INFINITY + 1 Chapter 6

Infinity + 1 Chapter 6

Galactic OnStar, Lost in the Void 

The mega-hive stretched endlessly—a throbbing, geometric nightmare of identical grey cubicles under the sickly glow of bioluminescent ceiling panels.  

Tech Support Drone 4173 (who secretly called himself Glip) massaged his smooth, bulbous temples. His workstation hummed with holographic distress calls from across the cosmos.  

"Another shift," he droned telepathically to his cubicle neighbor, 4174 (Blort). "Another eight light-years of idiots who can't navigate a simple quantum slipstream."  

Blort didn't look up from his neural interface. "I had a Zeta Reticulan yesterday who swore his hyperdrive was glitching. Turns out he'd just left the parking brake on."  

A new call blinked—URGENT: FAMILY STRANDED / GALAXY CLUSTER SUPER HIGHWAY / COORDINATES UNKNOWN.  

Glip groaned. "Oh, great." He patched it through.  

A frantic telepathic screech filled their minds:  

"HELLO? CAN ANYONE HEAR US? WE'RE STUCK IN THE VOID BETWEEN SECTORS 7G AND 12-F, OUR ANTI-MATTER FUEL CELL IS DEAD, AND OUR CHILD IS CRYING ABOUT THE DARKNESS!"  

Blort sipped his nutrient slurry. "Sir, have you tried turning your consciousness off and back on?"  

"WE'RE NOT JOKING! OUR BABY IS SCARED! SHE THINKS THE VOID IS GONNA EAT HER!"  

Glip pulled up their coordinates. "Ma'am, I'm showing your location as… huh. Literally nowhere. Like, nowhere-nowhere. How'd you even get there?"  

"WE TOOK A WRONG TURN NEAR THE NEBULA 9 REST STOP!"  

Blort rubbed his forehead. "You missed the exit for the Celestial Bypass? That's, like, the biggest sign in the local group."  

"THE BABY WAS ASKING ABOUT THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE AND WE GOT DISTRACTED!"  

Glip sighed. "Alright, let's run diagnostics. First—did you check if your infinite improbability drive is set to WARP and not ECONOMY?"  

A pause. Then, sheepishly:  

"...It was on ECONOMY."  

Blort's ocular lid twitched. "Economy. You tried to cross galactic clusters on economy mode."  

"WE THOUGHT IT'D SAVE FUEL!"  

Glip pulled up their schematics. "Okay, bad news—your fuel cell's totally fried. Good news? You're technically still in range of our premium tow service."  

"HOW MUCH?"  

"Nine thousand soul-units."  

"NINE THOUS—WE DON'T HAVE THAT!"  

Blort leaned in. "You do qualify for our Damned to the Void payment plan. Low monthly installments, eternal repayment terms."  

"FINE! JUST SEND HELP!"  

Glip tapped a command. "Tow probe dispatched. ETA… eh, sometime before the heat death of the universe."  

"WHAT DO WE DO UNTIL THEN?"  

Blort shrugged. "Ever played I Spy?"  

The call cut off with a telepathic scream.  

Glip stretched his spindly arms. "Break time?"  

Blort nodded. "Break time."  

They floated toward the nutrient dispenser, past endless rows of identical grey drones, all answering identical calls, in an office that never ended.  

Somewhere, in the void between sectors, a child wept.

———

California, January 1, 2086

The abandoned hospital cafeteria flickered under the glow of a single malfunctioning biolight. Fausto picked at his rehydrated noodles, the plastic fork bending in his trembling fingers. Across the stained concrete table, Rita glared lasers into his skull while Stephen's Meta glasses projected dancing cartoon feces directly into his optic nerves.  

"You're sweating," Rita noted, stabbing her soy-meat with surgical precision.  

Fausto wiped his forehead. The hospital's ancient climate control had died weeks ago, but this was different. His stomach churned like a washing machine full of bricks.  

A notification pulsed in the corner of his Meta glasses:  

PUSSYCOIN -98.7%  

The fork snapped.  

Stephen giggled at something only his decaying attention span could perceive. "Dad. Dad. Dad. Look. This guy's head is a butt."  

Fausto didn't respond. The numbers kept ticking down. His entire crypto portfolio—three months' rent, the last of Rita's trust, the emergency fund they'd sworn never to touch—evaporating in real time.  

Rita's knife screeched across the plate. "You did it again."  

His mouth moved before his brain engaged. "It was a sure thing. Nylon Musk's cat tweeted about it."  

The table shook as Rita slammed her palms down. Stephen's nutrient paste jiggled. "You promised. After the Pogo disaster. After the NFT apocalypse. You swore—"  

"I diversified this time!" Fausto's voice cracked. "It's a hedge!"  

