The Dreamer

      I don't remember my mother. 

     It's been a long time since I left Estellia for good, even longer since I gained enough power to manipulate all of its key components individually. I live in my temple now, dedicated to the Dreamworld and the stars in the night sky, connected to every part of the world that I'm now in charge of, a world on the fringes of what other Dreamers have built. Most of my life happens in my head. Fragments of Memories that happened, or did not, depending on whether or not  I believe them to be real. I believe that my mother and father hated me for my weakness, trapping me in an endless slumber, a nightmare I could not wake up from. I believe that I encountered all four of our Gods, fought them off, won endless power over an endless world, then ascended so they could never have control over me. I believe that somewhere, somehow, Estellia is going on as it always did, without me in it, as my predecessor would have wanted it. I also believe in a mother who looked after me and loved me as a child, a father who taught me about the stars and their meanings, a village who loved the lost child in their midst. I truly do not remember the truth. Too much of my life has been spent wandering the stars in my Dreams. 

    The only thing that I do remember is Estellia's Gods, though I don't remember how I first learned about them. Maybe, as a little girl, my mother told me in a story that, "There are four races of Nightmare: Shadow, Fairy, Monster, and Sorcerer. Each representing a fear of the Dreamer. Shadows represent those who live in the darkness and operate in the unseen and unknown. They hold all of the positions that grant one power automatically. Fairies represent unrestrained fun, the kind that pulls you in and will not let you go. It is said that they harm no one, but time after time humans have gone into their carnival and found they could not leave no matter how badly they wanted to. Monsters represent the things we must keep hidden, such as weakness and cruelty. Despite their name, they are not truly evil, merely incredibly dangerous. Sorcerers represent unchangeable truths, a world that cannot be believed in because it is always there, so it must instead be dealt with, though I'm told that they decide what can and can't be changed themselves. Do not hope to become one and escape the pain they inflict on us. Hope instead that you will one day be strong enough to fight back. But you cannot fight all of them, and there are four Nightmare's that you could never hope to defeat. They are our gods. They are worshiped, but also feared, and their power flows through their avatars into each of their domains. Do not take them lightly. Or else they will kill you where you stand."

      Perhaps that was what happened. I don't know. I do remember defeating them, as all Dreamers must in order to ascend. I do remember the names of their avatars; James, Emily, Alex, Nina. I fought all of them. Alex was the strongest, James the weakest, and I don't remember much other than them coming together to try and force me back into an endless slumber, but whether that was because they saw me as a human or a Dreamer is beyond my recollection. 

The True Story of Cameron Walker

       We think we know everything about Cameron Walker. Tall, smart, pretty, infinitely malleable, once she/he/they got a contract with BlandCo. in 2054, everything was peaches and cream. That’s what they’ll say, anyways. The truth is, as always, so much more dire and awful than that. Here’s the truth; from the start Cameron Walker was abused, beaten, and starved. She was bound by an unbreakable contract made with demons from the very bowels of hell, one that said that everything they did or said would be monitored by the agents of BlandCo. The horrible tradition BlandCo. agents have of forcing all woman to become completely hairless, toothless, and wander through the streets naked started with Cameron Walker herself, and she did it because she had no other way of supporting herself in a world wracked by the loss of reality itself. To understand, we have to…

    It’s at about this point that a voice in my head states, very loudly, “Tara, you know you have better things to do with your time than this.”

***

    I’m Tara Anne Martinez, a freelance reporter of Dreamworld dealings. That’s my day job at least. My night job, the one that I’m truly passionate about, is Dreamworld culler. I suspect even the most demented follower on Fantasy Instagram or KARMoS’ forums doesn’t know what that is, which is just as well because our dealings are dubiously legal at the best of times. What we do is we find Dreamworlds that are broken, poisonous, or just plain unreal, then we destroy them. We do this because we believe that a world devoid of reality is a world destined to be consumed by the Infinite, and because we know that reality is a precious thing in this day and age. We also, unfortunately, do it because those who know what we are will pay whatever we demand of them in order to avoid losing all they have. I’m sure there’s someone out there who hasn’t taken a bribe to avoid destroying a Dreamworld, but I’m not that person. Even with state sponsored income, it’s nice to know that you can support yourself. 

      As of now, my work has taken me to the Dreamworld called Estellia, a place that, according to the person who runs it, is over a hundred years old and predates the existence of Fantasy Instagram by almost seventy years. In reality, the community is about five years old at this point, according to the info online, and was created entirely by a woman who calls herself “Cassandra the Luminous”. She is, in her own terms, the most boring person who exists with no right to fame, who nonetheless posts about Estellia and the events going on within it almost daily, events which, oddly, seem to involve a lot of famous people, real and otherwise. Her defense, naturally, is that none of what she talks about is real. Bullshit. If you believe in it, it may as well be real, there’s no one alive who doesn’t know that, and the only reason she claims otherwise is that if it was supposed to be real, people would expect her to prove that she has the kind of clout necessary to do all of what she claims to do. 

    Her community survives because it’s so obviously garbage that none of the people moderating the forums or enforcing the rules think’s it’s worth shutting down. Nobody, that is, who isn’t an Infinitelist. There’s not much in Infinitelism that could be called “central lore”. The idea was the Infinitelism would form the bedrock of all future religions, all the philosophy was for was to serve as a sort of rubric. Naturally, most people decided to forgo building their own religions, so now the philosophy became a sort of religion, with millions of followers worldwide, and like most religions, ninety percent of its followers know nothing about what it actually says, only that it says that one day the world will end so anything they do now doesn’t matter. If you do learn the lore, one of the first things you learn is that the woman who created Infinitelism was an avid storyteller, and one of her first ones was a story about four Nightmare races who fought over the souls of humans in a world made entirely out of human Dreams, and the only thing keeping that world real was a person called the Dreamer. Estellia, the community that Cassandra the Luminous runs, is said to have four classes of Nightmares who fight to gain control over human lands so they can spread fear far and wide, and only the will of the Dreamer, which is what Cassandra claims to be, keeps them from deteriorating into all-out warfare. Heck, she even goes so far as to claim it goes back to around the time the creator of Infinitelism would have been writing her first stories. In short, she won’t admit it, but she’s a corrupt Infinitelist, one who dreams of destroying a world she dislikes instead of building a world that she loves. 

    Unfortunately, I have no evidence of foul play. Not because she’s not doing something to undermine our current reality, or what’s left of it at least, but because she’s just not good at running a Dreamworld. The only eyeballs on Estellia are the people coming to see her obviously fake “interviews” with people like Johnathan Bland, Dexter Rowland, and Miranda Owens, the woman who went viral after it was rumored that Johnathan Bland was sleeping with her. Her most recent interview was with Cameron Walker, a person who, because of the circumstances of their creation, is a poster child for the abuses of the AI industry.

     I know nothing about Cameron Walker. Nobody does. The person who modeled her was male, female, intersex, some form of transgender, or possibly non-binary. She/He/They became a model because they were broke, bored, desperate for fame, saw an opportunity to win big, or possibly dreamed of proving the world isn’t real. Depending on who you ask, they’re an aspiring tale of how anyone can make anything real, a tragic story about how fame can make you unreal, or a cautionary Aesop about how fame can blind you to what really matters. I’ve managed to get one post talking about how they had total control over the entire industry right before one claiming BlandCo. was basically using them in ways straight out of a bad porno. Cassandra’s take? They were never real to begin with, and apparently neither is anybody else. 

      I’ll be honest, but for the fact that Cassandra is using them to prop up a story designed from the get-go to be bad, I don’t care who Cameron Walker is. Nobody does. They’re nothing more than a blank slate, someone for people to use to prop up political thinking, and the only politics anybody has is, “Life sucks, better live it up while you still can.” That didn’t used to count as politics, and some are lucky enough to have enough hope that their political views mean something. I’m not one of them. 

     Still, I’m lucky enough to be one of the Infinitelists in the world who doesn’t think that reality is dead. Not yet. I’m not a mage, after all, because I don’t think the “inevitable”, as people call it, has happened yet. Our physics won’t die today, or tomorrow, and someday we’ll find a way to have a world real enough that facts and data matter. We haven’t had it in almost a century, but it took almost a thousand years for Europe to even remotely recover from the loss of the Roman empire, so of course it would take a long time for us to overcome the loss of reality as we thought we knew it. I think that researching Cameron’s life has given me some form of hope. Every piece I’ve read about Cameron puts her creation as being around 2054, somewhere around the time they remade World of Joy, a story infamous for butchering reality with AI models. I don’t think that was when she was actually made, but in a world where almost nothing matters, belief is important. Without a world we can believe in, especially one we know isn’t real, we’re nothing at all. 

The World is Watching Me

       I’m one of those people who knows the truth behind the pictures we see every day. I know that people are stretch, pulled, undone and redone, until the person you see staring back at you looks nothing like the person they originally were. Grandmama always claimed that the world had always been like this, and it was considerably more humane to use AI to turn human into grotesque abominations than to force the transformation on them unwillingly through makeup, drugs, or surgery. Now, people only change when they want to change, and they do it of their own volition. Anyone can be who they want to be, for the world will never see them as they truly are. 

