Robert had never been more proud of his son. From early age through early adulthood, his son Luke had always been a recluse and never one to socialize or make friends. So Robert was ecstatic when Luke came to tell him that he was planning to get married and was so excited to introduce his father to the love of his life.

But now standing in the forest, meeting his son’s bride to be for the first time, Robert felt more disgusted than he thought possible. Where did he possibly go this wrong?

“Son,” he said softly, barely more than a whisper. “Let us leave this right now and go home.”

“What’s wrong father? Don’t you love her, isn’t she beautiful?”

As if his son’s bride wasn’t horror enough, it was nothing compared to the smell.

Say, how are you? How are you I say? Have you heard of the town named Tooberaday?

It’s a place not too far You can get there real quick Although you might find yourself getting quite sick

In Tooberaday you see They don’t leave their homes That’s because every one Has its very own Tooberphone

The Tooberphone is a device that can do it all You can watch TV, surf the web, even make a call It cleans, it cooks, it reads you books It even will find you the best place for shnooks

So with all this convenience in their very own homes There simply is no reason to go out alone Especially when the world can be such a scary place Who wants to get eaten by a wild Whoobaface?

But this does make the town of Tooberaday sad There are no parades, no parties It’s really quite bad The people are lonely. They don’t have real friends They talk online through their Tooberphones But real connection? Depends

One day little Charlie Who wanted to play ball And really was just sick of it all Threw his Tooberphone out the window It caused quite the scene His parents cried “But Charlie what does it all mean??”

But not to worry Because within the hour A brand new Tooberphone was delivered Sleek, shiny, and powered

“Go on now Charlie,” his parents said “Go play some ball online with Ted” “Make a video or watch a movie in 3D” “You may not have noticed but this is the latest version, the Z”

So that is what life is like in Tooberaday Don’t you think it would be better to just stay away? Although their phones seem so convenient and fun There is just so, so much more in life to be done

“It’s Sunday, why am I getting a package now?”

My housekeeper gave me a confused shrug but left it on my countertop all the same and returned to her cleaning. I sipped my morning coffee and eyed the brown package suspiciously. Not many people knew what my address was. Hell, even what state I lived in. Something felt off.

I got up from my kitchen table and when I inspected the package closer I saw that there was no return address. There was however a card attached to the top of it. It had my full name and correct address on it so there was definitely no mistake here. Something about the handwriting made my hands start to tremble. By the time I opened the envelope, my hands were shaking so badly I needed to sit back at the table to read it.

Dear Tom,

Hello, you glorious son of a bitch. I know you’re terrified right now. I know because I still remember that terror. But I want you to take a deep breath. Another deep breath. Now read on.

You already know by the handwriting, and that gut feeling, yes it is me. You. I am you, writing a letter to myself. ‘Now why don’t I remember that?’ you’re asking. Well that’s because I’m you…from the year 2067. You don’t remember writing this letter because you haven’t done it yet.

I am writing because I need to warn you about your future. You are going to do some terrible fucking things. Society, mankind, Jenna and the kids…it’s all fucked. You’ve destroyed everything and your own legacy in the process. Think that people view Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong as bad people? Just wait until the name Tom Kinder joins the club. 

What you’ve been working on, the cure, I know it’s your life’s purpose. Our life’s purpose. It’s been almost seventy years and I remember the pain of mom dying from cancer. But what it is going to do to people, how it is going to mutate and infect others, Tom it is fucking catastrophic. A billion dead. Two billion more facing crippling, permanent injury. Jenna, Addie, Bill, Jonas, all dead. Society is damaged beyond repair.

This all happens in the span of a few months in 2029. I have been working ever since, for the past thirty-eight years, on a way to fix my mistake. On a way to reach you. Now, as I am nearing my life’s end, I finally have managed to do it. Tom, we need to correct our mistake.

But here is the conundrum and you may have already thought this out yourself. If I remember getting this letter then why have things remained unchanged? 

