As a child, I had always wondered whether it was possible to smell or taste in dreams. At that early age, I could only recall seeing and hearing during those unconscious hours, not anything else. As an adult, I now knew that the answer was yes. One’s olfactory sense could be simulated in dreams just as vividly as reality. For the past few nights when I went to sleep, all I could smell was iron. It was mixed with another familiar scent and underscored by a shrill echo from a lifetime ago. My dreams were coloured in red and panic with accompaniment by an orchestra of screams and cries and sirens. One would think that having seen the same scenes over and over again would dampen their impact, reduce its meaning to nothingness. Like saying the same word over and over again until it becomes an unrecognisable sound robbed of any significance. Or the fading strength of an echo towards oblivion. One would be wrong.

  I rose from my bed every morning with wild eyes and restlessness. The stickiness of the sweat on my skin and the remnants of terror in my mind lingered until I stepped under the cold rivulets from the showerhead. These dreams didn’t visit often. But when they did, they were always the effect, not the cause.

  The initial progress I had made since resuming the research had been invigorating. It had felt like a breakthrough was dangling in front of me. But as the discard rate of my ideas began to outpace the rate at which new ones were conceived, the familiar walls began to close in again as the prospect of success retreated further into the void. I had hoped that incorporating simulations would verify conjectures and provide guidance towards a successful approach, but instead it had so far done the opposite. Running simulations was akin to putting my ideas in front of an indiscriminate firing squad. The result was the same every time. Not a single condition met. If just one was satisfied, then perhaps I could take inspiration from what had worked from the solution attempt for the next iteration. And yet…

  Not a single one.

  Things were supposed to be different this time. I had suffered. I had seen things I couldn’t have ever imagined. I had information that I wasn’t privy to last time. Even my purpose had evolved. And yet, despite whatever progress I had made, the outcome was still the same. It was maddening. What had all that effort been for? It was starting to feel pointless. Like growing bloodstains on a fresh cloth against an ugly wound, hopelessness began seeping into the fabric of my reality yet again. And there was no other person, not even god, who could be the target of my indignance. My frustrations could only be directed at myself. After all, despite that everything had changed, I was the constant. And so I must be the problem.

  Lennox’s office looked the same as it did the first time I entered it. Except this time, the tea table near his large couch wasn’t empty.

  “I hope you don’t mind me taking the liberty to order your coffee ahead of time,” Lennox said with a smile as he teared his attention away from his interface. “Take a seat, Alex.”

  I was grateful for the coffee. It gave me a distraction away from the nervousness running through my veins. I had received a message from Lennox to meet him in his office earlier in the day, and I felt as if I was a scholarship student whose grades were slipping.

  I studied my coffee as he sat down.

  “Flat white, no sugar,” Lennox said proudly as he tapped his temple with his index finger.

  “Much appreciated,” I said.

  “Of course,” he said. “What kind of a man would I be if I didn’t offer my guest—who’s doing us a big favour—the best hospitality we can provide?”

  His description of what I was doing made me feel a pang of inadequacy. I washed it down with another scalding sip of coffee. “I thought all Receiverists are treated the same?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Lennox said with a twinkle in his eye as he finger gunned me.

  “So,” I started, figuring that it was pointless to delay the inevitable, “you asked for me?”

  Lennox looked at me for a moment, before breaking out into a laugh. “While I appreciate how the way you said that makes me sound royal, I didn’t intend for you to be here under my authority,” Lennox said. “I was hoping this would be more of a friendly chat. Not even between colleagues. Between two mates kicking back with some caffeine.” Lennox held up his ceramic cup for good measure. “Unless, of course, if you prefer beer. We can do that next time.”

  There was a mild wave of reassurance. It didn’t dispel every worry I had, but the way the other man was able to tactfully influence how I felt was impressive. I wasn’t sure if it made him more endearing or dangerous.

