There is a final, low-profile court hearing where Roha is cleared of all charges relating to Augustine’s death. At the same time, the Life Fountain Foundation agrees to put any complaints against the Kir family on indefinite hold. Discussions are completed behind closed doors, and concluding statements are quietly dispersed to only a handful of reporters.

The Kir stable of actors steadily continues their work over the following years. The roles are modest at best. After a dry patch, Petra puts her career on hold when her first daughter is born. Calya follows in her footsteps one year later.

The exception is, as usual, the matriarch Ruether. She unexpectedly emerges from her seclusion to play veteran assassin Agent A in preindustrial-era drama The Secret Journal of Agent A - a critically acclaimed work which awards her a fifth Best Leading Actress award at the age of 98, placing her neck-and-neck with her late husband and his accolades.

Augustine’s mother Nia appears to be in a career upswing until she is spotted at a violent anti-Life Fountain protest, following the ‘summit incident’, a political gathering where Life Fountain aura inadvertently triggered a serious allergic reaction in an ambassador and his family. The Life Fountain had been placed at the veneue as part of yet another medical and safety trial. The immediate public backlash, before the ambassador released an official response excusing his 'assailant', was scathing. Nia denied involvement in the subsequent hospital-burning and staff-targeting threats, but when confronted with photographic evidence (and in the spirit of Augustine, several passionate social media posts), retired from acting.

All Human and Mystic Love, the opposed organizations who somehow align to be the greatest conservators of Kir’s work, continue their battles.

‘Can you believe it?’ The ML forum moderator named Peleus gripes. ‘I’ve been seeing more and more normie girls throwing around this ‘monster boyfriend’ propaganda. What, have they gotten that desperate? No - they’re jealous. We were here first.’

‘Can you believe it?’ AH activist Whistle12 says, rolling her eyes as she reads out the highlights of the forum thread. ‘Too far up their own asses to see that this is a win for all of us. But no, if it's a win for us, it just can't be anything but an attack on them.’ Recently banned from ML, she has opened a fifth account, insistent on keeping tabs on the rival faction.

The Jeweled Sky Hotel closes its doors in 201x , citing safety and financial difficulties. One night, a hailstorm creates a crack in the chapel’s enormous triangular window. With the reduced maintenance schedule, the damage goes unnoticed and in a week the entire thing shatters in a period of strong winds. The diamond in the mountain is no more. The villages below are cautiously combing glass out of the runoff snow for weeks.

Lem Carthage continues to head the Life Fountain Foundation into her dotage. At the age of 76 she steps down with chipper thanks - she’s going to use her newfound time to focus on health and family. Though she has no children, she has a plethora of nieces and nephews (and grandnieces and grandnephews) to fawn over, as well as many longtime acquaintainces who consider her close as family. Her husband, the unaging Life Fountain Cadmus Carthage, continues Foundation management duties to this day as the sole director.

Studios, publishers and campaigners reach out to Roha, who still lives in her Foundation-appointed bungalow, but she does not respond to their offers. ‘Can’t help someone who won’t help themselves’, chides a spokesperson of All Human, when Roha snubs their invitation to speak at a human rights exhibition. Without speeches and meetings, she has plenty of time to catch up on her sleep. She becomes uninteresting for the cameras as a result, and attention turns elsewhere. One can imagine that’s all she hoped for.

After the ‘summit incident’, the status of Life Fountains in the medical field, as well as their legally recognized relation to humans, continues to be the subject of debate.

In an ironic twist, the crumbling Neovision Blue is acquired by the original Neovision corporation in summer of 201x. The parent company graciously allows its unruly offspring to retain its name, if not entirely its purpose. These days, Neovision Blue is known - or perhaps more accurate to say, overlooked - as a purveyor of vanilla pornography.

The dust settles. The Daily reporter and her brethren find some new drama to cover.

—

There’s just one piece left to account for.

The missing Kir that I was seeking to interview, since the inception of this story, is still elusive. A month after my initial attempt to track him down, I knock on the door to his office again, and am greeted by the same elegantly disheveled ‘assistant’.

