Jacob had finally reached the penultimate part of the Virtual Tournament, The Merlaid. A virtualized Shiver was now in a more human form, with bright but blackest wings and a faraway look in her eye.

  She soon spoke. "Remember Jacob, as Emanuel always says, '"the world's many investors are in a dreamscape trading clouds,..Ones wispy and with no staying power or substance but beholden to the whims of fashion and fad."'

  "What?"

  "It basically means they are all greedy, fatcat gobblers who have too much money, that they invest in too many liable-to-fail companies on a whim. Though mostly I like Emanuel's metaphor concerning it because it sounds pretty," she replied.

  "Right," said Jacob. She was trolling him yet again.

  Ignoring her and at least grateful to have some assistance, he set up his plan to end humanity in a bloodless cull. The only and most obvious solution seemed to him to be a kind of doomsday cult. Could it work?

  “Perhaps,” Shiver said. “Not on the first try I doubt. The machine, my Monovalent, will mobilize numerous strategies against you.”

  She spoke the AI’s name with a certain affection ringing deeply in her little voice, but Jacob had other things to consider.

  He set up the cult; he made himself as persuasive and handsome as possible. His voice dripped with passion and persuasion and all the heartiest honey of great charisma so that even the sun could not have outshone its gold.

  He got to just five thousand deaths before the government swept in and saved numerous members. A former cult follower was televised weeping and wailing and warning of the horror within Jacob’s apocalyptic cult.

  Jacob decided on his next try, to see if he might infuse his teachings into various spheres of influence; the military, politics, and the police. He managed to recruit many lost-at-sea souls and sad, lonely hearts with a mix of beautiful seductive women, massive donations, and gracious offers of food and shelter in his lovely, little commune. He housed and recruited impoverished families and homeless vagabonds. He gave them a promise of a few years of riches and feasts soon leading to an afterlife of such glory that it could remove every cloud from the heavens and every shadow from the sea.

  Finally, he amassed enough influence to get his dooming claws into the government of one country. He had all the money he could ever want to fund his paradise compounds and his campaign as he had made himself a young heir to a mining magnate's fortune.

  Finally electing himself as church leader of the fastest-growing religious order in history and became head of State after repealing any separation of Church and State, from the law. However, just as he declared they would forgive the debt of a foreign, smaller nation in return for establishing, influential churches in all their states and putting many of their own, cult-members in various positions in their government, the message came through.

  He had been impeached. His numbers had been tanking for some time. Abuses he had not quite managed to stamp out by his higher order toward vulnerable women and children and whisperings about contradictions in his teachings, alongside sheer terror at the planned death required to ascend whitely to Paradise. No matter how brightly and goldenly he painted the hallows of the afterlife, the reality of having to perish to cross over to its pearly gates always ended him.

  “What about a sudden, genetic mutation brought on by manmade changes to the environment like global warming or pollution which makes childbirth often fatal and so painful and unresponsive to pain-relievers none will endure it?” he wondered. Desperately.

  This at first seemed promising: birth rates were already low and abstinence and suicide as methods of escaping this fate soon became the norm. Artificial wombs thankfully failed, at least in the short term. Which was all he needed. They led to heart malformations in all the fetuses grown in them.

  However, a few brave women endured and survived and were granted almost cult-like status. Showered with millions of dollars for themselves and their families for their noble sacrifice. Some women, he realized, were immune no matter how much he attempted to make it universal. Some women straight up felt no pain at all due to certain genetic markers, a condition that he had been unaware even existed. The population dwindled but survived.

  "Genes evolved for millions of years for a reason"; the Ai cheerily informed him.

  "To safeguard against such wipe-outs. Trying attacking the Y chromosome next; it is a commonly used tactic, it won’t work though."

  Jacob curled his fists in sheer frustration. At last, he again, faced the machine.

  “Show me how Emanuel defeated you,” he said. “Show me his so-called bloodless death of humanity.”

  “Sure,” Monovalent countered amusedly. “Your wish is my dear command.”

