Linux stared wide eyed as his father chomped on a piece of meat skewered in the center. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his father alive like this. Before now, all he had were pictures, but that’s all they were. A picture isn’t able to pick up on the smaller details of a person and it never feels the same as seeing someone live. All someone has to do to prove that is take a picture of someone they hold near and dear to their heart, then compare the two side by side. The two are just so different that it’s almost like the photo shows a completely different person.

A photo is still and lifeless. When someone takes a picture of another person, it snaps a moment in their life, but it can never truly replicate the feeling of life. It can show it in a still frame, but only in real time can a person truly see the life shining around a person. Even a corpse feels different when comparing a photo of one to a real-life version. In real life, a dead body will seem like it used to have a life until it was snuffed out tragically by unknown forces at work. A photo only copies the dead image of it, never the life that it once had.

As Linux gazed at his father, emotions overwhelmed him, crashed into him so hard and fast that he nearly toppled over. His feet shook, his arms quivered, tears blurred his vision. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried tears of joy. Anytime he wept, it would always be after grieving a soul that had departed in sacrifice for the greater good. Now, he was bawling not just from sadness, but out of excitedness and joyous celebration.

The front door closed behind him, and the sound blared in his ears. His heart jumped and skipped a beat. Both the woman and his father swerved their heads toward the sound and all three of them made direct eye contact. The crackling of the campfire and smell of smoke strengthened as Linux’s heart beat faster and faster as if running a marathon.

Then, breaking the awkward silence, his father laughed, fighting away that creeping feeling of dread that was climbing up Linux’s spine.

“Good grief kid, you scared me.” His father wiped sweat dripping from his brow as he took another chomp out of the meat.

“That your kid?” The woman asked.

“Yeah,” Father turned toward him. “Introduce yourself.”

His breath froze in his throat. He wanted to scream and shout about what was going to happen in the future. He wanted to yell, “Father, you’re alive” and “The council won’t listen to a word you say,” but it was all frozen in his throat. Nothing could escape as an impenetrable wall nested between his neck and mouth.

“Shy one, ain’t he.” Father laughed. “His name’s Linux.”

The woman smiled and looked at him, her black eyes staring directly at him. It wasn’t intentional, but those eyes made it seem like she was trying to rip his soul out just by looking at him.

“My name’s Aisha Mellow.” Aisha said. “I have a kid just around your age. He’s shy too, so you might get along with him.”

“Why didn’t ya just bring yer kid along for the ride. It’s not too dangerous here, so I doubt above us would make any difference.”

There was no laughter to be shared. Linux knew his father was only halfway joking with that, but Aisha took it to be completely serious. She stared at him dead on, putting him into a trance that lasted for a few seconds.

“I admit, it’s better here than down there, but that doesn’t mean it’ll all be the same.”

“So you just left yer kid down there, thinking it would be worst up here?”

She nodded and rested her eyes on the ground. Linux could barely keep track with all that was being said. His mind was still whirring, seeing his father in such pristine condition. He’s had dreams where he met his father again after years of being dead, but none of them were this realistic or gave him such a range of control. One dream was him dying via heart attack, then meeting father’s ghost.

His father turned back to him and pointed to the door. “Time for you to go back to bed son.”

Linux’s body calmed back down as soon as he heard the order. Instead of doing what his father wanted of him, he walked to the campfire and sat down near the edge. The fire fought the cold out of his system and it was the most comfortable he’s been in ages. His father just stared at him, not knowing what to say.

“Kid, yer goin to regret not goin to sleep in the mornin. Yer gonna feel like a zombie.”

“Just let him stay up. He’ll learn what it feels like to stay up.”

Little did they know he’s already known that feeling for a long while now. Those days when he tosses and turns as the concept of sleep falls void in his mind until the sun rises and he has to force himself to stay awake while working. He’s experienced it all with most of his injuries happening because of those nights. He just couldn’t help it most days. The want to sleep fighting against the insomnia only hindered his sleep schedule to the absolute limit. The rest of those times were just him wanting to feel something else after days of working and emotional overload.

“You had a nightmare.” Aisha asked him directly.

He nodded, and her eyes may not have changed, but he could sense the sympathy in them. It turned to be rather calming when looking into her eyes when the fear and nervousness left him.

