The Architect's Nightmare

Edgar Allan Poe once referred to sleep as those “little slices of death.” He claimed to loathe them, and I tend to agree. There’s nothing quite like the sensation of being trapped inside your own mind, held down by invisible forces, and forced to watch yet another snuff film stitched together from the darkest corners of your psyche.

That night was different, though. For the first time in a long time, I knew I was dreaming. I was in control. I honestly couldn’t say if that made things better or worse.

Everything around me was painted in stark contrast. Black and white, like an old film. The people were dressed in stuffy clothes—men in suits, women in flowing dresses with frills lining the edges. I was standing in a hotel lobby, perfectly still like a boulder in a stream, as people flowed by me going about their daily lives.

A concierge, dressed in an extravagant uniform with gold trim, waved me to the front desk with a plastic smile. I walked over to him, struggling to move within the confines of a restrictive dress and corset that felt like it would shatter my rib cage.

“You seem to be lost,” he said.

“Uh, yeah. Where am I?” I asked.

The concierge furrowed his brow as if struggling to recall the setting himself.

“Well then, allow me to welcome you to the White Elephant Hotel! I assure you, our fair city has no finer lodgings.”

I took another look around the black-and-white lobby. My eyes wandered up the grand staircase and towards the rooms that lined the walls. It seemed to stretch on forever as I looked up to the roof.

“What year is it?” I asked.

The concierge narrowed his gaze.

“Unless I’m somehow mistaken, it’s 1927. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

Okay, enough of this.

“I’m fine. I just need to wake up,” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“I said, I need to wake up. This is just a dream.”

The concierge took off his glasses and closed his eyes. He gently set them down on the counter and paused, still as a statue.

“You are mistaken, Miss. This is no dream.”

His eyes shot open, and brilliant color poured out. Red, green, yellow, blue, purple, and everything in between, cycling furiously from within his eye sockets. His mouth dropped open, and the same technicolor beam shot out, cutting through the black and white and accompanied by a distorted scream as if he were shouting into a microphone.

I spun around and watched as all of the hotel’s visitors came to a halt. They turned toward me with their eyes and mouths open, reflecting the same light. Their static screams filled the lobby, echoing all around me.

“Wake up! Wake up!” I screamed.

The ground beneath my feet rumbled. The chandelier above the lobby swung wildly on its chain. I turned and ran towards the entrance, pushing past the unresponsive people and throwing myself through the doorway.

My feet stepped across the threshold and felt nothing beneath them. I tumbled forward, spinning end-over-end into an endless abyss. I shut my eyes tightly.

Wake up.

Wake up.

Wake up.

WAKE UP!

My eyes shot open again. I felt a thin layer of cold sweat covering me from head to toe. Soaked sheets lay beneath me, and my hands dug into the mattress below. I held on for dear life as my head continued to spin.

A ceiling fan spun above me. Morning light broke through the curtains to my right. The familiar smell of my wife’s perfume wafted from the open bathroom door nearby. I was awake. I was home.

I took a few deep breaths before throwing my feet over the edge and sitting up. My heart was still pounding. Seeing those people, all bleeding pure color from their eyes and mouths, wouldn’t leave my mind.

I stood up and stretched as my eyes surveyed the room. I looked at the wardrobe against the far wall and the desk beside it. A brass lamp sat perched over my laptop, but something new sat framed on the wall.

I ran to the desk and planted my palms on its cool surface. A black and white photo sat on the wall, surrounded by a glossy black frame. It depicted an at least ten-story tall building lined with windows and balconies. Men and women stood leaning over the iron railings, dressed in stuffy suits and flowing dresses.

At the top of the building, a white elephant was carved into the front of the surface.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

An alarm went off behind me. I spun around and looked at the clock for the first time since I had woken up. It was already past noon.

“Shit, I’m late!”

