When the world was ending, only one thing was going through my mind. When they were rising up and killing us all, there was only one simple sentence that plagued me, unceasingly. It just seemed to cry at me through the fog of the rest of the pain and destruction. That thing was that you are going to be pissed if you ever find out the part I played.

I’m sorry for what I did. I really am.

I’m in the kitchen, getting myself something to drink. It’s six in the morning. I can hear the train going by overhead. Well, I can feel it. Everything’s shaking. I’m used to it.

I spot a glass on my shelf skirting towards the edge of the vibrating counter. I wait and watch as it gets closer and closer, seeing if it can beat the train there or not. It does. I reach out in an attempt to smoothly pluck it from the air just as it topples over the edge, but I miss and it falls to the ground and shatters. I curse.

I step around the shattered glass as the train finally passes, everything going back to normal, and go find a broom and a dustpan. I feel like a responsible adult, cleaning up my messes. Shattered glass is no match for the fully grown man that I am.

My hand slips and I cut my thumb on the glass. Blood is pouring out. I swear again and go into the bathroom. I run my finger under cold water and put some hydrogen peroxide on it. It stings worse than the cut and I swear a third time.

I go back into the kitchen and clean up the glass. This time without any more blood.

I reach into the cupboard and pull out another glass and fill it with tap water. It tastes like rust and chemicals.

“Are you okay?”

I look up to see who it is. It’s Damien. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? I could take the day off and hang if you want, instead of you moping here in your room all day.”

“I like moping in my room,” I say, “It gives me a sense of purpose.”

Damien laughs and walks out of my bedroom to go to work.

I take a drink of the water and set it back on the counter. Damien hasn’t gotten back yet, and I’m worried.

I hurriedly pick the glass back up and fill it with more water. I’m starting to freak out a little bit. I always get really dehydrated when I’m freaking out. I down another glass. I’m starting to despise the taste of this stuff.

The glass is now in the sink and I’m sitting on the sofa in the living room, staring at the door. I start to pace. What if they found out about us? I should have accepted his offer for him to skip work. Then we would have been apprehended together. That would have been a comfort, at least. But now I’m all alone.

“I was really worried about you, you know,” I say, my hand clutching his as his chest is pressed against my back. I can feel his breath on the back of my hair.

“I’m sorry…” he says.

I glance back at him and smile. “Don’t be,” I say.

The door still hasn’t opened. I need some more water.

Back in the Kitchen, I look out the window above the sink at the flourishing city outside. It’s mocking me with its clean, white, windowless buildings. The rail overpasses zigzag all over the place, the one over my house is visible to the right flowing at an angle until the sharp 90 degree, curved turn to the next support beam. The Z line goes straight into the heart of the city, its final stop just outside the government housing complex where all the officials spend their time.

“If you have him,” I say, glaring at the capitol building at the center of that complex, “I will revolt. I’ll start a fucking coup.” And I mean it. I really will. I won’t stop until they’re crawling out of the ashes of their once "great" society.

“Hey, Zack, could you take a look at this code?” Jackson says, sticking his head around the corner into my cubicle. I roll my chair over towards him into his.

“What about it?” I ask.

“Well, see, it looks right, doesn’t it?” he says. I scan it briefly then nod. He continues, “But when I go to compile it, it gives me… this.”

He presses the compile button and a dialog pops up on the screen that displays the text, “Error Compiling; invalid proposal on line 436.” Then he goes back to the code, presses the shortcut to go to line 436 and says “But look! Line 436 is blank! It’s white space!”

I point at the line right above it. “That colon should be a semicolon. The colon’s making it think that line 436 is a continuation of the modifier on line 435.”

He looks at it again and then smiles. “Thanks, Zack. Sorry.”

I turn and leave, but I don’t go back to my cubicle. I go to the end of the hall and stare out the window. The view from the capitol building is beautiful, I’ll give it that.

What time is it? I’ve stopped looking at the clock every two seconds. It was only making me more and more anxious. I step out onto the balcony and listen to the cars below instead. I breath in the toxic air and I think that I can feel the cells in my body crying out in pain as they shrivel up and one by one begin the process of completely demolishing my body.

I probably can’t really feel that.

Tick tick tick. Time passes slower than I ever thought possible. I’m back inside and reading a book about a dog. Why are there so many books about dogs? What is people’s obsession with dogs? They’re nothing special. They’re not man’s best friend. Man’s best friend is a man’s best friend, not some canine asshole a man has to spend money and time and resources to keep alive.

I’m making assumptions about the way all men are again. I do this a lot. I guess that as I’ve grown up I’ve started to feel more and more disconnected from other people of my gender. People seem to think it’s a bigger deal when you’re a kid or a teenager. Because, it’s true, children are brutal. They are equal to all the damning might of a military superpower, but without the capacity to know to stop when someone calls mercy.