  “That’s good to hear,” I said. “Honestly, you had me worried for a second. That I wasn’t meeting a quota or something.”

  “I’m not your boss, Alex. But do tell me, how’re you going with doing our maths homework?”

  “Well, I like to think I’ve made some progress in my understanding—”

  “That’s excellent!” Lennox boomed. “See, I knew you were the right person. Usually we’d go back and forth about inviting outsiders into Sanctuary, but I didn’t have a single doubt about bringing you in.”

  Was I really invited? I thought sardonically. “But it’s still a tough piece of work. I was hoping that I’d have made more progress than I have so far.”

  “I see,” Lennox said. “And you’re disappointed?”

  “It’s hard not to be,” I said with a sigh as I brought my cup to my lips.

  “Did you think this would be easy?” Lennox asked.

  “No,” I answered. Did I think it would be easy? I couldn’t help but wonder. It was difficult not to think that I was better equipped to solve the problem than I actually was, given everything others have told me.

  “No. Of course not,” Lennox said. “Because if it’s easy, you wouldn’t be here right now. We wouldn’t have reached out to you in the first place. Oh my dear Alex, it seems that your expectations are misaligned. We think you can do it, yes, but it doesn’t mean we think it would be a walk in the park.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “We don’t know how long it’ll take before you solve the problem,” Lennox said. “Maybe minutes from now, you’ll be struck with an epiphany from the heavens. Or maybe, you’ll spend several years on this problem before you find something.”

  “Years?” I said in a surprised tone. I hadn’t considered that possibility. “I don’t have years.”

  “Of course you do,” Lennox said simply. “You can stay here as long as you need. Your material needs are taken care of.”

  “But I can’t do that,” I said. “Out there, my life isn’t just on pause. Nobody knows where I am. I can’t just inexplicably reappear out there ten years later with nothing to show for it.”

  Lennox shrugged. “That’s true. But you wouldn’t return with nothing. You’d return with a groundbreaking publication. A career-defining research.”

  There was a pause as he sipped his coffee and I caught onto the significance of his words. “You’re saying I can publish whatever findings I make?”

  “Sure,” Lennox said.

  “Why would you allow me to do that?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that put the existence of your society at risk?”

  “No, not really. Because you’d publish it without any ties to us on paper.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said as I leaned forward from my seat. “What’s the point of it?”

  “That,” Lennox began as he raised his finger, “is precisely the point. That you alone won’t understand the path to prosperity. We want you to publish. Yes, we need your research down here to solve important engineering problems. But the world needs to know as well. So your research can be expanded upon and refined by generations of researchers beyond. You will merely be the start of something greater.”

  Whatever clarity and relief that had been provided from my conversation with Lennox was equalised by further expectations of the work that I was now aware of. I had thought this research would be one-off. A mere excursion to a niche physics problem the Receiverists needed to solve. But instead, it was something more. According to Lennox, a seed that was to grow into something intergenerational. A completely new research path that would define not just my career, but a legacy that would outlive me. When I had first sent my response to the then mysterious email, I had only been looking for a small, innocuous research gig that I could churn out a quick paper from. One that would be done just in time for my coming performance review. Now, that research was a crushing ocean of which I lay helplessly on its bedrock.

  The infestation that wasted the surface of my desk had spilled onto the floor. I wasn’t a litterer; the trash drawer hidden in the wall of the room was filled with hundreds of papers that were coloured in hastily crossed out scribbles—more ink than the papers’ natural hue. No. The papers that covered a significant portion of the surfaces in my office had details for ideas I couldn’t rule out yet—or rather, I was clinging to any hope that they wouldn’t be discarded, like trying to find the heart to cut ties with a lover who just wasn’t meant to be. The plentifulness didn’t represent progress; they represented the lack of it. If I had made significant headways towards the problem, I would have less branches and a more succinct account of the approach. Less paper. But instead, my mind grasped at any straw that it could. It was desperation.