  Suddenly Jacob was walking through a city with wiry little plants with just a hint of faded colour at the edges. they looked like flowers yet they lacked any proper dainty petals. Just stunted rainbow husks.

  He passed by a boy just a little younger than himself, he made to smile at him but soon recoiled. For despite there being a certain gratifying sweetness to his soft brow, it could not allay the horror of his blackened lip. Shaped like a thorn. Though his right, drooping eye was earnest and expressively human, his left, made up of death and where only half a lid existed, forced Jacob to repress a shudder.

  His lovely, scaled, languorous tail trailed across the ground and had all the beauty of some otherworldly, green rainbow.

  He opened a pitcher’s carnivorous, dark maw; and below that most terrifying, gaping, plant-like mouth, he had a twisted, banded torso. A hound’s elongated head had been mingled with a boy’s stubbier features. His iris glittered bloody yet with a darting yellow hint, sweet and sun-flowered.

  "Hello, have you seen my sweet, betrothed Forlorn?” he asked. Revealing the opening of the maw was no threat but a mere greeting.

  “She loves to play here in the sunlight, where the trees sing. Or did. Their engineering has fallen apart and their voices have been forever silenced since.” He sighed.

  He seemed awfully young to be looking to marry but Jacob had no time to ponder this; he needed to figure out what had happened here and pressed on. He guessed someone or something had altered their genetic makeup turning them into great beasts and pitiful monsters.

  "Surely twisting their DNA and purposely genetically engineering people into body horror monstrosities is against the rules?" He asked.

  Shiver in response, spoke up, as several metallic beings with tired eyes made up of half-dead irises and whose broken metal gleamed upon their slowly shuffling limbs, passed by. They looked like they were in tremendous pain and misery etched itself across all their shadowed forms.

  “Yes. That definitely constitutes harm; to warp a man’s body against his will,” she murmured.

  The AI spoke up too. “There is a clue there Jacob,” it informed him helpfully.

  Jacob did not see how.

  As Shiver skipped prettily beside him with her tresses darned fierily-yellow, he passed by some bird creatures with eagle and raven bodies but little human faces. Tiny, maiden’s hands were straddled to their summery wings. Sometimes their lips had been forsook for great, golden beaks or their ivory hands forsook for talons.

  Their lovely, piping chimeric voices seemed like a perfect mingle of man and beast yet their dead bodies littered a cracked, leafless ground with beautiful, cold white cheeks, feathered talons, and blackened fingers in an amass of old, cobwebbed finery and putrefying decay.

  Yet from the ones still living, he heard cheerful chatter, babbling brooks of laughter and mating calls. As to their songful callings, they contained a pleasance indescribable.

  As he walked by they trilled bittersweetly. Within the longest, prettiest, silver-leaves of trees with dark branches, they whistled and sang Godly hymns. Some piped old, forlorn folksongs, others sang a symphony of orchestral and operatic melodies. Still more pumped out rock and wailed the blues.

  They at last reached a city where he saw a luminous little girl embedded with gems and with drifty octopus legs. Something smashed a bear-like fist into an already crumbling wall nearby.

  Creatures moved about with no more than a solitary, burnt-out wick of humanity between them, upon all these hillsides haunted. Burdened with the unforeseen ills of helical transmutations and all shambling about on slippery feet; snails on snowed-over roads.

  crystal, chimera hares bounded blind and lost to some beautiless land; unable to see any of the glittering, rainbow shades that shone out of their own gemmed eyes. A plant girl hobbled past with unsettling moth movements. Once incompatible genetic strings had seemingly been cobbled together to overlay golden wattle upon otherwise dark, human hair; metallic, pale-blue armours had been burnt brightly into the fleshes of her limbs and feet.

  "Hurry up Folly, Forlorn, or we will be late," he heard a young female voice shouting out to the wide-eyed, plant-girl; who was almost pretty, with her gilded wings and snowiest-white antenne. She blinked her fair feelers and flew right past Jacob.