But there’s one thing all children have in common: they’re children. You don’t have that same child-like bond to an average, full-grown man. You can’t hang out with him simply because you both happen to be full-grown men. And as such, they’ve become something of a mystery.

Or maybe you can and I’m just assuming again.

The truth is, I haven’t had much contact with “average” men since Damien and I started working for the underground. No time for sociability, apparently. Even if what we’re promoting is a sort of socialism.

I’m walking slowly through the dark grime of the world in which we live. I’m bowing my head, looking at the pavement below my feet, slimy and unreliable like our hearts. Dark and cracking like our smoke-filled lungs. Trembling and shifting like our unsure, frightened minds.

I don’t bother to look up when the cars zoom past me. I hardly even make the effort to listen to them passing. I just stuff my hands in the pocket of my coat and bow my head. I think it might be raining. I think I can see water droplets dripping off of my hat. But then again, it’s probably just fuel leaking from a shoddy jet.

I don’t know where I am and I don’t care.

I’m just tired. Tired of this city, tired of the underground, tired of being who I am. What I am.

Am I nothing more than a what? A thing? A mutation in my DNA made me a degenerate. Like that movie. I’m never going to rise up to the level that people always hoped of me. And I can do nothing about it.

But I’m tired of doing nothing about anything. Sure, I joined the underground, but was that really because I was angry at our oppressors? No, it was because it was convenient. I joined the underground out of necessity. I’m a degenerate and I’ll never stop being a degenerate. And the underground just loves the degenerates. We’re their demographic.

We’re always nothing but a demographic.

The door swings open and in comes Damien. His smiling face has alleviated any worries I’ve ever had. The world is beautiful and I love absolutely everything in it.

Something hard hits me in the gut and I fly back into the wall with a loud thud. I start to slide down toward the ground, numb, giving up, but somebody grabs my shirt and pulls me back up. They hit me in my face again, my head flopping to the side limply. I’m semi-conscious of blood trickling out of somewhere and trailing itself across my body, but the truth is I don’t even really feel it.

Blow after blow has no effect on me. After all the metaphorical ones, real ones can’t do a thing.

I’m just waiting for either the beating of the fists or the beating of my heart to stop. Which one will come sooner, I’m not sure. It's like the glass and the train. It's a race to a shattered demise. I’m not sure which one I’d prefer anymore, either.

I’m sitting in my cubicle writing code. I hate this job.

A light flashes on the wired phone sitting on my desk. I turned the sound off when I first got this job. The ringing was deafening. It pierced through my head and beat into my skull. I have to cover my ears when other cubicles’ phones go off or else I end up practically draining the water cooler.

I pick up the receiver. I can’t remember the name of my department or the greeting I’m supposed to give when I pick up the phone. I can’t remember if the public will ever be transferred to my line or not. I can hardly even remember what my job title is. Somebody just gives me a memo that says “We need program that does this.” I write the code in about an hour and then kill time for the rest of the day.

This job is not about the job. It’s about a chance to infiltrate the system for the underground. It doesn’t matter that they need a snippet of code added to a program that locates faces from public security camera feeds. It doesn’t matter they need something that can break through the firewall on airplane computers.

It doesn’t matter.

I throw myself into his arms. I bury my face into his neck and his shoulder, hiding the tears. I can’t help but smile. He’s okay. I have to keep telling it to myself or I’ll start getting thirsty again. He’s here, he’s healthy, he’s okay.

I pull away a little bit so I can look at him, still in his arms. He has a strange look on his face. A mixture between fright and puzzlement. I laugh. I can’t really help it. It just seems so funny all of a sudden for his face to look so utterly frightened and puzzled while I cry onto his shoulder because he’s completely okay.

I can’t stop laughing until suddenly I can. I look at him seriously and then I put my hand around his head, cupping him behind the ear, and quickly pull his face toward mine. I bring our lips together and then pull away and pause, looking into his eyes. Green like algae on the top of a pond.

“Damien,” I say.

“Mm?”

“I just thought of the shittiest simile in all of recorded history.” I pause. “Damien, I love you.”

He pulls me close and we just stand there embracing for a long time. It is wonderful.

She’s kissing me. Pressing me against the wall. She’s more powerful sometimes than any man I’ve ever been with. I don’t really have a choice right now. I’m her’s until she’s through with me, and then I’ll beg for more. But at other times she’s not like that at all. At other times she’s frail and insecure. It's baffling.

She pauses, pulls away. “Zack,” she says, “I love you.”

