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[removed]

Loop. Hole.

> The Canadian PM finally spoke up. “And what form do these sacrifices have to take? The historical view of these things is barbaric.”

Was wondering if unborn children would be eligible.

Looks like the Aztecs made a mighty prepayment.

Thank you - that is very kind!

That was really brilliant- well done!! =]

Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed!

Wow, that was brief but powerful.

I was laughing by the second paragraph. Amazing work!

After singing Happy Birthday, I began to cry. My tears blurred the flickering lights from the candles illuminating the cake. I could barely make out the blue icing before the lights disappeared; Happy 68th Birthday Dad.

“I’m still here” I hear as a hand gently touches my wrist and slides down my hand to take the knife shaking in my grasp.

“Sorry, I just need some air” I say as I move through the small group of family and friends towards the back of the room. I lean against the sliding glass door, pushing it to the side as the cool night air rushes into the house. As I step outside, I take out my phone and start typing in the search bar. Against the dark screen, I can see the subtle red reflection coming from the sky. I look up to see the 3 looming words

DATA LIMIT REACHED

It’s been 25 years since the day those words first appeared in the sky. Ever since then, everything has been challenging. In the following months, we learned it was due to the population reaching 10 billion. Unfortunately, this limit is heavily enforced by something. For every newborn that exceeds that limit, the oldest living person dies. We know this to be true by the nature of their deaths. Just a sudden cease in brain function.

Some governments imposed limits on birthrates while others did not. This caused an inadvertent power struggle across the world. Countries that regulated newborns saw a steady decrease in population as countries without were starting to expedite the death of the elderly. Eventually, limits were removed, and it became an all-out birth war. This caused a drastic shift in the age demographic of our planet. With the birth rate going unchecked, it started to directly impact our lifespan.

68 years, 2 months, 6 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes, 43 seconds

I stare at my phone to see the age of the oldest living person. Looking back inside the glass pane of the door, I can see my father passing around slices of cake. His eyes briefly met mine and then worked their way back to me again. He stares at me with a smile. I wipe away the streaks of tears slowly rolling down my cheeks. With a slight nod, he gestures me back inside. As I take a deep breath, I open the door to rejoin his last birthday.

“Now, I had accounting run the numbers. If we take…let’s call it a round four hundred years of late payments, tack on our standard interest rate of 5%—you’re lucky, rates are at an all-time low right now—and add on the cost of the platinum-tier package, you’re looking at a grand total of, 4,000,000 sacrifices due. No. That’s wrong. Sorry about that.”

The room visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

“No. Silly me. It’s 4,200,000,” said Plato shaking his head and laughing. “I nearly forgot the interest—hey you’re just lucky we don’t do compound interest!”

Now it was the Russian PM’s turn to be flabbergasted along with the rest of the delegation.

“Why, that’s a genocide!” Cried the British PM.

“That’s unconscionable!” Shouted the German Chancellor.

“We won’t do it!” Said the Japanese PM.

“Well now…” said the U.S. President. “Let’s not be rash. Say, Mr. Plato. Have you got some sort of a payment plan you can hook us up with?”

“I’m glad you asked,” said Plato as he switched to the next slide. “You May sacrifice these people over the next 3 years. Although, your recurring membership fee will continue to accrue.”

The delegation considered this.

The Canadian PM finally spoke up. “And what form do these sacrifices have to take? The historical view of these things is barbaric.”

“Ha. Yeah, back in the old days, we at GloboCorp had a flare for the dramatic. The bloodier the better,” said Plato with an apologetic smile. “Now all we care about is cold, hard, death. As long as you agree to pay the lives we demand, we can get creative about how we strike them down. Hell, one time in Egypt—back when you all were still paying now and then—we ran a test run of like 10 methods of plague to collect your bills. There are still a few planets to this day that pay in locust plagues!”

The delegation considered this offer. They weighed the pros and cons heavily. Most options appeared to too heavily impact one nation over another. They considered ignoring the upgrade altogether, but that wouldn’t do. If not remedied, Earth would be in an all out war with far more casualties than the payment demanded.

An agreement was struck.

As the delegation finished signing the paperwork, Plato thanked them for their business. But had one final question. “Oh! I nearly forgot. What will we call this plague you’ve chosen?”

The delegates looked left and right and said together, “COVID-42.”

