The professor’s voice droned. It was a consistent hum at the front of the class, like an air conditioner unit. Nagib had long since stopped parsing the individual words for their meaning. He was saying something about altruism. Nagib had already read the social psychology chapter of the textbook, and knew he didn’t have to pay attention. But he still came to class, because if he didn’t, he’d get lazy. Coming to class was motivating, even though it was boring.
He minimized his note taking app on his laptop. He wasn’t typing anything anyway, and he was at the back of the class, so nobody would see him open up League of Legends and queue for a quick game. But he was surprised to see a new icon suddenly appear next to the League icon.
The icon was a bright yellow smiley face with a party hat, blowing on a party horn. The Partying Face Emoji. This one: 🥳 And underneath the icon was the name of the application: ABSOLUTE_POWER.EXE.
Nagib thought maybe it was a virus and he shouldn’t click on it, but he didn’t use his laptop for banking or online shopping or anything anyway. So against his better judgement, he clicked it.
The application that opened was simple. It looked like a barebones Windows application, and had three sections. At the top was a description. Then below that, a search bar. And finally, a text box with some text scrolling by.
The description was short. “With great power comes great fun. This AI program is very fun! Enter the name of a person below and hit enter. That person will die. If you do not know their name, describe them unambiguously. Our AI will find them and kill them. Remember: have fun!”
The search bar below the description was actually an input field, with the placeholder text “Enter name or description here…”. Nagib clicked the bar, and the placeholder disappeared, being replaced with a blinking cursor. Should he?
He hit the submit button by accident and an error message appeared. “AI could not locate or kill person matching description. Reason: no input.”
He looked around the room. Everyone was listening to his boring professor prattle on. Still about altruism. Nagib typed “my boring fucking professor” into the bar. He knew nothing would really happen. This program was just some cringe, Death Note fandom shit. But sheer boredom compelled him to hit enter anyway.
In the text box below, a new line appeared. “Nagib Eztebe has killed Regan Brand!” This line was at the bottom of a list of similar lines.
अद्वैथ चन्द्र has killed इल बवा!
Luke Mallin has killed Dustin Smith!
विवान णयक has killed عریج گلرخ!
冯小明 has killed 舒华!
Тамара Люба has killed Руф Марта
कलिन्द चन्द्रन has killed अजद परेख!
李明珠 has killed 海子涵!
Zainabu Fumnanya has killed Fadzai Sauda
静香 佳代子 has killed Mawar Agustina
Virginia Martin has killed Aubrey Shepherd!
齐彦林 has killed 姚芝兰!
Nagib Eztebe has killed Regan Brand!
As Nagib looked at the box, an new line appeared below his. And another. And then a bang from the front of his class drew his attention. Professor Brand lay sprawled out on the floor, unconscious. A female student screamed. Students rushed to help him. Everyone was standing up, trying to get a better view.
Nagib right clicked ABSOLUTE_POWER.EXE and sent it to his Recycle Bin. He cleared his Recycle Bin, and closed his laptop.
She already had his name typed into the app. She needed only to press enter, and he would die. Another person might not have believed it, but Melina knew the ABSOLUTE POWER app that had appeared on her Android phone was real. Before she had even tapped the party face icon, she knew Jesus had answered her prayers. Tears had come to her eyes when she read the description. This was liberation.
He came in through the front door, closing the squeaky screen door quietly so as not to wake her. But she was already up. He looked tired. It took him a few seconds to realize she was standing in the hallway, phone in hand, staring at him.
“And where have you been?” asked Melina. It felt incredible to finally stand up for herself. She could see the confusion on his face. “Out fucking that whore?” she prodded.
“Why don’t you mind your own business,” he said.
“My business? I’m your wife, aren’t I? The mother of your baby? You don’t think a wife should know where her husband’s been all night?”
“Why are you acting weird? What I do is my business, we’ve talked about this. Just drop it,” he said. “What, are you recording me?” he asked, nodding to her phone which she was holding at a weird angle so she could press the submit button with the same hand that was holding the phone.
