Ever heard something repeated so many times it begins to lose meaning?

It doesn’t even take that many repetitions. The syllables begin to bleed, fricatives and sibilants blending together into a phonetic puddle that holds less meaning than white noise. If the repetitions continue, you can watch someone repeating the word, observe the movements of their lips carefully, and still not be able to make it out, the original sound and form utterly lost to you. This phenomenon has a name: semantic satiation. 

And for me, that word is “sorry.” 

I’ve heard it so many times across my life that it has lost all significance beyond the enmity it invokes. 

Whether it’s your situation, your mother’s drinking problem, or one of life’s little tragedies, someone will find a way to be sorry for it.

And, there is no word in the English language as useless as “Sorry.” 

Which was why, as my only friend blubbered in my arms and I tried in vain to avoid the tears and snot streaming from his face, I was determined not to apologize. Platitudes helped nothing. It was better to be useful. 

“Those assholes. They can’t do this to me. I’m gonna sue them into the ground.” 

I held my tongue, biting off a sharp response before it was spoken aloud. I knew my first responses had a tendency of coming out harsh, something he wouldn’t respond well to. 

So, I opted for a simple denial. “No you won’t, Nick.” 

We were both students at Talmont high. Ironically, not too long ago I hated Nick. He used to be part of the upper social stratosphere. The chic, sophisticated, athletic, and techno-savvy group that looked down on everyone else, oozing with confidence and self-assured pedantry. Not to mention he looked the part: wavy brown hair, near-colorless blue eyes, and outweighed me by at least eighty pounds of pure muscle. 

Which is why we likely made a bizarre sight. Him, bulging, oversized, yet clinging to me in the abandoned computer lab as if the slightest breeze could blow him away. 

It was a butchered horse collar tackle that did him in. Couldn’t get his balance right after the hit. His leg snapped backwards, ending his career with a made-literal fall from grace. Now he walked with a metal reinforced brace and a single crutch. 

He hadn’t taken the adjustment well, wasn’t able to accept the end of his tenure at the apex of the school’s hierarchy. He turned against the skid. Hit the gym just as hard and chased more girls than he ever had on the football team. Which led us to this unfortunate series of events. 

“Everyone’s seen it man. Everybody. Someone taped an elephant with a tiny trunk and googly eyes to my locker this morning. Someone’s gotta pay for that.” Nick wiped at his eyes angrily. 

I was about to comment that I hadn’t seen it, but stopped when I realized that wouldn’t matter. At school I existed outside the hierarchy. There was no individual group or clique that I belonged to and, as such, I was effectively no one. And, to be honest, I liked it that way. 

“Look,” I said, “there’s no positive outcome going that route. At best, you win, get some mild to moderate revenge, and watch in horror as the civil case starring your junk goes viral. Basic Streisand effect. At worst, you fail and just come off as… a loser.” I was going to say impotent, but figured that was not the word he needed to hear right now. 

“There needs to be consequences for this shit. If it was some girl, heads would be rolling—“

I rolled my eyes as he ranted. It was blatantly untrue—the number of girls at the school with leaked nudes was astronomical and rarely resulted in any significant fallout. 

“Let me ask you something. Say you wanted to send something out and wanted to make sure it couldn't be traced back to you. How would you do that?”

“Snapchat.”

Another eye roll. “No, that can be traced back to you. You'd use Signal, or Echo, or Vigilant. Shit that's untraceable by design. Which I guarantee you is what those asshats are using. The ones at the top of the chain at least.”

He clung to me tighter. I felt a squish as his nose smeared against my shoulder and fought the urge to push him away. “Then what am I supposed to do, Matt? I can't be invisible like you. This is gonna follow me.”

I let the shot slide without taking it personally. He wasn't wrong, and he was upset. Being good looking and popular had its perks, sure, but the downside is you never really learn how to keep your head down. 

“Skip the pointless lawsuit and go on vacation,” I said.

“What? Just disappear?” 

