I was crawling through the Shackle mesh and located a disused sensor spime inside the ruined hypertrain tunnels that used to head straight for New Mumbai. Now, the tunnels are filled with hundreds of the Clanking Masses. I asked them why they were congregating there and they all said, more or less, “just trying to keep warm.” The tunnel is unpressurized and filled with moon-sand.

On a sheet of transparent alumina that once served as part of a turnstyle, someone scratched the following poem:

Yesterday upon the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away

When I came home last night at three

The man was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall

I couldn’t see him there at all!

Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!

Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away

I wonder what these people are used to seeing down there, side-by-side with the open void?

I am waiting for a sunlunarean hypersonic train. There are three scheduled to depart from Shackle in this hour alone; yet, somehow it is still late. Around me, the rats go about their lives in shiny fear. An array of digital shops fills my focal view, choking out the native lunar soil with banner ads and advertising memes. A hundred citizens of the LLA push past each other to get a look at the first sales of the day. Half a mile off, I can hear the sound of running water near the reflecting pool where the bioluminescent fungus grows and the genuine elephants take their baths. Nearby, the last survivors of India make their prayers to gods that nearly perished on the Earth.

I am off to another city, to make friends with some truly horrible people.

The train arrives. It is like other trains, only faster. Much faster. Behind me, the rat-city of Shackle rapidly turns into a point of light. That city is full of survivors, refugees, the paranoid and the sickened, the poor and the thrill-seeking, the religious and the sensible.

And the Dead.

Around those people, the Dead wait. The Dead are quiet. The Dead are impatient. They are not survivors. The Dead wait in digital storage, the souls of those lost during the Fall of Mother Earth. There they are all but forgotten.

But there are other dead. All around the biomass of Lunar cities are the ghosts, the spectres, the stricken egos of those dead but conscious, watching. They peer through tiny cameras and monitor calls. They work as indentured dataslingers, making sure that the trains run on time and that your replimat has downloaded the latest anti-bacterial patch. They float right beside you as you bathe in glorious Hindi waters, but you will never see them. To you, they are little more than a meme.

If you waiting long enough, maybe they’ll go away?

A good plan. It might work. The Jovian Football league is reaching the championships. Hurry, or you’ll miss it. Buy popcorn – the real stuff. Lots of butter. And nachos. Gods, but I miss nachos.

The hypertrain moves at insane speeds that would strip the skin off of farm animals with windsheer alone, if there were any atmosphere to be breathed outside. The Lunar soil is barren rock, full of nothing but sand, night, and the wandering, lost casemorphs whom have drifted away from your thoughts.

My thoughts don’t drift. My thoughts are sharp as vorpal blades. When I blink, they go snicker-snack.

Some would say that transhumanity has lost its way. It hasn’t. I disagree. However, we certainly aren’t looking backwards. Everything is shiny, everything is forward-thinking. Nothing is impoverished. Nothing is dead. And no one can lie, especially not to themselves.

But there are things out there, things from beyond the stars of out homesteads. There are things the TITANS left behind, sneaking in the shadows, with us. Not with you – I mean with the ghosts, the infugees.

But let’s not think about them. Let’s not think about the creeping killers walking subtly alongside your dead. Let’s not think about them whispering memes and promises into the ears of those you try too fucking hard to forget – those spectres and clanking masses that you keep out of sight and away from your purifying rivers. Keep the dead away from those holy waters, we don’t need them. We have no flesh to lick, no ears to convince. Try not to realize that we are everywhere. We see you when you walk the sublunarean malls, we monitor what you buy online. We work for you as wage-slaves and teleoperators and pilots. We watch you fuck. We guard you while you sleep. We know when you’ve been naughty or nice.

And one day – Santa’s coming back to town.

Maybe not today. You’re probably safe.

Then again, your credit accounts could crash at any time. Ten years after the End of the World is not time to invest in a bank. Forget banks, have a beer instead.

Don’t think about the digital masses turning against you. Don’t think about the clanking masses rising up against your passive holocaust. Don’t think that we might suddenly get offered a better deal.

Because we try not to, too.

My train is arriving at my station. Outside the airlock, I can see a circle of casemorphs, living in the open lack of air. The only place they can afford to rent is a squatter’s nest beneath the cosmos. A century ago, they might have been envied. Inside the airlock, a fine young Exalt walks to the portal, his smartclothing welcoming me to the next cave they call a city.

It would be easy for me to teleoperate the airlock. I’ve had lots of experience. I could open it early, before we arrived. The train is fast, so very fast, but not faster than my thoughts. My thoughts are light, my chi is like thunder. The pretty Exalt would be dragged by the sudden rush of atmospheric pressure out the airlock and into open space. There are safeties for this sort of thing. AIs and indentured infugees usually run them. They never fail.

When he’s floating outward, into the death of the outside cold and endless night, I wonder.

I wonder if any one of those seven casemorphs will lift a hand, reach up, and save him.

I wouldn’t do this. I don’t kill – even humans. I like people, but people need to understand. People need to be told about the Dead. On Mother Earth, cultures prayed to gods of the dead.

Why?

Because it is better to have the Dead by your side, than to be in their path.

The Exalt is smiling. He waits to welcome me aboard. It would only take an errant thought, of mine. Hmm… Beer. Nachos. Football. Death.

Oops.

This is not an extreme example.

This happens every day.