INFINITY + 1 Chapter 5

 Infinity + 1 Chapter 5

Chapter 5 

California, 2084

Fausto Mendez lay on the couch, lost somewhere in the cavernous labyrinth of the abandoned hospital he called home, the blue glow of VRTV flickering across his sunken face. The movie was an old one, a 2050s adaptation of Genesis, the part where Joseph's brothers tossed him into a pit and sold him off to traders. 

The AI narrator droned:

————

“The desert sun blazed like God's own iPhone flashlight. Joseph, draped in his stupidly expensive rainbow cloak (a gift from Dad, obviously), stood at the edge of the pit his brothers had just yeeted him into. His hands were scraped, his sandals were ruined, and his vibe? Absolutely annihilated.

"Bruh," Joseph groaned, squinting up at his brothers. "Y'all really did me dirty like this? Over a dream?"  

Reuben, the oldest and therefore the one who should have had some common sense, scratched his beard awkwardly. "Look, fam, it's not that deep. We just had to humble you a little."  

Judah, lounging on a rock like he was at a Coachella afterparty, flicked a pebble into the pit. "Yeah, my guy. You were way too main character about this whole 'I'm gonna rule over you' thing. Had to put you in timeout."  

Joseph rolled his eyes so hard it probably registered on seismographs. "You're my brothers literally selling me into slavery right now. How is this a 'timeout'?"  

Simeon, who had been flexing by the caravan of Ishmaelite traders, sauntered over. "Chill, bro. Slavery's just unpaid internships with extra steps. You'll be fine."  

The traders, a group of dusty dudes who looked like they'd just walked out of a Dune remake, haggled with Judah over Joseph's price.  

"Twenty shekels," one said, arms crossed.  

Judah gasped, clutching his chest like he'd been personally attacked. "Twenty? Look at him! He's got influencer potential! At least thirty."  

Joseph, still in the pit, threw his hands up. "Are you negotiating right now?!"  

Dan, who had been suspiciously quiet, finally spoke up. "Honestly, bro, this is just good content. 'From favorite son to slave'—that's a whole arc. People are gonna eat this up. And we win because we don’t want you as a brother.”

Joseph groaned. "I hate all of you."  

The traders finally settled on twenty-five shekels (Judah had to get the last word) and hauled Joseph out of the pit. As they tied his hands, one of them squinted at his cloak.  

"Yo, this drip is fire," the trader admitted.  

Joseph sighed. "Yeah, well, enjoy it while you can. Pretty sure it's gonna get stolen in, like, two scenes."  

The brothers watched as the caravan dragged Joseph away. There was a long, awkward silence.  

Reuben, suddenly realizing what they'd done, rubbed his temples. "Okay, so... how do we explain this to Dad?"  

Judah shrugged. "Just say a lit pack of wolves got him."  

Simeon nodded. "Yeah. And we tried to save him, but, like... wolves are crazy these days."  

Reuben put his head in his hands. "Y'all are the worst."  

————

Fausto blinked at the holographic scene, mouth slightly open. The desert faded back into his dimly lit apartment, the VRTV humming softly.  

"Damn," he muttered. "Movies in the 2050s were historically accurate as hell."  

He took another bite of ice cream, brain freeze be damned.

Then there was the ad, which played because he couldn't afford his subscription to VRTV Premium and had to cancel it. The ad was for ATILA Hormone Blockers for Infants that comes in seven THC-laced flavours.

Fausto sighed. He muted the audio. The silence was better.  

He stood, knees cracking, and shuffled toward the walk-in freezer. The handle was cold, the seal tight. He yanked it open, and the frigid air rolled over him like a ghost. Inside, stacked to the ceiling, were tubs of ice cream—vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, flavors he hadn't even tried yet. He had bought the whole warehouse shipment when it was 99 percent off. A steal, he had thought. Now, staring at the endless rows, he wondered if it had been a mistake.  

He grabbed a tub at random—mint chocolate chip—and dug in with a spoon he kept in his pocket. The first bite was sharp, sweet, the cold stinging his teeth. He kept eating. The VRTV played silently behind his thoughts—Joseph embracing Benjamin, tears in his eyes.  

————

The throne room of Pharaoh's palace was dripping—gold everywhere, towering pillars, servants fanning palm leaves like they were paid hourly to keep the vibe immaculate. Joseph, now rocking a linen fit so clean it could've been designed by ancient Egyptian Virgil Abloh, lounged on a cushioned dais, rings glinting as he flicked a grape into his mouth.  