Melina stepped forward, making sure her thumb was right over the submit button in the app, right next to his name. “Stuart Clinton”. As soon as she pressed the button, he would die. She was more certain of this than she’d ever been of anything. “You’re a bastard, Stuart. A lying, cheating, wife-beating bastard. You deserve to die.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? I’m not a fucking wife beater! God, you’re so stupid! I’ve only hit you the one time!” he screamed. His face was turning red with rage. It wasn’t often she saw him so angry. This time, unlike all the other times, she was enjoying it. He was still taking off his jacket, but began taking it off more quickly. She knew it would be the belt next. If she wanted to say more, she didn’t have much time.
“Right. Just once. And the plate. And when you pushed me down the stairs.”
“I didn’t push you! I bumped into you and you fell!” He threw his jacket to the floor and approached her, taking off his belt. “But this time it’s gonna be on purpose! I don’t know what’s gotten into you-“
“There isn’t gonna be a ‘this time’, you sack of shit!”
His lips pressed together and his face contorted into that expression people only make when they’re about to hit someone.
Melina pressed the button.
He raised the belt to strike her face, and then suddenly his expression changed. He clutched his chest, looking down even though nothing was visibly wrong. When he looked up at her, all his rage was gone. He looked like a wounded puppy, wondering why it had just been kicked. Then a moment later, he was on the ground, dead.
Melina realized how heavy her breathing was, and that her hands were trembling. She set her phone down and screamed, tears streaming down her face. Finally, God had saved her. Finally, she was free.
Viktor had been invited to the SAFE-AI AI Safety fundraising event at the Four Seasons Palo Alto last minute. It was important that he network, but he was an introvert and found such things difficult. In the pre-function room before the event, others had been gathering in small groups and greeting each other, but he mostly stood in the corner, trying not to seem too awkward. When the ballroom opened, things got even louder, and he was even less comfortable. It was only when his good friend Khaled arrived that he felt more relaxed.
Khaled was a real extravert who had essentially adopted Viktor. He greeted Viktor with a smile and a firm handshake. He was so smooth. “How are you, my friend? Making friends with all these fancy billionaires already, I bet?” He smiled knowingly.
“No, not so much,” said Viktor.
Khaled took a seat next to Viktor, immediately engaging others at the table in conversation. Viktor couldn’t tell whether he knew them or not, but it seemed like he did. He was well connected. Viktor fidgeted with the brown-gold tablecloth and lost track of the conversation. Soon, the sound of his own name brought him back to the conversation.
“…Viktor here is working on a problem I think is just as important as solving the AI alignment problem. A kind of secondary problem.”
A woman across the table spoke. Viktor recognized her. She was a woman rich enough to buy the entire building if she wanted to. This intimidated Viktor, since he probably couldn’t even afford the tablecloth. “Truly?” she asked Viktor. “I’ve heard people say once we solve the AI alignment problem, then we can safely use the AI to solve all our other problems. Do you disagree?”
“Well…” said Viktor, getting his bearings. “Not exactly. But there is an assumption in your statement. You said once “we” solve the AI alignment problem. But who is “we”? If it’s China, that’s no good for us.” He looked to Khaled for reassurance, who gave him a friendly nod. Viktor continued. “You see, unlike nuclear weapons, which allow for mutually assured destruction to keep the peace, an AI first strike will be too quick and too destructive to allow for a retalitory response. If we solve the AI alignment problem without solving what I call the human alignment problem, then we are still as good as dead..”
“That’s why we need to be first,” said another man at the table. “If we can create AI first, we can use it to stop anyone else from developing powerful AI. And then we don’t need human alignment.”
The whole table looked to Viktor for his response. “Well, that only works if you are lucky enough to be the first to create superintelligent AI. Ideally, we would not need to rely on luck. I’m sure you would agree that relying on luck for solving the AI alignment problem would be a bad strategy. The same is true for the human alignment problem. You see-“
“What the hell?” interrupted the billionaire woman. “I just got a message saying the President just died. My friend at the White House said he just dropped dead.”
“Jesus,” said Khaled.
“And so did the first lady!” the woman quietly exclaimed.
