An ordinary winter day. 202x. Sulaymaniyah University, Physics Department — classroom 111.
An ordinary student sat in his seat.
The professor walked in with a stack of papers tucked under his arm. He set them on the desk and looked out at the room.
"These are your midterm results. Have a look and hand them back to me at the end of class."
He began moving through the rows, setting papers face-down on desks as he passed. When he reached the student he paused — placed the paper down and moved on without a word.
The student turned it over.
He looked at it for a moment. Then he looked up at the professor.
In the professor's eyes — before he'd even looked away — something was already there. Not anger. Not disappointment exactly.
Just the particular exhaustion of a man who had seen this before and wished he hadn't.
Before moving to the next desk the professor leaned down slightly, his voice dropping low enough that only the student could hear.
"Cevver — after class. I'd like a word with you, if you have the time."
The student put his head down on the desk. The particular boneless collapse of someone who is very tired and very done.
"Fine. Sure, professor."
"Don't just say sure — actually come, alright?"
The student raised one hand in a vague gesture of acknowledgment without lifting his head
---
The chair across from the professor's desk was the kind that had been sat in by too many nervous students for too many years. Cevver sat in it.
The professor set his glasses on the desk. Picked up his water. Took a sip. Set it back down.
"Cevver, was it?"
"Yes sir."
"Right." He folded his hands. "I've been looking at your record this semester. Not just this class — all of them." A pause. "You've failed almost everything."
The window behind the professor showed the university yard. A pigeon landed on the sill and immediately left.
"Son."
Cevver tilted his head toward him. "Yes sir."
"What's going on with you? Are you working somewhere? Labour? Are you—" The professor searched for the word. "Are you having a difficult time?"
Cevver's knee bounced once under the desk. Twice.
"Say something. Anything. Help me understand."
"It's — it's nothing. I'm just..."
"Just what?" The professor leaned forward slightly. "If this continues you won't finish your degree. Not this year. Not next year either."
Cevver nodded at the desk.
The professor looked at him for a long moment. Then he leaned back, pulled a sheet from the stack beside him, and drew a single line through something on it.
"I'm not going to register your results."
"Thank you sir."
"Don't thank me yet." He set the pen down. "Five assignments. Two weeks. You bring them to me on time — all five — and I give you the marks you need to pass this subject. That's the most I can do."
Cevver went still. Then nodded quickly. "Yes — yes of course, sir. Thank you. Really."
The professor studied him. "Wake up a little. I'm not asking for the world. Just a little. Understood?"
"Understood sir."
"You can go."
---
The university yard was cold and bright. Cevver came out with his books tucked between his arm and his ribs and was still squinting against the light when an arm hooked over his shoulder from behind.
"Ha — Ceva. How'd you do?"
"Terrible."
"I barely passed."
"Ibrahim You are such a lucky bastard."
"Hey." Ibrahim pulled back, offended. "I studied a little, man. Don't jump to conclusions, you penis head."
"Hm." Cevver shifted his books. "What are you doing today?"
"Tomorrow's Friday, day after is Saturday." Ibrahim spread his free hand like the answer was obvious. "I say we go out. Billiards. Then FIFA or Black Ops 2 zombies at the game center."
"Did you bring your car?"
"Parked right at the front gate." He nudged him. "Come on."
"I don't know if I have time The professor gave me assignments."
"Deadline?"
"Two weeks."
Ibrahim waved this away completely. "Ehh. You've got loads of time. Do them in one night with ChatGPT." He was already walking. "Come on."
Cevver considered this for approximately four seconds.
"...let's go."
---
Ibrahim's car smelled like old pine freshener and cigarettes. He lit one before he'd even started the engine, passed one across without asking. Cevver took it.
They pulled out into the street.
"Cev."
"Hm."
"You heard about that thing."
"What thing."
"That guy — front row, right side of our class."
"Hevar?"
"Yeah, that smoothie."
"What about him."
"He got married."
Cevver turned to look at him. "*Swear?*"
"Yes yes."
"...we're both going to burn from virginity."
Ibrahim snorted smoke. "My parents are like parrots, man. Chew chew chew in my ears about some girl they want me to meet."
"Ibrahim."
"Hm."
"How old are you again."
"Twenty two."
"I'm twenty three."
A red light. Ibrahim drummed his fingers on the wheel.
"Cev. Do your parents do the same? The marriage thing?"
Cevver looked out his window. The street outside was ordinary — a bakery, a phone repair shop, a man arguing with a parking attendant.
"Me?" He tapped ash out the window. "No. Not really." A beat. "I'm not interested anyway. My right hand is enough for me."