Well put simply it’s because I was a damn fool. You ARE a damn fool. I remember getting this letter, laughing, and ripping it up. Returning back to my life’s work, knowing that I could cure cancer in a matter of years, and I know that is what you are thinking right now. I know how close you are Tom. We are so close to solving it. But our cure, there is a devastating side effect that cannot be corrected. This won’t appear to you until it is too late. It CANNOT be corrected. I know you are too stubborn to believe me!

But you need to trust me. Trust yourself.

Get the package. Open it.

I turned away from the letter and grabbed the package. I furiously ripped it open, wondering if I’d see what I suspected.

Because I was right. I did know myself.

There it was, just as I knew it would be. A gun. It was already loaded. There was only a little bit remaining of the letter now.

Tom, you know what you have to do. It is the only way. If you do not remove yourself from the equation, your obsession to complete the cure will be the end of everyone. Do you want Jenna and the kids to live? The rest of your life, my life, has been an absolute misery and the only reason I haven’t done the same thing I am asking of you is because I needed to save them first. 

I know it can be different this time Tom. I know it can…because I didn’t have the gun when I got my letter.

Make the right choice.

That was it. My heart was racing as I put the letter down. A million thoughts ran through my head. I think I experienced the five stages of grief in the span of a few minutes. All the while my eyes couldn’t leave the gun, which seemed to be staring back at me from the package where it still lay. As if it was wondering what I was going to do. Would I have the courage to do the most selfless act of my life? Or would I do what it sounds like I did last time and continue the cycle?

But then I thought, why make a quick decision? The letter did say the incident happens in 2029. The shock of the moment starting to reside, and gathering my senses about me, I decided that really the only rational thing to do was to contemplate it all over and surely the right choice would come to me. I put the package away under my bed, ripped up the letter, took a hot shower, and made sure that I had my game face on for when Jenna and the kids came back from their trip later.

This was two years ago. I am still thinking about that letter though. Every day. I try to not let it eat at me but it can’t be helped. In a way, it’s like I have cancer. Society has cancer. We’re on a ticking time bomb.

But really…I am very, very close to finding the cure. Maybe this time I can account for any anomalies.

Captain Noah Dayton stood at the helm of his flagship The Ark, a colossal feat of engineering and physics. This metal and glass wonder was 1200 square miles, roughly the size of Rhode Island. From where he stood on his command deck, he oversaw a vast landscape of forests, mountains, lakes, valleys, and everything in between. Several cities and towns were spread out below. There were even more beyond what he could see. Above the landscape, artificial clouds hovered and sunlight was broadcast through a focal point at the top. The entire scene was encased in a gigantic bubble where beyond you could see the faintest hints of stars.

He needed everything to go right today. The fate of humanity was resting on his shoulders.

RiVo, his robotic assistant, came up and produced a small microphone from his silver hands. “Here you are sir. They are ready for your commencement.”

Noah took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

“HELLO CITIZENS OF THE ARK,” Noah’s voice boomed across the land. “WELCOME AND CONGRATULATIONS ON MAKING THIS VOYAGE WITH ME. AS IT STANDS, THERE ARE TWENTY THOUSAND OF YOU ON BOARD RIGHT NOW. WE WILL BE DEPARTING THE EARTH IN ONE HOUR. ONCE WE ARE OUT OF ORBIT, WE ARE NEVER TO RETURN. NOT THAT ANY OF YOU WOULD WANT TO..”

“YOU HAVE BEEN POSITIONED WITHIN THREE DISTRICTS OF THE ARK. WE WILL NOW BE FULLY ACTIVATING EACH DISTRICT BEORE DEPARTURE. PLEASE MAKE YOURSELVES COMFORTABLE AS WE PROCEED WITH THIS.”

Noah took the microphone away and looked towards RiVo. “All right, let’s fire them up.”