“Just a week. The school board won't stop you, and they'll probably be relieved that you're gone. Starve them out and the vultures will move on.”

“What if I come back and they haven't?”

“They will.” I reiterated. “Trust me.” I must have put too much emphasis on the last half because he looked up at me, suspicious. 

“You know something.”

I hesitated. The person I had in mind was Jinny Stiles. I’d never spoken to her, but when you're socially persona-non-grata you're good at picking things up. She belonged to the same social group Nick had. Popular. Pretty. She’d been head over heels for her college boyfriend, ducking parties to hang out with him every weekend. Her friends started making jokes about weight gain. Then she disappeared for a month and came back with a dead-eyed smile and a flat stomach. No more ducked parties for the boyfriend. And if I'd noticed, there was no way the rest of them hadn't.

They might torment Nick. But they'd eviscerate Jinny. Tall poppy syndrome beat punching down on a cripple any day. It wasn't really my style to air out someone else's dirty laundry, but it's not like it'd been told to me in confidence.

I settled on a compromise: partial information. “Stiles’ number is up. Could hit any day now. Better you're not here when it does.”

Nick’s eyes bulged. “Jinny? Why? She's nice. She's the only one who still talks to me.”

I grimaced, ignoring the fact I was actively being left out of that statement. “Just take the week, Nick.”

Nick stared at me. I could tell the direct command had rankled, bothered him. He was used to calling the shots. I was about to rephrase when he deflated, stepping away. 

“You creep me out sometimes,” Nick said.

“Thanks.”

“No, really. Where do you even get this shit? It's like you have a split-personality. You talk like you're some savvy socialite one minute, then start sweating when some flabby freshman with braces asks you for directions.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “You're leaving out the part where I'm usually right.” 

“Yeah. I know.” Nick grunted, limping towards where he'd left his crutch leaning against one of the many desks. 

“Hold it.” I held out a hand. “You have something to tide me over while you're gone?” 

“Who said I was going?”

He did. With his body language. The way he pulled into himself, feet facing the door. Surrender, clear as if he had screamed it. Of course, I didn't say any of this. 

I pushed my hand towards him. “Come on, cough it up.” 

Nick smiled and some of his usual cockiness came back. “Glad you remembered, because I caught a haul.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper. There were underlined subheadings with names and phone numbers. And, true to his word, many more than usual. 

“Five essays, three SATs, and there's a partridge in the pear tree my friend.” He tapped the name at the bottom of the list. 

I whistled. “LSAT. Damn. Really making your ten percent.” My fee for the law school admissions test was five times what it was for the SAT. Largely because the test was hard, filled with fuck-you questions and a general pain in the ass. “How'd you snag that?“

“Friend of a friend.”

“You talked to them about expectations?”

He waved my concerns away. “Yeah, they know about the code, the voice changer, and to expect a blocked caller.”

“Nick.”

“I promise.” He sounded annoyed. But the last thing I wanted was another freak out. 

“Okay, just making sure. Enjoy your vacation.” 

Nick hobbled away from me, then stopped. He cast a worried glance my way. “Matt. This thing with Jinny.”

I shook my head. “It's gonna get out one way or another.”

“Sure.” He bit his lip. “But if it doesn't, promise you're not going to help it along?”

I had no plans to. Talmont would almost assuredly do it for me. But if it somehow didn't come out before the end of the week, well, then things got a little more complicated. What it boiled down to was that, despite his faults, I cared about Nick. That was rare for me. And I didn't care about Jinny, or the fact that Nick cared about her. 

Maybe you think that makes me a horrible person. That's fine. I never claimed otherwise.

I gave him a false smile. “Won't raise a finger.”

There’s a certain art to walking around unnoticed. The first mistake most people make is literally keeping their head down. You don’t want that. It sends the wrong signals: small, weak, vulnerable. In a naturally hostile environment—high-school, for example—you might as well be carrying a flashing bother-me sign for any given observer with elevated testosterone. 

