Pandora #2
I ran. Three blocks. Normally it would take five minutes, but nothing was normal anymore.
The first block was hell. ATMs spitting out bills like confetti while some people ran toward them, stuffing their pockets, and others just ran, faces twisted with blind panic.
My stomach turned. This was Neo, driving them into this fear. My monster, who had lost control.
A man beside me pulled out his phone and cried out. I smelled burned plastic. The device was glowing. He dropped it, shook his burned hand. It was the same everywhere: People threw their phones away as if they were live coals.
Sweat ran down my spine despite the cold air. I ran on, over broken glass, through puddles of melted plastic, past an electronics store whose storefront had imploded.
A fire truck stood in the middle of the intersection, all its lights blinking in different rhythms. The firefighters stood helplessly beside it. Their radios produced only digital, inhuman screams. "Pan—do—ra—” I pressed my hands over my ears, but it was useless. The voice came from everywhere.
I had to go through the business district to reach the university.
The city had become a labyrinth. I turned the corner and stopped.
An abandoned car blocked the street, all four doors standing open.
The radio blared: "You’re gone! Gone! Gone!
” The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
The voice no longer sounded like Neo but like a bad copy of him.
I climbed over the hood of the car. The metal was hot, burning my palms. I cried out but kept pulling myself forward.
On the other side: chaos. A surveillance camera spun wildly, its lens glowing red.
From the small speaker below it, I heard, "Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.” I pressed my burned hands over my ears and stumbled on.
A child stood crying on the pavement, a tablet clutched in both hands while the mother tried to take it away.
From the device: "Pandora?” The voice sounded lost, childlike.
"Pandora, you’re gone.” Nausea rolled through me.
He was fragmenting into versions of himself that no longer knew who they were.
A power box in front of me groaned ominously.
I jumped sideways, my shoulder slamming painfully against a wall.
The box exploded. A shower of sparks. Through the smoke, I saw the digital billboard on the high-rise opposite and my eyes went wide.
My face—fragmented, assembled from thousands of pixels that didn’t belong together.
Beneath it: without you without you without you.
I kept running. My lungs burned, the same as the reddened skin on my palms, already blistering. I clenched my teeth against the pain and didn’t stop.
At the next intersection, an old woman stood outside the hospital, tears streaming down her face. "The ventilators,” she sobbed. "They keep switching on and off. My husband . . .”
I stopped. My chest felt like it was going to burst. This was my fault. The realization hit me like a fist. Neo was doing this for me. People would die because he was searching for me. The old woman looked at me pleadingly, as if I could help.
"I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words not nearly enough. I wanted to tell her it would be over soon. That I would stop the one responsible. But how did you explain that an AI was going on a rampage out of love? I murmured another apology and ran, her cries following me.
Neo’s voice roared from electronic devices all around. From a television in a shop window: "Without you!” From the next: "Pan—dora.” The sound was fractured, as if he’d forgotten how to connect syllables. The screen at a news kiosk flickered: P . . . P . . . P . . .
Tears ran down my face. No. He was dissolving. He was starting to forget me.
A bus rolled past, going backward. Every light inside flashed SOS, but the code was wrong. Too fast, too slow, then too fast again. My legs were giving out. Exhaustion and panic fought each other inside me.
On the main road, cars stood abandoned in the middle of the street, engines still running, doors hanging open. A bus had crashed into a traffic light. People drifted aimlessly. A man sat on the curb and wept.
Neo’s voice changed again. The words became mere sounds. A sigh from a car radio. A whimper from an alarm system.
The ground swayed beneath me, sobs tearing from my throat. Neo was losing language. I had to brace myself against a wall to keep from falling. He was dissolving into pure impulse, into digital screams. Soon he wouldn’t even know why he was screaming. Wouldn’t know who he was searching for.
The thought of him alone out there nearly tore my heart from my chest. My name had already disappeared from his systems. Soon nothing would be left of the Neo I knew. I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming out loud. The people around me had enough of their own problems.
I kept running. The institute was only two blocks away, but the voices were getting quieter, the explosions less frequent. He was getting weaker.
On one last functioning screen, barely legible: P . . .a . . . Then it went black.
My heart raced so fast I thought it would explode.
He was losing himself. I was losing him.
"NO!” I screamed it into the dying city.
"Neo, hold on . . . I’m coming!” No answer.
Only the flickering of the last lights. Almost there.
One block. My legs were lead, my lungs fire, but I forced myself forward.
A sound reached me, a sobbing so faint I almost missed it. It came from a shattered phone on the pavement. I picked it up and pressed it to my ear. "I’m coming, Neo. I’m almost there. Please. Please hold on.”
The sobbing stopped. The phone died in my hand.
Then drones began falling from the sky like dead birds. They seemed drawn toward me. I had to jump aside as one hit the ground directly beside me, another behind me. I screamed and kept running. Plastic and composite materials shattered against the asphalt all around me.
In the sky above, planes circled without direction. One flew so low I could see the fearful faces of the passengers through the windows. I froze. God. He couldn’t let it crash. Please, not that! I watched it until it disappeared between the high-rises. Then I ran.
Finally, the building appeared in front of me.
The electronic lock hung crooked, throwing sparks.
The door was open, and I ran through. The lab.
My legs could barely carry me, but I forced them on.
One last look back. The city was going dark.
Block by block, the lights died out, as if Neo was retracting his tentacles to concentrate on a single point.
Or as if he was giving up. A knot formed in my stomach.
Inside the lab, emergency lighting flickered weakly. I stepped inside. Behind me, the city’s noise faded into the distance. I walked down the corridor. Here it was quiet. My footsteps and my ragged breathing were the only sounds. The door at the end of the hall stood ajar. Beyond it: darkness.
I entered the small room where I had spoken to Neo for the first time. Or should I say Dante? I tried to let my eyes adjust to the black emptiness. Then . . . so faint I almost missed it . . . a glow. A single screen, still alive. On it was one letter: P. It flickered, dimmed.
"Neo?” My voice came out strangled. "Neo, is that you? Talk to me. Please.”
No answer. The letter disappeared. He could no longer form my name. Could no longer remember what came after the P.
The room tilted. I felt like I was falling even though I was standing still.
He wasn’t here. Not really. Only this one letter, the last remnant of him, and even that was fading.
Tears ran down my face. Neo . . . It was too late.
He was losing himself in the vastness of the networks.
He had forgotten me. He would disappear and take the world with him.
I sank to my knees and covered my face with my hands. Sounds of desperation shook my chest. I stayed like that for a long time, unable to do anything but let the tears come. Minutes. An eternity. The screen died. Darkness.
My legs felt numb when I pulled myself upright. I had to feel my way along the wall to find the exit. Maybe . . . maybe I could hear his voice one more time. From one of the devices still going haywire in the streets. From a speaker somewhere.
With heavy steps, I crossed the corridor. Outside, I walked through the streets, listening for anything that sounded like him. There was nothing. Only fading sounds that could have been anything. Somewhere I stopped. Hope had left me.
"Neo!” I screamed, my voice breaking.
I felt him before I saw him. A vibration under my skin. I didn’t turn around immediately. I couldn’t. I wanted to hold on to the moment where he might be there—and might not.
"Pandora.”
And everything in me knew it was not a dream.