** Mary Vompas, of the famed Vompas family, sat on the balcony of her luxury apartment in the city of New Boston. She gazed out over the cityscape, pristine and colorfully metallic buildings in every direction. Hovercars abound, the finest luxury models, and although this was a lively city there was no traffic or chaos. This was a city made perfectly for the families who had gotten their District I passes.

Mary sipped on her martini and snapped her fingers to the burly robot in the corner who came over and started massaging her shoulders. She could hear her boorish husband in the other room screaming at someone from the front desk about why he hadn’t been notified about a delivery, something trivial and stupid as always.

Mary rolled her eyes and tried to enjoy herself. Come on now, she thought. This is who he was on Earth, why did you think it would be any different here?

Just then she caught something out of the corner of her eye. One of the hovercars had just crashed below. As medics rushed to the scene, Mary felt a sense of unease. Maybe New Boston was actually going to be a LOT like Earth.

** Jason Hackett, MVP Quarterback and seven-time Super Bowl winner for the San Antonio Vipers, was relaxing in his hot spring when he heard the booming voice of Capt. Noah Dayton. His villa was tucked into a mountain on the far side of the Ark. Jason was surprised that the sound could carry this far over but he’d be damned if it didn’t sound like the voice of God himself.

It was a shame that only a couple of his teammates were able to obtain passes onto the Ark. The other Hall of Fame inductees. Even at that, and much to Jason’s surprise, he had to settle for District II passes. Not that he was complaining, his mountain villa was like nothing beyond his wildest dreams. With an array of robotic staff ready to tend to every need of his family’s, and a garage filled with a fleet of luxury hovercars, it really was perfect.

Still Jason couldn’t help but feel a little emasculated at being denied entry to District I. It made his mind race, wondering what sorts of things could be going on up in New Boston or Kennedy.

Just then, he felt the ground shake below him. He then heard a huge CRASH and looked below him as a jet black hovercar blasted out of his garage and took off across the desert below. His wife came running out, asking Jason if he had just seen what happened.

“Oh hell no,” he cried. “Was that the limited edition Vortex?!”

** Trevor Bast was a young man with a bad gambling addiction and nasty drug habit. Somehow he had wandered into acquiring a District III pass from a late night bet in a Vegas casino, and the rest is history baby. Frankly Trevor had no idea how they even let him on the Ark pass or not, he saw the other people here and he was clearly not of the same pedigree. All the same, they situated him nicely with a ranch-style house nestled in a forest along a nice riverbed.

It was tranquil and relaxing. Like something out of a Hemingway novel. Trevor hated it and left immediately.

He marched for an entire day and a half, looking for some sort of action. He came through a small town called Armstrong and stopping at their pharmacy, was dismayed to hear they didn’t have any Zodone.

“The fuck you mean that’s only in District I? Are you crazy?”

“Sorry sir but I am not programmed to know why Zodone is not available here. The closest available resource is located in New Boston at-“

Trevor was already out the door. He walked for several more hours, crossed a border sign that said District II, and eventually came upon a sprawling villa tucked away up in a mountain. He then heard a booming voice, the voice of Captain Noah Dayton announcing they were departing, and his sensitive hearing brought him to his knees. Oh man, he was really going through the withdrawals now.

He hadn’t had his fix for almost three days now and he felt himself becoming more and more a slave to his impulses. His animal brain was now taking full control.

“I bet these rich fucks got a garage,” he said to himself. “Let’s have some fun”.

---

Captain Noah Dayton sat with his head in his hands, having been informed of a hovercar crash in New Boston that left five people dead, including the driver.

“RiVo, how did someone from District III not trigger the alarms when they crossed over?”

“The borders were still in the process of being activated sir.”

Noah sighed. He glanced out a small window, looking at his creation. “We couldn’t even leave Earth without already finding a way to kill ourselves. Maybe we really are damned as a species…”

RiVo paused. His robotic mind had no idea what to say in response to that.