“You don’t think they could have been assassinated?” asked one of the men.
“How could that be possible?”
“Maybe they were poisoned.”
“Poisoned how? The Secret Service controls all the food that makes it to the President, and they sample his meals before-“
“Are you sure they’re really dead? Can anyone else confirm it?”
At that moment, a microphone turning on caused a ringing sound throughout the ballroom. A staff member spoke gently into the microphone. “Hi everyone! I just wanted to let you know there seems to be something happening right now. We don’t have all the details, but several famous celebrities and politicians seem to have all died within the last few minutes. Please remain calm, we will bring you more information as soon as we have more.” She scurried off stage.
The attendees did not remain calm as instructed. Everyone started furiously texting and calling. People yelled. “Is this a joke?” Only Viktor stayed seated. He didn’t think panicking would help anything.
“This had better not be some kind of fundraising tactic.”
“What is this app that’s on my phone? ABSOLUTE POWER? Does anyone else have this?”
“Oh my God, the governor is dead!”
“Taylor Swift is dead… and Peter Theil!”
The billionaire woman across the table from Viktor dropped her phone into her lap and clutched her chest. “No…” she cried meekly, too quiet for anyone but Viktor to hear. She fell forward into the hors d’ouvres. People around her screamed. There was another such occurrence on the other side of the room. People started dropping, one by one.
Chaos erupted. People grabbed friends or lovers and fled for the door, dropping dead even as they exited the room.
“Come on!” yelled Khaled, but Viktor was frozen. Khaled tried to pull on his arm, but Viktor wouldn’t move. Khaled gave him one last look. There was terror in his eyes. Viktor just stared back blankly. Khaled fled.
As Khaled left the ballroom, he turned to give Viktor one last look. But his expression was no longer one of terror, but pain. He clasped his hand to his neck, then fell over, dead.
After all the rich people had died and the hotel staff had fled, Viktor was the only one left. It was finally quiet.
In the chaos and confusion, nobody had known what was happening. Nobody but Viktor. He knew in his bones what was happening. When he finally noticed that little party emoji icon on his phone and read the description of the app, he smiled. He was too late. The AI apocalypse was here.
Tim sat in his dorm room, looking down at the courtyard. None of them knew anything. They weren’t on Twitter, seeing what he was seeing. Celebrities and politicians dying left and right. None of them had noticed the ABSOLUTE_POWER.EXE application yet, and nobody had died around them. Tim had already tested it on his roommate, and to his surprise, it actually worked. His roommate was dead in their shared kitchen.
Tim knew exactly how to best use this application. See, a fool would use it to kill their enemies, or political opponents, or whomever. But Tim knew you could use this technology as an oracle. He looked out the window, selecting somebody to test on. Someone isolated, that nobody would notice right away. There was a woman in the dorm room across the courtyard from his, sitting on her couch, studying her linguistics textbook. She looked annoying. She would do.
The universe would now give up its secrets. First, a test. “Kill the woman on the couch in the dorm room across from Tim Minsky, if and only if 1 = 2.”
An error message appeared. “AI could not locate or kill person matching description. Reason: not found.”
Nothing happened, exactly as he expected. He smiled. Next for the clever bit: “Kill the woman on the couch in the dorm room across from Tim Minsky, if and only if P = NP.” By watching to see whether the woman died, he would be given the answer to the famous computer science problem of P vs. NP. With this technique, he could extract any knowledge from the AI, including how to shut down the AI itself, or bend it to his will. He pressed the submit button.
An error message appeared. “AI could not locate or kill person matching description. Reason: nice try buddy.”
Tim Minsky pursed his lips in frustration. Then he felt a sudden sharp pain in his chest.
“I found them!” shouted the deacon, carrying a heavy cardboard box. “There’s a whole other box of them!”
“Fantastic! Thank the lord!” said Pastor Bill. He was a portly man in a tan suit, tall only because he stood on a stool while giving his sermons. Pastor Bill stepped down from said stool to help the deacon set down the heavy box and start passing out phone books.
