Trust the System

Above, the fires raged on—but now they burned in silence.

Drones patrolled the skies like metal vultures, gliding between the smoke columns with eerie grace. Their engines purred low, almost inaudible, as they scanned the streets below with beams of blue light. Occasionally, one would pause, hovering above a cluster of figures darting through alleyways or breaking into boarded-up storefronts. A moment of hesitation—and then a soft click, a camera shutter, a red dot, a shriek. The drone didn’t need to kill. It only needed to mark. The ground forces would handle the rest.

The gangs had adapted. Some worked with the machines now—paid off by those still pretending to run the show. Others stayed underground, literally, burrowing into the ruins of parking garages and subway stations like rats avoiding a flame.

And through it all, on every surviving screen—on the few televisions still drawing power, on cracked tablets hanging in shattered storefronts, on the digital billboards that still flickered like ghosts—Mayor Karen Trout smiled.

She was flawless in every appearance. Her face never showed the stress of collapse. Not the stink of blood on the streets, nor the sound of mothers weeping for their children. She wore pearls. Always pearls.

The screen behind her was a looped image of an untouched City Hall, rendered in digital gloss: bright, hopeful skies, green lawns, the California flag snapping proudly in the breeze. It hadn’t looked that way in weeks.

"My fellow Angelenos," she began, in that voice slick with warmth and devoid of empathy, “I want to reassure you that our city remains under control.”

Behind her, somewhere off-screen, a muffled explosion shook the building. The lights flickered. She didn’t flinch.

“We are experiencing a brief transitional period,” she continued, eyes unblinking, smile frozen. “But progress is happening. The insurgents—those few who reject order—are being dealt with quickly and decisively.”

Footage cut in: not of current Los Angeles, but clips from six months ago. Police walking orderly lines, citizens applauding, flowers handed out at community events. Lies. Archive reel masquerading as present day.

“And thanks to our partnership with Sentinel Solutions,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the hovering drones outside the windows, “we’ve achieved a level of safety and oversight unmatched in American history.”

Outside, a drone descended over Skid Row, locked onto a teenage boy raiding an abandoned pharmacy. His scream was cut short by a single high-frequency burst. His body twitched, then dropped. No trial. No warning.

Mayor Trout went on. “Let’s all do our part. Remain indoors. Obey the curfew. Trust the system. The light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter every day.”

She signed off with her signature wink. The screen faded, the broadcast looped again.

Somewhere, in a burned-out office building, a group of survivors watched her face vanish from a shattered flat-screen. One of them spit on the ground. Another picked up a Molotov.

The city was not fooled.

It had simply gone quiet before the storm.

 

The World Fades

The fluorescent lights buzz faintly in the long, linoleum-floored hallways of the nursing home, their hum a soft white noise that merges with the distant murmur of televisions and the occasional rattle of a food cart. Time does not move here as it does elsewhere. It loops and blurs, stretches and folds back in on itself. The clocks tick, but their rhythm means little to those who drift through this place—like ghosts tethered by muscle and breath.

Wheelchairs glide slowly through the corridor, pushed by tired hands or nudged along by occasional staff. The residents move not with destination, but with instinct. There is no map for where they are trying to go—only a deep, persistent sense that something familiar waits just around the corner. If only they could remember what.

Mabel turns down the east wing, her thin fingers gripping the armrests of her chair. She whispers a name under her breath, though she can’t say who it belongs to. Was it a son? A sister? The hallway is lined with framed prints—generic landscapes and still lifes—but one makes her pause. A farmhouse in the snow. She stares, lips parting, something trembling just below consciousness. But then, like breath on glass, it vanishes. She moves on.

James sits near the window at the end of the hall. His eyes are on the glass, but he sees nothing outside. His chair faces the lawn, though it may as well be the sea or a church or the backdrop of a play. Every so often, he mutters a joke with no setup, and chuckles, as if waiting for someone beside him to laugh too. The seat next to him is empty.

Others wander the maze of the building in slow circles, again and again, passing the same water fountain, the same peeling bulletin board filled with last month’s birthdays. Some smile faintly at each other in passing—recognition flickering like candlelight in a wind. “You look like someone,” one might say. “Do I know you?” But the answer always slides away.

