HEINA I 

HEINA I 

TW: mentions of death

 

Maybe this is a dream. Maybe I’m delusional, crazy, making this all up. Or maybe it’s real – maybe this is an existential nightmare, and I’ve been trying to run from it. Trying.

 

—

13th of May, 2158

 

It began like any other day in Heina. I was seventeen, strolling the snow-covered streets with nothing to do. I’d never really paid attention to the cold; it’s become background information. What you notice instead are the Argus bots. 

 

They drift above the pavement, quiet and aware. Cylindrical, around the size of a ruler, with their aluminium plates polished to a dull coat. Their small, crimson lenses are plastered like eyes, measuring our every move. The mortals would have called them “surveillance robots,” something straight out of their fiction—units to imagine, not to live under. But here, no one stares. No one reacts. You realise early on that paying them too much attention feels like a mistake.

 

I passed beneath one at the intersection near the old cathedral hall. It hovered there – motionless- its beady glare dissecting every shadow that walked along the street below. No alarms, no sudden movements—just continuous, silent observation. Around me, people carried on as usual. Conversations, errands, schedules. Normal, if you didn’t think too hard about it.

 

A little while later, as I strode through an alleyway, I found myself wondering about the mortals again. We’d been told grand tales about them growing up—how they lived with the harsh reality of an ending. How every decision mattered because it could be their last. They seemed to fear death in a way I’ve never truly understood, and shaped their lives around it. Careful and cautious.

 

The world I know isn’t like that.

 

No one here really dies—not in the way mortals thought of dying. But we’re not “immortal” either. Not quite. Everything is measured; tracked; counted.

 

By midday, I’d passed a few others around my age. Their conversations were the same as always—rankings, standings, and comparisons – they either kept quiet about or boast so loudly that your eardrums rattle out of your ears.

 But this all started due to one thing: the mortality index.

 

The index is what defines us. Not our age, not experience, not an hierarchy – numbers. A count. A leaderboard. The higher the count, the higher you stand. Simple enough on the surface – but everyone here knows what it really means. 

 

I remember pausing for a moment, eyes drifting upward as another Argus bot hovered above, its eyes flashing red as it scanned the crowded street. For a second, I wondered if the mortals would be able to comprehend our world now – a world where death isn’t the end, but somehow, everything still revolves around it.

 

Then the moment passed. The hum of the crowd settled around me. Just another day in Heina.

 

Or so I thought.

 

—

 

Because that was the first time I saw an Argus bot hesitate. 

 

It wasn’t obvious – not many people would have noticed it. But I did. It stopped above the intersection. Not hovered, not adjusted. Just… stopped. Its lens flickered once, then twice. No one else reacted. No one ever does. I should’ve kept walking. I should’ve, but something about it made me stall for a second – something felt wrong. 

 

Another bot gravitated beside the first. Then another. Slow, careful – and suddenly the street fell deaf to my ears. I remember thinking: this isn’t normal. 

 

And then, for the first time ever, I found myself wondering what would happen if the system made a mistake. 

 

Or worse – 

 

If it didn’t. 

 

—

 

I remember watching their lenses lock onto the man in front of me. His name shot down—from 10298 to 289875—on the leaderboard that displayed above his head. I remember how his eyes stretched wide in surprise. How the man began to cripple; clutching his stomach first, then his head. I remember it all too vividly. He collapsed onto the concrete floor, and began to disintegrate—like a pixelated simulation. 

 

People hadn’t noticed what had happened. They just saw it as another low-ranker, dissipating due to a low mortality rate. 

 

But I saw it all.

 

This?

 

This was not the world I knew.

 

Writer – Mayah Clements
Editor – Robbie Ge
Artist – Janace Wang

–April 2026–