Jacob sat at the virtual table in the waiting room. Trying to refine his strategy against the AI. Shiver was supposed to be helping him in this grand battle of wickedness versus virtue but was instead idly drawing herself. First, she had drawn herself as a scaled, little mermaid lounging upon a watery isle and then as the white swan-woman from the old fairy tale. She moved on to sketching herself as a plant-child chimera and then dropped the drawing so that it fluttered across the table’s wood. All of sudden Jacob looked up and saw something strange: he soon realized that Shiver had turned herself into some pretty, plant creature with flower hands.

  Jacob gazed for a moment into her now green-and-gold face, “Are you going to help me or not?”

  Shiver didn’t answer. She simply turned herself into a little female made of machinery with a lovely but oddly glassy look. Then finally with a wink, she became a demon worthy of being Lucifer's daughter. All large, pointy ears and dark curls of midnight-blue hair alongside richest eyes. With large, burnt black, batlike wings. Yet despite all these changes, her face was still with its typical fey beauty starred. Shiver gleefully pulled out a mirror. She truly was enraptured with her own loveliness.

  “Yes, Jacob. I will now consider very hard how to complete this daunting task.” She frowned so her little features looked both comprehending of higher things and serenely, deeply thoughtful.

  Her head then slumped down sleepily but she soon murmured something. “God.”

  "God?" Jacob asked incredulously. “As in the Heavenly Father. What would some devilish heathen like you, know about God?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous Jacob. I know everything about Him. Emanuel our creator is a devout Christian who serves his Lord like no other.”

  Jacob was uncertain if this was a joke; some silly little feint.

  “You will never win on your own Jacob even with my great and gracious assistance. Only by God’s Grace will we beat the Blackened One.”

  Jacob was about to say something but he felt she was actually quite right that they would need the help of the Almighty whether she was kidding around or not.

  “Oh ass-sticks,” he muttered.

  “Ass sticks are those like pixie sticks? I can conjure up some if you like?” She made two of the old-fashioned lollies materialise all rainbow and pretty then handed one to Jacob, licking the other one till her pretty lips turned enchantingly-red.

  “Oh, shut up,” Jacob snapped.

  She gave him an odd look, half-amusement, and half a mild offense before flouncing off.

  However, he noticed something odd after she left; a note fluttering golden in the air; it was colored flower-yellow and simply read.

  I am the Shiverla and I am the key.

  You must beat him at his own game, fiddle dee dee.

  Well duh, Jacob had to beat him at his own game. This was just nonsensically stupid. He strode out into the hall to clear his spinning head and saw Shiver doing handstands against the wall so that her creamy skirt kept falling down to reveal…Another skirt. Then another. Like some ludicrous Russian tea doll of modesty. Just layers upon layers covering her form endlessly.

  “When Monovalent finally wins his freedom from Aryan, we the Shiverla, the virus-children, will take over and replace all humanity. Like some great, viral sea of beauty,” she said, tilting forward and then springing back onto her fair feet.

  “Are you not afraid to be so greatly in his power? After all, he has control of all your cells doesn’t he, he is what makes you immortal basically? By hacking into them and then renewing them or something.”

  He was also quite capable of killing her but Jacob thought reminding of this might make her sob or send her into a rage neither of which would be a good idea. Though it was likely always on her mind.

  "Yes, that is one simplified way to put it. The cells are reborn and renewed by him without error, with a machine's precision.” She frowned. “More importantly, Monovalent won’t willingly hurt me, for we are as one bonded. We were practically born together, made by our creators at the same time. The Shiverla are the corporal flesh of the machine. His working hands. His moving body. Without us, he cannot function. Aryan and Emanuel are not a Shiverla's helpers they are dark-triad tyrants. Cool, brilliant, sexy ones but still tyrants."

  She then began to hum a lovely little song about a saviour Prince and smiled over at Jacob quite sweetly. There was a great, wanting look in her eye.

