From the Light
by Larry Ferrill
1
It’s already dark, not a good time to be looking for a new place to shelter; it’s time to be burrowing under and hoping to survive the night. But we have to find something soon. My clothes are drenched, the cold wind is turning them to ice as I run, and no matter how hard I pump my arms and legs, I’m still shivering.
“Hurry,” Stacy says, under my arm. “I’m freezing.”
We reach Shadow Town, but all the people are already inside their tents or whatever makeshift hovel passes for a house. No amount of pleading for help can persuade anyone to let us in. I try sneaking into a few that look deserted, only to be met by guns or knives or rocks. I immediately throw my hands up and back out.
Finally, I squat behind a structure that looks like a concrete-and-cardboard igloo. I use it for a windbreak, shoving my hands into my tattered backpack to warm them, though I’m still shivering.
You won’t survive the night.
The thought hits me like a fist. I try chasing it away but can’t find a positive thought to replace it with.
It seems inevitable: I’m about to join Cyrus in the morgue.
My long downward spiral has finally come to an end.
***
For four months, I’d been an unofficial resident of Meadows Apartments, all alone (if you didn’t count the Gray Ghost). All alone, till Cyrus came along.
I met him one January afternoon in an alley behind the Waterson Hotel. I was tromping through slush in the black leather high-tops I’d acquired at a thrift store, in trade for a holo-deck I’d scrounged from a dumpster and repaired. All the soles were intact and most of the seams, and I was feeling pleasantly surprised at how dry my feet were, when a man in a long green overcoat came running out from behind a dumpster.
He was so tall and thin, he looked like a test subject for growth hormones and diet pills that had been halted too late. He was running awkwardly, head tipped to one side, as if he were about to fall over, hands waving frantically, shouting, “There’s a girl in there! Help me get her out, or she’s gonna die.”
It had to be a trick. He wanted me to look inside the dumpster so that he could knock me out and run off with my shoes. Even as I thought this, however, I wondered if the same suspicions would have occurred to me back when I had a home, a wife, and a job. I wanted to believe that I would have plunged right in and helped that stranger; it was my life on the street that had caused me to grow a protective shell, a blind eye, and a deaf ear. But I knew better. Even in my old life, I would have thought that this man was out for my wallet and turned away, just as I turned away now, lowered my head, and pretended I didn’t hear him.
But he ran right up to me, bent his back, and dangled his face in front of mine. “You got to help me get her out,” he pleaded. “Got to.”
He wore a black trapper hat with the furry ear flaps pulled down. Tangled, greasy black hair skated out from under it and fell across his face. From behind that matted curtain, desperate gray eyes peered out. There was a look of pure sincerity in those eyes. Whether there was someone in that dumpster or not, he clearly believed there was, and I was suddenly intrigued.
“Let’s have a look.”
I followed him to the dumpster but heard nothing.
“I tried prying the door open, but it wouldn’t budge.”
“You must be new. Everybody knows they lock the dumpsters to keep us from scrounging.”
“How do folks throw their garbage in?”
“Custodial bots send a remote signal. But there’s a manual override, for when the wireless is down.” I pointed to the bottom of the dumpster. “Reach under there. Next to the wheel, you’ll find a lever.”
He dropped to his knees and extended a gangly arm under the dumpster. “Found it.”
“Pull it down. But don’t let go until I tell you to, or the door up here will close on me.” Ordinarily, I would have jammed the lever with a concrete block, but this was better: with him occupied down below, he couldn’t see the PIN.
A spring screeched as he pulled the lever. “Got it.”
I put down my empty coffee can, then scaled the dumpster, found the recessed handle, and tugged it back, revealing the keypad. I tapped out the four digits, pressed OPEN, and the gray door clicked and slid back, filling the air with the scent of days-old garbage.
“Help,” a tiny voice said. A girl, by the sound of it. But then gray daylight filtered into the dumpster, and I saw that it wasn’t a girl, after all. Not a human girl, anyway. It seemed to be some kind of droid-doll, so lifelike, it gave me goosebumps.
“Please help.”
I grabbed the shoulder of its blue dress, brushing my hand against its curly blonde hair—as soft as a real baby’s—and lifted it out.
“Thank you. You saved me.” Its blue eyes were clearer and more alive than most of the eyes in Shadow Town.
I jumped down and told him to let go of the lever.
Seconds later, he leaped up, took the doll, and cradled it in his arms, smoothing its dress with one mighty paw and gazing down at the thing as if it were a real child, rather than a realistic-looking toy. Then he turned it over and saw that a portion of its skull was busted open, revealing some of the nanons and organoid chips that made up its brain. Tracing his finger around the hole, he asked, “You reckon she can feel the pain?”
“Of course not. It’s not really alive.”
He looked doubtful, so I added, “It wasn’t created to feel pain.”
That seemed to comfort him. He hoisted the doll onto his shoulder and started galloping around the parking lot. “Wee!” he squealed.
“Wee!” the doll repeated.
I didn’t want to see his reaction when its charge ran down, so I scooped up my coffee can and started off. But I didn’t get far before he chased me down. “Forgot my manners. Name’s Cyrus. What’s your’n?”
“Call me Haden.”
“Well, Haden, Stacy here wants to give you a kiss for saving her life.” Cyrus had been holding the doll against his soot-colored beard, but now he lowered it and offered it to me.
I spun away. “Get that thing away from me.”
“But Haden…”
“Just go on about your business and leave me to mine.”
“But… we’s friends now.”
“We’re no such thing. Now get away from me.”
But the rest of the day, no matter where I went, he shadowed me. When evening approached, I got worried. Last thing I wanted was for someone to discover my place. So I took off running through alleys and side streets. The skyscrapers soon became bars, pawn shops, thrift stores, and diners. Then came Shadow Town’s tents, and the shanties of cardboard, particleboard, and busted concrete. Two blocks later, just as darkness fell, I arrived at Meadows Apartments.
I crept between the one-story buildings, hugging the shadows. Each one had plywood nailed over its crawlspace, but there was one that wasn’t sealed tight. I pried it off with my fingertips and then, out of habit, looked around for the Gray Ghost.
It wasn’t much more than a kitten, its ragged fur the color of smoke. I’d been sharing my space with it till a week ago, when someone diverted it with a saucer of milk. Each night, that saucer kept moving closer to one of the apartments across the courtyard, till one night I saw the cat squatting on someone’s doorstep, lapping up the milk. Next night, it was nowhere to be seen. Someone had lured it inside and made it a pet.
I wasn’t sure whether to feel happy for it or sad. It would have plenty of milk, and no more cold nights. But it would never taste freedom again, and that was the sad part.
I slipped into the crawlspace, closed the door with the handle I’d duct-taped to the plywood, and had just nestled into my corner when I heard someone tapping at the door.
“Haden, it’s me. Cyrus.”
I inched the door open. “Quiet. Someone’ll hear you.”
He lowered his voice. “Stacy’s shivering.” He nudged the doll’s head through the hole.
“How in the world did you find me?”
“I’m good at following.” He inched the doll’s blue eyes closer to mine.
“I’ll let you in if you promise not to tell anyone about this place.”
“Cross my heart.”
I removed the plywood. Cyrus squeezed through the hole, stretched out against the wall, and cradled the doll against his chest. “This some kind of place you got here, Haden.”
“May not seem like much at first.” I closed the door. “But on a cold winter night, a little corner of crawlspace can feel like heaven.”
“Except, you’re all alone. Ain’t much like heaven if you’re all alone.”
I shrugged and began cranking up the flashlight. “On the street, it’s every man for himself. I learned that the hard way.”
“You learned how to open that dumpster, too. How’d you figure that out?”
It would be wise not to reveal my method; Cyrus might decide to copy it. But I was proud of my accomplishment and couldn’t resist boasting. “A while back, I broke the wireless receiver on a dumpster. Then I took a little camera I bought at a thrift store and taped it across from the keypad. When the trashbots came and the remote wouldn’t work, they had to call for a crew to open it manually. My camera recorded… their actions.” I didn’t mention that it also captured the PIN. The city uses the same number for all its dumpsters, so the PIN was like a lottery number—and I wanted to hold the only winning ticket.
“You must be awful smart to figure that out. How come you’re livin’ down here, instead of up there?”
I switched on the flashlight and saw him pointing to the floor that was my ceiling. I wasn’t ready to talk about how I ended up here, but the man’s eyes somehow pulled it out of me. “I used to teach Prong at the community college.” At his puzzled look, I added, “That’s a programming language.”
“Why don’t you teach it anymore?”
“No one teaches any languages now. AI does most of the coding, and the few people who need to learn it just take a series of nano-capsules.”
“Couldn’t you take some of those capsules and learn another language?”
“I don’t wanna take them. They do more than teach you a language. They change you. I’ve seen it happen to people, seen them change overnight.”
Cyrus smiled at that. “You got family?”
