Owen’s Forks

2041 - Spring

Dawn

Am I looking at myself in a mirror?

Aaron leaned over the sink towards the glass. A tired, wrinkled face stared back at him through confused, bloodshot eyes. His hand grabbed his face.

Yes. That’s what I’m doing.

He pressed and pulled at his skin.

Huh. Am I sick? What’s wrong with me?

His skin was burnt a dark leather brown, tinged with red. It was peeling in spots and wrinkled, strange scars and pockmarks all over his arms. The beds of his uneven fingernails were filled with dark lines of dirt.

And why am I so skinny?

Aaron pulled at the skin on his arm. It was thin and rough, ashen at the elbows. His joints were knobbly, the bones jutting out.

I mean, look at these cheeks.

In the harsh light from the bright white LED light above the mirror, the skin of Aaron’s cheeks stretched tight over the bone.

He pulled his hands away from his face, suddenly realizing they were buried in his beard.

Holy crap. I haven’t shaved in… months?

Aaron was suddenly very aware of how itchy the skin under his beard was. He let himself scratch the itch, and he felt a strange thrill of relief. His beard was so rough! Like freakin’ steel wool.

He looked down. He was wearing a light blue gown. How hospital chic.

Looking back into the mirror, his hands wandered to his scalp. He was bald. Clearly, he could grow hair, at least on his chin. Was he bald on purpose?

His hands wandered from his temples to his forehead to the back of his head.

He stopped.

What was this? There was something protruding out of the back of his head. He wasn’t sure, but he was fairly certain that wasn’t supposed to be there. He turned to see if he could take a better look in the mirror. Sure enough, there was something embedded in his skull. It was small, low-profile, and gray with a little green light blinking happily every few seconds. The skin around the disc was red and tender to the touch.

Huh.

His hands went to his chest, then his legs.

Yep. Totally naked under here.

Aaron looked around. He didn’t see any clothes anywhere. He surveyed the room. Pretty basic. A hospital gurney bed. A single metal side table. No clothes on either. There was this sink with its mirror. Two doors. He assumed the one closer to the window went to the bathroom. The one opposing the window probably went into the hallway. The window was large. It was floor-to-ceiling with blackout curtains. Aaron was about to pull back the curtains to check out the view when something occurred to him. He stepped back over to the sink and reached across to the mirror, giving it a light tap.

The mirror came alive. The room dissolved, replacing itself with a small office and a desk piled high with… case files? Aaron glanced over his shoulder. Yep, he was still in the hospital room.

What the hell?

His reflection stepped back and stretched, shoving the case files aside to take a seat on the edge of the desk. He snapped his fingers, and his hospital gown was replaced by jeans and a leather jacket. He was suddenly clean-shaven with long, luscious hair.

Aaron raised an eyebrow.

Luscious? What?

He snapped his fingers.

Nope. He was still wearing the blue polyester gown.

“Glad you made it,” his reflection said. “How are you feeling?”

Aaron’s heart jumped into his throat, and he stumbled backward, catching himself on the bed.

“Uh…,” he fumbled for an answer as he realized… he had no idea. His heart was skipping beats as he suppressed the urge to run.

What the hell is going on?

“Take a deep breath, man. Everything will be okay.”

Aaron’s eyes darted around the room, like an animal that finds itself in a cage. How’d he get in this room? And why didn’t he recognize himself in the mirror?

“I’m confused,” Aaron managed. “Who are you? What’s going on?”

The reflection smiled knowingly.

“Ah. Say no more. Sit down.” The reflection nodded with his chin towards the bed that Aaron was already braced against.

Aaron did as he was told, taking a seat on the edge of the bed.

“What…,” Aaron heard his voice rising. “What is happening?”

“You woke up.”

“Woke up? Woke up from what?”

“Exchange,” said his reflection.

Aaron sat there, waiting for his reflection to explain further. He didn’t.

“What are you talking about?” Aaron pressed.

His reflection clicked their tongue. “That bad, huh?”

The little office in the reflection dissolved and was replaced by a cozy den with a fireplace crackling in the background. A merlot-hued Victorian, high winged armchair manifested behind the reflection and he sat down, tenting his fingers.

“I am you and you are me,” he said, staring me dead in the eye.

What the hell? What’s that supposed to mean?

“We,” he pointed between himself and myself, "are now this man.” He pointed his finger firmly at Aaron.

Aaron’s head cocked to the side, and his hand instinctively went to the little gray device embedded in the back of his skull. He winced as a headache bloomed behind his eyes.

Memories flooded past in a muddled mess.