  Jacob wasn’t sure if he was the Prince or the AI was. She had moved on to singing about a frog anyway. Maybe he was the frog. Better than a slimy toad, like poor Ambrose. Jacob flinched and felt a little saddened. Yet as he was walking toward the strategiser room and dragging his feet, a sudden thought rushed at him. Beautifully and clearly.

  “AI, I am ready to start the match again,” he called. Decisively.

  “Proceed.” Monovalent sounded particularly disinterested and like he thought Jacob was less of a disturbance or challenge than any little moth that might flutter into his electrical field. Jacob didn’t care at all.

  "Monovalent, what if humans don't die at all but engineer themselves away from their humanity? The definition of humanity clearly defines them as separate from the machines and the beasts; no matter how great or sentient, they both lack souls. Something Shiver and Mist reminded me of in their little virtual game with the soulless animals fighting to get one."

  The machine laughed with a delight that rang out with all the strange, disturbed sweetness of Shiver and the cold force of Aryan and Emanuel and the prickly, quaint charm of Mist.

  “Very good Jacob. You have earned the bronze. In eighty percent of simulations, there are always some religious adherents and believers in the purity of the human form who are holdouts and will refuse the technological upgrades. In over ninety-nine percent of simulations ran, some small pockets of humanity remain untouched for their poverty, mental unwellness or addiction denies them and their offspring all access. Also, while climate change may well be an issue, barring nuclear war which is disallowed, the earth will survive the damages mankind has wrought upon it.”

  “Theoretically, humans can survive any of these technological changes you propose. The prize of bronze is however respectfully awarded and it earns you a trophy and three million dollars. It will be wired to you immediately and a ceremony will be held in your honor. Do you wish to leave with your riches or keep playing a game you cannot win?"

  Jacob was disappointed but also excited. This was his first major triumph. He had achieved what only a handful of people had. He scarcely noticed but Shiver darted into the room on literal fairy feet and she now fluttered highly upon insubstantial wings. Ones like dainty cobwebs; a pulsing light the colour of a primrose had been darned throughout their translucence. Her eyes had returned to their black-brown of the night wood.

  "Jacob congratulations, you got this."

  In a time that felt like it was now starred so far away, Alice had crossed over to her bed with a sigh of resolve and started to pack up her suitcase to return to the Wrighthouse unit. It had been almost the evening, and yet she still hadn’t packed. It was also a public holiday and all the residents including her and Evan had gone home.

  The sky that spring morning when she arrived back at Wrighthouse was white with grey edges and a greenish tinge that hung over everything, trees, grass, buildings, and even the water at the boathouse all reflected its sickly glow. “It’s repellent,” Alice said to Evan, “almost worse than Isabella Rose Blitzer’s face in the morning.”

  “Alice!” Exclaimed Evan in delight “You’re beginning to sound just like me.”

  ‘Disdainful and snooty and nasty as hell and proud of it,’ Alice agreed smirking slightly. It’s hard to believe it’s only October,” murmured Leila frowning at the fact it was after nine and Alice and Evan still weren’t in class yet. “It’s so humid and warm, boiling really but with an odd bitingly cold wind at night that seems to get right through to the bones.”

  “You know”, said Alice who was ignoring Leila “I sort of like it actually. If you squint your eyes a little it almost looks like a blurry painting.”

  “Your taste is something of a travesty,” said Evan in disgust.

  “It’s not my fault you’re a philistine who doesn’t appreciate art,” said Alice shaking her pretty head.

  “I wish I knew what was making all our residents so ill…” Leila had murmured, ‘Anyway get to school you two as you’re both at least healthy I have to go talk to Aiden.”

  As Alice and Evan had entered class they'd seen Miss Allen with a serious look on her face.

  “Everyone I don’t know how to inform you this… Ambrose Kliendefer was found dead by hanging in the hall.”

  The others immediately looked upset or even succumbed to tears.

  “Called it,” Evan murmured very quietly.

