Shutdown (Glitch)

dreams at all—my favorite kind of sleep. When Adrien shook my shoulders to wake me, at first I pushed him off. Sleep was so easy. Empty. Nothing was asked of me there. Waking meant entering back into the world of struggle and strife, and I didn’t want that, not yet.
    Finally I gave in to the inevitable and opened my eyes. I sat up, every muscle in my body sore. Adrien had turned on the small portable heat lamp in the center of the chamber where the cave widened out. Our soaked clothing was mostly dry, and in spite of everything, I felt about a thousand times better than I had in days.
    Adrien leaned over me, staring at me with his eyebrows knit in concern. The previous day came rushing in. The details about everything that had happened were fuzzy because I’d been so exhausted and half-delirious, but I remembered him leaving.
    And him coming back.
    I stared up at him in confusion. The way he was looking at me now, as if he was concerned about me, as if he cared—
    But, as if he could sense where my thoughts were starting to go, he pulled back and made his face an impassive mask.
    I sat up, pushing off the two thermal blankets on top of me. I looked down at them. I’d had only one blanket when I went to sleep.
    “I didn’t want you to get cold,” he explained, as if reading the question on my face.
    “What about yourself? Aren’t you cold?”
    He shook his head. “I stayed by the lamp.”
    I blinked again and looked around us. I shivered in spite of the fact that I was warm. We were in the cave from Adrien’s vision. “What time is it?”
    “Nine at night.”
    That was good. I’d slept almost nine hours altogether today.
    I rubbed my eyes and looked around. The cave walls were moist, almost slimy. The ceiling was mostly hidden in shadow. But in the dim light provided by the heat lamp, I could see a bunch of long fingerlike structures dropping down from above. Moisture gathered at the pink-brown tips and occasionally dripped. I watched one drip, drip, drip, and listened for the resounding plink on the slick mound that had grown up below it.
    “How long till we outwait the other vision?” I asked Adrien. “Four or five days? Then we can get moving again.”
    “I’ve been thinking about it a lot while you were sleeping.” He handed me half a protein bar and then stood up, pacing back and forth on a path between the pinkish mounds lining the ground. “I’m not sure it’ll be safe to leave.”
    “Why not?” I took a bite. Even though I’d been eating the same bars for days, this one tasted amazing, probably because I was so starved after all the exertion yesterday.
    “I’ve never had visions like this before.” Adrien ran a hand through his hair. “What if I was wrong about the timing? What if they didn’t happen at the same time like I first thought? Maybe I just had two visions together, and the second one could still happen whenever we leave the cave, even if we do wait a few days.”
    I choked on the bite of bar I’d swallowed. Adrien quickly handed me the water bottle and I took a long drink before turning back to him. “We can’t just stay here indefinitely. We’ll avoid cities to make sure the other one doesn’t happen.”
    He shook his head with his lips pursed. “You know I’ve tried to avoid visions in the past. Whenever I did, I’d just end up causing them instead. We said we wouldn’t look for the cave, but then the storm drove us here. What if the same thing happens with the second vision?”
    “So there’s no way to escape it?” I scoffed, putting the cap back on the water bottle and standing up. “I’m just supposed to accept that if I step outside of this cave then I’m doomed to die in a city somewhere?”
    “No, no, no,” he said quickly, still pacing. “That’s not what I mean. I’m still hoping that I was right about the visions being simultaneous moments on two separate forked futures. But look at the facts.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “We don’t have any more epi infusions. The anti-infrared harnesses have enough coolant for maybe two more nights, at most. Then what? We have shelter here. The lake outside is spring-fed so we have fresh water. You’ve got the biosuit and I can head into the city by myself to steal you some more oxy tanks.”
    “But we have to try to get in contact with the Rez as soon as we can,” I argued.
    “Do you think Rez cells advertise with a sign outside their door? They’re impossible to find, and you more