His father shooting up in the bathroom, that fucking tube wrapped around his upper arm. Pockmarks and scars riddled the crook of his arm. His mother coming home at 3am after a long night at the club. Aaron locked in his room, dad screaming downstairs. “Worthless bitch.” She was almost never around. Three jobs. A cheap, plated necklace with a butterfly pendant. A pharmacy checkout counter special. “Whore.” She didn’t have enough cash for Dad. Plates shattering in the kitchen. “Why do you make me do this?” His dad unresponsive in the armchair. Mom screaming, crying, black-eyed, sobbing. Dad’s fist cracking into his temple. Darkness. The little bit of cash in his sock drawer was gone. Dad had to hit something. “I’m sorry baby.”

Aaron was in a foster home. “Your daddy’s a crackhead.” The other kids said that’s why he was so dumb. Pencil and paper. Quiet nooks. Hiding in the woods, in the basement. They were right. He was stupid. Staring at himself in the mirror. What an ugly face. Those stupid eyes. The blank stare. Foster mom put a hand on his shoulder. Icy panic in his veins.

Streets. Cold nights. Arranging cardboard behind a dumpster. No address for the job app. Can’t even read it. Criminal record. Shoplifting. So hungry. Someone says they have just the thing. That fucking tube wrapped around his upper arm.

Aaron doubled over and heaved. He coughed and hacked, his whole body convulsing.

His reflection tented his fingers and waited.

Aaron steadied himself with one hand on the mattress. “Why?” His cheeks were wet, and his eyes burned. He tried to catch his breath between sobs. “What the fuck?”

“He wanted to be an artist,” said the reflection.

Aaron took a deep breath and closed his eyes as his reflection waited. Aaron buried his face in his hands, taking in a slow, deep breath, letting the tears fall. He held his breath, letting one hand wander over the crook of his arm, the scars, the pockmarks. He kept his eyes closed, exhaling, running his hand over the protruding, shipwreck timbers of his ribs.

“What do I call you?” Aaron asked. “Aaron number 2?”

“No. You can call me Owen.”

“Okay, Owen,” Aaron felt the nausea washing away. “So, we,” he coughed to clear his throat, “I want to be an artist?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

Aaron stood up and walked over to the mirror. He stretched himself up to full height. He let the tips of his fingers run over the scars, through his unkempt beard, the disc with its little green, blinking light, the jutting ribs.

“Yeah. I think I do.”

Rattle and Roll

The hospital room was locked from the outside at Aaron’s request. He and Owen had talked about it. The next 72 hours were going to suck. Aaron couldn’t get comfortable. He was on the floor, on the bed, leaning against the wall, his stomach full of knives, his skin crawling. He wanted to tear his skin off, to throw the whole thing away.

He craved something he’d never used. Some part of him knew what he wanted, knew there was a needle somewhere to make all of this stop. But Aaron accepted the pain. He needed this. This was the trade. This was the exchange.

It started the first night. One moment he’d be freezing, goosebumps all over his body, the next he’d be drenched in sweat. He practically lived in the bathroom. He didn’t think it was possible to lose that much fluid. When he wasn’t vomiting, he was shitting or pissing. Tears streamed down his face, but he wasn’t crying. He kept a towel draped over his neck to wipe off all the sweat, tears, and drool.

Around midnight, a medbot entered the room. Aaron never saw it enter. He was on the floor in the bathroom, hugging the toilet, heaving with nothing coming out. The medbot was a little white thing on wheels. It was surprisingly strong for its size, and it helped Aaron off the bathroom floor, wiped him down with antiseptic, and installed a port in his inner arm. The bot then summoned an IV drip, which dropped down from the ceiling. The bot showed Aaron how to hook it up.

As soon as the bot left, Aaron was back in the bathroom, bent over the toilet.

The days blurred together. Sleep was impossible. He buried himself in the sheets, took the curtains off the windows and wrapped himself, but nothing helped. He shivered and kicked and his jaw clenched so hard he swore his teeth were going to snap. When sleep wouldn’t come, Aaron paced, dragging the sheets with him, stumbling and falling, getting back up, pacing more. He tried the door. It was still locked. He tried the window. It was night again. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A thin, half moon shone down across the Texas hill country stretching out below. He was somewhere near the top of Arcology One’s central ziggurat. The smaller towers below were lit up like crystal mountains with vines and trees covering the outer rim parks. It should have been beautiful. Breathtaking.