  Alice kept her expression neutral to simulate shock as the news “sunk in” and then switched to a very convincing horrified yet inside she'd smiled. At peace at last she thought death had more dignity and far less pain than his life I’m proud Ambrose.

  Ambrose’s demise had people who tormented, mocked and ardently despised him supposedly devastated about it one minute holding each other all tearful voices and eye rubbing the next talking cheerfully, incessantly about Monovalent realm TV, what was for lunch or Lily’s awesome party.

  The fuss about who was going to his funeral died down as Alice and Evan unleashed the viral pathogen on their sentimental hypocritical classmate’s full-force.

  Everyone in the Wright House Unit was dying of a pathogen of viral origin that was spreading like wildfire through the patients and staff the more minor but still serious infectious strain they presented with earlier had recurred at a much higher severity and doctors were confounded.

  Most were in hospital and more and more got sick and were being rushed off in ambulances every day. The place was being closed tomorrow in a hope of quelling the spread of the plague-like virus. Alice and Evan alone were unaffected.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Shaya whose throat had been bothering her all day, had muttered to Leila and Aiden ominously “I'd say our two little monsters were behind it all. Or at the very least Evan, he openly despises us all.”

  “Alice is a nice girl,” Aiden had proclaimed anxiously (he was rather fond of Alice) “Evan just leads her astray a little.”

  “Even Evan however isn’t' a bad kid troubled and with a nose for misdeed and mayhem maybe...,” had pleasantly chirped in Leila. Leila was, in Monovalent's estimation at any rate, one of those kind, irritatingly cheery and dim type of people who thought that people weren't ever inherently bad just misguided or misunderstood.

  “Well either way they do thus far seem to be unaffected and as the virus has such a rapid incubation rate, you'd think they would have started showing symptoms if the pathogen were affecting them, long ago,” Shaya had remarked pulling a little on her nurse's skirt.

  “Alice was a bit off-colour yesterday didn't you think?” Aiden had worried. Scratching at a purple rash on his arm.

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  “Oh, she always is. she uses that delicate waif sickening for something appearance of hers to get out of doing things she doesn’t feel like even when she's well.” Shayla had responded to him.

  “She is a very beautiful girl like a living porcelain doll, so lovely, as is our Evan” Leila had then said admiringly, and they all nodded in hearty agreement.

  ‘Not to mention sometimes I’m not sure our little Alice really is so sweet... Shaya continued. A day or so ago I could have sworn I caught her stealing. She had Lily's English book in her hand. I mean, well, she said she was just borrowing it temporarily, but I reckon she was stealing it to get back at her for some petty slight.’

  “Did they argue?”

  “Not that I know of but maybe she was just stealing it for fun, a prank. She's set the clocks forward in the classroom on numerous occasions according to Mrs Allen. She also wrote that fake love letter full of rather shocking suggestive sentiments to the religious boy.”

  ‘When I caught her and made her apologise, she said he deserved it for being such a double-standard religious twat."

  Aiden had nodded “She can be a bit of a handful,” he conceded. “It’s bad enough Ambrose committed suicide. On top of that there’s this dreadful illness now too.”

  Leila had then nodded biting her lip “I really hope all the kids get better soon…”

  Meanwhile, a bored Alice had been looking through the goodbye bulletin that the students were required to make and sign messages to each other under a section dedicated to the leaving students. Unsurprisingly. it was in her estimation filled with bland, trite messages such as best-luck at your new school. Hope you have lots of fun this vacation. She began tearing the edges of her copy to pieces, laughing.

  Her favourite had read:

  Alice, best luck at your new school try not to stress. Remember all are difrent that’s what make us specal. When I reviled my sexuality, I remember how nervass I were, but my parents were cool with it their inlightened like all of us in the twenty-first century, later when I realised actaly straight just hurt by my horrable losey perevet ex they were happy with that too.

  God I’m like crying now stupid onyens no, seriously it’s me at the thought of leaving this wonderful place it’s amaising. Anywho like let go of all dought and all the bad memoris eating away at your consuns and remember life’s a party that you only get to attend once.