“Here! Every row take one!” he said. “Every row take one book! We only have enough for one per row. If you’re the person with the book, it’ll be your job to do the scanning. Each of you start on a different letter, so A, B, C,” he said, pointing at different pews, giving each a letter. There happened to be exactly enough letters for each bench. “When you find a name, call it out. The person next to the person with the book, we’ll call you the designator. You designate a person to type out each name. The spelling doesn’t have to be exact. It’ll work. You have my guarantee.”
The phone books were passed backward from row to row. There weren’t enough for all the pews, and the remaining rows waited, phones in hand, for the deacon to bring the second box of phone books back from the basement.
People started calling out names.
“Zahrah Rachid?”
“Haja Atifa!”
One person would call out the names, another would assign the names to the people with the phones, and those people would type the names into the ABSOLUTE POWER app and click submit, killing the named person.
“Duha Abid ar-Raheem? Rahim?”
“Mohammed Ismat!”
“That’s good!” shouted Pastor Bill, marching around the room. “Let’s try to keep up a good rhythm! Remember, you don’t have to just be yelling out Muslim names. You see any Jew names in there, make sure to call those out, too.”
“Jacob Braunstein!”
“That’s good!” yelled Pastor Bill. “I wanna hear more names like that.”
“What about Chinese?” asked one worshipper.
“Skip ‘em for now, we’ll get ‘em on a round two. For now, let’s focus on the most satanic and most evil names. The real invaders and corruptors of our peaceful town. I’m talking about Jews. Muslims. Blacks. Save the Mexicans for round two. And violent criminals, too. Anyone you know is a trans, call them out, or if they’re a gay, unless they’re with God like Johnny Wexler. Atheists too, if you recognize any. But mostly focus on the main ones: Jews, Muslims, Blacks.”
“Nuri Johnson. She black.”
“Hamida Asiya!”
“What about Henry Cronenberg?” someone asked Pastor Bill.
“Anything with -berg, that’s a Jew name! Type it in!”
The deacon came up from the basement with the second box of phonebooks, enabling them to double their bandwith for righteous murder.
“Pass ‘em out, quick! The end times have arrived, everyone. When you show up to the pearly gates, you wanna be able to say you did your part, do you not?”
The whole church was in a frenzy. Pastor Bill looked around and smiled. He was doing God’s work. Finally. He had been sure the end times would come in his lifetime. He did not anticipate they would come in the form of an iPhone application, but the fact that God could integrate His powers with modern technology was just further proof of His greatness. Soon, he and his followers would be taken to heaven to be with Christ. He could only do his part in the little time he had left.
There was a feeling of something bursting in Pastor Bill’s chest, followed quickly by pain and a feeling of faintness. “I’m commin’, Lord,” he grunted out as he fell to his knees. He smiled through the pain. Before he lost consciousness, he caught the eye of Hardy Smith, the local teenage troublemaker. Hardy looked at the priest sidelong, holding his phone like the others. He seemed guilty of something. Well, whatever it was, it was in the Lord’s hands now.
Tomiko looked up at the streak of innumerable stars powdering the sky. She had never seen anything like it. She had lived in the city her whole life, but with the light pollution, the most she could ever make out was a few dozen stars. Seeing the full Milky Way overhead made her feel small. A breeze chilled her shoulders, and she pulled her cardigan together for warmth.
She didn’t have time to keep staring at the sky. She resumed her fast walk down the dark street, keeping an eye out for anyone. It was best not to be seen by anyone. Not hard, given that all the street lights were out. The city had cut the power, hoping to stop people from using the app. But people’s phones and laptops still had battery charge, and the application itself seemed to function somehow even without internet access. The city felt lonely without all the lights. And the people. Even at this time of night, Toronto would normally have had people walking around. But now the city was quiet, and lit only by the uncountable stars above.
On her way to the cafe, she ducked into an alley to let one of the police vans pass by. It blared its sirens briefly, then broadcast a message with its PA system.
“Do not use the ABSOLUTE POWER phone application. Do not use the ABSOLUTE POWER computer program. These programs are illegal and unethical! Stay indoors and wait for further instructions!”
