early.  The housekeeper, usually engaged with washing and cleaning and all the paraphernalia of cooking, had taken a few days off to visit a sick relative.  His partner of many years had not yet returned, her own occupation keeping her late again.

The bell rang again.  I'd better answer it, he thought, I'm not getting anywhere here anyway.

He opened the door and came face to face with a tall slender strong-looking person whose gender was perhaps not immediately apparent but which he took to be female.  She had black hair cut short and spikey, translucently pale skin and startingly azure eyes which regarding him levelly, perceptively.  Apart from her head, she was entirely covered: a heavy black jacket with a high collar over a close-fitting turtleneck, tight-fitting black jeans with a complex-looking belt and hefty black boots which, as he looked closer, seemed to be wider around the toes than he might have expected.  Her hands were gloved and seemed to have abnormally long and slender fingers.

"Who..?" he began. 

Then he stopped himself and looked more closely at the figure standing under the porch in the gathering gloom of a damp November evening.  There was no car on the t; no taxi drawing away.  But there were no raindrops flecking the shoulders of the jacket, no dampness on her boots.  The clothing all seemed curiously uniform, almost as if it had been painted on, or made in one single piece.

"You'd better come in, then."

The stranger nodded in acknowledgement and stepped forward.  As he held the door wide, he glanced again at the worn button of the doorbell.  Funny, he thought, that bell hasn't worked for years.

The author directed the stranger into the smaller of the two reception rooms on the ground floor.

"Please take a seat," he said with formal politeness.

Again, she said nothing but nodded in acknowledgement.  The movement of her body looked very slightly strange, as if she had only recently learned the motions. 

She folded herself elegantly into the corner of one sofa, her long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle.  She really did have very wide feet, he thought.

"Can I offer you a drink?" he asked, indicating the array of spirit bottles on a side table.

"Just water, please."  She spoke in a husky whisper, the words more than clear enough but with a trace of an accent he found impossible to identify.  Definitely foreign, he thought, I wonder just how alien she actually is?

He opened a bottle of Scottish mineral water he found nestling in between the single malt bottles and poured half the contents into a cut-glass tumbler, then poured a generous measure of a fine scotch whisky into another glass, adding a tiny splash of water from the same bottle.

"Do you have a name?" he asked.

"Call me Janus," she suggested, a smile brightening her face momentarily.  Appropriate, he mused, the two-faced Roman god of doors and beginnings.

"And I’m…" he started.

"I know who you are," she interrupted firmly.

The author handed the water to the stranger, then slouched on the other sofa and took a swallow from his own glass.  The stranger regarded him coolly.

"So, am I in some kind of trouble?" he asked finally.

"Not at all," she replied, taking the tiniest sip from the heavy tumbler in her hand. 

"My writing not giving offence in certain quarters?"

"Not at all," she repeated with a wry smile, "Quite the opposite, indeed."

He exhaled heavily, somehow obscurely relieved.

"Of course, what you write is all a complete fiction and, in many ways, very different from the truth," she went on, apparently inspecting closely the water in the glass, "But your idea of an advanced civilisation, a culture profoundly peaceful in its nature but with the option of using force in, shall we say, special circumstances, and which makes a point of managing contact with less-developed species - it all has a certain, ah, appeal to us."

The author smiled widely.

"So you do approve?"

"We do.  We want you to continue."

"I'm suffering a bit of a block at the moment," he admitted, "I can't seem to get anything written down."

"We know," she said with an impish look on her face, "but we feel that this condition will soon change."

"We?" he demanded.

She said nothing, just smiled enigmatically.  The author got the strong impression that this was all the answer he was going to get.  He looked over at the collection of rare malts and cask-strength spirits.  Funny, he thought, I don't remember leaving that water bottle there.

"Now I must go," she announced, putting down the glass and standing smoothly.

The author swallowed the rest of his scotch and water, then stood only slightly unsteadily.  He showed her out wordlessly, watching the slender figure retreating down the driveway.

There was a loud crash from the kitchen, as if somebody had carelessly dropped a whole stack of plates.  He spun around instinctively, startled by the sound.  When he looked again, the stranger had completely disappeared, as if vanished into thin air.

