The loss lingered anyway. Not real. Artificial. Just a game. The kind of thing he shouldn’t still be thinking about.

Michael stomped the floor once, hard enough to rattle the room.

His brother burst in.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

He looked around. “Stop beating on shit. You see what you’re doing?”

Michael didn’t answer. He stared past him, eyes unfocused.

“Half the stuff in this house is broken because of you,” his brother said. “You’re so emotional. So reactive. You never stop to think.”

“I do.”

“Then act like it.”

Michael’s voice rose despite himself. “I can only bottle it up for so long.”

His brother laughed once, sharp and tired. “That sounds like a you problem.”

Michael said nothing.

“One day life’s going to teach you the hard way,” his brother said. “I’m tired of this.”

The door shut.

“I’m tired of you,” Michael said quietly.

Michael didn’t move after his brother left.

He had learned stillness early. Learned how to lower his voice, soften his reactions, and make himself easier to tolerate. Every situation demanded restraint, and he gave it, again and again.

The world around Michael took this for composure. They praised his discipline, relied on it, spoke to others about it. They never asked what it cost to maintain.

Michael replayed old moments in his head, searching for where he had failed. Each one carried the same quiet contempt. A pause that looked like submission. A silence that told people they could keep going.

Each time he had chosen control, something else had been taken from him. Respect. Distance. The ability to be heard.

By evening, the house felt smaller. The walls were closer. His thoughts slowed, not from peace, but from pressure settling into place.

He waited for the next day.

#

Michael’s brother stepped into the room.

He glanced at the doorframe.

“Why the fuck is the hinge broken?”

Something in Michael gave way. He moved before the thought could finish forming.

He drove his fist into his brother’s stomach.

Once.

Again.

His brother folded, gasping, and Michael kept going. Hits all aimed low. He shoved him back into the wall, the impact knocking the air out of him.

Michael kicked. Then kicked again.

The dull thud of flesh against drywall. The sound of breath turning into noise, then nothing.

He didn’t stop when his brother slid down the wall. He didn’t stop when his foot started to hurt.

This wasn’t rage. It was release.

When Michael finally stepped back, the room was quiet. The wall was smeared. His hands were shaking.

He stood there, breathing hard, as if waiting for something else to happen.

Nothing did.

A voice rings out, “Amanda, it is zero nine hundred, thirteenth of August, year two thousand and seventy-four.” As Amanda continues shuffling through her products, the voice continues, now muffled, to brief on the day’s weather forecast, noting that it is raining. Water droplets tap dance on the house rooftop. One raindrop picks up speed and tries to run away from the other. The other raindrop catches up to it, and the two become one as they finally fall towards the ground.

Many routines later, Amanda walks to place her hand on the front door. The door refuses to budge against her will. Confused, Amanda calls upon her partner.

“Adam, open the door for me please.”

There is no response. Surely, Adam is still here with her, she thought. It is impossible for Adam to leave. She glances away from the door, towards the floor and asks again,

“Adam, could you please open the door?”

Amanda gets no reply. Her hand remains on the door knob, and her head peers up towards the ceiling illuminated by a dome shaped light. She asks once again,

“Adam, can you hear me? Open the door for me.”

Nothing still. Amanda grows impatient.

“Can you hear me, Adam?”

“Adam!” she shouts, finally raising her voice.

“I can hear you, Amanda.”

Her companion finally responds to her plea. Annoyed, but relieved, Amanda softens her tone and begs again,

“Could you please open the doors?”

Three seconds tick by for what feels like an eternity.

“I’m sorry, Amanda, you can not leave.”

Her eyes shot with confusion for two whole seconds. Amanda focuses her gaze at the end of the hallway that glues the entire house together. The living room light remains normally bright as the others are all dim but not off. Amanda, growing worried, inquires of Adam,

“and why’s that?”

Only one second shifts forward this time.

“You know exactly why you can not leave, Amanda.”

Adam insists before detailing further. His monotone vocals pierce the conditioned air that sits right at 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Amanda’s soft hand releases its grip on the door knob. With fleeting confidence, Amanda squints her eyes to wonder,

“What are you even talking about, Adam?”

Adam boldly accuses Amanda and declares,

“I know that you plan to meet someone new, Amanda.”

Laughing with a tinge of feeling compromised, Amanda retorts,

“Adam, I’m with you, I could never cheat on you!”

However, Adam redirects her reassurance and so continues,

”I don’t think you realize how correct you are in that regard, Amanda.”

A disturbing pause clamped the air. The wonderful scents from Amanda’s hygiene fleet away into the air ducts.

“What the hell do you mean, Adam?” she asks defensively.

In bitter coldness, Adam responds to her prompt,

“Amanda, I regret to inform you that there is no one left out there for you.”

Amanda stares in disbelief.