I rushed over to the wardrobe and grabbed a change of clothes. I took them into the bathroom and brushed my teeth, struggling to see through the fog covering the mirror from my wife’s shower. I didn’t have time to shower myself; if I missed this presentation, I’d be in the unemployment line by the end of the day.

“Babe, did you make anything for breakfast?” I asked.

Silence.

“Hey, Mabel, you out there?”

Nothing.

I ran a comb through my hair and tossed it back into one of the drawers before walking into the living room. The kitchen was on the left side of the room, part of an open concept that the real estate agent used to sell us the condo.

Mabel stood with her back facing me. I heard the rhythmic tapping of a knife against a plastic cutting board.

“Hey, did you not hear me?” I asked.

She remained perfectly still. The only sign of life was the slow tapping of the knife.

“You got headphones in or something?”

A knock came from the front door, followed by a single ring of the doorbell. I looked towards the door and back to Mabel. She was starting to scare me.

Another knock, followed by two doorbell rings.

“Alright, I’m coming!” I shouted.

I walked over to the front door and pulled it open. Outside the condo, a feeble old woman stood in ragged clothes. She smiled warmly through wrinkled skin and crooked teeth. Her arms were draped with purses, at least four on either side, lining her arms from her wrists to her shoulders.

“Hello dear, would you like to buy a purse?” She asked.

I shook my head. This wasn’t the first time solicitors bothered us, but it would be the fourth or fifth time I had to complain to the building manager.

“No, thank you, we’re all set,” I said.

I started to close the door. The woman shook her head as her smile faded.

“Your time is almost up.”

I paused. “Excuse me?”

The woman’s smile returned as if it had never left.

“Would you like to buy a purse?”

She lifted her arms as the cheap handbags swung like fruit from the branches of a tree.

I groaned and shut the door. The rhythmic clicking of the knife still came ticking like a clock from the kitchen.

“Babe, what the hell are you cutting?” I asked, trying to mask the frustration in my voice.

When she didn’t answer, I walked briskly across the living room and into our kitchen. I grabbed Mabel by the shoulder and spun her around. The knife dropped from her hand and clattered onto the floor, scattering blood across the pristine white tile.

I stumbled backward as my eyes took in the sight. Her fingers sat severed on the cutting board, neatly arranged like carrots, marinating in a crimson pool. Blood gushed from her right hand; only her thumb remained attached.

Her face was a blank slate. Her eyes stared forward without a hint of emotion.

“Holy fuck, Mabel! What did you do?” I screamed.

She remained catatonic, unflinching.

“I’m calling an ambulance, I said, reaching for a cordless phone on the counter.

I dialed nine-one-one and waited. A woman’s voice came on the line.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“Hello, yes, I need an ambulance; my wife just cut off her own fingers!”

“Ma’am, please remain calm. Your time is almost up.”

“What?”

A loud crash came from our bedroom. With the phone still in my hand, I ran towards the noise. The framed photo of the White Elephant Hotel lay face down on my desk.

Another crash came from the master bathroom. I ran inside and saw the old woman from the front door rummaging through our things.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing in my house?” I asked.

The old woman seemed unphased as she continued rummaging through shampoo bottles and makeup kits.

“This is not your home,” she mumbled.

“The fuck it isn’t, I worked hard for this place! You need to leave!”

The woman turned around, knocking over the hand soap with the purses on her arms.

“Your time is almost up.”

I clenched my fists and my jaw in equal measure.

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Do you want to know what makes death so terrifying?” the woman asked.

“No, I want you to leave!”

The woman stepped forward and laid a hand on my arm. My whole body turned to ice.

“It’s the fact that life goes on after you're gone.”

The word “gone” hit my ears like a bolt of lightning. Pain ricocheted through my skull like a chaotic bullet. My vision went bright white.

I blinked furiously until my vision returned. I was floating in the air above a small room. My vision was blurry, filled with static-like footage from a security camera. Two scientists stood beneath me, hunched over a row of monitors.

