Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
The
transformation occurred at approximately 2:23 a.m., Pacific Standard
Time. As far as I could tell, anyone who was indoors when it happened
died instantly. If you had any sort of roof over you, you were dead.
That included people in cars, airplanes, subways. Even tents and
cardboard boxes. Hell, probably umbrellas, too. Though I'm not so sure
about that one.
I'm not gonna lie. You guys who were inside,
probably warm and asleep and dreaming about some random bullshit? I'm
jealous. You're the lucky ones. You were just gone. Splattered into dust
during the transformation.
It was a Tuesday, and the calendar
had just ticked over to January 3rd. A terrible winter storm had
descended on North America, and half the country was buried in snow and
ice. In Seattle we didn't have too much snow that night. But it was well
below zero, which was unusually cold, even for January.
I'm sure
in other parts of the world where it was warmer and not in the middle
of the night, many more people survived. Many more.
I also bet
most of them were probably wearing more clothes than I was at the time
of the incident. And those assholes were smart enough not to go into the
light.
Me, I didn't have a choice. Like I said, it was below
freezing. I was outside. And I was wearing boxers, a leather jacket, and
a pair of pink Crocs sandals that barely fit me.
I was also
holding a crying, scratching, squirming, and spitting cat named Princess
Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. She was a tortoiseshell Persian cat worth
more than I made in a year. My ex-girlfriend called her Princess Donut
for short. I just stuck with Donut.
So let me back up about ten minutes. I won't bore you with too much backstory, but some of these details may be important.
My
name is Carl. I am twenty-seven years old. After a stint in the US
Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech, fixing electrical
systems for rich assholes and their party boats. I, up until a few days
before this started, lived with my girlfriend in our apartment in
Seattle.
Her name was Beatrice. Bea. She went to the Bahamas for a
New Year's thing with a bunch of friends. She didn't tell me her
ex-boyfriend went along with her on the trip. I figured it out pretty
quick when I saw the picture of her sitting on his lap on Instagram.
I
don't like drama, and I don't deal well with it. Whether she was
actually cheating on me or not, it didn't matter so much. She'd lied. So
I called her up, and I told her we were done. I promised I'd have all
her stuff ready for her to go when she got back. No drama. No fuss. But
we were done.
She'd asked her parents to come get the cat, but
they lived on the other side of the Cascades, and nobody was getting
through any of the passes with this weather. So I promised I'd look
after her until Beatrice got back.
So, let me tell you about
Donut the cat. Like I said, she's one of those fluffy, flat-faced cats
that look like they need to be sitting on the lap of a Bond villain. Bea
and I shared a two-bedroom apartment, and one of those rooms was
dedicated to the cat if that tells you anything. More specifically, the
room was devoted to Donut's Best-in-Show ribbons, her Best-in-Breed
ribbons, and countless trophies and framed photographs of her sitting on
a table, looking all fuzzy and pissed off while Bea and a judge stood
behind her. Bea probably had fifty of the pictures. She'd won a mess of
ribbons and trophies and photographs pretty much every time Beatrice
took Donut to an event. And Bea took that damn cat to a show almost
every weekend.
Her whole family was into raising and showing
Persian cats. Me, I didn't really know much about that whole cat show
world. I didn't want to get too involved. Like I said, I don't do drama.
And let me tell you something about cat people. More specifically, cat show people.
Actually,
never mind. Fuck those guys. All that's important is Bea and Donut were
a part of this whole world I didn't want anything to do with.
I
never considered myself a big fan of cats. But, if we're being truthful
here, I liked Donut. That cat did not give two shits about anybody or
anything, and I could respect that. If Donut wanted to sit on my lap
while I was blasting away on PlayStation, then she sat on my damn lap.
If I tried to pick her up, she hissed and scratched and jumped right
back up there. And then she looked at me with a squished face that said,
What're you gonna do about it?
