Apotheosis: Stories of Human Survival After the Rise of the Elder Gods by Peter Rawlik, Jonathan Woodrow, Jeffrey Fowler, Jason Andrew Page A

treatment was pretty dull, too. There were almost no other treatment candidates. Those that did come in during those long, awful weeks were what I’d risk calling unrecoverable.
    One of them – her name was Jamie, I think – was in the circle of lights with me for a while. She didn’t sleep, not once in three days. On the third day, when she was on one of the exercise bikes in the rehab center, she suddenly spun around and held her water bottle in front of my face.
    “Is this half full or half empty?” she demanded.
    “Oh, a little from column ‘A’, a little from column ‘B’.”
    “It’s half full!” she shouted at me.
    I started doing push-ups, deciding that I didn’t really want to know anymore.
    “It’s half full of half-piss!” she added. “Not a problem if you’ve got enough water! Enough minds! Dilution is the key! The big if, the plan !”
    The red-guard Tazered her, and she lost her footing on her cycle. The pedals kept spinning and her legs got all tangled up in them. It was really funny in a disturbing way.
    I don’t know where she got off to after that.
     
    *             *             *             *
 
    I knew the reds were coming for me. They gave me the SK test. Didn’t bother to do a confirmation test, just looked at the result, smiled and told me I was ready to be a patroller again.
    It was really odd, since I signed in under a completely different name, one that had all consonants. But then, these were the two reds that Katya usually had with her.
     
    *             *             *             *
 
    I got a new VR set screwed onto my head. They didn’t use those special anchoring sleeves after all. It really hurt. I mean, it hurt a lot.
    In my four months in the cage, things had really fallen apart. I could tell because nobody bitched about how bad things were. That meant things were fucked-beyond-funny.
    I was outfitted and got my first patroller assignment before the blood had even dried.
    It was nice to be back in the patroller section of the Underground again. I got to see it for about five minutes. Sinh Tong was still there, distributing the tools of our trade.
    “Hey Mick, good to have you back. We missed you.”
    “No need to shout Sinh, I’ve got a headache,” I said, pointing to the fresh anchoring screw.
    “One standard patroller rifle.” He held up the beautiful thing, opened the main chamber, the spear-chucker chamber, and the grenade chamber to show they were all empty.
    I took it, he handed me my ammo. It was less than I used to get.
    I noticed that my ammo was all that was left in the boxes.
    “Saber, knife, and of course – this!”
    “Ah, Daddy’s missed his little girl,” I said, taking back my old socket wrench and sliding it into my boot.
     
    *             *             *             *
 
    The disembarking room was a storm of orange and black. Patroller uniforms are stunningly ugly, but they keep us from shooting each other. Katya herself stood on the map table and fifty antennaed heads turned to look at her, mine included.
    She didn’t have a VR unit, just those damn eye-shields. Someone handed her a microphone and she addressed the crew. It was all I could hear over my new headphones. Very touching speech. Something about one of the broadcast towers getting a distress call from the Albany area, our moral duty to come to the aid of our fellow sane men, that kind of thing.
    I took advantage of the distraction to push my way up to the front of the crowd.
    Angie R. was there, right in front. She was looking up at Katya, listening intently to her uplifting speech. I knew it was Angie because she had some sort of razor wire chainsaw thing protruding out where her right arm should have been.
    I wondered if she would recognize me. I tapped her casually on the shoulder, the one with the real arm.
    “Hey Mick!” she said, a huge smile splitting the lower half of her