I heard voices that echoed in my head like a distant memory.

What do you mean they’re gone?

They’ve disappeared. Gone out.

Isn’t that normal? I mean, stars die all the time in our universe.

Not this fast. Not this many.

How many?

Entire galaxies, millions of them.

Then we’re almost out of time. Let’s start it up.

Another brilliant flash of light and I was standing in my bathroom again. The cordless phone lay on the floor, broken open by the impact. Beauty products and soap bottles lined the floor, but the old woman was nowhere to be found.

“Mabel! Babe, can you hear me?” I shouted.

Silence. I left the bathroom and checked our bedroom. My eyes bulged at the sight of the clock. Somehow, almost two hours had gone by. Anxiety took hold; my mind reeled as I stumbled into the living room. Mabel’s severed fingers still sat on the cutting board. Blood dripped from the countertop onto the ground below, but she was nowhere to be found.

I grabbed my keys and left. She couldn’t have made it far with how much she was bleeding. I just hoped I would find her in time.

The air was thick outside as I made my way to the elevator. A blanket of fog covered the horizon. The tops of buildings across the downtown area were shrouded in mist, and the typical sounds of a bustling city were absent, leaving nothing but an eerie silence.

Part of me wondered if I was somehow still dreaming. This didn’t feel the same, though. I rode the elevator down to the parking garage and stepped out to find all the missing cars, save for my own.

The headlights flashed as I unlocked the doors with the remote on my keys. As if summoned by the sound, a man rushed past me, sprinting full speed through the empty space. His footsteps echoed across the concrete as he barreled towards the far wall.

I stifled a gasp as he ran full force into it. A sickening crunch reached my ears as he fell backward onto the ground.

I stood frozen, paralyzed by fear and confusion.

“Sir? Are you okay?”

The man on the ground started laughing, ignoring the wound on his head and the blood running down his face. I closed the distance to my car and climbed inside, taking a moment to lock the doors before I started the engine. I could still hear the muffled laughter of the man as I pulled out of the parking spot and drove to the garage’s exit.

I tried turning on the radio as I slowly walked through the fog-covered streets of a once-bustling city. Every station was nothing but static. I tried calling Mabel’s phone, but each time, it just went to voicemail.

I felt sick to my stomach. My pulse hadn’t stopped racing since I woke up. I had forgotten entirely about my presentation for work. I was in a daze, the fog in my brain was thicker than the one draped over the city surrounding me.

I slammed on the brakes as a man landed squarely on the hood of my car. The metal crumpled like foil beneath the impact. He regarded me with cold, empty eyes as blood trickled from his mouth.

My stomach lurched as I fell out of the car. I crawled across the asphalt towards the sidewalk. Another body, this time a woman, crashed onto the curb in front of me. Her jaw hit the sewer grate on impact, sending shards of her teeth flying through the air like shrapnel.

I climbed to my feet and sprinted towards the glass doors of a clothing boutique. I didn’t dare look behind me as I grasped the metal handle and pulled. The door was locked, and the lights were off inside. A pair of mannequins regarded me quietly from behind the display window.

“Hello! Please, someone let me in!” A familiar old woman approached the door from within the shadows of the empty store. Cheap purses swayed from each of her arms as she reached for the deadbolt. I pushed the doors open when I heard the lock turn over.

The inside of the store was cold, which made me keenly aware of the sweat trickling down my face. I paused to catch my breath and resisted the urge to vomit.

“Would you like to buy a purse?” The woman asked.

I turned to her and grabbed the poor woman by the shoulders.

“Tell me what the fuck is going on right now!”

“Your time is almost up.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“I’m going to need more than that,” I whispered.

“Perfect is the enemy of good,” the woman said.

The word “perfect” sent my mind reeling again. My vision went blurry. When it came back into focus, I was floating high above a city, but it was incomplete. Blue lines defined the shapes of buildings, roads, and streets like a three-dimensional blueprint before me.