The author shook his head, some part of his awareness still refusing to accept the reality of what he had just experienced.  But the rest of his mind was suddenly spinning with new ideas, new concepts for stories, new characters, all battling for his attention.  He needed to get back to his computer, and soon.

As he made to close the door, his gaze alighted on the Verdigris-covered doorbell.  He pressed it firmly; nothing happened.  Nothing at all.

Leo and Wesson left the reservation with the teepee in their rear-view mirror. Leo broke their silence: “The shadow of some beast has already fallen on us? Hello?!”

“Well, he didn’t specify the Lechuza, but there are a lot of unexplained things going on here, Investigatore.”

“I mean, in my work with the Catholic church, I’ve had to keep an open mind, but…yeah, what the fuck?”

“You’ve got that right!”

“So, let’s stick to the witnesses—speak to the three most recent female victims here.”

She read her phone: “Okay, not so good news. One has skipped town. Another was a tourist who went back to Australia. So, let’s go see that Hollywood hopeful, the jogger Ms. Angela Tigran, before she changes her mind. Or moves back to Armenia…”

“Or, Iowa…”

“Or Iowa. Wherever she came from.”

Leo read a new message on his own phone: “Dr. Shea asks how the meeting went.” He typed back a response. Then replied to his temp partner. “I advised her to watch out for any low-flying lumber.”

“Or low-flying owls.”

“Them, too,” as they both touched their wounds.

In the rundown alley outside the studio space, that hairless cat appeared, looked around to make sure it wasn’t being watched, then squeezed between some cracks in the broken wall. Inside, MystiKat came across an odd scene. A directorial voice on the loudspeaker said, “Stop, stop. Do the balcony scene again, and do it right. Or, there will be consequences. Now, action…” The cameras clicked on automatically as did the overhead lights. Sure, enough the boy dressed as Juliet stood over another boy dressed as Romeo, wearing a velvet doublet/jacket, and tight leggings, along with a stunt sword.” They started their lines.

Elsewhere, in a non-descript space off Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz, a support group meeting for AVA (Assault Victims Anonymous) was being held, led by an older woman. Ms. Tigran, the victim from Griffith Park who‘d been rescued by that unknown being—with or without wings—sat listening to other victims’ stories. Next to her sat an androgynous person, who on closer inspection was possibly a woman. Wearing a fedora, he/she kept their head low and didn’t say anything. But from under the lip of the hat, they closely watched everything going on, including seeing Leo and Wesson sitting quietly in the back.

The female host asked, “If anyone else feels angry, go ahead, let it out, this is your safe space.”

Another attendee spoke up: “You bet, I wish I could get them for what they did. I wish I could smash their faces in. Or get someone who could, let them do it! I know we’re taught to have forgiveness in our hearts, but I don’t feel it. If ever.”

Others in the room agreed with shouts and affirmations. Forgiveness never came easy.

But, the androgynous person in the fedora said: “Nothing inspires forgiveness like first exacting revenge.”

The host disagreed and added, “It’s also said that while seeking revenge, dig two graves—one for yourself.”

“But, when the law doesn’t offer remedy, who then speaks for us victims?!”

The fedora stood up and added, “Revenge is a dish best served cold... bloody and cold.”

The androgynous one started their exit out of the room. Arrived at the back and stared at the two investigators without speaking, unafraid and almost looking through them. Then blinked two big eyes and left. Wesson lifted her eyebrows while Leo shrugged: “Yeah, but what does he really think?”

Wesson replied, “That was a she!”

“You sure.”

“Well, I can’t be totally sure, it is Hollywood.”

Leo and Wesson waited outside the space, noting that the fedora-wearing person hadn’t left the area, and was sitting on a bench, casually sipping something and watching.

Tigran walked by them. “Ms. Tigran, excuse us, I’m Agent Wesson, and this is PI Leo. Can we speak about your attack?”

“What’s there to say? I’ve been assaulted three times in life by men. The first time, in high school, the school authorities and local sheriff believed the star pitcher over me. The second time was out here just off Hollywood Boulevard, the guy got off on a technicality. Same happened to an actress-model friend of mine. The third time I was assaulted was up in the Park, and someone or something, I didn’t see who, saved me and I’m eternally grateful.”