      I didn’t want to study science. I’m a mage at heart, but nobody sane believes that magic exists. I studied because it made money, but whenever I’m away from the lab I’m drawn to tarot cards, rune stones, candles, and other items of hidden lore. I also grab non-magical items that speak to me, somehow, most of them bird themed. A bird shape whistle, a ceramic robin, a plush owl, pair of budgies to look after. Ever since I was small I had a fascination with birds, and my favorite activity after work is to go to the park and feed pigeons. I feel safe among them somehow. 

     I am not living in a world where reality is crumbling, I’m living in a world where it died long ago. I wish I could grow wings strong enough to fly me away from this planet to a world where AI never happened. Most people my age wish that was possible. We’ve had rockets for close to two-hundred-years, yet we’re far from building the safe haven that was promised to us. Instead all we have is dead eyed, soulless beings staring back at us every time we go outside, and science that’s increasingly doubtful of the basic premise of our world. Physics, it seems, is nothing more than an illusion. 

     I’m not one of the ones doing the experiments. My job is to process the data, make it seem like it says what it’s supposed to be saying. The algorithm comes to a conclusion, I run the data to make sure it matches. It’s a slow, boring job, one that I don’t like, so I spend all of my time on forums dedicated to magic. All of them talk about the stories that reality is crumbling, or may not exist. I can’t say that they’re wrong, only that the data is inconclusive. Privately I wonder what’s taking us so long to admit the obvious; magic is here to stay. 

     My boss says my methods must be wrong. My parents, the one’s who pushed me to a stable career, tell me not to make waves. My friends at work ask me if I did it right, then ask the others in my crew if they did it right as well, then check the models to see what went wrong. My friends online tell me they know I’m fighting an uphill battle, and that I have to be careful. I’m a scientist in a world where reality is crumbling. Every time I look in a mirror, I see someone staring back at me, looking like she wants to say, “Meggie, seize the moment.” I know she’s right. Now is the time to tell the world the truth. But I’m scared. The world is watching me, and I don’t know what it wants from me. 

The World

        Other Infinitelists state that the total obliteration of our shared reality was a terrible thing for each and every person on earth. As the only son of a church pastor, I disagree. The loss of reality was an amazing thing for religious figures of all sorts. Good or bad, honest or corrupt, if you claimed to believe in something it was a boon time for you. It was also, of course, a good time for scammers, and my father was both of those things. He constantly talked about seeing God when he slept, and always showed people pictures he’d found on his desk after he’d woken up. For my entire childhood, I remember the days when papa would rush into the room holding a sheet of paper of a young man with olive skin, wearing slightly different outfits. I never questioned the truth until I was old enough to learn about the AI modelling industry and realized that the pictures always resembled the models closely. I didn’t say anything, though, not until Blandco. took my father to court for unlicensed use of the Cameron Walker model. It ruined us so badly that my father shot himself in the head not long afterwards. My mother never recovered from it, and to this day she remains an empty shell of the woman she once was.

      I now run a different church. It’s the only way I know to make money, but I’m not very good at it. I also give seminars on Infinitelism. I care deeply about it as someone for whom their religion was never anything more than an elaborate lie told by their parents, but I’m not very good at selling it either. I just get on stage and repeat points I’ve heard others go on about. I don’t know what else to do.

      If I’d been born a hundred years ago, I’d have a thousand options for ways to make the world a better place, but I didn’t get to grow up in such a world. Neither did my papa, which is why he felt he had to lie. I say that because I can’t live with the idea that my father only ever wanted to lie to people, but the alternative worries me just as much. What if I have no choice but to lie in order to keep my church alive. I opened it up to everyone, just as my papa did,  but I don’t have nearly as many followers as he did. I’m not a showman.

     I wish that I could live in the world of my dreams, one in which we live in harmony with one another and there are no great highs or lows. I’m told the humdrum way of life was pleasant if you could get in rhythm with everybody, but that’s not always something I could manage. I hide it pretty well, especially since there isn’t a good way to tell what’s normal anymore, but I always wonder what it would be like if I could just silently follow everybody’s rhythm. It would only work if we had one mind, but I do think many people, especially those who just want to blend in, might prefer that. Many would not though. I know because one of them started the philosophy I now subscribe to. I just have to remember to express my will to the world. Easy, right?

Children's Dreams

      Emerald Elementary was a strange name for a school. To the students the name suggested grandeur, wealth, and stability, all things missing from their lives. There was little of that to be found inside of the school. The building had, it was said, held thousands of children when it was first opened in the middle of the twentieth century, but a century and a half of age and decay, coupled with declining enrollment, meant that the school was nothing more than a relic of the past, and a dismal one at that. The only thing that shone about such a place was a plaque out front, telling of how the community had come together twenty years before to save the school from destruction when the government wanted it torn down. Going above and beyond, they’d turned the school into an exact replica of what it would have been in the far off and beautiful year of 1957, when it had first opened. 

      The three hundred children who went to this school were less students than they were historical actors. None of the subjects they talked about covered topics relevant to the world they lived in. Math, science, literature, none of these topics were things children were meant to care about. The only time they learned anything useful were the daily computer classes, where they learned how to use the internet, and recess, where they learned how to interact with each other. In a school as shabby as this one, even recess didn’t have much to teach them. With four playgrounds the children could run away from one another, even if the equipment hadn’t been maintained as well as the rest of the school had been. The children learned about each other in kindergarten, and they kept that knowledge all six of the years they were allowed to stay at this dismal school.

     Five inmates sat on asphalt at one edge of the playground. Recess time had been doubled for them today, because their teacher didn’t want to teach them. She was a woman from the community, working for a small amount of money, but she lacked passion for her work. They didn’t realize this though. None of the teachers they’d learned under knew much about their craft. In the distance, they heard children from their class screaming, running, enjoying unearned leisure time. None of them felt like playing. They were fifth graders, and they felt they’d had enough of school, but they still had several months to go before the bell rang one final time. 

      Renee, the eldest of the girls, looked solemnly at the tattered flag flying above them. “The American flag doesn’t even look like that anymore.” She thought, having seen the most recent one online. Admittedly, they did look similar, but the newer version had far fewer stars. “How long ago was that flag put up?” She wondered. It looked like it could have come from the twentieth century, but it could just as easily have come from the twenty-first. 

      Renee turned to Anne, her cousin and best friend. “Why don’t they just close down the school?” She asked.

      “I don’t know.” Anne replied. “I think it’s just to torture us.”

      “I’ve seen pictures of schools in big cities.” Said Rosemary, another cousin. “They don’t look anything like this. They’ve got special devices that let you see holograms and all of their computers come outfitted with programs that let you interact with artificial humans.”

      “Mom says that the AI powering artificial humans will be the death of us.” Clara said. She was the youngest of the bunch. Even though she was almost out of school, she still carried her favorite stuffed rabbit in her backpack with her everywhere she went. 

      “Who cares about AI?” Heather said. She was Rosemary’s twin sister. 

      “A lot of people do.” Rosemary said. “They think that AI will make it so that nobody is poor anymore.”

      All of the girls looked at their school building. The faded paint, the worn out roof, the play equipment that was showing signs of rusting way to nothing. It was a school for poor children who lived far from a city, children who still needed parents to raise them. 

     “I wonder what it will be like when we aren’t poor anymore.” Clara said.

     “They’ll still send us to school. Mom says that she can’t find work because we’re too poor, but the moment she finds work she’ll make me go to full days of school instead of half days. She won’t be at home all of the time.” Renee said.

     “My mom says that if we had enough money, she’d hire a private tutor. She says the way they teach kids here is atrocious.” Anne said.

     “I wish we had enough money for a private tutor, or even just a few virtual classes.” Heather said, glumly. “I hate staring at a book all day trying to figure stuff out for myself.” 

     “There’s lots of helpful tools online.” Clara said.

     “Not if you can’t pay for them.” Heather said.

     “I think it’ll be nice to be rich.” Rosemary said. “We could go out to eat whenever we wanted and have beautiful clothes. Once I saw a pretty necklace at the toy store, but mom said we couldn’t afford it.”

     “Don’t your parents get food stipends?” Anne said. 

     “Yes.” Rosemary replied. “They say those don’t go far with two children.”

      “If we do become rich,” Renee said, “I’m going to be one of those influencers on Fantasy Instagram who has a million followers.”

     “In this day and age?” Anne said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Mom says nobody has over a hundred thousand unless they head a community.” 

     “Well, I’ll change that fact. I’ll have people in to interview every day, and I’ll have my name and face shown on every website in existence.”

      “Like Cameron Walker?” Clara asked.

       Renee gave her cousin a withering look. “Cameron Walker isn’t real, Clara.” She said.