“Had a wife and daughter. A baby.”
“Like Stacy?”
I grunted. “A real daughter. Lisha.”
“Lisha,” he whispered.
The rest of my story came out numbly, as if the crawlspace were smothering my words. “She wasn’t well. We tried every neurologist we could find. Experimental treatments. Nothing worked. In a year, she was gone. Ran up so many medical bills, there was no way I could ever pay them off, even if I was still working. Cass… she was already depressed about losing Lisha, and the debt just made things worse. Crushed her. Crushed us both, I guess. She wanted a fresh start and left.”
After a long silence, Cyrus said, “I’m awful sorry to hear that. But things are bound to turn around for a smart fella like you.” He rolled onto his side, still clutching the doll. “Thank you for lettin’ us in. Awful kind of you. Two acts of kindness in one day.”
A new record.
Almost as an afterthought, I asked, “What about you? Any family?”
He shrugged. “Fostered, till I got too old. Then they set me out on my own.”
“You had a job?”
“Worked a machine,” he said through a yawn. “Turned sawdust into shelves.”
“Then they replaced you with bots, you couldn’t find another job, and now you’re living on the streets. Am I right?”
He nodded. “I come from the Light House shelter. Lived there till they bulldozed it for that new office building. They said to try the shelter on the south side, but when I went there, they was all full up. So I prayed, and the Father sent me to Stacy. Then He led me to you.”
By then, he was yawning so much that he barely got the words out, so I turned out the light. In the dark, he muttered a prayer:
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
May angels watch me through the night,
And keep me safe till morning’s light.”
Somewhere in the night, I dreamed that the Gray Ghost was curled upon my chest, its fur as soft as the doll’s hair, and its glowing eyes just as blue. It whispered to me, told me of a secret code I could use to exit the dark world I’d tumbled into and return myself to the light.
But when I awakened, I found only my cold weathered hands on my chest, and the Gray Ghost’s secrets had departed me.
***
In the crawlspace, there’s no sleeping in: up before sunrise, then slip outside while it’s still dark. Cyrus followed me again, but now I didn’t try to shake him.
I had enough funds to buy coffee and doughnuts for both of us, plus a cup of milk on the side. He pinched off pieces of his glazed, soaked them in the milk, and fed them to the doll.
Surprisingly, it ate them. I’d been wondering why the thing hadn’t needed a recharge and had my answer: it somehow ran on food.
Afterwards, we returned to the business district. I pointed to a skyscraper that resembled a snow-capped mountain. “Looks like there’s some good spots in front of the CIGIL.”
While Cyrus took one side of the entrance, I took the other, under the company sign.
CORE ION GENETICS, INTERNATIONAL LABS
Pharmechnology that awakens the human potential
KEEP IN A DARK PLACE
DEGRADES IN THE PRESENCE OF LIGHT
2
Shivering and squatting behind that makeshift igloo, I hear someone crawl out of the front. I poke my head up and see Hermie, whizzing on the sidewalk. After he finishes, he turns back for the igloo, sees me, and growls.
I run around to the front and beg him to let us inside.
He snatches the pack from my hands, burrows into it, and scoops out all my money. As he counts and fondles the bills, his head and arms twitch and flail, gestures I decide to interpret as an invitation inside.
With Stacy clutching my arm, I crawl into his igloo.
***
The curious business with Cyrus’s hat went on for a week. Then one day, I saw a slender businesswoman with long gray hair standing out in front of the CIGIL. Her cool dark eyes were focused on Cyrus.
The next day, she was there again, now with a tall, muscular businessman, both of them eyeing Cyrus as if they had spotted a rare bird in its natural habitat.
The following day, they talked to Cyrus for a while. After they left, I gave the doll back to him and asked about them.
“They was just being friendly. Asked who I was, where I was from. Althena gave me a little cup of grape juice and put a band-aid on my arm, even though I wasn’t hurt. A few minutes later, she pulled it off, and Dominic stuffed it in a baggie with my cup.”
The “band-aid” was likely one of those dermal swatches that labs sometimes use for testing. When combined with a saliva test from his cup, they could learn a great deal about Cyrus.
What I couldn’t figure out, however, was why they were interested.
***
That night, I asked Cyrus about the hat, how he did it.
“It comes from the Father,” he said. “He blesses what I take in and lets each person take out what they need.”
He pulled his tattered children’s Bible from his coat pocket. He often read to the doll from it, but this time he opened it to a dog-eared page and read to me. “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or believe because of the miracles I have done. I tell you the truth. He who believes in me will do the same things that I do. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father.”
The rational part of my brain was skeptical but could offer no other explanation.
My parents had hopscotched from one faith to another, and for a brief time we attended a church whose preacher claimed to perform miracles. Eventually, he was exposed as a fraud, but by then we had moved on to another church.
As an adult, I lived exclusively in the secular world, which was fine with Cass, an atheist. But when the secular world offered no hope for Lisha, I turned to prayer. Cass felt I had betrayed her and saw me as weak, turning to a phantom God in desperation.
Thinking of Lisha, and the miracle that never came, I petulantly asked Cyrus, “Why doesn’t God bless you with enough money to get you out of this place?”
“Maybe someday He will.” He closed his Bible and lowered his head. “He leads me wherever I need to go.”
***
The next day, Althena and Dominic were back again, talking to Cyrus.
“They said I passed the test,” Cyrus told me after he took back the doll. “Said they could make me a whole lot smarter than I am right now. But I told them the Father made me as smart as I need to be, and if I passed my test, then I didn’t suppose I needed to be any smarter.”
***
In the crawlspace that night, Cyrus held the flashlight for me while I pulled my toolkit from my tattered backpack and performed surgery on a discarded game wrist-projector. Marveling as I brought it back to life, he whispered, “I bet you could heal Stacy.”
“You mean repair. But I wouldn’t know how.”
“You were wrong about her. She can feel pain. That’s why I wrapped those socks around her head. But they don’t help much.”
“Nothing I can do about it.”
***
During the night, I dreamed the Gray Ghost returned again and whispered to me.
Bring healing.
“If I could do that, don’t you think I would have healed Lisha?” I snapped.
Its blue eyes flared like pilot lights, perhaps in anger. To find that power, it whispered, you must increase your faith.
***
The next day, Althena and Dominic tried again. After conversing with them, Cyrus jogged back to me. I started to hand him the doll, but he shook his head. “I’m goin’ away with them for a while, so you need to look after Stacy.”
“Going away? Where?”
He pointed to the CIGIL. “They’re gonna make me an employee and enroll me in a special program. They said I’ll make so much money, I’ll be able to help millions of people.”
“I don’t think you should trust them, Cyrus.”
“Oh, they’re okay. It’s just like you said the other night: God’s making me rich enough to leave this place.”
I started to tell him I didn’t mean what I said, but before I could speak, the doll said, “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’ll come back for you. Then we’ll leave and get our own place. Meantime, Haden’ll take care of you.” He looked down, directly into my eyes. “Won’t you?”
Something in his gaze left me powerless to say no. I nodded.
He kissed the doll and handed me his Bible. “Keep this till I come back.”
I’d met many people who had fallen from the light and landed in the shadows. The streets were full of them. But until then, I’d never known anyone who had made it out of the shadows and back into the light.
Althena and Dominic led him into the tower, and just like that, I was alone again. There was a time when I would have been glad to see Cyrus go, but that night, the crawlspace seemed dark and cold and empty.
I’d been alone before, but I’d never really felt alone till then.
“You’re not alone,” the doll whispered. “You’ve got me.”
It touched my fingers. For the first time, I felt its skin, skin that was as soft and warm as Lisha’s.
I clutched her hand.
3
Hermie’s place is even more cramped than the crawlspace (Cyrus would have never fit inside it) and though it’s warmer than outside, I’m still shivering. It’s not long before a fever breaks out.
Stacy cranks up the flashlight and turns it on, revealing a pile of rags, and a mound of drug and food packets. She rummages through the mound and drags back a grimy plastic water bottle. “Drink this.”
After a few swallows, she hands me a packet of two pills. For fever, the label says. I down them and quickly fall asleep.
***
For a few nights after Cyrus left us, I read to Stacy from his Bible. But when I awakened one night and saw her cranking the flashlight and scanning the pages, I realized she could read on her own.
As each day passed, her knowledge and vocabulary expanded, though I didn’t know where that knowledge was coming from. She was clearly neither a droid nor a toy, as I had originally suspected.
One night, I asked her how she had come to be in the dumpster behind the hotel.
“I’m a STAASI. A Synthesized Test Animal with Artificial Synaptic Intelligence. I was part of a group testing pharmechnology compounds.
“A male STAASI near me experienced a side effect: bursts of extreme violence. He kicked and punched a hole in my skull. One of the technicians heard me scream in pain and removed him.”
