A strong gust of dry, warm salt-smelling air blows into my face, making my hair flow all over the place. I stand still paying attention to the surf’s sound crashing into my ears, mentally moving me before falling down to my heart, resonating deep inside. A few seconds pass before I open my eyes and look down at the craggy coastline. The turquoise waters of the Black sea are as marvelous as always. I sit down, dropping my legs off the cliff’s edge. I remove my backpack and pull out a shiny metal thermos displaying the word “Rvonics”, in a somewhat frayed font.

The thermos is full of hot, sweet ginger tea — total bliss — precisely what you need to drink when you are waiting for the sunset. Pouring a little bit for myself, I look around. It is a beautiful viewpoint, and I’m fortunate enough to be alone here today. I am only accompanied by sturdy stones, and behind them enormous, rough rocks. Most of the stones are gray, but some of the rocks that are part of the mountain behind me are orange — unsure from where, I remember that means they are full of metal. I laugh to myself, pondering the human ability to remember seemingly random things, and turn back to the sun beginning to start setting into the sea.

I have no idea how much time has passed, but it’s already pitch-dark. I turn my flashlight on and make my way back to the car. “Beep-beep,” I hear the phone. Looks like I have the reception again and a new message from Bettie: “Carol, have you ever eaten seagulls?”

Usually, I leave my small apartment around six-thirty in the evening when I’m done with work. It’s a calm neighborhood with a lot of single-story traditional buildings showing off their facades made of charred wood. Usually, I’m quite hungry by that time, and I proceed by heading directly towards the closest LAWSON convenience store. Don’t get me wrong, I do prefer 7-Eleven, but the closest one is much farther away than LAWSON, and — as I said — I am, usually, quite hungry by that time. There are not many people on the streets during this hour — I meet only a few on my way to the store. In the store, I usually pick up an onigiri or two (or three — depending on how hungry I am), something to drink, and then walk towards the Shijō Bridge.

The closer I get to the bridge, the more people I meet. It’s not a surprise because there is a subway station on the side of the bridge closest to me. All the people that I see are moving either towards or from the station. Upon reaching the bridge, I always feel like I’m in another realm — it’s hard to believe that it’s so quiet only a few blocks away. It’s quite crowded here. The bridge connects the subway station with a neighborhood full of loud riverside restaurants, atmospheric bars, colossal shopping malls, and business centers. Usually, I make a stop somewhere in the middle of the bridge, taking some time to ruminate about recent events while looking at the water. The crowd noise is somehow calming and helps me think a lot. The hunger, usually, doesn’t allow me to spend too much time starring into the horizon. Then, I move my gaze to the riverbank under the bridge, where a few groups of young guys and gals always sit and enjoy the river, each other, and their youth. I finally cross the bridge and join them. I sit on the green grass and eat. I can’t really notice the color of the grass because of how the lack of sun makes the setting under the bridge a bit dark — I know that it’s green, though. It’s surprisingly quiet here; the people chilling at the riverbank do not make much noise. I really enjoy that evening routine; the routine I’ve been sticking during the last three weeks that I had to spend in Kyoto.

That’s what I usually do, but not today. Today, I’ve received a message. A message that means the plan is in motion, a message that means “no onigiri today,” and that I really need to hurry up. I direct my stare to the top of the laptop screen; it is T minus forty-seven minutes. I have to act fast. I grab my backpack and slide the laptop into one of its compartments with a single precise motion. Everything else is already packed; I’ve been preparing for this to happen. I stand up, ready to leave, and look around a small room that I have called home for the past three weeks. It is a small, simple room with barely enough space for a single bed, two stools, and a journal table so small that it can be mistaken for a stool. The light of the evening shines at the table through a window. “Goodbye, home,” I say quietly to a huge blue kimono decorating the wall behind the bed — a ridiculous detail that I somehow learned to ignore. I walk out of the room while keeping my head low to avoid hitting the door frame — it can be an extremely painful experience, trust me. My flatmate isn’t at home. That’s good, that spares me an unnecessary conversation. I lock the door and leave the key in the mailbox on my way out. I check the watch; I’m six minutes ahead of schedule. It has started, and I better get ready.

You woke up, the summer sun ruthlessly frying you through the window blinds. You slowly open your eyes to find out that the white sheet you were supposed to cover yourself with is a messy waistband. You close your eyes and open them one more time to double-check that it’s actually morning. “Ok, Google, what’s time is it?” you ask. “It’s six-fourteen AM.” Precisely sixteen minutes before the alarm is due. You roll over to the edge of the bed and sit yourself down in one smooth motion. You find your slippers without looking and proceed with the routine by walking towards the bathroom.