  There were times when I felt overwhelmed by my failure to meet my responsibility for the task. When I felt so powerless. So tiny and insignificant. Like a hopeless krill trying to swim against the violent tides that was pushing it towards a gaping mouth the size of a planet. In those moments, another feeling bubbled from the depths of my being that made my chest feel like it was caving in. Guilt. The old familiar visitor revealed a path that descended into the abyss. A spiralling staircase that would take me into a darkness from which I would not return. A place of accusation and scorn. Of familiar faces. Of damnation.

  A dormant part of my brain registered the door opening a fraction of a second after the tone played, but my mind was in another universe entirely. It was entirely fixated on the sheet of paper in front of me. I had been staring at the same scribbles for over an hour now. There is something here, I willed. I’m sure of it. I just need to find it. As my eyes scanned from symbol to symbol for the nth time, I racked my brain for some kind of a transformation that would make the subproblem more tractable. If I can do it, then maybe, just maybe—

  “You’ve really turned a nice office into a recycling bin,” came a familiar raspy voice.

  I looked up to see the unfamiliar shape of a woman with a face I recognised. This was the first time I saw her where she wasn’t sitting behind a desk. She was shorter than I had imagined.

  “Oh. Mariam,” I said absentmindedly. Context switching when I was neck deep in concentration gave me a lightheaded sensation akin to whiplash. “Hello.”

  “Hello to you too,” Mariam said as her eyes continued to appraise the room. I felt naked. “A rather impressive feat that you’ve managed to outdo me in my postgraduate years.”

  My eyes couldn’t help but scan over the sea of papers and scribbles. “I honestly don’t know what to say.”

  “Then say nothing,” she said, “and bask in the accomplishment that I no longer see you as a fraud.”

  My eyebrow quirked up. “You saw me as a fraud?”

  “Don’t take it personally,” Mariam said as she took a seat on the chair that was on the other side of my desk, like she owned the place. She probably does, I reminded myself. “The only way to distinguish between a real researcher and a fake one is to see them embrace the struggle. And it certainly looks like you’re overdosing on it.”

  I crossed my arms. “Are you saying I’m struggling?” I asked indignantly.

  Mariam looked at me like a teacher would regard a student who asked if oxygen was breathable.

  I shrugged. “This stuff isn’t exactly easy,” I said, sounding more defensive than I would have liked.

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  “Child,” Mariam said with a patronising emphasis, “nothing we do here is easy. If it was all easy, I wouldn’t be here. If it was all easy, the world wouldn’t be as fucked as it is.”

  I flinched. Hearing the curse come out of a short statured, unassuming looking woman who was no doubt past her prime with the ferocity it had was penetrating.

  “So…” I uttered, hoping that she would get the message without me explicitly and awkwardly asking “can I help you or can you leave so I can get back to this stuff?”

  “I’ve seen some of the simulations you’ve been running,” Mariam said. “I like the ideas. But I think you could do with a little more creativity.”

  My ego flared. Who is she to criticise my mathematical ideas based on creativity? I might be struggling, but if she could solve the problem, then she’d have done so already. Instead of responding, I washed down the indignance with a sip of water.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Mariam said. Does she, now? I thought cynically. “‘Does this woman really know what I’m thinking?’” she said with an exaggerated voice. That’s cheating. “You may think that doesn’t count. Anyway. You were thinking who am I to criticise your ideas, right?”

  “No—”

  “Of course you were,” Mariam said. “Because that’s exactly what I would’ve thought. Except maybe I’d throw an ‘old hag’ in there.”

  “Now I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “But of course I’d see things you wouldn’t,” Mariam said. “I was in your position once. Many times, in fact. And for truly unique problems, you need truly unique solutions. None of these standard academia approaches. They won’t get you anywhere.”

  “Not that I don’t appreciate the advice—” I don’t—“but that’s not actionable. Creative is an elusive concept, and I need to start somewhere concrete.”

