Chapter 14

I woke up to my own bed and sat up in fear of being at home. A dream. It was all a dream. My first thought erased all I’ve learned of Garavand, Zaxi, and Secear with a flush of relief, but the second questioned the complexity I imagined. My relief was cut down by Fiona waking up to kiss me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked with searching eyes.

“Why are we at my place?” I asked. There was more I needed to know, but hesitated thinking that if the words of it left my mouth, they would become true. I could only wait for her to expose my reality.

“Doc said that we should live in a relaxing environment while the baby gestates,” she said. Doc was real. Then all of it had to be real. Ernie, Agi, all real. Panic hit me at the reality of this fantasy, but a memory of one night together with Fiona righted me. She was carrying my child now.

“But humans are hunting you,” I said. “And they’re sure to be watching me. This place isn’t safe for us, the three of us.” Fiona smiled and touched her stomach.

“I can feel the baby growing,” she said. “It’s strange, but feels nice.” She was ignoring the danger of the situation.

“Fiona,” I said, concerned.

“I know,” she said. “But Doc made something for us that will help keep us safe.” She walked over to the window and opened the blinds. “Temporary Sanctuary.” Beyond was just a projection of the world standing still. It flickered a bit while frozen in time. With a click of the remote by the window, the day rewound to night.

“We’re not really here, are we?” I asked, trying to remove the invisible virtual reality gear.

“We are,” she replied. “It’s manufactured-reality-space, like a recorded fragment of time on Earth. We can go anywhere we want as our baby grows in safety. All of this, already happened, so we can’t exactly change it, but we can explore it. This is a place where Zaxi learn how to imitate humans. We watch, then join in.”

It was an amazing turn of events, but how was Fiona so sure that our baby would even be born? It was an experiment of mixing energy with organic life. What would this child become for the human planet? What would it be for the stars? I was suddenly afraid of my own insignificance. With that fear, pain returned to wreak havoc on my brain. I shut my eyes and hoped Fiona wouldn’t notice.

“It’s a bit too much for a human mind to learn, I agree,” she said. “Let’s ask Doc to install a Gilk for you. It’s the Trevit device that allows you to browse your mind like a computer and supplements an extra bit of storage to the already available one.”

“How much?” I asked, trying to focus.

“Oh, it won’t cost you anything,” she replied, misunderstanding my words. I shook my head much to the pain mounting. “Oh, how much extra storage? Well, let’s see. A human mind contains this much, which is, huh, about half of brain capacity added, but it comes out to more since you can access all of it and gain an ability to archive unnecessary bits.”

“Will it change me?” I asked, opening my eyes. I remembered Doc mentioning that Zaxi do not like using Trevit tech. My head hurt, but her face alleviated some pressure. “Will it make me look any different?”

“You humans and your external appearances,” Fiona said. “I don’t understand that one bit. Can’t humans already change anything they wish to with the help of medicine? Humans can even switch genders. I guess you guys are more attached to bodies, but all they really are is skin. Tisyros can draw out human energy cores, even though they eat them. The energy inside there is like the one inside me, just smaller.”

“What are you saying?” I asked. “Are you saying that a Tisyros can turn humans into stars if they don't consume the energy core?”

“It’s a big ‘if’,” Fiona said, cradling my head between her breasts. Her warm skin pulsated with a pleasant heartbeat. “They literally need energy to survive, and it’s not just humans they eat. Tisyros are called destroyers for a reason. They go around eating energy from other beings in the colony that my kind create over billions and billions of human years. As for how Gilk looks, it’s just a white, or rather a very light pink stone in the shape of bar soap. It can attach to any place on your head, but burrows tendrils into the skull to reach the brain and connect. It’s very gross organic tech. Zaxi dislike icky stuff like that, but Trevits excel at it.”

“So it would be like a bald spot?” I said, smiling against Fiona’s chest. She was healing me with her energy somehow, but it was a temporary fix. I would need that Gilk sooner or later if I wanted to stay in her crazy life. She laughed, shaking her chest up against my face. Even though I was still in pain, my basic mind triggered the expansion of my reproductive organ. Did I want her to notice? Could we even do that while she was carrying an experimental child? I grabbed her hand and put it over the bulge in my boxers. It was her choice from there. My head was still buried in her breast-arm embrace. She could very well just use her hand or mouth for the act, yet I felt like she wanted to feel it just like before. When our eyes met, I knew she was up for it with purple flames in her pupils.