“I could tell right off the bat. My son’s that way too. He’ll come to my room and beg me to let him sleep in my bed.”

“We already sleep in the same room so that shouldn’t be much of a problem.” Father said. “I’m thinkin of gettin the council to extend the home a bit.”

They began having another conversation while Linux just sat and watched as they spoke on and on about the parenting life. He kept trying to speak, but his voice was still too afraid to come out. It infuriated him that he could finally spend some time with his father again, only for his voice to take a vacation during it.

Linux looked at the sky, wanting to look at the stars and hope that the lights would fix all his problems. Strangely enough, there were no stars in the sky. The moon wasn’t even shining, it was all a black void, the same color as Aisha’s eyes. That’s never happened in all of second floor history. For a second, he assumed that he was under a layer of smoke, but that’s when he noticed something else. There was no smoke emitting from the campfire. So where was the smell of smoke coming from?

“Linux!” Linux jumped in place and turned toward his father. “Listen next time boy. Aisha wants to ask you somethin.”

Linux turned to Aisha, those emotionless eyes staring back at him. Those eyes held many things. Love, caring, and resentment for all humanity. He forgot those eyes long ago, but now that he was staring at her again, he forgot how scared she made him feel anytime he looked at her face to face as a kid. Even in his tiny body of a child, she refused to make anything less than brutal eye contact.

“You know why you’re here, right?”

Linux blinked and looked around, wondering if she was even talking to him. When there was no one else around, he pointed at himself. She nodded, confirming she was indeed talking to him. Suddenly, the barrier in his throat lifted and he could finally talk again.

“What are you talking about?”

Aisha sighed. “You don’t get it, do you?” She pointed across from her. Linux looked and saw his father frozen in place with the meat near his mouth and his jaws wide. “This isn’t just a dream.”

“What do you mean by that? Is this a vision then?” Aisha nodded. “So how are you talking to me now.”

“The woman that I am currently is not the one you are talking to. I am me, not her.”

“So you just took the form of her?”

“Correct.”

Linux tried to wrap his head around what was happening right now. A random person contacted him and is giving him a vision. For what purpose exactly. Why him in particular?

“The reason I have chosen you,” Aisha said, reading his mind. “Is because you were the only person I could contact at the moment. Your brain is near death and being bombarded by my power as we speak, which allowed for me to contact you.”

“So you’re talking to me because it was easier. Not because of some divine purpose.”

“We do have a purpose for you, but divine is far from the truth of the purpose we seek you to fulfill.”

“You just said the same thing twice.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Aisha grabbed a piece of charred meat and scoffed it down. “Human cooking is rather tasty. Sad that we can’t have this most of the time.”

Linux grumbled, not wanting her to waste his time any longer. “Enough of that. Why are you contacting me, and who are you anyway?”

Aisha stayed silent for a few seconds. Linux was getting impatient and was about to yell at her to hurry. Before he could, she finally began explaining herself.

“The second question is much easier to answer. I am the judge and executioner of floors two, three, four, and five. I make sure the climbers pass the tests and go on to their next destination. If they manage to get to floor five, I’ll judge them based on a certain attribute and see if they are worthy to pass.”

“For the first question, it is one much harder to answer. Simply, I want you to climb the tower and punish a certain someone.”

“And who would that ‘certain someone’ be?”

“Simply put, he is the first man to have ever successfully climbed the tower.”

Linux was floored as soon as she said that. How could someone have already climbed the tower? It was a generous and unknown entity that’s unafraid to take lives with no remorse. Someone managed to climb it? That begs the question of why would the man that climbed the tower be a target for the judges of said tower. If she was a judge, then that meant that she let him pass willingly instead of stopping him in his tracks. Why punish him now?

“I cannot display that information to you.”

“Why not?”

She looked away from him and stared at the sky. “Because I do not know myself.”

The judge let the first man to climb the tower pass, then suddenly changed her mind, then decided to punish him, and she doesn’t even know why? That was absolutely absurd. He was sure that this had to all be something he was making up in his head, but it was all so real to be false. This was really happening.

“How don’t you remember.”

“I do not know.” He walked right into that one. “I do know that he must be punished, and that you and your companions can be the ones to do that.”