  Mariam extended her arm towards me, and just as I thought she was going to either choke me or stroke my chin, she reached for the sheet of paper I had been writing on. I sat in silence as I watched her read it, unsure if she would make any sense of my unannotated and chaotic work. She hummed in contemplation every so often. Just as it was getting awkward for me to sit here and watch her appraise something that didn’t even qualify as being “unfinished work”, she spoke.

  “I can’t tell you what the creative approach you need to take is, but I can tell you what isn’t.” Mariam said as she dropped the sheet onto the desk. “I see you’re trying to transform a component of the problem into something else. Something that you’ve seen before. Something that you already know the answer to. Yes, reduction to an existing problem is a standard solution strategy. But what’s the point of that if this problem is the first of its kind?”

  There it is again, I thought. That this work is the beginning of something bigger.

  “Frankly, you haven’t seen everything, Alex,” Mariam continued. “You may attempt to make sense of new things by trying to frame them into what’s already familiar to you, but you’ll only be confronted with the truth. Nothing here is like what you’ve seen before. And until you understand that, you’ll be too shackled to make true progress.”

  After Mariam left, I reached for the paper that I had been working on. The same one that she dismissed. Perhaps she was right in that I was shackled. I certainly felt like it. I was trapped at the centre of a web. That, at the slightest movement, the tiniest admission of defeat, the vibration would alert a monster that was eager to consume me. Like dominoes, if the first piece fell, then would the next. And the next. Until ruins were all that was left. And so I couldn’t admit to myself that nothing I was doing was fruitful. Perhaps it was illogical of me, but it was hard not to feel like it would become true if I admit it. And so I didn’t. And surely, Mariam couldn’t know the true solution to the problem, so it was entirely possible that I was still on the right track.

  It took another couple of days before I felt like I had found enough substance in my approach. And so while the simulation ran, I continued to explore the problem with what I imagined to be a sense of elevated curiosity; the feeling of having already solved the problem, but revisiting it with a recreational flair to see if I could find a more elegant solution, or something new entirely. It had been a while since I had some level of confidence in a solution. Perhaps the solution that was being tested in the clusters of supercomputers wasn’t perfect, but any improvement was a win. A part of me knew that I needed it. Needed to see a number go up. But it wasn’t something I liked to think about.

  It was early afternoon when my handheld played the familiar tone. It was uncanny how attuned my senses had become to the soft notes. Pavlovian conditioning at work. My heart rate jumped and my palms began to sweat. I even salivated a little. I took a deep breath. There isn’t any point in dallying, I thought resolutely. I reached for my handheld. It sat atop several layers of paper. The screen flicked on. It took several attempts before the permutations of symbols made sense.

  Script alert: Job completed. 0/23 tests passed.

  I stood up, not caring that despite the cushions of papers, my handheld still landed on the surface of the desk with a loud, concerning thump. My legs began to take a life of their own and paced around the room. I supposed my instincts had known that if I had sat still, the feelings would have all come crashing at once. Instead, they struck me one at a time as my muscles worked. Disappointment came first, but it was brief and weak. Or perhaps it had been overshadowed by the next. A frantic panic that darkened the edges of my vision. It was as if everything had become a static grey. My nails dug into my palms. The pain wasn’t felt consciously, but I had only realised they drew blood after seeing dark red smears on the fistful of papers I held. I tore and tore until the floor of my room was covered in snowflakes. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. That wasn’t surprising. I couldn’t scream back then. Not over the bloodbath in my family home. And so I wouldn’t now. The truth was there. Anything that was important, anything that people relied on me for, I couldn’t do. Whether it was about the survival of humanity, or the life or death of a small, financially struggling family, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I was the problem. I was defective. The decades hadn’t changed that fact.