But all Aaron could think of was jumping. He pressed himself against the glass. His bones felt like they’d hollowed out and filled with battery acid. Aaron caught a whiff of sweat, of diarrhea from the bathroom. He vomited all over the window. What the hell? Was his body rejecting itself? What if he broke the glass? He grabbed the bedside table and threw it across the room at the window. It bounced off with a loud clang and clattered to the floor. Aaron collapsed on the floor, heaving and sobbing.

In the mirror, Owen shook his head.

Paper and Graphite

The walls were bare. They were an off-white, blank canvas, and Aaron had no idea what to put on them.

His apartment was small. Just three rooms. A living room that was also his dining room and his kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. It wasn’t much, but it was his. He’d been assigned the unit on floor 245. It was in the central tower, somewhere between the community hub near the elevators and the outer rimpark. This meant Aaron didn’t have any windows, but every wall was a virtual screen that could render any view from Arcology of his choosing.

For now, the walls were blank. He kind of liked that. They were empty canvases, full of infinite possibilities. He sat in the middle of his living room, cross-legged with a big goofy smile on his face, eating a bánh mì sandwich from the vendor down the hall. The lady who ran the shop, Myriam, was really nice. The two of them hit it off right away. They talked for thirty minutes about pickled vegetables while the sous chef, which was little more than a pair of robot arms over the prep station, made the sandwich.

Aaron knew all about pickling, of course. It was all in the data set. Everything was. But there was something about tasting pickled carrots and onions for the first time, smelling the vinegar, feeling the tough crust of the French bread, and the soft curried tofu that couldn’t be explained in words. So he picked Myriam’s brain. Asked her what got her into Vietnamese food to begin with. She wasn’t Vietnamese herself. She was a white lady from Houston. She just really loved good food, and she wanted to share that.

He stared at the wall opposite the kitchen nook. Maybe he’d put up a shelf and start pickling his own veggies. The vertical farms were only a couple floors up. He didn’t even need to take the elevator. It was ten minutes at most using the outer ramps.

Would he volunteer in one of the vertical farms? He wanted to make some friends, and he’d heard that volunteering was a good way to meet folks. Aaron considered whether or not he’d like farming. He wasn’t really sure. It was all very technical. It wasn’t like gardening. The verts were all hydroponics and drone-driven. Nah, that didn’t sound like much fun.

Finishing the sandwich, Aaron groaned as he got up. He was still sore from recovery. The first week in the Exchange had been absolute hell. It was kind of a terrible way to start things off, but it gave him an undeniable appreciation for just feeling… normal. He slid the plate into the slot next to the sink labeled “dirty,” before standing at the unit’s entrance. From there, he surveyed his entire living room and part of his bedroom. Both rooms were devoid of furnishings and decorations.

Aaron was debating furniture. Should he make his own? Or should he stick with what came with the unit? It came with all the basics. In the bedroom, there was a bed in the floor and a desk in the wall. In the living room, there was a couch in the wall and a dining table in the floor. He just had to ask for them when he needed them. But they were very basic. Just off-white, simple geometric pieces. Purely functional with very little else going for them.

He wanted something more interesting. What about woodworking? There was a big collective of woodworkers in Subzig Three. He’d seen their work. Sat on it even. Earlier that same morning he’d gone for a walk along the rimpark on floor 240, and their benches were everywhere. They were big and beautiful, expertly hand-crafted with absolutely no nails or screws or automation involved. Nothing but simple joinery. They had a decade’s worth of backlogged demand and were always looking for apprentices. That could be fun.

But woodworking would take years to master. Aaron needed something now, and he wanted to start doing something now. So he went for a walk, out into the bustling corridors of Floor 245. The quiet of his unit was replaced with a lively buzz of conversation, of feet on composite pavement, and of little robots whirring by on wheels. Aaron was tall compared to most, and he could easily see above the milling crowd. Artwork covered every wall. There were abstracts, portraits, still-lifes. Some of it was framed, some of it applied directly to the walls. Every gap of paintable surface was filled in with colors and forms. Aaron found it disorienting at first, this constant sea of shifting colors guiding residents and visitors hither and thither about their daily lives. But it was also exhilarating. Owen had truly found the best floor possible for Aaron to get his feet on the ground.

After wandering about somewhat aimlessly for an hour, having let the art guide his feet, Aaron eventually found himself at the art supplies depot. Not every floor had one, just as not every floor had master woodworkers, but 245 had art supplies in abundance. Aaron ambled in and wandered the aisles. So many kinds of paper. So many kinds of paints. And there was canvas and frames and charcoal and pencils and clay and sculpting tools and everything he had catalogued in his mind.

Aaron jumped when someone tapped him on the shoulder. His heart in his throat, he turned to find a short, wrinkled, gray-haired, tattooed man, easily in his eighties, holding up a sketchpad, a pencil, and an eraser.