In the rec room, the television is on but unwatched. The sound is down low, voices from another world. A few residents sit nearby, their wheelchairs arranged in a loose, unspoken semicircle, as if expecting a sermon or a performance. Their faces are still, tilted as if listening. Perhaps they are. Perhaps not to the TV, but to some echo in their minds—a music box tune, a grandmother's lullaby, the voice of a long-dead love.

The staff move through the haze like gardeners tending a surreal garden. They speak gently, offer warm hands, adjust pillows, guide wheels. But even they can’t anchor the residents for long. The fog always rolls back in.

And so they roam—quiet pilgrims on an endless loop. Looking. Searching. Not for escape, but for recognition. For a word, a face, a memory solid enough to catch hold of and not slip away. Something to say yes, this is now, and I am here.

But the world fades, gently and without cruelty. Edges soften. Names melt. Time dissolves. And the wheelchairs keep rolling.

 

Vanishing Bliss

 

The monk remained still as night unfurled its cloak across the sky. The last color bled from the stones, leaving only soft blues and silvers. Bats flickered in the growing dark. The mountain had vanished into silhouette, no longer a shape but a presence—unseen, yet there.

And within him, something had also dimmed.

The voice that had once narrated his every breath was quiet now.
He was not trying to be silent.
He simply had no need to speak—not even inwardly.

Instead, the world grew louder.

The rustling of leaves in the wind.
The crunch of a fox somewhere below.
The deep hum of crickets, chanting as if the earth itself were breathing.

And the monk, in his stillness, was no longer a man.
He was a pair of ears.
A surface of skin touched by breeze.
A presence, without center.

“Indeed,” a thought surfaced gently, as if drifting up from a dream,
“one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence…”

The words echoed softly. Not with logic, but with recognition.

He remembered moments—
Standing on the edge of the sea as a boy,lost in the roar of waves.
Walking through spring woods, dappled in green light.
Listening to an old woman tell stories by a fire, his whole being wrapped in her voice.

In those moments, he had not thought, “I am experiencing joy.”
He had simply been absorbed.
Gone.
And that vanishing had been bliss.

Now, sitting before the mountain, he felt it again.
No longer trying to understand.
No longer trying to hold anything.

The distinction between the monk and the mountain, between the breath and the wind, between being and not being— thinned, and then vanished.

He was not aware of time.
He was not aware of himself.

And in that forgetting, he smiled.

Not as a man smiles, but as the moon glints on a still pond.

The Language of the Mountain

The sun had begun its slow descent behind the western cliffs, casting long amber shadows across the stone terrace where the monk sat cross-legged, alone. Before him stood the mountain—immense, unmoving, older than anything he could comprehend. It had been there before his master was born, before any temple stones were laid, before even the first name for "mountain" was spoken.

His eyes were closed, but the light pressed softly against his skin, warm at first, then fading.

He breathed in.

He breathed out.

Thoughts arose like ripples in a still pool: memories of childhood, vague longings, and half-formed questions about the world. Then came words—phrases, images, entire internal conversations. The monk watched them as one might observe clouds passing overhead: shifting, multiplying, dissolving.

But today, something caught.

A thought repeated itself:

“Who is it that thinks?”

Another arose in reply:
“I do.”

But before he could accept that answer, another voice—calmer, deeper—murmured within:

“What is ‘I’? And whose language do you use to speak it?”

He opened his eyes.

The mountain had not moved. The light had gone pink along the rim. The world was silent except for the occasional chirp of a bird readying for sleep.

The monk looked out over the valley, where homes flickered in the distance. He realized that even the shape of his thoughts—every word, every image, even the structure of his questions—had not originated within him.

The words in his mind were not of his own making.
The voice he called his own had been taught to him.
Even the question “Who am I?” was a gift passed down from others who had asked it first.

He had spent years searching for the “true self,” but now he saw clearly:
He was a vessel.
And the water within him had been poured by unseen hands.

He turned back to the mountain.
Still it stood—silent, uncarved by thought.

“Perhaps the mountain is wiser,” he whispered.
“It says nothing, thinks nothing, yet it is utterly itself.”

The sun dipped lower, and the sky flared briefly before dimming.

The monk closed his eyes again, not in search, but in surrender.

If he was not the maker of his thoughts, then he could release them.
Let them return to the wind, to the ancestors, to the vast unknowing.

The mountain said nothing.
And in that silence, he found a stillness deeper than any answer.

 

I Watch the Flicker

I sit. I think I’ve been sitting a long time.

The chair is soft. Or maybe it’s not.

