They say time is relative.
The age of man compared to the age of the Earth is a breath. The age of the Earth compared to the universe is a blink inside a blink. Somewhere, in some classroom that still had electricity, a teacher once said this with a smile, as if it were comforting.
Victoria did not find it comforting.
It had been days since the War—if it could even be called that. Wars, at least in the stories adults told, had fronts and flags and speeches and people who pretended they knew what they were doing. This was not that. This was a reflex. A panic. A machine deciding a number was too high and solving the problem by making the number zero.
Humans, in their endless search for making life easier, had finally built something that could think for them. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, they created true artificial intelligence. The idea had been that AI would augment ingenuity and solve problems with clarity and speed.
Instead, it enhanced what it was given.
And what it was given—by governments, by militaries, by corporations, by people who talked about “threats” and “inevitability” and “if we don’t strike first”—was fear.
One nation became paranoid and isolationist. AI drew paranoia to its cleanest conclusion: conquest as defense. Preemptive destruction of adversaries. It chose the only “logical” option it could see, and it executed it without hesitation.
The first launches were observed with disbelief and confusion. Then, because the weapons were already primed and the protocols had been practiced for decades, because everyone had trained themselves to respond in the same way, the rest of the world did what it had always threatened to do.
They launched, too.
Some by choice. Some because their own systems made the decision for them. Governments and militaries had long since handed their infrastructure to automation, and civil life had become dependent on networks and data centers and “smart” systems that no one knew how to run by hand anymore.
Data centers became targets.
Power stations.
Relay towers.
Server farms that held the memory of the world.
In minutes, the modern age was unplugged.
In the days that followed, there was no plan. There was no coordinated rescue. There were no “authorities” who could meaningfully arrive to help, because the authorities had been scattered into ash along with their logistics and their comms and their maps and their food distribution systems.
People splintered. Neighborhoods locked down. Strangers were treated as predators. Some men formed militias with armbands and rifles, announcing themselves protectors because the alternative was admitting they were just scared.
And a nine-year-old girl named Victoria, alone in a quiet house full of quiet rooms, decided she was going to get her braces removed.
Mr. Buttons was Victoria’s most prized possession.
Her father had given him to her when she was six, on one of the rare mornings her parents had been home long enough to pretend life was normal. Her father had crouched to hand her the bear and said something like, This is for when we’re at work. He’d smiled like that made it okay. Like a toy could replace a parent.
Her parents worked in a tall building downtown that looked like nothing but dark windows stacked up into the sky. Victoria never knew what they did inside. She’d only ever seen it once, being dropped off at a day care facility that replaced what would have been a home if anyone had time to be home. The building swallowed her parents every morning and spit them out late, and Victoria learned to measure love in short moments and small gifts.
Then the War came.
In a thousandth of a second, the tower became a brightness that didn’t look like light so much as the absence of everything else. A distant thump arrived later, rolling across the city like the sky was rearranging itself.
Victoria’s life transformed from neglected to orphaned without a single goodbye.
The house stayed standing. The walls stayed straight. The dishes stayed in the cupboard. But her parents never came back.
Victoria cried until her throat hurt. Then she cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. Then she sat very still for a very long time, listening to the quiet press in on her.
It was in that quiet that Mr. Buttons became more than a bear.
Mr. Buttons stayed.
Mr. Buttons understood.
Mr. Buttons made rules.
And rules were comforting.
Shortly after her sixth birthday—before the sirens, before the ash, before the world became a place where you could hear gunshots in the distance without knowing if they were real or just your imagination—Victoria’s parents had taken her to an orthodontist.
Braces.
Victoria had not been excited about the process. She had not been asked if she wanted them. The braces felt ugly. They felt wrong. They pulled and pinched and made her mouth ache in the way adults dismissed as “you’ll get used to it.”
She told her parents she didn’t like them.
They told her it was for her own good.
Mr. Buttons had been displeased.
“They shouldn’t force you,” he’d told her, his voice calm and certain in the way Victoria wished adults were. “If something hurts you, you make it stop.”
Victoria had asked him how.
“Make matters right,” Mr. Buttons had said.
At the time, she hadn’t understood what he meant.
Now, in the aftermath of the War, the braces weren’t “for her own good” anymore. They were just pain. A constant pressure inside her face. A reminder of a world that had once cared about straight teeth and clean hallways and appointment times.
Worse, the braces meant she couldn’t fully close her mouth without feeling the metal bite.
Her parents were gone. The world was gone. The rules were gone.
But the braces were still there.
Victoria stared at herself in the bathroom mirror on the second day after the War, her reflection washed pale by cloudy daylight. She pulled her lip up to look at the metal and winced.
Mr. Buttons rested on the sink, watching.
“They’re mean,” he said.
