Andaks, Andakland, Continental Confederation

  17 Mithalvan 2005, 22 MM (Continental Kontarian Standard Time; CUT -5)

  It was a bright cold evening of summer and Anna shuddered into her coat in an effort to escape the biting wind. As she slipped into her new flat with the last of the boxes, she dropped her keys into the bowl on the hallway table and paused to kick off her boots.

  The apartment was a small, battered space that had not seen much renovation since the late '70s according to the last owner. The heater whined like a dial-up modem trying to connect to nowhere, and the pale-blue wallpaper peeled at the corners like old scabs. But still, it was hers.

  She had come a long way to get here. Anna allowed herself to feel a deep sense of pride; just two months ago, she'd graduated from Andaks University. A year before that, she hadn't even been sure she would finish—not after LeukDeD had caused everything to go into lockdown. She still remembered the frustration of having her university close for six weeks straight just as midterms began, and having video classes sent to her in such low quality it looked like they’d been recorded through a foggy aquarium. But still, she had made it through.

  After weeks of scouring listings, she'd managed to find this modest flat, perfectly situated in the city, a short commute to her new job at the Continental Telecommunication Company. It wasn’t the kind of position she had dreamed of in her youth, but it was a job, and that was something she couldn't afford to overlook.

  A small stack of boxes sat between the tube telly and rudimentary kitchen (that was most definitely stuffed with several bio-hazardous organisms). Tucked between them was a battered duffel bag. A plastic keychain dangled from its zipper: a tiny pixelated figure with a pair of gliding wings, his fist raised in triumph. She smiled faintly. It had been a birthday gift from an old friend a long time ago.

  She stepped over and gently placed the final box on top of the stack. These were the last remnants of her old life:

  Clothes, hygiene stuff, some crumpled drawings, a shoe box filled with cassette tapes, a handful of game cartridges, the old YellowCo console, and an Annual from the end of Senior School.

  She didn’t need to open them to know exactly what was inside. Every box had been labelled in thick black marker, her own notes scrawled messily from a week ago. One read “School + Lyric stuff” in the corner, which made her pause for a moment. The name hit differently now, in this quiet room.

  But that part was done. Now came the task of sorting through everything and figuring out where it all belonged. Great.

  Thankfully, she did not have a lot of things to unpack. Unfortunately, however, she was the only one left to do it.

  Anna's parents weren't dead, but they might as well have been. The New Recession of the early ‘90s had hit them hard like most and suddenly the scaffolding of family life buckled and came tumbling down. Her father buried himself in contract work abroad: gem shipping to the Continent, and her mother vanished into one managerial role after another.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Now, she had completely accepted that they were simply trying to survive and give her a stable future, but as a child, she could only see that her own parents had chosen work over her.

  "Latchkeys", the anthropologists called kids like her—those who came home to an empty house, left to fend for themselves while their parents put in long hours at jobs to pay the bills.

  She pulled the boxes into two smaller piles, one for those she would need to use on a daily basis and one for things that might just live in a cupboard forever.

  Peeling the drafting tape off the first box in the 'forget in a cupboard' pile, Anna found herself staring at a tangle of wires and plastic: the old YellowCo 90. Black, bulky, and scratched, its trademark yellow "Y" logo still clung stubbornly to the corner. The cartridges wedged between the console and the box wall slipped free as she lifted it out. It was lighter than she remembered.

  Her throat tightened.

  Beneath the games lay something flatter, wrapped in a crinkled grocery bag from a now-defunct store. She slipped it out carefully, and her breath caught.

  It was a framed portrait. Anna did not remember it being tucked away in that box, and for a moment, she simply stared at it, frozen.

  It was of her and Lyric, her old friend. They must've been around 12 at the time the photo was taken. They were sitting on the concrete steps of his old home at Frostholm, grinning wide.

  There had been no falling out, no dramatic goodbyes, but somewhere between the start of college and adulthood, their friendship had drifted apart. The last she's heard of him, he had moved to study on the Continent.

  Her fingers ran along the frame. The image of the two of them, young and carefree, stirred something deep in her chest. The weekends spent playing video games in the living room, the endless chatter about Chronopiece, Wingman, and what games they could afford. It all felt so far away now.

  She turned the photograph over and was startled to see a note written in jagged handwriting, Lyric’s:

  "You thought there would be something here."

  Anna smiled, and shook her head. The exact words had been an inside joke of Wingman.

  How long had it been since she'd spoken to him? Almost a decade.

  She had no idea where he was now, what he was doing, or if he even remembered her.

  As she studied the portrait again, Anna considered placing it back in to box, to bury it in the past where it belonged. But the temptation to reach out was overpowering. She could not bear for something to end without a resolution.

  Her hand hovered over her cellphone in her pocket, but hesitation washed over instantly. What would she even say? "Hey, remember me? The kid who spent hours at your place playing games?"

  No, that wouldn't work. She dropped her hand from her pocket.

  Lyric had likely grown up, maybe moved on completely. What was the point of dragging up the past?

  But the longer she held the photograph in her hands, the more her mind wandered back. They had been happy. Simple. No complications. They'd argue about high scores, laugh at the ridiculous plotlines.

  She sighed. The more she stood looking at the portrait, the colder the apartment seemed to get. But it wasn't the cold that bothered her. It was the emptiness. The absence of familiarity.

  Anna hesitated a moment longer, then pulled her cellphone from her pocket.

  Her thumb hovered the keypad as she entered the contacts list. She couldn’t—what if he had changed? What if he had forgotten everything?

  She bit her lip.

  But she couldn't let go.

  With a deep breath, Anna scrolled to the "L" section of her contacts, where its only name stood, unchanged since the day she first saved it: "Lyric D."

  Anna's thumb hovered over the call button.

  Lyric, she thought again, silently. She hadn’t heard his voice in so long. She wondered how he would sound now.

  Her thumb hovered one last time before she pressed the button.

  The call began to dial.