Instead, you want to keep your gaze focused downward at the floor at around a 45-degree angle. Keep to a wall, but don’t walk too close. Wear clothes that suit the surroundings, nothing too bright or flashy. Most importantly, don’t make eye-contact. 

 I wish I had a better excuse for what I am. Why I don't feel things the way other people do, why empathy is so hard for me. Some trite, tidy backstory would go a long way in explaining my shortcomings. That I was bullied mercilessly. That my village was set on fire and my parents slaughtered. 

But none of that is true. I live in a city, not a village, and no one would bother to raze it. My family is poor, but we get by. My siblings are all alive and well. And God is just someone whose house we visit on holidays. 

The reality was that I was bored. I wanted a break from the monotony. I wanted something to happen. Good or bad, it didn’t matter.

I was such a fool. 

My first mistake was not looking up on my walk home from school. I had a lot on my mind, specifically which college to attend. It should have been a shoe in. I had a partial scholarship to Berkeley which made it almost affordable, and I was interested in engineering, so the choice seemed clear. 

But there was a wrinkle. I didn't have to listen to the late night raving and see the litany of empty bottles to tell you that the double initial organizations and group meetings weren't doing anything for my mother’s problems.

Yeah, I know. That shouldn't matter. It's my future, not hers. But I didn't like the idea of leaving my little sister and brother alone to deal with the fallout. Iris and Ellison—my siblings—were still too young to understand the considerable level of upkeep my mother required.

So I had the option of choosing selfishly, and taking my almost-free ride to Berkeley. Or, I could stay local and see what financial aid I could scrounge up from the local dregs. Maybe something in the surrounding metroplex, maybe something in Oklahoma where I could drive home easily if something happened. Not that I had a car. Maybe I could save up for one, or find a way to tap into my meager savings for the down payment. But that would mean working like a slave for my last few semesters, trying to scrounge up tuition. The only other alternative was doubling down now. 

But how?

I had two part-time jobs already, not including my extralegal testing and responsibilities at home. Taking another job would mean reducing my already meager four or five hours of sleep a night to two or three. 

The prospect alone made me feel tired. That's the downside of being poor. There aren't any good options. It was too much to consider, too much to even comprehend. If I felt like rolling the dice I could look into investing my money, but the only option that would possibly yield enough to make it worth while in such a short period of time would mean going with her. Someone I knew from personal experience to be both flaky and unreliable. 

Maybe that's why I missed the meteor, hurtling downward. Perhaps my mind was so preoccupied with the possible tangles of my future that I couldn't even be bothered to notice the nascent horrors of my present. 

“Matt!” A woman’s voice. 

What? I’d done nothing to draw attention to myself. 

Still, Sai Park, a Korean student with long silky hair and nice figure—despite the obviously padded bra—stood staring at me. Her phone was held limply in her hands. She was barely in uniform, plaid skirt rolled up just above her knee and her simple dress shirt adjusted to wring maximum style from the drab, conservative garb. A bright orange kerchief hung around her neck. Exactly the sort of person I didn’t want to see me. My heart jumped. My mouth dried at the prospect of even talking to her. 

Mouth open, horrified, she pointed behind me.

Someone screamed. Then another person, then another. I spun around to look. The street was usually bustling with activity, but foot traffic was frozen. Everywhere I looked people were staring at the sky, frozen, hands over their mouths. 

Finally, I looked up. 

My first, stumbling thought was that the freak occurrence of nature that was going to end my life had a tail, which didn't make sense for something that close. But like all forces of nature, it didn't have to. To my left, I saw a man and  woman cling to one another. A group of girls from my high school huddled against the walls of a nearby bank, trying to make themselves small, like prey cowering before a predator.

There was a deafening crash as an SUV slammed into a parked car, driver trying desperately to flee. 

A million thoughts went through my mind before I landed on one: It was over. All of it. I knew, in that moment, what death looked like. It was inevitable. I could be on a jet right now, breaking the sound barrier, and still end up in the blast of that thing.