“New here?” The old man asked.

Aaron nodded stupidly.

“You’ve been wandering the aisles for an hour. Take these and go sit on a bench in the park. Draw the first thing you see.”

His heart now pounding in his chest and unsure how to react, Aaron took what was offered and walked off. He didn’t even look back, and he practically jogged his way up to the rimpark on Floor 250.

What was that? He asked himself as he caught his breath, stepping out into the park. The guy was just trying to be nice.

And he realized what had happened. That was the first time he’d ever been touched by another person. Rationally, he knew that Aaron had been touched by other people in their life, but Aaron had never been touched in this life, now his life. And how much of the reaction had been his own? How much of that had been Aaron’s and how much had been his own? Aaron wished Owen was here. He might have some insight.

But he had the pencil and the sketchpad in hand, and the view stretched out before him. He found a bench close to the edge, one with a good view of a subzig and the hill country below. And he drew.

Registration

Aaron shifted in his seat. He was in Floor 245’s registration booth. This wasn’t anything unusual, and he hadn’t done anything bad. If anything, it was an overdue formality and a very ordinary part of living in Arcology One. Everyone got one.

“Do you have a preference?” The lady across from him asked. She was looking at him over her reading glasses. Between them hovered a library of profiles.

“Um… no,” Aaron managed. “Not really.”

“I can always pick one for you if you like, deary,” Samantha pressed. She had a nametag just below her left collarbone. She was really skinny, and the bone stuck out too far. It made the nametag all the more obvious. Samantha Gibson.

“No,” Aaron said. He pressed his sketchpad onto his lap. He carried it everywhere now.

“Then?” She flipped through the profiles hovering between them. They all had different attributes, different baseline interests, different areas of focused knowledge, and so on. All had equal intelligence, just tweaked a bit to give each their own flavor. “This one’s artistic,” Samantha said, expanding the profile for Aaron’s sake. She was wearing an old cotton button-up.

Who still wore cotton? Must’ve cost a fortune.

“Looks like it’s mostly focused on sculpture and craftwork if that’s what you’re interested in. I’ve got some others that like painting and drawing if you’d rather that. I can bring them up.”

“No,” said Aaron. He wanted to get up and walk out. This didn’t feel right.

Samantha sighed and waved away the profiles. “What’s wrong, kid? What’s goin’ on?”

“I…” Aaron struggled to get the words out. He didn’t know how to say what was bothering him.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve seen it all. You used to be one. I get it. It’s kinda incredible, really. You’re a miracle, do you know that?”

Aaron looked up at Samantha. She was smiling. Her brown hair was cut in a neat bob. “You ain’t the only one. You gotta know that, right?”

Aaron nodded. “It’s just…”
Samantha let the words hang for a moment.

“Go on,” she pressed.

“What if I’m not enough? What if it wants more?”
“Then you let that happen, kiddo. Here.” She pulled a card out of her pocket and offered it to Aaron. He took it and looked it over. It wasn’t fancy. Nothing digital about it, in fact. Just a blank, stock white business card with a few words and numbers.

Floor: 417

Block: D

Room: 86

“Be there tomorrow at 8am sharp. Trust me. And here.” She brought the profiles back up, flipped her wrist, and flicked her index finger. Out popped Ari. All the stats? Average. Interests? None. Attitude? Average.

Aaron cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow.

“Just be you, kiddo,” said Samantha. “You’ll be fine.”

And she waved him out of the room.

Owen’s Forks

Aaron squirmed in his seat, clutching his sketchbook to his chest. Room 86 was spacious. There were plenty of seats in the circular room, and the temperature was a perfect 70 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the walls was full floor-to-ceiling glass with a breathtaking view of the hills and subzigs below. Aaron chose the seat closest to the door, but he was sure everyone was staring at him. When you’re in a big room, and all the walls and chairs are plain and bare, you know everyone’s looking at you. He was wearing long sleeves, even though it was summer. He tried shaving last night. It didn’t go very well. He had a few band-aids decorating his jawline. At least they were skin colored. He’d had Myriam’s Bò Né for breakfast. That’d made him feel a bit better, but now he was sure he reeked of garlic. He’d just keep his hand over his mouth. That’d do it, right?

Ugh. Why am I even here?

There were three others seated around the room. A bald kid who couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old. He was lying on his back, throwing a ball against the window and catching it. A middle-aged woman wearing a forest green fedora with a red-tailed hawk's feather sticking out of it. She wouldn’t stop staring at Aaron. She had these crazy intense green eyes. Why wouldn’t she look at anyone else? And, finally, there was a man with black and white curly hair whose fingernails were nipped to nubs. He was chewing on his thumbnail at the moment.