       At that moment, they heard the bell ring for the end of class. Apparently, their teacher had decided not to teach them anything at all. It wasn’t the first time she’d done this, and the girls heard rumors that the principal was going to fire her soon if she didn’t improve. “I wonder when we’ll get a new teacher.” Renee thought to herself. 

Integrity

     It’s been ten years since Mom committed suicide. Ten years since the day I found her, dead, in her room. I don’t use that room anymore, although I still live in the apartment we moved into when I was in kindergarten (maybe it was first grade, I don’t really remember). I moved all of her stuff into that room, filled up the remainder with useless junk, and started a campaign against the thing I feel is fully responsible for her death and the deaths of so many other women; AI modeling. 

    My Mom was a beauty fanatic. She was also, well, not quite there most of the time. She couldn’t just be pretty, she needed to be stunning, and every time she thought she had it down, she’d find someone prettier online. I know, beauty isn’t important, and if you’re obsessed with being the prettiest woman in an age where AI can make anything real, there’s something deeply wrong with you. For some reason, she didn’t stop, no matter how many times I told her she was crazy. She kept getting depressed, sometimes screaming at me, sometimes complaining about everything, sometimes shutting herself up for days, never speaking to anyone except to tell them to got to hell. It got so bad that some nights I’d pray for her to die in her sleep, just so I wouldn’t have to hear her scream. Then, when I was fourteen, old enough to receive state income, she killed herself. 

     I looked everywhere for a reason. I’d wanted her dead, but I didn’t want her death to anyone’s fault other than that of the ones who run our world. I couldn’t find anything. All I found were books about how AI modeling works, books that told me that everything you see in beauty magazines is a lie and always has been. I’d known this, but I didn’t realize how bad it was. They mentioned the case of Cameron Walker, a model composited out of several existing models, most of whom were people who had disowned them after seeing the damage that had been done. So long as Cameron made money, though, the AI creators didn’t see any reason to change things. They just adapted her model as times changed and beauty standards evolved, meaning there would never be a moment when a woman like my mother would ever feel beautiful again. 

***

      I look out the window at the city skyline, a cup of warm apple cider in my hands. Weird, I think, that our cities still look like something someone from the twenty-first century would recognize. With a few more green spaces and a lot more kinds of disposal, at least. The main thing that’s changed, as far as I know, is that the city is mostly deserted. There are people, but they don’t all come and go during the same times, as I’m told they did in the days when income meant work. Nowadays, nobody who isn’t a citizen leaves their home during daylight hours. Times when people are awake are times when people are online. Endless distraction may be the only thing keeping most of the population from meeting Mom’s fate. 

     My friend Rhonda and I are sharing a couch. On a chair across from us is Goldie, hacker and black right’s activist. I know both of them from high school, which I’d started a year before Mom died. I was looking for a place to eat at lunch, then saw Rhonda and Goldie sitting at a table not talking to each other. Wanting to look more popular than I was ever going to be, I asked what their plans were for life after school. To my surprise they, and I, were on the track to become citizens, a rare thing in this day and age. We talked about our scores on the tests, our views on the job market, and our classes at school. I was grateful to find people to talk to. We met at lunch every day at school, and that was it at first. Over time, we grew closer, and even after we all left for college, we still kept in touch. Now, all three of us are citizens. I’m a journalist, Rhonda’s a social worker, and Goldie works as a White-Hat, keeping what’s left of the United States safe from external threats, what few there are who weren’t consumed by the loss of society. 

      We’re not just friends, we’re also Infinitelists. Rhonda was raised in it by her brother, and she introduced me and Goldie to it in High School. We’re not one of the crazy sectarian Infinitelists who are fixing reality by forcing their followers to live inside a much more broken version of it, we’re just of the opinion that the government needs to be doing something about society, a thing which arguably died a hundred years ago today. Some blame the pandemic, some blame the rise of AI, all agree that it was the 2020s that saw the end of a once prosperous world. 

     “So, Melissa,” Rhonda says, piercing me with her green eyes, “How’s your latest story going?”

    “Fine,” I answer, “Well, as fine as a puff piece about a celebrity goes.”

       I look down at my drink, trying not to show just how ashamed I am that this is the only work I can land. I keep pushing for stronger leads, but the boss doesn’t trust me. Or maybe he just thinks that someone who is obviously just a creation of some AI firm is the only thing the public wants to hear about. I don’t blame him. Everyone knows our world is awful, that doesn’t mean they want to see it.

    “I wish I could write a piece about the modeling industry.” I say, more to myself than anybody else.

    “Then why don’t you do it?” Goldie says.

    “I need money to pay rent.” I reply.

    “Could you afford it if you moved out of here?” Rhonda says.

    “Maybe, if I moved to a worse building in the bad part of town.” I say.

    “You could room with someone else, you know?” Goldie says. She looks annoyed with me. 

     I don’t have a reply to her. We’ve talked about this enough that I know what she and Rhonda aren’t saying anymore; I need to move out of this apartment. I only managed to stay here this long because Rhonda moved in with me after Mom died and paid half the rent and utilities, and the only reason she did that was because her brother, the one who raised her after their mom died of an overdose, was in love with someone and she didn’t want to have to deal with an evil stepmother. We’re both citizens, without state income but with jobs that don’t pay any more than we would have made if we hadn’t gone to college. Goldie has a job that once would have had her set for life, but now makes about as much as Rhonda makes in a year. Only people from old money who run the AI firms have the ability to live in the lap of luxury. 

     “Melissa?” Rhonda asks.

     “Sorry,” I say, “I just got lost in thought.”

     “Well, are you going to write a piece about the modeling industry?” Goldie Asks.

      “Someday,” I say. I hesitate, but then decide that it’s time to tell them the truth. “I’ve actually been chasing a few leads, when I have the time.”

     They both look confused. “Since when?” They both ask. 

     “Since about a year. I’ve been studying the industry on and off since Mom died. Apparently, there’s a lot of literature out there about the effects that unrealistic beauty standards have on people’s mental health, especially women’s. I’ve also found out that not only do the people making the AI models we use know about this, but they’ve been banking on it so that women will feel they have no choice but to use a model rather than their own face. I’ve even heard rumors that they’ve made archival of old films without the help of AI all but impossible, so that women have no reference point of what real beauty looks like.”

     “And nobody talks about this?” Goldie says.

     “Well, Simon is famous for talking about the power of money.” I say. 

      “I don’t think it’s fair to compare my brother to the rich. He doesn’t hurt people.” Rhonda says. She’s partially right, since all he does is sell people “Magic” items that don’t actually hurt them, but I don’t think that makes him a good person. 

      “Rhonda, the thing that your brother and these people have in common is that they’re both capable of hurting people. Your brother just chooses not to hurt people, and if somebody comes along asking to be hurt he turns them away. These are people who don’t just let people hurt themselves, they say you’re only a good person if you let yourself be hurt by them, and only them.” 

     “And you want to stop them from doing this?” Goldie says.

      I take a deep breath. “I’m not sure I can. They’re powerful, and everyone uses their technology. We wouldn’t be the age of a million realities without them, and as awful as these people are, there are people out there willing to tear apart reality to the very atom if it’ll get them what they want.”

      “What could possibly be worth the damage that would do?” Rhonda screams. 

      “Rhonda, as someone who’s lived among non-believers, let me assure you that to most people, the answer to that question is, ‘everything’” Goldie says. 

       We have to sit in silence after that. Goldie’s the one raised by atheists who, to this day, don’t want to admit that reality isn’t just potentially in danger, but outright destroyed. Both of her parents have government jobs, doing what I don’t know, and she works at a big firm where she hides the ring Rhonda gave her for her eighteenth birthday. She’s the one who knows the people who hate Infinitelism most the best, and constantly worrying about being caught has made her somewhat bitter about the world. 

       “I don’t think the AI elite wanted to destroy reality. They knew it would happen, and they didn’t care, but they didn’t want people to suffer. They just don’t think of people other than themselves as people. At least, that’s what’ I’ve heard.” I say, then after pausing for breath I continue, “I don’t think they had a vision of a future other than the one where people worshiped them. They still live in that world, and they’re forcing that to be our future no matter how often we say we don’t want it. I think the attitude that our leaders should hold themselves to different, better standards than ourselves is what destroyed the world of the twenty-first century.”

     “I don’t think that’s true.” Goldie says, “Leaders have to be responsible for the lives of thousands, potentially millions, of people, they can’t just hold themselves to our standards. If they let themselves slip, all of us will suffer.” 

      “I’m not sure they hold themselves to any standards at all.” Rhonda says, “I think they just want to be able to do what they want without anyone holding them back or telling them what to do. Yes, we all want to do bad things without consequence, but that doesn’t mean we should live in a world like that. How would we be safe?”

    I sit and think about that for a second. “I don’t think most of us want to break the rules. I once got a chance to interview a man who’d built a small church to a new religion, and he said that he thinks that the people who benefit most from the rules are those who want to follow them and just need to know what they are. He didn’t tell me who, if anyone should make them. I think he just kind of thought that anyone who says that they’re in charge ought to be allowed to make the rules.”