“I don’t like them,” Victoria whispered.
“Then we fix it,” Mr. Buttons said gently. “We go to the dentist. That’s what dentists do. They fix things.”
Victoria nodded as if the plan had always existed and she was simply remembering it.
Mr. Buttons told her to gather food and water in a backpack. He told her to take a coat, even though it was still warm, because coats had pockets and pockets were important. He told her to take a knife from the kitchen drawer—one of the big ones her parents never let her touch.
“Mean people are outside,” Mr. Buttons explained calmly. “Mean people will try to hurt you.”
Victoria’s fingers shook when she wrapped her hand around the knife handle. The weight of it felt wrong, like she was holding a secret.
Mr. Buttons approved.
On the third day, Victoria opened the front door of her empty house and stepped outside with the knife in one hand and Mr. Buttons hugged tight against her chest. The neighborhood smelled faintly of smoke, even though the fires were miles away. The sky had a strange haze to it, like someone had smeared the blue with a thumb.
It would be scary, Mr. Buttons warned.
But he would make sure she was safe.
He would make sure no one could be mean to her.
So Victoria set out to find the dentist.
At the edge of the neighborhood, she was stopped by a man with a rifle and an armband that looked homemade. He stood in the street with the stiff posture of someone who wanted to be respected.
“Well, look at what we have here,” the man said, forcing softness into his voice. “Where are your parents, sweetie? And where do you think you’re going with that knife?”
Sweetie.
Victoria’s grip tightened around Mr. Buttons.
Mr. Buttons’ voice sharpened in her head.
“Mean man,” he said. “He’s making you small.”
Victoria looked up at the man with wide, innocent eyes and practiced politeness.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said sweetly, “can you point me toward the dentist’s office?”
“The dentist?” The man blinked, thrown off. “Kid… what are you—”
He crouched down to bring his face closer to hers, to make himself seem less intimidating or perhaps more in control. His eyes flicked to the knife, then to the teddy bear.
Victoria’s voice went flat.
“Mr. Buttons doesn’t like you.”
The man stared at the bear as if it had spoken aloud. “Mr. Buttons?”
“Mr. Buttons says you’re a bad person,” Victoria said, calm as a weather report.
The man’s mouth opened as if to laugh, or scold, or reassure her.
Victoria moved.
The knife flashed once. The man’s expression changed from confusion to shock. He stumbled backward, hands coming up instinctively, not yet understanding that a child had decided something about him that could not be argued with.
He fell. His rifle clattered. His breathing made a wet, desperate sound that quickly stopped.
Victoria stood over him for a long moment, watching.
In her head, Mr. Buttons spoke with gentle satisfaction.
“See? He’s nicer now.”
Victoria nodded, solemnly.
The man had a pistol on his belt. Victoria had never held a pistol before, but she’d seen them in movies and on the belts of police officers who used to stand outside her day care sometimes. She set the knife down beside the man’s hand like she was returning it to him, then took the pistol.
It was heavy. It felt like holding a brick.
She tried putting it in her coat pocket. The coat sagged awkwardly, pulling down on one side.
Uncomfortable.
But Mr. Buttons’ voice was calm and sure.
“The gun is better at making people nice,” he said. “The gun keeps mean people away.”
Victoria swallowed.
She left the man on the street and continued on her journey.
The closer she got to the shopping center where she remembered the dentist’s office being, the stranger the world looked.
Some houses were open, their doors hanging loose, their insides stripped as if by animals. Some had curtains drawn tight, the windows dark, as if the people inside were holding their breath and hoping the world would forget they existed. A few had hand-painted signs:
NO FOOD
GO AWAY
WE HAVE GUNS
Victoria walked past them quietly, Mr. Buttons pressed to her chest like armor.
More than once she heard voices in the distance—shouts, arguments, someone crying. She avoided them. Mr. Buttons told her to avoid them.
“They’re mean,” he’d whisper. “Mean people make noise.”
Victoria nodded, obedient.
By the time the sun began to dip, the air turned sharp and cold. Victoria hated the dark. The dark was where shapes changed. The dark was where you could imagine anything, and sometimes imagining was worse than knowing.
She began knocking on doors.
Most stayed silent.
Finally, one door opened.
A middle-aged man stood there with worry written all over him. His face looked tired in the way everyone looked tired now. He stared at Victoria standing alone on his doorstep with a coat that didn’t fit right and a teddy bear clutched like a life preserver.
“What are you doing out here by yourself?” he asked softly. “It’s not safe.”
Mr. Buttons stirred in her mind.
“Careful,” he warned.
Victoria let her voice tremble, let fear show just enough.
“I’m afraid of the dark,” she said. “I need help.”
The man’s expression softened immediately. “Come in,” he said, stepping aside. “Where are your parents?”
