Runners get ready! Three, two, one, Go!

Now they all fucking run. I look around me and feel the flock moving all together, as fast as they can. I look down on my feet, still flesh, still mine. My knees, the connection between the past and the future, pulling me down one moment and up the next. I look down, as I don’t want to miss a step. I don’t want to fail, I don’t want to be crushed by a relentless mass of semi-human bodies. I must look forward. I speak to myself. I almost whisper to feel my voice just to verify that this is real.

The system packaged this race as inevitable. Run or die. No choice. No exit. But I chose to run anyway. That’s the move.

We have no idea where the end is or what it’s like.

But what if I run faster? Will I reach the end by first or second place? I need to concentrate. I need to focus on my goal: reach the finish line.

I lift my face up and try to catch my breath to not fall down. The system hates to break the predictable.

The person in front of me turns his head and looks at me: it’s a clown. I look around, all faces are clowns. This is how the master algorithm dressed them today. This is how it will dress them tomorrow.

I am torn between laughing and crying: I feel nothing, but I am awake. Fuck this, that’s my power: awareness inside the cage.

All those people, running together and alone to an unknown location but to a known destination: the end.

But is it really an end or a loop? The race resets itself. The clown masks fall and reveal the real faces but it doesn’t matter, all is gone.

Some get motivated by the prize but no one knows what it is. All they know is that by running as fast as possible, they get a chance to hear the applause and the crowd calling their name. They try hard to reach the end and meet the prize: emptiness.

The prize is a hole into the unknown that wipes away everything.

And the runners, they run away from the truth that is chasing them. But in the end, they will all have to eventually face it.

I see the checkpoint and I know there is no turning back. My feet still chasing the prize, my code hasn’t been compiled yet. All that ever was holding my name, ready to vanish.

I will stay awake.