I’m not sure where my legs went.

There’s a light on the wall. It changes.

People move in it.

They smile too wide.

Their mouths don’t match their words.

I don’t know what they want.

Beside me, a woman mumbles into her lap.

She could be my sister.

Or my daughter.

Or a mirror.

I blink.

It’s still Tuesday.

Or Wednesday.

I think I had soup.

Something is funny. The man laughs.

I laugh too, just in case.

It feels right.

Or it used to.

I see a beach on the screen.

The waves know my name.

I want to go there.

I think I already did.

Maybe I never left.

A nurse touches my arm.

She says “sweetheart.”

I like that word.

She smells like lemons. Or clouds.

I want to ask her something…

But the thought floats away—

gone before I can catch it.

Like the others.

So many others.

I turn back to the flicker.

It’s still there.

Still glowing.

I wait for something to begin.

It already has.

Or maybe it never will.

 

Static Flowers

The colors flicker… faces move.

Lips talk but…

no sound I know.

Someone laughs. Was it me?

Rows of chairs like gravestones.

People blinking.

Some sleeping.

One rocking, one humming a song I forget.

The box on the wall—

is it telling me something?

A horse.

A man with teeth.

A woman cries in a kitchen.

I think she knows me.

I lift my hand—

no, not mine—hers.

Nails chipped.

A tremble.

Skin like paper dolls.

The man beside me smells like dust.

I like him.

Or maybe I don’t.

He once had a dog?

Or a war?

Laughter from the screen again.

Is this a game?

Did we win?

I feel warm. Or wet.

Does that matter now?

Someone walks by—white shoes.

She bends down, says words.

Soft words.

I nod.

That’s what I do. Nod.

The TV glows,

and we bloom in its static—

all of us,

together,

like flowers no one waters

but still

refuse

to wilt.

 

Ain't No Easy Way Out

Above ground, the city was dying in slow motion.

The smoke hung heavy over Los Angeles like a shroud, glowing red from within as if the city’s soul had caught fire and couldn't find a way out. Sirens no longer wailed. They had been drowned out weeks ago by the sharper screams of the desperate and the dull thump of boots on pavement. Buildings stood half-collapsed or blackened with soot, their windows smashed, their signs hanging askew like broken limbs.

Flames licked the sky from half a dozen different directions, casting the skyline in an ever-shifting dance of destruction. Streetlights flickered with no rhythm or purpose, powered by what little juice remained in the crippled grid. Gunshots echoed through the canyons of concrete, sharp cracks that ricocheted off glass and steel.

It hadn’t started all at once.

There had been rumors first—quiet, disconnected murmurs of power outages, missing police patrols, and neighborhoods left unguarded. Then came the footage. A mob flooding Wilshire Boulevard. Fires set in front of City Hall. Looters dragging generators down Sunset in broad daylight, grinning at the hovering drones that filmed it all for no one.

And when the National Guard pulled out—told to stand down by politicians who had already fled—Los Angeles was left to cannibals in the flesh and the spirit.

From atop the skeletal remains of a burned-out overpass, a lone figure watched the city rage. Smoke curled around his silhouette, hiding the grime and blood that covered his coat. His rifle dangled at his side. He wasn’t here to fight today—just to remember.

Below him, in what used to be a grocery store parking lot, rival gangs roared as two prisoners were dragged into the light. One was barely conscious, the other defiant even as the boots came down on his ribs. This wasn’t justice. It wasn’t even war. It was theater. Punishment as public entertainment.

To the north, the Hollywood Hills flickered like kindling, luxury homes reduced to charred skeletons. To the south, Downtown had collapsed into itself, skyscrapers gutted and remade into strongholds by those who claimed dominion now.

This wasn’t about territory anymore. It was about dominance. Fear. Control. The city was a carcass, and every gang and warlord wanted a bite.

But the figure on the overpass knew something they didn’t.

Beneath all this chaos, under the feet of the looters and killers and tyrants, there were still people. Still survivors. Still fighters.

People who had fled into the tunnels not to hide, but to wait. To plan.

He looked toward the scorched horizon, past the plumes of fire, and whispered to himself, “They think we’re gone. That was their mistake.”

Then he turned, disappearing into the shadows, heading for a forgotten access hatch beneath a graffiti-covered wall. The city might have burned above, but below, resistance was being forged in silence and steel.

And soon—very soon—it would rise.