“Shall we carry on with the departure sir?”

It was always raining in the small English town of Kinsey. Most of the residents found it cozy and peaceful. That is anyway until Mr. Madsen started showing up.

It would happen once or twice a month. Mr. Madsen, dressed always in his long black coat and holding his black umbrella, would stroll about the neighborhoods of Kinsey. It didn’t matter whether it was pouring rain or just a drizzle. In fact, sometimes the heavier the rain the more likely he would be to appear. His pace never changed, it was remarkably consistent no matter the elements, and he would not be deterred from his path.

Sometimes the residents would catch Mr. Madsen whistling a tune. Sometimes they would hear him reciting poetry, or quoting some passages from a book. On rare occasions, an unlucky resident may find Mr. Madsen coming up their walkway to their front door. At this point, you would likely feel a pit form in your stomach as you hear the rap rap rap on your door.

None of the residents ever opened the door for Mr. Madsen. If he ever knocked, they would sit in fear and silence until he gave up and returned to his walk. He was never very persistent; he would normally give it two or three tries and then turn back. The residents speculated about what he could possibly want. It was the horrifying mystery of it all that lingered above the town.

You see, Mr. Madsen has been dead for twenty years. He had lived a quiet life in Kinsey with his wife and adult son, who it had been rumored was suffering from severe mental illness. Well those rumors turned out to be true it seems as one fateful night, Mr. Madsen’s son shot both him and his wife in bed before turning the gun on himself. It was the most gruesome murder the town of Kinsey had seen in over a century.

Now as I tell you this, you probably haven’t noticed its started to rain. Pretty heavy by the sound of it. You hear a faint tap on your door. It’s a polite but insistent knock. I don’t need to tell you who it is. You already know. It’s him.

What do you think? Should we let him in…and finally learn what Mr. Madsen needs to tell us?

Since I was twenty, I’ve lived two separate lives. By day I am John Hardin, a Managing Partner at Caldwell & Associates, and a loving husband with three adorable kids. By night I am SnakeMan, protector of the peace and terror to the criminal underbelly of Phoenix, Arizona.

I have stopped fentanyl from crossing our borders. I have taken down everything from local dealers to drug kingpins. I’ve stopped murders, rapes, kidnappings, and everything in between. What Spider-Man is for New York City, and Batman is for Gotham City, that is what I am for the southern border of this great country.

But I have been fighting crime now for over thirty years. I tire easily, I make more mistakes than I used to, and I am afraid now that any escapade could be my last. I love this city and my country, but I love my family above all else.

Now I need to be there for them. And I am ready to tell my family the truth about my identity.

I see Lauren, looking radiant as ever, standing out on the balcony from our bedroom. She stares into the night sky as she sips her glass of wine. I come up behind her and she gives no reaction when I put my hands on her shoulders.

“Honey,” I say softly. “I need to tell you something.”

She turns around to face me and it’s hard not to lose myself in her captivating gaze. But I can tell she’s been crying. Something’s wrong.

“What is it?”

She wipes her tears away and shakes her head. “John I-I know what you’re going to tell me.”

I can’t help myself, I laugh at this. “Lauren, baby, I promise you don’t.”

But she pulls away from me. “Oh no John, I do. Yes, you’re SnakeMan. The protector of our southern border.”

I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. The way she says it so nonchalant, so dismissive.

“H-h-how did you know that?” I whisper.

Now the tears are back and streaming down her face. “John, you have told me this exact story every night for the past twelve years.”

“That can’t be true,” I say. But I feel stuck in a dream and I am starting to doubt my thoughts.

“It is John. I don’t know what to do anymore. We’ll call Dr. Mott in the morning, he swore to me this new medication would be different.”

“NO!” I scream. “Lauren, you fucking listen to me now! Don’t do that. I am not crazy and I’ll prove it to you.”

