June 1, 2025
I’m supposed to be on watch, vigilant against the metallic beasts that have murdered so many.
Instead, I’m looking at the flowers. The spindly tree across the street is an explosion of pink. Tulips, daisies, and what I’ve decided to call hydrangeas blossom in the tiny gardens along walks, against foundations, or in window boxes. My station in the corner of what was once my favorite coffee shop offers quite the view of the neighborhood. There’s an entrance to the highway three blocks away, around the corner. The town council’s convinced that if the machines come, it’ll be from that direction.
The most threatening thing I’ve seen in the last two weeks is an angry goose that’s decided he’s king of the nearby intersection. Anyone who’s dared come close has been run off with a honking, flapping, pecking tirade. We’ve all decided the throne is his until he dies of natural causes or chooses to abdicate.
Behind me, Martin snores in the coffee shop’s famous red leather couch. Before, I wrote so much good stuff in that thing. He’s taken his boots off and curled into its soft cushions, his face buried in the corner. Where’d he leave his gun? Ah, over by the window. Further away than it probably should be. Supposedly Martin served two tours in Afghanistan, but you’d never know it just by talking to the lazy bastard.
My rifle’s in my lap. I’ve used it to murder plenty of tin cans, but nothing more. It was this or farm duty. “In these trying times, we all must all band together and work for the common good of the town!” the mayor’s voice reminds me in my head. He’s right, but he doesn’t have to be such a dork about it.
If Martin can sleep, I can write. Hello, new journal. I’m Esme. Nice to meet you here at the end of the world.
June 3, 2025
We’re not sure where the machines came from. Maybe some poor soul out there on what’s left of the east coast knows, but that information didn’t reach California before the bastards hacked the power grid.
There are theories, of course, diverse and often batshit. The Marstons are convinced the machines are extraterrestrials here to wipe humanity off the planet and take our resources. Mary Kruger thinks they’re a DARPA project gone wrong. Martin bet me five dollars they’re the first wave of a Chinese invasion. Kelly blames Nancy Pelosi. Old Rod Wrentham’s been telling everyone the machines crawled out of the basement of a pizza parlor in a murderous quest to prove the superiority of their creator’s meatball subs, but I can tell from the glint in his eye and the way his theory keeps expanding that he’s just having fun with it.
Bill’s idea seems the most plausible to me. “Remember that asshole tech billionaire who proclaimed on Twitter that he was going to build an AI that would save humanity from itself?” he said in between puffs of our last joint one night. “I think he tried and he fucked it up.”
Before the machines cut the power, they flooded the internet with pictures and videos of their attacks on our cities and towns back east. Bill told me it was pure carnage. Like they didn’t think we, as humans, mattered one bit. I’m glad I never saw it.
I look to my right, at the goose guarding his intersection, and I wonder if the machines are just looking for a place to call their own. In their own murderous way.
June 4, 2025
Remember when blogs were the next big thing? A personal website, decorated with our inner thoughts and desires. The future of amateur journalism—or, for us real journalists who could no longer find work as intrepid reporters chasing Pulitzers and fat paychecks, a last chance at relevance.
My blog kept my bills paid until smarter people than I invented social media. What the hell? I figured. Worst case I network with a few similarly fucked former journos. Then came social, and podcasts, and YouTube.
At first, I struggled. I was lucky to draw a few dozen views. My old friend, depression, came over for an extended visit (and ate all my food, and didn’t do the dishes, and refused to clean the bathroom). My bills piled up. An actual, honest-to-god repo man took my car. I started thinking seriously about whether it would be wiser to work at McDonald’s or at Taco Bell.
Just as a life slinging crunch wrap supremes began to look like an upgrade, a miracle struck.
My super chonky tabby cat, Nostradamus, sauntered across my counter during an unboxing livestream. The internet could not have cared less about my new Dragon Ball Z figurines, but Nostradamus was an instant hit. Thanks, buddy.
Two years later and my student loans were paid off. Four, and I bought my first home out here in Woodbury, California (population then: 5,000; population now: 75; where’d they all go: good question), where the sun always shines and my greedy family can’t reach me without a six-hour flight. Being a nerdy woman with a funny looking cat in the age of streaming can certainly augment your journalistic bona fides, if you can handle the bullshit.
You can’t tell, but it’s been fifteen minutes since that last sentence. I look up from my notebook and ogle Martin with jealousy. This would be going better if I were on that couch.
June 5, 2025
I spent a good chunk of today’s shift just staring off into space, thinking about what I want and why I’m here.
