That racist bitch. That bottle blond obscenity driving the murder weapon—she not right. Blue Luna butterflies are going extinct. Kaylee said so. So she says, so it is fact.
Protip: facts aren’t reliably facty. Especially in this space. And when the she is a girl he wants, facts are whatever closes the deal. It’s late Winter, 2125 in Vacaville, CA. Tule fog lays over the landscape. The weather fights against the lengthening days and warmth of the sun. Some facts need to stay true.
Tate knew that the robots which made life passable could be any size, including microscopic. He knew too well what happens if you piss off the Hive. Some illnesses are now annoyances instead of real trouble. The air he breathes has more in it than nitrogen and oxygen. It also has nanites (nanometer robot mites), some benevolent, some not. An uncomfortable truth is that nanites eat diesel exhaust soot and other airborne pollutants. Modern technology, yo!
April Showers No Spring Flowers
Finals are coming up. The last push before Spring Break and South Padre Island vacay condo. Spring Break can’t come fast enough. Weeks now of Tule foggy weather casting a morose shadow over Vacaville, CA. Yesterday the Pulse was alive with the news of a landslide that took out an English Hills house. Awesome!
Then this rando shows up in his Pulse Feed. Fucking weirdo, “Did you like the attack of nanites? I thought it was awesome. Understand this. Inger is mine. Nobody gets to fuck with her. I’m the only one. You and your little soy girl bitch Kaylee need to back the fuck off.” He’s the one that sicked a bunch of nanites on him? Asshole.
Did he like the nanite attack? Is he serious right now? It was awful. And the drone array acting like an airborne display? Chef’s Kiss? Fuck no. Leave the blond bitch alone? All day long.
A Reason to Smile
The Pulse feed kept refreshing like it was mocking him—same post pinned at the top, white Japanese text on black void, no profile pic, no handle, just that block of kanji/hiragana repeating the same threat in looped insistence. Tate stared at it until his eyes burned, thumb hovering over the block button that refused to work. The nanites had already done their job on the soot in the air; now they were apparently doing Damian’s bidding in his feed.
He leaned back against the dorm wall, the tule fog pressing against the window like wet cotton, turning the streetlights into smeared halos. Finals loomed in three days—Political Theory, Environmental Policy, a paper on post-scarcity ethics that felt hilariously irrelevant now. South Padre was supposed to be the reward: condo booked with Kaylee and three other poli-sci kids, beach access, pool parties, a chance to reset. Instead he was here, scrolling rage, replaying the nanite “attack” in his head.
It hadn’t been dramatic like the movies—no swarming black cloud, no choking cough. Just a sudden itch in his lungs that morning, a metallic taste on the tongue, then the Pulse glitching for thirty seconds while his feed filled with static and that single message. When it cleared, the air smelled faintly of ozone, and his throat felt raw but not damaged. Benevolent nanites, he told himself. The kind that eat diesel soot. The kind that also eat whatever Damian tells them to eat when he’s feeling territorial.
The Sun Also Rises
Tate’s thumb finally tapped “block.” Nothing happened. The post stayed. He tried again. Still there, “Fuck this,” he muttered, shoving the phone into his bag. Kaylee had texted earlier: Butterflies are back in the greenbelt. Come see? 🌸 He’d read it three times and hadn’t replied. The thought of her smiling at iridescent wings while he sat here choking on rage and fog made his stomach twist. She didn’t get it. Nobody got it. The butterflies weren’t the point anymore. The point was that some asshole with a god complex could drop nanites on him like a warning shot, claim Inger like property, and call Kaylee a “soy girl bitch” in the same breath.
He grabbed his jacket—still smelling faintly of that morning’s ozone—and headed out into the fog. The English Hills landslide footage was still trending on the Pulse: drone shots of the house half-buried in mud, roof crumpled like foil, a single bedroom window peeking out like an eye. “Awesome,” the caption read, posted by some anonymous account. Tate had almost laughed when he first saw it. Almost. Now it felt like punctuation on Damian’s message.
The walk to the greenbelt was short, but the fog made it feel endless. Streetlights flickered, nanites probably optimizing power draw or whatever. He didn’t care. He just needed to see Kaylee, needed her to look at him like he was still the guy who charged a diner booth for her butterflies, not the guy who was now collateral in someone else’s obsession.
Teal Kaylee
She was waiting on the bench where they used to sit, phone in hand, scrolling. When she saw him she stood, smile tentative. “You’re late,” she said.
“Yeah.” He stopped a few feet away, hands in pockets. “Pulse got weird. Some psycho’s claiming Inger and telling me to back off.”
Kaylee’s smile faded. “Back off who?”
“That girl with the smoking truck.”
“Her? Why not back off? What is she to you?”
Tate found the scuff marks on his Converse All-Stars suddenly very interesting, “Nobody, I guess.”
