Christy dove for Graham’s pockets, and just as she started rifling, Graham turned to her

I don’t know what he was thinking. But I have a feeling it was best that I was alone when I first felt so damn empathetic. Graham reached out and grabbed both her hands in his own

And Christy started to tear up too. Even as she was wrenching her hands away and staring at her palms, tears were flowing freely down her face, as she looked up at me.

“We’re monsters. We’ve always been monsters, haven’t we?”

The smallness and hesitation on her voice almost broke me. Like a newborn chick just realizing predators exist, that voice alone communicated a sense of hopelessness and despair that most people had never known.

But I had. I had been directly responsible for some of it, too.

Graham and Christy, two people I’d directly sold heartbreak to, who I’d been the source of happiness for, and who I’d tried to swindle out of every dollar they owned, sat in a heap at my feet, and I just wanted to give them some food and tell them it would all be okay

But it won’t be okay

The market had quickly emptied after Christy had proven whatever this was had a sort of contagious quality to it.

Graham hiccuped after a while, his eyes emptied of tears, and Christy wiped her own away while asking

“What do we do now that we know?”

We I thought

“I don’t know” I answered. Graham looked at me like a child who for all the world thought you knew the answer and couldn’t believe you didn’t.

“But” I answered, offering my hand to both of them.

They hesitated before reaching out and allowing me to help them to their feet.

“Maybe we can figure it out together?”

Graham looked down at my hand, then around at the walls of the marketplace, settled under the stairs of a mass transit AI line.

“There’s so many” he whispered.

Christy looked at her hand, then at Graham’s, and finally, at mine. She grabbed Graham’s hand too, making a triangle.

“Together” she said.