Chapter 14 - Spawn Chamber Blues
I arrived the next morning in the same spawn chamber, but as I scrambled out, nobody handed me a ZaP. In fact, the fighting was gone, and Rebecca awaited me by herself on the desk among the glass floor. None of her copies were around, but that could have been thanks to Shy’s shadows. Were those garems around her neck yesterday? And how did she get a shadow cloak?
“Hey,” I said and noticed that she wore the white ring of containment I gave her, made for her. beast had been strangely quiet around her of late. “Are your clones around to ambush me?” Rebecca stood and put her fists together in a force to produce her clones to her sides. Once she took away the fists, the other versions shifted back into her.
“We merged for this, Jack,” she said. “It’s easier than playing telephone later on. So speak, what are you planning? Are you going to burn the notebooks and try to erase us?”
“No, I-”
“Just so you know,” She interrupted. “We won’t go down that easy. Kara will get us out before that happens. We don’t live and die by your pen.”
“Geez, can you just let me explain?” I asked and waited. She looked conflicted.
“Damnit, shut up, Arnst!” Rebecca said. “This was a bad idea. Get out!” She held onto the front of her shirt and struck it with a fist of her other hand. With the impact, all her clones, plus some I didn’t know existed, emerged from the body.
“Sorry about that,” Rebecca said. “I haven’t had all of them inside me in a long while. At a certain point, I feel better without them always in my head.”
“That’s insane,” I said. “There’s like ten of them. I divided myself into four and that’s kicking my ass. Why did you let it get that far, Rebecca?”
“Oh, shush, sweets,” said one version, kneeling in front of me to undo my pants. “How’s my little guy doing? Getting off well?” Rebecca inspected her ring and cursed.
“Damnit, Crimmy,” she said and ran to stop her from slipping my underwear down. beast shook awake, resonating with Crimmy until Rebecca punched her and put the ring from the clone near me into her own mouth. “She’s found other ways out of the ring.” The Rebecca version at my crotch opened her eyes in surprise and shuffled back away from me. She was under the influence of Crimmy at the time, but now blushed cotton candy pink which matched her pink hair.
“What’s your name?” I asked, redoing my pants.
“Oh, she doesn’t talk,” Rebecca said. “Or at least I’ve never heard her speak. Her name’s Sugar, and she’s our chef. Alright, everybody! Circle up!” With that command, all the Rebecca versions stood in a circle around me. Shy winked at me while Sugar could not meet my eyes. I could take two whole pages to describe how they looked and behaved, with musings of what their abilities could be, but I didn’t have the time.
“Speak, Jack,” Rebecca the original said.
“I’m not destroying you, obviously,” I said. “I’m just moving onto another such creation, my third and last. This one’s goal will be to destroy me, kill me in all realities, because that will be the third strike against the Rahin people. My goal is to erase myself from the Infinity Void entirely, to have no record among the endless stories.” They were silent.
“You guys will be free to keep adventuring,” I said. “With this library, you could get so far, touch so many hearts, and lead your own great tale. And I hope you will.”
“What the fuck, Jack?” asked a Rebecca I hadn’t seen before. She had blood red lipstick on, and wore spandex garb, exposing both the curves of her breasts to the nipples, and the curves of her hips, centering around the outline of her vulva. It was borderline explicit, unless it was an outfit for gymnastics, ballet, or yoga. I looked to Rebecca for an intro.
“That’s Cira,” she said. “Very good in a fight thanks to her gymnastics and love of pyrotechnics. Also, potty-mouth.”
“What the fuck, Jack?” Cira repeated. “You want to abandon us to go and die? Do you not see how messed up you’re sounding? What about us, fuckface? We’re out here having crazy adventures, recording them for your dumbass, no less, and you’re ditching us for someone that doesn’t even exist yet? I see flaws in your logic, major flaws. You ought to focus on this, not that new bullshit.
“Write your stories, and just you wait. Our stories will be the greatest you have ever seen. They will blow your fucking mind!”