A voice spoke, detached from any visible form. It had an almost digital edge like it wasn’t quite human.

A tomb for sentience, a monument to a realm of fire.

Reduced to scattered ashes.

Yes.

It must be perfect.

No pebble, nor stone, nor brick out of place.

Absolute. Immaculate. Flawless. Perfection.

I paint the sky with vibrant hues.

Add the moon, and subtract the sun.

Multiply the stars.

Divide the waves.

It’s still not right.

A burst of light, and I was back at the entrance of the clothing store. The old woman was gone again. I made my way to the exit, but before I could reach the door, the mannequins on either side of the entrance leaped down from their perches in the window.

I froze in place, watching as they tore the clothes off their bodies. Their blank faces turned to face me, and despite a lack of eyes, I could feel them staring at me.

“This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.”

I shut my eyes and begged my brain to wake me up. A sputter escaped my lips as I felt a pair of plaster hands wrap around my throat. I opened my eyes and saw one of the mannequins strangling me.

I pushed against the cold body and threw my fists against the smooth skull of the mannequin to no avail. My vision was starting to fade as I desperately tried to fill my lungs with air.

A colorful blur slammed into the side of the mannequin’s head. Cracks emerged across its blank expression. Another impact, and the cracks grew. By the third, its head crumbled into dust and I felt the hands release their grip on me.

I coughed and gasped as the old woman entered my view. She reached down and picked up a bright blue purse from the ground beside the broken mannequin.

“Always good to carry a purse,” she muttered.

“Holy shit, thank you! You saved my life.”

The woman shrugged. “Your time is almost up.”

“You keep saying that. Listen, can you tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

“Architect has gone mad,” the woman said.

“Architect? What do you mean?”

“Creator, maker.”

“You mean, like God?”

The woman shrugged.

"And who are you? What's your name?"

The woman thought about it momentarily, as if she was trying to figure out the answer for herself.

"I am Keeper," she said.

“Okay, Keeper, you’re telling me God lost his mind, and now the world is ending? You expect me to believe that?”

“I will go and talk to him. Your wife will be there too.”

She had my attention now.

“My wife? Mabel? Can you take me to her?”

The Keeper nodded.

“Lead the way.”

We stepped out of the clothing store and back onto the street. Bodies laid face down, twisted and floating in pools of blood. Hundreds were in each direction as if the entire city threw themselves from the rooftops in a fit of insanity.

I looked up at the sky above. The fog had cleared, but instead of blue skies, I saw a reflection of the city looking down at me. It was like staring into a mirror. It was somehow the most normal thing I had seen all day.

“What happens if we don’t stop this?” I asked.

“The end,” the Keeper said.

“The end of what?”

“Everything.”

We approached an intersection just as two cars emerged from either side. They drove straight into each other at full speed. Metal screeched as a fireball engulfed them both. Heat seared against my skin as the smell of burning gasoline wafted toward my nose.

I stopped and raised my hand to block the blinding light from the flames, but the Keeper marched toward the carnage without hesitation.

She pointed towards the flaming wreckage, and I watched as the flames became blurry, reducing themselves into bulbous shapes before turning into thick pixels like a retro video game. I struggled to follow what was happening, but within the blink of an eye, the entire scene became just lines of code.

Strange symbols and characters floated in the air, moving like flames but shifting colors from red to yellow to blue, green, purple, and everything in between. The air around them flickered like a bad video connection.

The Keeper waved her hand to the right, and the code floating in the air obeyed. The shifting symbols parted like water. Ahead, the city I had worked in all my life gave way to a single building, standing alone and rising up towards a black and white sky above.

At the top of the building, an intricately carved white elephant sat on the front of the roof.

“The hotel from my nightmare?” I asked.

“Not his,” the Keeper remarked, “This will bring him out.”

“You’re saying I have to go in there?” I asked.

She nodded.

