Kiro didn't remember when he started hating people. Maybe it was always there, coiled in his chest like a sleeping snake. But working as a scouting agent for models had certainly refined the disgust into something sharp and useful. The girl standing in front of his desk had that desperate shine in her eyes. The kind that screamed she'd already spent daddy's money on headshots and was here to collect on a dream the world never promised her. She was moderately attractive in that predictable suburban way. Decent bone structure, adequate facial symmetry, forgettable features softened by just enough baby fat to suggest she'd never missed a meal or faced a real consequence. Brown hair with manufactured highlights. Manicured nails. The kind of carefully constructed mediocrity that worked at a coffee shop but nowhere that mattered.
"You don't have it," Kiro said, not looking up from his phone.
"But I..."
He finally looked up, letting his eyes drag across her face with all the warmth of a medical examiner. "But you what? You've been told by your parents you're beautiful your whole life? That you're special?" He leaned back in his chair. "You're average. Terminally, irredeemably average. You have no future in this industry. No amount of Instagram filters or ring lights is going to change your bone structure, and your bone structure is the only thing that matters here." Her mouth opened slightly, that little intake of breath that preceded tears. "The camera doesn't lie, sweetheart. It just reveals what everyone's too polite to say to your face. You'd be competing against girls who were born with what you're desperately trying to fake. Girls who make people stop mid conversation when they walk into a room. You make people glance up and then go back to their coffee."
There it was. The moment he'd been waiting for. Her eyes went glossy, that telltale shimmer of tears gathering at the waterline. Her bottom lip trembled just slightly. The exact second when delusion cracked and reality bled through. God, it felt good. Better than coffee. Better than sex with someone whose name he'd forget by morning. There was something pure about it. Honest. He wasn't the villain here. The world was simply sorting itself into hierarchies of value, and he was just the messenger. She'd thank him eventually, when she settled into whatever mediocre existence awaited her. Management. Administration. A comfortable grave with a 401k.
"Next," he said, returning to his phone.
The door closed. No dramatic slam. Just a quiet click of defeat. Cattle. The word sat bitter and satisfying on his tongue. All of them. Shuffling toward the slaughterhouse, hoping someone will tell them they're special.
"Wow, Kiro! Little harsh today, aren't we?" His coworker (Bradley, or Brandon, some aggressively cheerful name that matched his aggressively cheerful face) grinned at him from across the bullpen. The kind of guy who still believed in "team spirit" and "positive vibes." The kind of parasite who fed off the competence of others while contributing nothing but noise.
Kiro forced a smile, the one he'd practiced in the mirror until it looked almost human. "Just maintaining standards, buddy. Someone has to."
Bradley laughed like Kiro had told a joke. He hadn't.
The coffee shop on Fifth had one thing going for it: they made espresso that didn't taste like burnt tire rubber. Kiro ordered a double shot, drank it standing at the counter in three quick swallows that scalded his throat, then walked out without tipping. The barista's judgment slid off him like water off waxed steel. His apartment building squatted in the city's armpit, a monument to architectural apathy. Cracked concrete steps. Graffiti that wasn't even artistic. Just the alphabet vomited by people too stupid to spell their own names correctly. But that was precisely why Kiro liked it. Inconspicuous. Cheap. The kind of place where nobody asked questions because nobody gave a shit. No doorman writing down when you came and went. No neighbors organizing potlucks or community meetings. Just a collection of people too broke or too broken to afford better, all practicing the same religion of mutual avoidance. The rent was criminally low for the area, subsidized by the city's guilt about gentrification. Which meant Kiro's paychecks went further here than they would in some sterile high rise full of finance bros comparing Tesla models.
The homeless man was in his usual spot near the entrance, wrapped in layers of newspaper and cardboard like some kind of failed cocoon. He held out a cup without looking up, a ritual performed so many times it had become mechanical. Kiro walked past without breaking stride. "Thanks for keeping the rent prices down," he muttered, just loud enough for the man to maybe hear, maybe not.
The apartment itself was small (laughably so by the standards of the parasites in his office who still lived off family money). But it was his. Every square foot paid for by his own competence, his own ruthless efficiency at separating the valuable from the worthless. One room, a bathroom, a kitchen the size of a coffin. Bare walls because decorating was for people who needed external validation of their existence. He kicked off his shoes and collapsed onto the futon that served as both couch and bed, pulling out his phone. Twitter was, as always, a cesspool of mediocrity jerking itself off. But something was different tonight.
The entire feed (every single account, from the verified checkmarks to the conspiracy theorists to the porn bots) was fixated on the same thing. #PalestineGodWalking. Kiro scrolled through the videos with the detachment of a man watching ants burn under a magnifying glass. The footage was grainy, shot from helicopter cameras and shaking phone screens, but the figure was unmistakable. A man, tall and ordinary looking except for one small detail. He was walking through the streets of Gaza, and everything in his path was melting. Not exploding. Not burning. Melting. Like God had decided to drag an eraser across reality. Buildings sagged and liquefied into pools of concrete and steel. Cars folded in on themselves like aluminum foil. And people (the videos cut away before showing too much, but Kiro's imagination filled in the details easily enough). The man just walked, steady and purposeful, his eyes glowing like headlights cutting through fog. Heat vision. Actual fucking heat vision.
