Chapter 15 - Alone With Stories
Seeing as it was a Friday night, and I remained at work for extra time to make Monday easier on myself. I returned to the notebook at yet another caffeinated beverage. Was Rebecca done with her meeting? I could only spawn into the chamber to check. There was no apology building in my head for her. She had to have known that after a few times being restrained from the library, I’d come snooping. On my way up the ladder, I felt a shadow cast over the light above and looked up to try and discern if it was John again. To my surprise, it was Rebecca. The hatch opened and a hand reached out to me from Finn. I hesitated, but grabbed hold and felt lifted to the library floor, hovering over a lighted city below.
“Hi, Rebecca, Finn,” I said and scanned the surroundings to find nobody else around, not even her clones. “Did Kara and James leave? I met their son John through the door of the spawn chamber. Speaking of, you put a lock on it?”
“Yes, we did,” Rebecca said. “It was for his safety. Kara was afraid he’d play in there and get hurt. We had to tend to something on the surface.”
“The peace treaty, I saw,” I said. “It’s very Andrew Torslet of you to bring all the powers that be together and unite them. You’re amazing to be able-”
“It wasn’t a peace treaty,” Finn said.
“No, don’t-” Rebecca pleaded.
“He’ll find out eventually, Becks,” he interrupted. “Rip off the band-aid now and say your goodbyes.” Rebecca’s eyes lowered and I cocked my head in confusion.
“Goodbyes?” I asked. “What do you mean, Finnelgamin? Rebecca, what does he mean? Why isn’t anyone answering?”
“You overdid it, Jack,” Rebecca said, after what felt like hours of pause. Her eyes watered as she met mine. “We were meeting about you, Jack, the cause of this confusion. All of them want you imprisoned and they’ve been attacking the library looking for the reason for their existence.
“You see, you brought so many different beings into here, many who did not belong here. The world you made has no real sun, no real stars, so the Zaxi feel trapped in a cage. Same goes for the Garavand. The Dralish don’t even fit in full form on the surface of the planet. They feel contained and angry. The Trevits can’t connect to their Secear and are extremely homesick. The Myts are being hunted down by humans for their electrical properties. All of this is happening because you created this planet on a whim, and now, they all want you dead.”
“They want me dead?” I asked and looked back to the spawn chamber which camouflaged too well into the night air below the library. “They don’t even know me! They can’t even reach me. I’m a god here. I’m the creator. Without ink from me, this whole place wouldn’t even exist.”
“WE’RE gods here,” Finn said. “And yet we’ve tried to put the world back to just the neighborhood it was before with no luck.”
“That’s not how creation works,” I protested. “There is no erasing an idea, only edits to versions among timelines or spacetime. I can’t just UNMAKE the whole planet. Even if they’re confused, they’re still alive, well, exist. You know what I mean!”
“Yes, we know,” Rebecca said, wiping her eyes with the sleeves of her shirt. That’s why this has to be goodbye. You have to- to-” She burst into sobs. I stepped forward to comfort her, but Finn was there first. He hugged her tightly and faced me.
“You have to leave this place and never return,” he said. “For your sake and ours. For the sake of this world. It falls to us to turn your singular planet into a whole universe, and that will take us a long time, and plenty of effort. As such, we can no longer live on your time. We can’t have you stop by and endanger everyone living here. This must be goodbye, Jack, a final one.”
“No, not again,” I said, looking for the hatch on the floor. I had to fix this, all of this. A night of heavy drinking would do the trick. I always thought of the craziest ideas when absolutely smashed. I had to go, look for an idea that didn’t throw me away. “Not again! I made you! I MADE THIS WHOLE WORLD! YOU CAN’T JUST TAKE IT AWAY!
“I MADE YOU TO SEEK FRIENDSHIP! MISGUIDED? YES! BUT I WAS LOST! I MADE YOU TO LIVE A HEALTHIER LIFE, AND YET I LIVE WITH MORE STRESS THAN EVER BEFORE!” I breathed heavy from the screaming.