Cyrus had insisted that Stacy could feel pain; I knew then that he was right. STAASIs would need to detect if a drug was causing or alleviating pain and register degrees of discomfort. Pain detection would be essential.
“Because of my injury, I was dropped from the test. They ordered my humane disposal.”
“What’s that?”
“Euthanasia. Followed by decapitation.
“The tech, however, forged the lab records and sold me to a black-market dealer. There is great demand for us among cults, who want us for ritual sacrifices, and among the depraved, who desire us for lewd activities.
“Fortunately, the dealer sold me instead to a wealthy woman who bought me as a toy for her daughter. However, the woman’s husband thought I was possessed. He gave me sleep medicine and dumped me in the trash at the hotel, just before bots came and emptied the trash into the dumpster.
“I was frightened and weak, but hours later, Cyrus heard me calling.”
***
I was camped in front of the CIGIL, a good distance from the entrance. Stacy was at my side, closely watching each person who walked past. Black clouds were piling up in the west, brewing a storm, and the lunch crowd were scurrying back to their buildings, ants to their anthills. I started to doze and was awakened by a man’s voice.
“I have no time for you.”
“My Cyrus!” Stacy shouted.
I opened my eyes and saw a tall man in a business suit and a long black overcoat. But I couldn’t see his face; he had turned his head to stare down at Costak’s open palm. “I’m busy making the money you so casually solicit.”
He quickly turned away and resumed walking. As he approached us, I stood, trying to get a good look at him, and inadvertently blocked his path.
His face was fuller, his cheeks were shaved, and his hair was neatly trimmed, but otherwise, he looked exactly like Cyrus.
Then I looked into his eyes and wasn’t so sure.
He had the same gray eyes as Cyrus, but behind them, something was different. The happy-go-lucky nature of Cyrus was gone, replaced by cold determination.
“What’d they do to you, Cyrus?”
He looked at me as if I were a dog to be kicked out of his way. “I have no idea who you are. Now move away or I’ll tap my wrist implant and 911 your ass.”
I stepped aside.
He took only a couple of steps before Stacy, clinging to my arm, reached for him.
He spun around. “Who touched me?”
“It’s me, Cyrus. Stacy.”
He swung his eyes down.
She smiled and began to sing.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
May angels watch me through the night,
And keep me safe till morning’s light.”
His face—the face that was almost Cyrus, but not quite—was in agony. A tear slipped out of the corner of his eye. Then another. Slowly, the hardness in his eyes melted, and he stared at Stacy with nothing but love. But it only lasted a moment. His eyes dissolved into panic, then panic into anger. He turned and ran to the doors. The scanner read his eyes, the doors opened, and he bolted inside.
4
“Hungry.”
It sounds like Stacy, but not her current voice. Weaker. More like how she sounded when I rescued her from the dumpster.
“I’m hungry.”
I open my eyes. Rain thrums the roof of the igloo, and there’s a whirring sound I can’t place. I sit up, hacking and spitting, then zero in on the noise: it’s Stacy, cranking up the flashlight. She turns it on and illuminates the source of the voice.
Behind the packet mound, lifting its head out from under a pile of rags, is another STAASI. A thick black scar runs from cheekbone to chin.
Stacy gapes in horror, shaking her head. “This must end,” she whispers. “No more. Please.” As she reaches out to touch the doll, she drops the flashlight, and the noise awakens Hermie.
He sees Stacy holding the doll’s hand, and his scrambled brain becomes enraged. He tosses Stacy aside and pulls a broken bottle from behind the rag pile. Wielding it like a sword, he backs us out the door and into the pouring rain.
It’s daytime, but that’s small consolation, for it feels even colder than last night. The medicine is trying to claw me back to sleep, and I stand there, tottering, ready to collapse.
Stacy hasn’t given up, though. “Run,” she says.
“Where?”
She points. I run.
***
After our encounter on the street with the man who seemed to be Cyrus, we barely made it to the crawlspace before the rain set in. It rained every day for two weeks, forcing many of the shadow people to huddle under makeshift umbrellas of carboard, particleboard, or tinfoil.
I scrounged two broken VR helmets from a dumpster and combined them into one functioning helmet, then pawned it and used some of the cash to buy a rain poncho at the thrift store. I kept Stacy under it, close to my chest, so that the rain couldn’t soak through her sock bandage.
Business was slow those days, for the weather kept many of the workers indoors. Fortunately, I had the rest of the money from the wrist-projector and VR sales to tide me over. To prevent anyone from knocking me out and stealing it, I hid it inside my backpack in the crawlspace during the day, along with my flashlight, tools, and Stacy’s diapers.
Finally, on a day when the showers lifted and the weather suddenly turned warm, the streets were flooded with people again. Spring had finally arrived. I shed my poncho and had my first good day in quite a while.
But as I started to leave and walked past the front of the CIGIL, Althena ran out, looking haggard and bewildered. “What did you say to Cyrus two weeks ago?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“Nothing.”
“Our security cameras recorded you. You said something that derailed his progress.”
As she was speaking, Dominic joined her and noticed Stacy tucked under my arm. “That’s a STAASI. How—”
Althena silenced him as if waving an invisible wand. I quickly shifted Stacy behind my back.
“What did you say to change him?” Althena asked me.
“You’re the ones who changed him. So that he could work for you. But that killed what made him special.”
“And what do you think made him ‘special?’” she asked mockingly.
“You saw what he did with his hat. Giving away more than he took in, yet he still had some left at the end of the day. It’s like he had some sort of connection with God. A gift. Like God was working through him somehow. But that’s gone now.”
“You were seeing things. Cyrus had nothing in his pockets when we took him in. No money. No chips. No aura. He foolishly gave away all he collected. We rewarded that generosity.”
“Rewarded it?”
She nodded. “Each year, CIGIL gives back to the community by selecting someone who has been left behind and lifts them up. We bring them in and make them part of the company. This year, we chose Cyrus.
“He was a promising member of our finance team. No matter what you might think, he was better off. I’ll never feel guilty about that.”
“He didn’t know what he was giving up. If he knew, he never would have come with you.”
She ignored that and gave me a pleading look. “Tell me what you said to him that would make him pull such a stunt.”
“What stunt? What do you mean?”
She sighed. “He ran to our labs and disrupted one of our studies. Grabbed several lab dolls and tried to run away with them.”
Stunned, I didn’t know what to say. “Where is he now?”
Althena turned pale. “Security tried to stop him. He wouldn’t listen.” Her body quaked. “The police were called. He tried rushing them…”
“He’s dead,” Dominic said. “They shot him.”
Stacy whimpered behind my back.
Dominic raised his eyebrows and stepped forward for a closer look, but before he could see her, I turned and shifted her to my side, then ran for Shadow Town.
Stacy wailed like a siren the whole way.
5
Dazed and feverish, I don’t realize Stacy has directed me from Hermie’s igloo to the CIGIL until we’re already there. By then, I’m too wet and tired to resist.
The entrance provides shelter from the rain, but not the cold. I squat on the concrete, lean my head against the window, and doze in and out of sleep.
***
For the next two days after our encounter with Althena and Dominic, we stayed away from the CIGIL and went to the Flecherton Tower instead. On our second day there, spring revealed itself to be a false spring. It was warm that morning, so we had left our coats in the crawlspace, but by afternoon, the temperature had plummeted, and the wind was so sharp, everyone kept their hands in their pockets, and we collected nothing. Since I couldn’t risk being seen at the crawlspace in daylight, I didn’t dare go back to retrieve our coats, so we, too, were freezing.
When darkness finally arrived, I tucked Stacy under my arm and returned to the crawlspace to grab our coats and withdraw money from my pack for food. But when I reached the entrance, the board was nailed tight.
In desperation, I clawed at it, trying to pry it loose. I was so focused on it, I didn’t notice the maintenance supervisor as he came around the corner dragging a water hose. He squeezed the nozzle and began spraying me down.
I stumbled back, shielding Stacy behind me, then slipped in the grass and fell on my side. “My pack’s in there.” I held up a hand, begging for mercy, but he just kept pouring it on, waving the nozzle, head to toe and back again. “Let me get it out. Please. It’s all I have.”
“Your pack’s not in there,” said Dominic. He stepped around the corner with my pack dangling from his hand.
He let the torrent continue for a while longer, then said, “That’s enough.” The supervisor obediently cut off the hose, but by then I was soaked to the bone.
Dominic handed the man two crisp bills, large enough to make his eyes bulge. “Thank you for handling this situation.”
“Need anything else, just ask,” he toadied, then dragged his hose away like a tail.
Dominic turned to me. “I had you followed from the Flecherton yesterday and learned you were staying here.”
“What do you want?” Water dripped from my nose and landed in my mouth.
“The STAASI. Hand it over, and I’ll give you your pack. Nothing’s been removed from it. I even folded your rain poncho and put it inside.” He chuckled. “But I guess you could have used that a moment ago.”