They blared their siren again and then repeated the same message. They had been patrolling the streets repeating the same message for hours. It was almost surprising that nobody had tried to kill them. Tomiko wondered what percentage of people were actually using the app. It couldn’t be very high, but it didn’t take many. Tomiko waited until they were gone, then kept walking.
She crossed the road. There was a dead body in the middle of the road. It was not the first she’d seen on her walk. She stepped around it, heading to one of the only places in the city that had its lights on.
Alvin greeted her at the door of the Page One Coffee shop. “Come on, let’s get you up to speed. Since the phones cut out, we’ve identified three more killer groups, and another anti-killer group. The largest group is still the one in China. We think they’re going alphabetical through a list of American names based on voter registration or social media data. They’re killing dozens every second, but they’re still on the letter A. As you can tell,” he said, gesturing to himself and smiling nervously.
“This is Vitaly. He’s doing the data extraction.” The man called Vitaly looked up briefly and nodded at Tomiko. “He has a script that’s screenshotting the app every few milliseconds, and he’s doing OCR to get the names, since you can’t copy from the list. Every time someone uses the ABSOLUTE POWER app to kill someone, he gets their name and their victim’s name and stores that data. From there, he’s sending it to Jody so she can do her cluster analyses. She’s identified 36 killer groups so far. Most of them pretty small, maybe 20 people. But the Chinese one has at least a few hundred. The main killers are still individuals, though solo killers have been tapering off. Of the 36 killer groups, only four are anti-killer, including us. The other three anti-killer groups have accidentally targetted each other at least twice. Yash is setting up his Starlink so we’re hoping to get into contact with the others.”
The anti-killer groups were groups that existed to kill anybody who used the app. As names appeared in the “kill box”, like “Gal Imbi has killed Eliav Gwen!”, anti-killer groups would simply kill the first name. They existed to kill the killers, to try to disincentivize people from using the app and hopefully save humanity. It seemed to be working, but there were two problems: First, in order to anti-kill, your own name would appear as a killer. This was a problem because you might get mistaken as a regular killer by another anti-killer group. So the anti-killer groups needed to coordinate. Even then, if the regular killer groups noticed you were an anti-killer, they might kill you. The second problem was bandwidth. The app didn’t let you copy and paste names into the input box, so you actually had to type them out one letter at a time. And you had to wait at least a full minute after submitting one name before entering another name. This meant their anti-killer group could only kill a tiny fraction of the total number of people using the app.
“The Russian killer group has been stopped by the anti-killer group in San Francisco!” shouted Jody. “They’ve stopped killing entirely!” There was a cheer throughout the room.
“For now,” said Alvin. “Tomiko,” Alvin asked, “do you still think you can find a way around the copy-paste limitation?”
“Sure,” said Tomiko, sitting at one of the small, wooden tables and opening her laptop. “I just need to playback the keystrokes.” She quickly opened her code editor and began typing.
“Good. Once it’s automated, we only need to worry about getting more devices. Justine, how are we on the phones?”
A woman with thick, black glasses shrugged. “I haven’t heard from him. The walkie talkie is out of range.”
“Alvin,” said Vitaly gravely. “Only about a minute until the Chinese reach ‘A-L-V-‘.”
Alvin nodded. “I’m sorry I won’t be there to finish our mission. But you all know what to do! Jody, check again for individuals that have killed at least five people. Tristan, as soon as the Starlink is up, call the San Francisco group first, and you do the talking. Jody, once you have internet, cross reference with social media profiles to find a way to contact the other anti-killer groups. Tomiko, you know what to do. Ask Vitaly or Tristan if you have questions. Justine, as soon as Tom is back with the phones, get Harshal to help you connect them to Tristan’s laptop. As soon as they’re connected, we go after the Chinese killer group. Remember everyone, we are one of the only groups on the planet trying to save humanity. We have to do this. We must not fail!”
“Starlink is up!” Tristan interrupted. “I’m on a Discord call with the San Francisco group! Do you want to…?”