"Man shut your ass up—"
"Ibrahim"
"What—"
"IBRAHIM"
Ibrahim's head snapped forward. A car was coming directly at them. He yanked the wheel hard tires chirping, the other car blasting past with its horn going long and furious and then gone.
Silence.
Both of them sat very still.
"...my soul almost left my body," Ibrahim said quietly.
---
The cafeteria was warm. They found a table near the window and Ibrahim whistled at the waiter before they'd even sat down properly.
"Cappuccino and an espresso — don't put sugar in the cappuccino, bring a caramel toffee on the side."
"Right away."
The nargila came first. Ibrahim inhaled, passed it across. Cevver took it without looking up. They sat like that for a while — the pipe passing back and forth, phones out, the particular comfortable silence of two people who have been friends long enough that silence doesn't need filling.
"Ibrahim."
"Ha." Still looking at his phone.
Cevver's knee bounced. Slowed. Bounced again.
"My parents aren't home tonight." He handed the pipe across. "The match is Arsenal and Bayern Munich."
Ibrahim took it and inhaled. "So?"
"So what, bum? Bring beers. We'll watch it together."
Ibrahim looked up for the first time. "Cev you drink?"
"Been drinking lately." Cevver held his hand out for the pipe. "Behind their backs. It doesn't hurt if a man looks for a little escapism."
"Ahhhh." Ibrahim grinned and passed it over. "I see your crush is with another guy"
"It's not even about women." Cevver inhaled. Held it. Let it out slow. "It's not about anything like that. It's just that I—" He turned the pipe in his hands. "A man can't say much, can he."
Ibrahim stared at him. "What the fuck are you saying. Give me the pipe, you goof."
Cevver sighed and gave him the pipe.
The coffees arrived. They drank. They scrolled. The coals on the nargila went from red to grey and the waiter came and replaced them without being asked
Later — billiards, the satisfying crack of a good break, Ibrahim loudly disputing every shot that didn't go his way. Then the game center, controllers warm from use, the sound of zombies and Ibrahim swearing at the screen.
By the time they got back in the car the evening had settled into itself — that particular winter dark that comes early and sits heavy.
Ibrahim lit a cigarette before pulling out. Passed one across.
"When's the match?"
"Ten thirty." Cevver cracked his window slightly. "Don't forget the beers."
"Two cans enough?"
"Make it four. I'll repay you."
"You better." Ibrahim pulled into the street. "They've gotten more expensive since this whole thing between Iran and the Jews kicked off."
"I know. Groceries too."
"Man." Ibrahim shook his head. "I hate those fucking Jewish goblins."
"Everyone does. Though honestly they don't even like themselves"
"Ibrahim — I don't care if you're offended but Islam is just another cult alongside them."
"You're saying this like I'm some devout man." Ibrahim waved his cigarette dismissively. "I couldn't care less. Fuck religion. Fuck God too. I only pray when my parents are looking"
"I wouldn't say that tbh but, fortunately my parents aren't really religious" Cevver replied, exhaling smoke at the windshield.
"IBRAHIM"
Headlights. Coming directly at them.
"FUCK"
Ibrahim yanked the wheel. The other car blasted past with a long furious horn that dopplered away into nothing.
Silence.
"...this is the second time today," Ibrahim said quietly.
Cevver sat very still with his cigarette burning down between two fingers.
"... maybe that old asshole in the sky heard us"
Ibrahim didn't say anything at all
-------------------
Moments later
Ibrahim pulled up outside the building. Cevver got out, reached back in for his books, then felt his pockets and found the keys.
"See you tonight then."
"Yeah, see you around bum." Ibrahim leaned an elbow on the window. "Try not to think about it too much."
Cevver stopped. "Think about what."
"You know—"
"Ohhh." He straightened up. "Right, right. Nah — I couldn't care less."
Ibrahim looked at him for a moment through the window. "You've been acting weird lately." A beat. "I hope you don't end yourself or something because I love you man."
Cevver stared at him. "Ibrahim. What is wrong with you. Why do you say things like that, you almost ended us both today"
"You know what—" Ibrahim reached for the window button. "See you tonight. Yalla. Goodbye."
The window went up.
A short sharp horn once and the car pulled away.
Cevver stood on the pavement and raised one hand.
Watched the car until it turned the corner.
Then lowered his hand.
Stood there another second.
Went inside.
---
The house was quiet in the way that houses are when nobody else is in them. A different kind of quiet from empty rooms — the whole building knowing it.