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please check out my other stories at r/InMyLife42Archive

The human delegation arrived at the marble pantheon in the sky to little fanfare. The delegation was comprised of the leaders of the G8 countries. The conference at the sky pantheon was the result of an arduous process undertaken by the humans. After all, the messages in the clouds weren’t exactly forthcoming with the name of the individual who would accept payment for the new membership. The members of the delegation couldn’t help but feel a bit slighted.

“They have the audacity to cap our data allowance and don’t even deign to welcome us with a spot of tea?” Complained the British PM.

“Where I come from there’s such a thing we call ‘southern hospitality’,” said the U.S. President, “and this ain’t it.”

“Oh what is the point of it all?” Said the French President. “They know they have us by the…how you say? Balls. We are a captive audience. They set the price, we pay it. They know there is no need for red carpets or fresh coffee.”

That each of these leaders weren’t at one another’s throats was a miracle in and of itself. With the newly imposed data restriction Earth’s population had become a zero-sum game. That is, if the U.S. bore two new babies, but only had one old person die, that was one less baby for France, Russia, or Japan. These restrictions sowed protectionist policies and distrust among the global super powers. This game theory drove wedges between historically reliable allies and threatened to destabilize the entire globe if nothing was done about the data cap.

The stakes for the meeting were as high as the sky pantheon in which they’d take place.

As the German chancellor began to critique the structural integrity of the pantheon floating upon a cloud, the large, ornate marble door at the end of the corridor opened with a roar. A large bearded fellow with white hair and white robes strode out to meet the delegation.

“Apologies for making you wait,” said the man, “as you can imagine, we have a great many clients trying to upgrade their membership this time of year. And every client is our most important client—that’s the GloboCorp promise.”

The Russian PM regarded the man with a look dripping with disdain and spit. “Unacceptable. We are customer. We do not wait.”

The bearded man’s eyes burned with fury and his mouth opened to respond before the Japanese PM interrupted.

“What my colleague meant to say was that it is an honor to be invited to your beautiful offices. It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said with a deep bow. “We look forward to the beginning of a fruitful business relationship.”

This appeared to please the bearded man as he scanned from leader to leader, the frown melted from his face. “Of course, of course. I’m so happy you all have made the journey to our humble offices. I’m Plato, Earth’s account manager. It is a pleasure to meet you all. Please follow me to our conference room where we will begin our presentation.”

The delegation followed Plato down the long corridor, their heels echoing about the massive space. Each member took their seat in the plush board room—finally in their own element.

“Can I interest any of you in a quantum latte?” Asked Plato as he stood at the head of the table. “They’re a real treat. We steam milk from the golden heifers of Plang-8 and superheat antimatter and mix them together. The resulting concoction is truly divine…and that’s a certification I am qualified to make.”

The U.S. President raised his hand, “say, is that anti-matter similar to that antifa I hear so much about? If so, I don’t think my constituents would take too kindly to my affiliation with such a beverage.”

Plato stared at the man with a baffled expression of disbelief. “…no. There’s no relation.”

The Japanese and British PM’s shared a knowing look.

There were no takers for Plato’s latte.

“Alright. Let’s get down to business then,” said Plato. The lights came down and a slide show glowed behind Plato as he gesticulated precisely with a laser pointer. “As you can see, Earth has bumped up against its data cap at a population of 10 billion. Now, I hate to be the bad guy, but that’s the result of the budget membership you signed up with initially. Heck, when you first arrived your leaders expected population growth to stall at 1 billion, so it looked like a wild overpay to have selected the gold-tier.

“That said, there were moments—especially around the 7 billion mark—where we at GloboCorp worried about your planet’s ability to continue as a going concern. It looked like you all were going to heat that little blue marble into a boil and poof! There goes Q1 for GloboCorp. But no. Earth is resilient. You, as its finest world leaders, are agile, intelligent, real problem solvers. And for that reason, we’re pleased to offer—for a limited time only—access to the platinum-tier membership.”

Plato paused and scanned the room for questions. Seeing none he continued. “Now, the Platinum-tier provides you access to a new population cap of 20 billion. Since you were all kind enough to get over here this afternoon, I’ll tell you what I can do. If you all agree to upgrade today, I’ll throw in support up to 22 billion. But again, that offer is only good for today. Any questions?”

The French President raised his hand. “Yes, what will this be costing us?”