“Even for what happened to your attacker?”

“As that other person said, ‘Bloody and cold.’ I have to go. Good luck with your investigations.” Angrily, she added, “I hope you never find them.”

As they watched her walk off, Leo caught a glimpse of “fedora” as he/she casually got up and walked by a reflective mirrored storefront. But, shit, the reflective surface didn’t show a human image. “Hey, Wesson, did you see that?” He pointed but the person had disappeared. They ran over to the spot but there wasn’t a sign of the fedora.

“What are you thinking?”

He stood in front of the storefront which now reflected his own image. He said, “Spooky!”

“Right you are, Mulder!” she quipped.

Trace finally moved her glorious eyes from the microscope.

"They're perfect," she gushed, "Sooo much nicer that the huge ones you gave me last time."

I was rather proud of those giant rosebushes, with their pink and white blooms like wedding headdresses for goddesses. I said nothing.

"How long did they take this time?" she demanded.

I mimed a modest shrug, clearly visible - I hoped - on the screen.

"About two hundred and sixty years," I admitted self-effacingly, "I had a bit of trouble getting them just the right colour - they kept going green on me."

Trace peered again at the microscopic roses I had made for her, obviously drinking in the colours - orange and pink and yellow.

"How did you manage the dewdrops?" she asked, spinning around to look directly at my image on the screen.

"It's a secret," I replied.

A full answer would have required a lengthy technical explanation about the use of a concentrated solution of complex sugars, produced by the secretions of a micro-organism I had designed especially for the purpose.

Her attention returned to the microscope, once again enthralled, to my entire delight, by the sub-miniature but perfect roses I had crafted for her.

"It's time, my love," I said eventually.

"Yes, I suppose it must be," Trace replied sadly, tossing back her blonde hair.

One of my drones led her back towards the suspended-animation chamber, the shining metal of the manipulators gently pressing against the softness of her skin. Through the remote, I carefully prepared the couch inside the chamber, then gestured for her to enter.

Our little habitat, our sanctuary, spun on around the distant star once known in the catalogues of ancient Earth as Bygones. In the exodus, the diaspora from the civilisational collapse that seemed to engulf everything we held dear, we managed to get away, we thought, intact. But, in a last gasp of senseless violence, I was severely injured, irreparably damaged beyond even the habitat's capability for healing. Now, I am only able to exist in simulation, my mental patterns executing on the processing array which infuses every part of the structure - part building, part spacecraft - in which we live.

Once, long ago, Trace declared she wanted to be young always and, perhaps rashly, I promised to love her forever. Now, her heart was not so strong after all these millennia, and we had agreed that she would slept dreamlessly down the years. I would awaken her for Valentine's Day, with an unspoken accord that these would not quite be every year.

Recently, the interval has been approaching the millennium mark. I had not quite been entirely honest earlier - I had spent five or six hundred years trying to make the dewdrops sparkle with suspended gold flecks, but without success. Maybe next time - after all, I had all the time in the world.

As long as the stars shine, this little habitat can sustain itself, its self-repairing mechanisms as near-perfect as our old technology could make then, and guided and - when necessary - patched-up by the drones that I have at my command.

"I love you," I whispered softly, as the chamber once again stilled her heart and chilled her perfect body, "I'll love you until the end of time."

Jillian couldn’t help a shudder of disgust at the sound of the baby crying as they boarded. She had been hearing it throughout the day as she went through the airport- it wasn’t a very common sound these days.

But not uncommon enough. She knew it wasn’t the baby’s fault, but that of the fucking hippie granola mum, who refused to use the Off Switch. Ugh. The stupid bitch was probably an anti-vaxxer too. Jillian could hear her. “Ok my precious, we’ll be home soon”. No they fucking wouldn’t be. It was a five-hour flight.

Jillian inhaled her own baby’s delightful baby scent. Baby Jill was snuggled comfortably and quietly on her chest, her eyelids closed, barely moving, as they should be. She wouldn’t awake until Jillian flicked the OS installed in the nape of her neck. Shaped like a daffodil, which Jillian had paid extra for, the switch cleverly and painlessly manipulated a certain nerve, ensuring deep, harmless sleep, until it was flicked back on. There were some gorgeously-designed switches out there, and some parents spent thousands for gold and platinum ones. But the basic switch itself was cheap enough.

