Dissonance

March 3, 2026

It’s been about a month since I started working with Irina.

The work is moving, but at a snail’s pace. Most of our time has been spent catching me up on her work, and the physical processes that might be at play here. Just recently, she’s assigned me some more work: to create some simulations to try to determine what might be the cause based on the physical process she hypothesizes underlies the phenomenon.

And it is productive work. I have made progress. But I am just not sure if we can get it done.

I’m not sure how long I can even put up working with her.

She berates me daily, and allots me more work and studying than I can possibly complete. In some moments, she is the kind, tired woman I loved. But in others, this dominant mania takes her over, and it’s both inspiring and insufferable. But I know it’s because she is so entrenched in her work.

But… I tolerate it. I find myself awestruck by her intellect, and every time it makes me realize both how amazing she is, and that she is the best, and maybe only, chance humanity—and our family—has.

I find myself stumbling to keep up with her, hanging tightly to what I already learned from her research, and what has become familiar to me over my time working as a contractor. My old capabilities have come back some, as I wrote above, but perhaps not enough.

Outside of the work, May has grown more irritable with every passing day. I don’t know what to do about her—she can’t seem to accept that I’m doing all this for her and Alice.

She’s been going out again every morning, and been talking to some girl a lot otherwise. She won’t share more details than that; it’s always just “a girl I know.”

Alice, at least, has been an angel. She’s asked that we all spend time together a handful of times now, but each time I have to say we’re too busy. It hurts, but if we want any hope of solving this, we need all the time we can get.

And, with how it’s going… I’m not even sure how far we’ll

Irina tapped him on the shoulder a couple times with a clipboard, interrupting his writing mid-sentence. “Ken, did you see—” She cut herself off as her eyes landed on his journal. “Are you writing again?”

He nodded as he shielded it with his body, closing it and wheeling around in his chair to meet her gaze.

“You know we don’t have time for this.” She grabbed the notebook, tossing it aside and placing her clipboard in front of him. Her hand traced along each of the points it listed, reading them out.

He was deaf to it, at this point. Perhaps a skill he was relearning; the ability had come back to him quickly.

“So, get working on those. Today,” she finished. She turned on her heel and strode away, back to her workstation ten or so meters away. “I need that environment and batch of sims done by tomorrow!” she called back over her shoulder. She promptly set into some work of her own, craning over her laptop, and Ken could hear her muttering faintly, dancing between Russian and English with each word.

Ken watched her nimble focus bounce back and forth between her computer, a device connected to it, and her papers. She worked with incredible efficiency—a youth and vigor that he’d long since let slip away.

Contrary to her spry passion, Ken sighed lowly and turned back to his workstation. He read the items on the clipboard, and set it back down on the table.

Time to get back to work, he thought, opening his laptop.

———

The door to the “lab” slammed behind him as Ken stomped up the final step into the cold, bleak alleyway beyond. The end of the alley was sheltered from the wind, but the chill in the air in the weeks leading up to spring weather was no different than it always was.

He wrapped himself in his coat, and set off toward the street.

Since beginning working with Irina again, he’d taken the bus to and from the lab every day. It picked him up a few blocks away. In this area of the suburb, he rarely, if ever, needed to take his car out. And if he did, he always found it a pain to manage—parking, gas, traffic, and everything else.

As he reached the end of the narrow corridor, he was assaulted by the sounds of a lively city in the evening. Except, this kind of liveliness wasn’t the kind with which he was familiar.

Cars beeped and whizzed past, voices and footfalls echoed from all around; these things were expected, but perhaps dampened as compared to normal. But mixed in as well were voices booming above the rest, chants bellowed by misinformed mouths, and faint sirens belonging to the few remaining police seeking to maintain order.

The riotous noise was even more grating and unsettling than usual today. Ken drew his hood up over his head, yanking limply on the drawstrings, and then stuffed his hands in his pockets, continuing his trudging toward the bus stop still a couple blocks away.

He glanced across the street. The evening foot traffic milled about, weaving around and past each other like streams of vapor.

