WebNovels

Chapter 15 - The Nightmare..

Jessica and Mark stood in the rooftop bar, but it was different.

The space had stretched, become infinite. No walls, no floor, Just the two of them on a platform suspended in darkness and Darren standing in the shadows watching.

"Two years," Jessica said, but her voice was also different. Layered, like multiple people speaking at once. "We had two years."

"Venue deposits," Mark added, his face shaky, features melting and changing. "The were Non-refundable."

They turned to look at Darren. Their eyes were golden, gold liquid also spilled from their mouths instead of words, flowing like liquid:

[YOU DID THIS]

[YOU MADE US HURT]

[FOR $5,247.88]

"No," Darren tried to speak but his voice wouldn't work. "You were already.... The problems were.... I just...."

The pawnshop man materialized beside them, still clutching the wooden box with his father's watch. Still crying but when he opened the box, instead of a watch, there was Darren's face looking back, screaming silently.

"My father wore this watch on his wedding day," the man said. "Through two wars, through forty years at the mill, He gave it to me the day before he died, what did you give anyone?"

Darren looked down at his wrist, The $2,000 watch was there but it was growing, expanding, the metal band tightening like a shackle, cutting into his skin. Golden blood circled up around it.

"I had to survive," he said, but his voice sounded hollow even to himself.

The college student appeared, laptop still dripping coffee, the screen displaying the same error message over and over: FILE CORRUPTED. DATA LOST. THREE WEEKS OF WORK GONE.

"Three hours," she whispered and her voice multiplied, echoed. "I had three hours to finish, you took that from me. You took my time, my work, my hope, my future."

Her face twisted in anguish, and the anguish turned into golden particles that streamed toward Darren, forcing themselves down his throat. He tasted her panic, her desperation, her crushing sense of failure...*

The writer from the bookstore materialized with manuscript pages scattering around her like snow. Each page was blank except for the words: NOT GOOD ENOUGH. WASTED TIME. PRETENDING.

"Three years," she said. "Three years I believed in this, Until you showed me the truth, that I was just afraid, that I was wasting everyone's time, including my own."

"I didn't—you already felt that way—I just—"

"YOU WEAPONIZED IT," they all said in unison, their voices becoming one terrible chorus.

Marcus from Accounting appeared, then Sarah from Marketing, then Kevin from Engineering. All his former coworkers, forming a circle around him, their faces blank, expressionless, their tags all reading the same thing:*

[PARANOIA: YOUR CREATION] [$∞]

[TRUST: DESTROYED] [$∞]

[WORKPLACE: POISONED] [$∞]

"You came back," Marcus said. "We trusted you, we thought you were helping."

"I was just telling you what might happen—"

"You LIED," Sarah's voice was sharp. "You made us afraid, you turned us against each other. For what? For three hundred forty seven dollars?"

The platform beneath them all gave way.

They fell, reaching for each other, and Darren rushed forward to grab them, to save them, to do something—

—but his hands were solid gold. Heavy. Useless, when he touched them, they shattered into particles of light that streamed into his chest and he felt everything—

—every fear he'd planted—

—every doubt he'd nurtured—

—every relationship he'd fractured—

—every dream he'd poisoned—

And he felt NOTHING.

The emptiness was worse than the guilt.

He looked down at himself. His suit was woven from golden thread, but the thread was made of words, and the words were all the lies he'd told:

"I saw Jessica with her ex"

"They're planning layoffs"

"You seem kind of checked out"

"Your book sounds great" (but it's too slow, too pretentious, too you)

Liz's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere: "You chose the math, you always choose the math and the math doesn't care about faces. The math doesn't dream."

"But I'm dreaming now," Darren said.

"Are you?" Liz appeared, wearing a dress made of liquid gold, her eyes completely metallic here. "Or is this the only place Nova still exists? In nightmares? In guilt you can't feel while awake?"

She reached out and touched his chest, and her hand sank into him like he was made of water.

"You're hollow," she said, not unkindly. "You've been harvesting everyone else's emotions for so long, you don't have any of your own left. What happens when there's nothing left to harvest?"

Her hand closed around something inside his chest and pulled.

She withdrew a golden vial. Inside it, a tiny figure that looked like Darren Nova—the real one, the one who used to care about things, screaming silently, beating against the glass.

"Don't worry," Liz said. "We can fix this, we fix everything. For a price."

She drank the vial.

Darren tried to scream, but no sound came out, and he was falling, falling, falling into golden darkness...

Darren jerked awake, gasping.

His apartment was dark and silent, except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant traffic outside. He sat up, heart hammering so hard he could see his pulse in his vision, and looked at his hands.

