Like the majority of problems this decade, it all began with the memes. After his night shifts, Faust scrolled through them while the birds chattered vibrantly, his laptop weighing down his chest, body spent but mind awake. The screen, inches away, lit up his face like a spotlight, brighter than the sunrise outside. His eyes were cracked and dry.

The memes said things like, "When you realise you're not the most important person in anybody's life and you'll never be anything but a last resort," and they came with pictures of a cartoon character grinning at a noose. They'd make Faust snort out his nose; make his heavy computer wobble and rise as he tittered. There was something beautiful about thousands of people coming together to anonymously acknowledge the darker parts of life.

After all, it was ironic. They were funny.

And then Faust found himself in the supermarket buying four packets of paracetamol — as many as they'd let him buy. He rammed them right into the back of his medicine cabinet, hiding them with beard oils, foot creams, and complimentary bottles of shampoo. Now, when he got back from work and he let his jacket fall onto a pile of clothes next to his shoes and he lay there staring at the dust in the sunbeam poking into his room, he realised he could hear the pills whispering to him, softly.

"Who would win?" They regurgitated onto the canvas of his sleep-deprived mind. "A lifetime of struggles and hardships, or one ropey boy? Just kidding. Unless...?"

He made a noise like tch at the ridiculousness of it all, and shoved his head under the pillow, emtombing himself in the bed where it was dark and safe. The battle played out daily, as if he were treading water with no land in sight, and the cocktail of thoughts was a ball and chain, dragging him down, down, down. Would he really have been able to stay afloat forever?

Faust looked at Connie, at her trendy clothes, her perfect haircut, the way she smiled so easily as she talked on the phone. Somehow, he guessed, she'd slipped that ball and chain off, and now she was free to swim.

Tarquin was the same. Even now, he let his arms rest on the podium as he grinned. People who'd never sunk into a bottomless pit of despair were always so irritatingly insistent that he smile along with them.

Faust buried his head in his hands, like an ostrich. They were just memes. He hadn't really done it, had he?

"Sure thing, man," said Connie, dashing her phone to the floor with a flourish. "Okay, so the Scottish geezer said we've reached a milestone of like, 10 votes, and he's really proud that we're voting so much. Keep up the good work, he said!"

"That's brilliant, isn't it?" said Tarquin. "We must be getting close to making some progress, don't you think?"

"They called you just to say that?" asked Eirlys, furrowing her eyebrows. "There wasn't anything more to the message?"

"That's what I was thinking," said Connie, the corners of her mouth twitching.

"No sense in fussing over it." Haralda ripped another sheet off the clipboard and held it next to a lantern. "All those in favour of projecting a hologram of Greer's consciousness from the afterlife?"

Faust stared at his thumb as energy shot out of it like a sparkler. When he blinked, it left afterimages streaked by tears. He shrugged; put his thumb up.

7? — INVALID PERMISSION

Connie stifled a laugh behind her hand.

TOMFOOLERY, spat Kari, suddenly reanimated.

"Still?" said Eirlys. "I'm sorry, Haralda, but this is a distraction. None of this is going to work."

Something buzzed very loudly near Faust, and it took him a while to realise they were calling him on a withheld number. Generally, he treated his phone as a smaller tablet, and the only notifications he got were from his SIM provider.

"Would you mind putting it on speaker phone, this time?" asked Tarquin, smiling extra hard to try not to get on Faust's bad side.

Faust sighed and accepted the call, immediately regretting the decision to project it at maximum volume, because from the other side came his own voice.

"Faust," said the phone. His voice sounded horribly deep and crackly, and he wondered how anyone could ever bear listening to him.

"Ugh," said Faust, tensing up as he cringed. "Always a pleasure to hear from you, me."

"Faust..."

"But, if you were me, you sure as hell wouldn't be saying my name in earshot of everyone, would you?" said Faust. "Where's your fucking sense of dignity? Should I strip myself here and now, if you're so determined to drag my worth through the mud before these people?"

"...Stop going against the spirit of the rules. God, if I have to tell you lunatics again, I'm gonna start assaulting you with never ending Giga-bird action arcs. Capiche?"

Click. Faust hid his face in shame — how could anyone take him seriously when he spoke like that? He waited for the jeering to start.

"We stop, now," said Eirlys.

"Connie?" asked Haralda, rolling up her sleeves. "Are you quite sure the Scotsman was congratulating us?"

"Oh, shit, sorry," beamed Connie. "I must have got confused, or something. Can you blame me? The guy had an accent thicker than custard. At least Faust told it to us straight!"

"Aaaaaah," Faust shouted into his elbow at the indignity of it all. The others didn't seem to hear.

"Let's table motion three, then," said Haralda, scratching it out with the rubber end of her pencil. "Connie, I believe you were intending to propose the fourth and final motion of our meeting?"

MOTION FOUR

"Sure, man," said Connie, her eyes still lit up like she was watching a sitcom.

Haralda crossed her arms. "I would prefer to be addressed as Madame, thank you very much."

"Man's gender neutral nowadays! Anyway, credit where credit's due, this is a Team Shame proposal, and it should put an end to all the mystery. We want to open portals to the people on the other side of the phone so that we can find out who the fuck they are, speak with them, and, I guess, disprove the ridiculous idea that we murdered them!"

"Thank you," they chorused.

"It seems sensible enough to me," said Haralda. "Are there any objections? ...Kari?"

NONE. Kari held up their shiv reverently. THEY WILL SOON KNOW THAT EVEN IN THE AFTERLIFE, THEY CANNOT ESCAPE THE DJINN. I SHALL HAVE MY REVENGE TWICE OVER.

Faust got to his feet, and held up an arm, limply.

"I don't want to," he said.

"Uh," said Haralda, glancing over him. "Is that the extent of your objection?"

"Maybe the price of knowledge is too steep. Maybe there's a reason we made ourselves forget. Maybe I'm happier to go on without knowing. I don’t know if I could live with myself if I found out that kind of a truth."

"Come on, now," said Tarquin, walking over.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Faust rolled his eyes. "This again?"

And Tarquin slapped him, clean across the face.

"Get it together, won't you?" he said. "You can think yourself in knots all you like, but you're never going to get an answer if you don't come over here and face the truth! You just don't know, so what exactly are you doing moping around about it? How about getting all the facts BEFORE you decide what to feel, eh? Maybe you did kill yourself! Maybe! But until you know that for a fact, why are you hiding in the corner, ashamed and scared, letting that counter rack up and up and up and up? That's going to help you, is it? I've had enough of you making me look like the bad guy for giving a shit! How about you start treating me and everyone around you with a little more respect?"

Faust stared at him. Slowly, he took a breath and tilted his head.

He said, “Wow, Tarquin. Didn’t know you had it in you.”