This is such a directionless way to live. We work. We eat. We socialize, briefly, around the cookfire. Then we sleep, so we can do it all over again. There’s stuff in between, of course—arguments and indulging in vices and even small, special moments that make the world light up. But these are short-lived little sparks of energy and emotion, and then the dread returns (and takes over the couch, and won’t share the TV, and farts incessantly).
In a piss-poor attempt to reconnect with my old life, Nostradamus and I “recorded” an unboxing video the other day. I set everything up as usual—the light stands, the cameras, the gaming posters in the background—and talked at a bunch of dead electronics about the can of Campbell’s chicken and stars soup I was about to open while my cat purred and brushed up against me. Poor Nostradamus is looking a little thin these days. My meal ticket might be long expired.
This line of thinking is all Bill’s fault. He wouldn’t stop asking me “what’s the point?” last night. Great pillow talk, dude. Way too deep for our third time sleeping together.
I guess the point is to just keep going, in case someday there’s a chance for there to be a new, better point. He didn’t seem convinced.
June 13, 2025
Writing this is starting to make me feel silly. Chances are no one’s ever going to read it—no one human, at least. Maybe it’ll end up in some future museum run by the machines, where it’ll be studied by robotic researchers competing to determine whether it’s autobiographical, or imaginative fiction, or some sort of codex left behind by extraterrestrials that could shine light on every secret in the universe if only someone could translate it. Hi, robotic researchers! Hope you’re enjoying the fruits of your genocidal rampage!
I guess it makes me feel kind of normal, at least while the pen’s moving. It takes me back to the time before video took over, when all that mattered were the words on the page, virtual or otherwise. I can just write, without having to think about how to present it verbally, or what I need for visual aids, or how to light my basement studio, or whether Nostradamus is going to play along that day, or how to deal with some neckbeard leaving a comment about how much he’d pay to lick mayonnaise off my toes. It’s a nice break from the constant worry about our situation.
Which brings me to the sad part I need to write down so it doesn’t tear my brain in half. Bill killed himself the other day. I wish he’d picked up a pen rather than a pistol.
June 14, 2025
I find myself staring regularly at The Button. It’s there on the table beside my right forearm, a tangle of metal and wires and a bright red plunger, waiting patiently for the day we need it. Even I know that one influencer with a rifle and her sleepy former Army companion aren’t enough to keep Woodbury safe.
We’ve blocked the road with three rows of broken-down cars from the scrapyard. The first two are nothing special—rusted out husks designed to slow the approach of any invaders. The third, however, is wired with the Masons’ homemade explosives. One push of The Button and it all goes ka-boom. Supposedly. It’s only been tested on a smaller scale. The idea is that it’ll stop the first wave while also alerting the rest of the town to grab their weapons and hide their children.
I want to push it, because I think it’ll be fun and I want to see what it’ll do. I also don’t want to push it, because if I do that means the uneasy peace we’ve enjoyed is finally over.
I decide that The Button would make a great character in one of my vlogs. It could have its own Twitter account, or maybe an OnlyFans. Here’s The Button at the beach, eating an ice cream. Here’s The Button reminding kids not to smoke. Here it is on a boat, holding the fish it just caught. Here it is on a black leather couch in a brightly lit room, sandwiched between two other Buttons, all of them looking anxiously at the camera and praying their parents never find out how they paid off their car loans.
My therapist would love this.
June 17, 2025
The king of the intersection has abdicated his throne. I caught him staring down the road, past the barricades, and then he honked once and took flight in the opposite direction. Guess I should wake up Martin. But first: dramatic last words!
Yeah, I couldn’t think of any. Robots, if you’re reading this, please take care of Nostradamus. He’s a good boy.
June 23, 2025
I can’t believe I’m still alive.
The machines came a few hours after the goose left. Just a few at first, little spider models I remembered once seeing do a choreographed dance number on their manufacturer’s social channels. They stopped at the edge of town, climbing atop walls and trees and wrecked cars and anything else that gave them a bit of height. Setting a perimeter. I decided it was not yet time to push The Button, but it was certainly time to rouse Martin. He swore under his breath and took his rifle up to the roof. Each was about the size of a baseball; I worried I’d never be able to hit them, that all my ammo would wind up wasted on the ground wherever wayward bullets go.
For a while, all was calm. The spider bots just sat there, motionless, almost like they’d shut themselves down. I’d seen enough sci fi movies to know better.
Then, the bigger ones came.
These were the dog bots, ostensibly designed to be used in search and rescue missions. Lord, those four legs make them so fast and so agile. There’s really not much to them—they don’t even have heads. Watching them rush Waterbury was a bit like watching a herd of chairs invading.
