Work Text:
I first saw the lights four days ago.
They don’t move, and as I move around them, they remain constant. I walk in wide circles, going further and closer away as I move from left to right. I found this out on the first day, walking the perimeter of my small scrap of property, head buzzing like a crackling wire as I stared up at the little lights.
Now, I call them the lights, but that's not quite right, it’s just the only word that feels even close. They don’t glow, but they’re bright. Three of them, a perfect equilateral triangle, appearing to be hovering roughly two-hundred feet over the derelict shack in the middle of the Mojave that I call home .
It’s become a part of my routine now. When I wake up, I’ll crawl into my clothing, stare at the lights, get into my truck, drive to Kingman, do maintenance on my work for a few hours while online, follow up with interested clients, buy food, and then drive back home, now greeted by the lights.
My first thought, of course, was that it was some cape bullshit. The Brockton Job went bad, and the Undersiders had no lack of resources at their disposal. Maybe they sent some merc to rub me out. It wouldn’t have been the first time a customer had gotten pissy after a bad job, but it would be out of character for the Undersiders. The Undersiders liked working with known quantities, people who were known. I couldn’t find a single thing online that matched the lights online, even when I sent out feelers to the groups I had connections with. No hits from the Elite, the Adepts, or even The Folk.
If I stayed near the lights, who knows what would happen? Nobody online, at least, which means that I was really treading uncharted water. If the lights shot down lasers and vaporized me, there was really nothing I could do about it. Sure, I could try and leave town, but where would I go? I don’t have enough cash to relocate, work having been scarce after the Brockton job.
Turns out software is far less appealing to buy after knowing it’s been proven to sometimes fail, even if it failed against someone who was probably the best tinker in the world since fucking Hero .
Three little white dots, perfectly round, but not spherical. Three, exact circles, immovable against the backdrop of the broad horizon. It’s almost as though they move to face me, but they don’t. They remain still in a way that makes the back of my head itch.
I say they remain constant, still, but that’s not quite right either. They’re always changing, but never in position, only in color. They’re not in any color I can quite describe with any word, but if I had to, the word would be pale. They’re not pale blue, or pale pink, but they’re also not, not pink or blue. The lights are probably best described as what they’re not, really. They’re not moving from their location, but they’re also not getting any further away. I don’t see them If I turn around, but if I’m in their direction, regardless of distance away, I see them.
I can see them now, through the window next to my table, but as I look around at the others at the internet cafe, they don’t seem to. It’s as though a new constellation has been born over my house, a constellation that only I am allowed to see. Even though I can see them though, it feels wrong. Focusing on the lights for even a moment I feel a sharp spike of dread as a shiver scuttles it’s way up and down my spine.
I feel it in the little hairs in the back of my neck as the lights blink at me, pulsing their dizzying array of not-colors, and I am compelled to turn away, to avert my eyes from these three small circles in space, from these aberrant scars in the sky.
I close my eyes, enjoying the cool darkness. Even though I know that as soon as I open my eyes I will feel the sizzling sensation in the back of my head, I open them, wincing as the thorny lance prickles through the back of my head. I slowly turn my gaze downwards, resting on the yellow paint of the window frame.
The lights are haunting me, I think. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, what sin I’ve committed that I hadn’t before. Had I squished the wrong bug? Committed some unconscious crime to the Genius Loci of my land?
I close my eyes again, this time twisting my head with my eyes still closed towards my laptop screen. I open them again, making eye contact with the man behind the cash register. He peers back for a moment, a slight frown dancing on his lips. He looks down, probably down at the phone in his hand.
I stop staring and turn back to my computer, fingers sliding on the flimsy keyboard of my mobile platform. As I rearm a battery of counter-hacking programs on a corporate team’s private case file server, my mind wanders again to the lights.
I’ve told no one. The lights are clearly non-visible to most people, and even if they aren’t I can’t afford scrutiny. The last time I’d had my location leaked, the cops swarmed like locusts, with a protectorate team on their heels and I’d had to move from my workshop in Ohio to Arizona. I’d lost valuable tools in that raid, not to mention barely escaping capture.
Unlike Ohio though, I wouldn’t be able to rebuild after. My savings would cover little more than food and electricity for the next few months, and with Toybox deader than the dodo, I wouldn’t even be able to pawn off obsolete versions of my work for easy money. I was now relying entirely on the pittance I received for maintenance and whatever job I could manage to scrounge up.
I turn from my computer again, my eyes burning with tears.
I stare through the window at the horizon. The empty blue sky stares back, bright Arizona sun far overhead, the lights gone