‘I really am sorry. My supervisor is not available. He stepped out a short while ago.’

He claims to remember me, and says he passed on my requests for a meeting or a call. He says it all the while flashing a coy smile. In him, I think, there’s something like the controlled shamelessness of Augustine Kir.

He yawns. I ask him if he’s eager to get back to bed. To someone waiting, perhaps.

I have been watching too many of Kir’s videos.

The assistant turns his head slowly. ‘I apologize if I misled you in some fashion. There is nobody here besides myself.’ He looks back at me, then at his jacket, which I am inspecting. Pricey, with golden buttons, but mangled at the front with sleep. He laughs and brushes his hair flat with his hand. ‘I see, I see. I’ve hardly been professional. Well, for your peace of mind, perhaps I’d better-’

He pulls the door open and beckons me in.

The office Kir shares with his assistant is one room of a mid-sized apartment. It is well lit, quaintly decorated, and the air smells of coffee. The assistant offers that or tea, and points out a makeshift sitting area of mismatched furniture where I can wait. Aside from the two of us, the apartment is, as the assistant said, empty.

The assistant, S, does transcription work for the legal system. Kir does report and proposal audits for the detectives of Central’s police. Paperwork. When asked what business his supervisor has outside the office, he sips tea and furrows his brow. Even he doesn’t know.

‘I mind my own business until he tells me otherwise,’ S says.

Although he does not seem interested in questioning his supervisor, S clearly is not afraid of the man in the least. Somewhere in the hours I spend waiting on the old corner couch, S confides to me that he often naps at his desk. The boss is lenient in that department, he says. The boss respects his sleep habits. Just as he respects the boss’s.

The boss’s sleep habits?

‘Yes,’ S says while pouring out more tea. ‘Mr Kir doesn’t sleep at all. It’s quite impressive.’

I question this, and he volleys back, generating new questions, for new answers. Time ticks by. The man is a good talker. With no props on hand, without moving from the room, I am entertained for three hours. We talk about our hometowns. S says he used to live in the East, but can’t remember the name of the town. He says I remind him of a teacher, but can’t recall her name. We discuss food and the weather, construction and the nature of journalism.

It’s not an unpleasant conversation, but aside from the fact that S is allowed to sleep in the workplace, I learn nothing concrete. Supervisor Kir, naturally, does not show up. I begin to wonder if S knew his boss was not going to return.

I tentatively bring up Kir again. I ask what S knows about the Kir family. He stops me before I can state a single name.

‘That’s his business. I’m only an employee. I don’t need to give him reasons to believe I’m invading his privacy.’

I praise him frankly. He’s certainly trying very hard to do the exact opposite of invasion. He actually seems to be protective of Kir. And to what end?

He ponders over this accusation very slowly (as time keeps ticking by) and smiles in mock defeat. Self preservation and courtesy, he claims. Kir’s a ‘decent’ boss, and S’s placement here has been quite gratifying. He is protecting his job - the free coffee, a homey office, the midday naps - and Kir’s just lumped in with the benefits. Besides, he presumes the boss would appreciate being known for his kindness rather than whatever his family’s done, no?

I admit it’s true, and stop. It’s an odd little trap he’s set. In one brief reply I’ve inadvertently let him know that the story of his boss’s family is less than flattering. Or perhaps he knew already. I am hardly the first to cover the tragedy of the Kirs.

I’m not sure what to do with this conundrum. S shuts out distractions for a while to work on his transcription. I wait another half-hour on the itchy armchair, then get up to leave. He apologizes on behalf of his supervisor who never made an appearance. We say our goodbyes.

It is not until this entire trial has played out and I’m almost out the door that the assistant chirps, apropos of nothing, that Kir will call me to confirm a time and place to meet.

—

We meet in front of a single-storey house with an overgrown garden around noontime. The lights inside the house are off and the porch is unadorned. Grass spills through the short chain link fence. I could kick myself for not thinking of the place sooner - this is the home of Roha Kir. Through all the media firestorms she never moved out of her Foundation-assigned home - and it would make sense that her son dropped in once in a while.