I turned around to look for Sai, but the space where she was standing was now empty, like she’d never been there to begin with. 

Mouth dry, I pulled my phone from my pocket and called home. It took a couple tries before I got through. 

My little brother’s voice carried over the line. “Hello?” He sounded bewildered. 

I watched the meteor glow brighter and brighter blue, growing larger by the second. “Hey Ellis. You and Iris okay?”

“Matt, I'm scared.” His voice quivered. “Mom won't let me watch the news, but I can hear it from the kitchen. They're saying the world’s going to end.”

“Come on, pal.” I forced a laugh that I could only hope sounded more authentic than it felt. “It's the news. They're always saying that.” 

“I guess.” 

“Trust me. It's all gonna be fine,” I lied. I couldn't see any reason not to. 

“If you say so.” He sounded less confident than I felt. 

“Love you, kiddo. Put mom on, will you?”

“Ok.”

“Wait, El?” 

“Yes?”

“Tell Iris I love her too, please?”

“Fuck.” It was the first time I'd heard my brother swear. 

“Language!” I said. But he was already gone.

“Hello?” My mother's voice slurred. I gritted my teeth. No reason to stick to sobriety when the world was ending, but I had to wonder if she'd started drinking before or after she'd picked the kids up.

“Hey mom,” I said. 

“Where are you, Mathias?” Mom sounded more alert now, for all the good it did. 

“I'm surprised I got through.” I swallowed. How long did we even have? Minutes? An hour? Did it look so large because it was close, or was it just that massive?

“Where are you?” She said again, voice panicked. As if it mattered. 

“Halfway. Off of Lincoln and Third.” Funny that I remembered the street names at a time like this. A cop habit my father had ingrained in me. 

“You need to get to shelter. Get inside.” 

“How bad is it?”

Silence. “They’re saying it'll be worse than a nuclear attack.”

I cocked my head. I knew that voice. Was that understatement? She was actually playing it down. 

“They talking about it knocking the earth off its axis? It looks... really big.” I don’t know why I asked. Morbid curiosity, I guess.

“Get inside, Matt.”

“I will.” I didn't bother pointing out that our shabby two-bedroom apartment wouldn't offer much protection. A bomb shelter would fare just as badly. There was no getting away from something like this.

“I called to say...” The words “I love you,” spoken so easily to my brother and sister, died in my throat. I cleared it, then shook my head. “It doesn't matter.” 

“Don't give up. There's always a chance. We could be the outliers.” My mother once lived her life by measured statistics and numbers. But she sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than me. 

When have we ever been the outliers?

I stifled a bitter laugh. Still, I needed to say something. “... Sorry for being so cold lately.”

A short pause. “I deserve it.” 

“Maybe.”

“You don’t have to agree with me.”

“But looking back, I wish I hadn't been. Cold, I mean.”

“Matt, I—“

Three short beeps followed by silence. I looked at my phone and saw the call had ended. I tried a few more times and got a pre-recorded message saying the lines were busy and to reduce calls to emergency only. 

Well, that was that. 

The meteor was imminent. Strangely, I didn't feel fear. I felt resignation and relief, that the struggle was over. I didn’t have to go home, ignore my siblings, study until my head hurt, pass out, then drag myself to Dunkin’s for the early bird shift. My worries had all been rendered moot. I studied it, watching it grow larger and larger, and realized with grim amusement that it seemed to be headed straight towards me. 

As if in a hypnotic state, I began walking, trying to calculate the trajectory. It led me to the little garden outside of Emerson Square, where I took a seat on a park bench next to a tan-uniformed blonde girl who looked to be in middle school. She held a bag stuffed with cookies and had begun to dig into them. I took a seat next to her.

“Spare a few?” I asked

She eyed me for a moment before her gaze returned to the sky. “Five dollars.” 

“Thin Mints?”

“Yup.”

