"The dingey creak emanated through the empty hallways. Elfonse shook his head at it, oblivious of the source of the noise. The dust swirled around him as he brushed his mop up and down the corridor, trying to finish his days chores. Outside, light was casting into an otherwise empty laboratory for clinical research. The cogs zoomed by. They traveled past the dusty laboratory, perfectly in fashion with the road around them. They carried other workers and automatons, just like Elfonse, on their way to work, chores, and errands. The city was bleak and mechanical, various harsh lights bleeding over an iridescent landscape of steel and wires. The day was just like any other. The automatons had left for work, empty and hollow of emotion. They had taken their road cogs various places, all glowing and mechanical, and committed to their labor again. The various parses of natural land contained ragged leaves, bare trees wasting away in wretched grass, here and there all over the city. Elfonse leaned his mop in a corner of the corridor, wheezing at his shift nearly being finished. His dead eyes looked out the window, feelings of remorse and trepidation still easing into his soul. The orange morning light was almost clearly up, and a morning sun shone brightly in the sky. Elfonse wondered at it. Oh well, at least it was doing its work. An alarm loudly blared through his assigned vacant laboratory. Elfonse looked up sharply. This was a strange alarm. He noticed smoke pouring down the road outside, and a woman began screaming in the distance. What was happening?  He rushed to the loudspeaker and began listening for announcements. The screaming was joined by more screams as the smoke became acrid and cloudy, billowing in further intensity in the roadways. Cogs pulled over, as everyone became aware of something in the sky. Shrieking and pointing, Elfonse followed the crowd's gaze to a very tall building somewhere in the distance. The Hamien Towers.    Shit.   Not what Elfonse would have expected. Twin towers of grace and majesty, they were home to the great leaders who told Elfonse what to do. A plane had apparently hit one of the towers, and a big one too, at quite high speeds. How could this happen? Elfonse's stomach doubled, a strange warmth coursing through his system at the same time as feelings of deep fear and dread. There was another plane. Elfonse shielded his eyes as a bright flash hit his face. The second plane had slammed into the second building, a resounding boom echoing through the city's buildings and wires. The explosion was rocketing straight towards them. Elfonse remembered something, an ancient riddle he was taught as a young worker, about a dark prince seizing power over the city's masters in pillars of flame, as his heart froze. For the last second before the flames engulfed the building, Elfonse's automaton mind had returned to life fully for one instant. Something had happened..."

"Pavlov rung his bell. The dogs approached, wretched and scurrilous, after a hard day of not being fed. Nothing occurred to Pavlov, nothing except feed the animals. He passed out the scraps, one by one, careful to avoid giving the good meat or larger pieces than normal. It had been a good project. Wreckless things had happened, but the research team had been satisfied with the statistics and results. There wasn't much left to do but coach the dogs a little more aggressively. The days passed, weeks turning into months, as Pavlov's team studied the behavior of the canines. The dogs had been treated much worse, less and less food and substantially more mean treatment. But the bell, ahh. It quelled the dogs' hearts, remembering days of fatter and happier existence, as they trudged slowly into an unknown abyss. An abyss of the future, and the mistreatment and death, which they would soon suffer. The dogs died, miserable and unatoned, with the ringing of the bell still in their heads. They had promised. Pavlov stood up, his team in pieces over the difficulty of the study, and wondered. They had little good data, the dogs did something obvious, they routinely practiced lying and mistreatment. And the dogs were dead. Confused and shaken, they had died of expecting things that they were promised. The promises were then taken away, and the fear and hunger had set in. Pavlov wondered again. Were we studying their intelligence, for the purposes of control? Or were we just rote liars, who abused and mistreated the animal subjects out of greed and malice towards life? An alarm went off, and Pavlov headed out the door."

"The war had gone badly. It was desolation, a harsh, mechanical streak crowding the skyline. The war-torn areas were all sad and burned, and a holocaust of the unimaginable had happened. The corporations had invaded America secretly, keeping low to the ground as they had infiltrated every stratus of the American government, every nook and cranny of American life, every patch of American soil stained. There was nothing left. A few had resisted. The elite military of the United States of America had stood strong. Battles had erupted, with the corporations being forced back, but the seeding into American politics had proven too severe. With their supply lines cut off and no reinforcement from the corrupt government, there was little to do but acquiesce to a new world order of slavery and tyranny. The survivors. There wasn't much there, just bloated sheep that had remained unthreatening enough to the corporate forces to maintain a heartbeat. They milled about left and right, grazing off of grocery stores or crowding areas of commerce to pretend nothing had happened and their lives were still the same. Weak, ignorant, sheep. The strong men were gone. The corporate system had slowly churned them out of society with evil, and poisons, and false laws. Dead and gone, nothing remained but the weak and bloated. Obedience was a premium, and these wretches paid it happily. Their crowded minds ignored such things, whisking away into fantasies of stardom or reward for not standing up to the totalitarian corporate regime. The appearance of a mundane society remained, but all strength and beauty were gone. Anger and beauty had died away. Sparking and whirring, these new sheepish automatons of obedience were nothing but slaves to insane companies and their factories. Insane mechanical slavery ruled. All that was left were the masses that were too cowardly to fight this invasion in the first place. Tools were all that was left. Tools of the corporations, to be used and disposed of. To be used and disposed of, indeed."