“Alright, calm down, Cira,” Rebecca said. “Let’s not have a fire-breathing vagina in the circle. Anyone else want to chime in, or can I speak?”
“That’s low, Jack,” said Arnst, the green-totting Rebecca version. I wondered if her abilities were plant-based.
“Alright, time is limited, so I’ll rail you out in short-form,” Rebecca said and reached to hold my chin. For a moment, all the clones vanished and there was just me and her. She closed the gap to my mouth and thrust her tongue down my throat. It seemed to extend down, robbing me of breath at the opening to my lungs while I tried to struggle out. In the end, I realized that I didn’t need to breathe and gave in to the tongue exploring while extending inside me. I could feel it in every part of my body, in veins, nerves, bones and muscle fibers. When it withdrew, I felt like a piece of me was missing. They stood around me again, all ten of them. “You go and die, we go the same. Get it? We’re a part of you, and you’re a part of us, so you can’t go anywhere. That idea of yours? We reject it. If you go ahead with it, we’ll fly this library right into the void and right into your world. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing? An alien invasion of Rebecca clones just to stop one idea from destroying you.”
“Why do you care?” I asked. “You’re self-sufficient, got a whole world to explore, and can escape into the void. I’m no longer in control. You’re free, fully and truly free.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to die, dummy,” Shy said.
“Doesn’t mean you have to tempt fate and try become unknown to others after your story is over,” Tome said.
“I have no story,” I said. “I hide within more interesting ones because I can’t lead my own.”
“You already lead your own,” Rebecca said. “You write the story even now, a story about the connection of your mind to something more than people would believe. Don’t judge your life by the standards of others. Don’t be that guy.”
“Don’t be a poser,” Arnst butt in.
“What she said,” Rebecca said. “Don’t devalue yourself, because to us, and Finn, and Kara, and James, and even Little John and Danielle, you’re important. Fuck all else, for that is all that matters.”
“Thank you,” I said, looking between the circle before sinking into the glass and dissolving into a stained glass mural of me in better form surrounded by the ten of them, while three others of me circled my head. I vanished from there leaving the mural behind.
break
I was starting to feel annoyed arriving into the spawn chamber every time I came to visit. Yet again, I opened the hatch to a scene of action. This time, someone dropped on me from above, pushing me back into the spawn chamber. It was none other than the first denizen of the void.
“James!” I exclaimed. “I’m so glad to see you’re alive again. Is Finn up there, too?” James scrambled up next to me in the confined space and was about to say something, but a rope shot through the opening, wrapped itself around his waist by some strange magic, and hoisted him out.
“Sorry!” He called out, as he re-joined the sounds of struggle. It was something of a laser battle going on out there this time, and I was curious to see who Rebecca was fighting this time. Before I could climb up the ladder again, Rebecca landed at the opening and pointed something of an air bazooka at me only to find someone who was not her enemy. I started to climb again, but her foot stopped my head from going further.
“I don’t have time for you right now, Jack!” she said and fired off the air chamber in three directions, resulting in three pops of really loud champagne without the fizz of bubbles. “Plus you wouldn’t want spoilers of the story I’m writing, would you? Catch me over the weekend, maybe, ok? Ok, bye!” She pushed my head down and closed the lid. To my surprise, the angle she stood at exposed her to my gaze from below. Since she wore the white ring, I could see her pants fit snug against her crotch. I left before beast roared out in my mind.
break
I spaced over the weekend, and took the Monday off in an effort to use up my vacation days before the end of the year. So there I was, on Tuesday morning, hoping Rebecca didn’t wait for me. I appeared in the spawn chamber again and was starting to get sick of being treated this way, but before I could start climbing the ladder up to the hatch, it opened to the sounds of yet another battle and Rebecca jumped into the confined space leaving almost no space between us. She felt weathered.
“Hey,” I said and met her eyes.
“Hey,” she replied and sighed. “You’ve got some nerve ditching me. I asked you to come back over the weekend. I can’t believe I even waited for you yesterday to stop by and apologize for forgetting, but nothing! What do you have to say for yourself?” I smiled, but she was clearly upset at my distance.