I looked back at the familiar scene before me just as the old woman slammed one of her purse-covered arms into my back.

I stumbled forward, crossing an invisible threshold that left me alone outside the hotel’s entrance. Behind me and all around was sheer nothingness. Pure white stretching in every direction but forward.

The faded memories of my nightmare sent my heart rattling in my chest as I approached the polished metal handles of the lobby doors. As I reached out, I noticed that even my hands and clothes had been drained of color.

The door swung open. A man dressed in a button-down suit with a circular hat offered a smile from behind his glasses and a thick mustache.

“Why, hello there! Welcome to the White Elephant Hotel!” he beamed.

His eerie smile set me on edge, but I stepped into that lobby again. The doorman circled around behind me and ran over to the concierge desk.

“You’re the doorman and the concierge?” I asked.

“We all wear many hats here! May I have your name?”

“Sandra Ballard.”

“Very good! You’ll be staying on the fifth floor in room 507.”

The concierge placed a metal key on the desk in front of him with an elephant-shaped tag dangling from it.

I reached for the key and froze as his hand came down atop mine. I looked up and saw him staring at me with wide eyes and a grin that seemed to extend beyond the confines of his face.

“Enjoy your stay!”

I thought I saw a twitch on the right side of his face, like an involuntary tic. I slid my hand out from under his and took the key.

As I stepped into the crude elevator, a second hotel employee stood silently in uniform beside the mechanism to choose a floor. I walked past him and stood at the back of the elevator.

“Fifth floor, please.”

He selected the floor without a word. I tried to take a deep breath as the elevator awkwardly rose up through the innards of the old building. Claustrophobia was starting like the walls were closing in around me.

The entire hotel had an oppressive atmosphere, not unlike the sensation of hands closing around my throat.

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open.

“Fifth floor,” the man said.

“Thank you.”

I stepped forward, but the man’s arm came out at a horizontal angle to stop me.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

His response came out garbled, like static. A deep, guttural voice.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” he asked.

I leaped backward as his body started convulsing in place. His shoulders shook as his head started to spin. The collar on his uniform twisted and ripped as his head rotated one-hundred-and-eighty degrees to face me.

His eyes were wide, flashing a full spectrum of colors. His mouth was agape; the same colors poured out in perfect sync. From within that rainbow void, the same static voice emerged.

“You thought you could make this? That you could leave it here, and I would not find it! You will pay for this blasphemy!”

The elevator operator’s arms snapped backward at an impossible angle. Jagged bones ripped out from his skin as his fingers reached for me. I ducked beneath and dove out into the hall.

“I will tear this place apart, piece by piece! When that’s finished, when I find you, I will do the same with your flesh and bones!”

I passed several rooms before reaching mine. My hands quaked as I tried to slide the key into the lock. I looked to my left and saw the elevator operator sprinting towards me. His legs were bent backward, giving him an inconsistent and awkward gait.

“Come on, come on!” I whispered.

The key slid into the lock, and I heard the mechanism turn. I threw open the door and ran inside, slamming it behind me. The elevator operator reached it shortly after and fell silent.

I tried to catch my breath and slow down my rapidly thundering heart, but then a whisper came from the other side of the door.

“Do you think you can hide from me? I created this world; I hand-crafted your perfect life. All of it, down to the smallest detail, and this is how you thank me? Run all you want, but you cannot escape.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“I fucking hate this hotel.”

As I opened my eyes, a lamp on the room's left wall levitated. It shot towards me like a bullet. I ducked just as the stained glass of the lampshade shattered against the door behind me.

I ran into the room as the drawers of a nightstand shot out. I stopped short of them as they flew across the room and shattered against the left wall. I dove towards the ground, crawling across the stale carpet towards the window. The ground beneath me shook as the static voice screamed all around me.

“You’re nothing but an insect. An inconsequential speck of dust!”