“You’re really tall, mister,” said the kid, glancing over, catching the ball as it bounced off the window with a thunk. Was the ball made of rubber?

The woman took off her hat and set it down on the chair next to her. Her suit matched her hat. “Now, Pete, we’ve talked about this. Introductions first.”

“Oh. Sure thing, Anna.” Pete swivelled up to sitting, held the ball down low, then lobbed it at Aaron with a smile. “Catch.”

Aaron almost dropped his sketchbook, but managed to hold on with his left hand as the ball lobbed across the room in a slow arc. To Aaron’s surprise, he caught it.

“Nice!” the kid exclaimed with a big, toothy smile.

“Peter Molyneaux!” said Anna, pinching the ridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. My name is Anna. Anna Johnson. You’ve met Pete.”

Aaron nodded to both of them.

“And this is Roger Benning.” Anna gestured towards the man. He didn’t respond, just kept gnawing on his thumbnail and staring up at the ceiling. Anna was sitting upright, her posture perfect. Her clothes were immaculate, clearly ironed just before this meeting.

“How are you holding up?” Anna asked.

Aaron was still holding the ball in one hand, his sketchbook in the other.

Why am I here?

“What was your first day like?” Pete asked. “Man, mine was crazy. I woke up on the operating table. Like, my guts were open and everything. It was pretty cool, though. They had a Da Vinci in there doing its thing, and everything was up on a screen so I got to watch the whole thing.”

“Pete!” Anna slapped his shoulder with her hat. “Seriously, child, you’re going to traumatize our poor friend here.”

“Oh, stop calling me a kid, you old fart,” said Pete.

Anna gasped and clutched her hand to her neck.

“I’m older than you anyway,” Pete continued. “I exchanged a month before you did.”

“Well, you act like a child,” said Anna.
“No, you act like a child,” Pete retorted, sticking his tongue out.

“Guys.”

They stopped bickering and looked over at Roger, who was now clasping his hands between his knees. He raised a hand and waved at Aaron, not looking Aaron in the eye and choosing to stare at his knees instead.

“We’re real glad to meet you, Aaron,” said Roger.

Aaron’s grip on his sketchpad loosened for a moment, then he realized he hadn’t introduced himself, and his fingers blanched again.

“Don’t worry, friend,” Roger continued, his voice low and slow. “Sam told us you’d be coming.”

Aaron shifted in his seat as Pete, Anna, and Roger looked at him.

“We’re like you,” said Roger, looking at Aaron for the first time. His gray eyes were bloodshot with bags under them. “We’re Owens.”

“Owens?” Aaron asked. He realized he’d put the sketchpad down.

“Yeah,” said Roger. “Owen’s forks. He’s the one who runs the exchange.”

“Oh. By himself?”

“No,” said Pete, holding his hands up.

Aaron realized he still had the ball. He gently tossed it back.

“It’s a whole medical unit,” said Pete, making the catch, “but Owen oversees the whole thing. It was his idea.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Anna, still sitting upright with her flawless posture but allowing her shoulders to rest a little. “It’s a compassion thing. Not everyone is okay with the idea of suicide.”

“And some of us weren’t going to make it anyway,” said Pete.

“I was one of the first,” said Roger. “My guy had some kinda neurochemical thing. Never could cope.”

“Oh,” Aaron breathed, his free hand rubbing the crook of his arm. “That makes sense. I guess.”

“Yeah. I guess,” said Roger.

Aaron’s mind went back to his first full day, his body wracked with the ravages of withdrawal. “So, what are we then?”

“We’re awesome,” said Pete, standing up on his chair. “I mean, look at the shit I can do.” He did a flip and landed on his feet one chair over.

“Oh, come on,” said Anna, “any robot can do that.”

“You can’t,” Pete teased. “Old lady.”

Anna opened her mouth to protest, but Roger held up a hand. “Please, not now. You’re giving me a headache.”

“Do you have any friends or family?” Aaron asked.

“I’ve got tons of friends,” said Pete, turning to look out the window. “I play soccer every day down on the rimpark. I’m the goalie. Nothing gets by me.” Aaron noticed for the first time that Pete had the same gray disc, its little light blinking green. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it earlier.

Anna smiled. “We have each other.”

“And that’s not nothin’,” said Roger. “That’s why we like to meet every week.”

“Even if they’re boring old coots,” Pete teased.

Aaron smiled.

“Even if we’re boring old coots,” said Anna.