“Did you miss me?” I asked, expecting a punch or slap, but nothing happened.
“I just- You threw me into the deep end, Jack,” she said. There was sadness in her eyes and I felt a pang of anger at myself. How could I cause such an expression? It made me want to punch myself, but then I remembered the many times I’ve hurt her in the past. Was I just there to create conflict for her to solve? If so, what could I do when I found her in the dumps?
“I love you, Rebecca,” I said. “The only reason I gave you so much was to prepare you for the world. I’m sorry, but each world is filled with dangers and conflicts, many that are hard to solve. I wanted to make you stronger so that when you’re finally free of me, nothing can stop you, even when you can no longer separate your mind into individuals and have no creationist abilities beyond creating new human life within your body.”
“I don’t want to be free of you,” she said.
“It might not be up to you,” I said. “I live in that unpredictable world. Anything could happen. Just promise me that if I stop coming around for years, you’ll talk to Kara about getting out of your space and into the void. I don’t want you to be stuck here, in training for the worlds out there, and please don’t come looking for me, because I bet you will only find sadness.” Her face contorted in worry.
“What do you mean, Jack?”
“I have to go,” I said. “But I’ll be back here tomorrow for sure. Hopefully, I’ll be able to see everyone.”
“Jack?” she asked, but I smiled and faded from the spawn chamber.
break
Again at the spawn chamber on Wednesday morning, I waited for Rebecca to notice me. When the hatch opened, I climbed up to find only her sitting on the desk in a regular-looking library. She met my gaze right away and motioned me over. Without saying a word, I shuffled over to sit beside her on the desk.
“This feels like the past,” I finally said. “Before this library was a ship. Did you change it back with creation?” I was a bit afraid of her response, as it took some effort to create that flying library.
“No,” she responded after a few minutes of silence. “Tome just figured out how to close the floor blinds. Not that the sights from above aren’t amazing, even Crimmy likes them to the point of, well, you know how it is when beast enjoys something.” I wanted her to say it, but as beast stirred, I removed the thought from my mind. Rebecca leaned back onto her hands and looked to the ceiling painted the same way it was in Tiarto’s story.
“I always wondered why you chose this library to make a sanctuary,” she mused. “I mean, this is the library from your high school, isn’t it? They didn’t have these painted golden ceilings, and no stairs to the living quarters, but the place had to have some sort of significance for you.”
“I spent a lot of time there,” I replied. “It was my zone during the shift into adulthood, staffed with beautiful librarians fresh out of college, with unattainable dreams. Wow, I got derailed there.”
“They derailed you?” Rebecca asked.
“No, I mean, I didn’t mean to talk about them at all, but if you had- oh right, Crimmy, so you know how it is.” I said. “It feels nice to just sit and talk like we’ve done in the past.” Yet it can’t last. I didn’t say so, but it was true.
“It won’t happen often, Jack,” she said. “Not anymore. When you brought this planet into existence, what do you suppose populated it?”
“People? Lives too boring for me to care about?” I asked, but Rebecca shook her head. Damn Rassot, he was right.
“All you wished into reality by means of stories filled that world,” Rebecca said. “And that means there are Tisyros, Zaxi, Garavand, Portal Walkers, Torodemyt, Dralish, and ever so much more to organize across the planet. Even Trevits and the Nth goni somehow made the list, but I don’t think they’re actual beings. It wouldn’t make sense that you could pull a creature that could destroy your story into it. Though Fyntn III happened that way.”
“He was a special case,” I said and looked beyond the closed off library floor glass. All of that existed just beyond my feet, but existed at odds with the created second strike against me. Finnelgamin.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “What happened to Finn? I saw that James was back, so is Finn out of his void gem, too?” Rebecca cringed.
“Oh, he’s out,” she said. “It turns out Crimmy was modeled after Fiona somehow, or maybe she’s just able to change shape to suit her suitors. Either way, it’s easier than wearing her as some cursed ring and starting interracial, cataclysmic, and inter-dimensional orgies like she had done, but that’s a spoiler, I guess. They left the ship, and set up a sex dungeon on the surface, keeping everyone insane, yet she keeps him in a climaxing stupor of joy. So yeah, that is solved for now. What’s wrong?” I felt a roar build in my chest, an anger within the cage, but I set robot on beast.