“How certain are you on that?”

She twirled her finger around in the air, lost in thought. “Around five percent sure.” Linux’s shoulders slumped as he breathed a deep and hardy sigh. This was it. He was going insane from a near death experience. “Don’t dismiss this all off as delirium.”

“Then prove to me that this is real.”

“I cannot do that.”

Linux laughed. “So you can talk to me in my brain, but not prove that it’s really happening.”

“Correct.”

By this point, Linux wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if she even had a sense of humor to begin with. For all he knew, she was taking everything one-hundred percent seriously, and he had so much proof of that it made him hurt. He could come up with proof of his theory, but she couldn’t do the same for him? Typical.

“I got it.” Aisha suddenly spoke up. “Speak with your father and don’t give away your identity. Your mind will implode and you wouldn’t desire that. In soon time, you will awaken with no memory of this conversation ever happening. I’ll use that moment to place a mark in your mind to subconsciously follow the order.”

“And how is that supposed to prove anything?”

She stayed silent for a while. Linux blinked once and she vanished and he was on the seat that she had been in seconds ago, sitting across from father. He was chewing on his meal with little care in the world.

“So son, I got a bit of a question for ya.”

Linux wanted to warn him again now that his restraints were finally broken, but her words echoed in his mind. Giving up on rewriting history, even if it’d only happen in a dream, he carried on a natural conversation, as if everything was normal.

“What is it father?”

Father laughed heartily, like a man that had a long life to live for. At this moment, he’d barely have five years left under his belt. The knowledge of the future only damaged Linux’s mind even further. It was to the point that he wondered if not telling him would be the event that lead to his brain imploding. Aisha’s orders whispered in his head, however, so he stayed silent on the matter.

“When did you learn to be so formal my boy? Speak like a child, you’re not eighteen yet.”

“Yes Dad, what’s your question.”

“Well, I just want to know your opinion on somethin.” Linux nodded, waiting for him to go on with it. “What do you think of this?” Father took out a notebook and passed it to him. He caught it, nearly dropping it into the fire, and read what was on the page. He gasped, seeing what was written on the sheet.

It was the Gaxtex weapon that he was working on currently. The weapon that could almost instantly create knives, then recycle that energy to create an infinite source of weapons. These were the beginning blueprints; the start of a dream that only suctioned more and more energy out of him as time passed.

“You see, that thing is only a small part of what I got cookin up. I plan to use that idea, then expand it to other Gaxtexes and machines. Soon, this entire floor will be swimming in energy, then no one will have to leave to get any more capsules. The ones we have’ll be enough. How do you like the sound of that?”

Linux stared at the page that had a combination of sloppy handwriting and childish drawings. In isolation, it looked nothing more than a thought project thought of by an elementary student. However, this thing has the possibility to change lives. Had the possibility to change lives.

With the Gone Red bombs and the fires, he doubted that there would be any chances left to collect enough freeze organs needed to efficiently create a supply of self-renewing energy machines. It’s all gone and vanished, all because the people outside his head refused to let a genius be in the spotlight for once. They wanted the attention to themselves and create a utopia of lies and unmoving society. They just wanted to settle and be done with that.

Where’s the risk in anything like that! What is the purpose in life if the people living it just wanted to settle. The point of a generation is to make the new generation better for all, but they just want to sit on their asses all day and say all is done, all is well. Well, it isn’t fucking well. In coming times, the number of homeless will only increase and then whose problem will that be? Not his, that’s for sure, cause he’s leaving this fucking deathtrap once and for all.

Linux took several breaths, calmed down, and looked back at the paper. He noticed there were wet marks and wondered how they got there. It was only then that he realized he was crying.

“You okay kid?”

He looked up and saw a genius standing right next to him, looking down at him with a worried expression. The council thought that him dying would get rid of all their problems, but they were wrong. Linux grew up, and now he became their problem. Leaving humanity behind in progress was one thing, but they let the man that he respected more than anyone die with no remorse. They let him die, thinking him as nothing more than a pawn that they could call upon whenever. They forgot he was a human being.