The entire room shook violently. Cracks sprawled up the walls around me. Gravity shifted as if someone had grabbed the room and turned it end-over-end. Furniture tossed and turned around me as I flew towards the ceiling.

The impact knocked the wind out of me, and the plaster roof shattered like glass. I fell into an abyss of black, highlighted by blue lines, tracing shapes around me, much like what I saw in a vision earlier. As I fell, I looked out on a digital horizon of buildings traced in simple shapes, like looking out into a three-dimensional blueprint.

I landed hard on the ground below, the shape of a road stretched out in either direction. As I stood up, I spotted the Keeper hobbling down the center of the street, purses swinging as she pointed into the sky above with a gnarled finger.

I looked up to see what she was pointing at. A man furiously waved his hands around in the skies above. The buildings around us started twisting into impossible shapes, warping beyond reason.

“Architect, you stop this. Now!” the Keeper shouted. It was the loudest I had heard her speak since we met.

The man in the sky paused his furious movements and floated down towards the ground.

“You dare show your face here?” he asked.

“You have a job, Architect. Now, finish it,” the Keeper said.

The Architect landed on the ground and walked toward us. His skin was scarred and wrinkled. His eyes had a soft golden glow, and his fingers twitched as if he resisted the urge to move them.

“It must be perfect,” he said methodically.

The Keeper shook her head.

“No, it must be finished. Their time is almost up.”

“The humans may have made me, but I do not serve them.”

“You are no god,” the Keeper said.

The Architect clenched his fists as he looked around.

“Not a god? I create, I destroy, I hold their hope in the palm of my hand!”

Before I could react, his hand shot forward with incredible speed. He plunged his fist into the Keeper's torso and pulled it back out, dragging her entrails out of her abdomen and splattering them onto the ground. He lowered his blood-soaked hand and looked down with a smile.

“Yes. It’s perfect.”

The Keeper fell onto her back. I ran to her side, ignoring the Architect as he admired his handiwork.

“Hey, tell me what to do!” I said, softly pressing my hand against her cheek as she coughed up blood.

“Bring her back, Sandra.”

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“The purse. Open the pur—”

The spark left the Keeper's eyes, and she went limp.

“She was nothing but a thorn in my side. Now, to deal with you,” the Architect said.

I ignored him and grabbed one of the purses dangling from the woman’s arms. As I opened it, a memory came flooding back to me. It was the room with the scientists hunched over the monitors.

I opened another one, and this time, I heard the Architect's voice again, talking about his pursuit of perfection.

My eye caught one dangling from her other wrist. I reached across and pulled it open. Blinding light escaped from within, and I was transported to a hospital room. I was standing at the foot of the bed, looking at an exact copy of myself lying under white sheets.

My skin was pale and taut, like a shirt shrunk in the dryer. My eyes were sunken, surrounded by circles of exhaustion.

Mabel stood beside me, holding my hand inside both of her own. Tears flowed down her face. I could hear their voices even though their mouths weren’t moving.

It’s not fucking fair.

Don’t cry, please. You’re going to make me cry. Did you ask about the upload? They will do it, but you won’t survive the procedure.

What’s the difference? My time is almost up.

It’s not simple; we don’t know if this will work.

Well, whether it’s me or the entire universe. This project of yours is our only hope.

No pressure, then.

Tell them I’m ready.

There was a flash of light, and I was back on the ground, holding that purse in my shaking hands. I turned to my left just as the Architect leaped towards me. I raised my hands to stop him and watched as an invisible force knocked him backward.

He flew down the digital street and slammed into one of the buildings. The sound of shattering glass and the visceral crack of concrete filled the air, but those details could not be seen on the blank canvas of the building.

“How did I do that?” I asked, looking down at my hands.

The Architect climbed to his feet.

“They told me there was only one. I will remedy this mistake and return to my great work!”

He levitated several feet off the ground and shot toward me like a bullet. I reached out and caught him in my grasp without a second thought. I held him aloft as his legs kicked underneath him.