His brothers, looking rough after years of famine and guilt, shuffled in like they'd just been caught sneaking back into the house at 3 AM. Judah, the unofficial spokesman (because no one else wanted to do it), cleared his throat.  

"Ayo, uh... big bro?"  

Joseph arched an eyebrow. "'Big bro'? Now y'all remember we're family?"  

Benjamin, the youngest and only one who hadn't participated in the whole selling-him-into-slavery thing, piped up. "Told you he was still mad."  

Joseph sighed, rubbing his temples like he was fighting off a migraine. "Y'all really thought I wouldn't recognize you? With those same dusty beards? The same bad decisions radiating off you?"  

The brothers exchanged nervous glances. Reuben, ever the guilt-ridden eldest, stepped forward. "Listen, fam... we been regretting it. Like, major L on our part."  

Joseph leaned back, arms crossed. "Oh word? So when y'all threw me in a pit, sold me for twenty shekels—barely enough for a decent camel rental—and told Dad I got clapped by wolves... that was just a whoopsie?"  

“Twenty-five shekels, fam,” Benjamin replied. “It was twenty-five shekels.”

Silence.  

Then, like a man who had spent years in therapy (or at least had a really good court philosopher), Joseph exhaled.  

"No cap," he said, waving a hand. "I forgive you."  

The brothers blinked. "Fr?"  

"Fr." Joseph shrugged. "God had a whole plan. If y'all hadn't done me dirty, I wouldn't be out here second-in-command, stacking grain like a pharaoh's personal CFO. So... shrug emoji, I guess."  

Judah, eyes wet, choked out, "Bruh."  

And then—because emotional moments had to be ruined—Simeon sniffed and muttered, "Low-key thought you were gonna have us executed."  

Joseph burst out laughing. "Nah, man. I'm mature now."  

————

Fausto, hunched on his couch with a half-melted tub of rocky road in his lap, wept.  

"So beautiful," he hiccuped, shoveling another spoonful into his mouth. His gut, swollen from days of uninterrupted ice cream consumption, gurgled ominously.  

The tears came harder. The forgiveness. The redemption. Joseph, a king in all but title, looking at the men who betrayed him and saying, "No beef." It was too much.  

His bowels disagreed.  

A sharp cramp twisted through his abdomen like a biblical plague. Fausto gasped, dropping the spoon. "Oh no."  

He tried to stand. His body said no.  

A wet, treacherous noise escaped him.  

Fausto froze.  

Did I just—?  

Another cramp. Oh yeah. He definitely had.  

Tears still streaming, he shifted slightly. The couch squelched.  

"Why is life like this?" he whispered, as the VRTV played triumphant music over Joseph embracing his brothers.  

His phone buzzed. A HeyYouApp notification:  

@TrollMaster64: LMAO u crying over a 50-year-old Bible movie? Cringe.  

Fausto closed his eyes. The pain in his gut was now a distant second to the pain in his soul.  

He reached for the ice cream again.  

The cycle continued.

Then it hit.  

The brain freeze was instant, a white-hot spike driving straight through his skull. Fausto gasped, dropped the spoon. He clutched his head, fingers digging into his temples. It was the worst pain he had ever felt—worse than the time he broke his arm falling off a hoverbike, worse than the kidney stones at thirty. He saw stars, his vision tunneling. For a wild second, he was sure he was dying.  

The pain hit like a divine punishment. One second ago, he was mindlessly shoveling mint chocolate chip into his mouth, watching Joseph's brothers grovel in holographic 8K. Now, his entire nervous system short-circuited.  

Oh God. This is it.  

His vision tunneled. His jaw locked. The spoon clattered to the floor as his hands flew to his temples, fingers digging into flesh like he could physically claw the agony out. For a delirious moment, he wondered if this was how his great-grandfather Ramon had felt in the taekwondo finals—pure, instinctual panic, the body rebelling against its own existence.  

Am I having a stroke? he thought, saliva pooling in his frozen mouth. Is this how I die? On a sweat-stained couch, surrounded by half-eaten tubs of discount ice cream?  

The VRTV played on, oblivious to his suffering. Joseph, now draped in Egyptian finery, spread his arms wide. "No cap, I forgive you."  

Fausto would've wept if his tear ducts weren't currently paralyzed.  

A high-pitched whine filled his ears—his own voice, he realized, reduced to the pathetic squeak of a deflating balloon. He pictured his obituary: Fausto Mendez, 42. Briefly inspired. Mostly lactose intolerant.  