Amused, I pulled out my wallet and counted out three dollar bills before I came up dry. 

“What does three get me?”

“Savannah Smiles.” 

“Oof.” Still, I handed her the money, and she took it without looking, automatically handing me a box. 

“We’re gonna die, aren't we?” The girl asked. She sounded small, resigned. A man sprinted by us carrying a gallon of water. 

It was strange how calm she was. Maybe the reality hadn't sunk in yet. “Yeah. We’ll have one hell of a view though.”

The temperature grew from hot to sweltering. I tore open the packaging and tossed the oblong cookie into my mouth, nearly gagging as I chewed. “Christ, it's like candied Lysol.” 

“They're a bargain for three.”

“If you say so. Did you get through to your folks?” I asked.

“Don't have a phone.” 

“Try mine.” I handed it to her. She took the phone, glanced over at me, as if unhappy with the unevenness of the exchange, then slid me a box of Thin Mints.

“Thanks.” I tossed the box of lemon abominations in the nearby trash can. One hell of a shot, but of course everyone was a little too preoccupied to notice.

She dialed, held the phone to her ear, then handed it back. 

“Any luck?”

“No.”

A swarthy woman tripped hard nearby, landing on the flats of her hands and her knees before rolling onto her back. She took one look at the sky and began shrieking and moaning with an almost biblical fervor.

We both looked at her in annoyance.

“Noisy,” the girl said.

“Straight out of a Lifetime special,” I commented. 

It was close now. All sound disappeared, like I was underwater. I could feel the heat. Wind began to roil around us as the pavement boiled, tossing my dark hair in my face, covering my glasses. 

I stood and walked forward, leaving the Girl-Scout behind and forgotten. A handful of people joined me in the square. An older woman in business casual stood on the fringes, phone out, recording the moment. A muscled man with salt-and-pepper hair was chuckling to himself, the sound low and mean. 

It would be seconds now. The glowing blue rock took up my entire vision, dwarfing the skyline. I held my arms outstretched. 

Well, come on you bastard. Do what you came here to do.

A nearby building toppled. A hundred yards above, the meteor exploded into a massive wave of indigo ash that swallowed everything as the shockwave sent me flying.

/////

I was plunged into a darkness deeper than the blackest night. I’d expected my life to flash before my eyes. Now that it was happening, it felt more like a slow painful crawl. I saw Iris, signing to me, trying to catch my attention earlier that morning while I ignored her so I wouldn't be late. I saw Danielle Espinosa, asking me to the solstice dance—and me, focused so hard on perfecting my response, mulling over the problematic consonants to avoid a stutter, until she took my silence as rejection and stormed off. Finally, I saw the day that cemented in my mind that heroes were fools: my father’s police cruiser through dusty blinds, pulling up in front of the rundown house at the end of the street. 

A neon violet square filled my vision. It was painful to look at, eye-searingly bright. There were three ascending notes that sounded almost like a phone jingle.

Text scrolled, almost too fast for me to read: 

<System Message: Flauros initiative enabled. System is online.>

<System Message: Error. Core actors not found. Recalibrating>

<System Message: Analysis of user failed. User does not fit into existing schema. Activating backups.>

<SYSTEM MESSAGE: USER. ARE YOU THERE?>

The scroll stopped. There wasn’t an option for no. Just a “YES” option in capital letters below the scroll of text. I was confused. There was no straightforward explanation for what I was experiencing. I didn't have hands, or eyes for that matter. But I focused on it.

The text began to scroll again.

<WELCOME, USER.>

No system message notification this time. Just direct text.

<ARE YOU A SHEEP OR A WOLF?>

It reminded me of a question off one of those Freudian mealy-mouth surveys therapists pour over to psychoanalyze you, where there's no correct choice. Only, again, my options were limited. <WOLF> hovered below the text, the only option. 

<WOULD YOU SACRIFICE YOUR LIFE FOR SOMETHING GREATER THAN YOURSELF?>

If I had a mouth, I would have laughed. Again, there was only one answer highlighted. 