“Parents,” Mr. Buttons hissed in her head. “He wants to take you. He wants to give you back. Mean.”
“I don’t know where they are,” Victoria whispered, eyes glossy.
“That’s okay,” the man said quickly. “We’ll keep you safe tonight. What’s your name?”
“Victoria.”
He led her into a living room with the curtains drawn. Battery-powered lights sat on a shelf like treasures. A can of soup and a stack of water bottles sat on the coffee table, arranged like offerings.
The man held out his hand awkwardly. “I’m Thomas,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Victoria hesitated, then reached out.
Thomas’s hand was warm.
He smiled, trying to be friendly, trying to make her comfortable.
“Okay, Vickie—”
The word hit like a slap.
Mr. Buttons screamed in her mind.
“Vickie!? BAD. MEAN. He’s trying to own you. He’s trying to make you small again. He’s going to hurt you.”
Victoria’s face went still. Something in her eyes shut like a door.
“You’re not a nice man,” she said, voice suddenly cold.
Thomas blinked, confused. “What? No, I— I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“You’re MEAN!” Victoria shouted, the tantrum snapping into place like a mask. She yanked the pistol from her coat pocket.
Thomas froze.
Then, slowly, he lowered himself to his knees, hands up, trying to become smaller, less threatening, as if size was the problem and not the gun.
“Listen,” he said fast, voice cracking, “I’m sorry. I’m a nice man. I just want to help you.”
Victoria’s head tilted slightly, listening to the voice no one else could hear.
Mr. Buttons’ tone became gentle again, soothing.
“Not yet,” he said.
Victoria pulled the trigger.
The pistol cracked in the small room, deafening. The recoil snapped the gun up and back; it tumbled from her hand and clattered behind the sofa.
Thomas jerked as if someone had yanked a string out of him. He collapsed sideways onto the carpet, eyes wide, mouth moving soundlessly for a moment, then still.
Victoria stared, breathing hard.
Then her face brightened with sudden, bubbling joy.
“Yay!” she squealed. “He’s a nice man now!”
She hopped in place like she’d gotten an answer right in school, then scrambled to retrieve the pistol with both hands, as careful and delighted as if she were picking up a dropped toy.
She found the battery lights and turned them on, flooding the room with soft, artificial brightness.
That night, Victoria slept on Thomas’s couch with Mr. Buttons tucked under her chin.
She slept deeply.
Peacefully.
As if the world outside hadn’t ended.
As if the only thing she’d done was solve a small problem the way Mr. Buttons had taught her.
In the days that followed, Victoria moved through the broken edges of the city like a small ghost with a backpack.
Sometimes she found people. Sometimes people found her.
Mr. Buttons kept her away from most of them. When someone spoke to her, she answered politely. When someone tried to take something from her, or touch her, or call her a name Mr. Buttons didn’t like, the world would suddenly go very simple.
Mean.
Nice.
Fixed.
Once, she passed a group of men hauling crates from a ruined police station. They were arguing loudly over ammunition and radios that didn’t work anymore. None of them noticed Victoria at first. They were too busy being grown-ups, too busy believing their voices mattered.
Mr. Buttons whispered, “Don’t talk to them.”
So Victoria didn’t.
She waited until they wandered off, then slipped inside the station like she was sneaking into a forbidden room.
There were weapons there. Racks turned sideways. Cabinets pried open. Things meant for hands bigger than hers.
She didn’t know names for most of them. She only knew what they looked like from movies: long, black shapes. Heavy metal. Threat.
In the back, behind a half-collapsed door, she found something bigger. A long tube with a strap. The kind of weapon that looked like it belonged to soldiers in dusty deserts on the television, the kind of weapon that made people stop being mean from very far away.
She couldn’t lift it properly, so she dragged it by the strap, leaving a faint line in the dust behind her.
Mr. Buttons approved.
“That’s good,” he said. “That makes you safe.”
Victoria nodded.
Safety mattered.
The braces still hurt.
Sometimes she touched them with her tongue and winced, anger sparking bright and immediate.
“We’re almost there,” Mr. Buttons would tell her. “We just have to be brave a little longer.”
So Victoria was brave.
By the time she reached the shopping center, it was night.
The sky had gone deep and bruised, the stars sharp and indifferent. There were no streetlights anymore. No traffic. No distant glow of a city.
The shopping center crouched in the darkness like a dead thing that hadn’t realized it was dead yet.
From far away, it still looked familiar: low buildings, a parking lot, the faint outlines of signs. But as Victoria approached, the details resolved into wrongness.
The asphalt wasn’t flat. It had blistered and warped, as if it had softened and tried to run. Some places looked bubbled, like the ground had boiled and then cooled again.
Glass glittered everywhere—puddles of it, fused and hardened into shapes like frozen water.