Plato shined his bright white teeth at the group, his grin appeared more like a dog baring its teeth than a friendly smile. “Yes. There is the small matter of the payment. Before I go into the gauche details, I will first say that Earth is also a bit delinquent on its gold-tier membership. It appears as though…let’s see…”he delayed as he skipped ahead a few slides. “Ah yes, here. Earth is delinquent by a few hundred years.”

The delegation gasped—well, most of them. The Russian PM was unfazed by this revelation. “So how we pay now?” Said the Russian PM with an enviable nonchalance.

“Human sacrifice, of course,” said Plato.

The man walks south on High Street, his duster jacket painted in a thousand competing shades of red by the advertisements that line the street. Half the signs are in simplified Chinese or the phonetic bastard English that’s grown more popular these last few years, the other half just scream at you; sometimes they scream through words, other times through flesh. Tonight it’s flesh, and so when the man looks from side to side he finds himself cringing away from pictures of his ex. Her name was Mandy, not short for Amanda, and by dint of a two year relationship their pictures have become forever linked. The advertisements scan the viewer's face, search the Internet for weaknesses in his economic armor—points of purchase, Mandy used to call them—and use them to worm their way into his head. Mandy’s smiling face stares out at him from twenty different screens, sipping New Coke through a neon straw, or posing in oversized men’s shirts, hair mussed like she’s just picked them off his floor.

The man’s name is Jonah, and he was on his way to a bar downtown, but there were cops outside it, two officers and a cloud of blinking police aerostats, so now he’s drifting. It’s a cold night in early autumn; if there were trees their leaves would have started to turn colors. But there aren’t trees. Just like there aren’t cats or dogs or squirrels. Like how the bugs have been replaced by aerostats, miniature mechanical drones that flit across the night sky like stardust, like some child’s misplaced dream. The animals have all been jettisoned, the South has even solved kudzu. And Jonah, drifting through it all, is thinking about the Franchise.

At twenty-three, Jonah doesn’t have it. He’s not a citizen of these New United States, or of the Middle Kingdom’s Exclaves, or any of the other small, independent phyles that have sprouted up around the this part of the world. He is chronically undernourished, underpaid, and overworked. And he is sterile.

A few weeks ago Mandy won her Franchise in a lottery. Jonah has been over it a thousand times, and a part of him is grateful. He thinks now that he didn't really like her, just like she didn’t really like him. They were placeholders in each other’s lives, a thing you did because that’s what you were supposed to do. Because over however many millions of years the human animal was programmed to search out another human animal and pick lice out of her hair or something. So he’s free and feeling it, but he’s also sad. The advertisements are proof that it still bothers him, Coca-Cola’s marketing departing knows you better than you know yourself after all, so she must still have some kind of hold over him.

Jonah ducks into the first that doesn’t advertise her face at him. He buys a PBR from a shirtless bartender who’s sold all the skin on his chest to Playboy to hock magazines. It’s just an address, obscenity laws and all that, but the address spirals around the man’s pale chest hypnotically, and before he can look away it has reformed into Mandy’s face. Smiling. Sketched out on the bartender’s bare skin. He even recognizes the photograph.

Jonah finishes his PBR, tosses the can into the recycling bin, and stumbles back into the street.

In the ten minutes that he was away the advertisements have gone somehow more red. Chinese characters dance across the corners of his vision. Mandy’s face contorts around half a dozen photoshopped expressions. Jonah tries to think about the Franchise. He needs a plan, some way to get it, to get ahead, to make his life have meaning, but all he can think about is that the planet is full up. There’s ten billion souls and Mother Earth has had enough. We’ve scoured the rainforests, the highest mountain valleys, the deepest oceans, eliminated all the biomass we can, and still. Somewhere along the way humanity hit the carrying capacity of the planet, and from Challenger Deep all the way up to the fucking clouds, everything said “No.”

Jonah mulls this over on a street corner, waiting for the light to change. It has started to rain, and pedestrians are scattering into the bars and late night tea shops. He hears music, the high keening sound of feverbeat, which has gotten popular lately. Genres spring up overnight these days, and die out just as quick. Like a passing fever, Jonah thinks, and he smiles. He turns towards home, giving up on the night, and there, beneath another one of Mandy’s pictures, he sees a real life, honest-to-god human holding an old fashioned sign. Jonah squints, thinking his eyes are playing tricks on him, but the man waves the sign. He shouts, trying Mandarin first, but when Jonah shakes his head the man switches seamlessly to English.