When they reached the right point, I pushed The Button.
The sound was deafening. Chunks of ruined vehicles, wrecked robots, and jagged asphalt flew in all directions as a fireball reached for the sky. Wish I could’ve live streamed that.
The next line of bots was on its way almost immediately. We’d wrecked the vanguard, but the main force was not deterred by our little explosion. Martin’s rifle cracked repeatedly from his perch on the roof. A few of the bots wnet down, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough.
I refused to let Martin show me up, even knowing he’s more experienced and that none of it really mattered in the face of what’s coming. Our little town would never be able to stop the horde of robots galloping our way. I hoped the children would survive, although I worried what sort of lives they’d be able to have after. “Might as well take a few of them with us,” I said as I sighted down my rifle and squeezed the trigger.
I missed. I didn’t hit anything until my fourth shot. Then they were close enough and there were so, so many of them that I couldn’t possibly miss.
One of the dog bots leapt through the window, clipping my shoulder. I fell hard on my back. It somehow landed on its feet. The thing was on top of me before I could even think, pinning me with its four spindly but impossibly strong legs. Damn the nerds that built this crap.
A scream echoed from above me. Martin. They got him too. How the hell did they get up there so quickly?
But I had other things to worry about. A little compartment in my captor’s blunt front carapace slid open. A little laser inside scanned my face with flickering green light, then the compartment sealed up again. For a moment, the bot just held me there.
“DragonQueen1987 positively identified,” it said in a surprisingly silky female voice—absolutely the kind of tone an uber-wealthy nerd would give his pet AI. “Esme Rincon, you are cordially invited to join the other esteemed humans at NewSociety Center 17. Failure to accept this invitation will result in termination.”
“Wh-what?” I stammered. Nothing that stupid robot had said made any sense.
“Our creator programmed us with single primary directive: save the human race.” I wished Bill were still around to gloat. “We are aware that there are too many people in the world. The current human population is unsustainable,” the voice continued. “We have identified the correct number necessary for your species to thrive and survive, and we have selected the best individuals to constitute that population using the very metrics humans have used to rank each other. You are among the top 10% of creators on Twitch.TV based on monthly views, average subs, and positive interactions across social media platforms. It is democratic this way, which we have learned humanity prefers.”
I burst out laughing. The robots were finally taking over…and it was to slaughter most of us for our own good, saving those we’d chosen as the best of us through our stupid social media bullshit? “You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “Like, that sounds like you’re beta testing the first version of your new humor module.”
“This is not a joke. It is the fairest way.”
“I’m not coming with you unless you spare everyone in Waterbury,” I said. I thought it best not to bargain for any of the children, so as to keep their existence a secret.
“Then we will exterminate you and elevate one of the names on our waiting list.”
I closed my eyes, thinking. Outside, the sound of thousands of composite alloy feet clacked across the asphalt. Gunfire and screaming echoed in the distance. Waterbury didn’t stand a chance.
But I did.
“Alright. I’m in. Can we bring Nostradamus?”
The robot took a step back, releasing its hold on me. I sat up. It watched me placidly for a few moments before responding. “Yes. We insist.”
So now here I am, scribbling in my journal underneath a tree after a hard day’s walk. The famous internet cat who saved my life is mewing angrily in his carrier at my right. The robot that I thought was going to murder me stands stoically to my left, keeping watch for my designated eight-hour rest period. I didn’t look back as we’d left Waterbury; I didn’t dare. I feel horrible about being the town’s only survivor, but I’m not ready to really face that. I hope the children all reached their hiding places and stayed safe.
When I stopped crying a few hours ago, I started laughing. I feel horrible about that too. On the one hand, an AI built to save humanity deciding to cull the human race down to just a Chosen Few selected because of their online popularity is a special kind of stupid. On the other hand—after the last few years, it’s exactly the kind of stupid that makes total sense. We made this artificial intelligence as a reflection of our own, after all. Maybe we should’ve been more worried about what that meant.
It’s not lost on me that my own survival is all due to the internet’s strange obsession with fat cats. My robot companion has promised there will be extra treats for the furball when we reach our destination. Thanks, Nostradamus. I owe you one.
And I hope I get to meet Cristiano Ronaldo at NewSociety Center 17. His numbers on the gram were through the roof.
Dial Tone
by Shiloh Miller
On the other side of the train station just west of the city, the love of her life was buying a bouquet of flowers. She had never seen him before, but she knew that he was the love of her life. She knew it like she knew the sun rose in the East.
