Andy and Gary lived on two separate continents. Because of their caprices, they had changed the names of the nations of the world, so you will not place any of them, hard as you try. Names, as it turns out, are fragile, malleable things, as light as sunbeams and as easily forgotten, though human beings fight so ardently over them. Andy resided in the ruins of Fartvard University, and Gary in the peopleless tundra of the Arcdick.
Similarly, Andy and Gary decided to change the colors of humankind to green, orange and blue. They thought the old color palettes of white, black, red and yellow were getting old. This suited the humans just fine; they enjoyed reestablishing racial hierarchy.
Andy and Gary decided it was time for another war game.
The impetus for the war game was very simple: if any group of humans grew too influential through their stockpiling of weapons, wealth, innovation or natural resources, it was best to decimate them, for the sake of world peace.
The execution of the war game was much more complex. Andy and Gary had played so many of these games that they required a challenge, in order to credibly claim victory over the other. And so they constructed a complicated points system to accomplish.
Andy was given an orange-predominant nation called Freedomland, and Gary was given a green-predominant nation called Glad Kingdom.
They liked to start from the most arbitrary point possible and build from there.
The orange woman sat on her couch with her hands pressed against her belly. She was pregnant. When she felt kicks within her, the doctor told her the child was coming along well, and smiled.
She did not smile. In fact, she did not know why people smiled so much at her since she became pregnant. Her mother smiled and sent her endless cardboard boxes with mobiles, bibs and onesies. Her coworkers smiled and wished her a happy time off from her job. Passersby, cashiers and hair stylists smiled, saying she glowed. And yet, she did not smile back.
She did not resent these people. She sat on the couch and watched TV. She had nothing better to do. Maternity leave is a lot of waiting. She would occasionally remove herself from the couch and move to the sole window in her studio apartment. She had not decided where in the apartment the baby would sleep. She did not allocate space in her cupboards to put his formula. She did not know where in her closet to put the diapers.
She supposed, when people smiled at her and asked if the baby was coming along well, they were really asking her if she was coming along well. That was why she did not smile back, because she didn’t know. She had no idea what to do.
This was logical in a logical world.
From the shapeless succession of color and sound came the late afternoon news. Freedomland was preparing for war with Glad Kingdom. Freedomland was a civilized, advanced nation, and so the war was expected to be over very quickly, at which time, after bloodying Glad Kingdom’s nose, there would be peace around the world. That being said, the citizens of Freedomland should take the precautionary steps of procuring essential goods.
Oh my god, she thought. Toilet paper.
She immediately got into her car and drove.
As she drove out of the exit and saw the supermarket small in the distance, another car suddenly entered left of her view.
Roads are a critical part of a city’s infrastructure. By making the travel between two parts consistent, timely and cheap, the city facilitated the flow of what could ultimately be called good intentions. Not only did the mother’s supermarket benefit from weekly supplies of goods by truck, but the mother benefited from visits from her own mother in the form of emotional support, even though the mother’s mother did not drive, she took the taxi, who is another beneficiary of a well-paved road.
Andy sought to make it extremely difficult for people to drive. He made roads for no reason. He made harsh turns. He made paths lead nowhere. He constructed random intersections. He broke traffic lights at his own whim. Now, the people of the city reasoned there were good reasons for these forks, turns and dead-ends – the fork facilitated so-and-so, the turn was easier to build, the dead-end necessary for housing. In reality, Andy made it so there would be more car crashes.
It’s going to miss me, she thought in the first millisecond. Then: no, it’s not.
The car smashed into her. She briefly thought, because the car was left of her, it would hit the passenger seat. It, in fact, hit her directly. Her car door shattered into pieces, then flew off its hinge and danced on the asphalt until it fell flat on its back.
Now, the reason why the door flew was because the car was made of lightweight materials. When the car’s manufacturer asked its analysts as to which materials to make their car, they answered with this shatterable, easily breakable metal. This was logical: because the material was light, cars would go faster and less energy would be expended on acceleration; because the material was cheap, it would save the manufacturer money. In reality, however, Andy made the cars so, as to ensure the highest lethality possible in car crashes.
Andy did so to make humans a little more uncomfortable. Their lack of comfort increased the chances of violence by a few percentage points.
Andy also did so because he had a quote of pregnant women to kill.
It was not a matter of whether they were women or whether they were pregnant. These factors, which contributed to Andy’s overall score, were chosen randomly out of a million factors. Andy is not a misogynist, but random chance is.
At the moment of impact, the mother’s mind exploded into color, then died in darkness. Her arm shook, as if groping for a cliff’s edge, mistaking her body as falling into abyss; then it fell limp by her side.
© 2025 Jay Lee