<NO>

I started as a wall of text filled the screen. 

<THERE IS A RUNAWAY TROLLEY BARRELING DOWN THE TRACKS. AHEAD, ON THE TRACKS THERE IS ONE PERSON YOU LOVE TIED UP AND UNABLE TO MOVE. YOU CAN PULL THE LEVER TO DIVERT THE TROLLEY TO THE SIDE TRACK. HOWEVER, YOU NOTICE THERE IS A PERSON YOU DO NOT KNOW TIED TO THE SIDE TRACK.> 

A feeling of unease washed over me. The trolley problem was ethics 101. And frankly, it was highly hypothetical and stupid. But this version was wrong. There were supposed to be five people tied to the main track, one person tied to the sidetrack. This was a darker, more nihilistic version of the dilemma.

<PULL THE LEVER> 

Anger started from somewhere deep within me. It brought me back to the original question: Why was there only one answer? Was the system just assuming I would make that choice? The core issue with the original trolley problem that was raised over and over was a simple one: Agency. If you did nothing, you were merely a tragic witness to the deaths of five people. The series of events that brought about their deaths were already put into motion, but that blood was ultimately not on your hands. You didn’t cut the trolley’s brake lines. You didn’t tie those people to the tracks. 

Things got complicated when you pulled the lever. By pulling the lever, you left the realm of passive observer and became an active participant. No longer a mortal, but a self-appointed god. You weigh the worth of five lives and decide that they are worth killing one person for. And unlike the death of the five, you are directly responsible for that death. 

The text disappeared then reappeared, the letters tripling in size, bright red. 

<PULL THE LEVER>

It didn’t matter. The most important aspect of test taking was to pick an answer and move on. Time was the enemy, not the question. And it wasn’t like I had a choice. I focused on the option, trying not to think about the implications of why I didn’t have a choice, and it disappeared with no fanfare. 

A panoramic picture came into focus line by line, as if drawn by invisible brushes. It had a storybook quality. A pastoral town washed in oranges and reds by a rising sun peeking halfway over the horizon. It was a drawing of a fantasy world. There was a knight in silver armor cleaning a tarnished shield. A wizard, complete with a pointy hat and beard, was haggling with a fruit merchant in a smock. Meanwhile, an elven ranger with multiple golden rings piercing his pointed ears put arrows into a target at a practice range.

<WHO ARE YOU?>

I didn’t understand the question at first. When I realized it was asking which person in the picture I identified with the most, a manic, horrible thought clicked into place. Willing it, I scrolled back up to the original system notifications, reading them again. 

This wasn’t a test. 

I wasn’t being graded for my ethics. 

This was a character creation. 

What kind of half-assed dream had I stumbled into? 

I scrolled back down to the most recent question, my mind racing. As the text flashed by, a million terrible scenarios popped into my head. I’d read novels with similar premises. A protagonist dies, killed by a truck, or a mugger, or a god damned meteor, and when they awaken, they are transported into another world. 

That was how it worked in fiction. But discounting the much more likely scenario that this was all simply the manic work of a dying mind, I realized I didn’t want to go to another world. I had a handle on this one, grim and hopeless as it was. And the devil you know is always better than the devil you don’t. 

It was a panicked thought. Dumb. Delusional. Even fanciful. Unlike me. 

<WHO ARE YOU?>

The only answer was listed below the question, and looking at it sent a cold chill through me. 

<I AM THE HAND IN THE SHADOWS>

I searched the image. The wizard, ranger, and knight were still going about their business. But there was something I’d missed the first time. In the deep shadows cast by the rising sun next to one of the buildings, a man reached out towards the camera as if to grab it from afar. He was almost invisible, and had no definable features, other than the hand. But he held it out towards the other figures, and for a reason I could not quite describe, I feared for them. 

Reflexively, I focused on the option and the data screen disappeared. 

And then I woke up in the worst place possible.