Raiko Kir, or Rai, as he prefers to be called, is now a very intense yet earnest man in his mid-twenties. He comes out of the house in unironed slacks and a scuffed t-shirt with a blazer thrown over it. His bold facial features and garnet eyes resemble his father, but for the most part we see the son of Roha. He is unique in his complexion though; not ethereal in paleness like his mother, and far from the bronze tones of his father, but instead a sort of waxy gray.

It’s not unreasonable to assume there had been Life Fountain-human dalliances in times gone by. It’s also not unreasonable, from what we know now, to believe that unexpected offspring were produced before Rai. But he was the first publicized case - and how public he was. The tests, the photos, all that prodding and provoking. His conception may very well have been caught on camera, a tragic moment under snow and rock. As nothing more than an infant swaddled in an old coat, he pulled the Kirs’ professor friend, and men of his ilk, from scholarly orbit. Life Fountains, by definition of the word, are a species close to humans. Though the exact genetic scope is still undergoing study, one thing is very clear: the two intermingling can produce children.

But after he stopped being a bundle on his mother’s lap, and Roha went into seclusion and the Kirs tried to bury the ordeal, he quickly dropped from the spotlight. He’s been lying (relatively) low for over 20 years now and shows little desire to change that.

‘Mom and dad won’t be up to any new adventures anytime soon,’ he says, cutting off my questions. He has a bag of trash in either hand. ‘First, help me shove these in the trunk.’

He wrenches open the back of a green sedan.

Wrestling down the crinkling plastic, he says, 'I find it hard to believe you never though to stake out her house at all, you know, to chat her up firsthand. I know your type's all about bullshit and heresay, but, I don't know, lurking outside someone's house seems on-brand.'

Whether scheduled or caught unawares, Roha has not released any further enlightening statements for almost thirty years. Besides, it is Rai that I want to talk to.

'As if I'm going to make your little editorial anything more than a bunch of retreads,' Rai mutters, though he makes sure I hear it.

When the garbage is stowed, he extends a hand to me. Even from several feet away, I can smell disinfectant on his clothes. His fingers, palm, and forearm burn low-intensity neon blue with his inherited Life Fountain aura. We shake hands.

—

Rai brightens marginally after retrieving a thermos of coffee from under his car seat.

‘Always nice to meet another louse from the Daily,’ he says with a rocky grin. Despite having once been an intern at the Daily Beholder (in his time, it was branded as the Daily Update) he speaks disparagingly of the publication any chance he gets.

Rai does not want to conduct the interview on the street, so I follow him to lunch. Rai gives the impression of a man always on the go, always in a rush. Combined with his fresh dose of caffeine and seemingly innate driving habits, the results are hair-raising. By some miracle we make it to the nearby shopping center intact.

Rai hauls the trash bags to the dumpster at the edge of the parking lot. ‘Talk about luck. When you visited the first time, I was out of office for a case. And this week I’ve been doing check-ins for the Foundation, so I was going to be out again. Today happened to include a certain sleepy transplant’s house.’

When I mention the inscrutable assistant, he smirks. ‘Sleeping on the job. Well, it’s not a problem for me as long as he gets his shit done. And you got your meeting in the end.’ He taps his fingers when he’s thinking. ‘You didn’t pay him off for the favor, did you? Ah - if you’re about to say no: think again, hard.’

I try to remember what I may have told the assistant during my four-hour stint in the office waiting area. But it seems equally likely that Rai is winding me up. He is playful, but somewhat opaque. I end up paying for three burgers without thinking. Two for him. He wants to bring one back for the snoozing assistant.

Rai also orders two coffees, but drinks both himself. We sit at a plastic table, and I open a notebook. He stares me down and says, ‘Why don’t you tell me what you’ve already got before I try to offer up anything? I wouldn’t want to waste your time telling you what you already know. Sometimes it feels like everyone knows my life better than I do.’

