I’ve put eleven men in the ground. Neither they nor ground existed.
 

I knew it all along.
 

So I lived like it.
 

People would always say to me, If you get arrested one more time that’s it.
 

And it was true.
 

That same phrase ran around in my mind as I entered the hotel room. Clancy hangs crouched in the corner. His gun upright, yellow fingernailed hand curved around the barrel. He motions me over.
 

Lay low, should be here any minute now, he says.
 

How could I not know? They think I’m an employee, I reply.
 

And you think I’m helping you on this, Clancy states.
 

And you think I’m helping you on this, I say.
 

We both smile. The ash, soot and asbestos of the air clinging to our teeth like moths to a light.
 

Offline. Offline. Offline.
 

This blinks in the corner of my vision. It’s the closest thing to peace I’ve ever felt. Depriving myself of senses I didn’t need.
 

One day we will live as our ancestors did, Clancy nods.
 

Without all of this, I say.
 

I can almost feel what it’s like now. Looking through the shattered cobweb strung window, I can see an expanse of ruined buildings the color of the bags under a tired man’s eye. In the air hangs detritus and scrap like man made rats with wings. Beyond that are the rectangular spikes of the city made black against the watery gray sky. Normally the city would be illuminated with advertisements for virtual accessories.
 

Virtual cat tails. Virtual breasts. Paid subscriptions to make the ads go away.
 

But not out here.
 

They don’t render.
 

Offline. Offline. Offline.
 

Here they come, Clancy whispers.
 

The engine hums down the road. I get my gun into position.
 

Was the truck real, or was it just the Iris telling me?
 

Because what I see is a standard electric eighteen wheeler. Iris embossed in a bold classic font on the sides. Our target.
 

The Iris has been there since we exhaled our first breaths. And it stole and filtered some of the first photons our eyes detected.
 

Invented to provide an alternative to phones and fix the human posture, the Iris is now implanted under every newborn’s cornea to be replaced every year. They augment your entire reality with GaN-on-Silcon LEDs, red and green quantum dots and a bandwidth connected to an AI to make the world a digital dream. They can project anything into your eyes and looks as though it’s a part of reality. We’re told when we’re young what is real and what isn’t, but we don’t know anything but a world of unreality.
 

And before us now is a shipment of materials.
 

Go, Clancy shouts.
 

I unload my gun into the truck’s tires. It halts and drops like a man shot in the breast.
 

Our men emerge from the ruined graffiti splattered storefronts like bees wielding crowbars, bats and gasoline. As they surround our catch, small compartments on the sides of the truck burst open and release black twisted creatures my mind tells me are birds but are drones.
 

I’m out of bullets and one of them is eyeing Clancy.
 

Let’s get out of here, I shout.
 

Gunfire and yelling explode below.
 

Offline. Offline. Offline.
 

The gunsmoke quickly reached toward us even as we sprinted through the dilapidated hotel. We made it to the other side where half of the building had crumbled away. Now we remember that we’re on the third floor. Before us is a ledge lined in a cilia of bent rebar looking down on a slanted crust of a building. No stairway. Only a mattress staring up at us.
 

An angry electronic buzz is closing in on us. The drone followed.

Only one way down.
 

Jump, Clancy yells and points at the mattress.
 

We both go at once.
 

I try to give him more room so we don’t collide. I jolt with panic. I edged myself too far. I land unevenly and collapse onto the concrete.
 

It hurt. But not nearly as much as it should have. Why did it not break both legs? I should be in agony. I should be killed by the drone.
 

Go, Clancy slapped my arm.
 

I got up and followed him to cover.
 

#
 

Offline. Offline. Offline.
 

We should be safe here.
 

An old mansion with a partially caved in roof farther away from the city.
 

My Iris will continually state that I am in fact offline. That’s not entirely true. I’m still in range for it’s antenna to wirelessly harvest energy. Just not enough for the AI flood my vision with advertisements, fun facts and idealized versions people and places.
 

At least I think I’m out of that range. Because no matter what, the Iris never turns off.
 

It’s left me a paranoid wreck.
 