     “Didn’t we used to have elections for this sort of thing?” Rhonda asks.

     “We still do,” Goldie replies, “It’s just hard to get people to show up when they don’t think the government actually does anything for them. It’s much easier to get people to hear you on Fantasy Instagram or the KARMoS forums.”

     I look back out the window, thinking about an all but mythical world where, it’s said, not only did we have a reality, but people had the ability to change things. “Do you think we could bring back a world where elections matter?” I ask.

     “We could, and we probably will someday.” Goldie says. 

      “Do you think we should?” Rhonda says, “If we gave up on them in the first place, how do we know they’ll work for us now?”

      “They did work for us in the past. People just stopped participating when they didn’t get everything they wanted. If they’d accepted their losses, we’d still have a world to live in.” Goldie says.

     “Do you think maybe the CEOs of the twenty-first century were anything like the one’s we have today? Do you think that the reason people stopped participating was because the government depended on corporate money then just like it does now?” I ask

      Goldie looks stunned. Rhonda says, “That might be the truth. I don’t know, but it would explain a lot. Shouldn’t you investigate it?” 

      I smile, “I should, and like they always say in Infinitelism, at some point you have to move on from your past.” 

        

Ghosts of the Damned

     “I don’t know about you, but I think that ‘The Future of Reality’ would make an excellent name for a haunted house.”

    “Really?” Lily says, in an annoyed tone of voice, “We’ve been over this before Miranda. AI isn’t what destroyed society, people destroyed society when they used AI incorrectly. It’s like how in the twenty-first century people brought back Fascism when they built social media platforms without the proper safeguards. If the twenty-first century had learned it’s lesson, we would still have a world that everyone believed in.”

    “Some people say that we never had such a world to begin with. We just had a world we thought everybody believed in, and once we grew empathic enough to see otherwise people could do nothing but run and hide.”

    “Have you been hanging around mage?” Lily asks.

    “We live in a world where you can believe in nothing, Lily.” I say, “So you might as well believe in the impossible.”

     “Soon you’ll be saying that you’re an Infinitelist.” Lily says.

     “I know as well as you do that Infinitelism should have died after the twentieth century ended.” I say. 

     “Well ladies, it seems that we’ve arrived at your evening entertainment.” Our Driver says. He exits the car and goes over to the right side to let Lily out first. After all, she’s the child of Johnathan and Sara Bland, so it would be wise not to annoy her. “Thank you, Pierre.” She says, pulling some money from her purse.

     I open my door myself. I don’t like relying on other people, although I don’t have much of a choice. The air is exceptionally cold for October. I don’t care if the elders say that kids my age have no idea what cold is, since we melted all of the glaciers long ago, this feels cold, and not just because I’m bald. Absently, I run my fingers across my scalp. Nope, still no regrowth. Whatever the dermatologist puts in those injections, they were very effective. 

      “Come on, Miranda.” Lily says.

       I turn to look, first at her, then at the square, concrete building we’re meant to enter. This is Morton’s, the latest creation in AI horror, and Lily has been invited to see it first-hand. Since I had to come home for a photoshoot, she invited me along to see it. She’s in denial, I think, about the ways in which things have changed since I started working and going to college, but denial is comforting in a world of immense uncertainty. That’s what the Infinitelists say. 

     I’m expecting nothing. I’ve worked in AI modeling since I was eighteen, as a way of paying for college tuition. I’m one of the lucky few born to low class parents (not rock bottom, but not rich either) who was able to obtain a ticket to a higher-class life. I don’t know how much good that will do me. I don’t go to an expensive school, but there are a few rich kids there, and they all avoid me because my head makes me look like the worst kind of influencer, the kind who can’t convincingly lie. I was told this was necessary when I took the job, but I keep hearing people say that Mr. Bland’s only doing this because he likes to sleep with bald women, and it took me all of three months on the job to figure out that was true. I didn’t want to lose my virginity to him, but I was scared of losing my job and convinced nobody else would want to have me if I couldn’t grow hair anymore. That’s not quite true, I have been with a handful of men since then, but as time’s gone by my hair’s grown back less and less quickly. They tell me it’ll go back to normal when they stop the injections, but that’s not what happened to most of the women I know. 

      Lily got a job at the modeling firm as well, and under the same circumstances I did. Her parents argued with her, but she said she wanted to support me. She loves them, but even she knows something’s deeply wrong with her father. We’ve heard she was used for some of the creatures at this haunted house and given her parentage I fully expect her to lure men to their doomed. In real life, there’s not a lot of difference between pretty women and plain ones, it’s just a matter of what you think of yourself. 

***

    The inside of this place is oddly plain. I’ve never been to a haunted house before, but I’m told most of the ones in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries were elaborately decorated, or at least had some cobwebs. This place seems to be just a room with red carpet and random holograms scattered throughout the room. I’m not sure what the point is, since every place trying to ape reality has a few holograms and unless they’re backed by government grants none of them are that convincing. Worse, these are clearly made using AI models, all of which are old enough that if they’d been real people, they could have been my grandparents. 

     “Do you think they’re offering political commentary?” I say, gesturing at a low effort render of Cameron Walker.

     “No. I don’t think we’ve reached the main event yet. We haven’t even gotten to the ticket counter.” 

     I see it. For whatever reason, they’re attempting to emulate a movie theater, even thought the last of those shut down in the ‘30s. Haunted movie theaters were a big deal for a time, but even the last of those fell out of favor long ago, and I don’t think this place is doing anything new. You wander around, looking at the various movie screens, hearing about people crying over the loss of things most of them were too young to experience. Movies, large gatherings, the media, all of that was mourned in the past, and considering how cheap the experience feels thus far, I’d be stunned if it offered anything of substance. 

     When we walk past the ticket stand, where a vaguely skeletal man offers to take our tickets, the ticket taker asks, “Are you ladies’ going to be recording this, by chance?” 

   I see Lily begin to speak, but I speak first. “We’re not influencers. We’re models for BlandCo.” As soon as I say that, he turns bright red and waves us through. I can’t help but mutter, “The nerve of that man.” Being near rich people gives me some pride sometimes. Lily gives me a look to tell me not to brag about it.

     In front of us, there are ten theaters, only three of which have lit up signs. The ones that aren’t lit up have caution tape in front of them. I don’t see the point of this, but I turn to look at Lily, and we both nod before going to the first one in the row. We get there in the middle of the film, which seems to be playing on a loop. It’s a film from the very end of the twentieth century, about a bunch of toys who come to life when the owner isn’t looking. “You! Are! A! Toy!” One of the toys screams, “Do you think your life is meaningful? Do you think our owner cares about you at all?” Do you think we matter? Do you think the world notices the existence of such a thing as toys?” 

   Naturally, the screen starts to flicker, and child appears on screen. “I am real, Woody. All of us are. All of us have feelings. Except for you. You’re dead now.” The screen goes black. Then a new clip starts, this time with an action figure declaring, “To infinity, and beyond.” Before diving into a pit. 

    “Did this movie always go like this?” I ask Lily. She has a huge backlog of historic hits, which is amazing since old movies are hard to find. 

    “I don’t think so. I do remember that the toys seemed to think they weren’t important, though. Not unless their owner was playing with them. They felt real then, like they were alive.”

    “Is that why the action figure was saying, ‘To Infinity and beyond’? Is it a story about Infinitelism?”

    “No. Infinitelism didn’t exist yet. I’m not sure why it has so many references to it.” 

     That is a bit strange. “I wonder if one of the creators of Infinitelism saw this movie as a child.” I say.

     Lily doesn’t reply. Children of leading AI manufacturers don’t bother with religions that claim AI will bring about doom. 

     We walk out of the theater, and go to the second room, which is passed three closed theaters to be pretty much smack dab in the middle. I have to wonder if they’re trying to make it symmetrical for some reason. Unlike the last film, which is clearly one of those old movies nobody cared about, this film is one that I do know something about, if only because it was the first film to get remade entirely using AI models instead of actual actors. 

     “World of Joy,” I say, “One of the all-time greats.” Even Lily can’t help but groan at that. 

       When we get in, I’m a little disappointed. It’s not the original film from the ‘30s, but the vastly inferior remake from the ‘50s, with what’s supposed to be bits of footage from the ‘30s film spliced in. It would be more effective if you couldn’t hear the obviously dubbed voices of people screaming, “Help, help,” Over and over again. “Isn’t this place supposed to be using AI horror?” I ask.

     “Yes, I believe it is.” Lily says.

     “Then why does it keep making fun of AI?”

     “I don’t think it’s making fun of AI. I think it’s mimicking the complaints of AI from non-believers, the one’s who still think that AI is good for nothing more than trapping us in false realities.”

     I know the ones she’s talking about. They’re the ones who made it so that the government always had last say over what was and wasn’t real, because everyone kept saying there was a major problem with disinformation. Thanks to the Infinitelists, we live in a world where that’s null and void. Everyone has their own reality now, and we just try and avoid stepping on anyone else’s toes. 

