Natural disaster disrupts Spatial’s elder Grieves Engine model, causing serious harm and injury to tenants and raising legal questions of liability.

October 27, 2059
updated 6:43 p.m.

At 5:43 a.m. this morning, residents of Grackle Pointe Apartments awoke to a malfunction in their complex’s multi-spatial engine due to an unprecedented derecho that swept through the Montrose area of Houston. This resulted in tenants being mentally and physically fused together. The incident has sparked questions of liability, safety standards and future developments of the technology.

The technology, known as the Grieves Engine, allows two dimensions to occupy a set amount of space, with each passing development thus far facilitating a larger amount of space. Though Grackle Pointe Apartments uses an earlier model that can facilitate its process up to 500 sq. ft., the engine can now reach up to 1500 sq. ft.

Tina Rodriguez, a nurse who works the overnight shift at a children’s hospital, had been living in her unit for over seven years before the multi-spatial technology was installed. Grackle Pointe Apartments was built in 1960, and a records inquiry revealed that the twenty-five -unit complex had been specifically chosen due to the consistent sizing of each rental space at about 500 sq. ft. each. At first, Rodriguez had been skeptical of the new development, but the initial offer was too good to pass up.

“They offered me to keep living there for half the rent! What was I supposed to say?” Rodriguez said. “But I should’ve known better. I should’ve known better.”

Indeed, the technology first allowed different tenants to pay half the rent for the same space in an economic boon for leasers. A $1500 one-bedroom apartment would then be $750 for each renter while allowing the renters to maintain their privacy.

“That was certainly a housing golden age for low-income families and individuals,” Esteban Shaw, Director of the Housing Justice Group, said. “Back then, subsidies, grants and incomes could go much further. Two families could occupy the same space for half the price. That is what technology is meant to do! Make things easier, not harder.”

But as time went on, landlords returned to charging original rent rates for tenants for the same space, leading to a housing instability crisis that spurred lawmakers to pass ordinances on rent hikes for multi-spatial units. Along the way, complications from the multi-spatial technology became more apparent.

“I would hear arguments about hearing arguments I had over the phone days ago or smell food that I’d never eaten my whole life,” Rodriguez said. “The worst was when I’d be lying in bed and wake up with this horrible pain in my face, as though it was fighting itself. The only way I could end the pain was by stepping outside where I’d also find the other tenant grabbing their face, too. When we’d bring the issue up to the owners, they would basically say we could pay to break the lease anytime we wanted.”

The company who owns the Grieves Engine, Spatial, first developed the technology for storage capabilities for industrial usage in 2046 before implementing it in living spaces in 2053. Laws in Texas no longer require a set time or benchmarks for research development, testing and implementation for human beings. Experts and critics debate on whether the technology should have been tested longer.

“Think of dimensions in a multi-spatial room as one cube inside of another cube. Though one cube is infinitesimally smaller than the other, they constantly switch places,” Dr. Lois de Luna, a physics professor at Houston University, said as she placed air quotes around places. “The cubes take turns being inside of one another—back and forth and back and forth. If you make that switch happen quickly and smoothly enough, would you know which cube is inside of which? Until Spatial reveals the exact nature of how the Grieves Engine operates, we can only estimate the long-term effects on human beings.”

The engine is attached to each confined space akin to a generator, allowing users to define a set space for the multi-dimensional process. The engine then moves subatomic particles within its confines in such a way that tenants cannot perceive each other’s reality, physically and mentally. At least, that was the theory.

Though she usually arrives at her apartment closer to five a.m., Rodriguez waited until the derecho passed through per emergency communications warnings. When Rodriguez returned from her nursing shift that fateful morning to her complex, she noticed someone outside of their unit hunched over and screaming.

“It was still a little dark, so I couldn’t see who it was exactly,” Rodriguez said. “It was like two people screaming from one mouth. As I approached them, I noticed something was off. That’s when I saw it. It was the people from apartment A13! His arms were her legs, and his legs were her arms. His head was where you’d expect a head to be, but her head was between their legs. They were both screaming!”

Rodriguez began pounding on doors for help, only to feel that they felt heavier and denser. The derecho had knocked out the complex’s Grieves Engines for a split second before backup power could kick in, causing anything occupying the approximate space to be fused together.

Because the limited apartment space causes tenants to generally use the same layout of where furnishings are placed, many of them were fused together in similar ways. Tenants of apartment A6, for example, were fused into a being with four arms, two legs but with four feet and their faces split between a single head. Though the being could not be reached for comment, their lawyer shared medical reports showing that the one being maintains memories of both individuals.

As Rodriguez inspected her unit for damage, she noticed that her coffee table had fused with her co-tenant’s dog, which had been found dead. The same was said of other tenants whose flesh combined with inanimate objects, causing organ failures when intestines were replaced with clothes in B7 or lungs stuffed with comforters in A2. Some tenants became mounds of flesh barely able to breathe like in A14 and B20. One hand with ten digits in B3. A couch with sprouting legs in A22. A torso with leaves from various plants protruding outward in B11. A heart found inside of an armoire in A24. One tenant’s mind had been completely replaced with another in B13. Had Rodriguez returned at her usual time to A3, she’d have faced her own horrific melding with her co-tenant whose skull combined with her pillows.

“As a nurse, I’ve seen some crazy stuff. But my mind was not ready to see what it saw that day,” Rodriguez said. “I can’t get that scream, those screams, out of my head. Someone must be responsible for all of this.”

The owners of Grackle Pointe Apartments are gearing up for oncoming lawsuits. Their lawyers claim that an act of God renders them non-liable for the multi-spatial technology’s mishap.

“Though we offer condolences to all those affected by this tragedy, this lies entirely in the hands of Spatial,” a spokesperson for the apartment complex said. “Grackle Pointe Apartments installed the technology correctly and followed all requirements.”

Spatial has yet to respond to any inquiries. A press release sent out earlier this spring announced that the company would soon be testing an update to the Grieves Engine to allow up to three dimensions to occupy one 2000 sq. ft. space. Housing rights groups and activists are calling upon lawmakers to demand accountability and transparency from this incident.

“The government has made it so that the state cannot be held responsible for any damage caused by natural disasters, so that’s already out of the window,” Shaw said. “The affected individuals are in an uphill battle since corporations pretty much have more rights than individuals in Texas. For now, the best people can do is avoid spaces using the Grieves Engine.”

The derecho caused nearly two million dollars in property damage in a span of 11 minutes, according to filed insurance claims. Though Grackle Pointe Apartments’ Grieves Engine is one of the older models released earlier than others in the area, it is unknown how future weather complications and electrical grid failures will affect other models in the upcoming years. For now, Rodriguez is joining a class action lawsuit against Spatial.

“What with all that’s going on, I can’t afford to move anywhere else,” Rodriguez said. “I guess I’m just going to have to work with the new tenants on rearranging things so nothing like what happened happens to us. Sometimes, I can still hear whispers from long ago. I don’t know if it’s me going crazy or my mind slowly mixing with someone else’s. Lord help us.”

As of this writing, the Grieves Engine is in use in over 5000 spaces across sectors, such as restaurants, hospital rooms and coworking spaces.