imagine that

“Jayce,” Viktor says, “Are you alright.”You blink, blearily, at the Machine Herald, then at the hole in your window still faintly glowing around the edges from being melted through with a laser, then out at the warm summer midnight beyond. And you say to him,“I’ve got the air conditioner on, man.”You’re standing in your living room wearing nothing but your boxers, caught between one glass of whiskey and the next, contemplating the broken glass on the floor and sort of wishing it had stayed one melted heap instead of falling through the carved hole in the center.You haven’t left your house in three weeks.