“You look lost, friend!” he shouts. “Are you lost?”

“No,” Jonah shouts back, confused. “I live here!”

“Not that kind of lost!” And the man puts down his sign, which says, as best as Jonah can read the crabbed handwriting, Mr. Lun’s Ersatz Tomorrow.

The man steps into a shop nearby, and swaying to the frantic tempo of the feverbeat, Jonah steps in after him.

Inside, it is chaos. The shop is small and very cramped, and when the old man, Mr. Lun presumably, turns the lights on they spark and flicker, and he has to hit the unprotected bulb with a length of PVC tubing to make it work right.

Mr. Lun is a short man, stooped, whose threadbare hair is turning gray like the color leaching out of a well-worn sweater. He wears a thin blue windbreaker and grubby jeans. His hands are small and very fine, always moving. Grease-stained fingertips brush against his bulbous nose, the cluttered counter. As the light inside Mr. Lun’s shop stabilizes, Jonah sees patches of synthetic fur mounted for display. Half constructed cats peer up at him, and a mechanical dog darts out from behind a beaded curtain to fetch a tatty length of rope. When the dog picks it up, Mr. Lun has to spring forward and take the rope from him. The dog has snagged half a dozen electrical wires in the process. There are so many wires sketched across the floor that Jonah doesn’t know where to put his feet.

“Come in, come in,” Mr. Lun says. “I could tell that you were lost the moment that I saw you. It’s like an aura, gray waves coming off your skin. My mother would have seen them, but me? No, I just have my intuition.”

“What’s your intuition telling you, specifically?” Jonah asks.

“That you’re a man without a Franchise!”

“Me and half the world,” Jonah says.

“Lucky for you,” Mr Lun says, “I have just the thing.”

“A lottery ticket?”

“Better. An android.”

“You sell mechanical pets.”

“Oh yes,” says Mr. Lun. “Entirely artificial, no penalty against the biological maximum. Would you like a parakeet? They are quite popular. Parakeets and parrots and whole flocks of pigeons. I do cheshires, sphynxes and Maine Coons. Half a dozen breeds of dog. And for a price I can make you—”

“Ever do a human?” Jonah asks suddenly.

The salesman blinks. “Excuse me?”

“A human,” Jonah says again, “you ever make one?”

“Perhaps,” Mr. Lun says carefully. “Though if you’re interested in such fare there is a bordello down the street.”

Jonah hears himself speaking now. He’s moving without any conscious thought. He’s sad. He’s tired. He wishes that he’d had more to drink. “I’m not like…that,” he says. “Not an adult. A child, have you ever made child? I want…”

“Ah,” Mr. Lun says. “Ah. That would be…expensive.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Jonah says. “Could you make--damnit.”

Mandy’s face is in front of him now. He’s turned to look out the dirty window, and the advertisements across the street are screaming her at him. Did he love her? Maybe. Jonah asks himself the question. Asks it again. Wants to scream. Right now, somewhere across the country, she’s staring into a future that he will never have. There will be houses with white picket fences, vacations to exotic destinations, a family and children. And now, he’s decided, just now, thinking about that, maybe he did love her. At least a little. As much as he’s ever loved anyone, and maybe, Jonah thinks, that’s enough.

“Yes?” Mr. Lun says.

“Could you make it look like me?” Jonah asks. “Like it was my child with a particular person?”

“Very expensive,” Mr. Lun says. There’s a smile in his eyes. The dog curls at his feet and wags its skeletal tail. Besides the unfinished tail it’s very lifelike; you could look it straight in the eyes every morning and believe that it’s alive.

“I’ll manage,” Jonah says, and across the street the advertisements begin to change.

r/TurningtoWords

Nice work; great job capturing the horror I imagined.

Manmade Horrors Beyond our Comprehension

TW: tragedy, baby loss

Aiden stared at the clouds, thinking carefully about what it might mean.

Simulation theory. Aliens. A bizarre prank perpetrated by some billionaire tech bro.

“10M Human Lifeforms Achieved! Please upgrade your membership to continue growing your civilization.” Read the script emblazoned on the midday sky.