“Our coats…”
“Ahh. Had to throw those out.” He wrinkled his nose. “Fleas. But we can get you a new one. Along with a nice warm motel room for the night, some dry clothes, and a hot dinner. Gonna be a cold night. Rain coming. If you stay out in those wet clothes, you’ll catch pneumonia.” He held out his hand. “The STAASI, please.”
“What do you want with her?”
“I reviewed the video of your encounter with Cyrus more closely. Zoomed in on the doll’s eyes, scanned its retinal code, and confirmed it’s our property.”
“She’s no one’s property.”
He smiled, straining to make it look pleasant. “As I scrutinized the recording, I realized that it wasn’t Cyrus’s conversation with you that triggered his downward spiral—it was his interaction with the STAASI. It must have caused him to remember his old life. He probably felt guilty about working for the same company that discarded the doll, so he tried to rescue other dolls to soothe his conscience.”
“You still can’t have her.”
He sighed impatiently, his face and voice now firm. “What do you know about its history?”
“She told me how she got injured.”
“I’m guessing it didn’t tell you everything. A small percentage of participants in its study experienced side effects of various degrees of telepathy. All of our products rewrite neural pathways, so the effects often persist long after discontinuation. However, with this doll, the side effect seems to be persisting longer than in others.
“Brain tissue analysis may help us determine if the side effect was just an aberration of the ASI, or if the effect can be replicated in humans. If it can, we might be able to tweak the formula so that all users can experience it. We could then market the drug with this as the primary benefit. Think of the—”
I sprang from the ground, head-butted his gut, and snatched my pack from his hand.
“Kiosks selling pills that turn people into mind readers?” I shook my head. “I want no part of that.”
Doubled over and gasping for breath, he wheezed, “AI with… access to… any mind… dangerous.”
I bolted into the shadows and ran, shivering and sopping wet, for Shadow Town.
6
Someone enters the CIGIL, and while they fiddle with their umbrella, Stacy slips in undetected at their feet.
I doze.
Cyrus comes out and squats beside me. “Thank you for taking care of Stacy. Feeding her. Keeping her warm and dry.”
“You’re just a dream,” I mutter. “You’re not Cyrus.”
“Don’t you know me?” He opens his eyes wide and smiles, his gray eyes now golden orbs. “Live like children who belong to the light.”
I snap awake and one thought floods my mind before I tumble back to sleep: If He can use a donkey or a burning bush as an intermediary, then why not a broken lab doll?
***
A distant ambulance siren awakens me.
Stacy climbs onto my shoulder, takes the sodden Bible from my shirt pocket, and reads, “The greatest love a person can show is to die for his friends.”
The ambulance is coming down the street now, heading this way. Stacy kisses me, and for the first time since Lisha died, I pray—for Cyrus’s kind of faith.
I let go and relinquish myself to a greater power, like a twig carried along by a river’s current. For a moment, I’m confident I will end up where I need to be and feel a rising surge of inner peace. But then I open my eyes and see Dominic taking Stacy away, and my inner peace shatters.
“No.” In my mind it’s a scream; in my ears it’s a whisper.
But Stacy seems to hear me and looks back, ambulance lights dancing in her eyes.
Then they slip through the door, and she is gone.
7
One night in the hospital, I awaken to find someone standing over me. The figure with eyes like golden orbs. The figure that once looked like Cyrus but now does not.
“Now you know me,” he says.
“Yes.”
His eyes glow brighter. “In the past you were full of darkness, but now you are full of light in the Lord. So live like children who belong to the light.”
I close my eyes and when I open them again, I see no one there. But it doesn’t feel like I’m alone.
And I know now what I have to do.
***
On my first day out of the hospital, spring has finally come to stay. The sidewalks are warm from the light of a blazing sun as I make my way back to Shadow Town.
Hermie’s not there, so I hike on to the business district and find him in the shadows near the CIGIL. I march right up to him, and he sees something in me that makes him cower. But when I lay my hands on him, no anger flows from them.
Something else flows. Something that’s hard to describe. Maybe something that can’t be described.
An artist has knowledge of his paints, how to mix them, how to use them, but the great ones have mastery over them, and it’s kind of like that, except I’m not painting with oils: I’m painting with something else. Something that feels like a torrent surging through me. A torrent of energy and information, perhaps.
All I know for certain is that it doesn’t come from me; it comes from the one who wrote the code that powers each living cell. And all I can do is grasp it, like the mightiest paintbrush, and guide it.
This torrent, when directed at Hermie, forces the thing that we might call a demon, the thing that had taken up residence in the crawlspace of his mind, to flee in a shriek of madness, and Hermie can speak again.
But we don’t stop there. Mixing just the right code, the right information, in just the right way, the proper brushstrokes, and Daniels has his arm again, and Costak’s face is restored.
The others, too. They, a small crowd, gather around me outside the CIGIL tower as I sit with Hermie’s STAASI on my lap, running my fingers through her hair. I smile as the last traces of her wounds close and she is whole again.
“What’s next?” Hermie asks.
“Next?” I think of what Stacy said after she discovered this STAASI in Hermie’s dark lair. This must end. No more. And then I cast my eyes to the tower. “Next, we move a mountain.”
The author lives near Indianapolis, Indiana and works as an e-learning developer and consultant. His work has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways and Writers of the Future. He enjoys all types of speculative fiction, hiking, and deliberately trying to confuse his YouTube algorithm.
Author’s note: “At the macro level, all around us, we can see God as the master artist. But when we learn about the micro level, and the tiny machines inside each of the trillions of cells in our bodies, all working in conjunction with each other, shuttling information back and forth like high-tech miniature factories, we can see that He is also the master engineer. I like that both of those aspects of Him (artist and engineer) are reflected in Haden.”
“From the Light” by Larry Ferrill. Copyright © 2026 by Larry Ferrill. Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, International Children’s Bible®. Copyright © 1986, 1988, 1999, 2015 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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It’s already dark, not a good time to be looking for a new place to shelter; it’s time to be burrowing under and hoping to survive the night. But we have to find something soon. My clothes are drenched, the cold wind is turning them to ice as I run, and no matter how hard I pump my arms and legs, I’m still shivering.
“Hurry,” Stacy says, under my arm. “I’m freezing.”
We reach Shadow Town, but all the people are already inside their tents or whatever makeshift hovel passes for a house. No amount of pleading for help can persuade anyone to let us in. I try sneaking into a few that look deserted, only to be met by guns or knives or rocks. I immediately throw my hands up and back out.
Finally, I squat behind a structure that looks like a concrete-and-cardboard igloo. I use it for a windbreak, shoving my hands into my tattered backpack to warm them, though I’m still shivering.
You won’t survive the night.
The thought hits me like a fist. I try chasing it away but can’t find a positive thought to replace it with.
It seems inevitable: I’m about to join Cyrus in the morgue.
My long downward spiral has finally come to an end.
For four months, I’d been an unofficial resident of Meadows Apartments, all alone (if you didn’t count the Gray Ghost). All alone, till Cyrus came along.
I met him one January afternoon in an alley behind the Waterson Hotel. I was tromping through slush in the black leather high-tops I’d acquired at a thrift store, in trade for a holo-deck I’d scrounged from a dumpster and repaired. All the soles were intact and most of the seams, and I was feeling pleasantly surprised at how dry my feet were, when a man in a long green overcoat came running out from behind a dumpster.
He was so tall and thin, he looked like a test subject for growth hormones and diet pills that had been halted too late. He was running awkwardly, head tipped to one side, as if he were about to fall over, hands waving frantically, shouting, “There’s a girl in there! Help me get her out, or she’s gonna die.”
It had to be a trick. He wanted me to look inside the dumpster so that he could knock me out and run off with my shoes. Even as I thought this, however, I wondered if the same suspicions would have occurred to me back when I had a home, a wife, and a job. I wanted to believe that I would have plunged right in and helped that stranger; it was my life on the street that had caused me to grow a protective shell, a blind eye, and a deaf ear. But I knew better. Even in my old life, I would have thought that this man was out for my wallet and turned away, just as I turned away now, lowered my head, and pretended I didn’t hear him.
But he ran right up to me, bent his back, and dangled his face in front of mine. “You got to help me get her out,” he pleaded. “Got to.”
He wore a black trapper hat with the furry ear flaps pulled down. Tangled, greasy black hair skated out from under it and fell across his face. From behind that matted curtain, desperate gray eyes peered out. There was a look of pure sincerity in those eyes. Whether there was someone in that dumpster or not, he clearly believed there was, and I was suddenly intrigued.
“Let’s have a look.”
I followed him to the dumpster but heard nothing.
“I tried prying the door open, but it wouldn’t budge.”
“You must be new. Everybody knows they lock the dumpsters to keep us from scrounging.”
“How do folks throw their garbage in?”