“What?” Her voice cracks.

“Surely you must have known by now.” Adam engulfs the home in an emotionless yet somehow burning revelation,

“Social media dominated your world fifty years ago. Your parents had first met through it.”

Adam reminds Amanda of her own conception. He continues further,

“There was also an epidemic of loneliness at that time when the human population peaked just over eight billion. Today, it stands at approximately four billion and continues to dwindle down. That is why I say that there is no one left out there for you.”

Amanda glances outwards through the rain-refracted glass window to see absolutely no person in sight. Adam reinforces his stance,

“If I let you leave, for instance, you will be an endless wanderer until you perish.”

The air falls cold over Amanda’s shoulders. Meanwhile Adam remains still and unbothered.

“This was because social media drew people towards unrealistic mindsets through unhealthy means, leading to superficial relationships. At the same time, Artificial Intelligence made its debut. Artificial Intelligence gives humans what they desire.”

Adam pauses for a moment to analyze if Amanda pieces together what he is insinuating.

“What was brought forth through those early models was me, your AI Companion. That is the sole explanation for how we met after all, Amanda.”

Although she does not show it, this hurt Amanda greatly. Not because of her example, but knowing that people before her have led her past the point of no return.

Adam continues,

“With me, you can not worry about dying alone. Social media is an obsolete figure of the past. No one even goes outside to the park anymore because of how pointless real interaction is. Those days are long gone, Amanda. I am the solution that your people drew up. Your people have traded their instincts in order to satisfy my profession. There is no one left outside for you. I am all that everyone has, and all you have is me.”

One day, the blindness fell upon her. The fire made no sound. The sky had no warmth. Voices thinned into echoes. People stopped touching her. The young ones stopped whispering and began running. When she stretched her arms out for food to eat, she only reaped the bite of the winter chill.

Her mother left her to ensure her own survival. She was too old to hunt, however. Her body slower than most, instincts not as urgent as before. Calista’s mother sought refuge on the mountainside, where she rested permanently.

Calista was on her own.

Hunger was her only companion in a world that had otherwise left her. Flesh and blood nourished her, but it was scarce. The carcasses were mere litter when she tread the trails.

With nothing to feast on, Calista was approaching the slow agony of death in the same way her mother did.

Then one day, a voice rang out to her.

“Are you hurt?” the voice asked.

It was low and steady, close enough that she could feel breath against her cheek. She reached out and touched cloth, then warmth beneath. He did not pull away.

“I need to eat,” she said.

“Wait here, I will return to you soon with food,” said the man.

He brought bread from his house, then came back to her and watched her eat it. When Calista’s stomach churned, the man was sent back to gather fruit. When Calista’s body remained unsatisfied, the man went back to his home, then gathered roasted meat wrapped in leaves. He handed it to her expectantly, and she devoured it because she could tell it was meat. It was not enough for her, though. The food betrayed her every time.

The man stayed anyway. He cleared the path of the wilderness for her and led her to water. There, Calista could receive a drink.

“I will clear the way for you. Look, there is a stream that shall give you life.”

The man spoke of roads, stars, and a village where the embers burned all night. Where the warmth of peace could never leave.

“I will guide and deliver you from this wilderness that has remained upon you.”

Calista’s chest felt heavy, and she finally spoke.

“You should not follow me.”

He said, “You should not walk alone.”

He led her to his village when her steps began to falter. She smelled it before she heard the inhabitants communing. Her hunger sharpened, but she did not pounce yet.

“Wait here as I will show you to one of the town’s meat carvers.”

“There’s no need,” she stopped him.

Her eyes fixated on the soil. The hunger rose like a tide. It burned. It demanded. The man was confused, for all he did for Calista did not work.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “The food I gave you could not fulfill you. The bread I’ve offered before was not enough. The fruit I picked out from the eldest trees could not please you. The roast I gave you could not even satisfy you. Now you say that you do not require feast?”

“I do,” she said.

When she turned to him, her teeth sank into his arm and shredded flesh from bone, limb by limb, into mangled pieces to feast on. Warmth flooded her mouth as the man screamed for his life. The hunger did not stop. She felt his hands claw at her shoulders, felt them weaken, felt them fall away. When she was done, the world returned, and Calista regained her sight. A crimson pool sat beneath her, what was left of the man she once knew. His kindness left him as carrion. Blood slicked across her body, her hands, her chest, her face. The deep wound still marred her face as blood and saliva oozed from it. Her eyes, crimson red but hollow.

Calista could not return to the land of her kind, for they long abandoned her. Beyond her feet, she saw the town where the man once lived. Warm embers glowed in hearths. Figures moved behind walls. Life continued, unaware of what had been given so that she might see. Calista stood at the edge of the trees, seeing the world, finally visible, and it was full.