Today's Reading
The building smashed down to the ground. I watched it happen. The seven-story apartment building was there one moment, and then it was gone. But it hadn't disappeared. I was looking right at Mrs. Parsons when it went down. It was like the building was a massive tin can that had been crushed by a giant, cosmic boot. I saw it, and I heard it. Wind rushed at me, and it was instantly dark outside. The streetlamp just to my left was gone. The buildings all around me were gone. The cars on the street were gone, too.
Everything was gone except the trees and the bicycles in the bike racks, and Marjory Williams's moped that was still booted by parking enforcement.
I looked around, the freezing weather momentarily forgotten. In the dark, overcast night, I could barely see anything. In the distance—a distance I could now see thanks to the lack of buildings—a fire burned.
There was utter, complete silence.
"What the hell," I said, spinning in circles.
A couple random things remained. Like the bike rack. The stop sign was there, but the street sign next to it was gone. It didn't make sense. Where the cars were parked on the road, car-shaped indentations of dirt appeared, as if they'd been pulled down toward the center of the earth, being ripped directly through the asphalt.
Donut jumped into my still-outstretched arms. I looked at the cat, not knowing what to do or say.
"What the hell," I said again.
All that remained of my building was a rectangle of churned dirt and rocks.
And then I saw it, right near my feet.
It was Mrs. Parson's head. In the dark, it was hard to discern. But I immediately knew what it was.
It hit me, at that moment. The sudden shock of the buildings was one thing. But there were people in those buildings. It was almost everybody in the damn city. Hell, even most of the homeless people were in shelters. There'd been a whole thing on the news about them rounding everybody up because of the extreme cold. It was two in the damn morning on a Monday night. Everyone would be in bed. And that meant everyone was dead!
I kept spinning in circles like an idiot, not knowing what to do. I felt sick to my stomach. Donut started to squirm, having decided I was useless. She clawed at me, but I wouldn't let the cat go.
Then came the voice. A male, robotic voice.
It spoke in my mind. The voice was like a physical thing. A spike in my brain, scratching me. It wasn't speaking English. But I understood the words. As the person spoke, the text also appeared floating in front of me.
Surviving humans take note.
"What?" I said out loud. "What's that? Who's there?" I kicked at the floating words with my foot, and the too-small Croc went flying. I hopped over and quickly shoved my foot back in. The words moved with me, floating just a few feet in front of my face.
Even the letters weren't in English. They crawled down, not across the screen. But I knew them, understood them like I'd been reading the language my entire life.
Per Syndicate rules, subsection 543 of the Precious Elemental Reserves Code, having failed to file a proper appeal for mineral and elemental rights within 50 Solars of first contact, your planet has been successfully seized and is currently being mined of all requested elemental deposits by the assigned planetary regent.
Every interior of your world has been crushed and all raw materials—organic and inanimate—are in the process of being mined for the requested elements.
Per the Mined Material Reclamation act along with subsection 35 of the Indigenous Planetary Species Protection Act, any surviving humans will be given the opportunity to reclaim their lost matter. The Borant Corporation, having been assigned regency over this solar system, is allowed to choose the manner of this reclamation, and they have chosen option 3, also known as the 18-Level World Dungeon. The Borant Corporation retains all rights to broadcast, exploit, and otherwise control all aspects of the World Dungeon and will remain in control as long as they adhere to Syndicate regulations regarding world resource reclamation.
Upon successful completion of level 18 of the World Dungeon, regency of this planet will revert to the successor.
A Syndicate neutral observer AI—myself—has been created and dispatched to this planet to supervise the creation of the World Dungeon and to ensure all the rules and regulations are properly followed.
Please pay careful attention to the following information as it will not be repeated.
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