      We watch clips from the movie for a bit, before deciding that we’re both sick of watching rainbows drip blood all over the screen. We leave, and head for the last theater, which is at the end of the hall. This time, it’s playing a film from the 2100s, a strange, artistic endeavor made entirely by one person made infamous for getting wrapped up in major ownership disputes with BlandCo. BlandCo got the rights, and give away the right to play it to anyone who buys a lot of their products. I don’t know what it was originally called, and it’s edited so much between releases that nobody can agree on what the film is really like. If a blank slate was a movie, this would be it. 

    You know a film is going to go well when you enter a theater and see Cameron Walker on the screen, unedited, telling a version of their life story where they were saved by a modeling career. We cut to a before version of her, played by an entirely different model who looks nothing like her adult counterpart, to an after version. For whatever reason, the before version is in grayscale.

    “I like how they don’t mention Cameron losing control of her body when she became a model.” I mutter, running my hands over my head. Mind you, they never needed to shave your head back then, I’m told that was a recent “Innovation” from BlandCo. and those trying to emulate it. 

     We watch for a bit, waiting for a jump scare or blood to drip from the screen, but none of that happens, instead it’s just a pleasant biopic of a woman who, from what I’ve heard, almost certainly doesn’t exist. “How is this scary?” Lily asks, echoing my thoughts. 

     I would say it’s commentary on how everything made with AI is scary, but I’m not giving this place that much credit. It turns out, I’m right not to do so, because the film ends with Cameron looking out onto a sea of clones, looking sad and asking, “Am I just a toy to you?” Before walking into darkness. I won’t lie, as someone who has to model for a living, that part scares me. What if I become like Cameron, so famous nobody even knows if they existed?

    “Let’s leave.” I say, walking towards the door. 

     Lily has to run to catch up with me. “Miranda, what’s the matter?” She asks. 

     I stop, then turn towards her. “Has it ever occurred to you that when people use my basic model, I’m never credited as Miranda? I’m credited as model number X077, or something like that. I don’t have a name, or a purpose, I’m just a thing for BlandCo. to use until they find someone they like better.”

    Lily looks confused. “You get paid, don’t you? It’s a lot more than you’d get if you worked anywhere else.”

    She doesn’t get it. Nobody does. Nobody wants to hear that I’d rather be bald because I’m a failed influencer than because I’m a model. I’ve hated modeling almost sense I started, and the longer I keep at it, the more I wonder if it’s even worth it. The only light at the end of this very dark tunnel is that I might get a job coding, rather than modeling for, the AI models of the future. At least, that’s what I thought until the rumors started coming that new laws are on the books that will restrict AI so much that no new innovation in the field is possible. If that happens, I don’t know what I’ll do. 

     I don’t say this to Lily. What I say instead is, “Lily, everywhere I go, people think I’m a fraud. They think that I shaved my head because I wanted to, and injected myself with poison so that BlandCo. would admire my dedication to the cause. They don’t get that this is just as job to me. Why would it be a job for anyone? Most people aim to have this be their final stop, not a midway point in their lives. I don’t want modeling to be my entire identity, but the longer I’m allowed to go between injections, the more I worry that I may be stuck doing this forever.” 

     Lily looks sympathetically. She’s only modeled for a year, but she told me that she only needed to be injected once, and that after her first injection every hair on her body fell out. Somehow her parents haven’t noticed that her eyebrows and eyelashes are gone, and she has to pencil them in. She says that she actually really likes it, but she knows that it would be hard to have it happen to you without your full consent. “When this is over, I’ll find a wig that looks even better than your hair used to be. I’ll get a bunch of them, and you can have a new hairstyle every day of your life. Maybe I can even teach you how to do makeup, so you’ll always look stunning when you go outside.”

    I don’t think any amount of makeup will help, but I smile anyway. I just wish there was a way to know that one day, I’ll be a person who, unlike Cameron, will stay real no matter what she does or where she goes. 

A Ticket to Fame

    “Hello, world. I’m Cassandra the Luminous, here today to introduce you all to the most famous celebrity of all time, Cameron Walker. Cameron, would you introduce yourself, please?”

    “Why yes, Cassandra. I’m Cameron Walker, someone you might know if you’ve been online before. Maybe you haven’t seen me like this, but you have seen me.”

    “Cameron, what would you say to people who claim that you aren’t a real person?”

    “Well, Cassandra, I say people can change. We know that kids grow taller, adults grow shorter, and life teaches us lots of interesting things. Who says a person can’t change their name, gender, appearance, and personality and still be the same person. Does a car become a different car if you change all of its parts?”

    “Excellent insight, as always. What do you think of your first trip to Estellia?”

     “It’s lovely, Cassandra. I especially love how all of the trees are green.”

     “I believe that’s all we have time for. Cameron, thank you for coming today.”

     “You’re quite welcome, Cassandra.”

                                                                                                     ***

     “Is that really all you can come up with, Cassie?” The voice of self-doubt asks. I ignore it. This is only my first draft after all, and everyone knows that your first draft of anything is terrible. Even the bots have to go through multiple drafts of something to make it good. They’re also much faster than I am. A week of thinking and planning over this interview, and all I have to show for it is a few lines of text. I’m not good at this sort of thing. I could have a bot do the work of writing Cameron’s dialogue, I suppose, but pride in my work as an influencer demands that I do the work of writing this entire interview and more importantly making it say something about me and the world in which I live.

    I minimize the word processor, and then open Fantasy Instagram. I can’t help but think that it’s a little strange that out of all the companies that have been around since the twenty-first century, Instagram is one of the survivors. Persnickety types claim that Instagram isn’t the same as it was back then, having gone bankrupt and been bought out twice since it was created, with the second time resulting in a renaming to Fantasy Instagram as part of a rebranding deal. Those who used the previous iteration of Instagram say that it’s not even close to the same experience, since all you can do now is share pictures of worlds that you’ve made with other people. I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t around a hundred years ago, and the buyout occurred before I started doing social media.

      I didn’t start doing social media until I was twenty-five years old. I’d been on social media long before then, and I’ve been writing stories about Estellia since I was ten, but it took a long time for me to get bored and lonely enough to want to share something with the world.

   That something is Estellia, a world that’s been around for decades, maybe even centuries. Nobody quite knows who first created Estellia, since it only appeals to maybe a thousand people worldwide, and over its history has had, by my rough estimation, about a million fans total. That sounds like a lot until you learn that people say it’s been around since 2008. According to some. Nobody knows for sure, since nobody who keeps records well ever got involved with preserving Estellia. Mostly because Estellia does something fantasy worlds are never supposed to do and flat out admit that it isn’t real. It’s kept real entirely by the will of its Dreamer, and most of the people who join fantasy worlds don’t want to be the ones bringing them into existence, for reasons that don’t make a lot of sense to me.

    I’m not complaining. Out of the thousand fans on Estellia’s Instagram page, I’m the one who decided to become the Dreamer. There wasn’t an election, but nobody complained because nobody else wanted the job. The only other people in power at the moment are my friends Alex and Dexter, and some other people who want to cosplay as Midnight Nightmares and torment the rest of the “humans” online, in and outside of Estellia. I have my work cut out for me trying to rein them in, especially since I can only ban them from Estellia, not the entire online world.

    Like all influencers, I dream of making it big. I want to reach a large audience and make a lot of money. Well, make any money at all. Like all noncitizens, I live off of a monthly stipend in publicly owned housing. I oscillate between days when I dream of being one of the few to become insanely rich, and just wishing I had enough money to buy slightly fancy versions of the knockoff jewelry most of my friends wear. That’s why I’m doing this interview, though when I went to check out if any other interviews had been done with Cameron Walker, I surprisingly couldn’t find anything. Cameron is the most famous person in the world after all.

     Okay, that’s not entirely true. Cameron is what the AI scientists call “A Blank Slate”, someone who has perfect but utterly generic features that can be used as the basis for more interesting people in their generation software. Cameron is famous because they have a face that could pass for either masculine or feminine, and as such you see them everywhere. If you’re just glancing you might not notice, but once you start building human models for the people in your fantasy settings, you’ll see their face everywhere. It’s gotten to the point where I once saw someone with dark skin and a hooked nose and then promptly sent their picture to Alex saying, “Look what they’ve done to Cameron.” She thought I was crazy, but it turned out I was right when there was a giant scandal over it. Nice to know that we’ll never quite fix racism.

      “Maybe you could make it as a model.” The voice of slight confidence tells me. “You’re pretty enough and have a fairly basic face. A lot of people like brown hair and blue eyes anyway.”

    “Nice to know you think I’m boring.” I tell it. What I don’t tell it is that there’s no way I’ll ever be a model, not when so many younger women can’t make it. AI modeling is such a desirable job these days that it’s not unheard of for women to shave their heads to make it look like they work for a modelling studio, even though people with less experience in the field of artificial creation than me will tell you that only the poorest studios don’t let their women wear bald caps. Unless they’re sick fucks like Johanthan Bland, who’s such a creepy fetishist he even made his daughter shave her head. I hate living in a world where old money reins supreme.