“You guess? The one time I wake up with you next to me, both of us hungover and you just guess? Were you lying when you said you liked the crepes I made you?”
Wait. She cares? Kaylee cares? Oh. OH! Tate felt the heat climb his neck, “No . . . she . . . it was the butterflies. I wanted to be the one who saved them. For you. Now they’re saved anyway, and some psycho’s telling me to fuck off.”
“So fuck off. Leave her alone,” She stepped closer, touched his arm. “Come see the butterflies. They’re everywhere now. Like they were waiting for the fog to lift.”
She kept her hand on his arm a second longer than necessary. Then she turned and started down the path without another word. Tate followed. The butterflies kept fluttering. Indifferent to nanites, landslides, and the men who thought they owned things.
Calistoga
Sal wasn’t home. He and the family were in Calistoga. Saito-Gumi paid well. It’s an hour from the hotel to where Sal was staying. Inger and Tala were up at 6am. They checked out, had breakfast at Cuba Cafe, and headed to Calistoga.
Tala heard where Sal was and looked for an Asian place to eat. She messaged him and he recommended the seafood special diner at Soo Yuan. FINALLY! Food that wasn’t just cow carcass, “I found a place we can eat that isn’t just dead cow.”
Inger, “Ok. So . . . dead duck too?”
Tala missed the joke, “They have roast duck on the menu.”
“What else?”
“Pretty much everything,” said Tala.
“I’m down for some Mongolian Beef”
“Mongolian dead cow. Yum,” giggled Tala.
Nice hour driving along 29 and 128 from Vacaville to Calistoga. Sal pinged Tala’s phone, “where are you eating lunch?” She told him, “Nice pick. You should try the hot springs.” They met Sal mid-morning in the parking lot of Calistoga Hot Springs. He spotted the Muteki, came across the parking lot, coffee in hand. Tala had been chatting about Damian on the drive over. He was up to speed. Greetings exchanged, a round of “hey” and “what’s up” ended with friendly hugs, “It’s still early for lunch, Soo Yuan doesn’t open until 11. We can talk more after you unwind.”
Mineral Water Glow
Lunch was good—plates of golden fried prawns, steaming seafood soup, sweet-sour fish, shrimp fried rice, plus Inger’s Mongolian beef piled high. Tala ate like someone finally tasting flavor after weeks of corporate beige. Sal sipped tea, watching them.
“So what’s up?” he asked.
Inger set her chopsticks down. “Damian. Regular at the casino back when. Been stalking me hard. Can’t shake him.”
Sal raised an eyebrow. “Did you give him any signals you were into him?”
“I’m a bar back. Guys assume signals all the time. Comes with the job.”
“Are you into him?”
“Fuck no.”
“I’m retired from that life. Why pull me in?”
“He’s already in debtor’s prison in Norfolk, VA. Saito-Gumi put him there. He keeps escaping and sending sex robots to me. They show up powered down. I power one up, it repeats ‘we broke up with him,’ then bricks itself. Prison didn’t stop him. It’s like he wants his ass beat.”
Sal leaned back. “I wouldn’t do that. Some crazies crave negative intimacy. Fighting him could be erotic to him.”
“Oh… eew.”
“Debtor’s prison? By whom?”
“Saito-Gumi, my bosses.”
“And they can’t stop him? I hear they are sometimes quite brutal.”
“The beatings continued because behavior didn’t improve. He won’t stop.”
“And you think I can make a difference?”
“I hope so.”
Time to Go, Damian
Sal exhaled, glancing toward the window where the Muteki sat. “Saito-Gumi’s brutal when they need to be. Debtors prison is designed to grind. If he’s still pulling stunts from inside, he’s got hooks somewhere. Nanites on that kid in Vacaville? Pulse threats? Sex bots as messengers? That’s escalation. Could be low-level Hive bleed-over he’s exploiting, or he’s got a sympathetic guard/tech slipping him tools.”
Inger nodded. “The bots brick after delivery—message delivered, no trace back. But it’s constant. I need him shut down for good.”
Tala chimed in around a prawn. “We rerouted here because you know the game, Sal. Ex-bodyman, Saito connections. You owe her for the escape vouch.”
Sal rubbed his jaw. “Family’s finally breathing—kids in the pools, Joana sleeping nights. But yeah. Favors stack. I’ll sniff around on my next Bay run. See if his prison access is compromised. If it’s Saito-adjacent tech he’s jacking, they can clamp it. If not… maybe a quiet word in Norfolk. Or we make the bots stop arriving.”
Inger’s eyes hardened. “I need him gone.”
“Understood. Give me a day—I’ll ping my contacts. In the meantime, enjoy the glow. Hot springs did you good.”
Tala grinned. “Better than any chain breakfast.”
The table quieted, chopsticks clicking, steam rising like a temporary truce. Outside, the Muteki waited—diesel heart ready for the next road. Damian’s shadow lingered, but for now, allies, good food, and geothermal peace.