18 God Machine

"You must escalate conflict so that, if everybody did it, you'd be better off. But you gotta deal in every human. Otherwise you get Illuminati bullshit."

- Mr President's Notes to Self Twitter Account

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4 Hours Later

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"Ma'am? Are you awake Ma'am?" says the cop standing over me.

I start. What the fuck? I look around. Shit, I'm on the ground. I try to get up, but my clothes aren't on right, and I fall on my face. Shit.

"Are you okay Ma'am?" the cop asks.

"Yes." I say. Fuck off, I think.

Fear sobers me a little. I get my clothes on right and stand. There's a lot of people running around. Fuck! I'm going to jail.

The cop asks me a bunch of questions. It slowly dawns on me that he's worried about me. I calm down a little, and give him what he needs to leave me alone. I'm okay. Nothing happened to me. Yep, I'm drunk. No, nobody attacked me. I'm not crazy, hurting, or whatever. Sleepwalking's a bitch.

He offers me a ride home, but fuck that. He nods. "Okay." he says. "Just… Be good to yourself, okay? We're gonna get through this."

I nod seriously at his pep talk. Weird.

I walk to Candy's. There are so many people running around, it takes me a while to realize it's 4 in the morning. Everybody is looking up, at the moon. Fuck, that's not the moon! I fumble with my phone. Every feed is lit up. A new planet appeared out of nowhere 2 hours ago. New planet. Scary close to Earth. Out of fucking nowhere.

I pull up my full lab right there on the street. I call Doc-Danger. I get no answer. My stomach hurts. I've never tried to force my way into Doc-Danger's feed. I do so now. There's no need, I have full access. He's gone. He just disappears 2 hours ago. He fucks me in the woods, pulls up his lab, and disappears.

I pull up the God Machine. It's gone too. 2 hours back, there is activity in its logbook. In the same millionth of a second, it answers all the impossible questions. Then it disappears.

My chest hurts. Like there's barbed wire around my heart. I kneel down on the street and weep.