We buried my brother with his dreams. On colored scraps of paper my young son, Teddy, and I scrawled all the fantasies Abe never achieved for lack of trying: hero, quarterback, singer, actor and more and crammed them in the satin folds of his coffin along with his favorite bottle of Jack and a pack of Camels. Teddy, a budding artist, sketched Abe throwing a football. “Can you imagine Uncle Abe throwing long on a cloud?” Teddy asked as he gingerly dropped in the drawing. “Might piss off the angels if he gets too rowdy,” I shrugged. “Same goes for showing off his bravery or acting like he’s better than all the other souls.” “Everyone sings in heaven. He can sing, huh?” Teddy pressed. “Not off-key. God has sensitive ears.” “So, Uncle Abe doesn’t get to live his dreams after all? That sucks,” Teddy gathered his crayons and paper, sat on the floor of the funeral parlor and begin drawing in earnest. “What the hell are you doing, Teddy?”

Teddy put a finishing flourish on a portrait of himself painting. “Going for my dreams while I can just in case I run out of time and end up in heaven.”

In eighth grade, I wore tons of make-up to Catholic school. I was a rebel. Trying to hide my outbreaks, I covered them with a layer of Clearasil beneath my beige foundation and powder. But it wasn’t just about my bad complexion. Oh no. I wanted to look like a movie star, like Elizabeth Taylor or Sophia Loren. I penciled in my eyebrows with black eyebrow pencil, jet-black eyeliner thickly lining my eyes, and I topped it all off with jade green eye-shadow that came in a long tube something like a lipstick. My mouth I left blank. This made my eyes stand out more. The fact that we weren’t allowed to wear make-up to school created all this excitement in me, and one day when Sister Theonilla was walking down the aisle in her long black robe, her wire-rim glasses perched on her nose and her skin the color of oatmeal, she stopped at my desk, moved in closer and slowly ran her index finger across my eyelid. The tip of her finger came back green.

“I’m not wearing make-up,” I said defiantly. Oh, the thrill of it. This was the beginning of my long career as a liar.

According to a book I read, the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hindus, and Japanese believed the Earth hatched from a mundane egg. Mundane? “Mommy, what does mundane mean?” She was stirring a pot of soup and I could see she was not in a good mood. Adele was playing, there was a bottle labelled “NO TOUCHING” on the counter (that was to warn me), and a martini glass sitting on the counter half empty. Daddy and mommy argued this morning. It woke me up. I played with my dolls until I heard the door slam. From my window I could see my daddy swirl out of the driveway. I pulled on her t-shirt. “Mommy, mundane?” “Earthly. Dull. Now go do your chores.” Outside the day was a jewel. The grass was like emerald dust. There were fluffy but scant clouds. There was the gold light of the sun. Our small farm seemed drenched in lambent beauty. “How could this come from a mere mundane egg?” I wondered. I got the rusted, wire basket to collect the chicken eggs. Mr. Rooster was very bossy this morning so I bossed him back. The hens clucked as I searched for eggs. When I found the seventh one it fell. “Oh, no.” I could see no bright yolk. I saw a sphere with little people and it was growing. I ran inside, dropping all the eggs as I hurried. “Mommy, mommy. There’s a world growing in our world.” She paid no attention. She kept stirring the plot angrily. I made note not to get angry as I grow older as I would miss a great deal of life. I could miss life itself.

“Mommy, mommy. There’s a world growing in our world.” She paid no attention. She kept stirring the plot angrily. I made note not to get angry as I grow older as I would miss a great deal of life. I could miss life itself.

Penny was a little girl who lived in Alaska. It was ice-cold there. She kept praying that she could play in the lush, green and warm gardens like we do but of course, she couldn't. Her father, like all the men there, didn't have a job. He hunted seals and caught fishes as was the custom. So her father hadn't even heard of money and even if he had money, there weren't any aeroplanes to take them abroad. Now somewhere near Penny's house was a deep, dark forest. Everyone was afraid to enter it. They said that whoever entered it would be sucked in by a great hole. One day, Penny was playing with her Eskimo friends when one of the boys shouted, "Hey, I dare one of you to enter the magic forest."

No one dared. Penny picked up a twig and threw it at the edge of the forest. Nothing happened. Penny was astonished. It's all a legend! We can play hide and seek in the woods if we want, she thought. She walked slowly towards the woods. It was getting colder and colder she took each step. She walked right into the middle of the forest.

The cards spoke of fate, but the future they predicted was always left up to interpretation of the one reading them. Most people were almost illiterate. Preston fancied himself better than that. He pondered that conclusion as he stared at the cards before him. He knew his present was a pair of jacks grinning at him, but his future? The jacks might have been a good a few hands ago, but now he was down to just a two more big blinds. “What will it be?” asked Jerry with that lopsided grin he always wore. He sat behind a large chip stack that everyone at the table had been contributing to over the last hour or so. Preston stared at his opponent trying to get a read, but Jerry was a stone wall. Preston thought about folding, but there wasn’t a promise of a better hand in the wings. This was the poker player’s dilemma. What did the future hold? The jacks were mute, but Preston decided that the future was bright. He didn’t care if the light was that of victory or the burn out of defeat. He adjusted his shades and matched Jerry’s goofy ass grin.

“All in.”

We didn’t even know we were being conquered. How about that for humanity’s divine right? First shoe to drop was when Amazon just went dark. Like not even a 404-error dark. A spinning wheel of painful waiting torture was the only eulogy for what was king the day before. Facebook and Twitter were soon only posting stories about end of the world scenarios. Left wing, right wing, any crackpot scenario of the end of the world was jamming everyone’s feeds. Reddit was the same, no matter the voting of the members. Hell, 4chan was even doing it. Like what the hell, 4chan? The aliens took over so smoothly that by the time we realized what was happening the only thing we could do was to surrender. Any attempt at pulling the plug and they would go all Terminator on us. We expected the AIs we would be fighting would be the ones we created, but we were naive. The alien AIs controlled every digital system on the planet.

The best part was we were all home waiting for COVID-19 to be cured, but the virus that killed off the autonomy of the human race was digital. No mask for that.