  It was a struggle making it out of the room. I didn’t bother cleaning up the crime scene. If Mariam thought my office was messy before, what would she think now? I wondered sardonically between far less pleasant and coherent thoughts. But it wasn’t a conscious decision, because there was no decision. If I had even tried to clean the office, if I had so much as bent over, I would have vomited. Or toppled like the unstable equilibrium of an upright pen. I was the embodiment of a house of cards. Fragile and hollow. I staggered across the corridors like a zombie. Post-death. It made sense. Maybe I died nearly twenty years ago, and the bag of flesh that existed afterwards was just an unusually slow process of decomposition. Even the detritivores didn’t want me, much less God. I was the meaningless twitch of residual electrical signals in the body that mimicked existence. Echoes of a life that would be, but contorted in all the ways that mattered. The way the corridor was blurred in my shaky vision.

  I had almost missed it. The elevator had looked like a grey, amorphous blob, and my legs didn’t stop for it. It was only when the familiar tone played, followed by the muted swish that the portal made itself recognisable. A man in white walked out in my direction. I only knew he was a man because of his voice.

  “H-hey,” he stuttered in the tone that one might use on a lost child that inconveniently landed in their jurisdiction. He only spoke after stopping a metre from me. “You alright?”

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t care about much in that moment, but puking onto this man most definitely wasn’t something that I wanted to do. He could only look on as I staggered past him and into the elevator. The buttons were only distinguishable after I wiped my eyes. It wasn’t until the doors had closed that I had realised my finger had pressed one of the buttons. God bless muscle memory, I thought. As the elevator began to drop, the marginal change in the g-force didn’t feel so marginal. My heart was still thumping like I was in death throes, and my hand instinctively held my stomach as if it was the only thing preventing its insides from spilling. The few seconds it took for the elevator to go down a couple of levels had felt much longer. When I exited the doors, my brain strained to comprehend where I was. It was then that I had realised I took an elevator that wasn’t the one I would usually frequent, and so I was somewhere I didn’t recognise. My wobbly legs began walking sluggishly in a direction away from the nearest wall.

  When I reached the square, I was thankful that it was at an hour where there weren't too many people around. It was well past lunchtime, but distant from the conclusion of anyone’s work shifts. There was only one bench that wasn’t empty, and that was taken up by someone hunching over their tablet. I plopped down onto the bench that was closest to me. My elbows rested on my knees. My face was held up by my hands. My eyes closed. Yet again, I was reminded of where I was by nullity. The lack of the breeze. The absence of the sunshine on my skin. The missing smells of being outside. The only odour was of lifelessness. Of sanitisation. It made me wonder whether trading the freedom of being on the surface for the materially comfortable life in confinement would be truly worth it. What would my mother think, as someone who had their essential needs provided in exchange for freedom. Not that she had a choice.

  The nausea subsided, but only in the statistical sense. In truth, it ebbed and flowed like waves. There would be moments of reprieve when it was muted enough for me to think that it was gone. Enough for me to think at all. I would be convinced it was over, only for my thoughts to wander back to where I was and why I was here. The chain of causality always led back to the root cause, and it would trigger the return of my desolation and the familiar embrace of nausea. And the process would repeat.

  The world outside of the darkness beyond my protective eyelids and hands didn’t exist. Or at least it hadn’t, until a familiar echo penetrated my consciousness. The echo was strange. Instead of fading with each repetition, it became louder and louder. As if it was echoing backwards in time. Backechoes, I thought in amusement. That’s a cool name.

  “—hey, I asked how you’re feeling.”

  The voice finally reached the conscious layer of my mind. Oh, someone’s talking to me, I realised.

  “Sinusoidal,” I answered without moving anything but the set of muscles that was minimally sufficient to produce sound.

  “Suicidal?” the voice shrieked in concern.

  “What? No!” I said, shaking my head as I did. Due to my posture, the motion rocked my entire body. “I said sinusoidal.”

  “What’s that?” the voice asked. It was only then that I realised it belonged to a girl. It tickled my neurons with familiarity, yet my greymatter couldn’t conjure a name or a face.