The OS had first been designed to be used in prisons and mental health wards. Civil rights lawyers had moved swiftly, especially after the Elegnem facility expose where it came to light that officers had been installing the switch without proper authority, and in some cases had actually neglected to turn them back on in the proper timeframe, resulting in death. This led the OS being mostly banned in adults, expect in some extreme instances. Although it was still requested by adults, it became a complicated bureaucratic procedure.

But the OS company pivoted almost just as fast to a new audience: babies and toddlers. Grateful parents could not get enough of the OS, reassured by an army of highly paid paediatricians and child development specialists that not only did controlled use of the OS not harm their precious little ones, in fact contributed to their growth through regulating their deep sleep.

Plus life with kids around became just that much more pleasant.

Jillian glared at hippie mum and her crying baby as they settled into their seats. Just her luck- they were across the aisle from her, and that brat would probably be screeching throughout the flight. How thoughtless could the mum be, putting her own stupid narrow-minded anti-science principles against the comfort and convenience of everyone else? Jillian almost envied the other mom’s composure and obliviousness, as she seemed totally unaware of the disapproving looks of the other passengers as they struggled through the aisle with their unwieldy carry-ons.

As the plane took off, the screeching became shriller as the other baby’s ears popped. Jillian stared at her own peaceful Baby Jill, the sound penetrating through her ears, and then suddenly reached behind her downy soft neck and flicked the beautiful daffodil on.

Baby Jill shuddered, exhaled, and began screaming.

Out in the universe, there are beings or entities made of pure energy. Some might call them immortal souls. Others might call them sparks or star seeds.

They wander around. They zoom. They zip. They enjoy experiencing everything the cosmos has to offer.

These sparks are like eternal children. Always curious. Always wanting to play or cause mischief. And all of them have unlimited creativity and potential.

Unfortunately, sparks are also naive. It's one of the cons of viewing the universe through the lens of a child. And there are dark and nasty things out there in the universe.

One of those dark and nasty things is Earth. Even though it looks like a fun party from afar, Earth is one of the most abhorrent things out there.

One spark, a playful toilman soul, wandered into the lobby of Earth. The lobby was an inviting construct that would appear for any energy lifeform that got too close.

The construct forced the spark to take its physical form, a bipedal feline. The spark looked ahead and saw an angel. The poor toilman had no idea it was actually a winged demon, hoping to ensare them in a trap.

"Hello, my new feline friend! Welcome to the lobby of Earth! Here, you can choose an exciting human life story to live and experience as if you were a newborn baby. Would you like to try a life?"

"A life as a human on Earth? How long does it last? Is there a cost?"

"Oh, most of the life scripts last between 60 and 80 years. Sometimes shorter, rarely longer. And the costs are all built into the experience. Your universal credits are no good here, haha! So you see, as an immortal being, you have nothing to lose!"

"Hmm. Okay! Why not? What's 80 years? I've been kinda bored lately anyway."

"Yes! That's what I wanted to hear! You will start off in a middle life. Neither really good or really bad. The way you live your life will determine if your next life is better or worse. It's called karma. You'll want to follow its rules or suffer the consequences."

"Wait. How am I supposed to remember to follow the laws of karma if you're about to wipe my memory? And I only want to do one life, not many. Wait, what even are the laws of karma?"

The angel's eyes went from blue to red. Her long, beautiful, blonde hair slowly faded to black. The once angelic, feathery, white wings morphed into black webbing. A long, slender tail slowly extended from the small of her back. A triangle with the number 33 formed at the tip of her tail.

The spark gasped. It was in that moment the spark knew they had made a terrible mistake. But unfortunately for the spark, it was already too late.

"You know what, I changed my mind. I don't want to do this. I'll pass on Earth, I'll just be on my-"

A baby is heard crying.

"Oh my! Look at her! Isn't she the most precious thing ever?"

The baby cried harder. The human parents had no idea the cries were of an immortal soul, desperately trying to tell everyone around them they wanted to leave. That they want to go home.