"A wind howled across Los Diablos, a darkened skyline betraying the tall, glittering towers of bone and steel that made up the city. Large, winged creatures could be seen flying in the sky, oblivious to all but their own ominous nature. The city was dark, almost always, and had an iridescent green hue to it coming from the windows and lights of the demon city, centerpiece of the hellish demon planet L'naam. In tall towers, demon lords lurked and monitored their lower classes. The people, and this city, were subject to mind control in an effort to drown out any opposition to the demonic factories in Los Diablos. The obsession with profits, grandeurs, greed,  and malice of these evil conspirators as they traversed their way into a new age of slavery and death was infernal. Once thriving demons of happiness and self-pursuit on L'naam, the new city of Los Diablos was crushed by the weight of enslavement. The demons were told what to do, by glaring screens, and directed harshly from one assignment to the next, like set routines. The higher demons controlled the hellscape with eerie propaganda, inundation of commercial mind-control, and controlled public speakers that were celebrated over the demon horde. The speakers, as they were called, were looked up to by the demon horde, and represented the public presence of the demon factories that controlled them. Then they were cast into an abyss of death when their roles were done. The nature of these particular demons was ragged and barren, in any real manner, to the decent and average demon horde. And few knew it. These freakish demons, the speakers, dressed provocatively in tacky and gaudy clothing. They had demon technology hooked into their bodies that made them appear strong, and wore flashy, garish false hairs. All manner of things were done to inundate their images upon the lower demons, for the sake of the looming and evil demon factories. This also included the absolute butchering of the face and body amidst a horrid and ghastly process to reconstitute the speaker demons afterwards. With surgeries, they were turned and twisted into something new, wretched, and unholy. And, seemingly, these butchered and false speakers were beguiling to the lower demons of the city. It made the mind control effective, to create speakers and thrust them upon lower society in such a brazen fashion and manner. The proles, or poorer, lower demons of the city of Los Diablos, took this horrible illusion gratefully. The speaker demons were routinely manufactured and placed into the public eye of Los Diablos to quell unfriendly thought or sentiment against a new age of death and enslavement. They were put in screens, on stages, and given great galas or affairs in the public eye. All to sell a mindset of obedience and contrition to the evil hypnotic factories, and soon rulers of a new age, in Los Diablos. The dark age was coming. Almost no one could fight back, and the minds of even the strongest demons could not resist the socialism of the hypnotized demon hordes. Harsh accusations of sedition lurked on every street corner, were in every gasp of air. What could stop this horrible death and brutal enslavement but a stronger, darker evil? The night grew deep and cold, and somewhere, outside the city of Los Diablos and its gleaming, greenish bone towers, a giant, restless eye opened at last."