But as he continued watching, he saw something through the crowd: two men, one hooded and one in street clothes, stood facing each other.

They spoke. A quick exchange. The hooded one passed something to the other. He took it, pocketed it, and turned, giving a sarcastic salute as he walked away.

But something flashed in the hand of the one in the hoodie.

A loud crack rang out. It resounded off the buildings, a chilling echo lingering in the air.

The other man slumped to the ground. A trickle of blood from his head pooled on the ground, dripping into a storm drain a few inches from his face.

Everything stopped. For a moment, the world felt silent next to the sound of the gunshot.

The crowd scattered, panicked and screaming, giving a wide berth to the gunman. Many of them ran past him, tip-toeing as though one false step would turn his gun onto them.

People on Ken’s side ran, too. He nearly fell over as they bumped past him, clawing desperately over each other to reach a place out of range of the killer.

But his gun instead turned down, returning to its hidden place by his hip. He walked to the corpse he’d just made, picked from it what he’d given—as well as the dead man’s wallet—and continued nonchalantly down an adjacent alley.

After a time, the situation calmed down. The frantic flow, which had pulled Ken down the street, was subsiding due to the relative sparsity of people. And with the arrival of the police moments later, people began returning to their normal level of non-urgency.

They just went on milling around like ants in a farm. He couldn’t understand it. They were so frightened of immediate mortal peril, yet as that immediate threat subsided, they just… fell back into step.

So many of them, and yet not a single one of them was trying to delay the end. They just accepted it. And went on living their normal lives.

Perhaps they didn’t believe. Or perhaps they were simply unaware. Ken didn’t know. He couldn’t.

But, after a brief time more walking, he arrived at his stop. He heaved a strained breath and lowered himself onto its bench.

His phone said it was already seven o’clock. I’ll have to apologize to the girls, he thought.

The bus wouldn’t come for 13 minutes more, according to the schedule. He glanced around as he realized it, surveying his surroundings—there wasn’t much else to do, anyway.

Not much of any significance happened now. People just walked, faces glazed over with idle melancholy. That was a common expression, it seemed. Maybe people were worried. But they felt powerless. So they carried on with their lives to present a facade of normality.

His eyes passed over face after face, but eventually, he realized something had… changed slightly in the scene, though it was difficult to realize. His eyes scanned the sidewalk and buildings again and again, searching.

And, at last, his brain registered it: a warbling and shaking of the light.

A sphere, visible over the heads of the passersby, that radiated sickly, swimming shades of color, but only faintly, and transparently. It was a phenomenon that shifted and broke the light moving through.

One with which he was familiar.

May had described it to him. Irina’s notes had depicted it. She’d shown him precisely this. But at the time, he hadn’t realized what it was. Now, he was sure.

It was an extirpation. Specifically, the distortion that precedes one.

And this wasn’t just the preceding burst of synesthetic energy. This was imminent.

He sprang from his seat. Adrenaline pumped through him. Someone next to him said something, but the words didn’t make it past the shell of panic now enveloping him.

Standing, he could see the situation more clearly: the sphere of light covered most of the sidewalk. It hung low to the ground, and was extremely large—perhaps 30 feet across. Significantly larger than the one in Irina’s lab. And it partially intersected with a building.

A tall, tall building.

Through the distortion, he could see some people shuffling out of the way of it subconsciously, like how they might avoid a puddle after the rain. But many had their heads down, moving straight through, completely ignorant as to the danger accompanying that choice.

Worse yet, at its base, a girl not much older than May stood there, alone. One of her hands waved back and forth inside it, swirling in the uncertain space.

In his mind’s eye, he saw May herself there, overlapping with his view of the girl.

Her curious nature got the better of her. She reached her hand deep inside, turning it back and forth. Feeling it and its power.

His body moved before he properly could think it through—before he could even adjust his mental image.

He slammed into the river of people, sliding and shoving his way through them, clawing desperately past them to get to the girl.

He wasn’t even sure how long the sphere was there for.

But it didn’t matter. He had to help her.