“Custodial bots send a remote signal. But there’s a manual override, for when the wireless is down.” I pointed to the bottom of the dumpster. “Reach under there. Next to the wheel, you’ll find a lever.”
He dropped to his knees and extended a gangly arm under the dumpster. “Found it.”
“Pull it down. But don’t let go until I tell you to, or the door up here will close on me.” Ordinarily, I would have jammed the lever with a concrete block, but this was better: with him occupied down below, he couldn’t see the PIN.
A spring screeched as he pulled the lever. “Got it.”
I put down my empty coffee can, then scaled the dumpster, found the recessed handle, and tugged it back, revealing the keypad. I tapped out the four digits, pressed OPEN, and the gray door clicked and slid back, filling the air with the scent of days-old garbage.
“Help,” a tiny voice said. A girl, by the sound of it. But then gray daylight filtered into the dumpster, and I saw that it wasn’t a girl, after all. Not a human girl, anyway. It seemed to be some kind of droid-doll, so lifelike, it gave me goosebumps.
“Please help.”
I grabbed the shoulder of its blue dress, brushing my hand against its curly blonde hair—as soft as a real baby’s—and lifted it out.
“Thank you. You saved me.” Its blue eyes were clearer and more alive than most of the eyes in Shadow Town.
I jumped down and told him to let go of the lever.
Seconds later, he leaped up, took the doll, and cradled it in his arms, smoothing its dress with one mighty paw and gazing down at the thing as if it were a real child, rather than a realistic-looking toy. Then he turned it over and saw that a portion of its skull was busted open, revealing some of the nanons and organoid chips that made up its brain. Tracing his finger around the hole, he asked, “You reckon she can feel the pain?”
“Of course not. It’s not really alive.”
He looked doubtful, so I added, “It wasn’t created to feel pain.”
That seemed to comfort him. He hoisted the doll onto his shoulder and started galloping around the parking lot. “Wee!” he squealed.
“Wee!” the doll repeated.
I didn’t want to see his reaction when its charge ran down, so I scooped up my coffee can and started off. But I didn’t get far before he chased me down. “Forgot my manners. Name’s Cyrus. What’s your’n?”
“Call me Haden.”
“Well, Haden, Stacy here wants to give you a kiss for saving her life.” Cyrus had been holding the doll against his soot-colored beard, but now he lowered it and offered it to me.
I spun away. “Get that thing away from me.”
“But Haden…”
“Just go on about your business and leave me to mine.”
“But… we’s friends now.”
“We’re no such thing. Now get away from me.”
But the rest of the day, no matter where I went, he shadowed me. When evening approached, I got worried. Last thing I wanted was for someone to discover my place. So I took off running through alleys and side streets. The skyscrapers soon became bars, pawn shops, thrift stores, and diners. Then came Shadow Town’s tents, and the shanties of cardboard, particleboard, and busted concrete. Two blocks later, just as darkness fell, I arrived at Meadows Apartments.
I crept between the one-story buildings, hugging the shadows. Each one had plywood nailed over its crawlspace, but there was one that wasn’t sealed tight. I pried it off with my fingertips and then, out of habit, looked around for the Gray Ghost.
It wasn’t much more than a kitten, its ragged fur the color of smoke. I’d been sharing my space with it till a week ago, when someone diverted it with a saucer of milk. Each night, that saucer kept moving closer to one of the apartments across the courtyard, till one night I saw the cat squatting on someone’s doorstep, lapping up the milk. Next night, it was nowhere to be seen. Someone had lured it inside and made it a pet.
I wasn’t sure whether to feel happy for it or sad. It would have plenty of milk, and no more cold nights. But it would never taste freedom again, and that was the sad part.
I slipped into the crawlspace, closed the door with the handle I’d duct-taped to the plywood, and had just nestled into my corner when I heard someone tapping at the door.
“Haden, it’s me. Cyrus.”
I inched the door open. “Quiet. Someone’ll hear you.”
He lowered his voice. “Stacy’s shivering.” He nudged the doll’s head through the hole.
“How in the world did you find me?”
“I’m good at following.” He inched the doll’s blue eyes closer to mine.
“I’ll let you in if you promise not to tell anyone about this place.”
“Cross my heart.”
I removed the plywood. Cyrus squeezed through the hole, stretched out against the wall, and cradled the doll against his chest. “This some kind of place you got here, Haden.”
“May not seem like much at first.” I closed the door. “But on a cold winter night, a little corner of crawlspace can feel like heaven.”
“Except, you’re all alone. Ain’t much like heaven if you’re all alone.”
I shrugged and began cranking up the flashlight. “On the street, it’s every man for himself. I learned that the hard way.”
“You learned how to open that dumpster, too. How’d you figure that out?”
It would be wise not to reveal my method; Cyrus might decide to copy it. But I was proud of my accomplishment and couldn’t resist boasting. “A while back, I broke the wireless receiver on a dumpster. Then I took a little camera I bought at a thrift store and taped it across from the keypad. When the trashbots came and the remote wouldn’t work, they had to call for a crew to open it manually. My camera recorded… their actions.” I didn’t mention that it also captured the PIN. The city uses the same number for all its dumpsters, so the PIN was like a lottery number—and I wanted to hold the only winning ticket.
“You must be awful smart to figure that out. How come you’re livin’ down here, instead of up there?”
I switched on the flashlight and saw him pointing to the floor that was my ceiling. I wasn’t ready to talk about how I ended up here, but the man’s eyes somehow pulled it out of me. “I used to teach Prong at the community college.” At his puzzled look, I added, “That’s a programming language.”
“Why don’t you teach it anymore?”
“No one teaches any languages now. AI does most of the coding, and the few people who need to learn it just take a series of nano-capsules.”
“Couldn’t you take some of those capsules and learn another language?”
“I don’t wanna take them. They do more than teach you a language. They change you. I’ve seen it happen to people, seen them change overnight.”
Cyrus smiled at that. “You got family?”
“Had a wife and daughter. A baby.”
“Like Stacy?”
I grunted. “A real daughter. Lisha.”
“Lisha,” he whispered.
The rest of my story came out numbly, as if the crawlspace were smothering my words. “She wasn’t well. We tried every neurologist we could find. Experimental treatments. Nothing worked. In a year, she was gone. Ran up so many medical bills, there was no way I could ever pay them off, even if I was still working. Cass… she was already depressed about losing Lisha, and the debt just made things worse. Crushed her. Crushed us both, I guess. She wanted a fresh start and left.”
After a long silence, Cyrus said, “I’m awful sorry to hear that. But things are bound to turn around for a smart fella like you.” He rolled onto his side, still clutching the doll. “Thank you for lettin’ us in. Awful kind of you. Two acts of kindness in one day.”
A new record.
Almost as an afterthought, I asked, “What about you? Any family?”
He shrugged. “Fostered, till I got too old. Then they set me out on my own.”
“You had a job?”
“Worked a machine,” he said through a yawn. “Turned sawdust into shelves.”
“Then they replaced you with bots, you couldn’t find another job, and now you’re living on the streets. Am I right?”
He nodded. “I come from the Light House shelter. Lived there till they bulldozed it for that new office building. They said to try the shelter on the south side, but when I went there, they was all full up. So I prayed, and the Father sent me to Stacy. Then He led me to you.”
By then, he was yawning so much that he barely got the words out, so I turned out the light. In the dark, he muttered a prayer:
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
May angels watch me through the night,
And keep me safe till morning’s light.”
Somewhere in the night, I dreamed that the Gray Ghost was curled upon my chest, its fur as soft as the doll’s hair, and its glowing eyes just as blue. It whispered to me, told me of a secret code I could use to exit the dark world I’d tumbled into and return myself to the light.
But when I awakened, I found only my cold weathered hands on my chest, and the Gray Ghost’s secrets had departed me.
In the crawlspace, there’s no sleeping in: up before sunrise, then slip outside while it’s still dark. Cyrus followed me again, but now I didn’t try to shake him.
I had enough funds to buy coffee and doughnuts for both of us, plus a cup of milk on the side. He pinched off pieces of his glazed, soaked them in the milk, and fed them to the doll.
Surprisingly, it ate them. I’d been wondering why the thing hadn’t needed a recharge and had my answer: it somehow ran on food.
Afterwards, we returned to the business district. I pointed to a skyscraper that resembled a snow-capped mountain. “Looks like there’s some good spots in front of the CIGIL.”
While Cyrus took one side of the entrance, I took the other, under the company sign.
Pharmechnology that awakens the human potential
We were just in time for people to come flooding out of the buildings for the midday rush. Food kiosks started cruising by, and close behind were the drug kiosks, each one hawking pills or capsules to change the color of your hair or eyes, learn a foreign language, or mimic the personality of various celebrities. Watching all those people placing their orders, I decided there wasn’t one person in the city who was content with who they were.