I expound on the draft I have so far, offering a few of the completed pages. I feel a little self-conscious rambling about his father’s sexual exploits, but all the while Rai slurps his coffee, nonplussed. ‘This is no worse than the shit my school buddies dug up and passed around. I’ve had porn of my parents rubbed in my face since the third grade. So by all means, pad out the middle if you gotta. I’m perfectly familiar with the lackluster end.’ Tapping his chest, he makes clear that he is referring to himself as that 'end'.

The final scene of mother and child does not move him in the slightest. He crumples his cup. ‘That’s it?’

I’m hoping he’ll be able to produce a more satisfying conclusion, and ask him about his continuing relationship with his mother. He answers blandly. ‘All good.’

Questioning her sleep habits elicits another expressionless answer, but a strange story. One weekend when Rai was six, Roha served him breakfast then went to take a nap - and didn’t wake up. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, but when he went knocking on a neighbor’s door for supper - two days later - the Foundation was alerted. Rai was taken to live with Lemina and Cadmus, where he bawled his eyes out. He thought Roha was dead. No one was sure where he’d learned the concept of death. Eventually, after two weeks, Cadmus took him to visit his mother, still in her bed, peacefully asleep, and tried to explain her ‘condition’. Rai didn’t care. He bawled again. She finally awoke.

‘You must have seen all the videos. Crying gets to her. I think,’ he shrugs. ‘I don’t throw tantrums like that anymore. For a while I tried making noise in other ways to get her to wake up, but it didn’t work out either. It’s better not to bother her. But you need to know, she was never mean or upset, even when I was being a real asshole. Once she got up, it was right back to business. I liked being with her, when she was awake.’

His opinion of Lemina and Cadmus is also positive. According to Rai, they picked up most of the childrearing duties in Roha’s stead. The Kirs never so much as lifted a finger; tossed a dollar his way. ‘And I’m not particularly interested in them. Barely recall half their names and have no reason to look them up. Hell, my assistant knows more about their movies than I do. The famous old ones with Ruether and what-his-name. The black and white era.’

I then question his assistant’s claim that he ‘does not sleep.’ Rai raises an eyebrow and says it’s true. ‘No more than 30 minutes a week, or something like that. I don’t remember when it started. One good thing I’ve gotten out of my aura - I make a pretty penny with all-night overtime.’

His coolness falters slightly when I ask if it has anything to do with his mother. ‘You mean, like some teenage act of defiance? As in - she wants me to chill out, so I guzzle coffee and stay up late just to show her? Nah. I’ve been doing this a long time, because I want to, because it helps with work. She’d be too busy sleeping to notice. And - anyway - holding a childish grudge for ten-to-twenty years is a bit much. Even for me.’

This answer did not come easy for him, already, I can tell. I don’t press the topic.

When Rai finishes his meal, we step out in the cool afternoon, and I walk with him to his car. Inside, I notice a duffel bag with a camcorder poking out. Rai smirks. ‘Like what you see? A thirty dollar piece of shit. Once, someone smashed my windows, took a look at the damn equipment and just left it all. Saved by cheapness - Augustine Kir would be rolling in his grave.’ He holds it up. ‘Camera’s good to have around, though, to catch evidence on film, or for inspiration. I still write sometimes. Do you remember a contributor article in the Daily a few years ago, about the old M mansion by K Lake, and the phenomena surrounding…?’ Catching my mystified face, he lowers the camera and shoves it back in the bag.

I seem to aggravate him even more when I ask if he has any messages to pass onto the Kir family, or any organization featured in the story, whom I plan to follow up with before submitting.

‘Definitely not. Just keep pretending you never met me. Or say I died in a pileup a week after the interview.’ Rai, like his mother, has never responded to requests to talk for rights groups - monster lovers, or otherwise. Despite his good relationship with the Foundation heads, he has never represented them in a public forum either. ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone who decided that I owed them that right before I was born. With the Kirs, at least I know we will never be asking each other for anything. But it’s those hideous fucking groups who want me to talk about how great it is to have spawned from two very different or very human or very special beings mashing their junk together. How great it is to have the self-appointed council of who-fucks-who-and-when trying to lure me in as early as primary school to put onstage and parrot their shit, in retribution for my dad, some dumbass I never met. Is it not enough for me to just wish I was never born?’ He pulls a wry smile. ‘Oh, whoops. Wishing a Life Fountain-human kid was never born. How regressive of me.’

