1. AfterDark
AfterDark
Playlist: After Dark - Mr. Kitty
Lyra
My bare feet hit the cold floor with a soft thud. Air. It’s scarce in this city, but the need to clear my head is immense.
I quietly open the door to the balcony. The rain comes down in sheets now, like tiny shards of glass stabbing the pavement below. A deep breath in, I settle on the giant billowy cushions of the makeshift sofas Eli and I made out of furniture from the alley.
The city looks almost beautiful from up here.
Neon bleeds through the fog in soft ribbons of pink and electric blue.
Towering holo-signs flicker through the mist like giant constellations.
The rain never fully stops in Oneiro. It hangs in the stale air, beading along the railing and glistening on tangled wires overhead.
From my balcony, the world feels half-alive.
I almost forget it’s drowning in artificial light.
I light the candles on the low table beside me, their flames dancing in the night breeze, sputtering when a nearby security drone drops in. The sofa cushions are worn from nights spent out here sketching, thinking, trying to remember what the world felt like before it was plugged in.
I pull my knees to my chest and open my sketchbook.
Stars. That’s all I used to draw at first. The real ones that used to twinkle in the sky over the beach, not the ominous ones that later fell during StarFell.
Or, at least, what I remember of them. Memories rarely rejoin my thoughts anymore, but I have no problem recalling the night they disappeared.
The night the lights went out everywhere, all at once, like the world itself was placed on hold while the universe decided whether it would answer the call. No warning. Just a sudden silence.
I turn the page to another sketch of one of the many sunsets Eli and I used to sit underneath. Another memory claws its way up from the recesses of my mind, this time not as pleasant. The air twisted and suffocated us both. I remember being blinded and choking on light.
The night the stars didn’t fall at all, because they were purposely ripped out of the sky.
StarFell. Named by the corporations most likely responsible for it. That’s on the next page. It’s grayed out where I used the eraser one too many times to convey the terror it brought down upon us.
We all woke up screaming. Visions that weren’t ours drilling into our skulls. Some of us scorched from the inside out with power that felt too big for our bodies. Others felt hollowed and emptied.
I press my fingers to the inside of my wrist where my tattoo glows faintly. Constellations arranged in a pattern no astronomer has ever charted. Just like the one running down my spine.
We were marked, but not with ink. Strange tattoos, symbols and sigils we never chose for ourselves, glowing with neon colors no ink could ever mimic.
Nano-light. Particles from the blast that fused to our cells, binding to us like circuitry woven into our flesh. Radiated fallout. The pain was blinding, like a celestial brand searing straight through flesh.
I turn another page as mist hits my face causing tiny little prickles across my cheeks.
It’s a drawing of my own eyes. I was trying to figure out how and why they looked different from the last time I saw them in the mirror.
Once the glow settled under our skin, it spread to our eyes, searing them with micro-luminous threads, binding to our DNA like an invasive code.
I flip through the rest of the sketches quickly, the paper now damp against my fingers.
It lands on a sketch of one of my friends from the beach, and she looks completely normal.
A few poor souls were left unclaimed, without any magic invading their body.
They were burned by the stars but barren.
No magic. No power. Scarred with plain tattoos where something more powerful could have lived. I don’t know which fate is worse.
I look out over the massive bank tower across from our balcony. Dawn is just beginning its struggle to break through in shades of pinks over an ad for some new food being created in a lab, deep inside a corporation’s basement.
Another memory surfaces. Dawn, the day after StarFell. When it finally fell over the ruined horizon, the corporations were already waiting, organizing, cataloging us.
The branding began immediately, officially naming it StarFell and calling us “gifted” to make it sound like a miraculous event, like we were given a divine offering.
But in most ways, it was just a tragedy. My entire generation was touched by it, marked by it, altered at the molecular level.
The patio door below us opens; a new prototype AI dog barks incessantly, sounding like a glass pane shattering in slow motion.
Or is it a human voice whispering the word “Woof” at four hundred times the speed?
Either way, it annoys me, as our neighbor yells something about getting up and getting out of DreamNet to her son.
DreamNet. Created for my generation by the Corporation because after that night, we stopped dreaming. Not metaphorically. Literally. A place where we can virtually go to drift into imagined worlds. DreamNet is where we build alternate realities, awake or asleep.
I flip the page and title my next piece: “The Birth of the Dreamless.” I begin to sketch the horizon splitting open.
My generation woke up altered at the molecular level, powerful and powerless, because it stripped away our means of escape.
I smudge the charcoal to make it look like the sky is glitching.
It leaves the tips of my fingers blacked out.
How ironic. No dreams of a better life or a better place.
No dreams of a future without corporations.
A future blacked out by corporate entities and AI systems belonging only to those rich enough and influential enough to have it.
A delivery drone buzzes just above me, its robotic steel arm slicing into the air to drop a holo-ad at my feet, then fluttering away quickly and neatly. I pick it up; a woman smiles brightly, selling artificial starlight subscriptions for your home. “Own the sky again!” it promises.
I let out a humorless laugh.
They took our freedom, our futures, and our ability to imagine a world without them. But they didn’t realize something else happened that night. They woke us up.
I close the sketchbook and hold it tightly against my chest. A last look out over the city, wires, neon, rain, and all, before it starts to slither its way into my day.
They think they control our power. They’re wrong. StarFell made us into something they can’t fully control, especially now that we can artificially dream. We’re far more dangerous now.
They should’ve left us sleeping dreamless, because now the dreams are manufactured, and the thoughts are more organized. And the memories?
Now they’re weapons.