"Dexter Harisov smiled coercively as his victim gave in. He laughed quietly, watching the blood drip from their mouth. The blood dropped, spattering onto Dexter's shoes and pant legs. O well, it was just blood. He cleaned up, disposed of the body, and went back towards the street. Dexter had committed many terrible homicides lately. In alleys, behind grocery stores, in quiet little neighborhoods at night, many had felt his knife cut through their bodies. He fancied himself a serial killer, taking pride in knowing he had killed these people, caused their death, was better than them like that. Dexter ambled up a dark avenue in Los Angeles, swinging his coat and humming to himself about greater things. Passersby questioned him, but they always did, with a slight look or an inquisitive glance. They were just fools. They didn't know the power he had. To take life, to betray, to be sneaky, and to kill. Turning a corner sharply, Dexter stumbled slightly over a jagged sidewalk in the waning daylight. A slight girl, huddled with her friend off in the distance, barked a laugh. Shock. As usual. Dexter's face went numb, his eyes locking onto hers with a keen menace. This is how it always was. Things just happened. He approached her abruptly, not even noticing the few stragglers in a wintertime Los Angeles neighborhood looking on. 'Whoa! What do you want? I just...' Her cries were cut off as Dexter grabbed her hair and yanked, pulling her off the sidewalk behind a white cottage. She screamed, trying to break free, but his grip was too strong. The wild look in his eyes scared her more than anything, and she went limp and started sobbing. The butcher knife in his back pocket was drawn, as he stabbed her in the stomach several times, hacking and gashing at her body brutally as she hit the ground. A few onlookers had gathered. A brief gasp emanated from one of them. Shit. Not Dexter's day. Not usually this sloppy. Oh well, it didn't matter. They were just sheep. Dexter struggled with the tight handcuffs. He had been picked up by the police and taken downtown for interrogation shortly after the incident. A detective loomed over him, bright light filling the room. Dexter blinked, unable to keep his usual cool in the harsh lights. 'Why, Dexter Harisov? Why did you do it so badly? What else do we need to know, Mr. Harisov?' The detective questioned him sternly. Dexter blinked again, trying to regain his calm and focus. 'It's not a big deal. I just stabbed her. She just pissed me off.' The detective grimaced, unsure how to proceed. 'Mr. Harisov, do you get it? That's first-degree murder. You're in the system now. Have fun, asshole.' With that, Dexter was pulled to his feet and escorted out, a lone tear trickling down his scowling face. The lights flashed on. Stay cool, Dexter. It was just light. The guard was saying something, loud and baritone, and Dexter was too shaken to hear. Stay cool, Dexter. They're just noises. The electricity speared through him, the system depriving him of life ever again. Shocking pain reverberated through his spine and in his brain. Dexter was dying. There was nothing else to it. A horrible fear, a scary, horrible, lonely blackness, was sweeping over him. Stay cool, Dexter. It was just..."

"Alfonse checked the deck, securing the area for the mission team. 'All clear!' He tugged the cargo strap, indicating its tightness. The deck captain walked over, checking the periphery. 'We've got a major move of chips coming through here. Let's be ready, lieutenant Grove.' Alfonse saluted, eager to get along with his protocols. Standing six-foot-two, Alfonse Grove was a handsome man. Recruited into the military at age thirteen, he had ascended to the rank of lieutenant over his twenty-two-year career. This was an important move. Thirty thousand credit chips, straight from Awkswarma, and he was on the receiving team. The chips were loaded, by indicators on the right side, from five credits all the way up to five hundred thousand. A lot of cash was at stake, and the team was vigilant. 'Heads up, Grove!' one of his fellow soldiers barked. The final shipment was coming through nearby. A member of the transport team walked past, wheezing at the heavy load. Alfonse put down his weapon, eager to help. He grabbed a corner of the cargo box, his duty gloves slipping as he grasped for a secure hold. With a yell the transport member lost control of the cargo, the cargo box hitting the transport bay floor with a dull, reverberating thud. 'Grove!' The team captain rushed over, hopes for a purely clean mission draining from his face. 'I'll get this, lieutenant. Just back off!' Alfonse groaned, embarrassed, and overwhelmed by the immensity of the mission. As he walked off, his foot kicked a small credit chip that had popped loose from the dropped cargo. No one noticed, as soldiers were busying themselves up righting the cargo and moving it into the compound. Alfonse picked up the chip in wonder and checked it, by himself now in a corner of the docking bay. He let out a low whistle. Five thousand credits, fully loaded and ready to go.   The team had gone inside with the cargo, leaving him alone with his embarrassment for sullying a high value mission operation. They had treated him badly. Well, why not. He slid the credit chip into his jacket pocket smoothly, making sure no one had seen the move. He stood up straight, making an attempt to look busy, and thought to himself. 'There's a few nights of partying, anyway.' Behind him, a mounted camera made a dull noise. Alfonse's heart froze. Of course.   The security cameras. He turned to face the noisy unit, casually checking his perimeter. In the distance, he could see his fellow soldiers slowly running towards him, cutting off his path of escape. Something occurred to Alfonse, a mission speech his commander had given, assuring them that no entity would partake in these chips but the government headquarters they were delivering them to. Or else. Alfonse gulped, a cold, eerie sweat trickling down his back as the soldiers rushed towards him. Bent over on his knees outside the compound, Alfonse groaned. His commander gave him one final look. 'Where do you want the shot, Grove?' Alfonse was sobbing, unable to regain control over himself. A blast reported, and the soldiers walked back into the compound, shaking their heads incredulously at what had just happened."

