"Stop, Franny!" Ordered Al Zander.

"MY NAME'S NOT FRANNY!" He dove under the racing tide that grew taller and taller by the minute. No one was coming to save Al now, not his ex-wives, not his humanoids, not his robots, nobody. Only the breath of the wind and the thundering tide and splashing waves could be heard and the skin on Francisco's body tightened and locked like metal as his arms and legs caught onto his old boss like a leech and all his weight fell onto Al Zander so as to dig him under the sand where he could not breathe and where God could not find him.

"No--" shouted Al, before he gargled the red sand and his face dug into it like the head of an ostrich.

Francisco's body shook from the beating of his heart. His gums grew tight under his gritted teeth as he struggled to force Al under the watery sand and suffocate him. The creeping crawlers of sand crabs started swarming upward from beneath the wet sand into which their two bodies sank.

Al Zander flapped his arms and legs, aiming to elbow Francisco's ribs, but it was no use, the waves flowed back and forth over balding white scalp of his head, and his body started to convulse from the lack of oxygen. His brain felt this to be all to real, and so his mind would shut down if this went on to the breaking point.

Die, Al.

Tears swam out of Francisco as he watched the murder play out from under him. He closed his eyes to avoid changing his mind.

I won't. He will die. He must. After all he's put me through. Put the world through.

Al Zander's body wiggled like a desperate fish, his oily skin flopping all about in last attempt to save himself.

He deserves this, thought Francisco. He has ruined the lives of so many people. Humans have suffered the lure of a false reality because of him. They've trapped themselves in a virtual world only to give up any meaning in a real life. He has replaced human to human relationships with robotic intervention and made perversion acceptable with his commercials and rationalizations.

As the tide swept off them for only a moment, Al Zander managed to roll himself over under Francisco's weight, and spit out the words, "I gave you everything! All the money, all the POWER a man could ever want in this godforsaken world—and you try to kill me?"

Francisco shut his mouth before he could lose his drive. He gripped Al Zander's neck with both hands and curled his fingers, sinking them through the flesh in the hopes they would touch at the epicenter of his bleeding throat.

Al Zander choked. He gasped and fought. He plunged his fingers up and poked and cut at Francisco's face.

"You killed my family," said Francisco. His face grew hot, and his reflection in Zander's bulging eyes turned as deep red as the shadowy red sand below.

In a wildly bubbling phrase, as the water washed over his mouth, Zander said, "No, I didn't. I swear..."

Tasting the acrid flavor of blood burst from his gums, Francisco could feel his fingers bubbling through the tissue of Al Zander's neck, when Al Zander's eyes rolled back into his head and started convulsing into death like a rat getting smashed under a rolling boulder. "Swear in the dark..." said Francisco. And the nails of his fingers reached in the center of Al's neck, and finally the ocean washed over Al Zander, covering his dead body completely under its sheet of foam. Francisco yanked out his fingers like they were knives, and he immediately trembled when he realized the monstrous act which he enacted.

Al Zander's body never surfaced from under the high tide, and Francisco walked on his feet backward, never turning his face away from the Al Zander's nose, which was the only part of him splitting the foaming surface.

Is he breathing? Francisco thought, staring in terror at Zander's soaked and hairy nostrils. Francisco hoped he would never have to touch the skin of that man again.

And as the tide rose even higher past Francisco's feet, over the sand and above Al Zander's empty flesh, Al Zander's nose and nostrils disappeared under the thick layer of salt, water, and foam, and Francisco knew he was no longer breathing. Al Zander was dead. And he, Francisco, was his murderer.

Francisco looked over that water, as it shifted forward and back, forward and back, like a pendulum that was masking over the face of this virtual Mars. Why was it that this virtual Mars even existed, was a question he long wondered, but now he knew. The genocides of the humans on Mars by the cyborgs on Earth was a false victory that man had progressed into perfection. In the same way the death of interstellar transportation, and the commercial success of virtual travel was another false victory that suggested man had progressed into immortality. This Mars was better than the real Mars. This ocean was better than the real ocean of any planet. That dead body underneath the tide was better than Al Zander's real body. It could breathe despite the blood rising out of his chest. But one thing was certain, you can't escape the wrongs you've done to others. No matter how much power you have, it comes back to you, like a tracker in your chest. Either by guilt, karma, or an enemy's vendetta. And this time, this vendetta was Francisco's.

But so soft, this was no victory. Francisco merely stood like a passionless statue over the ocean that rose up to his knees, inching up toward his waist. This was merely a sidestep into the abyss of Francisco's hell. There was no balloon to take him out of this virtual dungeon. No angels to pull him out of his heart wounds. He lived for nothing if his family was lost forever, nowhere to be found in this world or that.

His checks sank into pathetic flaps that waved in the wind under his jaws. Like two gobbles, they rippled under him as he stood there like a lame turkey, staring up at the fading brownish-yellow sky. The clouds grew thicker and the air humidified into intensely exhausting pressures. Or was it just Francisco, as his mind wobbled and spun across the sea like a badly thrown disk?

Aimless and obscure, Francisco walked toward the horizon, and let the waves fall over him, until he eventually came neck-deep under the water, and he saw that butterscotch sky turn to charcoal-grey night. Francisco closed his eyes, and the only light that would change his broken heart, would be his son Juan coming to find him in the morning on his back on the sand. His son would lift him and save him. His son would show him how he could be so happy in a world totally constructed by man. His son would show him how to be happy, in a world at first which Francisco thought he should never endorse, but which would reveal to be the savior of an impoverished people, an alternative life that would explain that all dreams were possible, if you only played them out with a flexible mind.