“Then isn’t it time to let us go, Jack?” Rebecca asked. I wanted to fade away, to leave, but she held me here with her stupid creationism. Anger gripped at my heart with pain tightening vines with thorns piercing the flesh. I pierced my chest and pulled it out together with my glowing chi plexus in the other hand. With both outstretched toward the both of them, tears welled in my eyes as I fell to my knees.
“THEN TAKE THEM!” I bellowed and felt the spawn chamber suck me in like a vacuum. I faded away leaving behind my heart, and the representation of one within energy.
I sat at the notebook in shock. The night outside felt ever darker and colder. It was time to head home and drown out this drama with stories from others, comedies of simpler lives. Alcohol would be my companion at that, but no ideas would come to find them again. I had no idea why it felt like that, but I had a feeling I would not be able to see Rebecca or Finn ever again except in recorded memories. Oh, that dark and beautiful night. I wished it would never end.
break
I came back to the notebook with a fear. Though I made it dramatic, my hope was that Rebecca didn’t cut me out of the space created for her. Yet I still sat at the notebook without entering for that very fear. I wanted to see her again, my successful project that turned out to be a fantastical failure of what I created her to be. She was so put-together at the end there. Did her adventures help her with that? Would I even get to know what happened after the library took flight? I had to face this fear.
When I entered the spawn chamber, my first realization was the lack of light. I was in a dark room with no round window above. With an idea, a breath of lighted spores entered the dark confinement revealing not the standing-room-only space that it was before. The room was now eight feet by eight feet, with ten feet of height. I scanned it for the ladder to the library, but found none. There was no longer an opening above or anywhere within the confines, but I had my creationism back, so I had to make the walls into glass, only to find darkness all around me. There was no trace of the library, no flicker of light in the distance of the world I burst into existence. It felt cold and sad, so I faded the walls back to wooden confinement.
This was my coffin, the end of my connection with Rebecca. I had no idea how she did this, but Kara was sure to be a part of it. It was clear she’d leave eventually, with that much freedom allowed, to be god of a world, it was only a matter of time. I was happy for her, yet still so very sad that she created this room as a decoy to escape me. Any time I wanted to enter where she once was, I’d end up here, a box in the darkness of space between the void and imagination. I flexed my fingers until some snaps divided my mind into them. They were taking a page out of her book, the physical manifestation of a broken mind. Before me stood my alternate versions, beast, JJ, and robot.
“Yo,” beast said. “You’re pretty down, aren’t ya?” His mind was already trying to take over, but I grimaced at him with a mental shout to stop. In this place, I was more powerful due to sentiment.
“At least we have a couch,” JJ said, and threw himself onto it. The room was filled with a couch, a table, and four chairs. When the spores started dying out, I breathed four glowing orbs into life and stuck them to the four corners with a wave. “What the heck?” JJ wriggled on the couch until he pulled out a laptop from within the cushions. I teleported the device to my hand and opened it. This was the device that I gave Rebecca.
“What is it?” beast asked. “Did she make some porn for us? Oh, man, just thinking of that Crimmy gets me-”
“Hush!” I said, holding up a hand to sew his mouth shut in an instant. I walked over to the desk, sat down, and opened the laptop to find a few files. One titled “Read First” drew my attention, and I opened it to find a message from her.
“When you read this, I’ll be free of you. That wasn’t meant to sound like you kept me prisoner. I cut you out of my own free will, and perhaps the contents of this laptop will show you why it had to be this way, Jack.