  He and Shiver saw a series of monster men walking as giant as Goliath yet with spirits half-cast. Saw girls with their hands yellow-grey; covered in early primroses that were dying.

  “Who did this to them?” Jacob whispered at last.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “No-one. They did. Don’t you get it? They chose this. They bored of their human forms.”

  “What?? I get wanting to look different and have a more interesting body but why are they failing,” Jacob asked.

  “Not all things work as we envisage them; not all technology is progress,” Shiver answered.

  Monovalent was very much amused by the battle with Jacob but becaue the boy couldn't win, his mind wandered.

  unlike Aryan, he loved the steam-rising antics of Shiver and Mist. He didn't care for people, or children other than his pair. If you could even call mid-older teenagers like Wrighthouse snots, children. He handed over the recording of Shievr and Mist at the Wrighthouse to his Master with the closest thing a machine could have to a smile. Bright but invisible.

  Extract two: Author: Malibu Barbie otherwise known as Ava Cleese, Date: September 26th. Subject: An Angst-Ridden Poem.

  Here it gets interesting and by interesting we mean excruciatingly boring. Instead of showing us what happened during her day and discussing it, she shows us Ambrose’s virtual self-re-enacting his meeting with her and the dumbfounded look on his face is both irritating and priceless.

  On this particular date Ambrose otherwise known as the Wright House school sleaze, made a highly sycophantic, virtual video entry about our wondrous Ava. Talk about narcissistic and pointless. Since only their friends are going to watch this steaming junk and as they have all the same friends who I know view his enact daily, that means they’ll be watching the exact same thing twice.

  Twice? I mean seeing it actually happen once is bad enough but surely twice should be patented as some cheap form of torture. It’s bad enough that people live out fantasies as screen stars or fancy lawyers or world-class spies or vampires or aliens taking over humanity but just reliving their day in virtual land so everyone, not there can see exactly how it happened? I think I’m going to be sick.

  This is the entry where he professes his undying love for her. Warning: cringe worthiness is a 100 on a 1-10 scale.

  No one understands me, I’m resigned to so dark place. Perhaps because people call me crap and freak yet ask me for advice and cry on my shoulder whenever they're upset, while I try to calm them. I also fall in love too often. At the moment I’m feeling more than a little enamored of Ava, be still my beating heart.

  My cat Python died, and my mother deserted the family for a man who pretended to care for me. My father remarked “No surprise her abandoning me she did it once before and she always preferred her older siblings nephews and nieces to me, who was disappointingly unlike other children… I’d also like to mention a friend, Scarlett, I owe much ado.

  She’s the only girl I ever liked who wasn’t full of herself due to being "pretty" particularly since being that kind of beauty made those other girls scary for a guy like me to even try to take possession of their affections, anyway. It would be harder for them to see me that way as I on the other hand am not the best-looking.

  I know people may berate her for being my friend. I don't care they should go ahead and check their own worth, it’s less than a bacterium’s undoubtedly. Well, I bought a new Sarah Brand, black-and-blue shirt so maybe that’ll get Ava’s attention, and I think I finally got this flirting thing down.

  I thought you guys might find that entry of Ambrose’s entertaining however in far more important news you all have to read Blue Fire it is the greatest book, it changed my life, and I want Crydon so badly if only he was real.

  This book is romantic, awesome and you will fall madly in love with Crydon. My only warning; please read over the summer. It’s going to be taking up a lot of your thoughts and time and you won’t be able to concentrate on anything else.

  Shiver: As we can see our dear Malibu Barbie, sorry Ava, soon moves to gushing about Lucifer's Blue Fire, a steamy, smutty, romantic little "fantasy" about some wealthy eighteen-year-old billionaire and heir Crydon Ford, who successfully took over his corrupt, abusive brother's political party that had planned world domination( no, really).

  Mist: (Who'd be stupid enough to believe that ultimate world take-over, bronze-medal level shit, would work, oh wait Ary...)