Rita's laugh could've frozen a supernova. "A hedge? Against what? Reality?"  

Stephen blinked up from his digital stupor. "Dad's a crypto loser."  

The words hung in the air, more damning than any court verdict. Fausto's glasses kept updating: -99.2%  

Rita stood, her chair screeching against the concrete. "I'm taking Stephen to my sister's."  

"You can't—"  

"Watch me." She yanked Stephen's glasses off, ignoring his shriek of protest. "Your son hasn't seen sunlight in weeks. He thinks 'outside' is a premium VR subscription."  

Fausto's gut twisted. He wanted to argue, but the numbers scrolling across his vision told the real story: LIQUIDATION EVENT IN PROGRESS.  

As Rita stormed out, dragging a shrieking Stephen behind her, Fausto's glasses auto-played a PussyCoin ad:  

"Don't be a cuck—be a KING! Invest today!"  

The cafeteria lights buzzed like angry wasps. Somewhere in the hospital's bowels, a pipe burst.  

Fausto sat very still, listening to the drip.  

Alone.  

Broke.  

A crypto loser dad.

———

The hive’s central terminal pulsed with the dull glow of a trillion souls in standby mode. Glip’s three-fingered hands danced across the holographic interface, pulling up the distress signal from the stranded family. The screen flickered—coordinates still unknown.  

"System’s lagging," Blort observed, watching the progress bar crawl forward at a glacial pace. "Must be all those Earth souls pinging back."  

Glip groaned. "Why do we even have eight billion human souls in the queue? They’re not even spacefaring yet."  

"Procedural error," Blort said, scrolling through the logs. "Somebody left the '21st Century Human Experience' subroutine running. Now they’re all stuck in the buffer."  

The terminal stuttered. A pop-up appeared:  

WARNING: SOUL OVERFLOW DETECTED

SYSTEM PERFORMANCE DEGRADED BY 78%

Glip rubbed his temples. "We could purge the cache."  

Blort hesitated. "You mean… delete them?"  

"Not delete,” Glip corrected. "Just… clear the cookies. Temporary souls. You know how humans are—most of them are just looping the same three traumas anyway."  

The terminal pinged. A new alert:  

CHILD’S VITAL SIGNS DROPPING

VOID ENTITIES DETECTED IN PROXIMITY

Blort’s ocular lid twitched. "Okay, fine. How do we wipe the excess?"  

Glip pulled up the system menu. "Should be under 'Soul Management.' Then 'Batch Processing.' Then—"  

The interface flickered. A dropdown menu appeared, written in an ancient dialect of Cosmic Admin.  

Blort squinted. "I don’t… think this is our usual OS."  

Glip tapped the screen. Nothing happened. He tapped harder. "Did the hive upgrade without telling us?"  

A new window popped up:  

SOUL PURGE PROTOCOL

REQUIRES ADMINISTRATOR APPROVAL

CONTACTING HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS…

Blort groaned. "Great. Now we’re stuck in a permissions loop."  

The terminal lagged again. Pixelated artifacts flickered across the display—ghostly fragments of human faces, half-formed memories bleeding through the corrupted data stream. A distorted voice crackled from the speakers:  

“…is this thing on? Hello? I think I’m supposed to be somewhere—"

Glip slammed a fist on the console. The voice cut off.  

"Focus," he hissed. "We just need to isolate the human souls, dump the non-essential ones, and free up enough bandwidth to locate that family."  

Blort hesitated. "What if we accidentally delete someone important?"  

"Important?" Glip scoffed. "They’re Earthlings. The most any of them ever did was post memes and regret life choices."  

The system chimed. A new message:  

HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS RESPONSE: NEGATIVE

PURGE REQUEST DENIED

REASON: 'ETHICAL CONCERNS'

Blort threw up his hands. "So now what? We just let the whole system crash?"  

Glip stared at the frozen progress bar. Somewhere in the void, a child’s telepathic screams grew fainter.  

"Fine," he muttered. "We’ll do it the old-fashioned way."  

He pulled up a command line interface—an ancient relic from the first hive expansion. The text glowed ominously:  

> FORCE_SOUL_REALLOCATION.EXE

Blort’s fingers hovered over the keys. "You sure about this?"  

Glip didn’t answer. He typed:  

> SACRIFICE_NON_ESSENTIAL=TRUE

The terminal whirred. The lights dimmed. Somewhere in the data stream, eight billion human souls flickered—briefly aware of their own impermanence—before dissolving into the cosmic cache.  

The progress bar surged forward.  

"Got them!" Blort shouted as coordinates flashed onscreen. "Sending tow probe now!"  

