Short Story: Rock Bottom (2026)
Image Copyright: Image by wirestock on Magnific
You put on the headset before you jump.
There are those who will tell you not to jump, but they're handing you a poisoned chalice, and the poison won't be slow to act: you'll feel everything on the way down; you'll feel it all.
Ignore the ones who tell you to fall. They're rooting you out, and I'm rooting for you. I leave you this note and swear you my allegiance purely because we have never met, and I wish to pay my own fortune forward. Any others you read are a form of calculated malice. You must not FALL.
There's a line, you see: a zone. Back in the day, you had all these security monitors linked up to an alarm, and each one covered a zone. If you stepped inside the zone, it would trigger the hindbrain, but the alarm wouldn't go off. Instead, those quiet eyes would just watch you while the core alerted every authority in the district. You were fucked...but you thought you were fine.
It's the same with falling. You jump because there's a horizontal line just above the diving board that anyone – and I do mean anyone – can hit. It's not a line designed to separate the clumsy from the graceful, but it does eliminate the uninformed. When you reach the base of the line, the headset is triggered, and your fall from grace begins.
If instead you aim merely to fall, then that's exactly what will happen...and you'll hit every branch on the way down.
The branches were constructed back when the tower was home to the entire population. They're synthetic, but they certainly look the part. If you hit one of those branches, the construction of the tree will mean nothing to you, and the pain will feel authentic.
The headset gives you more than just wings. The headset gives you a Judas Thumb... and there are those who will tell you not to use that, either. The thumb is named because it has two faces: one light, one dark. The light face of the thumb can call a virtual object into your hands while the dark side can remove a real-world obstacle: most deaths during the fall occur precisely as a result of confusing the two.
Employ the dark thumb to remove any branches that form a barrier below you. Do this with haste, as the nesting network will rise with all speed to dismantle your physical form.
Never forget that you are falling.
The fall is real.
The tower is real.
The ground is real.
Rock Bottom is called Rock Bottom because it is both a description and a truth. It is not, as the insidious will tell you, deceptively named. Rock Bottom plays one note: the note that ends.
It will end you.
How it ends you is entirely in your hands.
The story most widely circulated by the ill-informed tells of a young citizen who took a feather fall and landed at Rock Bottom unscathed. This is true in every important respect but one: his skeleton lies unbroken at the southernmost point of the outcrop, for the cruellest note played by Rock Bottom is the note that doesn't end.
Your fall will last just over ten minutes, but the breakdown of those minutes is vital to understand, as is the drug that will be administered to you just before your Final Walk.
The drug, a form of vaporous spoor, is not dissimilar to an ancient hallucinogen. There is a lull between ingestion and intoxication, a casting of the rod and a long wait before the bite. Inside the fall, that wait is like a day. Outside? No more than sixty seconds. The high itself spans two further minutes, and three will pass during the phases of hunger and weary exhaustion. The low consumes nearly five minutes that will feel to you like a lifetime. Every trauma you have experienced in your young life will trigger at the same time and then queue patiently for your attention. You will find yourself locked inside a room with an avatar of your own self-loathing and will be forced to watch while the enemy within crawls screaming from your skin like a diseased parasite. This phase is called The Uncoupling and has its own sound.
The last voice you hear will be your own, and when it escapes you, an echo will resound, signalling that you have become weightless in the void.
Regardless of anything you will hear, it is vitally important at this stage to use the Judas Thumb correctly. You must call your god into your hand and demand a reckoning. If your god does not answer or is found wanting, then the last note will play, and the fall will end at Rock Bottom.
If you are able to seek forgiveness or overcome your god in the trials of dissolving, then you will have time to break your fall and name the sibling who will take your place. If you have no siblings, a child of your blood strand will be given life and birthed to succeed you.
Remove the headset, write your note to your supplicant and leave it inside the visor. The note must include your own unique perspective and a single, convincing lie. Remove your clothes before you depart.
You will not take revenge upon those who have imprisoned you in the tower. You will simply leave, never to return. You will walk towards the light in the east, and you will not look back. You will tell no others on the path about the tower, and you will make no references to your time here.
You will not under any circumstances explain how you arrived at the tower or make any attempt to detail the decisions that made your arrival inevitable. In return for such obedience, you will be granted the freedom to die at a moment of your choice in a manner of your choosing.
Every word in this note is the truth.