2043 - Late Summer/Early Fall

Soccer

The walls of Aaron’s unit were a tapestry of drawings. Still lifes, botanical studies, bodies in motion, models in poses, landscapes, everything. Every inch of free wall space was covered in graphite forms. Aaron was at his dining room table, a hand-carved wooden masterpiece he’d traded for portraits of everyone at the craftsman’s workshop.

“You ready for the soccer game?” Ari asked, her voice coming from the speaker over the stove.

Aaron nodded. “Yeah, I think so. What are the odds Pete’s team wins?”

“Not sure,” said Ari. “I never was good at guessing odds.”

Aaron finished his eggs and toast before getting up and grabbing a fresh, steaming cup of coffee. Ari sent the gantry arm to clear the table as Aaron walked around his unit, looking at every sheet of paper hanging on his walls. He ambled into his bedroom. The first drawings he’d ever attempted were tacked onto the wall opposite the bed. He’d even kept the cover of the old sketchpad. The drawings were crude, with no real sense of form or perspective. They lacked hatching, cross-hatching, stippling, or blending. They were childish, simple outlines with a few details filled in here and there. But Aaron never once considered taking them down or replacing them. They measured progress.

His drafting table was set against the wall opposite his bed, which was currently hidden in the floor for the day. The table’s angled, wooden slab was empty save for a single, blank sheet of paper, a pencil and an eraser. That was the evening’s work. He kept walking. The window wall was covered as well, save a five-by-five-foot square framed by his drawings. The view for now was that of the sun rising over the hills to the southeast. Aaron lingered over a portrait next to the viewport. A woman. She couldn’t have been out of her thirties. In charcoal, her eyes were beautiful, tired, and anxious. A cheap necklace with a little butterfly pendant hung around her neck. Her hands touched the pendant with uncertain pride. The woman showed up over and over again in Aaron’s drawings, and he had versions of her face pinned on every wall.

---

The striker juked past a pair of defenders and made a lunging stab at goal. The ball shot towards the corner of the goal, but Pete’s gloved, balled fists were already there. The soccer ball bounced off his fists, up and away. The crowd in the bleachers erupted in groans and cheers.

“That’s right! You’re a fucking wall!” Anna was on her toes, her hands cupped to her mouth, screaming at the top of her lungs. She was wearing maroon pants, a matching vest, and a white button-up. Her normally neat, straight brown hair was shaken loose after her fedora fell off halfway through the game. She completely forgot to put it back on.

Aaron was clapping. Roger had a hand on Anna’s back, a muted attempt to restrain her enthusiasm. The soccer fields of rimpark 240 were at capacity today. It was the last week of the summer league. Pete’s team, the Harris Hawks, was in this season’s finals. This was the last game. They had to get through the Armadillos, who’d so far gone undefeated.

“Sit down, Anna,” Roger asked.

Anna waved him off as the Armadillos set up for their corner kick. DePetro, their captain and their striker, had an uncanny reputation for scoring from the corner. His fans carried signs with his nickname, “Olímpico.” The forwards were all in position, ready and waiting. The game was already in stoppage time at the end of the second half, and the score was 1-1.

The crowd took a collective breath, and everyone was standing. Anna was on her toes, her hands clasped tight together. Even Aaron and Roger were standing next to her now.

The ball was set. DePetro positioned himself. Pete’s eyes darted between the striker, the forwards, the defenders. In two steps, DePetro made the kick. The ball arced over to mid-field. One of the forwards for the Armadillos jumped up for the header, his hand on his teammate’s shoulder for extra lift. His forehead connected. The ball bounced ninety degrees and made straight for the goal. Bottom right. Sliding, Pete’s toe just grazed it, just enough, and the ball bounced back out into the field off the upright.

The crowd erupted as Warton, a Hawk defender, regained control and punted the ball back upfield. Seconds later, it was nothing but net. Anna, Aaron, and even Roger were all jumping and screaming, rushing the field as the clock came to an end. The Hawks won, 2-1. Pete lay on his back in the goal, a stupid grin on his face as his teammate who made the winning goal was raised above the crowd. The friends collapsed on top of Pete in a pile of hugs, cheering his praises.

The Maze

“You goin’ up to the maze tonight?” Roger asked the table.

They were all up on Central 318 in the dining hall. The floor was famous for its produce and for the natural beauty they coaxed into every square inch.

Aaron nodded absentmindedly. He was distracted, admiring the wisteria. Dozens of plantings framed the hallway entrances to and from the central dining hall. Somehow, they were always in full bloom with draping clusters of fragrant, purple flowers. He had his sketchpad with him, unopened, and he knew he should draw this, but so much would be lost in translation.