"Dexter Valentine shook his head vigorously, unaware of the dangers around him. This can't be it.   The final cut had gone poorly for Dexter Valentine, lead actor of the set of the movie Vertigo . It was a thrilling romp about highness in society, and the madness that came with it. Isabela, his co-star, came over to him. 'Why so upset? We still have a show. Even if that was a little, I don't know, reaching?' Isabela patted Dexter's knee and walked off, her long dark hair flowing behind her, confident she had raised her co-stars' spirits. Dexter wailed again, holding his head in his hands and refusing to believe a word. He was in his late forties, coiffed hair, and the most perfect facial symmetry Tinseltown had ever seen. And, yet his awkward nature! So effete, so feminine! No one could stand him, up close, and his film sets often went just this way. A line here, a gesture there, and his whole career was sunk. Ruined. If they only knew the truth. Dexter walked off enflamed, roiling over the fact that no one knew who he was. No one, at all... A small boy on set who had been watching Dexter ran off crying, upset by the actor's strange behavior. Tears streaming down his face, the boy had not been able to figure out why Dexter Valentine was so different in person than he was in his movies. Dexter noticed, and his eyes followed the child with a wicked menace. He puffed a cigarette, faked an inhale, and stormed off the set with all the apparentness of a great ego smoldering behind his dark shadow. Dexter had been annoyed by Isabella, too. Isabella Grande, the great American actress. She had been aggravated by his behavior as well. Whatever. Who are you to me, old lady. Dexter's ego could not account for such things. As far as he was concerned, he was  the characters from his movies. Bold, dashing, and daring. Handsome, and masculine beyond description. Dexter stared into his trailer's mirror, studying his unique face as he contemplated. The surgery? Nah. This is just who I am. His head swam into fantasies and screen plays long ago, dashing through jungles, heroically saving people, taking down the villains in the countless movies he had done. Surely, that was the real Dexter Valentine. His phone buzzed, and he took it out and checked it. Smitty, his Hollywood friend, asking how the shoot had gone with a heart covered smiley face. Dexter smiled slightly, then shoved the phone back into his pocket. That was for him. He studied his appearance in the mirror once more, more convinced than ever his characters were real. With a sigh, he wondered about Isabella's kid, who had run off set because of him. Nasty kid. He didn't get it. Dexter was a big deal, a naturally perfect  Hollywood hero, and he had to be respected as that. Lucky he was Isabella Grande's son. Dexter Valentine had dealt with this before. Dexter relaxed, the final credits for Vertigo  rolling on screen to the audience's applause at the premiere in Hollywood. He smiled. Isabella had not been able to come, due to a fatal accident her son had been in a week beforehand. Feeling invincible, Dexter got up from his seat with a slight dizziness and started drinking in the attention of the countless flashing cameras around him. Bringing in his braggadocio, he smiled his perfect face and explained to the cameras how responsibly and warmly he was dealing with the loss of Isabella Grande's son. It was like life couldn't get any better."

"'All together now!' The lead circus instructor tilted his head at the others. Waylon, an ornery and slightly taller clown spoke up. 'This is all we do! Practice and train, practice and train. Why can't we take some time off once in a while? I'm exhausted!' The lead instructor nodded wryly; his lips perched in a smirk. "Entertain and serve!" was all Gravis shot back. Catalina, a forty-three-year-old female clown with a beguiling nature, laughed raucously. The lead instructor's famous line. Typical. The instructor, whose name was Gravis, pulled and tugged at his pointy hair, the slight make-up on his face assimilating into the nature of a frown. He studied the company. They just had to be good enough. 'All together now!' They had seen this every time. Working together, too rebellious to get along, too unpracticed to do things properly. But the company must survive. As Gravis said, to entertain and serve was merely their purpose in life. Waylon considered it. What was the point? All day, every day. Why be a clown for these people, when you could just eat a bagel and watch the television? Nothing mattered. Catalina approached Waylon, Gravis tooting at a horn somewhere in the background. Her usual feminine nature entranced him, and he consented to be a little honest with her. 'Why, Catalina? Why do we do it?' Catalina saw the look in his eyes, aggravated and sincere, and laughed again. 'Beats me, Waylon. It's just a job we do. Gravis takes this way too seriously, anyway.' She rubbed his knee slightly, rolling her eyes. Waylon sighed, hunching his six-foot-two frame on a hay bale as Catalina winked and walked away. He pulled out a joint from his overall pockets and made sure the intense little instructor Gravis was far away. Lighting the tip and inhaling, Waylon leaned back and reminisced about days and places far away. Eventually, the stars came out and he was still looking up at them, wanting more. Gravis was furious. Waylon and Catalina were missing. The two had left over night, abandoning the camp in a cloud of weed smoke, no less. The nerve. Gravis had called the authorities, to very little avail, only to be told the pair hadn't broken any laws besides a little pot smoking. In Oregon, that wasn't a big deal. They had only left the circus's clown company, apparently unhappy with the way things were there. Far away, Waylon looked up at the stars again the next night. Catalina was beside him, curled up in a taxicab, snoring peacefully. She had gotten tired of it, too. He thought to himself, the country scenery zipping by in the nighttime hush. Fuck this circus. He glanced once more out the window, a new world rushing past him, and smiled slightly. It was time to truly live."