You open a white wooden door and turn on the light. The light is bright and cold and contributes a lot to helping you wake up, but you are not very happy about it right now. At the moment, you wish you would have installed dim, warm lights here — anything instead of these incredibly bright cold lights. You approach the sink and look at the reflection of yourself in the mirror cabinet. After a long second, you turn the faucet knob, fold your hands, pour some cool water in them, and wash your face. Woof! This is refreshing. Now you feel much better. The cold bathroom light is suddenly much more tolerable, probably, because you’ve come closer to its temperature. You look at yourself one more time as you open the cabinet door to get the toothbrush and toothpaste. You hold the toothbrush in an ideal horizontal line and squeeze out a bit of toothpaste on its bristles. Then, you water the toothpaste a little and start brushing your teeth. You are fast and precise, you are not leaving any spot, any gap, untouched. Less than two minutes have passed, and you are done.
You are in the kitchen when you pour some water into the electric kettle, and wait for it to boil. It boils fast; the kettle is brand-new and very efficient, but it feels like forever. Of course, it does; everything feels like forever to you. You want to move faster; you want to do more; you are as demanding to everything and everyone as you are to yourself.

Finally, the kettle boils and turns itself off. You take it off and pour some water into the cup with a teabag of good green tea. You prepared the cup right after you put the kettle to boil, and immediately before it had started to feel like the kettle was inexplicably slow at doing its job. You can’t tell which tea it is since you didn’t pay attention to which one you had taken, but you are sure that it’s green and good; this is the only kind of tea you can find at home. You put a teaspoon of honey into the drink and stir. You taste it, put it down, and, after a slight hesitation, add another spoon of honey. It is now perfect. You are ready to move away from the kitchen, satisfied.

“You know that time never sleeps…,” shouts your morning alarm with the words of a random song from your playlist. A song that you like but will never be able to remember if asked to do so. It startled you quite seriously and forcefully pulled you out of your train of thought. “Ok, Google, stop!” you immediately shout in response. The day has officially started. It’s time to get things done.

He stretched his elbow backward a bit further from the bow, and the tension in the bowstring increased noticeably. A red synthetic string cut deep into his fingers, causing a few micro-fractures to appear on the skin. The archer pulled the bowstring a little bit more and let his grip go. All of the power accumulated in the bowstring, immediately launched an extremely lightweight carbon arrow forward, it rushed driven by the pressure passed to it from the bowstring. One of the feathers sliced the tip of the archer’s index finger. The arrow cut through the air with its pointed head. It was barely visible, wobbling and racing towards the bullseye. The archer moved his gaze to his finger; it had been deeply cut by the feather.

A drop of dark red blood started to slowly form at the lower side of his index finger. It quickly grew in size, lengthened, being pulled down by gravity towards the archer’s feet. In a moment, the drop lost its grasp of his finger and started the fall to the ground. The archer moved his head following the drop as it hurled down. The drop hit an old brown leaf with an almost inaudible splash sound and spread across the leaf veins. The archer fixed his gaze on the leaf, exploring how the single drop interacted with the leaf. And, at the exact same moment, he heard a loud and distinct sound of an arrow hitting the target. He instantly moved the gaze back towards the shooting target and opened his eyes and mouth wide in awe. The arrow had just hit the bullseye. The archer lowered his arms, relaxed his posture, and dropped his dark redwood bow in relief. He finally hit the bullseye.

“Did you bring it?” said a familiar voice.

“We have what you requested,” a cold, inhumane voice slowly responded. “Did you deliver on your part of the agreement?”

“Sure, I did. Still, I don’t understand why you may need this.”

I slowly peeked around the corner and was shocked by what I saw. The captain of the ship is making a deal with one of the aliens, with one of the invaders!

I asked myself, “Who would’ve thought that they could speak English this well.”

“We don’t expect you to understand. You only had to deliver.”

A sudden sound of something small hitting the metal floor startled me. I quickly hid behind the wall.

“Shit! Where did I drop it?”

I heard some noise but didn’t dare to look.

“Here it is. Sorry about that, please, take it.”

As I listened in, I heard a noise of a docking gate opening and closing. “You humans can be adorably clumsy. I’m surprised how you managed to hold your ground against us for so long.”

It was quiet for a while.

I turned my sight around the corner and saw that the captain was standing there alone. “What is he waiting for?”

Not seeing the alien made me anxious. A chill ran through my spine. I had that weird, suspenseful, horror-like sensation of doubting whether the alien was behind me now. I slowly turned my head. No one was there, just a clean empty corridor.

The sound of the docking gate opening directed my head towards the captain again. The alien was back with a black bag the size of a bottle of whiskey. It looked heavy for its size.

“Here is your payment, human. As agreed.”