Aiden was not a foremost scholar in physics or philosophy or any combination thereof that might hold an answer to what he saw. In fact, he was a man of meager means, who worked himself to the bone for every scrap he got. He began this life with an ‘upbringing’ in a dank foster home, experiencing neglect in every sense of the word, and the only thing he could muster as a silver lining was his very ardent work ethic. He knew that as long as he worked hard, he could make sure he never found himself in that kind of situation again– surrounded by indifferent people, with no agency to improve his life. Through hard work, he could keep himself afloat financially, and by working hard to improve his understanding of what ‘friendship’ meant, he also eventually learned what it meant to be a ‘boyfriend’, then ‘husband’, and now, any day now, ‘father’ was his latest lesson.

Or…was it?

Aiden’s stomach began to twist into knots. What would it mean for his baby? For his pregnant wife?

Medicine had come a long way, so old people weren’t dying at the rate they used to.

Aiden flinched. He was wishing old people would die? Even if it was to make room for his child, what kind of warped and rusted-out kind of conscience did he have, if that was his first train of thought?

Clenching his hand until he felt his fingernails draw blood, Aiden decided to stow the topic away until more information came out. Maybe it was just a prank. Maybe he was freaking out over nothing.

In two days time, it was confirmed that he was not, in fact, freaking out over nothing.

The news anchors tried to use the gentlest phrasing possible, but there really wasn’t a way to phrase mass miscarriages in a polite way. People began protesting, demanding the government find a way to meet the ‘upgraded membership’ condition. Older people hid away from the general public, afraid of what they may be asked, afraid of what they would be accused of, afraid of what might happen to them.

Society as Aimen and Sadia knew it did not last long– and with Sadia expecting any day now, Aimen felt the hardening around his heart beginning. Not the kind that comes from eating deep-fried Oreos, either.

“Don’t even think about it.” Sadia said, cutting through Aimen’s darkened countenance. He had been staring out of the hospital window as she waited for an ultrasound, trying to ensure that the child hadn’t already been lost.

“Don’t think about what?” Aimen asked, trying to put on a brave face.

“I know how desperately you’ve wanted a family, baby. Don’t. We’ll figure something out. The entire world is trying to figure this out. We’ll come up with something.”

Aimen sighed, but not the kind of sigh that was paired with relief. Instead, it felt as though the weight in his chest grew heavier. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. It’s…I’m just not in a good head space. Sorry. This is probably much harder for you than it is for me.”

“Not a competition.” Sadia said. Her voice was warm, but firm, almost like she was correcting a very endearing and frustrating puppy. “It sucks for everyone. We just need to keep it together and not do anything irrational while we wait.”

“I’ve never been good at waiting. I’m just going to clear my head real quick, can I get you something?”

“Apple juice, please.” Sadia said with a very faint smile. It had been her only craving throughout the entire pregnancy.

Aimen managed a half smile back, and he stepped outside.

He hadn’t made it more than ten feet before he heard the noise. The sound of a plastic pan hitting the ground, shouting, then the first scream.

Just down the hall, there was a man with all the fury in the world behind his eyes. Aimen had a very solid guess as to why.

The man was shouting, throwing things, and as Aimen approached, he saw the reflected sunlight off of some kind of metal in the man’s left hand.

Aimen rushed in, unthinking. He had never been the type to wait.

The next minute was compressed into just two moments– when Aimen tried to grapple the man from behind, and when he felt the sharp sting across his throat.

Nurses and Doctors came quickly, Security pinned the man down. Aimen didn’t feel the pain anymore, though he was vaguely worried. He realized that he was confused…and then he felt cold. Medicine hadn’t come that far after all, he guessed.

—---------------------------------

Aiden pushed open the Simulation Casket. His memories– his real memories returned to him. The year was 2024. He wasn’t Aimen. He was a University student. He had signed up for a study. It was supposed to be about video game design.

Immediately, he threw up on the floor. The clash of what he had lived– a life that was almost as real as his own, come and passed, in what was probably just a few hours. The love he had felt for his wife. What was her name? He–

His dizzy vision slowly cleared. “What kind of Matrix bullshit was that?”

No one answered him. He wasn’t important enough to answer, apparently.

“Michael, clean up the mess. Aiden, there’s a shower just beyond that door. Please fill out the survey when you’re done.”

As reality sunk back in for Aiden, and he wrote a very precise review in the survey, he left Simulacrum Laboratories on shaking legs, and walked back to his dorm.