I'd been tempted, more than once,
to throttle the thing. But I'm not an asshole. Plus, I could respect
the little monster's tenacity. Some of my buddies would give me crap
about it, me spending all this time with a fuzzy cat that was probably
worth more than I would make in a year, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed
having that ball of fuzz sitting in my lap.
One of Beatrice's
ironclad, this-is-not-negotiable rules was no smoking in the apartment.
So after our fight and breakup, I'd made a point of smoking as much as I
could. I know, immature. But it was freezing outside. Donut didn't seem
to like the smoke too much, and the smell clung to her hair. So, as a
compromise, I would crack the window when I smoked.
So when I
woke up at about 2 a.m., having been startled awake by a dream, I
decided I needed a smoke. I pulled out my pack, cracked the window, and I
lit a cigarette.
Donut, who had been sleeping right next to me
on the bed, decided at that very moment that she wanted to-for the first
time in her feline life-go outside and explore. She jumped up on my
shoulder, and she leaped out the second-story window onto the tree
outside my apartment. Just like that. I'd had that window open dozens of
times over the past year, and she'd never even given the window a
second glance. But tonight, on the coldest night of the year, the furry
asshole decided to Lewis and Clark her way out of the apartment.
She
scampered down the tree, sniffed at the sidewalk a few times, and then
promptly realized it was cold as fuck. Her adventure over as quickly as
it began, she rushed back up the tree and stared at me over the five
feet from the window to the branch. The adventure all drained out of
her, Donut decided not to risk jumping back inside. So instead, she
decided to start howling at the top of her lungs.
I spent the
next several minutes cursing at the cat, trying to coax her back inside.
I opened the window all the way, sending gales of ice-cold air in the
previously toasty apartment. The fuzzy black-and-beige-and-white cat
just sat there, bitching and howling so much I feared one of my
neighbors might wake up and shoot her.
I'd left my boots in the
dryer all the way in the building's basement. I didn't know where the
hell my running shoes were. So, in a momentary decision I would quickly
come to regret, I squeezed my feet into a pair of my ex-girlfriend's
Crocs, pulled a heavy leather jacket on, and I rushed outside to grab
the cat. A part of me kept saying, Screw it. It's not your cat. Let the
fucker freeze.
But, like I said, I'm not that much of an asshole.
As much as Beatrice deserved it, she loved that damn cat. And poor,
stupid Donut wouldn't stand a chance out here in the cold. Not for long.
Plus, again, the cat was right there, howling like someone was eating her children in front of her.
I
rushed down the stairs, and I jumped outside, rushing to the tree that
sat between the sidewalk and the building. I immediately regretted not
taking the time to put proper clothes on. The cold, windy air sank its
claws into my legs and feet.
Donut was right there, sitting on a
tree just out of reach, looking between me and the open window into the
apartment. She continued to howl. A light popped on in an apartment on
the first floor. I groaned. Mrs. Parsons. Grumpy,
I-like-to-file-complaints Mrs. Parsons.
"Donut!" I said. "Come on, you little shit!" I held out my arms.
The
cat could jump into my arms. It was something I'd trained her to do. I
could shake a bag of cat treats, and she'd jump right up there. I could
make a pspspsps sound, and she'd sometimes jump up on my shoulder. I
cursed myself for not bringing cat treats out with me.
The window
on the first-floor apartment slid open. "What in god's name is going on
out here?" Mrs. Parsons called, sticking her head out the window. The
old woman had her head wrapped in some sort of towel, making her look
like a swami. Her beady eyes focused on me. "Carl, is that you?"
"Yes, Mrs. Parsons," I said. "Sorry. My cat got out, and I'm trying to get her in before she freezes to death."
"It looks like you're the one who's going to freeze to . . ."
Mrs. Parsons never finished the sentence.
Slam.
It happened so fast.
The
building smashed down to the ground. I watched it happen. The
seven-story apartment building was there one moment, and then it was
gone. But it hadn't disappeared. I was looking right at Mrs. Parsons
when it went down. It was like the building was a massive tin can that
had been crushed by a giant cosmic boot. I saw it, and I heard it. Wind
rushed at me, and it was instantly dark outside. The streetlamp just to
my left was gone. The buildings all around me were gone. The cars on the
street were gone, too.