Pushed away friends and family who swear to me it’s fine. A little filter on reality won’t hurt anything, they would say. If anything it’s far more convenient and helpful.
 

But it’s hard to truly know what is real that way.
 

We have to get these things off of our eyes, I say.
 

No we don’t, Clancy replies.
 

You always object to it. Why?
 

It’ll damage our eyes.
 

If it’s our eyes that prevent us from experiencing what is actually real, then rip them out.
 

Then what will we be able to do without them? The whole world we’re trying to get this message through to will have a leg up on us. Technological superiority and sight.
 

But we don’t know what is truly real.
 

There will always be something to bolster your hyperskepticism. We’ve talked about the invention of the Utility Fog, haven’t we? Literally programmable matter. Tiny nanobots a hundred nanometers in diameter that link arms, rotate and slide themselves on each other to form into whatever you want them to.
 

Those are in a way real.
 

True. But they can deceive you. A Utility Fog has to be controlled by advanced algorithms conveyed by magnetic stimulation to tell it what to do. The same way the AI filtering our world through the Iris works.

That’s not a good reason to keep these things in our heads. Why would you knowingly leave them over your eyes?
 

Clancy doesn’t answer.
 

I sat down on the old ash coated couch in what once was called a living room.
 

Offline. Offline. Offline.
 

If you get arrested one more time, that’s it.
 

That’s it.
 

Always a chance of that.
 

They’re already after us.
 

They have our faces.
 

I want to see the world before I have to see it through bars in a concrete cell. And you have to know a straight line to know a crooked line.
 

I pull out my knife.
 

What are you doing? Clancy asks.
 

I’m ripping it out.
 

No, you’re not.
 

I don’t reply.
 

I raise the knife before my eye.
 

Stop.
 

I gently angle the knife.
 

The Iris is right below the cornea.
 

Just below the cornea.
 

Like the real iris.
 

Stop.
 

I feel it gently plunge through and hit something hard. Something that’s not supposed to be there.
 

My vision blinks.
 

I force my eye lids wide open.
 

Stop, Clancy yells.
 

I’ll be free.
 

Offline. Offline. Offline.
 

I feel it starting to pull out as I lift the catch of my knife away. Air filling in the gap.
 

Stop.
 

Offline. Offline. Offline.
 

I rip it all the way out. Full force.
 

Clancy attacks me.
 

I’m thrown my back hard on the couch.
 

The vision of my left eye was blurry like dirty pond water.
 

And everything stopped in my right eye.
 

Clancy hung there, shoving me but frozen solid.
 

Clancy?
 

I reach up and feel his arm.
 

Then the light went out.
 

I blink and I’m still staring at a frozen Clancy.
 

Except he’s gray. Everything is gray. And I’m not in the abandoned living room anymore.
 

I’m inside a giant sphere that looked hollow and translucent because light was shining through.
 

The knife in my hand was also gray.
 

The clothes on me were also gray.
 

The only part of the couch that was real was the part I was sitting on.

Below and around me within the sphere was a gray disk.

​

I stand up and walk.

​

My feet felt the same dirt ingrained shag carpet as the house.

​

The shell of Clancy still hangs there.

​

I can’t say anything.

​

Was this was reality truly looked like? Had the Iris colored the world so much this was all it looked like?

​

I lift my gray knife to see the Iris still pricked into it.

​

It’s red with blood.

​

An alarm sounds.

​

A loud screeching sound of worst case scenario.

​

My knife turns into a gray smoke.

​

My clothes turn into a gray smoke.

​

Clancy turns into a gray smoke.

​

The partially materialized couch turns into a gray smoke.

​

The ground below me turns into a gray smoke.

​

The sphere turns into a gray smoke.

​

I tumble down and hit a cool rubber floor.

​

I see all the smoke collecting into a large cloud above me.

​

I’m in between two massive white walls. Strange lights are arranged on them.

​

Looking back I can see large windows and people looking in horror. Behind them are signs that read, No Metal Passed This Point.

​

Now men in electric white hazmat suits are running toward me. One holds me down. Something sharp enters my arm.

​

Now things are going dark.