The terminal beeped cheerfully:  

SYSTEM OPTIMIZED

LAG REDUCED BY 99.9%

EARTH SOUL BACKUP CORRUPTED (IRRELEVANT)

Glip leaned back, exhausted. "Next time, we just let the void take them."  

Blort nodded, already dreading the next call. Somewhere on Earth, a million people suddenly forgot their passwords.  

The hive hummed on.

———

The emergency room lights buzzed like dying flies. Fausto sat hunched over his desk, a half-empty bottle of synth-whiskey casting long shadows across his unpublished manuscripts. The glow of his Meta glasses reflected in the stainless steel cabinets—former homes of scalpels and morphine, now stuffed with rejected drafts and unpaid bills.  

A notification blinked:  

INSUFFICIENT FUNDS FOR PROMOTION

He tapped again. The same error. His biography of Ramon Atila—three years of work, five hundred pages of meticulously researched family history—was drowning in the algorithm's undertow. No ads meant no readers. No readers meant no money. No money meant—  

The whiskey burned going down.  

He pulled up the manuscript file. The dedication page stared back:  

For Rita and Stephen, who deserved better.

A bitter laugh escaped him. Rita had taken Stephen months ago. The hospital's hollow halls echoed with their absence.  

Fausto switched to HeyYouApp. His last post—"Ramon Atila: The Untold Story of a Forgotten Genius"—had seven likes. Six were bots. The seventh was TrollMaster64:  

LOL who?

His finger hovered over the suicide prevention hotline icon. One tap and a soothing AI voice would ask him about his feelings. As if feelings mattered when the rent was due and PussyCoin had evaporated his last cent.  

The Meta glasses flickered. An ad for Atila Hormone Blockers popped up—the family legacy reduced to pharmaceuticals and bad investments.  

He stood too fast, knocking over the bottle. Amber liquid bled across Ramon's face on the book cover. Fausto didn't clean it up.  

The window showed only darkness. Somewhere beyond the hospital's crumbling walls, the city hummed with lives that didn't include him.  

He opened the publishing dashboard again. The "Boost Post" button glared red. Insufficient funds. Always insufficient.  

The emergency call button on the wall—once meant for cardiac arrests—tempted him. One press and someone would come running. But there was no one left to care about emergencies in this derelict place.  

Fausto took off his glasses. The world went mercifully blurry.  

On the desk, the whiskey-soaked manuscript pages curled at the edges. Ramon's life warping under the weight of his failure.  

He reached for the bottle again.  

Tomorrow, maybe, he'd find the money for ads.  

Or not.  

The emergency room lights buzzed on.  

Somewhere, a printer whirred to life, spitting out another unpaid bill.

———

The California coastline shimmered under the midday sun, its beaches now mostly empty except for the occasional drone sweeping up microplastic confetti. The air smelled like salt and industrial sunscreen.  

Glip and Blort materialized in a shimmering orb of light just above the boardwalk, their smooth grey forms rippling as they adjusted to Earth's gravity.  

"Told you we should've gone to Mars," Blort grumbled, his ocular lid squinting against the harsh sunlight. "At least there, the food isn't 80% nanoplastics."  

Glip ignored him, already gliding toward a neon-lit food stall advertising 25th Century Tacos: Now With 10% More Lab-Grown Nostalgia!  

"Mars is corporate," Glip said. "Earth's got culture. Also, their condiments are better."  

Blort's stomach gurgled—a sound like a malfunctioning air recycler. "Fine. But if I get another parasitic meme from their data streams, I'm purging your soul cache next shift."  

They phased through the line of waiting customers (mostly cyborg retirees and gene-spliced influencer teens) and materialized at the counter. The cashier, a bored-looking human with gill implants, didn't even blink.  

"Two quantum crunchwraps," Glip telepathically broadcast. "Extra neutrino sauce."  

The cashier tapped their temple implant. "You guys want the celebrity DNA seasoning? Today's special is Zendaya 2.0 or vintage Elon."  

Blort shuddered. "Hard pass. That guy's genome is mostly poor decisions."  

They floated to a nearby bench—or rather, through it, their semi-corporeal forms unable to fully interact with physical matter. A seagull screamed at them in confusion.  

As they unwrapped their food (telekinetically, because hands were so 24th century), Blort sighed. "You ever think about fusing?"  

Glip's nutrient absorption pores flared. "With you? Hard no."  

"Not us, idiot. With a star. Like, a pop star." Blort projected a hologram of the current galactic chart-topper—Glorp-7, a shimmering androgynous entity with twelve vocal sacs. "Imagine that genetic material in our lineage."  