Normal. Not gold. Just hands.

But when he held them up to the street light from the window, he could see it: thin filaments of gold threading through his veins, visible just beneath the skin. Like Che's eye, like Liz's hair.

The physical tell, the cost of long-term Gilt exposure.

He stumbled to the bathroom, flipped on the light and stared at his reflection.

The gold in his eyes wasn't subtle anymore. Clear, unmistakable flecks in his irises, catching the light like metal shavings. His pupils seemed darker by contrast, like someone had turned down the brightness on his humanity.

On his wrist, the $2,000 watch gleamed.

Darren grabbed it, tried to take it off but his hands were shaking too hard, the clasp wouldn't cooperate, He fumbled with it, breath coming faster, panic rising—

Jessica's face: "Maybe we need a break."

Mark's shaking hands: "Maybe we do."

The way they'd looked at each other, two years of love curdling into hurt—

The watch finally came off, Darren threw it across the bathroom and It hit the wall, clattered into the sink but still kept ticking.

Of course it kept ticking. $2,000 watches were built to survive.

He slid down the wall, sitting on the cold tile floor, and stared at the watch in the sink.

His reflection in the bathroom mirror looked weird. The gold in his eyes, the expensive pajamas Liz had included in the "lifestyle acceleration package." The apartment behind him that cost more per month than he used to make.

He looked successful.

He looked like a stranger.

[OBSERVATION: USER EXPERIENCING ACUTE GUILT RESPONSE]

[PSYCHOLOGICAL INTEGRATION: COMPROMISED]

[RECOMMENDATION: EMOTIONAL STABILIZATION PROTOCOLS]

"Shut up," Darren whispered.

[HARVEST EFFICIENCY WILL DECLINE IF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE REMAINS UNSTABLE]

[PROFESSIONAL OPERATORS MAINTAIN EMOTIONAL EQUILIBRIUM]

[CONTACT BROKER FOR STABILIZATION OPTIONS]

The Goldscript Protocol was trying to help. Offering solutions, because of course there were solutions in the Gilt economy and as he had learnt everything had a solution if you were willing to pay.

Darren sat on the bathroom floor until the pre-dawn light started filtering through the windows. He couldn't go back to sleep, every time he closed his eyes, he saw faces or heard voices, Felt the weight of what he'd done pressing down like water pressure at impossible depths.

At 5:47 AM, he gave up and tried to shower.

The hot water helped, a little, gave him something physical to focus on but when he looked down at his hands, he saw the gold threading through his veins pulsing faintly with each heartbeat.

How long until he looked like Che? Eyes completely golden, decades of Gilt exposure written across his body?

How long until there was more gold than human left?

He dried off, got dressed—not the suit, just jeans and a t-shirt, trying to feel normal, and went to make coffee.

His hands were still shaking.

The coffee mug—his old "World's Okayest Developer" mug from his cubicle days, felt heavy. He set it down carefully, afraid he'd drop it and watched the coffee brew with the hollow attention of someone going through motions.

"This is fine," he thought. "Just a bad night with stress dream, everyone has them."

"You literally monetized someone's heartbreak," another part of him countered. "For a watch, you destroyed a relationship for a fucking accessory."

"They were already having problems," the Analyst interjected. "I just accelerated the timeline. Extracted value from inevitable entropy."

Listen to yourself," Nova whispered. "You sound like a sociopath."

"I sound like someone who survived," the Analyst said. "You wanted to die slowly in that shoebox apartment. I chose to live."

The coffee finished brewing, Darren poured it with shaking hands, spilling some on the counter. Stared at the dark liquid spreading across the white surface like a Rorschach test.

He saw faces in it.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, grabbing a towel to clean it up.

His phone buzzed. A message from Liz:

Morning, How are you feeling?

"How did she always know?"

Fine. he typed back.

Liar, I can see your biometrics in the system, your heart rate has been elevated since 3:47 AM. You're experiencing a guilt cascade.

Darren stared at the phone, the Goldscript Protocol was monitoring his vital signs? Reporting them to Liz?

It's normal. Liz's next message came.

First major operation always triggers this, your conscience is trying to reassert itself. We need to talk.

I'm fine... Darren typed.

You're not and if you try to harvest in this state, you'll fail. The emotional instability will interfere with the cold dissociation required for extraction. I've seen it a hundred times.

I SAID I'M FINE.

Prove it. There's a coffee shop two blocks from your building, corner of Pine and 8th. Go harvest someone, anything over $5. If you can do it without your hands shaking, I'll believe you're fine.

Darren looked at his hands, still trembling slightly despite the coffee.

FINE. He sent back.

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