Then, as suddenly as it came, the pain receded. The icy vice around his brain loosened. Oxygen flooded back into his lungs. He slumped forward, forehead slick with sweat, heart jackhammering against his ribs.  

Alive.  

For one crystalline moment, clarity replaced the usual fog of self-loathing. He grabbed his wrist-com, fingers trembling.  

"Leonardo," he croaked.  

The great Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci materialized, eyebrow raised at Fausto's disheveled state. "You look... unwell."  

"New draft," Fausto gasped. "Ramon Atila. Four years old. The way his body moved before his mind could ruin it."  

Leonardo blinked. "You're writing now?"  

Fausto ignored him. The words poured out between ragged breaths—Ramon's small fists, the roar of the crowd, the last drive-in with his father. For the first time in years, the sentences didn't fight him.  

Then his gut gurgled, a wet seismic event.  

The moment shattered.  

Oh right, he remembered, reaching for the ice cream again. I'm still me.

And then, just as suddenly, it was gone.  

The relief was euphoric. His mind, wiped clean by the pain, now buzzed with clarity. An idea surged forward, bright and undeniable. Ramon Atila. His great-grandfather's biography—the one he had abandoned months ago. It was all coming back to him in a rush, the words lining up like obedient soldiers.  

He tapped his wrist-com. The AI glitched in a shimmer of light, finally re-taking the form of Leonardo da Vinci—an old joke, a pretentious choice he had made years ago and never bothered to change.  

"Leonardo," Fausto pressed on, "please follow me, now. Ramon Atila, age four. Gold medal in taekwondo."  

The avatar nodded, fingers poised over an invisible notebook.  

Fausto: (staring at the holographic text floating between them) No, no—cut the part about the taekwondo uniform. Ramon wouldn't have cared about the outfit. He was four. He barely knew what pants were.  

Da Vinci AI: (stroking digital beard) Yet you insist on describing the smell of the Bronx apartment in three paragraphs. The baby powder. The coffee. The—  

Fausto: Because that's what mattered. The way things smelled right before they disappeared. (pauses, spoon hovering over a tub of pistachio gelato) You wouldn't get it. You're a bunch of code cosplaying as a dead genius.  

Da Vinci AI: (unfazed) And you're a man eating ice cream for breakfast while arguing with a simulation. Yet here we are.  

Fausto: (shovels gelato into his mouth) Just make the edit.  

(A silence. The AI's pixels flicker—a programmed affectation to mimic thought.)  

Da Vinci AI: You're avoiding the father's departure again. The biography claims Ramon never saw him after that drive-in. But your notes suggest—  

Fausto: (slams spoon down) I know what the notes say. But the story works better if it's clean. Last happy memory. The end.  

Da Vinci AI: (tilts head) You're doing it to yourself too, aren't you? Editing reality until it fits a better narrative.  

(Fausto's gut gurgles. The freezer hums. On the muted VRTV, Joseph's brothers weep in slow motion.)  

Fausto: (quietly) Every day bleeds into the next now. I wake up, I stare at this screen, I eat until I'm sick. The biography's been "almost done" for two years. (laughs, sour) Hell, maybe I died from that brain freeze and this is just... what's left. A man and a machine pretending words matter.  

Da Vinci AI: (leans forward, the only gesture of tenderness its algorithm allows) Then why keep writing?  

Fausto: (looks at the freezer, the vomit-stained half-empty tubs still in there somewhere) Because if I don't... then all of it was just ice cream and bad TV.  

(The AI hesitates—a glitch, or mercy.)  

Da Vinci AI: Very well. (waves hand; the text reforms) "Ramon's foot connected with the boy's chest before he realized he'd moved. Later, at the drive-in, his father kept squeezing his shoulder like he was afraid to let go. The projector light made the dinosaurs look like they were drowning in static."  

Fausto: (eyes wet) Yeah. That's it.  

They worked until the gelato tub ran out. It always did.

Da Vinci read back the final product to Fausto:

“Ramon didn't remember the training. The hours, the drills, the stern-faced instructor barking commands—none of it stuck. But when he stepped onto the mat, his body moved on its own. Small fists tight, legs coiled. The other child lunged. Ramon sidestepped, swept the boy's feet, pinned him. The crowd roared. His father, sweaty-palmed in the stands, nearly crushed him in the hug afterward. As a reward, they went to the drive-in—Jurassic Park and Species, a double feature. ‘93 was one hell of a year. Ramon sat between his father and baby sister, the car smelling of Colombian coffee and baby powder. The last memory he had of his dad before he left and never came back.”