I walk across the bedroom to our closet. I’ll show her where I hide the SnakeSuit. I hear her collapse on the bed behind me, just bawling at this point.

As I go to move our dresser, a cold shiver runs down my spine as the secret compartment I installed years ago is nowhere to be found. What the fuck? I feel my heart beating in my throat. No, no, no, no. It can’t be.

I now bolt out of the bedroom, racing through the house to the basement. I pass Cody, my fourteen year old, sitting on the couch watching TV and cracking open a coke. He sees the intensity in the face.

“What’s the matter dad? Going to look for the CobraCopter?”

The tone in my youngest son’s voice, the mockery, stops my dead in my tracks. “You know too?”

He now gives me a look of pity as he guzzles his soda. His expression hurts me more than anything I’ve ever known. “Yeah dad, I know. So does Melody, so does Sam.”

I stand there staring at him. I don’t know what to say.

“Mom! Can you come get dad? He’s having his episode!” Cody has already turned back to his TV show.

My fists clench. “You lying piece of shit.”

Cody looks away from the TV and I see the fear in his face now. “Huh?”

Before I can think it through, I take the lamp from the coffee table and throw it against the wall. It shatters into a million pieces. “I SAID YOU. LYING. PIECE. OF. SHIT. SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!”

I am now hurling pictures, toppling over bookshelves, throwing plates. I punch through the TV as Cody screams. I hiss at him. Lauren has now ran downstairs to find my chaos and is screaming at me herself in between bouts of tears.

Hours later, when most of the house has been demolished, they come to take me away. They find me out back smoking a cigarette. I stare out at the empty black desert and mountains beyond. The stars are bright tonight. As they lift me up and bind me in a jacket, assuring my family that I’ll be just fine and not to worry, I fixate on the desert. I see a rattlesnake slither past. Then another. And another.

Soon I see swarms of rattlesnakes, my friends, writhing in the desert and begging me to come with them. Come have one last night with them, dancing under the stars and fighting crime wherever it is to be found.

Oh if only I could my friends. If only I could.

The town of Chester was a quiet New England town that had the reputation for being cursed. This rumor had been in existence since the town’s first settlers had burned a witch at the stake and the stories piled on from there. Murders, disappearances, they seemed to happen frequently in Chester. Maybe every town was like this and the stories were blown out of proportion. But then the Vanishing Week happened, and nobody ever looked at the small town the same way again.

Sunday. June 12th, 2013: The first disappearance was a child wearing a Spider-Man mask named Tommy, who had been standing by himself waiting for the school bus. Then Joe Collier the chief of police never showed up to work, and his wife didn’t hear him leave in the morning. Susie Evans left her office for lunch and never returned.

Monday. June 13th, 2013: Three residents of a nursing home were found missing from their rooms. A teenager named Chris Bowen went on a run. His mother Charlotte called her husband frantically after he had been gone for two hours and unresponsive to her calls and texts. David Bowen said he would leave work immediately to come home. He never did.

Tuesday. June 14th, 2013: School Bus #54 didn’t report in after picking up its full route of children in the morning.

Wednesday. June 15th, 2013: Helping to coordinate a manhunt, Tom Wright led a group of people into the woods to search by the river and the old mill nearby. He led ten people in and by dusk they were searching for three of them.

Thursday. June 16th, 2013: All residents were ordered to stay at home under emergency instructions from the mayor and acting chief of police. Still, four entire families - the Turners, the Gesickis, the Browns, and the O’Briens - were never seen or heard from again.

Friday. June 17th, 2013: Ten patients disappeared from hospital rooms and twelve infants disappeared from the delivery room. This time detectives had surveillance. However when they looked through the footage, there was a full minute missing, as if someone had been able to get in and cut it.

Saturday. June 18th, 2013: The mayor was reported missing. This was the last one.

