I’ll never forget the day the checkmarks appeared. Hundreds of them, pinging out overhead like a symphony of success. Cheers, hugs, and other Garden-native forms of affection I'd rather not try to explain filled the air.

  Ascension Day was coming. The System-sanctioned ritual of transcendence where every worthy Citizen would move on from the Garden into their tailor-made existence for eternity.

  Everyone I came in contact with had been publicly marked as ready. How, then, was I to explain to them that I—the chosen one—wasn’t?

  I had to come up with something, and fast.

  Luckily, my hidden metrics, still considered a holy trait, had in this case the additional benefit of allowing me to perpetuate one of my patented ruses.

  My solution was remarkably simple, bordering on ill-conceived. Or, as Meg put it, “bound to fail.”

  I would just pretend I was going, too. That's all.

  Then, of course, I'd stay behind. But there would be no one left to call me on it but the Liaisons who—other than the teeny tiny remaining group who labeled me The Heretic and spent every waking hour attempting to prove I was a fraud—absolutely loved me.

  I'd just explain that it was my destiny to remain in the Garden for subsequent cycles, or whatever claptrap I came up with in the moment. I'd just have to smooth it over with my detractors who, I'm sure, would see my apparent unworthiness as catnip to their cause.

  **

  This plan, however, hit an immediate snag when I, in a small hubristic misstep, accepted an invitation to give a massive culminating speech on Ascension Day detailing the Doctrine of the Garden.

  There was a further hiccup when I agreed, in an attempt to throw them off my scent, to be the ceremonial First Ascender. An honor everyone assured me it was imperative I accept as fulfillment of this “long-awaited prophecy” they were always going on about.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  All it entailed was publicly volunteering to Ascend before anyone else—which, one could argue, was a bit of a bump in my airtight scheme.

  I have to admit, these were huge unforced tactical errors. But I'd been in jams before, and never once had my captors actually gotten around to eating the sandwich they'd trapped me within. I'd find a way out of this, I assured myself, just like I had in the Redacted Region of MegaTech? HQ.

  How, exactly, I'd wriggle my way out of this was not nearly so clear. And I wasn't sure I had the wherewithal to pull another scheme out of the back of my toga.

  **

  In the days to come, this all began to curdle into a profound sense of despair. It had been building for quite some time, but now, as I went through the motions of pretending to enjoy myself, this time coupled with the knowledge that I'd already failed, my hatred for this place began to consume me.

  It wasn't just the orgies I hated or the mountains of delicacies piled so high they nearly blocked out the Perpetual Sunset. If only it were that simple.

  No, were it just that, maybe I could have endured choking down those Mirth Melons with something approaching enjoyment. Even if the Sisters of Seduction insisted on watching me as I did so, for reasons I dare not think too much about.

  It was the Serenity part that got to me. The metric-mandated performance of peace.

  I cannot begin to count the number of mornings I ran into a Citizen at the Invent-Your-Own-Pancake station, and they'd smile at me in evident egolessness as if I hadn't watched them the night before inventing categories of pleasure too metaphorically and literally slippery to be captured in words.

  These ideas: the indulgence of everything you could ever want, and the pursuit of perfect harmony. Could they really go hand in hand?

  For me, any gratification, no matter how small, triggered a tangled mess of feelings so complicated I'd have to decamp to the Fetal Farm for recovery. Was it really so simple for these other Citizens, I wondered, to reconcile their self-indulgence and their self-esteem?

  Maybe they, unburdened by the baggage of their time on Earth, really were free.

  I, on the other hand, was leaking like a spiritual virus. Corrupting entire quadrants every time I'd uncover a new childhood memory during a meditation session.

  On my worst days, I'd imagine myself stuck there forever, becoming a hollowed-out symbol, a sort of absurd cult object whose initial promise gave way over endless cycles of new Citizens to a kind of ceremonial role.

  I was harmless—they'd say just loud enough for me to hear, surely earning them precious metric points for kindness—but don't take the stories you hear about him too seriously, and do not ask him about his time in grade school.

  It was almost comforting.

  Almost.