“beast trouble,” I said, trying not to meet her eyes for fear of him breaking free. She had her Crimmy satisfied. Did that mean that she could feel all the pleasure, but didn’t have to fight off other urges? “Shy, Arnst, would you mind holding me down? I don’t trust myself until he calms down.” Shy appeared behind me and held my hands down with some sticky shadow. Arnst on the other hand grew vines from the desk to compress my crotch tightly.
“You should really just set him loose one day and let us figure out how to subjugate him,” Rebecca said.
“You had that idea once already,” I said. “And now your mind’s all split like mine. I’m not letting him ruin your life now that you have Crimmy figured out. Not to mention that even without him inside, I hear an echo of him still there. Sure, it’s not strong, but the terrible ideas keep pouring in.”
“Yeah, we get those, too,” Shy whispered in my ear with a hot breath. I pulled at the sticky shadow as beast rattled around the cage with robot. Out of nowhere, Crimmy popped into existence in the library.
“You called?” She asked and found me on the desk. Her eyes lit up blazing red as she took a large inhale to stick her barely covered chest out.
“SHIT!” I burst out. I could feel beast tearing through the bars to meet his wild companion. His hands melted the mental of containment and swatted robot away as if he was nothing. “TOSS ME INTO THE SPAWN CHAMBER!” Rebecca faded the binds and lunged to throw me within. Crimmy was at the hatch right as it closed. I saw Rebecca step to the woman wearing no underwear and press underneath to make Crimmy vanish in a puff of white smoke. Rather than come back out, I felt beast break his containment down while watching Rebecca press Crimmy’s clitoris like a button, and faded out of existence for the fear of what he would do.
break
I arrived to the spawn chamber the next morning and climbed the ladder to find the hatch locked. That was a surprise, but Rebecca would sense me and open it. I waited, but heard no footsteps. Did they lock it on purpose? I wasn’t even the one who made that proxy spot for visits, so within that wooden structure, I had no power. Sure, I could break it and force my way in, but something told me that doing so was the first step towards an all-out war against Rebecca. Instead, I knocked on the above hatch with the hopes that she was just being cautious because of what happened prior.
“Who is it?” I heard a voice speak. My mind froze up. Did anyone else arrive by this hatch? It was a spawn chamber, but I figured that was just a name for a space to contain my arrivals. Another concern was the voice of unknown origin. This wasn’t Rebecca or Kara, and though each split ‘Becca was her own person, they sounded the same.
“The person writing this story,” I said, trying to decide between Rebecca’s targeted name of Jack and the general JJ used to author my stories. In the end, I said nothing else. Something obstructed the light from above and I looked up to find a child’s face. With a quick run-through of possibilities, it had to be John, Kara’s and James’ son I created by accident. He had her hair, and those Denizen eyes. “You must be John. Let me up. I know your mom and dad.”
“Mom said not to let strangers into the house,” he said. “Also not to talk to them.”
“Aren’t you in a library right now?” I asked. “You’re not at home, so can you just let me in?” I heard something metal jangle above.
“It’s a padlock,” John said. “I don’t have the key.” I had to wonder what they were off doing that Rebecca was with Kara’s team, but there was nothing to do but wait.
“Guess that’s that,” I said. “Well, at least tell me how you like the library.”
“It’s big,” John said. “Empty and lonely. Plus books are boring. They have better use as blocks for my fort.” I smiled at the thought of my recorded brain being used to build a fort. JJ would have fun in that sort of environment.
“Did your mom say where she was going?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did she say how long she’d be?”
“No.”
“Well, I guess I’ll head off,” I said and started fading out.
“Wait!” the boy said. “Where are you going?”
“Back to me world,” I said. “My reality at least. Why?” There was a long pause of silence.