His neighbor was an electrician. Aiden went and spoke with him for a moment, asking to borrow a sledge hammer. Then he went to his dorm room, opened the mini-fridge, and drank a bottle of apple juice, before returning to the street, marching right back to Simulacrum Laboratories, sledge hammer in tow.

Aimen was not the type to wait.

This can be as dark or not dark as you please, but I'd recommend a trigger warning for those who have personal traumas. Also seems like being the membership owner could be a fun direction. Hope you enjoy, it seems different than typical at least.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* Stories at least 100 words. Poems, 30 but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* See Reality Fiction and Simple Prompts for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

🆕 New Here? ✏ Writing Help? 📢 News 💬 Discord

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Matthew doesn't like to listen, does he?

David is a good friend.

Beautiful

“The paperwork’s been cleared. Are you sure you want to do it this way? This place does hold the worst of the worst.”

“All right, I’ll lead you to Matthew.”

We walked down the halls, accompanied by buzzers, as the control room opened the doors ahead of us. After what felt like seconds, we got to cell block B. I just have to go through a final door and up the stairs.

Once we got to Matthew’s cell, the guard stayed back. Matthew didn’t look at me as I walked into the cell.

“Nice bed you have there,” I said, “ it must be hard to enjoy the comfort since you can’t leave.”

Matthew didn’t say anything.

“People here still think of you as human; that’s more than what you gave the people you killed.”

Matthew still stayed silent.

“I thought I knew you. What happened to the person I loved?”

“I had to do it,” Matthew said.

“Life was perfect with you up until two years ago. I went to answer a knock on the front door and found a swat team in front of the house. That day I discovered that you were both a loving husband and a terrifying psychopath.

While I was on the sidewalk finding out what you did, the swat team searched the house for you. I was hoping, praying that you would be in the house.”

“Everything I did had a reason for it.”

“You’re here serving two dozen life sentences. You killed hundreds of people, and that’s the best you can say?! I’m surprised you survived on the streets long enough for the police to find you.”

“I never wanted to hurt you. You mean too much to me.”

“What about the lives you ended and the families you shattered? Or do you consider humanoids to have no value?”

“What are they worth to you?”

“I can’t assign a value to a single one of the lives you took. I was hoping that you would have changed and that I could move on from how you betrayed me. Maybe there is still some hope for you, or maybe there isn’t. But I can’t continue holding out hope.”

I left him there. The guard escorted me out of the prison and to the shuttle bus.

“I was hoping your visit would convince him to change,” the guard said.

“So did I,” I said before getting on the bus.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello there, thanks for reading this story. It was almost a redemption arc, alas Matthew is not willing to change. This story here is part of a larger multiverse that can be (if your interested in more from me) found at r/skye_the_Smart__write .

And if anyone here wants some extra information on what's happening in this story, here you go. This story is set in the city-state* of Atheridge, but doesn't directly reference it. Atheridge's prison system is based on the Norwegian style, but without the 21 year maximum sentence. The prison used in this story is the 'Atheridge Regional Penitentiary' and is home to the worst criminals in the Atheridge Multiverse.

*Technically Atheridge is a country, however in their home dimension they still consider themselves a city-state. Other dimensions are home to the Atheridge Territories. Sometimes the size of a few counties, occasionally multiple countries.

Very nicely done!

I raised my eyebrows and gestured to the camera and its protruding microphone. David smiled quietly and replied in our old tap-code, a quick drumming on the table that even the guys in our unit never thought was more than a nervous tic we'd shared.

"No. Rob broke the mic." David tossed a nod to a tall, uncomfortably chipper man on the other side of the glass. The presumably-Rob fellow nodded back and tapped his lips with two fingers. "Go ahead," he drummed. "Try it."

I cleared my throat and tried to speak with intensity. "You son of a bitch, I'm glad you're cuffed because I'm going to kill you where you sit." I pushed my chair back as if to stand, my motion not matching my tone. A beat, two, three. No response. I stood anyway, just to make it less strange a sight. I stretched, then sat again. Now that the moment was here, I found I had a hard time speaking.

"It's okay," David said, in a quiet, even tone that was unfamiliar and disquieting coming from him. "I know why you're here. You can say it."