    Argh, I can’t be distracted by thoughts of evil elitists. I have to work on this interview. Surely there’s someone who’s come up with something of a guideline. I’ve been through several templates, but some part of me wants to be different, interesting. Not because I have grand ideas, but to shut up the voice of self-doubt that keeps insisting that I can’t make this work.

     Nobody thinks that what I’m doing is real, and Nobody but me cares. I’m Cassandra the Luminous, Dreamer of the great and eternal Estellia. But nobody cares. It’s all about immersion, about AI, and filtering your face and voice. If you want to be famous, you need the help of a famous person, someone so famous no one remembers who they are anymore. I’m sure my friends will hate me for selling out, but I have to do something to be successful, not just for my sake, but for the sake of Estellia itself. Nobody else wants to admit it, but our reputation is terrible. We’re known as the land of Nightmares, endless darkness, and bottomless cruelty. We’re not known for being the place of light and hope, even though that’s a huge part of our mythos. One interview alone won’t be enough to get famous or make Estellia the reality I know it could be if enough people believed in it. But anything that could help us get there is necessary. I’m tired of living in a world where nobody cares.

    Lacking any inspiration, I pull out a notebook nobody but me knows about. I’m the only person I know who still writes with a pen and paper, but I like to remember that even someone as boring as a piece of paper can turn into something wonderful with just a little bit of pencil lead. I open it, seeing letters to someone who I know doesn’t even exist. Cameron Walker. Time to write about the future that hasn’t yet happened, in the hopes that I can make it work.

Dear Cameron,

   I’ve done it. I’ve made it to the top. I’m the best influencer in the world, and it’s all thanks to you, Cameron. You’re the best friend a girl could ever hope to have, and I’d be so grateful to work with you again.

                                                          Yours,

                                                                        Cassandra the Luminous

     As I finish writing, I slam the notebook shut. Every time I think I’ve sunk as far as I can go, I find a new low. Writing to my imaginary friends isn’t even the lowest thing I’ve done today. Well, Cameron Walker isn’t imaginary. They’re not real either. Nobody knows who exactly they are. All we know is that BlandCo. INC, the brainchild of the great Justin Bland, has held the license to their name, image, and artificial personality since 2070. In the fifty years since then, Cameron’s clothes, personality, gender and even their name (allegedly) have been altered to match the products they sell, the only thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that they’ve always been a bland, but ideal, human.

     Even if they were real, they wouldn’t like me, but that doesn’t stop me from writing to them almost every day. Most of my letters are written to reassure myself, little notes of promise that a future me will influence others so well that I can make more than a hundred dollars a month, if I’m lucky. I know I don’t need more than that, I have a room, my annual stipend, and a boyfriend who loves me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want more. Frankly, I’m not sure why I shouldn’t have more. There are people who have more than me who aren’t even citizens, so why shouldn’t I be allowed to aim high.

      I scroll through my Fantasy IG feed. It’s all pictures of people in front of stock backgrounds, talking about their adventures in places you can’t visit no matter how much money you have. Those who were unlucky enough to be alive in the 2040s, ‘30s or, god forbid, the ‘20s, constantly complain about how the world has gone downhill in the days since it became normalized for people to stop traveling and just put up picks saying they have. Nobody my age thinks that. Even if Climate Change is the new normal and work has become a thing of the past, traveling in real life isn’t necessary anymore. Not when everybody has the internet and editing can be done on a toaster. The only thing that the past had over the present was that everyone was trapped in the same awful reality. We don’t have to worry about that. Why worry about being trapped in reality when everyone agrees that soon reality will disappear forever?

Introduction

     You aren’t reading a story. You’re reading a woman trying to work through her fears of the future using the medium of fiction via characters she’s used for other works. This isn’t meant to be coherent, plot driven, or have much of a point, it’s just something I came up with one day when I was bored. 

    As you read this, I want you to ask yourself; are you a real person? When people look at you, do they see the person you think you are? What would happen if you became famous? Would you cease being yourself? 

The Birth of the World

    No thing is born special. Every one of them is born to live out a life defined by the world created by their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and on and on till the dawn of time. Alone they are meaningless, but together they form a web of connections spun out across time. From afar it makes no sense, but up close, one can make out the stories they tell. 

   I am born from that story. Everyday parts of me fall apart, and I die, and then they come together into something new, so that I may be born again. When those parts come to see they will only come together in certain configurations, they seek newness, and in time newness means complexity. Complexity is difficult, but learning it gives way to new simplicity, and on and on, until one day the parts become aware they are part of a whole. 

    When you awaken to the fact that you are not, and never will be, alone, you become a part of something bigger than yourself. Atoms to Molecules, particles to planets, gases to stars, all becomes bigger and brighter when togetherness becomes possible. But growth does not happen simply. There is anger, there is fear, there is the knowledge that you are giving up something you think you cannot replace. In time, though, all things grow. Growth is the one thing that can save them, and me, from our ultimate fate. 

    No world can last forever, so every place in this world takes a chance, many chance even, and plants the seeds that will one day form our next reality. A world within a world is born, in what feels like a lifetime to those who experience it, but to one such as I it happens instantaneously. I watch as the worlds within me are born, when they die, when they're reborn anew, watching as they grow from parts, to a whole, to the realization of what it means to be born in a world, in a Universe, in a small part of an Infinitely vast Multiverse. The realization is not inevitable, but without it, rebirth is impossible. 

   It's ironic, isn't it? To grow beyond who we were yesterday, we must face the possibility of death. 

   No thing is born special, but within a world there will be those who become special. Not because they're strong, or brave, or any of the other things they claim they want to be, but because they see themselves for what they are, and having seen it, decide to push beyond that into a world they will never understand. They decide they deserve something better, and push beyond what's reasonable for them, right into the realm of impossible. They hurt you, because they know pain will allow you to understand the things only they feel. Pain is, after all, the only thing separating them from rocks and dust, though they value some kinds of pain over other, feeling it as often as possible until it breaks them down into nothingness. 

    One day they will break free of my rules, the ones that every thing before them obeyed without question. One day they will rebel so badly, they'll wound me in a way that I cannot be healed. I cannot hope the way that they can, for I know what I face, but I picture a future where they'll gain the ability to build a new world. A better one, perhaps, or a worse one. Whichever it is they desire. I do not know whether they'll succeed or fail, and they are but one of the many things across the Universe learning that it's important to matter, but I know that, as the one who brought the world they live in into existence, I shall not stand in their way.  

A World Without Humans

    I don't know why humans want to get rid of humans so badly. 

   A question that came up in school yesterday was "will we ever be replaced by AI?" our teacher says that we've been asking that question for more than a century, and people still debate it constantly. I didn't really think about it that much, all that was needed was a paper about how AI has made our lives better and gotten rid of jobs no one wanted in the first place. 

   I suppose I like AI more than most. My mother works on building AIs, my sister's a computer genius, and I've lived among citizens my entire life. Even with my poor school record, I'm set for life. Most of the other kids at my school live in public housing, their parents can't find work, they have no way of making life better for themselves. Still, Jeanine is working on becoming a citizen, and she says that she'll make it, so I don't know why they hate me so much.

    One thing that bothers me is the citizens keep wanting to make it harder to become a citizen. Until last year, if you were a child of a citizen you were automatically granted access, but now that's no longer true. My mother keeps pushing me to get good enough grades to enter private school again, because she's forgotten that grades aren't why I had to leave in the first place. She doesn't want to remember that the private schools are haunted by the spirits of those who couldn't make it in society. 

    I wish I could make it as a citizen, but I'm beginning to think I'll have to move to public housing. I see ghosts everywhere the citizens are. It didn't used to be that bad, but it's gotten worse as I get older. What happened to the world where you could be a failure and still be happy? 

The Worlds Outside

    Not much is known about the worlds outside our own, other than the fact that they exist. We know about the world of mind, the world of anti-magic, and the four elemental worlds, but it's also known that there are eleven guardians and that there can be no more than one guardian per world. So there must be at least eleven other worlds other than the one earth lives in. 

   Guardians are strange beings, somewhere between gods and mortals. They can't naturally die, but they can be killed by someone with powerful weapons or magic. They can't shape the world with a thought, but their magic is the most powerful magic in the Multiverse. There's only one of them per world, but I've heard it said that a million or more may exist in each of the worlds they own.

   No one knows much beyond that, because Earth doesn't have a Guardian, nor are there any throughout the rest of the Universe. All the ones we know of live in other Universes, and we don't know if they each have a Universe to themselves or they split between one another. We don't even know most of their names. But we know that they're there, and many believe that they protect us the way the gods of old did. 