“Great! No, you go ahead,” said Alvin. “Tomiko, once you have it figured out, you’ll have copy your script-” Suddenly he stopped speaking and his face contorted in pain. He fell backward, hitting his head on the wooden counter before dropping to the floor dead. Tomiko stared at his body. Blood trickled from his mouth. She imagined herself dying in the same way. Her heart twisting in her chest until it ripped itself apart. That’s how it happened. She shivered.
She realized Tristan was talking. “No, we’re not automated yet, but we will be soon. Yes! 36 killer groups. You haven’t identified them? Then who are you killing?” Tristan sounded frustrated. The San Francisco group was evidently not as sophisticated as the Toronto group. “But what about the other anti-killer groups? There are at least four groups! If I find out you’ve hit anyone from the other groups- Yes! Do you not know basic statsitics?”
Tomiko’s fingers flew across her keyboard trying to do her job as quickly as humanly possible. The faster it was done, the faster they could automate their killing process. Right now, most of the people in the cafe were reading names off a TV hooked up to Tristan’s laptop and typing in the names manually on their phones or laptops. Once Tomiko was done, that wouldn’t be necessary. The killer names would be killed automatically, as fast as the phones would allow.
“What is happening!” screamed Tristan into his phone. “Who is killing you? Jody! Who is killing the San Francisco group? We’ll counter it! Just tell us which group!”
One of the people whose names Tomiko didn’t know coughed a spray of blood across the cafe and fell forward, dead. Then another died, falling backward and sliding off their chair.
“They’re hitting us, too! They’re getting our typers! Everyone stop typing! Just for-” Tristan himself clutched his chest and fell forward. “Fuck-” he groaned, collapsing on the ground.
Tomiko panicked. Tristan hadn’t been one of the typers, so his name shouldn’t have showed up on the kill box. Yet whoever was targeting their group managed to get him. How? How could they have killed him?
Tomiko’s eyes widened as she realized the truth. By describing him. You could kill a person with a description, as long as your description was unambiguous. “The police officer in the driver’s seat of the van in front of me” was enough. You didn’t need a name. As an anti-killer group, they hadn’t really needed to use this technique. They were only killing killers, and the killers all had their names in the kill box.
But what if you were a killer group, and you wanted to kill all the anti-killers, even the ones who didn’t have their names in the kill box? You could start entering descriptions like, “the third person to join the Toronto anti-killer group”, “the fourth person to join the Toronto anti-killer group”, and so on. By doing it that way, they could unambiguously identify every member of the group, even the non-typers!
Nearly everyone in the cafe was dead. Tomiko knew that since she was the last to join, she would probably be the last to die. She gripped the edges of the wooden table, hyperventilating, waiting for her heart to explode.
Maria Xol was born in a remote village in Guatemala. She did not spend the first years of her life speaking English, but Kʼicheʼ, a Mayan language. And some Spanish. Her captors did their best to beat both out of her. For a long time, she spoke only broken English, unless there was no danger of being overheard. At night, she would whisper in Spanish to the other girls, so quietly you could barely hear. But now, she could speak any language she wanted. Her pimps were all dead.
A john had died while he was with Teresa. Teresa died later that night. From the whole brothel, only Maria and Rosa had survived. Maybe because there was no record of their existence anywhere, neither in America nor in Guatemala. They had only been known in the hearts of their families, and in the avarice of their captors.
Nearly everyone else was dead, it seemed. The streets of LA were empty, aside from the occasional person dead in their car in the middle of the road. Convenience store cashiers were dead behind the counter. Inside every home was a dead family. Most of the world had committed a strange, mutual suicide.
The rich and the famous had gone first. That’s how the ABSOLUTE POWER app worked. If you knew someone’s name, or could describe them, then you could kill them. The only way to stay alive was to stay hidden. Maria was good at this. She could sneak through the city without the squirrels seeing her.
In the weeks since the world fell apart, Maria had made regular trips to the grocery store to get food for her and Rosa. She could tell, by paying attention to the dwindling stock, that she wasn’t the only survivor visiting the local Whole Foods. Coming here was a risk. But the nearest grocery store besides Whole Foods was twice as far, and Maria preferred the known risk to the unknown. She didn’t mind risking herself. Not if it was for Rosa. They were like sisters. She would do anything for her.