You can say it. How different this was, from the last time we'd spoken in a quiet room, when he'd asked me to join him. When he'd rebuffed every excuse, when he'd left me out of breath even though I'd barely said a word. And now here he was, the charisma still there but restrained, humming under the surface while he waited for me to speak. I took a deep breath.

"I don't think I can do this." He nodded, looking... Resigned? Accepting? I wasn't sure what to do with this new David. But at least it wasn't going to be a fight. "I still have the gear from the job. It's in a crate, in the back yard. I can go to the cops, I can tell them what I-"

"NO."

I stopped, sitting up in my chair. The look on David's face had gone from beatific resignation to a barely-contained snarl. He hadn't shouted; he hadn't moved at all, but his voice had been final.

"David. You know this isn't right. You didn't kill that man. You shouldn't be here. If I hadn't been shot you wouldn't be here."

"I would be here, with you. And you shouldn't be here. You shouldn't have been at that goddamn bank. You shouldn't have been in that hospital, you shouldn't be here visiting me now. You should be at home." His shoulders were still but tears were pouring down his face. Eyes that had locked with mine that night when he'd outlined the plan, that had stilled all objections, now couldn't seem to rise to look at me.

I traced the scars on my face. Three surgeries, six months in a coma. I'd learned to walk again pretty fast but they still wouldn't let me drive. And I liked asparagus now. "You didn't drag me to that bank. I needed the money. I came to you with a problem. You offered a solution."

"Do you know what a solution would have been? Just giving you the money. I had it. I would have been tight for a few months but Claire would have gotten her medicine. I could have given you the money and put off the bank job until the next quarter and done it with a full crew. A solution would have been helping you set up a Go Fund Me or whatever ended up paying for Claire's meds and your surgeries and Angie's bills while you were in a goddamn coma. A solution would have been telling you to go fuck yourself and letting you find your own way. But I wanted the glory days. I wanted you on board. I wanted to drag you down to my level. So I got you drunk and talked you into robbing a bank and a cowboy teller died and you almost died and now I'm here and that's exactly the way it should have ended. So keep your fucking mouth shut about what's right, you sanctimonious idiot."

Now he was crying. He was careful not to move much so they wouldn't think it was an emergency or something, or that he was dangerous. God knows they had to see tears on these cameras pretty often. I choked a little trying to respond. "David..."

There was a long pause. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer, almost the way it used to be. "Are the girls okay?"

"That's not... Yeah, man, they're fine. That's not really the point. They're fine, but..." I trailed off. He finally looked up at me, saw my face, and nodded.

"That is the point. That's been the point since you got shot. It should have been the point when you showed up at my door." My hands were shaking on the table. No words, just the flickering stoccato of a man realizing that he's trapped outside his own cage. He kept talking. "Go home. Go home to your daughter, go home to your wife. When they're out getting ice cream or something, you dig up that gear and you burn it."

"I can't, David. I can't just pretend it didn't happen."

"You can, and you will. You have to. Because I'm all good now. I'm at peace. I've got my books and my routines and my therapy. I know I should be here. I know I should have been here years ago." He leaned over the table, and that old glint in his eyes flared up, and for the first time in our lives I had the good sense to be scared of him. "But in a year? Two years? Five years? Eating this godawful fucking food and talking to these idiots and taking beatings from these prick guards?"

I swallowed. I nodded. I understood. But he had to make sure. He kept talking, and I saw him for what he was, finally let myself understand just who my best friend had been for as long as I could remember.

"You told me you had it. And where it was. And I know there's no way for anybody to know what really happened. But if you had the gear? And I could get out of here quicker by telling them where it was? Maybe even convince them it was you all along?"

A vein on his neck was pulsing and his teeth were gritted. His voice was a hiss. And then he suddenly seemed to realize what he was doing, what he was thinking, and he closed his eyes. His mouth moved slowly, silently; maybe he was praying. I know I was. The clock chimed and the door opened. A guard walked in and told me our time was up.

"It was good to see you." David didn't look at me as he said it. "Tell Angie and Claire I said hi. And get that landscaping taken care of. Your place is a mess." I just nodded.

The guard walked me out to my dad's waiting car. He looked at my face and didn't say a word as I got in. We were close to the house when I turned to him. "Hey Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I need a few hours to calm down after that. Think you could take the girls out to ice cream for me?"

This was sad... seems like the imprisoned was broken inside...