Linux jumped out of his chair and hugged his father. His head barely reached his father’s thighs, and he was grappling onto legs, but it still felt like a genuine hug. He closed his eyes as tears fell from his damn leaky skull. He always wondered why crying felt so good, yet painful at the same time. Now he could finally piece together why. It was the release of everything about a person. They could finally rest from being nothing but a mindless bot and become a human being once again.

He felt arms hug him back. He opened his eyes and was face to face with his father. He was looking at him with a grin so wide and proud, a fresh wave of tears threatened to escape again.

“You grew up alright, Linux.” All went white in a sea of tears, sadness, and joyous celebration.

Linux opened his eyes, his eyes stinging as badly as the fire that surrounded them on all sides. He sat up slowly, his body aching all over. His vision blurred and swerved, forcing vomit to rise in his throat. He tried to hold it back, but in the end, it all came out. A tangy taste was the only thing left behind, the proof he was still alive.

The smell of smoke hang strong in the air and the heat from the fire continued to blast him as if he was in a furnace. Suddenly, he felt someone tap his arm. He looked and saw a guard standing above him with a Gaxtex in hand. He went for his weapon, but all he felt was hard, steaming ground. He looked around him and found his weapon sitting next to the first floor trio.

“You don’t have to worry.” The guard said. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m just giving you your Gaxtex back.”

The guard held his hand out, and Linux hesitantly received it. He waited a second, seeing if this was all some sort of trick to lower his guard. However, the guard wasn’t lifting his weapon, and the trio was here, so that put some security in him. He lifted his shoulder and inserted the Sheild back into his armpit. Lightning left the wound and shocked all over him, but considering how excruciating the last few hours were, he gritted his teeth and refused to scream. Once it was in place and the lightning finished blasting, he stood up and stared at the guard.

“The names Depsy.” The guard held out his hand and waited for Linux to shake it. Deciding Depsy was safe to be around, he shook his hand in return.

“So what’s your story?” Linux asked.

“I kinda accidentally cause all of this.” He looked around at the fire.

The fire was lower and lacking in heat than that time he woke up hours ago. He’s been out for so long that the fire had begun wearing itself out naturally. The wind ceased to blow, the grass and trees were all burnt up. There is nothing left to keep the fire going for much longer. Soon, it’ll vanish into nothing and leave behind a sea of death, rot, and decay.

“So your makin up for it?”

“I’m going to try, but don’t expect anything I’d do’ll help.”

“Don’t worry.” Linux chuckled and patted Depsy on his back. “You may have set the floor back a few years, but if you help on progressing it further, then it’ll all turn out well in the end. Don’t you three agree!” The first floor trio didn’t answer, instead they stayed focused on the book in the center of them.

“What do y’all have here?” Linux said, approaching the three.

“We found this journal in the tunnels.” Killian answered. “It was near some drawings and a Tetson nest.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, there were also babies. Kauss killed one.”

“Well, maybe it shouldn’t have gotten in my way.”

Linux blinked a few times, thinking he heard incorrectly. “Say that again?”

“Kauss killed a baby?”

“Now that just sounds worse.” Helona said.

Suddenly, a laugh echoed around them. They all looked up, only to see Linux laughing like a madman that was just told to calm down. Tears flowed from his eyes and dripped down his cheeks, only to fall to the ground with little fanfare. Kauss and Helona looked at each other as if thinking he had finally broken down for good.

“This day just gets better and fucking better.” Linux finally began calming down, his laugh lowering to nothing more than a chuckle. “So, there is hope after all.” He stared at them. “Where are they?”

Kauss pointed to his left. “That way. It’s hard to miss considering it’s probably the most wrecked out of everything here.”

Something was finally going right once and for all. He saw the organ sitting next to Helona and knew that everyone was ready. It’s time for the final judgement of the floor. Whether they decided to make progress or regress isn’t up to him anymore. All he can do is point them in the right direction and hope that they choose correctly.

“It’s time for us to go.” He turned to Depsy. “As for you, I want you to head to Olten. See what’s happening then wait outside for us to arrive.”

“Where are you heading?”

Linux turned back around, ready to walk into fire. The trio stood up and advanced as the smoke cleared up. The sky shined a rosy pink as the void gave way for once.

“We’re going to find the future.”

They took off as the sun rose in the sky. It shined down on everything underneath it, banishing the darkness away. It’s a new day, a day that will hopefully change everything.