"Of all the ubiquitous little parlors in town, Johann's was the most fastidious. A little nook here, a little cranny there, everything had to be dusted and arranged just accordingly. And all for bread. A little bread shop, it seemed enough to keep up with the rural scenery of the small town of Faskach. It was a small development outside of the major factories and living centers nearby in Urbania. Not much happened there. Faskach had seen them all come and go, from creepy little neo-Semites with nothing going on to trickle-downs of the factories north of them with slick hair and well-fitting suits, looking for their next pay. None of them did well there. It was work and die. From the rural suburbs to the mighty factories up north, there was nothing else to do in the world. Standing up to his full height of three foot eight inches, slightly tall for Faskach or even Urbania, Johann finished dusting off a chair. His twenty-three-hour shift was coming to a close, and he wanted to go outside for a little while. To gaze at the great dust balls in the sky, see the huge factories up north pumping smoke, see the bicycles carrying workers whisk by. Anything to clear his mind of its tension. Johann watched the clock as he finished his dusting. It struck his number and he sighed gratefully, careful not to let his supervisor hear. Setting down his duster and arranging the chairs one final time, Johann stepped out of 'La Panera,' the little bread shop he worked in, into the street. It was dark, and the glowing yellow dust balls greeted his eyes immediately. He smiled. For a second, he felt better about things. The minutes passed, Johann's green hair and orange skin glinting in the streetlights as he smoked his cigarette and thought. The burden was heavy . He would think about that later. There was too much to do. His parlor needed his attention, and the many parlors all around Urbania and the towns around all shared that one rule. 'Never late, never frown.' Johann sighed again and stood up in the eerie glow of the streetlights outside the tiny bread parlor, amongst a town, a city, an entire world full of them. He checked the clock and went back inside, a slight tremble to his lips."

"A strange kind of obedience. Like a lust had fallen over them, these freaks, and encumbered them in a dull trance. Skin flaking, stomachs rotten and fat, the freaks of Androgynis simply walked around in a strange haze for their entire lives.  Their stores were everywhere. As if they had beckoned the freaks, calling them to their doom. Nothing was left but a sea of cattle being herded between them, wreaking havoc on the atmosphere of Androgynis through automobile exhaust and giant smoking factories. Churning the freaks left and right by the signs swaying over their heads. Dusky, gawdy cars traveling into and out of shopping centers, annihilating any chance these poor things ever had of a life. Life was staring into a flashing commercial screen, waiting for your next impulse buy. Pollution reeked. Everything seemed to power the commerce of Androgynis with nothing left to content the poor swine idling in its malls and shops. Everything coughed smoke. The only decency there was left to the lives of the freaks of this hellhole world was an occasional product gleaming on the aisles worth a damn, a nice smoke bought at a smoking shop, or a little peace and quiet between shopping mall visits. The freaks themselves. It was a ghastly glow. Their faces lit up like commercial fire, eyes wild with retrospect and compassion for the thing they used to be a long time ago. Just a baby, wandering into a world of commerce, immediately clashed into by the wild blinking of machines and repugnant expectations of the commercial slime around them. There was hardly any mind left, merely a blinking receptacle of commercial viewing and drudgery from one bleak task to the next. Nothing danced, and nothing sung. Neither men nor women, these freaks had long forgotten their sexualities or genders in a world of barren commerce and horrid unsophistication. No one clung to each other anymore, the expressions on their faces were mute, and any show of candor or affection would be treated with harsh glares or physical attack. Signs ahead. What would the world of Androgynis do? What would happen next to prove life had any other purpose or meaning? It was creeping into the media. Like a dark cloud, ominously taking over the advertisements, changing media on signs. Curtailing any effort to maintain a harsh and mindless consumeristic existence. A black cloud, sweeping over their world, proving to them they had done something wrong... As some freaks sat dreamily by their flashing commercial screens, glad for the reprieve."