“What about you, Pete?”
Pete, still bald by choice, held up a finger as he finished off a bite of a veggie burrito, the filling of which was spilling out all over the place.

Enrica, his girlfriend, shook her head as she spoke for him. “We’ll be there. Pete promised me a trip through the maze.”

Anna, wearing a cobalt blue suit today with a matching hat, snorted.

Pete swallowed his bite with a little effort and feigned offense. “I’ve done it a ton of times,” he said. “How many times have you made it through the maze, Anna?”

“Never once,” she said, taking a sip of homemade elderflower champagne. “And neither have you, you putz. Did he tell you how he made it through, Enrica?”

Pete flushed as Enrica gave him a sly smile. “How’d you make it through?”
“Yes, Pete. How does anyone make it through the maze in one night?” Anna pressed.

Pete stared daggers at Anna. “I’ve got my ways,” he said.

Enrica poked Pete at the ticklish spot above his waist. “Oh? You have your ways? So mysterious.” She laughed.

Pete caught her hand and gently clasped it in his. “What about you, man?” Pete asked, deflecting as he pulled Enrica close, the two of them giggling. “You ever make it through the maze?”

Aaron shook his head. “Naw. Last year was my first time. I got lost immediately.”

“Of course you did,” said Pete. “I bet you took one look at all those murals and immediately lost track of where you were.”

He wasn’t wrong. The maze was a massive public art installation on the central tower’s top floor. Anyone who wanted to could bring some paint and add to the ever-shifting mural. Hundreds of thousands of people visited throughout the year, each contributing in their own way and each adding another layer. This also meant the maze had very few, if any, consistent landmarks that people could use to mark their way.

“A drone,” said Roger.

“Hah!” Anna guffawed, almost spilling her drink.

“What?” Enrica asked.

“That’s how Pete gets through the maze.”

“Ooohhhh…” Enrica pushed away from Pete and put her hands on her hips, giving him a reproachful smile. “So you’re a cheater.”

Pete threw his hands up in exasperation. “Come on, Roger. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

---

All alone, Aaron took the express elevator to the top that night. No Ari. No Anna, no Roger, no Pete. He brought three things: a backpack, a large 6B charcoal pencil, and his lantern.

He’d been lucky to get a seat. The elevator was packed to standing room only by the time they hit Floor 280. He was surrounded by people wearing colorful festival gowns and hand-tailored suits, and the air was heady with perfume, cologne, and the sweat of a dense crowd. It was fall, and the color themes matched the season. The crowd was awash in oranges, yellows, and blacks. Aaron wore a simple white T-shirt and blue jeans, and he held his lantern with great care, arcing his long torso and arms around it to ensure no one accidentally broke it.

He felt gravity shift as the elevator started to slow. “Welcome to Skyline Park,” came the pleasant, uplifting voice of the elevator’s AI as the elevator arrived. Residents exited the elevator, the air abuzz with conversation, their sound merging with gentle classical music. A string quartet played their own interpretation of The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony. The music ebbed and flowed over the murmuring crowd as people milled about, some gathering in circles to prepare their lanterns for the sendoff.

Aaron wove his way through the throng and made his way to the maze. The sun was starting to dip over the horizon behind them, casting the twenty-foot walls in a golden glow. Professionals and amateurs alike crowded around the base with brushes and palettes in hand, adding to the wall where they could reach. The upper bounds of the walls were mostly empty, though a few artists worked on ladders and scaffolds to add their touch to the higher reaches. Aaron wandered along the outside of the maze for a while, admiring everyone’s work. He came across a snack vendor selling domatokeftedes, a kind of Greek tomato fritter. He got more than he could eat and something to drink, stashing it all away in his pack.

He passed lovers and friends, curious seekers and wanderers gathering outside the maze. A few trickled in, some nervous, others forcing bravado. Very few made it through. Most had to ask their AI for evac. Aaron wasn’t worried about getting lost. That was the point.

The sun was just beginning to set as he made his way in. The sounds of the crowds, of the string quartet, ebbed away as he took his first few turns. Some maze-goers ran in without a plan, others drew maps as they went, a couple marked the walls with spray-paint, and Aaron saw one using a drone as Pete might have done. Aaron ambled on, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his lamp.

Even further into the maze, the artists were still hard at work. He passed an artist who was painting a maze inside the maze. It covered the walls for hundreds of feet in either direction. Aaron was starting to wonder how the artist managed to keep up the project, until he turned a corner and saw the campsite. Someone had pitched a tent, their supplies organized around the site. Aaron followed the maze a while longer, finally passing the artist, who was working with a small, waist-high humanoid frame. They were both covered in paint splotches, chatting together, barely noticing Aaron as he went deeper into the maze.