I look her in the eyes, still pressed against the wall, my hands on her hips. “But I’m a degenerate,” I say.

I’m at the water cooler. I hear it gurgling behind me. I’m not sure it’s supposed to gurgle, but it is. It’s gurgling. I pour myself another Dixie cup of the water. This is the only water I’ve ever had that doesn’t taste absolutely terrible. I’m starting to crave this water when I’m at home and all I have is the tap. I’m starting to be constantly thirsty because of this job, and yet this is the only place I can deal with it anymore because of its wonderful water.

I crush the the little paper cup in my hand and throw it in the trash. I head to my boss’s office like he asked on the phone. “Alright,” I’d said, “Gonna get some water.”

He’d laughed. My body's dependence on the most fucking delicious water in the city was funny, apparently.

I knock on his door. He tells me to come in. His smiling face gives away that I’m safe still. No one but me knows what I’m doing here. I’m safe. I’m safe.

“Zachary,” he says, that smile still on his face, “Have a seat.” I do, in the chair across from his desk. He continues, “I’ve noticed that you spend a lot of time not really doing anything in your cubicle…” He’s still smiling. Am I safe?

He pauses, seems to consider the best way to continue. Then does. “I’d like to offer you an opportunity,” he says. He explains and I start to tune his jolly voice out. His fat, smiling face has always bothered me. He’s a terrible boss. Still, though, I nod and pretend I’m excited for a chance to move up in the company.

I go back to my cubicle and pretend to brag to my brother. Jackson doesn’t know the truth about me.

I’m laying on the ground in the alley, bleeding, the hooded gang standing around me. One of them rips their mask off and leans in close. I can barely make out his face, but in the end I can. Suddenly it’s starkly clear and I wonder how I didn’t recognize his voice before.

Everything is flashing through my mind at once right now. I’m just writing it down as it comes into my head. You handed me this journal and told me to write down everything that happened. I told you that I’d feel silly. You told me to just trust you.

I’m watching them march through the street. I don’t know it, but somewhere miles and miles away a missile is being launched that is going to end everything. It’s flying at hundreds of miles per hour toward the capitol building that I used to be able to see through my kitchen window while I drank water and worried about Damien.

Why did I wait so fucking long to actually do it? To trust you about the stupid journal? I’ve trusted you with everything else. You saved my life. I don’t think you realized what you were doing at the time, but you did. You saved my life and I never even thanked you for it. Didn’t even fully trust you until now.

Their feet sound like drums. I rush into Lucy’s room and grab a bag. I bring it around the apartment and stuff it full of things I think might be important. I decide to wait ten minutes longer to see if she’d get home before I leave. I don’t even have water on my mind. I’m scared thirstless.

When we separated I thought for sure I was going to die within the month. But you assured me it was for the best. Well looks like I get one last “I told you so” before I go. I’m glad it’s this cave at least. This is by far the best cave I’ve been in.

The door swings open and in she strides, a smug look on her face. “Do you see what’s happening?” she asks happily.

“Yes,” I say. There’s a fucking coup going on and she’s cheery as an elf. “Lucy, we have to get out of the city before they find out what we’ve been doing.”

“What we’ve been doing?” she laughs. “Zack, we’ve been working for them. We’re fine right where we are.”

I’m not sure which will run out first: the time until they find me in here, or the ink in this pen. Everything comes back to the train and the glass. Can't it ever be between a bunny and ice cream? Why is it always two terrible things racing toward destruction, never two great things racing toward a happily ever after?

I’m hoping time, honestly. That runs out. I’m hoping I can get everything down in time. I wish I could think about this linearly, but the gas is making my mind fuzzy. My thoughts disparate and disjointed. One moment I’m remembering Damien plucking at the buttons on my shirt, next he’s replaced with Lucy as she brutally rips my clothes off. One moment I’m thinking about how I’d construct a program to tell the digital water cooler to dispense the glorious liquid at a certain time every day, the next I’m thinking about the dumpster I was hiding in when I found you.

It’s completely ridiculous. It’s all I can do right now not to jump into another tangent. But time is certainly running out. When I wrote that last paragraph I thought I had a lot more time. But now I can hear them.

Look. I can’t just sit here and wait. This is more than a cave, this is an underground tunnel. I don’t know where it will lead, but I’m going down into it. I doubt that I’ll get very far before they find me. But amongst any survivor’s pessimism are the traces of inescapable optimism. I have a chance.

But this is the last I think I can write before I go in. I wish I could have told you the whole truth about what happened and the part I played, but at least I got the basics out of the way. You can probably figure out the rest because you know me so well. And I am so sorry.

There are so many things in my life that I should have done, should have said, should have put down on paper… god dammit.

Good bye.

End Part 1