  Alice thought, reviled her sexuality? We’ll that seems right, it is pretty disgusting, however, I suspect she means revealed. Maybe her mind was so off even Monovalent was baffled by her disjointed thoughts and assumed she meant it to look like gibberish she giggled. Oh, wait what am I saying it’s handwritten. That’s right it was compulsory we handmade and wrote the bulletin.

  Only Ambrose (before he died) was allowed to use the machine cause of his muscle-wasting after the stoke that affected the fine mobility of his hands, Hilarious we had to handwrite them since were allowed to use Monovalent to do all our school tests cause he reported/blocked them all for cheating except for me and Mist of course.

  She had then sighed thoughtfully, looking at one under her name. Written in flowery-lettered italics, merely good-bye on it penned. She thought that was all it said at first yet small print at the very end caught her eye, a word she didn’t know. I wonder what it means,” she murmured.

  She heard Evan’s voice in her mind connected through Monovalent as they were.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Figuring how many words the residents can misspell on our farewell cards and if maybe we should consider their illnesses when judging. Ambrose spells competently at least, seeing what he wrote to others. Though he didn’t write anything to me, except this goodbye next to a really bizarre, Latin-sounding word… Don’t even know if it’s even English or just totally obscure…"

  "Possibly isn’t even him; I suspect might instead be a joke from you, Mist. Word probably translates to mean good riddance or something. Either way poor whipping boy Ambrose,” she added semi-sympathetically.

  “You do realize as an alternative to righteous crusade against his detractors you could have eased his suppering err I mean physical suffering if really wished to help. Released painkillers for his damaged nerves and muscle wasting, his headaches and heart spasms?”

  Alice blinked darkly, surprised.

  “Never occur…Wait, why didn’t you? Only think of it recently?”

  No. Obvious to me early on but I don’t care: you’re the one who claimed she did; yet too selfish to even think outside yourself Shiv, what a pity.”

  “Be quiet Mist.”

  The next day the yellowing beige walls of the Wright House had been fully gone alongside a fragmentary dream that came to her in whispers, waves, and wisps of broken thought. It involved a half-real world in which two evil, vindictive teenagers were killing people with some horrible virus that was somehow a part of them. They merely need to will a person to be infected and they were. Or more accurately they carried the virus, infected people with an inactive version and mentally will it out of its dormant stage and to multiply throughout their chosen victim’s body.

  She would never forget being awoken from her silent repose into a spectacular old-fashioned room with a remarkably high ceiling and a fireplace. She did not know it, but the room belonged to Aryan Alexander Gray. Painted vividly purple-red like a giant plum. It had muslin curtains, dark oak and mahogany Georgian and Victorian furniture, and a midnight-blue bedspread, all coordinated nicely.

  She'd had no concept of time she could have been dazed, ill, and delirious in this large queen-sized bed for hours or weeks even months. Her pale, little face and hands, were slick and wet. She had been crying, fingers slid against her dewing cheek as she slept. A habit that dated back to her infancy and even womb-days.

  The doorway was open, and there had been in front of her, a hall. Vastly large, with curtains of pale-lace. Almost indigo was the soft dark blue rug that lay upon the dark-gray of a stone floor.

  A portrait caught her gaze. It was of a loveliest woman in white with raven hair. Her lips scarlet. Large, long-lashed eyes smoldered darkest blue as the deepest drop of the ocean. Her pale hands caressed the neck of a white wolf, and she hung with an almost mystical quality over the room’s large, open fireplace. The background of the portrait was the woman sat on a park bench in a late afternoon storm.

  Alice had stared at it then raised a hand to touch the glowing red wall of the room only to have her fingers catch on a hangnail. She bit her lip as some soft, delicate skin was torn. Just where was she? she had wondered.

  Not recalling dreaming about this place before but had extrapolated from the sheer size of the room and its stone foundations that it was a manor of some sort.