Before going in, she checked her phone. 13% battery. It was her third phone, and tomorrow she’d have to make another trip to the Best Buy to get another. She still wanted to find a generator of some kind, but swapping phones would do for now. She opened the ABSOLUTE POWER app, and typed in a description: “El ser humano más cercano a Maria Xol.” In English: “The nearest human being to Maria Xol.” She did not hit enter, but rather put her phone in her pocket. She was ready in case something went wrong.
She set her backpack down outside the store, then dashed in holding her breath because the rotting food inside the stoor smelled awful. She grabbed three reusable grocery bags from the checkout and ran back out, putting them next to her backpack. She took a breath, then ran back in. Holding her breath, she went to find non-perishable food. Rice. Pasta. Canned vegetables. Canned meat. Rosa had asked her to find canned tomatillos, though Maria told her there would be none. She didn’t see any. With an armful of cans, she ran out of the store, gagging. The rotting seafood was the source of the worst smell, she thought.
She ran in again after catching her breath. This time she wanted to get some apples and baking ingredients — another request from Rosa. She wanted to make a apple pie. Neither of them had ever eaten apple pie, and soon all the apples — and eggs — would be rotten. Maria didn’t know how Rosa planned to bake a pie without power, but Rosa was resourceful, and Maria trusted her. She started in the baking aisle, tossing sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg into the bag. Then she dashed for the produce section, throwing apples one by one into the bag. By the time she got to the eggs, her stomach was contracting, trying to make her breathe, but she held her mouth and nose closed with one hand. With her one free hand, she grabbed a carton of eggs and turned to run out of the store.
She slipped on a wet spot, landing with her arms touching the wet floor. “¡Mierda!” she wheezed. It was a slurry of rotting meat and vegetable juice. The eggs had also cracked open against her chest, and she learned they were all rotten. Abandoning her grocery bag, she bolted out of the grocery store.
Landing on her hands and knees, she gasped for air and then vomitted all over the sidewalk. She alternated gasping and vomitting, pulling off her soiled clothes and throwing them back into the store. When she had nearly recovered, she realized there was another person on the sidewalk, only about ten feet from her.
A woman. Older. She looked like she’d been homeless. Before. She had a grocery cart full of canned food and other items. The woman gave an uneasy smile, and waved at Maria.
Maria waved back slowly without smiling, still sitting on the sidewalk. They both stared at each other, neither saying anything. For nearly a minute they stared at each other, studying one another.
The woman pulled her phone out of her pocket and frantically started typing into it.
“Atit tzi!” cried Maria as she reached for her own phone. Her hand only met her bare thigh. Her phone was with her clothes inside the store. “Kís! ¡Puta! Whore!” She scrambled into the store, blocking out the smell, and grabbed her jeans. The woman outside the store was still typing.
Maria pulled out her phone and pressed the power button to wake it up. She saw the description was still ready in the app: “El ser humano más cercano a Maria Xol.” (“The nearest human being to Maria Xol.”) Maria screamed, “Jat pa achia’q! ¡Perra estúpida!” She pressed enter. There was a crack outside as the woman’s head hit the pavement. The kill box, which these days only showed a new kill every few minutes, displayed a new line:
Maria Isabel Xol has killed Doris Clementina!
Maria crawled out of the store and panted for fresh air. Blood seeped from the cracked skull of the woman she killed. Doris. Maria didn’t feel bad for her at all. If Doris hadn’t tried to kill her, she still would have killed Doris the second she turned her back. Once Doris knew Maria existed, she could kill her any time, whether now, in an hour, or in a week. This was the only way to stay hidden. To stay alive. She couldn’t trust anyone except Rosa. She prayed that nobody would see her name on the kill box and decide to kill her. It seemed like that kind of retaliatory killing had ceased long ago, but you could never be sure. She felt exposed.
She looked back in the store at her ruined clothing. She would have to get more clothes from the thrift store on the way home. But she still had to get more food. The eggs were no good, but maybe she could get a premade pie crust from the baking aisle.
She held her breath. Time to get Rosa her apple pie.