**Zulphithos**
**
Realm of Eternal Shadows – Central Primate Bank Underground
Some time after the previous reset (or perhaps before, chronology is a luxury for those who have already eaten the planet)
In this stratum of the narrative the monkeys are rich.
Not rich as humans understand wealth.
Rich as those who have the concept of possession in themselves.
They have coffers full of stolen time, shares in futures that will never happen, titles of nobility issued by bankrupt gods and, above all, the absolute monopoly on emotional gravity: the richer the monkey, the heavier other people's hearts become just looking at him.
Ana was an orphan.
Not in the common sense.
Orphan of species, of planet, of narrative layer.
The only human (or what was left of her) in a world where humans were considered museum artifacts or bad jokes.
His mother — Afifa Abdulsamad — was not exactly his biological mother.
It was the last piece of humanity that the system still allowed to exist: a maternal entity generated to give meaning to Ana's orphanhood.
Afifa was made up of collective memories of all the mothers who ever said "it's going to be okay" while they knew it wasn't.
But the system was hungry again.
Hunger on a planetary scale.
And the only acceptable food to pay off the monkeys' cosmic debt was... the Earth itself.
Ana had no choice.
Or better: the choice had already been made in some previous version of herself.
She sat on the edge of the Great Monetary Cliff, legs dangling in the void where the Atlantic Ocean used to be.
Afifa was at his side, still smiling that smile that hadn't reached his eyes for several updates.
— Are you really going to do this, daughter?
Ana looked down.
Entire continents were once just crumbs floating in the financial ether.
— If I don't do it, the monkeys will charge interest.
And interest here is charged on existence.
First they take away your childhood, then your adolescence, and finally… your ability to remember that you once were someone.
Afifa touched her daughter's face.
The hand was warm.
Too hot for something that would soon be eaten.
— Then eat — she said, without drama, without pleading. —But eat slowly.
I want you to feel every piece of me becoming a planet inside you.
Ana cried.
Or tried.
The tears fell and turned into cryptocurrencies before touching the ground.
Then she opened her mouth.
It was no ordinary mouth.
It was a gap in reality, a black hole with longing teeth.
The first bit was Afifa's hair.
Taste of childhood in Beirut, smell of jasmine and gasoline.
Second bit: the shoulders.
Flavor of sleepless nights sewing other people's dreams.
Third: the heart.
Ah, the heart.
Flavor of all the times someone said "I love you" and it wasn't a lie.
While Ana ate, the Earth groaned.
Not from pain.
Of relief.
Like someone who finally lets go of a weight they have carried for billions of years.
When it ended, Ana was alone on the cliff.
The entire planet now lived inside her: continents in her stomach, oceans in her bloodstream, cities in her lungs.
She burped and a small cloud of stardust came out of her mouth.
It was what was left of the North Pole.
The monkeys arrived in procession.
Dressed in suits made from contracts signed in the blood of stars.
The richest of them—a golden-eyed bonobo named Chairman Y—walked up to her without fear.
— You ate the Earth — he said, his voice calm as if confirming a bank balance.
— I ate — Ana replied.
His voice echoed with the sound of ancient tsunamis and São Paulo traffic.
- And now?
Ana looked into the void where the planet used to rotate.
—Now I am the planet.
You can charge whatever you want.
But they will charge me.
And I'm very, very indigestible.
The monkeys looked at each other.
For the first time in millennia, the concept of "harm" appeared in their eyes.
Chairman Y scratched his hairy chin.
— What if… instead of charging… we negotiated?
Ana raised an eyebrow.
Inside her, the entire Amazon shook.
— Negotiate what?
— Peace.
You — I mean, you — take the title of Last Human/Living Planet.
We have the right to exist without having to destroy everything to pay the bills.
And maybe... every now and then... you'll let us visit.
— Visit? — Ana almost laughed. — Like existential tourism?
- Exactly.
Selfies in your stratosphere.
Picnics in its inner forests.
No extractivism.
Just… assisted nostalgia.
Ana was silent for what could have been centuries or seconds.
Then he extended his hand.
- Closed.
But with conditions.
First: never be hungry again.
Not money, not time, not meaning.
Monday: Afifa is still alive inside me.
She gains a voice.
She gets history.
Third: you stop pretending that possession is the same as value.
Chairman Y shook her hand.
His paw was small.
Her hand was a continent.
— Deal.
And so, on a cliff that was no longer a cliff,
in a world that was no longer a world,
an orphan who became a planet
and monkeys who learned not to be so rich
reached an amicable agreement.
Down there, in the void,
a single star twinkled
as someone who approves.
Or as the one who has the last laugh.
**End of Chapter 4**