Birds chirruped under the fresh morning aura of the solar wonder. Chlorophyll-infested plant breathing organs rustled to the tune of the visiting breeze. Cicadas scratched their wings from niche ecosystems unseen.

A pleasant start to a summer-squashed day.

Two pairs of ladies and gentlemen sat round a table in Café Eve-Jack. The largest person among them placed a slab of newsprint onto the topcoat of the table, for them all to see.

“A town without crime, eh?” Michael’s smile was drugged with sarcasm. “Not going to hold onto that title for too long. I’ve hidden the body in 207 for now. But with no landfill nearby to dump it in, I guess the Chasm will do.”

“More roadkills,” Adam read out the headline of the article covering nearly two-thirds of Vicilia Today’s current day issue. He continued reading the first paragraph. “An unidentified body, 26F, has been located near the northern end of our highway. Private investigator teams have concluded that the individual had received fatal impacts from a speedy vehicle.”

“T-this is bad,” Eve commented. “We need to be cautious.”

“Duh,” Radiyana rolled her eyes. “Although the damage is done already. We need to tread lightly and silently. Vicilia may not have a police force, yet. But the Authorities are certainly observant of the anomalies,” she brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Michael, I apologize for everything that had happened yesterday. I could build a prosthetic hand that will serve you to a greater extent than your God-given one did!”

“Aye, seems good enough,” Michaelangelo nodded. “The painkillers seem to work on the pain for now. Why did you even attack me in the first place, damn woman?”

“Haha~,” the Russian ex-scientist covered an accidental giggle with her hand. “Why, you still couldn’t figure it out, cute dummyhead? I guess all your brains have turned to brawn,” she playfully stroked her hair, her articulated fingers freely brushing past the keratin fibers. “If it shouldn’t be apparent enough, you’re the one who contacted your niece, Catalie, to attack a man fitting the descriptions of Adam, suspecting him to be behind something treacherous. While you’re not wrong, you were the culprit who began the chain of bloodshed. Thus, I simply returned the favor.”

Michael’s lips gloomily curved in a maximum parabola. His brown eyes jerked in eighty different directions per second, out of an internal frustration and regret.

Doestoevsky continued.

“It’s just like the Hindu philosophy of karma. You ordered Catalie to kill Jucas. Jucas killed Catalie, out of his own conviction. And I wanted to leave a mark to serve as a monument for remembering the lesson – to not judge people without solid ground evidence. Do that again and I’ll be sure to discard you to the Chasm.”

“Pardon me to interrupt but,” the detective stepped into the convoy of Radiyana’s monologue. “What’s this Chasm you speak of?”

“Ah, glad you’ve asked!” her eyes lit up. “Remember the large wide faultline in the ground near the northern and southern ends of the highway? That’s the Chasm. A pit so deep that you could call it nearly bottomless. Also, if you haven’t known about this elusive fact yet, travelling over the Chasm from the northern end brings you to the southern end of the highway. Vice versa for the opposite direction. As far as I can recall, the Authorities wanted to test a teleportation prototype via a wormhole generated through space-time. Whatever lies at the bottom of the Chasm is behind this unique physical phenomenon.”

“Gods be amazed!” Michael nearly jumped out of his seat in surprise. “Y-you mean to tell me that Vicilia is fake? All of this is jus’ some big corporation pulling our strings to do their bidding? Gyattdamn, those people must be insane!”

From what Adam could see, Michael was undergoing an existential crisis. Sweating heavily, his facial skin wrinkling and his body fidgeting around with a new kind of fear.

“Insane? Huh!” Radiyana lowered her gaze, her eyelids covering the blood diamonds of her eyes from the other three listeners. “The Authorities have done even more outrageous activities than you’ve all known, or ever will. If only my memories weren’t erased and reformatted, I’d have been able to narrate from my experiences. To the point that I remember nothing about them. Not even their name. So I’m just labelling them as ‘the Authority’ for referential integrity’s sake.”

“Well, then, what’re we waitin’ for?” Michael dampened his emotional instability. “Let’s just head out of this town and begin spreading the news about these crazy people in coats working on us day and night like lab rats! The world needs to know!”

“Sure,” the mature woman agreed. “But where to? And how? Nobody knows how much time has elapsed in the outside world. Whether there even ‘remains’ a world, is yet to be found out. And even if we want to get out of this pit of Hell, impossible-to-climb steep cliffs surround us. The highways in Vicilia lead to nowhere, recurring with each other in an infinite loop. The Chasm doesn’t seem to be a very neat option for escaping. There are no coastlines, so the way of water is also a crumpled-up piece of paper. From my suggestions, I’d assume that the only feasible option would be by air. But there exists no airport in Vicilia. We’re literally in the most landlocked piece of human settlement ever constructed.”

Adam instructed himself to pave a path out of the pessimistic overview laid out by his ex-wife. A wife that never was.

“Is there a library in Vicilia?” he asked the three common residents.

“Yes, t-there used to be two,” Eve decided to contribute to the conversation. “One of them had been d-demolished recently, for making s-space for a new h-hospital.”

“Is that so?” Adam’s artificial skills of crime detection were spinning their gear wheels in his default consciousness. “Perhaps there’s still hope.”

“Ah, my dear bumble bee,” Radiyana brought her face forward, resting her chin on her hands, with their respective elbows touching the table vertically. “I wonder what you want from me.”

“Simple,” Adam slid his elbow over the table to enter a more relaxed sitting pose. “We have no aircraft? We build our aircraft!”

“You sure about that, son?” Michael seemed worried about what’s coming ahead. He didn’t want to risk dying from an aerial accident. “Where will you get the materials from? And have you ever built one yourself? You must be high on nuts!”

“No, he’s right,” Radiyana replied supportively. “Adam’s brain has been gifted with knowledge spanning over a range of academic disciplines, including forensic science and engineering. I think he knows what he’s upto. Don’t ya, my honey-crispie?”

“Y-yeah,” Adam felt awkward getting treated around like a junior from a woman of the same age as himself. “The books will serve as references, and we could rely on Michael’s factory for the metals and equipment.”

“One small problem,” the factory owner criticized. “For several months, my gas cylinder factory has been out of order. Due to labor shortages. And… I lost my key somewhere.”

“Heed no worries!” Adam joyfully held out the relevant key from his pocket. “Here’s your key, sir.”

“Whoa, where’d ya steal that from?” the big man chuckled.

“Okay, the faster we get started on this is the earlier we quit being involuntarily tested upon by the Authorities,” Jucas stood up from his seat. His companions followed. “My clone’s Bentley is right outside. It’s a two-seater though. Maybe we could all hop in if we jam in?”

Eve and Radiyana immediately shook their heads.

“No, thanks, and also you deserve no thanks,” Eve’s female friend spoke out. “You two get right in. Go to the factory, drop off Michael. Return back here. I’ll be next and Eve will be the last.”

“One moment!” Michael’s voice boomed from outside. “Jucas! Your car’s ignition chamber has a wiring problem. See if there’s a toolkit inside the café.”

“Alright.”

It all doomed on him. He was observing all the various events he had experienced from the first day of extra sentience, in the current behind-the-scenes perspective.

He made his way to the back.

‘So this explains how I had found my car suddenly fixed the other day. If everything is indeed cyclical, then some things need to be modified. The last time I was here, the waitress in charge had fallen prey to my rude actions. No doubt, if a new clone of mine is bound to appear, my history will repeat itself.’

He found the toolkit. He also found someone else entering from the staff entrance.

Another Bouchie clone.