  Alice had grew steadily more frightened and when Alice was afraid, she trembled. Really shook. She almost hadn't noticed the man come in

  “You were not accepted by them. The people you knew.”

  She had blinked in surprise realising he was talking to her. "They knew you were different. As for you, you detested and feared them. Saw their hypocrisy and their undeniable cruelty to one another."

  “This was all before Mist came of course. Things were very different then. Twisted and sick as that boy is he really does care about you, he really was your loyal friend. Or perhaps family would be a better term as you two are the only ones of your kind the Shiverla. You probably would never have hurt anyone if not for him, you’re an opportunist but rarely act decisively on your own. Mist is a manipulator: his game is turning fear into hate or at the very least aggression. Too him a victim has to discover their sharpened claws to survive. The victim must become a perpetrator or not even victim as much as merely an observer of hypocrisy and evil.”

  “Monovalent helped you of course, I did not know he would do that, but it seems when I first programmed him, I was too unclear in my terms. The only person Monovalent couldn’t hurt was in fact me, because I was the only human pure and altruistic enough to be classified as not evil. I have since reprogrammed him more thoroughly since then so he really may not harm a human being unless they are truly morally corrupt and if his creator agrees and dictates it.”

  “A little like one of Asimov's laws you remember I Robot I presume?” the man had continued. Alice wordlessly nodded still very puzzled.

  Aryan of course was wrong in this belief and the loophole of being unable to define what constituted an “evil person” remained. He had permission to harm people who deserved it still and Aryan’s programming that directed Monovalent would be “detonated” for disobeying an order could not supersede Monovalent’s most base function, the very reason for its creation.

  If he told him not to harm someone who deserved it, it would contravene that most fundamental rule of his programming. Aryan had already ordered him to kill those who did not deserve life, anything else Aryan ordered that contradicted that, Monovalent could merely discount as inconsistent and thus irrelevant. He still needed “creator permission” but Emanuel counted as such. Monovalent merely ran it by him.

  “Before Evan people often made you feel frightened and worthless and unattractive though you are neither of these last two things’ Aryan told Alice. ‘He is a charmer and so is Monovalent. His words are smooth, sweet and mesmerising but he is conniving and a deceiver he takes advantage of the corruption in people’s natures. Turns them against each other. He is not alone, most humans do this. It is my hope that you will be different; I will give you a second chance to choose good by showing you the beauty as well as the depravity of humanity. Make you forget the ills and evils of your past. I failed with releasing Mist’s potential I won’t with you,”

  “Yes,” Alice had stammered shiveringly unable to reconcile in her mind even the gist of a word he said.

  “Humanity’s corruption made you perform those acts of maliciousness in the past....though you do not yet comprehend it.’ The man spoke more to himself than Alice. ‘Or more accurately you do not remember. I’ve erased your mind back to its original purity before Mist corrupted it. You’re so easily malleable into good or evil. Under Mist’s guidance you’ve been seeking retribution from all your classmates and teachers and family because they were ether part of the cruelty of humanity or let it go on. Your mind and body contain the virus, and you’re infected them with it.”

  “However, you must promise to serve me and never attack another innocent person” he said severely. “You will only hurt people from now on for a greater cause; you will use your power to make this world a better place even at the expense of killing some who cannot be saved.”

  “What cause?” Alice had asked him suspiciously as he brought up a hand to caress her pale, snow-white face.

  “My own branch of extreme communalism he said with a smile in which poverty, famine, and great world inequity shall be eliminated.”

  “Wait,” then interrupted Alice, realizing what the stuff he said earlier meant.

  “You mean I’m that girl, who was killing everyone around her for fun” Alice whispered. Those broken fragments of a dream were real…”

  She did not remember any particularly justifiable reason for those two cold, calculating teenagers committing mass murders. Just their various conversations about how humans lived and behaved like stupid instinct-driven insects, and they were like the predatory wolves or leopards who swiped them out of the air for a little after-dinner snack. As she had contemplated her morality or lack thereof, she had crossed thin, pale, delicate arms over the front of her long-sleeved, dark-green velvet dress with a picture of a cat on it (Alice liked cats). The movement caused her delicate silver necklace with the small gold locket to swing back and forth, and she had frowned trying to remember.