At the end of the day, I checked my can. There were some aura tokens people buy for social credits and pass on to us, redeemable anywhere; a little cash, which a few places would accept; and a couple of gift chips, mostly for high-end restaurants that we could never set foot in. A glance in Cyrus’s hat told me that he hadn’t done any better.
But then a funny thing happened.
Cyrus left the doll with me while he walked up and down the street, sharing his hat with all the shadow people. After three or four had made withdrawals, the funds should have been depleted, but somehow, dozens of people managed to take something out.
When he was done, he offered the hat to me, but I declined. I did, however, peek inside and was even more perplexed: there was now a little more in there than the first time I had looked.
I decided it was a trick hat with a hidden pocket to ward off potential thieves.
Afterwards, he took the doll back, then grabbed its hand, walked it to the Thrift Store, and bought it diapers.
I thought he was wasting his money, but as it turned out, the doll needed them: we soon discovered that it had a fully functioning digestive tract.
Fully.
***
“What’d you do in your spare time in your old life?” Cyrus asked, that night in the crawlspace.
“Painting. I wasn’t much good at it, but it was a nice change of pace from code. Forced me to use a different part of my brain, if you know what I mean. You?”
“Carving. I made animals and birds, but someone at the shelter stole them.”
“If you do as well tomorrow as you did today, you should keep all you collect and head to the pawn shop. You might find a woodcarving set that someone hocked.”
“I’ll think about it,” Cyrus said.
But the next day, he seemed to forget all about it. We were in front of the CIGIL again, with the same result: Cyrus passed his hat around while I held the doll, everybody reached in and grabbed a handful, and afterwards, he was left with a little bit more than when he had started.
I checked his hat closely this time but found no hidden pocket.
He didn’t take my advice about the woodcarving set, but he did buy some things at the thrift store: a baby-sized parka for the doll, and a pair of adult-sized blue socks, which he wrapped around the doll’s head, like a bandage.
***
In my fumbling attempts to paint, I had learned that good paintings balance the presence of shadow with the presence of light. Both are needed for a painting to come to life. Light, represented by warm colors, pops forward, while shadows feel farther away or closed off.
Shadow people are like that, I think. In daylight, we sit in the shadows of the skyscrapers, closed off from the people who live in the light. They scurry past and toss us a little something but barely look our way.
Maybe they’re afraid that if they look too closely, they might see how easy it would be to tumble from the light and land in the shadows.
Cyrus had quickly learned the names of many of the shadow people and introduced me to a few. I felt embarrassed that I had never learned any of them on my own.
There was Daniels, who’d lost an arm in a car crash, and Costak, who’d lost half his face in a fire. And a twitchy little man named Hermizinsky that Cyrus called “Hermie.” His eyes were inkblots, his arms and head jerked involuntarily, and his mouth produced hisses, growls, or muttered gibberish. His pockets overflowed with blister packs of drugs he had acquired in some manner or another. During our meeting, a foil packet fell out. I scooped it up but could only read a few words of the warning label before he snatched it back:
At the end of the day, I checked my can. There were some aura tokens people buy for social credits and pass on to us, redeemable anywhere; a little cash, which a few places would accept; and a couple of gift chips, mostly for high-end restaurants that we could never set foot in. A glance in Cyrus’s hat told me that he hadn’t done any better.
But then a funny thing happened.
Cyrus left the doll with me while he walked up and down the street, sharing his hat with all the shadow people. After three or four had made withdrawals, the funds should have been depleted, but somehow, dozens of people managed to take something out.
When he was done, he offered the hat to me, but I declined. I did, however, peek inside and was even more perplexed: there was now a little more in there than the first time I had looked.
I decided it was a trick hat with a hidden pocket to ward off potential thieves.
Afterwards, he took the doll back, then grabbed its hand, walked it to the Thrift Store, and bought it diapers.
I thought he was wasting his money, but as it turned out, the doll needed them: we soon discovered that it had a fully functioning digestive tract.
Fully.
“What’d you do in your spare time in your old life?” Cyrus asked, that night in the crawlspace.
“Painting. I wasn’t much good at it, but it was a nice change of pace from code. Forced me to use a different part of my brain, if you know what I mean. You?”
“Carving. I made animals and birds, but someone at the shelter stole them.”
“If you do as well tomorrow as you did today, you should keep all you collect and head to the pawn shop. You might find a woodcarving set that someone hocked.”
“I’ll think about it,” Cyrus said.
But the next day, he seemed to forget all about it. We were in front of the CIGIL again, with the same result: Cyrus passed his hat around while I held the doll, everybody reached in and grabbed a handful, and afterwards, he was left with a little bit more than when he had started.
I checked his hat closely this time but found no hidden pocket.
He didn’t take my advice about the woodcarving set, but he did buy some things at the thrift store: a baby-sized parka for the doll, and a pair of adult-sized blue socks, which he wrapped around the doll’s head, like a bandage.
In my fumbling attempts to paint, I had learned that good paintings balance the presence of shadow with the presence of light. Both are needed for a painting to come to life. Light, represented by warm colors, pops forward, while shadows feel farther away or closed off.
Shadow people are like that, I think. In daylight, we sit in the shadows of the skyscrapers, closed off from the people who live in the light. They scurry past and toss us a little something but barely look our way.
Maybe they’re afraid that if they look too closely, they might see how easy it would be to tumble from the light and land in the shadows.
Cyrus had quickly learned the names of many of the shadow people and introduced me to a few. I felt embarrassed that I had never learned any of them on my own.
There was Daniels, who’d lost an arm in a car crash, and Costak, who’d lost half his face in a fire. And a twitchy little man named Hermizinsky that Cyrus called “Hermie.” His eyes were inkblots, his arms and head jerked involuntarily, and his mouth produced hisses, growls, or muttered gibberish. His pockets overflowed with blister packs of drugs he had acquired in some manner or another. During our meeting, a foil packet fell out. I scooped it up but could only read a few words of the warning label before he snatched it back:
DEGRADES IN THE PRESENCE OF LIGHT
2
Shivering and squatting behind that makeshift igloo, I hear someone crawl out of the front. I poke my head up and see Hermie, whizzing on the sidewalk. After he finishes, he turns back for the igloo, sees me, and growls.
I run around to the front and beg him to let us inside.
He snatches the pack from my hands, burrows into it, and scoops out all my money. As he counts and fondles the bills, his head and arms twitch and flail, gestures I decide to interpret as an invitation inside.
With Stacy clutching my arm, I crawl into his igloo.
The curious business with Cyrus’s hat went on for a week. Then one day, I saw a slender businesswoman with long gray hair standing out in front of the CIGIL. Her cool dark eyes were focused on Cyrus.
The next day, she was there again, now with a tall, muscular businessman, both of them eyeing Cyrus as if they had spotted a rare bird in its natural habitat.
The following day, they talked to Cyrus for a while. After they left, I gave the doll back to him and asked about them.
“They was just being friendly. Asked who I was, where I was from. Althena gave me a little cup of grape juice and put a band-aid on my arm, even though I wasn’t hurt. A few minutes later, she pulled it off, and Dominic stuffed it in a baggie with my cup.”
The “band-aid” was likely one of those dermal swatches that labs sometimes use for testing. When combined with a saliva test from his cup, they could learn a great deal about Cyrus.
What I couldn’t figure out, however, was why they were interested.
That night, I asked Cyrus about the hat, how he did it.
“It comes from the Father,” he said. “He blesses what I take in and lets each person take out what they need.”
He pulled his tattered children’s Bible from his coat pocket. He often read to the doll from it, but this time he opened it to a dog-eared page and read to me. “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or believe because of the miracles I have done. I tell you the truth. He who believes in me will do the same things that I do. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father.”
The rational part of my brain was skeptical but could offer no other explanation.
My parents had hopscotched from one faith to another, and for a brief time we attended a church whose preacher claimed to perform miracles. Eventually, he was exposed as a fraud, but by then we had moved on to another church.
As an adult, I lived exclusively in the secular world, which was fine with Cass, an atheist. But when the secular world offered no hope for Lisha, I turned to prayer. Cass felt I had betrayed her and saw me as weak, turning to a phantom God in desperation.
Thinking of Lisha, and the miracle that never came, I petulantly asked Cyrus, “Why doesn’t God bless you with enough money to get you out of this place?”
“Maybe someday He will.” He closed his Bible and lowered his head. “He leads me wherever I need to go.”
The next day, Althena and Dominic were back again, talking to Cyrus.
“They said I passed the test,” Cyrus told me after he took back the doll. “Said they could make me a whole lot smarter than I am right now. But I told them the Father made me as smart as I need to be, and if I passed my test, then I didn’t suppose I needed to be any smarter.”
In the crawlspace that night, Cyrus held the flashlight for me while I pulled my toolkit from my tattered backpack and performed surgery on a discarded game wrist-projector. Marveling as I brought it back to life, he whispered, “I bet you could heal Stacy.”
“You mean repair. But I wouldn’t know how.”
