Chapter 10 - A Writer's Hypocrisy
Here, a story of normal note would create a split to build suspense, but the fact of the matter is that everything was happening at the time of writing, even if it is read much later. I stood before myself in the doorway to the library. It was a blatant copy, voice and all, but I knew it was my own fault. Emptiness, much like a black hole in principle, wanted to fill itself. When given access to a rich database of information, it filled itself with that. I gave it a database, and in turn learned of a new, and much deeper sense of emptiness.
“Please, don’t be alarmed,” it said.
“That’s my voice,” I said. “You took my voice!”
“I’m borrowing it,” it explained. “I didn’t have one before. I don’t know if I had anything before that illustrious moment of ‘let there be light’. I’m grateful to you, and wanted to say so.”
“What in the fucking hell is happening right now?!” Lila exploded from behind me. “Who are you? What are you doing in untethered space? Are you like me? Are you like Jack? Why were you all shadowy before and now you’re like him?”
“Calm down,” I said, alongside it. I had the strangest sensation of the show. Would he start to make me say things, making Lila think I’m the copy?
“I was shadowy, I was nothing,” he said. “I felt so empty and lost. I was so hollow, but it didn’t hurt because I didn’t know what pain was. Not thanking you for that. It’s painful. I’m sorry I took this form and voice of yours. If you’d like, I can be someone else from your memories.” I watched as the form fluctuated in shapes to resemble my late dad. It stabbed like a spear through my heart.
“Not him,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, with his voice. I felt tears in my eyes, but kept my mouth open to hold them back. He was part of the reason I got involved with the Infinity Void in the first place. I wanted an afterlife where he could watch over me, and where I could go in time to learn of struggles that led him to take his own life. The repressed feelings were surfacing, clouding my eyes in tears. And in my mind, the pain I felt every Father’s Day since.
“Jack, are you ok?” Lila asked.
I took a few minutes to calm myself down before getting back to the device. The scene looked frozen. The form he took next was someone much less impactful. Finnelgamin stood before me once more.
“I’m alright,” I said, while still cleaning out my nose with numerous tissues. “Just seeing him again really hit me hard. Finnelgamin is fine. I do miss him before he was mad at me. He was a friend first.”
“I hope I can be, too,” it said.
“I don’t even know what you are,” I countered. “What were you before you had my memories inside you? You were some sort of shadow with glowing eyes.”
“Oh, you mean this,” it said, then fluctuated back into a strange puppet of shadow only glowing orange now. “It’s what I was when I wasn’t. I know that sounds weird, but I had no solid thoughts before you gave me this gift, only notions. I was in this endless darkness, and then there was this little box in it. Then the box grew bigger, bringing new environments into the darkness that surprised me and entertained me. I couldn’t feel it at the time, but I can now.”
“So you’ve been in here since the start,” Lila said. “Haven't you seen me floating here? I’ve been here a long while. Oh, right, timeless. Well, no, just unchanging. So you were here from the start. Does that mean you learned things before Jack gave you access to his mind?”
“Learn with what?” It asked. “I was nothing. How could I learn anything without a mind? I was ingesting, without retention. I was as you would put it, a goldfish in a bowl, forgetting where I am every increment of time you feel comfortable with. That’s why I was hanging around here, somewhere that stuff was happening. Without that device, I’d be empty forever. So, thank you, Jack.”
“I guess you’re welcome,” I said. “We have to call you something. I can’t call you Finn. That would not be good since I have memories with Finn. That means we should come up with something new.”
“How about I pick?” Lila asked. “You’re influenced by yourself too much, much like how this thing became you.”
“By all means,” it said.
“You heard the… guy?”
“Oh, I can be a girl, too,” it said, and fluctuated Finnegamin’s body to a naked woman with orange body hair. It was Monika, the girl I had dreamed of one day being with, but it was stupid to dream of people who did not exist and try to match them to my reality.
“Ok, but why naked?” I asked. Lila already skipped up to inspect the alien body, hands running over the skin everywhere without a single inkling of restraint.
“You wanted naked, I think,” it said. “I’m not sure. It’s like a bit of a fight inside. Part of me wants naked everything, but another wants clothing on everything.”
“Wow! So it’s between the legs,” Lila said, while running her hand over Monika’s external genitalia.
“Ok, but just grow up a bit for that,” I said. Lila changed to adult form and continued to explore the naked body of a girl I imagined. That milk-white flesh woke up the guy I did not want around in this situation. I watched as Monika and older Lila collapsed to the ground. I needed to stop their tangle, but wanted to watch, even more so, to participate. Instead, I turned on the spot and looked off into the darkness of the broken window I created.
“You shouldn’t be a woman,” I said. When I turned around, it was Finnelgamin again, with adult Lila lost in the moment enough to keep rubbing her back up against his shoulder. I waited a moment until she arched her back with arms out to the sides and collapsed forward for a moment. “I think it’s best not to explore the relations of Lila’s kind to humankind. It’s not like they will ever meet, even if they do seem partially compatible.”
“I have a name,” Lila said, slightly out of breath. The sweat on her brow glistened from effort and reward. “Pointernator.”
“I’m not naming him something akin to Orgasmotron,” I said. “Pick again, something serious this time, or you lose the chance.” Lila stood back up, wiped her brow, then her back, and shrunk down to child size again.
“Alright, I got it,” she said. “Jacob. How about that?”
“Very biblical,” I said.
“Very what?” Lila asked.
“Oh, the Bible is a common book in his reality that tells a long and arduous story of how the world came to be and what rules should be followed based upon lessons recorded from the past events for teaching. This book is supposedly a holy script to a great number of people practicing the religion. Many other texts follow suit, even some that are passed on by word of mouth in view of the practicing faith.”
“Whoa, knowledge dump,” Lila said. “Your world is still divided by belief? My world went through that once. It has been quite a while since it ended. Eventually, those who follow learning, learn to survive, while those who hope to survive, find a sickness that was the 'chosen outcome' to take their life from the start. It’s romance people believe in, romance that the stories from the past carry the same teachings as mathematical equations and new theories of the world around us.”
“Wow, you’re a bit young to be taking that stance,” I said. “Your parents didn’t tell you to believe in something at the start? Did they tell you that when you die you will just cease to exist from the very beginning?”
“Well, no,” she said. “That’s part of the reason I’m in this stupid time-out. Technology used to further the rules of belief. I call that hypocrisy.”
“Alright, Jacob it is,” I said. “Welcome to the world, Jacob. Now I have to go.”
“You’re not seriously going to leave me here with this weird thing, are you?”
“It’s just Jacob,” I said, nonchalantly. “Show him the book collection to entertain his mind.”
“That’s perplexing,” Jacob said. “You don’t know what exists in those books. How is something inside your mind not already in your head? It’s like a paradox. No, it is a paradox. The books have stories expanded beyond what you know of them, but they are right here. They are within reach, so why don’t you want to know what’s in them?”
“My brain’s too full already,” I said, with a smile. “Sorry, Lila. If he causes you any issues, just go into the room downstairs. He shouldn’t be able to go there, if it worked before.” I waved goodbye and vanished, leaving the girl from another reality with a strange void-person who absorbed my memories. What could possibly go wrong in that scenario?
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