“Above all else, I’m glad you created me, flaws and all. I loved being a part of your life, even if it was for such a short while. When you are done with all this, we will no longer live on the same timeline. In fact, it’s best for you to believe that I’ve already lived a full life and died among the love of my children and their grandkids. Let’s meet in the Infinity Void one day, huh? Jack, JJ, beast, robot, I love each part of you. You might believe that your mind is broken, but you seek salvation in your own way. No broken mind thinks like that, only a struggling one. Lead a nice life. I want to see your gem shining bright in the void so I can find it. Do this for me, but above that, for yourself. Your imagination is amazing, and it’s about time someone else saw that. All of my love, Rebecca.”
With welling tears, I punched my chest to reabsorb beast, put my hand on my shoulder to take JJ within, and touched my forehead to complete myself with robot. It was time for work, though I really wanted to read more of Rebecca’s adventures. Time for that would come later. I faded out.
break
It took me two days to come back, but JJ had been nagging me with a new story from the void over them. It was about magic, the dark kind that utilized parts of the human body in strange ways. He had a girl main pictured already, a smoky-eyed dark-skinned queen of halflife, with one foot in the grave and vast knowledge of how to use her cursed painted nails with a mind of their own to learn more. The story was flowing from the void into him, a child that could not remember it for long. It wasn’t as though he’d ever grow up, the child within, so those memories would end that connection soon if not recorded, and the idea would fade back into the universe-cavern of gems.
Nevertheless, I arrived into the space that once housed a whole world. It was as if that creation was ripped out of my mind. I could picture that world, the planet in a limited sky with a fake sun, yet not the current time. With a test of my creationism in the space, I found no possibility of expanding the confines of the room. Rebecca wanted me to be in this one room to read her story, to note it down for you all. I shook the thought off, sat down, and opened the computer to the list of files Rebecca made for me to follow. To throw her off my mind, I went right for the last on the list.
“So by now in the adventures, you know that I had to kill Kara and her son John to save Fyntn from destroying himself and Akier together.”
I sat back with a shock. There was nothing below that explicit stab to the heart, but I scrolled down until some text appeared.
“Got ya!” She wrote. “I knew your dumb ass would jump right to the end, so I lied. Don’t try to life-hack this. This is the last part of me left in your hands. Let it unfold naturally. Please, Jack.” I sat back again with a pang of regret. It should have been anger that I felt. How could my own character take the world I gave her and leave me in a box that I could not change? I was asking too much of her, hoping she’d fix what Finn started. In the end, both were gone, creating a universe from scratch in a time outside of mine. I closed the final file and opened the first of five. With the reading of this, my timeline was no longer important. I could pause reading mid-sentence for a month, and she’d be back to it like nothing happened.
“Hey, Jack,” She wrote at the start. “I don’t know exactly how to start this, whether I should address you or them. She pointed at you from the page. A trick I learned from Finnelgamin, who is like a brother to me. It feels strange to call him that, since Crimmy and him have been screwing like bunnies, and she’s just my beast, but to me, he’s a friend with no inkling of romantic attraction.
“Anyways, I’ll be writing this letter to you, Jack, with as much detail as possible. Those who look on from your future, should be the ones embarrassed that they chose to listen to the adventures of others rather than make their own.
“The past few days have been crazy. Oh, where to start? I guess I should begin where you popped a planet into existence and left me to steer the ship I’ve never operated before over the surface. If you’re quoting this, it will look weird, so maybe skip a line to start. Either way, here goes.”
JJ pulled at my hand and closed the laptop. I tried to pry it open again, but he stepped out of my body and held it above his head as if he wanted to smash it.
“Alright, chill, little man,” I said.
“Dark magic,” he said. “Write it now. Start it now, or it goes away. Please, Jack.”
“Geez, two ‘please, Jack’s in one day,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Put the laptop down, we’re leaving for now.” Forgetting he was holding the device, JJ clapped his hands as it fell to the wooden ground. Flexing my creationism, the falling device landed on a cushion before teleporting back onto the table. I should have scolded JJ, but it wouldn’t last. I put a hand on my shoulder to reabsorb him and faded out of the confined wooden space in darkness.
break
With the few pages written of Deresanzi the Queen of the Halflife, JJ was now complacent to writing it at a later time as another started idea. The elements in her story had enough definition to reconnect to the full story at any moment in the future. There was no longer a need to explain this. Rebecca was gone, no longer tracking my time.