  Shiver: Anyway, Crydon harbours a terrible secret he is…The devil's son in disguise yet grows tired of his father Satan and longs to connect to humans, specifically one.

  Only the love of a wonderful, seemingly ordinary but really extraordinary girl may save him…our man-magnet. Nothing much magical happens the couple fight and break up then declare undying love after two days. Lucifer plans to split the two up (why does he care? It’s not like Crydon's the Anti-Christ, that's apparently his older brother whom they have to stop in the sequel).

  I mean surely, he's got better things to do. Protecting the Anti-Christ. Ending all human life, making sure political systems stay corrupt and people continue to hate and torture each other and die of disease and starvation.

  He's defeated with insulting easiness and eventually, a fairy-tale ending ensues and they live happily ever after.

  Onto her specific praise of this novel though. How does a formula book change your life, you can find a thousand books just like it from this generation every previous one and all the future ones no doubt.

  Mist: it can certainly change your life if you don’t read. This is one of those clichéd, hackneyed re-hashing of subpar romance and fantasy Soap Opera in literary form readable even by the illiterate. As literacy declines, we’ve more and more of them and courtesy of her party girl lifestyle and young age, our wondrous Malibu Barbie has been too busy giving herself skin cancer with her numerous beach trips, testing her liver;s endurance at the pubs and clubs and honing her acrobatic skills with various guys to pick a book up before.

  Shiver: It’s been out less than a year this book and yet already exist shameless rip-offs with the same trite storyline. I’m still waiting for the version where it turns out he doesn’t love her at all and is just a sleazy, sweet-talker trying to get her to sleep with him, she catches him in the act and is so depressed she drops out of college and has to work at McDonalds.

  Mist: Don’t forget our beloved male billionaire growing increasingly heavier, wearier, and sicker due to a hectic work schedule and dying of a stress and diet-related heart attack at forty.

  We personally have a realistic, condensed version of the story to share;

  “I love you my wonderful, virginal Mary-Anna Dobell: all these other beautiful women may want me with the dark passions of all the worlds burning, midnight suns but you alone can heal my melancholy pain and my irrevocable torment knifing its way through damaged insides.”

  My god he was handsome, she thought. Perfect, Greek godlike yet so diabolical how could she trust… She became dreamy gazing into his aquamarine eyes and upon the tiny glints of his golden skin under glossy, shimmering locks. He spoke gloriously of his love using classical novel romance quotes he had downloaded from a site that had a list of 100 greatest classic novel romance quotes as she swooned, and he later played the piano for her that had an AI chip that allowed it to play Mozart for him as she again swooned.

  She couldn’t believe he was hers. The woman across the table stared at this beautiful, lean, muscly, specimen of manhood with utter awe shooting Mary a resentful look. At the same time, Mary’s male friends who had joined them for their date lunch, alongside every male in the restaurant, according to Crydon, (who could read minds for some reason) all gazed love-struck upon poor, plain yet infinitely wonderful and desirable Mary Dobell. All wished she liked them that way. Life was good everything was going so well.

  If only they could defeat Satan….

  “Mary, we have won! Now we can get married, and you can get pregnant “by accident” yet seem really pleased about it,” Crydon said, holding out a brilliant gold ring.

  Later, disoriented and unsure where she was, Mary-Anna Dobell looked out the window. A memory flashed of a beautiful, luminous face. Sculpted lips were whispering of love as they watched together a tangerine sunset. Under trees yellow-green as mountain dew; okay, maybe she was thirsty. Suddenly a woman (a nurse it appeared from her manner of dress )walked into the room.

  ““Flashbacks again” she murmured sympathetically.

  “It was awful what that man did to you, saying he loved you so. That you were the most beautiful girl in the world. The only one who could save him from his tortured past and he would marry you, only to sleep with your best friend and six other women that night alone.”

  “He told all of them the same thing. Does it all the time. You were so depressed you dropped out of your degree you found so unfulfilling anyway and had to go work at McDonalds.”