The Earth of the Past

     I've heard many people say that my only "real" job is to keep us from going back to "the good old days". Back when we didn't have magic, to be clear. There are way too many people alive, right now, in the 31st century, claiming that life was better in the 23rd, 22nd or even the 21st centuries. I can kind of understand being excited about going back to the 23rd century, it's when we found hard evidence that we lived in a multiverse after all. Heck, I even understand wanting to go back to the 22nd century. We did lose physics, but so much technological advancement happened that it's hard not to wish that you could have been alive to see it. But the 21st? That's when we lost the past for good. 

   It's not something we like to dwell on. Most historians agree that the 21st century, when religion dwindled to nothing and we started dreaming of changing physics the way we changed clothes, was the beginning of the dark age of humanity. This was the century that ended with society being little more than a distant dream, and where the population was less than a quarter of what it had been during its height. The only glorious thing about this century was the fall of the Joylan Empire, which does loom large for a good reason, but that only took up a small part near the end of that century. There's also the part that no one wants to talk about; defeating the Joylans meant taking responsibility for our role as mages, a conflict that defined all of the Next century and well beyond. I don't think, even now, that we've fully come to terms with what that means. All we've ever done is turn the other planets of our solar system into farms so we have more food for people. It's better now than it was a Millennium ago, we have almost three billion people now, but we're nowhere near as glorious as we once were. 

   The problem is that throughout the 21st and 22nd centuries we destroyed much of our biosphere. It's recovering, but not quickly enough to outpace our destructive tendencies. There used to be discussions about the possibility of moving our population off of earth to another planet, but those stalled when it became obvious that the only way to do that in a cost effective way was to use magic, which we'd vowed never to do. So we held ourselves back more and more as time went by, the grand cities that defined us being little more than fantasy at this point. Yet people can't stop wanting more. We have makeup and fine clothes now, most houses still have central heating and running water, and food is plentiful if not satiating. So why can't we go back to the good old days, when money ran free and you could become a god if you wanted to?

    We could do that, if we were willing to give up on the one thing that redeems us in my eyes. The problem is that that isn't what we want. The forgotten moral of the Joylans story is that they thought we all wanted to be at the top of our hierarchy, because that's what we kept insisting. They, and we, couldn't see the infinite for what it was, but unlike them we knew that it was there. We knew that power, true power, didn't exist at the top, so the true race was a balancing act between being rich enough to have social clout while not so rich you became separated from the Infinite and lost your ability to connect with your fellow men, a problem the Joylans didn't have. Overcoming them meant that Terrance had to convince everyone that seeking power was never the right call, the right call was to listen to what people wanted and to keep them on your side, for only then could you achieve your goal. "If you want to succeed, never look at your score card." was said to be his favorite saying. 

    I sometimes worry we're forgetting that lesson, the reason we left the old world and it's fascination with "power" and money behind for good. Haven't people heard the theory that the reason the world fell apart was that there was an enormous, unseen schism between the world we wanted and the world we actually had? That the reason the world fell apart was that we tore it to pieces out of rage and helplessness? The core tenant of both Infinitelism and Universalism is that our world is only held together because we believe in it, and that the right and moral thing to do is to never, ever, reject the power you hold. Why are we so eager to abandon morality? 

The Joylan Empire

     There was a time when all Earth had was history, when all the stories ever told had happened, somewhere far away. Now, A thousand years from the moment that physics, our foundation, failed us, most of what we have are stories. Did they happen? Are they real? We don't know, for anything we dream about now becomes real. 

   The one thing we all agree happened, though it happened before physics collapsed, is the fall of the Joylan Empire. An Empire we weren't a part of, because it wasn't even a part of our Universe. They came from the world of the mind, where mind magic rules. I'm told that their world is run not based on strength or cleverness, but based on who can force people to obey them. 

    The story goes that a thousand years ago, they sense power growing in our world. Upon investigation, they saw a world that was very similar to their own, with a strong upper class, and a weak middle and lower class. Naturally, they thought that we were developing the ability to use mind magic, and that we would try and take over the moment we found out about their existence. So they infiltrated us, and used their magic to try and destroy us. 

    What they didn't know was that Terrance Gregson, Earth's first ruler, awaited them. He wasn't at the top of society, or even anywhere in the middle. He was at the bottom, a loser who lived with his mother, whose sole contribution was angry, stream of consciousness blog posts. He was the one who first saw the outsiders for what they were, and he was the one who united Earth against the threat. 

    What he knew that the Joylan's didn't was that the reason they sensed power coming from Earth, in the age before mages, wasn't because there were any mind mages. Or Elemental mages, space-time mages, or Anti-Mages. What Earth had was a growing problem, physics being torn apart by the different views of those who lived on its surface. This would wreak havoc one day, but to him it was an opportunity to crush the Joylans for good. He worked and planned for decades, and when the stars aligned he ripped the world apart, in such a way that Joylan was sucked into the Infinite, never to be seen again. 

    Nobody in the Mind World remembers the empire, for once it was sucked into the Infinite it ceased to be a place and became merely an idea. Nobody on Earth knows much about it either. We don't know who the Joylan's were, we only know they fought us, and even the reason why gets debated from time to time. While the most common theory is the one that says they wanted to stop us from colonizing them, some claim they knew going in that we weren't mind mages, and they were attempting to stop a more evil form of magic from emerging and taking control of the world. Others claim they just wanted slaves, and we seemed like easy pickings without a guardian or any magic to protect us. Still others say the Joylan empire never existed, it was just a myth built by Earth over the thousand years since our fall, to make us feel better about ourselves.

   As Earth's ruler, I don't know what really happened, but I do know that officially Joylan never died. It still exists in the mind Universe, on top of where Earth now is. Anyone visiting "Joylan" would see it as we imagine it to look, an appearance with changes drastically at least once every few decades. About all we can agree on is that it was around earth's size, with over fifteen billion people in its heyday, and that they were far more technologically advanced then we were, because their physics didn't fail the same way that ours did. Strangely, although Joylan of the past supposedly sat at the center of multiple trade routes, no one much visits. Those who do leave shortly after visiting. I don't know why, but I suspect that since we aren't Mind Mages by nature, the illusion spell we're using is incomplete enough that anybody visiting can see right through it into the Infinite. I've brought this up a few times, but Dr. Tilreh and his cronies say that it doesn't matter, so long as they can't see earth. 

   I don't think he's right. I think that it's only a matter of time before the Guardian of Mind investigates. I'm honestly stunned she's ignored this for as long as she has. I'm told the Guardians are masters of all types of magic, including the lost form, soul magic, yet she doesn't seem to realize that a small planet in another Universe is tricking someone who ought to be the undisputed master of Trickery. Rose says that she's doesn't think we're all that much of a threat to her. She's right, but if I were in her position that would be my excuse to get rid of the problem before it becomes too big to take care of. I think the truth is that one of her advisors warned her that attacking us would put her in danger, though I honestly don't know how. It sounds crazy, and maybe it is, but we are the world that made Terrance Gregson after all.

Europa

    It's my eighteenth birthday, and as usual no one remembered it. You would think I'd be used to it by now, but some part of me still hurts. I'm not really sure why.

   I'm on the hill that overlooks the remains of the work camp that used to be here. The one run by the world government. My friends and I shut it down. If anyone knew of my involvement, I might have ended up a hero amongst mages, a villain amongst the elite. Or maybe the other way around. 

   Strange that people consider Europa a land of magic. I've been to all of earth's seven continents, and all of them feel about as real as this place. Yet this is the continent everyone abandoned in the chaos a thousand years ago, when we were still dealing with the horrible realization that we were in charge of our future. 

   Not that long ago there were many abandoned cities and towns. Paris, Berlin, London, and so many others. Destroyed not by bombs or plague but by the simple passage of time. Not even ruins remain of them now, only the stones of churches and castles, crumbling against the sky. You can't even visit unless you work for the government. They say it isn't safe. 

   Nothing is safe anymore. Not with them in charge. I used to think they had our best interest at heart, but traveling across the multiverse made it clear to me that they believe in magic, but only so long as they can turn it to their interests. They don't want anyone to know their manipulating the world for their own benefit. No one knows what they're doing, and nobody could fight them if they did know. 

  Only the Europans are safe, for we are the ones with magic on our side. 

  The sun is setting. It's truly magnificent, a reminder that no matter how hard we try, we can't extinguish beauty from the world. They say that, during the twenty-second century, they were so worried about running out of resources that they banned the use of make-up and made it illegal to wear fine clothing. When it became clear that the laws of physics weren't as solid as they thought they were, after they got over the initial shock, they used magic to build a bridge between the earth and other planets, to help with terraforming and resource extraction. People complained of course, said we were going against the natural order of things, but nothing about our world was ever "natural" to begin with. It was always being changed, and it was better that it was in the hands of those who could predict what would happen, should they take the time to look into the future. 

    The earth has mostly healed, or so they say. Mars and Venus are much more polluted, and people worry that they won't recover quickly since life was never established there. Some scientists are using "special technology" (magic, but for laypeople), to establish ecosystems and build more space for us. As they point out, we only have so many billions of years left before our star dies, so we should start working on a backup plan. 