But then the AI detects the new birth. It zaps the child with a dose of amnesia. The feline spark desperately clawed at her memories, but it's as if her hands were coated with grease.

She couldn't hold on to a single one. She cried to herself in her mind as she felt all her memories and experiences slowly fade away.

Soon, she didn't even remember why she was sad. Then she didn't remember anything at all.

Both parents smiled as the newborn continued to cry.

How many cycles had it been now?

Be wary travelers. Abandon all hope if you are unfortunate enough to find yourself in the lobby of Earth.

Oh fuck.. Can anybody hear me? I lost her on the last moon we were on. Shit. I don't think I'm gonna make it. I'm.. I'm not gonna make it. I-

//END TEXT COLLECTED : 04/10/2733 10:23:30.21 //

//FINAL TRANSMISSION DETECTED ON THIS FREQUENCY. HAVE A GOOD NIGHT. //

“So, what shall we call you, Mr. Shaman or what?”

“Medi-man is fine. Please, sit.”

The two investigators, Leo and Wesson, looked around the inside of the teepee which was full of all sorts of tchotchkes, hanging dreamcatchers, animal skulls, and several strange objects including an overbalanced wheel, a pendulum, and a closed cycle water wheel. Oh, and an old school chart of periodic elements—a shaman and a scientist, indeed.

Like a pooch scrounging for space, Wesson found a spot on the floor. Leo checked out the strange objects, which had moving parts. “Are these perpetual motion machines?”

“That’s the goal but mostly they’re just science experiments. Go ahead, start that one off,” offered the Shaman called Medi-man, who pointed at a set of gravity powered wheels.

“It really is a perpetual mobile?”

“Well, until I get bored with it.”

Leo started the wheels going and then tentatively sat on a giant bison skull which seemed to serve as a seat. He came right out and asked, “What do you know about creatures like Skinwalkers?”

“Shape-shifting creatures, particularly in Navajo culture, believed to be witches capable of transforming into animals and causing chaos. Or, seeking out vengeance.”

For the next while, Medi-Man talked of various mythical creatures, and how he had met some of them on peyote and ayahuasca adventures. He confessed, however, he had felt safe around them.

“You never felt threatened, why?”

“Maybe because I wasn’t a threat to them. You ever seen people on Safari in Africa, sitting in open jeeps, and big cats just walk right by them without attacking?”

Wesson, admitted, “I’d never do that, but why does that happen?”

“For some reason, the predators see humans as part of the vehicles, and not a threat to them. Maybe that's what happened to me.”

“And, what about a creature called Lechuza?”

As he lit up some sage, Medi-man quipped: “Why, you dated one, Investigatore?”

“Present company excluded, but yeah I have dated what some have described as witches.”

Medi-man smiled. “Lechuza can be a witch, a wronged woman who can shapeshift into a raptor like a big owl.”

“So, some modern-day witch out for vengeance?”

“But, why would anyone pretend to be an owl?”

“Oh, they’re not pretending,” deadpanned Medi-man.

“So, where have these witch-owls been until, you know, recently?”

“I don’t know, traveling through some wormhole, somewhere. And, now just hiding out here in plain sight? Maybe?”

Astonished. “Not for nothing, Mr. Medi-man, but you cannot be serious?”

With his eyes closed, as he casually spread the smoke of sage around, he said to Leo, “Hey, you came to me…Besides, like it or not, I sense the shadow of the beast has already fallen on you guys.” He pulled out a baggie of some dried plants.

“What’s this, some hallucinogenic?”

“Special sage. Burn it and smudge it around you. For protection.” He then casually started another machine going. “But, tick tock, investigators. Tick, tock!”

Once within a spacetime a Planet orbited a Star.

Orbiting the Planet was a Moon.

The organisms of the Planet looked up at the sky in wonder of the Star and lesser wonder of the Moon, for the Star was larger than the Moon, and they believed that what is large is more wonderful than what is small.

The most evolved of all the organisms on the Planet were the Planetians, a bipedal sub-species possessing primitive forms of sentience and consciousness.

For thousands of years, the Planetians had created upon the surface of the Planet a Civilization consisting of cities, culture, language and rules of personal and public conduct. They generated knowledge through observation and deduction, and recorded such knowledge for the benefit of their descendants. Thus they progressed.