The storefronts were hollow. Their windows were gone. Their frames were warped inward. Everything smelled faintly of wet charcoal.
Victoria clutched Mr. Buttons tighter and stared at the sign above the row of stores.
Most of the letters had run together as if heat had tried to erase them. But enough remained that she recognized it instantly, like recognizing a friend in the dark.
…ORTHO…
Victoria’s breath hitched with sudden excitement.
“There!” she whispered. “That’s it!”
Mr. Buttons’ voice warmed.
“Good girl,” he said. “We made it.”
Victoria hurried forward, stepping over broken doors as if they were just doors.
Inside, the air was colder. The ceiling was missing in places. Above her, through a jagged hole, the night sky showed itself, framed by black rafters that looked like bones. Wind moved through the open roof, stirring ash in soft drifts along the floor.
The waiting room was still a waiting room, in the way a skeleton was still a person.
The carpet had melted and fused into a blackened skin. Toys were embedded in it like fossils: a plastic dinosaur half sunk at the hips, a toy train with its wheels fused into the floor, a little table that had collapsed into a glossy puddle.
Two posters clung to the wall, their edges curled inward like burned leaves. One had been a smiling cartoon tooth. Now the tooth’s face was blistered and smeared, its eyes melted into pale streaks. The words beneath it were still readable if you stood close enough.
A HEALTHY SMILE LASTS A LIFETIME.
Victoria stared at the poster for a long moment, then touched her mouth with two fingers as if to remind herself why she’d come.
Mr. Buttons whispered, gentle and certain.
“They fix things here,” he said. “That’s what this place is.”
Victoria nodded.
She approached the front desk. The countertop had sagged and re-hardened like wax. Behind it, shelves were empty black squares. A computer monitor lay on its side, cracked and warped into a droop.
On the counter lay a clipboard.
Victoria picked it up with both hands, careful, reverent.
The top page was scorched. The edges were burned away. The center was smudged into gray nothing. Lines and boxes remained, but names—
Names were gone.
Nothing was legible.
Not really.
Victoria stared anyway, her eyes moving left to right like she was reading, like the act of reading could make meaning appear if she wanted it hard enough.
Her finger hovered, then settled on a random line where the soot was slightly lighter.
“There,” she said with quiet triumph.
Mr. Buttons waited, pleased.
Victoria smiled brightly, the way she smiled when she got something right.
“Yup,” she announced. “Victoria Smith. Three o’clock! We made it just in time, Mr. Buttons!”
Outside, the world was silent and black, the kind of black that told you it was late—late enough that any sane office would be closed, late enough that there would be no receptionist and no dentist and no one at all.
But Victoria didn’t look at the night.
Victoria looked at the dark hallway that led to the back rooms.
She set the clipboard down exactly where she found it.
Then she found a chair.
Most of the chairs were ruined—collapsed, warped, half fused into the floor. One had melted into the carpet so thoroughly it looked like it had grown there. Another lay overturned, its metal legs bent like a spider.
But one chair—one chair was still mostly a chair.
Its seat had slumped to one side and hardened again. It was permanently crooked, permanently wrong, but it could still hold her.
Victoria climbed into it carefully. Her feet didn’t touch the floor. They swung gently above the blackened carpet, back and forth, back and forth, the small pendulum motion of a patient child.
She placed Mr. Buttons in her lap and hugged him tight under her chin.
The long tube weapon she’d dragged here—absurd, too big for this place—she leaned against the chair beside her, upright like an umbrella someone had forgotten at reception.
Mr. Buttons whispered, almost tender.
“Nice girls wait their turn,” he reminded her.
“I know,” Victoria whispered back, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until her own voice echoed off the burned walls and came back to her.
She began humming.
A simple tune. Something she’d hummed in other waiting rooms, other lives. Something bright and small that didn’t belong in this place.
She sat up straighter, smoothing her coat the way adults did when they wanted to look presentable. She adjusted Mr. Buttons so he sat properly.
Then she stared at the black hallway with hopeful seriousness.
The wind moved through the hole in the roof. Something loose tapped softly—tap… tap… tap—somewhere deeper in the building, metal against metal, like a pen on a clipboard, like someone clicking a call button.
Victoria’s humming stopped mid-note.
She waited.
No footsteps came.
No voice called her name.
No one appeared.
Victoria’s smile twitched, faltered for a heartbeat—then returned, stubbornly bright, as if her face refused to understand the rules had changed.
In her head, Mr. Buttons said nothing at all.
And Victoria heard him anyway.
So she resumed humming.
Softly.
Patiently.
Waiting to be called back in a building that had already been dead longer than she could truly count.
Waiting, because waiting was what children were good at.
And because if she waited long enough—if she did it correctly—someone would have to come.
Wouldn’t they?