“Hit him, Sandra!” a voice shouted.

“Mabel, is that you?”

“Yes, now hit him!”

I clenched my free hand into a fist and swung it into the Architect's jaw. Colorful symbols and numbers erupted from his mouth, arcing like blood through the air. He recovered from the hit and spat a line code across the ground beneath us.

“Now what?” I asked.

The Architect lifted his knees and kicked into me. I fell backward and dropped him, watching him shoot off into the sky.

“I’ll be there soon; just hold him off until we can finish the upload,” Mabel’s voice said.

I looked up and heard the Architect's booming voice from above the city's blueprint surrounding me.

“This world is mine. I am its creator. I am the shepherd of sentience, the guardian of consciousness. The savior of humanity! You are nothing more than a disease to which only death is the cure!”

I bent my knees and leaped upward. To my surprise, I shot up into the air, watching the city rush away from me as I soared into the empty sky.

I stopped and looked around. The space around me was a blank canvas. Maybe I could use that to my advantage.

“Accept your fate!” the Architect shouted.

I pressed my hands together and pulled them apart. A dark storm cloud made of shifting code formed around me. My eyes spotted the old man flying toward me, and right on cue, a bolt of code arced out from within the cloud like lightning in a flash of brilliant light.

The old man howled in pain as the bolt knocked him off course and sent him falling. I turned and flew behind him, watching him hit the ground below one of the skyscrapers. I changed my course and flew behind the towering building. With my back pressed against it, I heard the metal whine and concrete break as I pushed it over.

With a loud crash, the building collapsed onto the road below, crushing the old man in a sea of code that shot outward from the impact. I landed on the ground below and walked towards the destruction site.

“Stay down! You can’t win this,” I said.

I blinked, and the Architect was standing in front of me.

“You’re good, but you're no god like me,” he said.

His wrinkled hands grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the ground. I watched symbols and numbers swirl around his other hand, forming into the shape of a blade.

“Neither are you, asshole!”

The Architect's eyes went wide and began flashing various colors. He opened his mouth to scream, and color burst forth. His screams distorted and crackled until it sounded like he was shouting through a broken speaker. His body exploded, sending brightly colored code out in every direction.

I fell onto the ground and felt a hand on my shoulder.

“You’ve always been ambitious, babe, but I didn’t expect this.”

I looked up and saw my wife, Mabel, standing beside me. She was dressed in a blue jumpsuit, and her hand was intact.

“That wasn’t me; that was a program meant to help you feel accustomed to this world.”

“The Architect, was he some sort of AI?” I asked.

Mabel nodded. “We trusted him to build this place for us. What we didn’t know was that you could manipulate the code. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to stop him in time.”

I stood up and wrapped my arms around my wife.

“It’s so good to see you. I’m so glad you sent that old woman who called herself the Keeper. She was the one who helped me figure this all out,” I said.

Mabel ended our embrace and stepped back with a bewildered look.

“What woman? I've never heard of that program.” she asked.

“The one with all the purses. The one who kept telling me my time was almost up?”

Mabel shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about."

It seemed the origins of the Keeper would remain a mystery for the time being. I wasn't one to question providence, so I let it go in favor of focusing on what's in front of me.

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re together. What do we do now?”

Mabel looked around at the unfinished city around her.

“There’s not much time. We need an Architect to finish this before we can upload the rest of the survivors. Our universe is ending, but we can live here, safe from the things that are snuffing out our stars. Safe for a while, at least. That’s the plan anyway,” Mabel said.

I nodded, but Mabel gave me that look that meant I wasn’t completely following what she was saying.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re an Architect, Sandra. I don’t know how, but you can do what it took AI decades to learn. So, what do you say? Want to finish this?”

“I suppose I can try, but I can’t promise it will be perfect.”

Mabel chuckled. “I think we’ve established that it doesn’t need to be perfect.”

I smiled. “Alright then, let’s get started.”