The bed served the secondary purpose it was designed for as we removed our clothes and circled it. That soft center was the rink, but the fight would be gentle on the count of our baby. We sat together to foreplay for a minute, but when the time came, I was at the entrance to her human skin. At the very first thrust of my hips within I felt electricity pulse from within her. The shock slipped me out and threw me to the floor. Fiona ran up as the electric kick shook my nervous system.

“Finn! Are you ok?” she asked, leaning over. Despite the pain, I re-hardened at the sight of her naked body. “What happened?”

“My best guess is that the baby defended itself,” I said. “It seems the experiment succeeded. Too bad that means no more sex for me.” Before I could get up, Fiona’s mouth was around the erect part of my body, warm and wet. Her tongue glided around while I grit my teeth to hold back. There was no escape from the sensation. I could only exist there and wriggle as the climax ravaged my body from the inside.

“We’ll just have to get creative for a few months,” Fiona said resting her cheek on the deflating member. “Maybe wear some rubber gloves and condoms for insulation.” We shared a laugh and rearranged to have my head resting on her lap. I could hear a faint heartbeat beneath my head.

“Do you think it’s a boy?” I asked. “Zaxi have a type of gender, right?”

“Not exactly gender, or at least not two distinct ones that science could determine,” she replied. “It’s based on the energy levels. The ‘women’ have higher output where ‘men’ would be categorized as a wider spectrum. I know this makes no sense to you, I’m sorry. For example, a new Zaxient could very well have both or the reverse of it, low output and narrow spectrum. The hue has nothing to do with Zaxi anatomy.”

“I’ll need this Gilk soon,” I said, putting my hand closer to Fiona’s crotch. Maybe I could just use my hands to-. A spark jumped out to stop my motion. “Oww.”

“With that energy output, I’d say it’s more of a girl,” She replied. “But this is new territory for my basic Zaxi knowledge. Oh, no! Wait a moment. Do you think this baby needs food? I haven’t been eating any human food or anything! I assumed it was feeding on my energy or that it was already creating its own!”

“We should ask Doc,” I said, getting up. Fiona stopped me at the door.

“We don’t need to go anywhere,” she said, waving at the ceiling. “Doc! We need a word!” In a blink of an eye, the world recording was gone, and Doc stood in front of us in a blank white space.

“We’re wondering if Fiona needs to eat human food to supply the baby’s growth,” I said. “Also, I’d like to have this Gilk installed whenever.” Doc stepped closer and held out the pink blob the size of a bar of soap.

“I’ll let you choose where on your head to attach it,” he said. “Just put it on and the Gilk will do the rest. As for your baby question, I am not sure. This is an experiment, after all. The baby could feed on energy from your core until ready to detach, but that’s only Zaxi type. My best bet is that you should eat something. I will install you a digestive system and connect it to the uterus. Should probably add some taste buds too, or you might not care to eat living organisms.”

A lab table appeared in the white space and all the tools Doc required. When he worked, it seemed he was getting younger. Fiona was in the light, her naked skin reflecting bright. When the procedure was done, Doc aged rapidly back to an old man. What was this being? Curiosity was expanding my limited mind. The Gilk was soft in my hand, like a silicone breast implant. I squeezed it and considered which placement on my skull would be best. The base of the skull’s back emerged victorious in my mind.

When it touched down, I felt as if tiny insects were burrowing themselves in my hair, then into my skin and at the end, a cold feeling sent shivers down my spine as the tendrils drilled through the bone in my skull. I stood there in the white space as Doc worked on Fiona’s modifications, but my mind was a new world. My body could wait as I dived into the Gilk to explore.

alter

I remember now. You’re JJ. You’re writing me, my story. You gave me a past, the ridiculous name “Finnelgamin.”

“What… just happened?” he asks inside my own mind. Is he a figment of my imagination? Are you a figment of my imagination? “Am I a figment? That’s a joke, right? I created you. Didn’t you just say that? I might have overdone it with the Gilk. It was only supposed to help your mind deal with the amount of information you were learning, but I see it broke past my flawless shroud of division between me and your world.”

Is… Is any of my world even real? Why do you hesitate? I… We share a mind, don’t we? What do you mean it’s real because you created it? Am I even real? Fiona… My baby… Zaxi… Garavand… Where- Where did you get all of that? What’s the Infinity void?

“STOP!” he yells in his mind. “I… I didn’t want this. I’m just writing a story about you. No, I’m not…It’s really a story of myself, what my mind created, what insanity exists within. It’s a warning.”