  “Like a sine wave. If you know what that is.”

  “Of course I know what a sine wave is,” she said in exasperation. I could imagine her rolling her eyes. “How can you feel like a maths function?”

  “It comes and goes,” I said.

  “I guess that makes sense,” she said, before sighing. “You should’ve just said that to begin with. You know, like a normal person.”

  I felt the vibration of impact on the bench. Who is this person? I wondered. The curiosity ate away at me. And so for the first time since sitting down, I decided to withdraw my face out of my hands. For a fearful moment, I almost fell forwards. Was my head always that heavy? With more effort than anticipated, I brought myself upright.

  “Ow, fuck,” I cursed as the base of my neck clicked painfully. My hand reached around to massage my neck as I stretched my shoulders and back. My eyes struggled to adjust to the light, and for a moment I was blinded. The sounds of the world returned, and it did so in convoluted layers. All in all, I was experiencing sensory overload.

  When the disorientation faded to a tolerable threshold, it became clear that hours had escaped me entirely. There were crowds of people moving across the square. The benches were utilised almost to capacity. Chatter, walking, the sound of scooters, all melded into an orchestra that took me a moment to follow the rhythm. When I finally turned to see the owner of the voice, I found a school girl staring wide-eyed at me. It made me jump.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten my name,” the girl said, before adding for good measure, “Alex.”

  I scratched the back of my head. “Look. I’m going to be honest with you, because you deserve nothing less,” I said. “I can’t remember.”

  The girl sighed. “It’s Charlie.”

  “Ah I thought so. It was on the tip of my tongue.”

  “I’m sure,” Charlie said. She didn’t sound impressed. “So. What’s gotten you down?”

  “Excuse me? Do I look down?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “I guess I am,” I said. Despite the understatement it was, I didn’t want to talk to Charlie about my problems. She was still a kid. She would have more life than I ever would. I shouldn’t taint her. “It is what it is.”

  “Well, at least you aren’t carrying a gun,” Charlie said. “That’s an improvement.”

  “Strange how I feel twice as heavy,” I said. Jesus, keep it to yourself, I scolded myself internally.

  Charlie regarded me for a moment. I couldn’t read her expression. The urge to say something became unbearable, and so I followed with, “Sorry. Ignore that. I’m just—”

  “Whatever you feel right now, you’re supposed to feel it.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Whatever you feel right now,” Charlie repeated, slower this time, “you’re supposed to feel it.”

  “I heard you the first time,” I said. “What do you mean?”

  Charlie shrugged, before she stood up abruptly. “I got to go.”

  She took a couple of steps before I called out, “Charlie, wait—”

  “Oh, and Alex?” she said as she turned around with a smile. “I’m glad you’re not suicidal.”

  She blur into the crowd. I could still see her retreating back. She looked like she walked with a purpose.

  I left shortly after that. It was almost a return to normality. I knew that if I thought about it again the awful thoughts would return. And so for now, I compartmentalised the offending cluster of interlinked neural pathways in my brain as a nondescript “it” and tried to think about anything but it. I was certain it would all come crashing down again later. It was so entangled with my work here that I wasn’t sure if I could go back to the maths.

  As I turned around the corridor, I saw a familiar figure walking towards my apartment door from the order end. It was uncanny how I could recognise her by the way she walked from so far away.

  “Hey,” Irene said as we met at my door. It was almost comforting to hear the familiar flatness in her tone. A lot had changed for me, but at least this didn’t.

  “Hey.”

  “Are you busy tomorrow?” she asked.

  For a moment I was about to tell her that I planned to work all day. But truthfully, that was the least likely thing I would do. “Not really, no,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “Good,” Irene said with a smile. “You should take a break.”

  Does she know? I wondered. “Maybe I should,” I said, before adding, “Yeah. I probably should.”

  “With me. You should take a break with me.”