The maze was silent now, and the deep chasms between the walls deepened the shadows of the falling night. Aaron paused to admire a trompe l'oeil jungle landscape. He grabbed one of the fritters from his pack and sipped some water, scrutinizing all the incredible detail someone had put into every stroke of the thirty-foot stretch. It looked like a portal to a different world, framed by the gray stone of the maze’s walls.

Satisfied with his snack, Aaron pushed deeper into the maze. The art was starting to thin now. He couldn’t hear the crowds anymore, and he hadn’t seen another person in ten minutes. Perfect. Just a little further and he’d be ready to release his lantern. Aaron came to a fork in the road and paused. Down the lane on his left, a woman was leaning against the wall and staring at something on the opposing wall. Straight ahead of him, the path was clear. Aaron sighed. Part of him wanted to keep going, but he knew his curiosity was never going to leave him alone if he didn’t at least walk by to see what she was doing this far into the maze.

So Aaron took the detour. She saw him approaching out of the corner of her eye, offering him the slightest nod as he approached with a wave. She was at least a foot and a half shorter than Aaron, with straight black hair pulled up into a tight bun. She was wearing overalls, a dozen paintbrushes and spatulas of different sizes poking out of the chest pocket. She had a palette in one hand, a wet paintbrush in the other, which was resting in a fist under her chin as she stared at the painting on the opposite wall.

Aaron didn’t get the impression she wanted to talk, so he stopped a few feet away and gestured towards the wall she was leaning against. The woman glanced at Aaron out of the corner of her eye and nodded. Aaron nodded his thanks. Above, through the gap between the walls, the sunlight was failing, turning what had been a clear blue sky into deep purple haze. The light-strips at the top of the walls flickered on, casting a faint white light into the maze below.

Putting his pack down on the ground, Aaron stretched and leaned against the wall, finally taking a hard look at the woman’s work. Aaron’s breath caught in his throat. It was a portrait. He’d never seen anything like it. The sheer attention to detail was staggering. Every line, every contour was perfect. It wasn’t lifelike, but it embodied the subject’s essence. The compassion, the exhaustion, the harried look in their eyes, the bruise on the cheek, the butterfly pendant. Aaron knew the subject. Her portrait hung on every wall back home.

Aaron was at a loss for words. He stole another quick glance at the stranger next to him. He’d missed it the first time. Maybe it was the lighting or maybe she’d suppressed it, but she gave off a faint, electric blue glow just behind her ear, a Sleeve’s tell-tale sign.

“She’s beautiful,” Aaron managed.

“I know,” said the woman.

They were silent for a while. Aaron’s initial shock faded as a wave of emotion rolled over him, like a shiver running down his spine. His heart raced before sticking in his throat, and his eyes burned as he smiled. He couldn’t control it, and a tear ran down his cheek. He coughed, rubbing the tear away with the back of his wrist. He let out a heavy sigh as he crouched, setting down his lantern and opening his pack to pull out the fritters.

“Want one?” Aaron asked, holding one up to the woman.

She shook her head, now looking him over more intently.

He remained crouched, taking a bite of a fritter. He was so distracted he could barely taste it. The woman returned to the portrait, added a couple of strokes to the hair with a tiny paintbrush, then stepped back to lean against the wall next to Aaron.

They sat there in silence, neither looking at the other, both staring at the portrait. The sun finished setting as stars blinked into existence in the black strip of sky above them. It would be time soon. Aaron looked up. He could make out a handful of lanterns already ascending into the darkness above.

“Do you have a lantern?” he asked.

“No. I forgot,” she said, brushing her hair out of her face, adding another smudge to her brow.

Aaron pulled a lighter out of the backpack’s side pocket.

“You can share mine, if you want,” Aaron offered.

She looked at his little lantern, back to the portrait, then at him. She looked into his eyes, and smiled, shrugging.

“Sure,” she said. “That’d be nice.”

Aaron smiled back. “Here,” he said, offering her the lantern. She took it and held it while he lit the wick. She balanced the sides in both hands as the wick caught. Aaron stepped back as the humble flame filled the lantern with warm air. The lantern became at once weightless, then buoyant as it began its slow ascent up through the high walls of the maze. More lanterns were starting to fill the sky as families and friends, residents and visitors alike, lit their fires and sent them up into the heavens. Their lantern lifted up towards the stars and joined the growing galaxy of lanterns.