Cevver dropped his books on the desk. Looked at them. Opened his laptop.
The cursor blinked.
He thought about what Ibrahim had said — *one night, ChatGPT, done *— then thought about the professor's face this morning. The particular tiredness in it. The way he'd drawn that line through the results without making a performance of it.
*The professor will know it's AI written.*
He stared at the screen.
*...will he though?*
He stared at it a while longer.
Closed the laptop.
Went downstairs, put a pot of water on the stove, turned the gas up, and stood there with his hands in his pockets looking at nothing. Then went back upstairs without waiting for it to boil.
---
He lay on his back on the bed. Pulled out his phone.
6:58pm.
The professor's voice drifted through *wake up a little, I'm not asking for too much* and he looked at it from a distance, that thought, the way you look at something through glass, * cevver you Fucking peice of shit do your job properly for once just for once don't don't*
He closes his eyes and opens them again and then he opened TikTok and it was gone.
The feed loaded immediately.
An edit. A song he half recognized. Someone's gym progress. A pretty cosplayer, a silly vtuber , Jews strong and wining, USA burns middle east again,A news clip with the sound off, a city that was on fire somewhere in Iran , uae, Iraq ), the caption something about casualties. An anime fight cut to music. A girl dancing. Another news clip — different city, same fire. A cat knocking something off a table. Someone crying, half life 3 confirmed click bait but the comments were arguing about something else. A war condensed into fifteen seconds positioned between two advertisements for skin products.
His thumb moved without him asking it to. Load after load of informations and unpleasant news
At some point he got up and put his earphones in and walked circuits around his room with something loud and rhythmic filling the space behind his eyes. That was better. That was marginally better. He walked until the song ended and then started another one and walked through that too imaging himself inside fiction scenarios he made up .
7:54pm.
He lay back down and looked at the ceiling.
*Assignment.*
The ceiling didn't offer anything useful.
*Watch porn first or start the assignment.*
He thought about this with more genuine deliberation than it deserved. The assignments were five of them and two weeks was actually a lot of time if he was being honest and Ibrahim was right that one solid night could—
He reached over and turned his trousers off and made a decision.
---
It took about as long as these things take when a person is going through the motions rather than present for them.
Afterward he lay completely still with the phone face-down on his chest.
The room had gotten darker without him noticing. Outside a motorcycle passed. Someone in the building above walked from one room to another, the footsteps crossing the ceiling and stopping.
He should feel better. That was supposed to be the point of it. Instead the familiar weight was back — heavier than before, the way it always was afterward, sitting somewhere between his sternum and his throat without a name or a shape, just a pressure, just a fact. He lay under it and didn't move and thought about nothing specific just the general texture of everything being slightly wrong in a way he couldn't locate or explain or talk about without sounding insane.
*A man can't say much can he.*
"What have I done wrong for my life to turn out liket this?" He stared at the ceiling and dragged his palms across his sweating face "every decision I make ends in the worst way possible" he took a deep breath then exhaled with a voice so low only himself could hear " I wish I could go back and start all over again....."
7:58pm.
He got up, pulled his trousers back on, and went to the bathroom and washed his hands and looked at himself in the mirror for a second just a second, not long enough to start anything and went downstairs to the living room.
The living room was dark. He looked didn't bother with the light he Just dropped onto the couch with one of his hands flat over his sternum the heaviness still on his chest and reached to the table across the couch for a cigarette.He Put it between his lips.
His nose wrinkled and started sniffing the air , that Something smelled strange. He looked at the stove in the kitchen from the hall and he didn't seem to see anything or a glow so he dismissed it.
with the unlit cigarette between his teeth, lighter in hand, not moving
Again A smell. Faint. Chemical. Like when you leave a gas burner on and walk back into a room and feel it before you consciously register—
The pot!
He got up but didn't see any flame on the stove as if he didn't lit it to boil the pot at all and he sat down "heh"
The lighter was already in his hand.
The room was dark and his thumb was already moving to the trigger it was just one flick
The lighter clicked And The click was the last ordinary sound.
Outside Ibrahim's car rolled to a stop in front of the building. He killed the engine, checked his phone *10:12, still time* and reached into the back seat for the bag. Four cans knocked together as he pulled it out. He was already composing the complaint in his head about how Cevver better actually pay him back this time when he stepped out onto the pavement and looked up.
The windows on the ground floor were wrong.
He stood there with the bag in one hand and his phone in the other and tried to understand what he was looking at.
Then the glass on the near window darkened from inside something pressing against it and his brain was still catching up when the handprint appeared. Palm flat. Fingers splayed. Moving downward the way things move when weight is leaving them. Leaving a dark wet smear on the glass as it went.