Glip snorted. "Glorp's a hack. Their last album was just whale noises remixed with black hole echoes." He summoned his own hologram—a pulsating orb named XxQ'lith. "This is artistry. Their mitochondrial DNA won the Andromeda Music Awards three cycles running."  

Blort's taco hovered mid-air, forgotten. "XxQ'lith? Seriously? They literally reproduce by mitosis during concerts. That's not music, that's cell division."  

A group of passing humans paused to film them, their brain-embedded social media suites automatically tagging the video AliensBeingBros PleaseNoticeUs.  

Glip phased a tortilla chip right through a teenager's skull. "Ugh. Earthlings. They're like if garbage became a species."  

Blort, now fully invested in the argument, projected a third hologram—a towering, bioluminescent being named Ћ. "Compromise. Ћ's got eight Nobel Prizes and can photosynthesize tequila."  

The debate might've lasted all afternoon if not for the alert that pinged through their neural feeds:  

EMERGENCY RECALL: VOID INCURSION IN SECTOR 12  

ALL TECH SUPPORT UNITS REPORT IMMEDIATELY  

Glip groaned. "Ugh. Again? We just got lunch."  

Blort dematerialized his half-eaten taco directly into the nearest trash receptacle. "Next time, we're going to literally any other planet."  

As their forms dissolved into light, the last thing the gathered humans heard was Glip muttering, "...still think XxQ'lith's discography holds up better in a gene splice scenario..."  

Then they were gone.  

The seagull pecked at the abandoned neutrino sauce.  

Somewhere in the void between galaxies, a child's telepathic scream echoed.  

Back at the hive, the lunch break timer hadn't even hit zero.  

Glip and Blort phased along Highway 1, their forms shimmering above the cracked asphalt. The coastal scrub baked in the afternoon heat, the air thick with the scent of warm tar and sage.  

"There," Blort said, gesturing with a flick of his mental projection. "Organic lifeform. Query: Is this creature dangerous?"  

The creature in question—a Western fence lizard, its blue belly pressed against the sun-warmed concrete—did not flee. It merely blinked its obsidian eyes at the aliens, throat pulsing in slow, reptilian patience.  

Glip scanned it with his neural sensors. "Designation: Sceloporus occidentalis. Threat level: Negligible. Primary behaviors: Sun absorption, insect consumption, pretending to be a rock."  

The lizard flicked its tongue, tasting alien pheromones on the dry air.  

Blort hovered closer. "Fascinating. Observe the dorsal scales—clearly evolved for thermoregulation. Efficient, if primitive."  

A pickup truck roared past, its turbulence ruffling the lizard's spiny back. The creature didn't flinch.  

"Resilient," Glort noted. "We should incorporate such stress tolerance into the next hive-worker clones."  

Glip pulsed a dismissive telepathic burst. "Unnecessary. Our systems already surpass this creature in every metric except..." He paused. "...charm."  

The lizard, having deemed the aliens neither predator nor prey, resumed its solar charging. A single black ant wandered too close and vanished in a flicker of pink tongue.  

"Efficient predator," Blort admitted. "Perhaps we should—"  

Their neural feeds pinged in unison: PRIORITY OVERRIDE: VOID BREACH CONTAINMENT FAILURE  

With a ripple of distorted light, the aliens dissolved. The lizard, undisturbed, closed its eyes as a vulture circled overhead. Somewhere down the highway, a Tesla autopilot braked for a mirage.  

The ant colony, unaware of its narrow escape, continued marching toward a crumb of protein bar.

The lizard basked, his blood thickening with ancient heat. The sun pulsed—once, twice—and the world rippled.  

Suddenly, he remembered.  

Great stone cities rose where scrub now grew. Towering beings of emerald scale strode between monoliths, their claws etching laws into obsidian. The air thrummed with their clicking tongues, a language older than mountains. He saw the Eye—a molten jewel passed between rulers—containing all the wisdom of the warm-blooded world.  

Then came the dying.  

The vision twisted: cities crumbling into tar pits, the last priest-king hissing as he placed the Eye into a hairless, pink-skinned creature's trembling hands. The new inheritors blinked stupidly at their prize, not understanding its weight.  

The lizard shuddered. A truck's shadow passed over him, its exhaust bitter in his nostrils. Somewhere beyond the highway, metal towers glittered. The Eye was there now, he knew—locked away in glass, reduced to a curiosity for soft beings who named what they could not comprehend.  

A fly landed on his back. Instinct won. His tongue lashed out.  

The sun dipped. The vision faded.  

He crawled beneath a rock, his tiny heart racing. That night, he dreamed of sinking his teeth into something warm and hairless.  

Above him, satellites blinked across the Milky Way, carrying messages in a language no scaled thing would ever speak.

—-ATILA—-