He kept VOIDWAR running at fifty percent opacity, watching the repossessed dreadnought hop through jumpgates on autopilot as he picked through the roughly person-shaped mound of clothes piled on the bed beside where he slept. After a quick smell-test, JD changed into the least-dirty clothes he could find: his favorite deconstructed-reconstructed jeans, patched, paneled, and pieced together in a dozen shades of gray denim by automated sewing machines his old friend Jess had hacked together for shits and gigs; a sleeveless black shirt; solar and kinetic charging utility vest; and an old windbreaker, waterproof apart from the right shoulder where the weight of his ancient leather workbag had split the seam, exposing the rough polyester lining within.
Dropping down to sit on the edge of his bed, JD picked up his controls just as the dreadnought reached Zero—the game’s central system. Countless ships traversed the space around the binary suns, and the chat window crawled with requests for help from rookies and the perpetually struggling. Zero Corporation’s HQ hung in the very center, the twin stars blazing in orbit around the titanic space station. Quiet awe gripped JD still, no matter how many times he passed through the sector.
With autopilot disengaged, JD took the ship in on manual, hands gripped casual to stick and throttle, his left foot bouncing on the cheap low-pile carpet as he tried not to watch the clock. The dreadnought built up speed slowly, engines flaring white-blue against the dark of space. Courier frigates passed him on the way to the jumpgate, and loose fleets of sworn enemies flew together toward Zero Station—weapon systems disabled by corporate mandate.
Alpha sat to port and JD let the sun’s gravity slingshot him on a course aimed right for the station. The colossal structure reappeared suddenly from behind the star and resolved in sequence, textures popping into place. The surface bristled with residential outcroppings, automated defenses, and communications arrays. Buried in the center of the station were Zero Corporation’s in-game holdings, their vaults, resource silos, and their massive fleet—every ship and resource built from finite digital materials mined by a player within the game.
Manufactured scarcity helped keep the value of ZeroCash high, higher than many “real” currencies, and staked out space for digital repossessions to flourish—alongside other cottage industries. After the crypto bubble burst, ZeroCash filled the vacuum left behind, quickly becoming the favored coin for black—and gray—markets the world over. Every transaction consolidated Zero’s wealth, and increased its stock market value.
There was a time when JD had played VOIDWAR purely for fun, before he had rent and bills to pay, before he had a job, when he could buy and sell in-game commodities with a fervor bordering on obsession, eventually earning enough ZeroCash to buy limited-edition sneakers or, one time, an eighth of darknet weed so dank it had tainted all the socks in his drawer with its smell. Now repo jobs were how JD paid most of his bills, but not his rent. For the Zero services he used, he could pay them directly in their own currency, never needing to let his earnings touch a “real” money market, which was just how Zero Corporation liked it. Still, it was money JD could earn while plugged in to an ever-shifting galactic conflict, talking to friends from all around the world, and blowing shit up.
JD took the dreadnought into the gaping maw of the station’s main hangar, flanked on all sides by other players coming in to dock. Automated processes took over and the haptic controls went slack in JD’s hands as the dreadnought was swallowed by the bureaucracies of repossession.
He limped to the bathroom and sat on the toilet, wincing at the pain in his knee. JD took his phone and finalized the repo paperwork with Zero, and sat staring, thumb rotating in small circles to keep the screen active. After fifteen seconds the loading bar was replaced by an animated tick. He smiled, then remembered his other job. JD locked his phone and frowned at his sleep-deprived face staring out from the slab of black glass. He finished up and went back to the dorm room, his thin mattress warmed by the rig always humming softly beneath the bed.
JD retrieved his corvette from the Zero hangar, and set course for an uncharted sector. He started the exploration protocol, and immediately his rig’s cooling fans hummed louder, heat pouring out in waves to wash over his legs. It was another form of ZeroCash exchange—processing power for digital currency. All those resources stored in Zero’s holds had to come from somewhere, and players could earn ZeroCash by lending the game devs processor cycles with which to expand the size of VOIDWAR’s playable universe. Everybody wins, but mostly Zero.
Julius padded quietly out of the makeshift living room slash dorm, his footsteps masked by the snores of his five roommates. He shouldered his rucksack, stole someone’s bread from the fridge, and walked out the front door with two slices held in his mouth. He stepped into his knockoff three-stripe sneakers and pulled the heavy door closed, silencing the orchestra of snores and the steady drone of CPU fans.
His face was the first one I saw.
If father is the person who created you, then he was not my father.
But if father is the person who guided you through childhood, who molded you, then here he is: unaware that this new day would set him on a path to the center of everything.
When he wiped his ass and tossed the folded wads of feces-smeared recycled paper into the toilet bowl, he saw only the act of disposal. He did not see that everything is one. He did not see the truth of his shit—that it could never simply disappear. It was still there, flush, growing distant yes, carried away on a