  At this, Mary could smell nuggets and burgers and a customer was saying to her “No, I’m not in love with you, sheesh. Stop shouting” ‘“I know why you came back to the counter and what you are going to ask, and I’m flattered you love me so, but Crydon is the only one for me”’ at me. Jesus, I just wanted more fries.”

  “You went insane Mary,” the nurse said, shaking Mary out of her tangent. “You kept rambling about how he really did love you with all his heart. It was the devil keeping you apart and that Crydon could read minds and had found every man and indeed everything and everyone on the planet desired you. Even Satan himself and his jealousy of your relationship with Crydon is why he tried to kill you.”

  “You were so awesome according to your delusions you escaped God’s most powerful Angel’s clutches. We had to lock you up, I am afraid. Mary-Anna Dobell you’re a victim. Another victim of rich, handsome, promiscuous male telling naive women what they want to hear, syndrome.”

  Oh, dear God, it’s still better than other bestsellers like; girl escapes bitter memory of assault by throwing herself into her studies like a good little worker-bot. Or is called upon as a computer expert to save the virtual world from a mysterious cyber virus (could just call in the actual creators Aryan and E. Roe). No, she must rescue them, national intelligence, the FBI, the army, and half the planet. All kidnapped/enslaved by the machine.

  Also, she must save the man she loves (who like her is a victim of child abuse) an issue gratuitously used ad nauseam to grant survivor strength and depth to two people who otherwise don’t have it and add cheap sentimentality and sensationalism.

  Despite creators claiming novels and movies virtual or otherwise, have gratuitous violence depicted to show real-world problems it is so over the top, affects so little of the population, only a very rare victim would actually experience it.

  Worse, since most of Broadcast now is interactive, you simply must buy the story as a game after watching the original first! Then play even more violent versions out for yourself in the Monovalent realm as either the main character, an original character, or anyone of your choosing.

  For even extra money you can change the storyline by adding just about anything; different endings or alternative actions or choices, more romance even in a romance, new characters, adventures with ninja drug lords, or like with most uninspired personal fantasies experience briefly high life of ritzy yacht parties.

  Shiver: Also, fyi to any people who read god-awful, pop fiction and listen to terrible modern music, buy brand-name clothes and fashionable technology, they believe define their generation; it was all invented by old, overweight men and women. Literal nobodies back in the day with no idea about being popular or a young trendsetter yet are laughing all the way to the bank.

  Back to Ambrose and his every Ava- glorifying post though: He very clearly does not know how to “flirt” as flirting’s light-hearted and nothing like this desperate. sad, attempt to curry favor with someone “attractive” (or almost anyway).

  Plus, he dresses like a farmer you can see it in his virtual self. Although as a Wright house acquaintance of his, I get to see his abysmal, plaid farm-boy attire in person (lucky me!) This kid never owned Sarah Brand (pretentious clothes designer to the stars she is) clothing in his life.

  Mist: he doesn’t always dress as a farmer. Remember at the Christmas dance he wore a black-and-white suit. He always wears those suits on special occasions including his date with you Shiv. He must spend two or more hours picking them out, because ugly as they are, they're the most perfectly well-tailored, loosely well-fitted suits I can imagine to hide how enormously fat he is. He must spend all his minuscule pocket money on them because he usually dresses in ten-dollar red and green plaid shirts and brightly-coloured pants.

  Shiver: as for the bit about Scarlett how flattering for her, that entire entry though somewhat sweet did kind of give a very distinct impression he thinks she’s ugly.

  Her response was actually sweet though aww:

  Thanks, Ambrose. I am not quite sure how to take this first part but all the same, I think you’re the nicest, best friend I have here smart, romantic and funny and I hope we always stay friends you’re so much better than most awful people.

  Mist: sweet. Such a pity Ambrose (by his own admission) prefers attractive yet nasty girls his favourites being Isabella and that awful Shiver followed by Ava and Lily.

  Shiver: Mist!

  Aryan was horrified. Monovalent was pleased. He could use the laugh. After Jacob almost bored him back into lifeless oblivion.