But- How can I have my own thoughts? How am I aware of this? And what the hell is this sensation of some sticky orb on the back of my neck? The pen. You’re writing on paper in a notebook that is my existence. Why? Why do I know this?

“Because I’ve written for you to be that way,” he says, a voice from nowhere, in my head. “I gave you life and chose to share my mind with you, but I separated the ‘you’ of the story, and the Finn that knew me. Then I wrote about Gilk, and so here we are. Hold on, I have to go to work. I will stop writing for some time, but don’t worry, you’ll barely feel the time skip.”

break

I felt it, JJ. The time skip drops me into a nowhere where I can count the seconds of nothing until your pen reconnects to my neck. I was there nearly a whole day and I never want to be there ever again. How could I stand that before? What is this constant feeling that someone is watching us?

“That would be the people reading this story,” he says. “Later, when it’s been replicated in digital and print formats. We can’t perceive them as we are now, but if I ever show this chaos of my mind to anyone, that will be when the feeling of onlookers will be sound. We’re time travelers in that respect.”

I can’t- This is NOT FAIR! I don’t want to just be a figment of your imagination! That! You just stopped me MID-WORD to look around! That’s insanity! My life is nothing to you, so just kill me and stop this ridiculous endeavor!

“I can’t do that, Finn,” he says. “When you clearly fear death. Don’t you want to live the rest of your story? You have a child on the way! Isn’t your love to Fiona stronger than that?”

What love? The one you wrote for me to have? Is there even any inspiration from real life to this?

“Think back to a moment in the park where you danced with her,” he says. “And there I leave you for now. Test your theory that it’s all fake. You’ll have limited free reign. Have at it, THEN tell me what you think all this is.”

break

A dream. This is all a bad dream I’m having. I just need to fall and wake up from this nightmare. Why am I here again? The space with nothing. Give me back the memory of the park!

“Ok, I understand what happened,” a voice says in the empty space. It’s him, the creator of my story, the false god of this figment of my imagination. “So- yeah. Actually, keep that thought up, but what happened is simpler. The damn Gilk expanded your mind by one and a half, so the shroud of invisibility I put up to separate your story and Finn of my mind was exposed from the back. If that was all, everything would have been fine, but that damn Trev tech also made the containing edge into a mirror, I guess for self-reflection, better access to memories. Don’t worry, I’ll eat your memory of all this, but don’t call me a Zaxi. I just need to move all my stuff and our shared stuff to the edge, and you’re gonna help me do it. Brace yourself, this is gonna get a bit trippy for the folks at home.”

Folks at home. The readers, those who watch my life. There could not be such a crazy audience in my life. While I stand in the nothing, the ground fails. Where is he? I fall in nothing, the feeling of being weightless in my body, but there is nothing to suggest I will eventually hit a surface, no wind in my ears, nothing to suggest motion until I see a blip of mass get closer to me and grow into a human being.

“Grab hold!” he yells with hands outstretched. It’s that voice, the pretend-creator, life in my mind I hear as if a dream. I reach out to him as we pass, throwing us into a spin of weightless motion. He smiles with a look toward me. “Nice to meet you in person, Finnelgamin. I’m JJ. For today’s adventure, we will be diving into your mind to restore sanity to your story and mine, if at all possible.”

“How?” I ask, realizing I actually have a voice.

“Well, don’t look now, but we’re falling right into your mind,” he says with a grin. “There will be a surface coming at us, but don’t be afraid, we can’t die in this space. I can’t promise there will be no pain, however, especially for you. It is your mind we’re jumping into, after all.”

“How is that even possible?” I replied, noticing a tiny bubble of silver grow with every second of falling.

“I uprooted you to speak with you,” he says. “But now I can’t plant you back in, so we’re coming in hot.” The bubble was more of a dull gray without a source of light, but grew with proximity below. How could I not feel fear at this point? He said it would hurt, but I could not die. I wondered how it would feel until there was no time to think. I grit my teeth to face the mirrored surface head on.

It felt cold to break that metallic skin of the bubble, but it was more of a surface, and the substance of mercury kind. The inside was like he said, all mirrored and rounded. Our fall continued toward a flat gray surface.

“The rest is up to you,” he said, or says. The tenses make no sense and feel wrong. Has that stuff even happened yet? It must be the past if I am to survive this. “Think of how you wish to land, and it will be so.” I let his hand go and took a dream of his into mine. Wings sprouted from my back and slowed my fall to a glide. As for him, he deserved to impact brutally and splatter red on the gray surface, yet I didn’t want to rebuild his body. At the last second, I put a thin mattress underneath him to absorb some of the force. When I landed beside him, he grinned at me from beyond a bloody face.