With that morbid quip aired, his mood lightens and he seems to rethink his approach. 'Better to be hounded by pro-unity folk than the alternative, I guess. And my life’s not been bad. I had Lem and old man Cad watching out for me - they always got me to school and made sure I had food, a roof over my head. There are mixed kids, and hell, non-mixed non-variant kids, who live with less. So I’ll do what I can for the Foundation within reason. They wouldn’t force me onstage, so it’s okay. Like today, covering visitation duties, supply runs, it’s fine.’

For his parents, for the great breadth of experiences and qualities they evoke, he sees nothing particularly enviable. ‘I don’t need their kind of recognition. I don’t hate them - I kind of consider myself lucky that I won’t have elderly parents hanging off me when I get old. The biggest favor they did for me, dad in particular, even when he was going to pieces, was pull stunts crazy enough to keep the rest of the Kir flock off my back forever.’

His sharp grin drops and his expression becomes mild.

‘My assistant gets it, I think. He tried not to ask about the family when you spoke to him, right? Good. He’s good at pretending he doesn’t know a thing, I appreciate it. You can publish that.’

Before we head our separate ways, I ask for a candid photo that may or may not be used in the article. Rai jokes that he’ll only give me one chance for a shot.

‘Live fast, right?’

I center him in my phone’s viewfinder.

Behind the camera, I begin to notice his slouch, the beginning of wrinkles on his forehead. Under bright eyes hang deep, dark eyebags. Rai somehow looks older than either of his parents ever did. He is catching up to his father’s age at the time of his demise. But despite the wan face, dipped in shadows, he is full of energy, the coolness of a youth who has experienced - survived - an unusual inception and an incomparable life. In him, Augustine’s cosmopolitan vigor is still battling away with Roha’s infallible lethargy. A chemical reaction like that could keep anyone awake ad infinitum.

Below his jaw, he has a small red line, a shaving accident. The cut is still raw.

It suddenly comes back to me that, when the infant Rai was the hottest topic on newsfeeds, an inside source at the Foundation leaked that he may not have inherited his mother’s full healing prowess, specifically the Life Fountains' powers of longevity. Life Fountains plunged into human society are no longer storybook figures on whom one can close the book on, a happy ending when a baby is born. Immortality in practice is more than just oddball attitudes and romantic imagery; relations must be considered, legacy and obligation. Where will they spend their near-eternity? Who will they spend it with? Who can they spend it with?

If he lacks sufficient aura, Rai's aging might someday outpace his mother's. His declaration of gratitude toward parents who won't 'be hanging off him' as he ages, suddenly clicks. Perhaps his detachment, his attempts to maintain objectivity when speaking of her, is not simply a facade meant for the outside world.

Then Roha's sense of detachment too, which has maintained her since the day she entered Central on that train; the pale smile so easily brushed off as dreamlike apathy; may have been a calculation.

Once again, alert as a cat, he catches my drifting to wistfulness and cuts off the photoshoot in a huff. Life isn't fair, he snorts in response to my protests. A prescient statement. I let him walk.

Rai wraps up the interview with the slam of his car door. ‘Try not to make me sound too tacky,’ he says in lieu of goodbye.

He is evidently a busy man. He has places to be and people to see. Time not to waste. His well-worn ride starts with a tired grumble. When the engine’s groan levels out, I hear his speakers are rolling out a familiar tune. A dead brother and a world that won’t stop moving.

He frowns, as if the sound system is playing a prank on him of its own accord, then punches the button to silence it. He shoots me a challenging look, but softens. I wonder if he is not as rigid as he’d like the world to believe. Then with a curt, blue wave of his hand, he is off.

—

I mail Rai the final drafts as a courtesy. He replies with minor grammatical corrections and some information about the closure of the Jeweled Sky Hotel.

I do not think he will mind my relaying his final response.

Shit from start to finish. I’d expect nothing less from the Daily. Print it.