The comments section was having a collective aneurysm. Half convinced it was CGI, some viral marketing stunt for a movie nobody would watch. The other half screaming about the apocalypse, the antichrist, alien invasion. The usual hysteria. Kiro felt nothing. Not fear. Not excitement. Just a distant curiosity, like reading about a traffic accident in another city. Probably fake. He locked his phone. Some basement dweller with too much time and Adobe After Effects. The world was full of desperate people manufacturing importance out of nothing. Why should this be different?
He stripped down to his boxers and collapsed onto the futon properly, staring at the water stained ceiling. No friends to text about it. No family to call. Just him and the silence he'd cultivated so carefully. Being alone wasn't loneliness if you chose it. That's what the weak never understood. Isolation was power. No obligations. No compromises. No one to drag you down to their level. Sleep came quickly, dreamless and heavy.
Kiro opened his eyes to somewhere else. Not his apartment. Not anywhere that followed the rules of places that actually existed. He was standing in an infinite stretch of grassy plains that rolled out in every direction, endless and perfectly flat. The grass was too green, too uniform, like someone had copy pasted the same patch of lawn across eternity. Above him hung a single point of light. Not a sun. Not a star. Just light. Sourceless and absolute, casting no shadows.
"Kiro."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. He spun around and found himself face to face with the thing. It wasn't human. Wasn't trying to be. Tall and wrong, with limbs too long and joints that bent in directions geometry hadn't invented yet. Its skin (if it was skin) shimmered like oil on water, reflecting colors that didn't have names. No mouth. No eyes. Just a smooth, featureless surface where a face should be. But Kiro could feel it looking at him.
"What the fuck is this?" Kiro's voice came out steadier than he felt.
"You were chosen randomly." The thing's voice vibrated inside his skull, matter of fact and utterly disinterested. "One hundred thousand individuals across your species. Most will receive minor abilities. Menial alterations. Ten thousand will be exceptional. One thousand will be gods." It gestured vaguely, as if indicating something Kiro couldn't see. "The man in Gaza. That is what a god looks like."
Kiro's mind raced. "Randomly chosen. So this isn't about worthiness or potential or..."
"No." The thing might have been amused. Hard to tell without a face. "You are not special. You were selected the way your species selects lottery numbers. Chance. Nothing more. Do not mistake random selection for cosmic significance."
The words should have stung, but Kiro found himself almost respecting the honesty. At least this thing wasn't blowing smoke up his ass about destiny or chosen ones.
"This place," the thing continued, "is where all chosen will visit when they sleep. A neutral space. You will always awaken here when you fall asleep in your world. You may stay as long as your body sleeps, or you may enter actual rest through your panel." A translucent screen materialized in front of Kiro. Floating. Pulsing with soft light. Options scrolled across it in text that shifted between languages he recognized and symbols he didn't. VISITOR STATUS: ANONYMOUS. MAKE PUBLIC? YES / NO. POWER MANIFESTATION: PENDING. SLEEP MODE / REMAIN CONSCIOUS.
"You may choose to make yourself known to other visitors," the thing explained, "or remain anonymous. Choose wisely."
Kiro glanced at another section of the panel that showed a list. Names. Faces. Locations. Dozens of them already, users who'd made themselves public. JustinK_USA, sakura_chan_tokyo, TheProphet777. Grinning profile pictures. Bios. Some already bragging about powers they'd discovered. Only a fucking idiot would make themselves public. He selected ANONYMOUS without hesitation.
Then something else caught his eye. About twenty feet away, standing in the grass like it had always been there, was a slot machine. An actual fucking slot machine. Chrome and gaudy, with blinking lights and a red lever on the side. It looked like something ripped straight out of a Vegas casino floor, completely out of place in the infinite green expanse.
"What the hell is that?"
"Your power manifestation," the thing said simply. "It takes different forms for different individuals. Yours manifested as... exactly that."
Kiro walked toward it, grass crunching under his bare feet. The slot machine hummed with potential, electric and waiting. The display showed three empty windows, ready to spin. He reached out and grabbed the lever. It was cold. Real. Solid in a way that shouldn't exist in a dream space.
He pulled.
The wheels spun. Fast at first, then slower, clicking through symbols he couldn't quite make out. Images blurred together. Power. Potential. Cosmic lottery. The sound filled the infinite space, mechanical and rhythmic. Click. Click. Click. The first wheel stopped. Then the second. Then the third.
The display flashed. MEMORY IMPLEMENTATION.
Kiro stared at the words. "Memory Implementation? The fuck does that mean?"
He looked back at the creature, but it was already fading. Dissolving into the grass like smoke. "Wait. What does this..."
"I will return in one month to observe the results." The thing's voice was distant now, already half gone. "Good luck, Kiro. Or don't. Luck is also random."
And then he was alone. Standing in an infinite field of grass, staring at a slot machine that had just told him his cosmic power was something called Memory Implementation. Not heat vision. Not super strength. Not flight or telekinesis or anything that sounded remotely useful. Memory Implementation. It sounded fucking weak. Like some background character ability. Like something they'd give to a support class in a game nobody played.
The slot machine's lights dimmed and went dark. The panel still floated nearby, glowing softly. One hundred thousand people. Most worthless. Some exceptional. A handful who'd become gods. And Kiro had pulled Memory Implementation.
He looked down at his hands, feeling that hum beneath his skin again. Coiled. Waiting. Whatever this was, he'd figure it out. He always did. The game had started, and for once, everyone was playing. Even if his hand looked like shit.