“It’s just so boring here,” John said. I wanted to create something for him in the space, but I’d need to break past the containment of the spawn chamber to do so.
“I got that,” I said. “But I bet you can find some fun stuff to do upstairs. There are beds for bouncing and closets for rummage through for treasure. All you need is a little imagination. The upstairs could be a castle, and to storm it you have to go up the treacherous creaking staircase filled with monsters that swarm at every sound.”
“That sounds fun!” He said and ran off. I chuckled and heard him try to walk up the stairs quietly, but creak out. I faded off hoping he wouldn’t hurt himself, but that was near impossible in what was once my space. Now there was a padlock on the only entrance. The story was living its own life now. I was just a passenger.
break
I came back the next day, Friday morning, and spawned in that very same chamber. I climbed the ladder and tried to push the cover open to no avail. Maybe John was still around. I gave the cover a knock, but after a few minutes of waiting, and a few more knocks, it was obvious he was not in the main room of the flying library house. It felt weird to call it a library, but the basis was that one library from my past. With a burst of imagination, I expanded the vast space into what it was for Tiarto and Sana, and then for Rebecca.
Rather than fade off and go to work, I sat in the corner of the small spawn chamber and felt a sadness build at being denied access to something I built in my mind for Rebecca. Was she angry at me? Was she doing something that I would ruin by joining? Whatever it was, Kara was involved enough to leave her son in the safety of the library house. Did this involve Finnelgamin and Crimmy? Was it of a sexual nature, or was it just dangerous? Maybe it had to do with Akier Vil Moredo and Fyntn the Third. There had to be a reason for not allowing me inside, at least the physical me, but I tried creationism while in the chamber and found myself without the ability. Rebecca built it too well, seceding from my support when I abandoned her in a chaotic world of her own. That was it. Her revenge was the spawn chamber. I felt anger bubble to the surface.
Even if I couldn’t pass through the hatch in ghostly form and could not use my creationism, there was a way I could still see what she was up to, though it was a bit invasive. I sat at the foot of the ladder with my legs crossed and folded fingers so that only my index and pinkies connected. There was no purpose to this, but I felt better believing that it opened the path to her, to Rebecca’s mind. When I closed my eyes, the reach activated. This wasn’t creationism magic, just a weak link piggybacking JJ’s connection of announcing my arrival.
It was dark at first, but something came into view. It was Kara, seen through Rebecca’s eyes. Rebecca closed her eyes and put a hand to them with a sudden headache.
“You alright?” A familiar voice asked off to her side. She turned to find Finnelgamin with the kindest expression I’d ever seen on his face.
“Yeah, just a sudden headache,” she replied.
“I don’t blame your head for feeling overwhelmed,” he said. “This is pretty intense stuff we’re dealing with. They’re all confused, but being at each other’s throats will only cause more chaos.”
“Thanks for being here,” Rebecca said. “Is Crimmy ok?”
“Yeah,” he replied and petted his breast pocket of his jacket. “Shrinking her down was a great idea. I just wish she wasn’t the sexual demon version of you all the time. I know she’s not the actual Fiona, but at least I can pretend she is sometimes.” Rebecca nudged her head at Kara who stood in the middle of a large arena.
“They’re gathering,” Rebecca said and looked to Kara as a number of things happened. Out of a gray pillar emerged shadowy figures that floated and shifted around. Out of nowhere, a few lighted humans that I knew to be Zaxi arrived from above. Another group is the arena threw down their camo cloaks to reveal purple skin of Trevit kind. A rumble shook the whole arena as the red Dralish walked up from below growing into giants they were. With a stomp, one Dralish excavated blue living rocks that I knew to be torodemyt. As if this wasn’t enough, the statues at six points of the arena melted into their original forms, the Tisyros.
“Hey, Jack,” Rebecca whispered to nobody. I was shocked to find out she knew I was in her head. “It’s rude to be here uninvited.” She imagined a giant hand that grabbed me and threw me back into a darkness where I could only reel myself back into my body. Rebecca was brokering a peace treaty. I smiled and faded from the spawn chamber.
break
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