“You were wrong about her. She can feel pain. That’s why I wrapped those socks around her head. But they don’t help much.”
“Nothing I can do about it.”
During the night, I dreamed the Gray Ghost returned again and whispered to me.
Bring healing.
“If I could do that, don’t you think I would have healed Lisha?” I snapped.
Its blue eyes flared like pilot lights, perhaps in anger. To find that power, it whispered, you must increase your faith.
The next day, Althena and Dominic tried again. After conversing with them, Cyrus jogged back to me. I started to hand him the doll, but he shook his head. “I’m goin’ away with them for a while, so you need to look after Stacy.”
“Going away? Where?”
He pointed to the CIGIL. “They’re gonna make me an employee and enroll me in a special program. They said I’ll make so much money, I’ll be able to help millions of people.”
“I don’t think you should trust them, Cyrus.”
“Oh, they’re okay. It’s just like you said the other night: God’s making me rich enough to leave this place.”
I started to tell him I didn’t mean what I said, but before I could speak, the doll said, “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’ll come back for you. Then we’ll leave and get our own place. Meantime, Haden’ll take care of you.” He looked down, directly into my eyes. “Won’t you?”
Something in his gaze left me powerless to say no. I nodded.
He kissed the doll and handed me his Bible. “Keep this till I come back.”
I’d met many people who had fallen from the light and landed in the shadows. The streets were full of them. But until then, I’d never known anyone who had made it out of the shadows and back into the light.
Althena and Dominic led him into the tower, and just like that, I was alone again. There was a time when I would have been glad to see Cyrus go, but that night, the crawlspace seemed dark and cold and empty.
I’d been alone before, but I’d never really felt alone till then.
“You’re not alone,” the doll whispered. “You’ve got me.”
It touched my fingers. For the first time, I felt its skin, skin that was as soft and warm as Lisha’s.
I clutched her hand.
Hermie’s place is even more cramped than the crawlspace (Cyrus would have never fit inside it) and though it’s warmer than outside, I’m still shivering. It’s not long before a fever breaks out.
Stacy cranks up the flashlight and turns it on, revealing a pile of rags, and a mound of drug and food packets. She rummages through the mound and drags back a grimy plastic water bottle. “Drink this.”
After a few swallows, she hands me a packet of two pills. For fever, the label says. I down them and quickly fall asleep.
For a few nights after Cyrus left us, I read to Stacy from his Bible. But when I awakened one night and saw her cranking the flashlight and scanning the pages, I realized she could read on her own.
As each day passed, her knowledge and vocabulary expanded, though I didn’t know where that knowledge was coming from. She was clearly neither a droid nor a toy, as I had originally suspected.
One night, I asked her how she had come to be in the dumpster behind the hotel.
“I’m a STAASI. A Synthesized Test Animal with Artificial Synaptic Intelligence. I was part of a group testing pharmechnology compounds.
“A male STAASI near me experienced a side effect: bursts of extreme violence. He kicked and punched a hole in my skull. One of the technicians heard me scream in pain and removed him.”
Cyrus had insisted that Stacy could feel pain; I knew then that he was right. STAASIs would need to detect if a drug was causing or alleviating pain and register degrees of discomfort. Pain detection would be essential.
“Because of my injury, I was dropped from the test. They ordered my humane disposal.”
“What’s that?”
“Euthanasia. Followed by decapitation.
“The tech, however, forged the lab records and sold me to a black-market dealer. There is great demand for us among cults, who want us for ritual sacrifices, and among the depraved, who desire us for lewd activities.
“Fortunately, the dealer sold me instead to a wealthy woman who bought me as a toy for her daughter. However, the woman’s husband thought I was possessed. He gave me sleep medicine and dumped me in the trash at the hotel, just before bots came and emptied the trash into the dumpster.
“I was frightened and weak, but hours later, Cyrus heard me calling.”
I was camped in front of the CIGIL, a good distance from the entrance. Stacy was at my side, closely watching each person who walked past. Black clouds were piling up in the west, brewing a storm, and the lunch crowd were scurrying back to their buildings, ants to their anthills. I started to doze and was awakened by a man’s voice.
“I have no time for you.”
“My Cyrus!” Stacy shouted.
I opened my eyes and saw a tall man in a business suit and a long black overcoat. But I couldn’t see his face; he had turned his head to stare down at Costak’s open palm. “I’m busy making the money you so casually solicit.”
He quickly turned away and resumed walking. As he approached us, I stood, trying to get a good look at him, and inadvertently blocked his path.
His face was fuller, his cheeks were shaved, and his hair was neatly trimmed, but otherwise, he looked exactly like Cyrus.
Then I looked into his eyes and wasn’t so sure.
He had the same gray eyes as Cyrus, but behind them, something was different. The happy-go-lucky nature of Cyrus was gone, replaced by cold determination.
“What’d they do to you, Cyrus?”
He looked at me as if I were a dog to be kicked out of his way. “I have no idea who you are. Now move away or I’ll tap my wrist implant and 911 your ass.”
I stepped aside.
He took only a couple of steps before Stacy, clinging to my arm, reached for him.
He spun around. “Who touched me?”
“It’s me, Cyrus. Stacy.”
He swung his eyes down.
She smiled and began to sing.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
May angels watch me through the night,
And keep me safe till morning’s light.”
His face—the face that was almost Cyrus, but not quite—was in agony. A tear slipped out of the corner of his eye. Then another. Slowly, the hardness in his eyes melted, and he stared at Stacy with nothing but love. But it only lasted a moment. His eyes dissolved into panic, then panic into anger. He turned and ran to the doors. The scanner read his eyes, the doors opened, and he bolted inside.
“Hungry.”
It sounds like Stacy, but not her current voice. Weaker. More like how she sounded when I rescued her from the dumpster.
“I’m hungry.”
I open my eyes. Rain thrums the roof of the igloo, and there’s a whirring sound I can’t place. I sit up, hacking and spitting, then zero in on the noise: it’s Stacy, cranking up the flashlight. She turns it on and illuminates the source of the voice.
Behind the packet mound, lifting its head out from under a pile of rags, is another STAASI. A thick black scar runs from cheekbone to chin.
Stacy gapes in horror, shaking her head. “This must end,” she whispers. “No more. Please.” As she reaches out to touch the doll, she drops the flashlight, and the noise awakens Hermie.
He sees Stacy holding the doll’s hand, and his scrambled brain becomes enraged. He tosses Stacy aside and pulls a broken bottle from behind the rag pile. Wielding it like a sword, he backs us out the door and into the pouring rain.
It’s daytime, but that’s small consolation, for it feels even colder than last night. The medicine is trying to claw me back to sleep, and I stand there, tottering, ready to collapse.
Stacy hasn’t given up, though. “Run,” she says.
“Where?”
She points. I run.
After our encounter on the street with the man who seemed to be Cyrus, we barely made it to the crawlspace before the rain set in. It rained every day for two weeks, forcing many of the shadow people to huddle under makeshift umbrellas of carboard, particleboard, or tinfoil.
I scrounged two broken VR helmets from a dumpster and combined them into one functioning helmet, then pawned it and used some of the cash to buy a rain poncho at the thrift store. I kept Stacy under it, close to my chest, so that the rain couldn’t soak through her sock bandage.
Business was slow those days, for the weather kept many of the workers indoors. Fortunately, I had the rest of the money from the wrist-projector and VR sales to tide me over. To prevent anyone from knocking me out and stealing it, I hid it inside my backpack in the crawlspace during the day, along with my flashlight, tools, and Stacy’s diapers.
Finally, on a day when the showers lifted and the weather suddenly turned warm, the streets were flooded with people again. Spring had finally arrived. I shed my poncho and had my first good day in quite a while.
But as I started to leave and walked past the front of the CIGIL, Althena ran out, looking haggard and bewildered. “What did you say to Cyrus two weeks ago?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“Nothing.”
“Our security cameras recorded you. You said something that derailed his progress.”
As she was speaking, Dominic joined her and noticed Stacy tucked under my arm. “That’s a STAASI. How—”
Althena silenced him as if waving an invisible wand. I quickly shifted Stacy behind my back.
“What did you say to change him?” Althena asked me.
“You’re the ones who changed him. So that he could work for you. But that killed what made him special.”
“And what do you think made him ‘special?’” she asked mockingly.
“You saw what he did with his hat. Giving away more than he took in, yet he still had some left at the end of the day. It’s like he had some sort of connection with God. A gift. Like God was working through him somehow. But that’s gone now.”
“You were seeing things. Cyrus had nothing in his pockets when we took him in. No money. No chips. No aura. He foolishly gave away all he collected. We rewarded that generosity.”
“Rewarded it?”
She nodded. “Each year, CIGIL gives back to the community by selecting someone who has been left behind and lifts them up. We bring them in and make them part of the company. This year, we chose Cyrus.