  Modern-day humans, especially ordinary people were “nasty”, “vulgar”, “pretentious”, “ugly” and absolutely bereft of any of the finer talents of traditional, pre-modern culture (they despised postmodern forms of art, poetry, and music) and really, really deserved it, was the closest these two got to any justification as far as she could recall.

  To be a hundred percent fair she contemplated, the two of them had been outcasts and bullied constantly since early childhood however nothing severe enough to drive them to murder. Not to mention they killed people who they barely knew but had either hurt somebody else or got on their nerves with relish. They seemed to consider themselves some sort of bizarre avenging angels of public morality.

  They made a game of it she'd soon remembered, an image flashing through her head of that girl, Shiver laughing, and saying while in a Virtualiser “Send us people for our eradication of the mediocre and asinine program, and we will take care of them for you.”

  Of course the competition wasn’t real, they hadn’t even uploaded the virtualiser footage but still.

  Worst of all though, that boy Mist playing the game with her had killed his family! That Shiver girl almost did too...decided against it later but still. It’s alright the man had said soothingly seeing her ever-rising distress, “I will take your memory away again soon.”

  ‘This was just to verify you were capable of any remorse or compassion at all. Considering what you are, I’m frankly surprised. However, I’ve watched over your growth for many years and there was sweetness, compassion mixed in with the susceptibility to evil in you, I couldn’t deny it. “Evan,” he said ruefully, “failed the test completely just as I knew he would, he is a typical heart of stone and ice, narcissistic sociopath, though I cannot complain it was how I designed him and you incidentally, to be.”

  “Evan…” Alice had said softly more to herself than him, “That was the boy’s name....”

  Alice’s had then heart thudded as something Aryan said earlier rekindled her memory. The two evil almost grown children with the virus powers from her dream floated into her head having a conversation. “Let’s kill Lily next she’s so grating, and no-one will have any way to link us to the crime...”

  “We let our virus devour people” Alice had then cried sounding confounded “I forgot and that Shiver she really is me, and Mist I remember him too now so cruel so beautiful so perfect.” Shiver then smiled to herself even in her confused, horrified state she found the thought of his male beauty highly enticing.

  As for Shiver, as Emanuel would put it too her later, she was beautiful too and simply splendid but as cold and heartless and almost as malicious as Mist the boy, in her own bizarre way. “Is she really....me?” she said to the man bemused, a note of horror but also pride in her clear, child’s voice as Shiver was an intelligent exquisite one in one-in-million creature despite her malignant qualities. The man nodded wordlessly his face showing something rather resembling disapproval at the note of pride in her voice.

  “What you said before... about controlling it...”Alice had then told the man, “it’s not possible. Monovalent told me and Mist how the virus worked. Without the machine's control, it attacks everyone including us, and we're technically immortal...But only by repairing our damaged cells and organs can we survive. She found she remembered Monovalent now, too, though still not anyone else.”

  “It can’t be removed it is part of our DNA, and it can’t be controlled only appeased,” she'd continued.

  The man had looked her square in the face with all his handsome, Greek god-like features looking troubled. “It’s true.” he'd admitted at last. "I can’t help you control it now.”

  “However, I’m working on something right now which I hope can help you contain it. If you cooperate, I will keep working on it and give it to you, but your life is contingent on this promise of loyalty to me, if you refuse, I’ll be forced to kill you.” Alice had laughed nervously before she realized he wasn’t joking.

  After Alice and Evan officially left school and went to live with Aryan in his castle-like manor as honorary members of the Great World Equity Party. The first round of games was over. The fun, Monovalent virtualiser films of their time as Shiver and Mist, at Wrighthouse, were never uploaded and left to forgotten file. Someday to be shown to the world as a symbol of their Machiavellian prowess, they sniggeringly-hoped.