The captain briefly looked inside the bag. “Good, good.”

The alien silently moved back through the docking gate. A slight vibration made it clear that the alien ship had de-docked. It looked like the captain registered this too. Suddenly he became very relieved. And, with the threat of the alien threat, I became furious with the captain.

Without thinking, I ran towards him and punched him in the face. “Why did you make deals with aliens?!”

The captain was surprised and wasn’t able to react. He moved back, almost falling behind. The bag he received from the alien dropped to the floor. Beautiful, crystal clear rocks of different sizes were scattered across the floor.

“And for what? For a bunch of diamonds?! You ignorant fool! What did you give them?”

He stood up and cleaned up the blood from his mouth.

“You’ll see.”

He took out a small remote control with a single button. My eyes widened.

“What’s that? Don’t make any moves, or I’ll shoot you.”

My hands went for the gun. I took a step back.

“Calm down. I’ll explain everything. You shouldn’t have seen this.”

I pointed the gun to his chest. He raised his arms above his head.

“Listen, boy.”

“Jared, my name is Jared.”

“Listen, Jared, I will explain everything to you. But you have to trust me.”

“Shut up! I’ve heard enough. Put the remote slowly on the floor. Keep your other hand in the air. Do it! Or I’ll shoot you!”

“Calm down, Jared. We don’t have much time.”

The captain took a step towards me and tried to grab the gun in one smooth motion. The plasma from my gun burned his shoulder as I panicked and pulled the trigger. He involuntarily screamed and fell to the floor. The air was filled with the smell of burned flesh. But he was still holding the remote and looking at his wrist computer. He was checking something!

“It’s time.”

The captain pressed the button on the remote and passed out.

A few seconds passed in complete silence before my wrist computer alerted me of an explosion wave hitting our station. The wave was of minor power, nothing to worry about. Another fact was brought to my attention. According to the computations, the epicenter of the explosion was somewhere behind the enemy lines.

“The explosion should’ve been huge.”

The guy sitting at the window in a coffee shop on the corner of Church Street and Left Side Street got up from his table to get the order. The pen that he dropped, when standing up, rolled to the edge of the small, wooden square table and stopped there, demonstrating quite distinct bite marks around the barrel.

The guy was writing something, but the notebook was left on the blank page, like he either doesn’t want to risk anyone occasionally looking at his work, or wants to start with a blank page when he gets back. There is visible steam coming from a large, almost full teacup waiting for the “writer” beside the notebook near a small plate hosting a few bites left of an almond donut. There is no way not to notice a ridiculously massive amount of used napkins covered in donut frosting lying all over the table; some of them tucked under the plate. Two empty creamer tubs are hiding in a small pile of napkins behind the cup. The dark gray long coat is hanging on the backrest of the chair, opposite to the one the “writer” just left.

Oh! And there is also a large black backpack carelessly tucked under the table. A charger cable is leading from inside of one of the backpack compartments to the table, but the guy took the phone with him, so, now, the cable’s connector is lying freely on the table, waiting for a small pool of spilled tea slowly creeping towards it. Fortunately, the notebook is in the other direction.

Wait! The pool has met one of the napkins and is now being consumed by it; it looks as if the cable avoided the risky encounter this time. Now the “writer” is back with more donuts.

Perhaps we should leave him alone with his work.

I set the spaceship on course to the universe’s most delicious edible and maxed out the engines. “Treat of the ages, here I come.” I had been waiting for it long enough.

“What’s up? Are you down for a race?” — The communicator went alive.

“It looks like he got the coordinates too,” I thought to myself while tracing his coordinates. “Shut up, Eddie. You are parsecs behind me; keep dreaming.”

“We’ll see,” — I heard a familiar noise of his Marta’s boost engine starting up.

“Did you get your hands on that illegal fuel? I’m impressed.”

“You don’t know the half of it. This is going to be interesting!”

I have never allowed Eddie to get the best of me, and I am not going to start today. “Marcus, look for shortcuts, ignore safety restrictions,” I commanded the computer.

“I have found a faster route through Amanda’s asteroid belt that will save six hours and twenty-four minutes. New ETA is in fifteen hours, forty-seven minutes. Do you want to follow it?” — The computer responded immediately.

“Yes. Go for it,” I replied.

“This will make sure that Eddie will never catch up with me,” I thought to myself as I smiled.

“Reaching the asteroid belt in 30 minutes,” Marcus roughly interrupted my nap. “Please, move to the pilot seat and be prepared to use the manual control.”

“Did it kick in?” — Eddie interrupted.

“What? What are you talking about?” Then I felt a sudden, painful sensation in my stomach. “Ahhh!”