“I’m kinda glad you did that,” he said. “Shows you have compassion for those you dislike. I wish I could be like that, but beast always nags me to kill my competition.” His wounds were already healing.

“beast,” I paused to remember his mind. “Ah, yes. That split personality you created to keep yourself from murdering people who crossed your path. Why make something wild just to keep it in a cage?” He cracked his neck.

“Well, you’re thinking of the right beast,” he said. “But careful of your thoughts while inside your mind.” A maw entered view, extending from his back, snarling wild. I tried to stop thinking about it, but it was so strange and beautiful.

“Alright, if you won’t do it, I will,” he said and grabbed the top of the maw by the teeth and pulled until the whole creature was outside. It looked bulky, no discernable arms or legs, only a big mouth full of sharp teeth surrounded by long, shaggy, brown fur, and eyes glowing red. Within seconds the bundle rose to legs, extruding long claws that scraped the grey floor without sound. “Don’t worry, I have something to deal with beast. Come on out!”

His torso opened like a Russian Matryoshka doll and a sphere of metal floated out. It melted into a skeleton and came to life.

“What the…?” I asked as the beast tackled. One of the metal arms jabbed the inside of the open maw until it closed, ripping the mechanical part off. The metal flowed out of the mouth and rejoined the skeleton. beast snarled and growled, but robot blocked every attempt at a charge toward us.

“That’s our cue to leave,” he said, as beast and robot battled in the mirrored bubble of my mind. Soon after we walked away, they faded and vanished. “We still have to find the leak and fix it.”

“The leak?” I asked.

“The bleeding of two psyches,” he answered. “It’ll be a bit difficult. The stuff is under the invisibility shroud. Our best bet is to trace the edge until we can find the spot.”

“What then?”

“I already told you,” he said. “We move the other psyche to the edge, cover it back up and I’ll eat your memory of this. Simple and quick.”

“That’s possible?” I asked. “What’s going on outside right now in the story?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’re probably in a coma or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ernie tries looking into your mind to check what happened. Hey there, Garamant. Don’t worry, none of you will remember anything of this, but they must be panicking right about now. Wish I could see their faces. Oh, wait, I see them. Hilarious. Even Zaxi and Doc are scared of me. That’s why gods never visit the mortal world. Or do they?” I groaned at his statement.

“Let’s just do this,” I said. We walked until we reached the edge of the mirrored bubble. Along the way, I tested the freedom of the inside of my own mind. The whole place blossomed in flowers, with some from his mind and from the world around him. Why was everything sourced from him? Did I not exist? What was this to him?

“Yeah… you do know all your thoughts are open to me right now, don’t you?” he asked. “You exist, don’t worry. You’re my insanity, but I wouldn’t trade you for anything, well, maybe sanity. Heh.”

“How am I your madness?” I asked.

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” he asked. “It’s almost me conversing with myself, but expanded to an extent where you have your own mind and body. It’s something of a creator and created, where the created gets up and walks away, only to return and kill the creator or ask the impossible of them. Consider humanity’s dance with artificial intelligence. What you are, is your own person living life at my direction and within the mind of me. That concept is quite ridiculous, and thus I must be mad.”

“Then why write me a story?” I asked.

“That’s due to my own belief,” he said. “With the idea of the Infinity Void in my head, I seek to end your story and put you to rest in the void, where all stories go after they’ve run their course. Once my story ends, we’ll meet there as equals. That’s why I have to end your story to cure myself of the mad notions. Our stories will forever be integrated, but the one I created for you specifically will have no connection to me, hence the invisibility shrouds. Speaking of. Do you see it yet?” There it was, a sliver of gray, expanding with each step. There was a clutter of objects half-hidden under that strange invisible fabric.

“Is that Galtean skin?” I asked.

“Oh, right, I forgot Doc mentioned that,” he said. “It is and it isn’t. I haven’t really defined who Galteans are yet, but let’s say this shroud is synthetic, not tanned skin of some being in the universe. That would be straight-up savage, something a Dralish might do.”

“A Dralish?” I asked, querying his mind, but only withdrew some pictures of naked women and close-ups around their naked hips. “What the hell?”

“My bad,” he said. “Stray thoughts. Dralish are red giants, the most savage of creatures that exist in the places I’ve seen in the Infinity Void.”

“Will they be in my story?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “Once your baby’s born, a different story begins with raising that experimental bastard. That’s a story by itself right there, but I’ll skip over some parts.”