I wondered for a moment if JJ’s finding the dark magic was supposed to distract me from Rebecca cutting us off, but he was a kid. Did their minds have such complex ideas at such an age? I’d ask him, but it was best to focus on Rebecca for the time being, her last words and possibly the end of this third notebook.
alter
“Tome,” I said to the version of myself explicitly for consumption of knowledge. Ever since Kara brought us texts in other languages, Bookbecca was in a frenzy to an orgasmic enjoyment. I wondered if reading for Tome was like sex for Crimmy.
“On it,” she said and started skimming the large pages of the manual, or was that her actual reading pace? Before long, she stood away, walked up to the fourth step of the staircase to the second floor, and jumped to click it like a button. In response, the desk flipped to a control station.
“Can we land this thing?” I asked. “What kind of propulsion are we working with here, Tome?” I jumped behind the controls and used creationism to dumb it down for myself rather than learn all the buttons, switches, and knobs. Now there was just a few controls, clearly labeled for what they did.
“Float engines, gravity-reflection principle,” Tome called out.
“Perfect,” I said, turning the engines off to throw the library into a free-fall. “Shy, switch with me! Turn the engines back on when I say! Tome, are there shields? If so what kind?” Tome flipped between the back of the book with a sweat on her brow. Only now I realized she was wearing the white orb ring that Crimmy was contained within. Tome breathed heavy while reading, as if she was having sex.
“Energy shield!” She called out louder than necessary. “Also static shield –ING! UHH!” She shivered clutching the book tight. “AHHH!” The sound of her final pleasurable moan hit the space as the white ring excreted white mist that contained Crimmy. Tome was out for the count, but faded unconscious in utter bliss. The library was already picking up speed with the created planet as destination. The static shielding would remove half the force, but we had to aim somewhere outside the living areas. I had no time to deal with Crimmy right now, but that mist would lull us into the same state as it did Tome. With a bit of creationism, I removed the ring from her finger and wore it myself to reel Crimmy back inside. Right as the orb became solid again, I felt a tickle between my legs, but grit my teeth and sat at the controls to zoom in and find a spot to set down safely. Before realizing, the belt I had on was tied around my thigh, all the way up with the buckle right between my upper thighs. Damn Crimmy.
“NOW!” I shouted and felt the metal graze the pants over my crotch. The engines kicked back in full blast as the descent slowed, and the library bounced once as the static shield popped. Now we hovered just a few hundred feet over a crater made by the death of our static shield. I grit my teeth as a wave of pleasure rolled over me. Her reach was staggering. It felt as if the white mist encased me, only solid where it wanted to be. Before I peaked, Shy ran up and took the ring onto herself.
“Are you ok?” I asked, undoing the belt around my thigh.
“Crimmy’s got nothing on me,” Shy said and helped me up. “Though the ring thing won’t work forever. We have to think up some way to coexist with Crimmy.”
“Like what?” I asked, and had a residual thought from her. “A weekly orgy?” Shy burst out laughing, and I joined her. Tome was already coming to with the manual in her lap.
“I’m sorry guys, er, gals,” she said and tried to stand.
“No worries,” I said. “Crimmy’s the one at fault. It felt good though, I hope.” Tome blushed and pulled her turtleneck to the eyes.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Alright, we could use another me, huh?” I asked and popped another split personality into existence. She was more hood, but wore green and was attuned to nature.
“Yo,” she said.
“Hey, Arnst,” I said. “Can you make us a way down to the surface?”