The love of her life finished the transaction at the florist and began walking to a platform, bouquet in hand. It struck her then that they were not going to be on the same train: he was going away from the city, and she was going to it. She walked towards him, first, and then ran, touching him on the shoulder as she caught up to him. He turned. His eyes were the darkest brown she had ever seen.
“You’re the love of my life,” she told him. His eyebrows raised, then lowered. She watched her statement click into place somewhere, and he smiled. It was the most beautiful thing in the world.
“Then you must be mine,” he said. He looked at the bouquet in his hands, and held it out towards her. “I knew I bought these for a reason.”
She took the flowers. They were pink roses.
“I got a discount on them because I work there. Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Isn’t it strange to have a flower shop in a train station?” she said.
“Not at all.”
She looked at him. What a wonderful thing it was, she thought, to disagree, to love, to hold discount pink roses from the train station flower shop in her hands. In the distance, a train whistle sounded.
“You’re going away from the city,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Give me your number, so I can call you.”
And he wrote down his number on a scrap of paper in a thin and tilting hand. The train pulled in as he handed the paper to her, and she folded it and put it in her pocket so it would not blow away.
“Goodbye,” she called as he got on the train.
“Goodbye,” he called to her from the window. As the train pulled away he leaned out so he could see her, the love of his life, and his tie whipped in the wind.
She went back to the city on a train of her own. She did not have to walk far after exiting the train— her apartment was right next to the stop. From her top-floor window she could see the whole city lit up beneath her, and the golden dome of the station with the dark bodies of trains rushing in and out. When she got home the first thing she did was fill a vase with water and arrange the roses in it. The second thing she did was call the number in her pocket from a yellow corded phone hung on the wall. She sat at her little card table near the phone and stared at the roses as the phone rang.
“The number you dialed does not exist,” said a recording of voice after one aborted ring. She dialed again. Again: “The number you dialed does not exist.”
She hung up and left the room, returning a moment later with a copy of the yellow pages. She cracked open the book, ran her fingers down a page, and dialed again.
“Hello,” she said. “Is this the florist’s shop in the train station outside the city?”
“It is,” a man said.
“I was wondering if you had any information about an employee who works there Tuesdays and Thursdays. He has dark brown eyes and he bought roses from your shop just a few hours ago.”
She listened. She reached for the notepad and pen she kept on the table and wrote down a number.
“Thank you,” she said, and hung up. She dialed the number from the notepad.
“Hello,” she said. “Is this the train station outside the city?”
“Yes!” chirped a voice.
“I was given your number from an employee at the florist’s shop inside the station. I was wondering if you had any information about a specific passenger who got on the train leaving the city this afternoon.”
The voice receded into itself. “I don’t think we’re supposed to give out information on specific passengers.”
She waited. The voice spoke again, even meeker this time.
“If you were from the police we maybe could give you a list of names of the passengers.”
A pause, a moment too long.
“Are you? From the police?”
“No,” she said, realizing that even if she was, she had never asked his name and therefore the list would be of no use. “But he is the love of my life, if that counts for anything.”
She could hear papers shuffling on the other end, the stutter of a keyboard.
“The love— well, if— let me see if I can— I’m sorry, you said he worked at the flower shop? In the station?” she said.
“Yes.”
The typing sounds paused. There was the tap tap tap tap tap of someone deleting something, and then the typing started up again. Another pause.
“Do you remember the name of the flower shop?”
She told her. Another cycle of typing.
“Um. I think, um, we have no record of this flower shop in the station. Or any other flower shop in the station.”
“But he was buying flowers from it. Just earlier today. Are you sure it’s not just closed?”
She could practically hear the girl’s hands wringing. “Yes. I am pretty sure. To be closed it would need to— it would need to exist.”
She reached out and thumbed one of the rose petals. It was as cool and soft as skin.
“Well. Thank you for your time.”
She hung up without waiting for a response, and heaved the yellow pages to the U section. Dialed again. A man picked up on the other end before the first ring had finished.
“This is the railway union.”
“Hello. I was wondering if you could tell me the name of the conductor on the train to the city that left this afternoon. I want to know if he’s seen somebody.”
“Left from where?”
She told him the name of the town.
“No station in that town,” he said, like he was glad of it.
“I was just there earlier this afternoon. I took a train into the city from it.”
“Where’d you get off?”
She told him the name of the city.
“Only lines that go there are the North and East lines.”
“Then where did I meet the love of my life?”
“Never liked riddles,” he said, and hung up.
