Glitch

The morning sunlight filtered through the thin haze of moulering day, casting a pale glow across hillside facing the sun. Jahan Moridi sat beside her husband on a worn boulder in front their small home, which was carved into a hillside. Her husband, ran a calloused hand over the conduits embedded into his forearm. Jahan had the same ones. Neither of them knew of a life without this built-in obedience to the AI ruling their lives.

“Bowman will command us soon,” Sanam said. He made the same comment every morning before they went off to do whatever the AI demanded of them. Their mornings were steeped in ritual. If the weather was good, they greeted the rising sun.

For the next part of their morning routine, Jahan rose and walked inside. Their home consisted of three small rooms. Carved out of dirt and rock, the dirt had been treated to harden the walls, floors, and ceiling. One room was for eating and living, another for sleeping, and the third was the bathroom.

A small grill made from stones was closest to the door, comprising the kitchen along with a large metal basin on top of a wooden box for washing and a set of table and chairs. Farther into the room, a sofa, a data console, and crude end tables comprised the living area. Jahan passed all of her paltry comforts into the back room. Having no windows, the second room was dark and fit for nothing other than sleeping.

Jahan powered on the lighting, sat on the bed, and pulled open a drawer. Her hands brushed over an old painting she kept tucked among her few items of clothing. On thick paper, the painting depicted an exact likeness of two children—Mahda, barely ten, grinning in her patched tunic, and Naji, her younger brother, who had drowned during one of the great floods. The heavy paper was frayed at the edges, but the memories it held were sharp. A kind neighbor had painted the children on a lovely summer day—before Naji met with tragedy and before Mahda ran off to the Moon. The artist was gone now too, lost in a firestorm. “They’re all gone,” Jahan whispered her grief to the ghosts living in the shadows of the tiny, stuffy room.

“Mahda would send word if she could,” Sanam said as he came into the room. Picking up the painting, he kissed his fingers and waited. Jahan kissed his fingers, and he pressed them to the smiling faces. “Important work takes place on the Moon. We’ve already seen a shift in the weather from the efforts, bettering our lives. Our Mahda did that.”

Jahan nodded. “I know.” Her voice was steady, but her soul carried the weight of too many years of heartbreak.

The conduits in her skin flared, emitting a faint hum. Sanam’s arm lit up too. He gently kissed her lips. “I carry them and you in my heart, even when I am unable to say.”

“Same,” she answered. Bowman would cruelly block their thoughts and words for the next ten hours.

Sanam grimaced and tucked away the painting.

Jahan took his hand, lacing her calloused fingers through his. Instructions scrolled across her mind, Sector 5—construction duty. She repeated the instructions aloud. Sanam whispered the same words. She let the happiness of working together today fill her. Besides, the few moments where they remembered their children, she had little else to give her joy.

In unison they rose from the bed, their bodies moving to the orders pumping through their conduits. With only the directions of where to go in her mind, Jahan noticed little else.

Outside, the hillside paths buzzed with the quiet activity of their neighbors. Everyone moved with the same measured precision dictated by Bowman’s omnipresent will. The AI didn’t allow for detours or conversations. Everyone was a cog in a vast machine.

The day unfolded as expected. The construction site, which would become a new farm protected from the brutal swings in weather was a blur of stone, metal, glass, and relentless labor. Jahan fitted pipes, while Sanam welded, their hands moving with the automatic efficiency Bowman commanded them with. By day’s end, an acre of land sat under the arcing roof of a new greenhouse farm.

Jahan’s conduits in her arm flared again, signaling it was time to return home. But something was off. The instructions led them down a winding path that veered away from their usual route.

Sanam noticed first, frowning. “My love,” he said quietly, “this isn’t the way home.”

Jahan slowed. The neighborhood they entered was unfamiliar, the houses worn and tilted as though they’d been forgotten by time. In front of a crumbling doorway, the humming ceased with deafening silence.

“This… isn’t right,” Jahan whispered.

Sanam glanced at her, his expression unreadable. For a moment, they stood there, untethered and no longer driven by Bowman’s commands. The stillness stretched until it became unbearable. Climbing onto the roof of the steadiest looking home, Jahan surveyed the horizon. She spotted the hills where people lived. The hills offered more protection than the long-abandoned cities.

“This way,” she said, leading Sanam away from the dilapidated housing.

As they walked, a faint unease settled over them, like a shadow too small to notice but too large to ignore. Bowman never made mistakes. Until today.

GET ECHOES OF HALLER CANYON