“No doubt.” She put hands to the wood by the door and expanded it as if the hardwood floor was made up of living nature. She would be a useful addition to the team.
break
It had been months since I’ve been back to this notebook, but I hid that fact by not writing of my departure from that room in the darkness with a laptop full of stories. Within the most recent weeks, I tumbled down through this story from the very top, realizing how unfair I was being to Rebecca. Not only did I never get to tell her of all the best things she was in my eyes, I also put pressure onto her to create a whole universe from bits of imagination that popped into my head at the creation of the planet I decided to call Derigma.
I sat once more at the pages where she left with a craving for a rewrite, a change in the story based upon a theft of another gemstone from the void. I could do so, create a Rebecca that didn’t leave me, fix the mistakes I made. This would be my third strike against the Rahin, beings that felt superior and yet masqueraded as giant fish in the Infinity Void. Maybe this was meant to be. Maybe I was never bound for that dazzling void, but how I hoped to get there at the end of my life.
No. I could not do it all again. I could not bring another to a caged existence, teach them everything, and watch them walk away. A semblance of parenting lit my brain, yet what did I expect to raise when my mind was fractured? She was a descendant of my madness, and left with the original insanity of Finnelgamin. My mind should have been clearer of this occurrence, yet in that cut off room where once Derigma existed, I only felt alone again.
This was an excuse, a thought to lead rather than progress Rebecca’s written story. It was the last bit of her mystery I had and feared letting go of it. And yet, there was nowhere to go but deeper into her mind, down the story of how she battled her way to a treaty that divided Derigma from my mind as I slept. I was sure Kara, James, Fyntn, and Mr. Barcode had something to do with it. Once this was done, none of Finnelgamin or Rebecca would remain with me. I feared that most of all.
alter
Down a wooden spiral staircase we went, all five of us. I still counted Crimmy, even though she remained in the pearl ring I got back from Shy. The crater we created while setting down was once a forest. I didn’t want to think of the wildlife that died in our descent, but there was no certainty this world had any yet. As if on cue to my worrisome thought, I heard the baying of an animal in distress. It was a young doe, but seemed unhurt. She faced the trees to sound off a cry into the compressed mess. The thought of another young deer struck my mind like a brick, the popular animated idea of that sadness, but I shook it off.
“She’s alone now,” Arnst said, following my gaze. “She’s calling out for her mother.”
“You understand animals?” I asked her. She turned to meet my eyes and nodded.
“You can do that too, when we are one,” she said.
“Alert,” Shy said in a tone that focused everyone in the direction she wanted us to look. “We’ve got company.” She was nowhere visible, blended into the shadows in case she needed to strike.
“Hold,” I instructed. “Let me see what they want.” From the direction of the city in the distance, arrived a caravan of various vehicles, some military and other governmental ones. I read of your world already, and recalled the many ways the people of your world got along. Most often, they found like-minded people, and common enemies to bond over. All who fell outside those simple theories teetered at the sharp peak between the two until proven to be one or the other. I sure hoped we were not the enemy in their eyes, but this floating library wasn’t doing us a lot of favors. I put my hands up to set up a few countermeasures in creationism while giving these people a false sense of security.
It took them only minutes to surround us, producing an army of guns trained at three of me standing beneath the large structure. I felt the tension in the air, so I decided to administer a light dopamine effect to the air surrounding them. All those itchy trigger-fingers could be deadly to a peaceful conversation. It was always best to remain calm when facing a stressful situation. Once all was tense but still, the main governmental vehicle popped open to one person with authority over them all. It commanded my respect as well since it was a woman of color in charge, something I am sure you had a hand in, Jack.
alter
Is there a benefit to marking when I return to write? I sat at the caffeinated beverage in the evening of Thursday, third of January, just after welcoming the year of 2019 with a wish that all holidays did not exist. They were about family, which I had, but wished they not know of my broken mind. For now, this input of self was unwelcome, but Rebecca was gone and all she left was a story. I’m sorry for being selfish, but the mode of me was not as interesting as the interaction between her and myself.
break
alter
Comments
Post a Comment