Everything was gone except the trees and
the bicycles in the bike racks, and Marjory Williams's moped, which was
still booted by parking enforcement.
I looked around, the
freezing weather momentarily forgotten. In the dark, overcast night, I
could barely see anything. In the distance-a distance I could now see
thanks to the lack of buildings-a fire burned.
There was utter, complete silence.
"What the hell?" I said, spinning in circles.
A
couple random things remained. Like the bike rack. The stop sign was
there, but the street sign next to it was gone. It didn't make sense.
Where the cars were parked on the road, car-shaped indentations of dirt
appeared, as if they'd been pulled down toward the center of the Earth,
being ripped directly through the asphalt.
Donut jumped into my still-outstretched arms. I looked at the cat, not knowing what to do or say.
"What the hell?" I said again.
All that remained of my building was a rectangle of churned dirt and rocks.
And then I saw it, right near my feet.
It was Mrs. Parson's head. In the dark, it was hard to discern. But I immediately knew what it was.
It
hit me, at that moment. The sudden shock of the buildings was one
thing. But there were people in those buildings. It was almost everybody
in the damn city. Hell, even most of the homeless people were in
shelters. There'd been a whole thing on the news about them rounding
everybody up because of the extreme cold. It was two in the damn morning
on a Monday night. Everyone would be in bed. And that meant everyone
was dead!
I kept spinning in circles like an idiot, not knowing
what to do. I felt sick to my stomach. Donut started to squirm, having
decided I was useless. She clawed at me, but I wouldn't let the cat go.
Then came the voice. A male, robotic voice.
It
spoke in my mind. The voice was like a physical thing. A spike in my
brain scratching me. It wasn't speaking English. But I understood the
words. As the person spoke, the text also appeared floating in front of
me.
Surviving humans, take note.
"What?" I said out loud.
"What's that? Who's there?" I kicked at the floating words with my foot,
and the too-small Croc went flying. I hopped over and quickly shoved my
foot back in. The words moved with me, floating just a few feet in
front of my face.
Even the letters weren't in English. They
crawled down, not across the screen. But I knew them, understood them
like I'd been reading the language my entire life.
Per Syndicate
rules, subsection 543 of the Precious Elemental Reserves Code, having
failed to file a proper appeal for mineral and elemental rights within
50 solars of first contact, your planet has been successfully seized and
is currently being mined of all requested elemental deposits by the
assigned planetary regent.
Every interior of your world has been
crushed and all raw materials-organic and inanimate-are in the process
of being mined for the requested elements.
Per the Mined Material
Reclamation Act along with subsection 35 of the Indigenous Planetary
Species Protection Act, any surviving humans will be given the
opportunity to reclaim their lost matter. The Borant Corporation, having
been assigned regency over this solar system, is allowed to choose the
manner of this reclamation, and they have chosen option 3, also known as
the 18-Level World Dungeon. The Borant Corporation retains all rights
to broadcast, exploit, and otherwise control all aspects of the World
Dungeon and will remain in control as long as they adhere to Syndicate
regulations regarding world resource reclamation.
Upon successful completion of level 18 of the World Dungeon, regency of this planet will revert to the successor.
A
Syndicate neutral observer AI-myself-has been created and dispatched to
this planet to supervise the creation of the World Dungeon and to
ensure all the rules and regulations are properly followed.
Please pay careful attention to the following information as it will not be repeated.
Per
the Indigenous Planetary Species Protection Act, all remaining
materials-estimated to be 99.999999% of the sifted matter-is currently
being repurposed for the subterranean World Dungeon. The first level of
this dungeon will open approximately 18 seconds after the end of this
announcement. The first-level entrances will be open for exactly one
human hour and one hour only. Once the entrances are closed, you may no
longer enter. If you enter, you may not leave until you have either
completed all 18 levels of the World Dungeon or if you meet certain
other requirements.
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