7 SQUARE

“You’ve got to put this on,” Val exhorted, holding out the helmet urgently.  Kyu just stood there. His black hair spiked down over his eyes.  

“You think I don’t remember?”  His lips contorted.

“We hurt people with that thing, no, destroyed them.  And Alex was first.  She didn’t even have that bad of an issue, just some anxiety and ordinary attachment issues.  But I called her up, so excited, since I knew she was just going to love the idea of the 9-Square.  She had such an obsession with odd and interesting gadgets of thought.”

“Look Kyu, I know you’re hurting but right now we—”

“All I wanted was to make my mark and help bring some light into this crumbling world.  But instead I destroyed people.”  Kyu’s shoulders began to shake.  “God.  God!  I can’t take this anymore.  It’s like a constant fire in my chest.  I didn’t know it was possible to hate, to want your life to end, this much, with such a perfect degree of disgust.”  

“Come on friend, we need to save that life, now.”  Softness spread across Val’s eyes like a white blossom blown in the summer.  “Do you remember the time we ran across Chicago picking up trash from sidewalks? You insisted we take a break from our experiments and do something useful. You also insisted we wear superhero capes so that people would see trash-cleanup the way it ought to be! Show me some of that spirit now.”

“Do you think I’m fucking stupid?  You’re still trying to experiment with that 9-Square abomination after it ruined people?  You’re still just trying to use people to get your little theories of the universe tested.  ‘It’s an inevitable advance, we might as well be the ones to explore it.’  That’s what you would say.  I’m not going to be a part of your little mad-scientist act anymore, friend.  Do you think I’m fucking stupid?”

Kyu tore the helmet from Val’s hands, dodged out the doorway, his head down like a sprinter in the last stretch before the finish line.  Downing the stairs, bursting out from the building, streaming across the parking lot like a gust of dirt.  

Kyu found himself alone on a long stone bridge.  A cold river flowed far beneath.  A vandalized sign read “icy when slippery” in bold red spray-paint.  Kyu took one step, turned clockwise around, and limply fell from the bridge.  His arms spread out like he was taking a nap in the summer on a picnic field.  The helmet slipped from his graspless fingers, spinning above him.  

He thought “This ends now.”  And then

“What a stupid thing to say before you die.”  

[The Story has ended.  

As the reader you must now restart at the 1-Square,

Unless you have acquired The Power of Context, in which case rebirth at the 0 Square.]