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I haven’t been up to Tybo in a decade. I just drifted apart from Tycho, you know? Nobody stays that close with a friend forever. It’s a really long way to drive to sit in someone’s living room and say nothing much, so I don’t. Nobody else goes up to Tybo much anymore either. I don’t think anyone else still lives there. That’s why Tycho won’t come down to visit me here in Vegas. He was always convinced that if he left the place alone for too long, it’d blink out of existence.

When our friends realized he wasn’t leaving his house anymore, we started to drive up his groceries. Perishables monthly and a big cache of canned food every three months. One of us has some medical training and checks up on him once in a while. We don’t want him to die, you know? Even if I don’t have anything to say to him anymore, I don’t want bad things for him.

I know he’s going to die. He was never healthy at the best of times. Kept running off cliffs, banking his Jeep off the road into a ditch, getting vitamin deficiencies, breaking his bones, refusing to drink water. I guess if he isn’t going anywhere he isn’t getting himself injured anymore, but he’s taking care of himself even less. If his kidneys give out, nobody will notice until he stops coming to the door when they knock a few weeks later. Sometimes it keeps me up at night.

I thought about going up there one more time the day I got the call. He didn’t come to the door. She isn’t going to call the police about it, it isn’t what he would have wanted from us. I have a hard time feeling any regret. There’s nothing I wish I would have done. I tell myself I don’t care anymore, that he did this to himself. I almost believe myself. When I show up at the makeshift funeral, I have a hard time feeling my limbs and I don’t know why.

There’s a video going around online right now. Some alien hunter posted it. A bright flash in the sky over the intersection of 375 and 6. A rumbling sound, a shockwave. Rocks fly into the cameraman’s body. You can see the shimmer of intense heat. AI generated videos can be weird, huh? No idea why they didn’t set the clip closer to Area 51.

I could go up there and see if something happened, but it’s a really long way to drive to prove everything’s normal, so I don’t.