“I’m having a boy?” I asked, trying to contain my joy. I was secretly hoping for a boy.

“Oh, well,” he said, while throwing the invisible cloak up where it faded and vanished. There was a lot of gray containers sealed up with tape. “You won’t really remember this anyway. Might as well enjoy it. Now help me move these to the edge of your mind so we can fix this dumb overlap the Gilk created.”

“What’s inside them?” I asked, trying to pry one open with an imaginary crowbar I created. JJ put his hand on the tool.

“Don’t open that,” he said. “Those are bits of my gray matter I used to make this possible. Just trust me and help me out. Ok?” I questioned his mind for a moment, but got nothing more. Moving all of this would take a long time. Seeing as this was my mind, I could make magic real. With a motion, my arms expanded to cover all of the gray and moved the mass of boxes to the edge of the bubble.

“Huh,” he said. “That’s helpful of you. I’ll give you a nice intercourse session with Fiona later on as thanks. You’ll probably have to wear rubber though because of the kid.” He plucked at the air and draped that invisible shroud over the boxes. They vanished from sight entirely, only reflecting the two of us like any mirror would.

“What now?” I asked, imagining a screen of his thoughts above his head. While partially occupied by bare breasts, he was distancing himself from writing about me. “Don’t you want to keep writing?” He glanced up and grimaced at the screen.

“The problems in this story tire out my mind,” he said. “I can’t just leave this unfinished, but I don’t want to finish you just yet. Would you put that thing away?” He waved to catch the screen, but I yanked it away with recoil.

“It lets me see into your mind,” I said. “Anger, huh? You want me to suffer. Be careful what you wish for. Inside my mind, I’m the creator.”

“Yeah, but I can’t be hurt,” he says. “Besides, your mind is inside mine, and even inside a story, on these pages. You should be the one afraid.”

“Empty threats,” I countered. “You need me, JJ. You think there is no way I can hurt you? What if I were to bed your star, the woman you’re endlessly infatuated with. I know what she looks like. I know how to call her out of your dreams. Wouldn’t that hurt you?”

“Do you understand what you’ve done?” he asked. “By putting the idea out there, you made it reality. Congratulations, Finnelgamin, you’ve stabbed me emotionally. Again thought taken, of mercy born, unending in attributes, taken and torn. Never such serene a form, did grace our vision bright, and endlessly lit the darkest night.” His body crumpled to the ground in pain, clutching at his heart. “Take it from me, Ledeon! Take this longing and eternal pain! I created you for that purpose! Make me a husk!”

I approached him slowly, but he avoided my hand of comfort. His one weakness was the impossibility of his dream. He feared chasing after her, making that journey. The path existed, but he had nothing to offer and thus I came to be, an insanity from repressed humanity. This weakness exposed his inner workings to me, something that was best left unknown.

“Get up, JJ,” I said. “You can’t leave me like this. I think too much.”

“What’s the point?” he asked. “I’ll never reach her. That’s why she’s my star, the most unreachable thing to a human being.”

“And yet for me, you wrote a star that I did reach,” I said. “Fiona, the girl who you made me forget once, the Zaxient that is a living star. If I could influence your life in that manner, I would write that you find her again, but as your creation, I can only hope you do. Maybe this will draw her back to you, once it’s public.”

“He told me, Virtu,” he said. “That I would die before I’m forty, and that my work will not be recognized until after I’m dead. What can I do against his word? How can I fight my creator? You of all people should know it’s impossible. We have a connection, unlike my other stories. You have a voice and we can converse, but to Virtu, I’m just a random story, nothing more.”

“Before I’m gone,” I said, grabbing his collar to face him. “Before I forget all this and you throw the memory into those gray bins you don’t allow me to look into, let me tell you something. When you feel that you’re helpless, that you’re playing into your story that has been set for you, do something different. Didn’t we make a deal? You seek to better your life, and I rebel against your idea. Assume the same deal against your author, your writer, your creator, your god. They are just people like you. If you rebel against their plans, they might just feel better that they choose to make their lives better and rebel further up. That’s how you start a revolution, dear JJ, in all of your perceived Writer’s Continuum. Now get up, and write me a goddamn story!”

My hand reached out to him, but he hesitated. He shook the silent idea off and reached for me, but head-butted me in the face. Then his thumbs pressed into my eyes like thumb drives. He could have done it gentler, but this was it. The memories were coming out. The memories of what? What was I saying?

“Sleep now, Finnelgamin,” a voice said. “Awake anew.”

 

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