Ibrahim's phone hit the pavement.
His hands went slowly to the back of his head.
The bag of beers was still in one of them.
"...."
"Cevver!" He shouted with his full throat strength
---
Darkness.
Not the darkness of a room with the lights off. Not the darkness behind closed eyes. Something else , a darkness with depth to it, with distance, like floating in the middle of something that had no walls and no floor and no ceiling.
He tried to extend his arms and legs but he couldn't do any of that He realized that he didn't not have a then how could he feel or see darkness, The question didn't seem to apply.
Then
Two points of light.
Blue. Side by side. Faint at first, the way stars look through cloud cover, then steadier. Closer. Growing slowly as they approached or was he approaching them, direction having lost its meaning — until they filled enough of the dark to look like eyes.
They stopped.
Something came through the silence.
*"Time?"*
A pause. As if the word itself needed to be considered.
*"Is it really that time again?"*
The blue lights regarded him.
Then they dimmed. Slowly. Fading back into the dark the way embers fade ,the glow outlasting the source, then that too gone.
The dark went with them and then He was moving.
No — ascending. Upward through layers of something that thinned as he went — grey to lighter grey to a pale that had no color in it — and then through cloud, through the fantom cold wet interior of it, and out the other side into open air and he was above it, above everything, the clouds beneath him a white broken plain stretching in every direction.
Still rising.
Faster.
The clouds shrank. The horizon curved. The blue of the sky deepened and then thinned and then darkened at the edges into something that wasn't the blue sky and the curve beneath him became unmistakably, undeniably a sphere white and brown and blue and green, the whole beautiful thing hanging there in nothing
He ascended faster.
The sphere shrank. Stars appeared around it. Then more stars. Then the sphere was a marble. Then a point. Then gone into the background of everything else.
He flew even faster.
The stars blurred making their Light stretched into lines. Direction became meaningless and speed became meaningless and the only thing that existed was the going, the movement itself, until
There.
Ahead.
A star. Blue. Enormous. Growing as he approached it the way the ground grows when you're falling — slowly, then suddenly, the scale of it becoming real all at once and far too late.
He went straight into it.
The moment he made a contact everything went white White
Total AbsoluteThe white of everything at once Then he felt that he was going down and Down.
Fast he saw The clouds again he descended so fast he went through them without resistance, no friction, just the cold wet interior of them for half a second and then out the other side into open air and below was land the descending was so fast it was hard to see where he was going to land the light the ground was coming up so fast there was no time to react for the crash
Contact with the ground was made
Inside a cottage
A cry. Raw. A small body, wet and red, its limbs drawn tight.
A woman's hands moved over it. One finger swept inside the mouth. Another wiped the nose. A cloth passed over the chest, the belly, the legs.
"It's a boy."
Through the door of the room a man stepped forward
"Is he—"
"He's fine mr Freeman" The woman's hands were lower, working between the legs of the one on the bed. "He lungs are Good just listen to his cry ."
Another cry his Small fists clenched,
The one on the bed lifted her head. Her face shone. Black hair stuck to her forehead and cheek. Her arms shook as she reached out.
"Let me—give him to me—"
The woman placed a bundle into the curve of her arm Quickly and Careful.
The one on the bed looked down
The face in the bundle was red and scrunched his eyes shut. The mouth opened and closed for small squeak tocame out.
"Oh." Her breath caught
The man moved closer. He stood over them, looking down. His hand hovered near the bundle's head but not touching.
"His fingers," he said. "Look at his fingers."
The one on the bed looked at them and The small hand had opened. The fingers curled slightly. The palm was crossed with fine new lines.
She touched the back of that hand with one finger.The small fingers closed around hers Tightly
The women's eyes got wet and Tears fell onto the blanket
The man put his hand on her shoulder. Left it there. His thumb moved once, a small circle, then stopped.
"You did so well Ms Freeman." The woman with the cloth was packing things into a bag. She looked up and straightened "congratulations on the baby boy may the almighty bless his life and his parents life" by that she bowed and left the room and closed The door,
The room was quiet the room was quite the man crossed his arms and said "almighty my ass" and looked down at the women on the bed looking at him unpleasantly "alright alright I'm sorry it just slipped out of my mouth"
She dismissed him and looked down back at the bundle
The baby made a wet, small noise The one on the bed pulled the bundle closer. She lowered her face to it. Inhaled.
"Hello." Her lips touched the top of its head. The baby's eyes opened for a blink Grey-greem and Unfocused .