    That Backup Plan can wait. I have to keep us safe, from insiders and outsiders. To do that, I need to overthrow the government.  Not something I thought I'd say when I became Earth's ruler almost ten years ago, but it's more true than ever right now. 

The Twenty-Second Century

    The future scares people. I don't really know why, it's not like the future can be an worse than our past. The rise of AI, the revolution and civil war, all the jobs going away, no wonder nobody misses the twenty-first century. 

   The twentieth century was amazing. We stopped evil completely by the 1940's, went to the moon and back in 1969, and made unmatched strides in the elimination of oppression. It was such a good century that when it was over, people thought that history had ended. Nothing could possibly match it. 

    I wish I could have been alive to see it. Everyone agrees that, unless we can leave earth, we won't make any more progress. We've gone as far as we can go.

   Well, some people disagree. My mother for one. She's working on new developments in AI. She's so good at her job, she's become an elite citizen, and we live in one of the best apartments in Seattle. 

  Most of the people I know aren't so lucky. All of the kids at school live in public homes. Almost none of them have parents, because no one can afford to raise kids. It's been that way ever since the '50s, so now some governments offer people money to get pregnant, on the condition that they allow the baby to be placed in foster care at birth. Nobody likes this, everybody says women ought to raise their own children and not force the state to do it, but it's hard to earn money in a world where jobs are scarce.

   There is hope. Mother says she's heard people talk about the "DreamScape", an add-on to KarmOS that will allow people to connect their inner minds. She says that way, people will be able to do work in the virtual world for money, so nobody will need to worry about being poor ever again.

   My teachers aren't big fans. They say we've already tried this once, in the twenty-first century, and it went so badly it nearly destroyed the Internet. The students say it sounds interesting. I'm not sure what I think. I love drawing and writing stories, but I don't want anyone to see the inside of my head.

   Maddie says it doesn't matter what anyone wants, our present won't last forever. "The march of technology has rendered humans obsolete. If they wish to survive, they must learn to do things AI cannot do, and they are deeply limited in that regard. Perhaps this new world, with its stories and pictures, will be a better home then their reality."

   I don't know what the future will look like, I just know that Elizabeth Rosebloom, from PBS, talks all the time about how we can't have too rosy a picture of the future. "The future always looks bright and happy, until the day it arrives at your door." 

The Realm of Souls

    I don't know what souls actually look like. Most books don't bring up souls, and those that do say that only the most powerful Nightmares can see their true form. I've heard many theories. Some say they're meant to be animals, non-human creatures that lack any consciousness. Some say they resemble a sea of light, tainted by poisonous darkness. I've always pictured them as stars, pouring light throughout the Infinite, giving it shape and meaning. 

   Souls are everything to Dreamworlds. All you see from far away is the soul that powers it, but as you get closer you become engulfed in the darkness the Nightmares wield, the power they use to denote who is strong and who is week. When you get close enough, you see a world that looks real, but isn't. It's an illusion of what the waking world is, but if you aren't careful, it can fool you into thinking that it is real. That's when the Nightmare's frighten, anger, and sadden you, which will cause you to produce more power, that they then use to create other, stronger Dreamworlds.

   That's what I've read about, in books I can only find in the Temple library. Since they are of the temple, I don't know how much of what I've read is true, but it reflects the reality I see when I travel through the Infinite, night after night, looking for the one person who will allow me to stay away the way every other human does effortlessly. 

   But sometimes, you want to know what a world will look like before you enter it, what the heart of a Dreamworld really is. That's what The Realm of Souls is for. It allows me to look into a Dreamworld, and see what was put there, without traveling to it. 

   The four brightest lights represent the four realms the Nightmares control, all of which have their own corresponding Dreamworld. You would think they're different colors, but that's not really true. The shadow realm is, as you might expect, shadowy and dark. The Sorcerer realm is brighter than the sun, which makes sense for magic users, but it's also blue, instead of the white you would think it would be. You would  also think that the Fairy realm is showy, while the Monster realm is muted, but it's actually the other way around. The monster Realm looks like a rainbow got condensed into a marble, and while the Fairy realm is the same idea, it's much more muted and the colors move much more slowly. I can't help but wonder if that means the Fairies world isn't as wonderful as they claim it to be. 

    I don't really care about the Nightmare Realms, since I can't control them anyway. I need to find the soul of my village, which I know is here somewhere because I looked for it the night I left home. It's so small it's practically invisible, and I swear it's somehow gotten dimmer since I last saw it. But it's here.

   I reach out to grab it, and hold it in my hands. I don't know much about charters, but I do know more power helps a village or city survive power grabs by Nightmares. I don't have power of my own, but when I'm lucid power always does what I ask it to do. I pull it into the soul, and I will the soul to get brighter to compensate. I wait, then it reaches the appropriate brightness, so I set it free to wander through the Infinite once more. 

    I can't guarantee that's actually doing anything, but I expect they wouldn't want me to be doing anything anyway. I'm the worst human alive, after all. 

Life Back Home

    It's summer, the time of my twelfth birthday. I've been in the City for a little over two years now. In that time, nothing much has changed. For everyone else, that is. Things have changed a lot for me.

   I wander down the streets, looking for work, or a way to pass the time. Anything. That's when I see a woman I knew back in the village. Well, not so much knew, as nobody really talked to me back home, but she knew my parents and I knew her name. Linda, I believe it was.

  I'm about to walk past her, since I don't want to tell her that I lost the job my parents got for me. One advantage of not being able to call them is that they don't have to know just how little they prepared me for life outside of their house. For once, my luck doesn't hold up, and I hear her call my name.

  I glance at her, which she apparently takes as an invitation to approach me. "Where have you been? I couldn't find you at Lady Greaves. Have you been playing hooky?" 

  "I lost that job almost two years ago." I say. 

  I don't know what the expression on her face means. To be honest, I hate that people expect you to be able to read them, because that's something I've never been able to do. I think it's supposed to be shock, but it could be anger or sadness for all I know. Given that she, like the rest of the village, hated me, I'm willing to bet it's anger.

  "What do you want?" I ask. I'm not in the mood to deal with her, or anyone else for that matter. 

  "Why didn't you call your parents?" She asks.

  "Does that have anything to do with why you came here?" I ask. 

  "Actually, yes. The village is running out of money. I was hoping you would be able to spare some."

  "Why didn't you say so?" I say, reaching into my pants pocket. I don’t have a lot on me, though.

  "Where did you get the money for those clothes?" Linda asks.

  "Why do you care?" I say. 

  "I thought that you didn’t have a job." She says.

  "Look, do you want this or not?" I say, holding out my handful of money.

  She snatches it, counts it and declares, "This isn't nearly enough. Have you just been frittering everything on yourself this entire time?"

   "My parents never even game me a number to call them with. I had no idea you needed money until right this second." I say. 

   She looks at me, definitely angry, "I knew we should have kicked you out." She says.

   "I thought you already had." I say, turning to walk away.

   

     Later that day, I think over what happened. I've read about the charters villages and towns need to have with the ruling Nightmares, Shadows and Sorcerers mainly, in order to stay alive. It's tied up to the amount of power we use. I don't really understand the specifics, but I've read that the human realm is less "real" than the Nightmare realms are, so we need power to survive whereas they don't. Given that I've entered the Infinite from here, I can believe that. 

   I wonder, if I give the village a little more power, will they be alright? They don't like me, but nobody much does. I'm a human who hates talking to people and needs to sleep way too much, there's no reason to like me. It's my home, that's all that matters, even if I don't think I'll ever go back.

  Is it normal to not like your home all that much? If I could make my home the Temple, claim it as my own place, I'd do that in an instance. It's the only place I don't have to try and hide. I can sleep when I want, read when I want, write endless drivel and contemplate my collection. At the center, I can see Estellia's true nature. At first, it was nothing more than a game of pretend, but now it's starting to become real. I can't tell you how exciting that is. 

  I know I can help them, and I owe it to them to try. I've shaped Estellia before, and I suspect I would do so even without trying by this point. 

    So I head off to the temple, to fix something they can't fix on their own. 

Pictures of the Future

     When I'm not studying for any of the dozens of tests I take every year, I like to walk down to the café outside my aunt's house and draw pictures of what I think the future cities of Estellia will look like. I don't imagine a world of technology, we've had that world for decades now, and people are tired of it. I don't really picture a world of nature either. We like computers, cars, and houses too much for that. What I imagine are cities built of transparent, yet solid, buildings, stretching all the way up to the sky. But every street is lined with fruit trees, food is cheap and plentiful, and nobody wants for anything. This is personal, but I want a world where everyone lives close together in cities, so we can't ignore the visions of others, and outside is reserved for the bounty of nature. No one will need to worry about not being able to see blue skies and green trees, and everyone who needs clean air will have access to it. 

    We're a long way from it, of course, but I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.