---

Sunday. June 12th, 2023: A young man Nathan is hiking in the woods with his girlfriend Nina. They come across the ruins of the first settlement of Chester. Nathan explains to Nina that this used to be a historical landmark, back when anyone cared about this town. Before everything went to shit. Walking through the ruins, Nina sees an old stone building mostly intact that Nathan says was the schoolhouse.

She sees a figure in the entrance, something that looks like a young boy with big white eyes. Something that looks like…no, it couldn’t be. He beckons her to come closer. There are others behind him, hiding in the shadows. But when she blinks, he has disappeared.

A shiver runs down her spine and she begs Nathan to get out of here immediately. He gives her a funny look but obliges. Later on, when she has had a chance to explain to him what she saw, over hot chocolate and cuddled up with blankets on the couch, all Nathan can do is laugh it off.

“No way,” he insists. “You did not see a four-foot tall Spider-Man standing in one of those buildings..”

Sgt. Ben Markin wiped the sweat and dirt from his face and surveyed the barren wastes around him. After days of warfare against the Zi Clusters, the wretched bugs were finally retreating back into their holes. The ground was littered with miles of carcasses, mostly Zi claws and abdomens but plenty of Markin’s comrades as well.

Let the Zi have this shithole excuse for a planet, Markin thought. After these last three months of being stationed on Prixin, he was ready to get back to his family on Earth-Ten. If the transports could finally land safely, he could be back on those golden beaches in seventy-two hours time, with Sara and the boys in his arms.

Standing behind him, Lt. Chris Pennington crinkled his nose. “What’s that awful smell?”

Before Markin could open his mouth, an explosion came from behind him. Turning around, he came face to face with a humongous Zianth, one of the largest he had seen. This one must be a lead, he thought as he quickly realized his rifle and the squadron ran up behind him.

Pennington shouted “Quick now boys! One last sad sap to put out of its misery before we go!”

The Zianth was already charging its laser cannon, a pulsating red light coming from its claw.

“Fire, now!”

Ten sets of blue lasers shot forth from their rifles. Each one was a direct hit on the Zianth but it barely reacted. This didn’t give any of the men pause, they were used to this now and each got out their protector shields to block the impending blast. When it came a few moments later, the ground shook but the men were protected. But their shields would quickly wear thin.

Markin looked at the Zianth, right into its ugly face, and saw its red beady eyes. They wanted nothing but death and destruction. The Zianth had no conception of love, attachment. How could it, being the disgusting brute it was?

Then a thought came into his head. “I do love.”

Then another one. “Please. I have a family. Don’t kill me.”

As he fired another blue beam into the creature, he now saw more in those red eyes. He saw tiny pupils of white. And as he saw even closer, an endless ocean of white and warmth.

This creature does have a family. It does know love. In the span of a second, Markin saw this Zianth’s entire life. He saw the entire history of the Zi. How this was once a beautiful planet, with marvelous cities and breathtaking crystal white oceans. The Zi were an incredibly accomplished people.

“I do love,” the thought lingered in Markin’s head.

“I do love,” he said aloud. Pennington turned next to him “The fuck you say?”

Markin looked at Pennington, the man who had been fighting alongside him for the past three months. His friend…no his brother. How could he say something like that to him?

“I love, Pennington. I love.”

“Ben I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about but if you aren’t going to help, step the fuck back! One last round should cut through to this fucker’s organs.”

Markin felt hurt. Why was Pennington filled with such hate? Markin couldn’t have that. He turned his rifle towards Pennington and shot a blue blast right into his face. As Pennington disintegrated, he heard the gasps and screams of disbelief.

“Quick, Ben’s been compromised!”

Eight rifles rose up towards Markin and eight blue blasts met him head on.

‘How warm’ was the last thought that went through his head before he compressed into molecules.

In the next instant, the Zianth fired a particularly charged red blast head on at the squadron and evaporated them.

The Zianth then crawled away back towards its hole. If it was lucky, it would catch one or two of its dead brothers fresh on the road and have a fine dinner later.