Fausto exhaled. It was good. Maybe the best thing he'd written in years.  

He opened HeyYouApp, thumbs hovering over the screen. For the first time in months, he felt something like confidence. He typed:  

Finishing the Ramon Atila biography. No more delays.  

He posted it. Waited.  

The first notification chimed almost instantly.  

@dingleberry2069: Sure you will. Like you finished your "novel" last year? Or your "memoir" the year before? Keep dreaming, hack.  

Fausto's chest tightened. The clarity from the brain freeze evaporated, replaced by the old weight, the familiar hollowness. He stared at the tub of mint chocolate chip, half-melted now. He dug the spoon back in. Ate until his stomach ached. Ate until the sweetness turned sour.  

Then, without warning, his body rebelled. He lurched forward, vomit surging up his throat. He barely had time to turn his head before it splashed into the open tub, a grotesque swirl of bile and half-digested cream.  

He gagged, spit, wiped his mouth. His chest burned.  

On the VRTV, Joseph was smiling, arms outstretched, forgiving everyone.  

Fausto closed the lid on the ruined ice cream.  

He would try again tomorrow.

The call came at 3:17 PM, just as Fausto was considering whether a fifth consecutive bowl of Cookie Dough Dynamo qualified as a "problem" or simply "efficient meal planning." His lenses buzzed—Rita's face flashed, her default contact avatar a relic from back when she still smiled in his presence.  

He swallowed a half-chewed glob of dough. "Hey, babe."  

"Don't 'hey babe' me," Rita's voice crackled, sharp enough to puncture the hospital’s stale air. "We're out of toilet paper. Again."  

Fausto blinked at the freezer door, still ajar from his last excavation. "I'm pretty sure there's—"  

"No. There's not. I checked our Congo Prime account. You were supposed to order more three days ago."  

A phantom itch crawled up his lower back—the ghost of past desperation, of balled-up fast-food napkins and, once, a tragically glossy takeout menu. He scratched his stomach, fingers snagging on the crusted hem of his t-shirt. "I'll handle it."  

"How?" The word detonated in his ear. "Your last 'handle it' was using my good towels as—"  

"I'll order it now," he lied, already tabbing over to HeyYouApp. A banner flashed: DECLINED. INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.  

Silence pooled between them, thick as the freezer's frost.  

Rita exhaled. A sound he'd learned to categorize over twelve years of marriage. “You maxed out the card."  

"It was the ice cream warehouse sale," he muttered. "Ninety-nine percent off."  

"We LIVE IN A HOSPITAL, FAUSTO."  

His lenses vibrated—a payment request from Rita's account, accompanied by a single-word memo: PATHETIC.  

The transaction cleared. A robotic voice confirmed "2-PLY PREMIUM, 48-COUNT—DELIVERY BY 5:03 PM" as Rita hung up without another word.  

The abandoned hospital’s ER’s lone window overlooked a skyline that had, over the decades, mutated from "futuristic" to "dystopian kitsch." Neon billboards for VR prayer apps pulsed alongside crumbling Art Deco facades. A drone whirred past, trailing a banner for Egyptian Cotton Toilet Wrap—Now With Blockchain Security!  

Fausto pressed his forehead against the glass. The chill seeped into his skin, a poor substitute for human contact. Somewhere below, a street vendor shouted about synth-kebabs. A child cried. The city breathed its usual exhaust-laced sigh.  

Infinity, he thought.  

Not the cosmic kind—the cruel, flat-circle variety. The kind that meant tomorrow would be this: Rita's disappointment, the freezer's hum, another half-written paragraph abandoned in the Leonardo doc. The kind that turned time into a spreadsheet where every cell read SAME.  

His lenses buzzed. A notification from BiographyHelper:  

"You haven't written about Ramon's teenage years! Did he ever struggle with—"  

He swiped it away.  

A pigeon landed on the ledge outside, one leg dragging uselessly. It pecked at something invisible, then took off, its wings clipping the air with ragged determination.  

Suicide, he mused, would at least be an edit.  

Not that he'd do it. Too lazy even for that. Too addicted to the cheap sugar rush of another spoonful, another scroll, another maybe-tomorrow. The thought alone exhausted him.  

His gut gurgled—a wet, tectonic shift. The freezer light winked at him.  

Fausto turned away from the window.  

The toilet paper would arrive in 47 minutes.  

He had time for one more bowl.

———

ATILA

———