“About time,” Eddie commented. “Do you remember that smoothie we drank at the port?”

“Crap! You poisoned me, you sleazy bastard!”

“Yeah. FYI, you have 24 hours to live,” Eddie chuckled. “Ask Marcus if you don’t believe me. The antidote is at the port in a storage box under your name. You can still get to it in time if you turn around.”

I disabled the communicator and injected myself with a painkiller shot I grabbed from the medicine compartment. “Marcus, full power to the engines,” I said while engaging the manual control mode.

Maneuvering through asteroids wasn’t as stressful as I anticipated. I had already crossed about two-thirds of the belt when I was blinded by a bright explosion by mine right. Marcus immediately traced the rocket that caused the explosion and zoomed in on it. “The last thing I need right now,” I noticed a familiar emblem, “is for some jockeys to prank around here with rockets!” Right this second, I saw an asteroid fragment flying at me. “Shit! I’m still in manual mode!” I turned the ship to the direction perpendicular to the rock trajectory and… impact.

Marcus tried to stabilize the ship. “Engine damaged. Overriding manual mode. Engaging in safety protocol.”

The right engine was damaged. I activated the service bot to assess the severity. The driver was slightly misplaced, I moved the bot inside and explored the contact panel. It looked fine except for one damaged wire leading from the driver. “Cheap Martian tech!” After quickly patching it, I ran the driver self-diagnostic and let the bot to examine and fix external damage in autonomous mode.

“Self-diagnostic tests passed successfully. Driver re-calibrated to compensate for displacement,” Marcus reported shortly.

“Get me out of here, Marcus,” I said and passed out of pain and exhaustion.

“You have reached your destination,” Marcus announced, waking me up.

The pain moved from my stomach to my head, but was bearable; I injected myself with another shot of painkiller. “Marcus, look for an ARC-5 object, collect it, validate, and serve, as usual.” Retrieving the edible didn’t take long. In a few minutes, I was looking at the table served with wine and a weird gooey mass as the main dish. One bite and striking pain forced my spine to bend. I fell to the floor. “The edible is a catalyst for the poison! Oh, Eddie, you don’t want to know what is coming for you next time.” I laughed, crashed the consciousness backup capsule, and died. Again.

Once, when I was about six years old, I found myself looking inside a tube of super glue. The thing is, I was curious about how it can work so well. I wasn’t able to figure out much by peeking inside, so I decided to squeeze some glue out in order to examine it closer. I pressed the tube while holding it in front of my face, the glue erupted towards my mouth …and glued my lips together. I panicked. I didn’t know what else to do, so I ran to my grandma — I was staying alone with her that day. My grandma cleaned up my mouth and hid the glue on the very top shelf of the tall wardrobe. This is not the end of the story. Neither the incident nor the present location of the glue was enough to stop my curiosity. After I waited for some time and made sure that grandma was busy in the kitchen, cooking something delicious for me like she usually did, I expertly constructed a ladder by putting one wooden stool on top of another. And, in a short while, I continued the ever so important study. Once again, I applied pressure to the tube, and, this time, I glued one of my eyelids shut. My grandma saved the day once again. Thanks to the blink reflex, I didn’t get any glue in my eye. But, to be safe, she called my dad to take me to the doctor. The doctor cleaned up my eye using some mixture and made me an incredibly cool eye-patch as the one actual pirates had!

Mike, the hedgehog, was out late evening looking for food. It was getting dark too fast, almost like someone was playing a trick on him. He was afraid of the darkness. “Darkness is uncertainty; darkness can hide all kinds of threats, like this tiger sitting in the tree — oh, it is just a carving someone made on a hike, how barbarously,” - came through the hedgehog’s mind. Suddenly, his train of thought was interrupted by a crow’s cry, and then he heard another, and another. “It sounds like there is a murder,” - Mike says to himself, too quiet, almost like he is afraid of the sound of his voice. He cannot pretend that he does not hear this. A chill went up through the hedgehog’s spine — another “kraa” rings through the air. Mike considered returning to his warm nest, and, after a short period of hesitation, decided that his hunger is stronger than his fear of crows, darkness, and whatever other filthy omens can be hiding in the woods.

“Just an apple, or maybe a mushroom,” - the hedgehog keeps repeating to himself, trying to focus on the task at hand. He draws upon his memory, reassuring himself with past instances of all the times he was out at night looking for food, and how nothing had happened to him. He expects to find these thoughts comforting, but instead obsesses over everything that could’ve happened to him, like that one with the cage. The time when he almost got caught. “Hey, who do we have here?” - Mike’s reliving of the cage incident was interrupted by a voice too close and too loud for comfort. The hedgehog felt like the air explode around him. Then, an unbearably bright light blinded him.