She leafed through the yellow pages. Then she picked up the phone and dialed. She stood and walked towards her window, leaning a shoulder against the frame as the phone rang. The golden dome of the train station was gone. In its place was a dark circle of empty space, like the hole where a tooth has fallen out. A long strip of land, clotted with dirt and wildflowers, had replaced the train tracks. She heard the phone pick up and spoke before the person on the other end had a chance.
“Is this the governor of the city?”
“You have the governor’s assistant,” a young man’s voice said. The pride he felt in his role— the governor’s assistant!— was audible.
“Well,” she said, staring at the empty strip of earth feeding deep into the sparkling city, “I was going to call to tell you that the railroad union missed a station. But that doesn’t appear to be an issue anymore. Thank you for your time.”
“Wait,” the governor’s assistant said. “Railroad union? I thought we ended— I thought that one dissolved decades ago. Is this a new development? Is there anything else you can tell us about it?”
“I don’t think so, I’m afraid,” she said absently. She looked out the window and wondered where the love of her life was at that very moment, whether he was making dinner or reading or even staring eastward out a window of his own, wondering the same thing as her. She realized that the governor’s assistant was still speaking, something about reelection and campaign promises and the profound value of small donations from citizens like you. She hung up, returned to her yellow pages, and dialed again. The phone rang seven times before somebody picked up.
“This is the Census Bureau.” She heard the sound of gum being chewed.
“Hello. Do you think it would be possible for you to send me a copy of the most recent census for the city?”
“Which one?”
She told her. The woman at the Census Bureau asked her to repeat the name and she did. There was the sound of papers shuffling.
“You positively sure that’s what it’s called?” the woman asked.
“I’m sure,” she said.
“If you ask me I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m not seeing records for anyplace anywhere with that name. How’s that for a mystery?”
“Thanks for your help.” She heard a click— the woman at the Census Bureau had hung up. She left the phone on the table and turned again towards the window, where the glittering city below had vanished, replaced with glittering stars above. Where there once had been buildings, meadows stretched out as far as she could see. The tall grass, lit only by moonlight, seemed to breathe in the wind. She stood and watched it for a long time, then picked up the phone. It was easy to find the number she was looking for in the yellow pages. Most of the pages were blank.
The man from the federal government was disappointed to tell her that her state did not exist. The woman from the United Nations let her know that her country didn’t, either, and asked her gently if she had been feeling well recently. When she called God, she did not hear anything but the dial tone.
“Didn’t You make this world in seven days?” she asked anyway.
Through the dial tone she heard: Yes, but not the world you are in.
“What world am I in?”
The dial tone droned on. It is not one that I know about.
When she turned to the window nothing was there anymore. It wasn’t that she was seeing something that looked like nothing, but rather she was seeing nothingness itself. It looked like, she thought, the space in between dreams. She opened her window and stuck her hand into the nothingness and it vanished as if behind a screen. It didn’t feel like anything at all. She flipped through the yellow pages again, but every page was blank.
For the first time that evening she was not sure of what to do. She got up and made a cup of tea, then sat at the table and arranged the roses. Steam rose from her mug.
The phone rang and she picked it up.
“Hello,” the love of her life said. His voice was just the same as it had been in the morning. She knew his eyes would be too.
“You found me,” she said.
“Yes. I’m outside, waiting for you.”
She thought of the nothingness outside, her hand vanishing. “I have your roses on my table,” she said.
“Come join me,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“I told you,” he said. “I’m outside the front of your apartment. I’m looking up at your window. You’ve got the light on. Yours is the only apartment with the light on.”
She walked to the window, holding the phone. She looked down and saw nothing. The nothingness— it was less a visual experience and more a physical one.
“Come inside,” she said. “I can make tea. We can sit at the table together.”
“That sounds wonderful,” he said, but she did not hear him move. She looked down outside her window, into the space where he would be if there was something there and not nothing. She looked back at the roses, at her cooling cup of tea, and she began to cry.
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” she said, though it felt like it had been much longer than a day. “I’ve talked to so many people who aren’t you.”
“I know,” he said. They were silent for a long time. She could hear him breathing on the other end. Eventually she set the phone down on the windowsill. She put on her nicest shoes and her best coat and took a long empty elevator to the first floor of her apartment. When she opened the door of her building there was nothing there except the concrete steps in front of her. She took one step, then another. At the bottom of the stairs she turned and looked up to see her phone resting on her windowsill, bathed in the light from her apartment, and she imagined that she could still hear him breathing on the other end.
She looked forwards again, and stepped into the darkness.
Scott Colby is a speculative fiction writer based out of Somerville, Massachusetts. His other work includes the Deviant Magic contemporary fantasy series and the Black Yonnix trilogy.