“He was a promising member of our finance team. No matter what you might think, he was better off. I’ll never feel guilty about that.”
“He didn’t know what he was giving up. If he knew, he never would have come with you.”
She ignored that and gave me a pleading look. “Tell me what you said to him that would make him pull such a stunt.”
“What stunt? What do you mean?”
She sighed. “He ran to our labs and disrupted one of our studies. Grabbed several lab dolls and tried to run away with them.”
Stunned, I didn’t know what to say. “Where is he now?”
Althena turned pale. “Security tried to stop him. He wouldn’t listen.” Her body quaked. “The police were called. He tried rushing them…”
“He’s dead,” Dominic said. “They shot him.”
Stacy whimpered behind my back.
Dominic raised his eyebrows and stepped forward for a closer look, but before he could see her, I turned and shifted her to my side, then ran for Shadow Town.
Stacy wailed like a siren the whole way.
Dazed and feverish, I don’t realize Stacy has directed me from Hermie’s igloo to the CIGIL until we’re already there. By then, I’m too wet and tired to resist.
The entrance provides shelter from the rain, but not the cold. I squat on the concrete, lean my head against the window, and doze in and out of sleep.
For the next two days after our encounter with Althena and Dominic, we stayed away from the CIGIL and went to the Flecherton Tower instead. On our second day there, spring revealed itself to be a false spring. It was warm that morning, so we had left our coats in the crawlspace, but by afternoon, the temperature had plummeted, and the wind was so sharp, everyone kept their hands in their pockets, and we collected nothing. Since I couldn’t risk being seen at the crawlspace in daylight, I didn’t dare go back to retrieve our coats, so we, too, were freezing.
When darkness finally arrived, I tucked Stacy under my arm and returned to the crawlspace to grab our coats and withdraw money from my pack for food. But when I reached the entrance, the board was nailed tight.
In desperation, I clawed at it, trying to pry it loose. I was so focused on it, I didn’t notice the maintenance supervisor as he came around the corner dragging a water hose. He squeezed the nozzle and began spraying me down.
I stumbled back, shielding Stacy behind me, then slipped in the grass and fell on my side. “My pack’s in there.” I held up a hand, begging for mercy, but he just kept pouring it on, waving the nozzle, head to toe and back again. “Let me get it out. Please. It’s all I have.”
“Your pack’s not in there,” said Dominic. He stepped around the corner with my pack dangling from his hand.
He let the torrent continue for a while longer, then said, “That’s enough.” The supervisor obediently cut off the hose, but by then I was soaked to the bone.
Dominic handed the man two crisp bills, large enough to make his eyes bulge. “Thank you for handling this situation.”
“Need anything else, just ask,” he toadied, then dragged his hose away like a tail.
Dominic turned to me. “I had you followed from the Flecherton yesterday and learned you were staying here.”
“What do you want?” Water dripped from my nose and landed in my mouth.
“The STAASI. Hand it over, and I’ll give you your pack. Nothing’s been removed from it. I even folded your rain poncho and put it inside.” He chuckled. “But I guess you could have used that a moment ago.”
“Our coats…”
“Ahh. Had to throw those out.” He wrinkled his nose. “Fleas. But we can get you a new one. Along with a nice warm motel room for the night, some dry clothes, and a hot dinner. Gonna be a cold night. Rain coming. If you stay out in those wet clothes, you’ll catch pneumonia.” He held out his hand. “The STAASI, please.”
“What do you want with her?”
“I reviewed the video of your encounter with Cyrus more closely. Zoomed in on the doll’s eyes, scanned its retinal code, and confirmed it’s our property.”
“She’s no one’s property.”
He smiled, straining to make it look pleasant. “As I scrutinized the recording, I realized that it wasn’t Cyrus’s conversation with you that triggered his downward spiral—it was his interaction with the STAASI. It must have caused him to remember his old life. He probably felt guilty about working for the same company that discarded the doll, so he tried to rescue other dolls to soothe his conscience.”
“You still can’t have her.”
He sighed impatiently, his face and voice now firm. “What do you know about its history?”
“She told me how she got injured.”
“I’m guessing it didn’t tell you everything. A small percentage of participants in its study experienced side effects of various degrees of telepathy. All of our products rewrite neural pathways, so the effects often persist long after discontinuation. However, with this doll, the side effect seems to be persisting longer than in others.
“Brain tissue analysis may help us determine if the side effect was just an aberration of the ASI, or if the effect can be replicated in humans. If it can, we might be able to tweak the formula so that all users can experience it. We could then market the drug with this as the primary benefit. Think of the—”
I sprang from the ground, head-butted his gut, and snatched my pack from his hand.
“Kiosks selling pills that turn people into mind readers?” I shook my head. “I want no part of that.”
Doubled over and gasping for breath, he wheezed, “AI with… access to… any mind… dangerous.”
I bolted into the shadows and ran, shivering and sopping wet, for Shadow Town.
Someone enters the CIGIL, and while they fiddle with their umbrella, Stacy slips in undetected at their feet.
I doze.
Cyrus comes out and squats beside me. “Thank you for taking care of Stacy. Feeding her. Keeping her warm and dry.”
“You’re just a dream,” I mutter. “You’re not Cyrus.”
“Don’t you know me?” He opens his eyes wide and smiles, his gray eyes now golden orbs. “Live like children who belong to the light.”
I snap awake and one thought floods my mind before I tumble back to sleep: If He can use a donkey or a burning bush as an intermediary, then why not a broken lab doll?
A distant ambulance siren awakens me.
Stacy climbs onto my shoulder, takes the sodden Bible from my shirt pocket, and reads, “The greatest love a person can show is to die for his friends.”
The ambulance is coming down the street now, heading this way. Stacy kisses me, and for the first time since Lisha died, I pray—for Cyrus’s kind of faith.
I let go and relinquish myself to a greater power, like a twig carried along by a river’s current. For a moment, I’m confident I will end up where I need to be and feel a rising surge of inner peace. But then I open my eyes and see Dominic taking Stacy away, and my inner peace shatters.
“No.” In my mind it’s a scream; in my ears it’s a whisper.
But Stacy seems to hear me and looks back, ambulance lights dancing in her eyes.
Then they slip through the door, and she is gone.
One night in the hospital, I awaken to find someone standing over me. The figure with eyes like golden orbs. The figure that once looked like Cyrus but now does not.
“Now you know me,” he says.
“Yes.”
His eyes glow brighter. “In the past you were full of darkness, but now you are full of light in the Lord. So live like children who belong to the light.”
I close my eyes and when I open them again, I see no one there. But it doesn’t feel like I’m alone.
And I know now what I have to do.
On my first day out of the hospital, spring has finally come to stay. The sidewalks are warm from the light of a blazing sun as I make my way back to Shadow Town.
Hermie’s not there, so I hike on to the business district and find him in the shadows near the CIGIL. I march right up to him, and he sees something in me that makes him cower. But when I lay my hands on him, no anger flows from them.
Something else flows. Something that’s hard to describe. Maybe something that can’t be described.
An artist has knowledge of his paints, how to mix them, how to use them, but the great ones have mastery over them, and it’s kind of like that, except I’m not painting with oils: I’m painting with something else. Something that feels like a torrent surging through me. A torrent of energy and information, perhaps.
All I know for certain is that it doesn’t come from me; it comes from the one who wrote the code that powers each living cell. And all I can do is grasp it, like the mightiest paintbrush, and guide it.
This torrent, when directed at Hermie, forces the thing that we might call a demon, the thing that had taken up residence in the crawlspace of his mind, to flee in a shriek of madness, and Hermie can speak again.
But we don’t stop there. Mixing just the right code, the right information, in just the right way, the proper brushstrokes, and Daniels has his arm again, and Costak’s face is restored.
The others, too. They, a small crowd, gather around me outside the CIGIL tower as I sit with Hermie’s STAASI on my lap, running my fingers through her hair. I smile as the last traces of her wounds close and she is whole again.
“What’s next?” Hermie asks.
“Next?” I think of what Stacy said after she discovered this STAASI in Hermie’s dark lair. This must end. No more. And then I cast my eyes to the tower. “Next, we move a mountain.”
The author lives near Indianapolis, Indiana and works as an e-learning developer and consultant. His work has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways and Writers of the Future. He enjoys all types of speculative fiction, hiking, and deliberately trying to confuse his YouTube algorithm.
Author’s note: “At the macro level, all around us, we can see God as the master artist. But when we learn about the micro level, and the tiny machines inside each of the trillions of cells in our bodies, all working in conjunction with each other, shuttling information back and forth like high-tech miniature factories, we can see that He is also the master engineer. I like that both of those aspects of Him (artist and engineer) are reflected in Haden.”
“From the Light” by Larry Ferrill. Copyright © 2026 by Larry Ferrill. Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, International Children’s Bible®. Copyright © 1986, 1988, 1999, 2015 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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