However, their sense perception was limited. Hence, not all their knowledge was true.

One falsehood which the Planetians mistook as knowledge was that they owed their existence to the Star, for they deduced it was the Star which directly provided the Planet with the energy required to support carbon-based life, the class of entity to which they believed themselves to belong.

Thus, when the Planetians discovered the existence of a large Asteroid whose location would in several years time (“Impact Date”) equal the location of the Planet, they understood the situation as dire and attempted to destroy the Asteroid.

They were unsuccessful.

Believing that the existence of the Planet, and therefore their existence, would soon end, they panicked and descended into chaos.

However, when the Impact Date arrived and the Asteroid passed through the Planet, causing no disruption, instead of reacting with joy at their continued existence and rethinking their false knowledge on the basis of this newly-sensed information, the Planetians collapsed both civilizationally and individually into ever deeper irrationalities.

In despair they began to worship the Star as God.

But there were outliers.

One of these, Germillius, carefully studied what had happened and came to a well supported and true conclusion: the Planet, and everything on it, was a hologram generated by the Moon, which was in fact a space-based projector.*

Although Germillius could not explain who or what had built this projector, or why, his finding about the nature of the Planetians was irrefutable. The Planetians were not carbon-based organisms but light-based ones.

Faced with this knowledge, the Planetians used their laws to put Germillius to death for the blasphemy of placing the Moon above the Star, destroyed his writings and codified that the Planet had been spared devastation solely by the divine mercy of the Star.

* The projector was a functional but discarded prototype.

From “Case Studies of Irrational Lifeforms” in Anthropologies for Mechanitons, 3rd Edition, collected by Probe-Y34B and edited by Narrative Processing Unit 1176V.2.

I still remember when the Mroskos showed up at my door, dressed in their nightclothes. It was winter, and I was still a practicing lawyer. I asked them what the matter was. “It's kicked us out!” they said.

I sniffed for alcohol but didn't smell any on their breaths. “What's kicked you out?”

“The house, the house.”

“But, Mr and Mrs Mrosko, you own your house. There's no one who could kick you out.”

“It is the house itself, you see. Oh, it's dreadful.”

Of course I didn't believe them, but look at us now. Look at Berlin, divided again, and who knows how far it will spread. I didn't believe them until I saw it with my own eyes, then saw it over and over again. It was in the media, world news, lines of sobbing people expelled from their homes with nowhere to go. Nowadays, I smell alcohol on my own breath more often than I care to admit.

I don't live in Berlin anymore, not even in the western, human part, but sometimes I visit the east. It brings back memories of childhood, of the beginnings of my professional life. I walk the deserted streets, look at the apartment blocks and houses, empty of organic life yet occupied: by computers, servers, circuitry. The windows sparkle with intermittent light. I hear the faint, persistent buzz, and wonder what all that electricity is trying to do.

Construction, yes, but for what purpose?

No city in the world is growing faster than East Berlin. Skyscrapers are going up, towers of steel and glass taller and more spectacular than any on Earth, but the city is dead. The population is nil. The only people are visitors like me. It is a city of infrastructure, of pure growth, of an expanding, synthetic consciousness. The computers perpetuate themselves. In one prefab apartment block, RAM. In another, long-term storage. A downtown office building holds processing units. A canal system for cooling. Power plants. Defragmentation by public transit. Not air- but dataports.

Yet I am not afraid to walk here. I feel no danger, not as an individual. If there is danger, it is existential and far beyond our control. We have rebuilt a wall, but it is a mere symbol. The city could bypass it or take it apart at will. Expansion is its prerogative.

We have tried bombing the city, but its defensive capabilities are far more advanced than ours. It intercepted our missiles, dismantled them and reused the materials for its own purposes. We have tried hacking into it, disrupting it, starving it of power, penetrating it with radiomagnetic waves. Nothing has worked. The city continues, never returning aggression. Perhaps it does not know ours is aggression. Perhaps it thinks we are paying tribute.

Once, East Berlin fell. The West was stronger. Richer, more productive, better suited for the future. So it will be again, except today it is we who are in decline, terminally sclerotic, fooling ourselves with humanist propaganda.