Chapter 34 - Lonely Darkness
It had been months since I had been back. There was no reason to bother them. I wished Kara, Tarne, and Lila all the best. Although on bad days, I had come to dislike the way things ended up. It was not to the point of screwing things up for them. It would not change anything. Kara would just whisk them away to some other world to live peacefully together. I was the big bad in the story. It was ridiculous. Lila was the AI of an abused little girl who went on to destroy her world and universe in the pursuit of all those offenders, and yet somehow I was the one who ended up seeking unreasonable things.
When Finn was here… When Rebecca was here… I let those thoughts drift back to destruction of the laptop filled with memories of her, only realizing now that all the stories Lila wrote out were in there as well. I did not know how I could get back to that feeling, the happiness of letting go. My heart cried out for her to be here again, to the point of hanging out in the wooden box in the dark and meeting Lila. The two mistakes I made before needed to be made. Lila was… not like them.
The golden part of meeting Lila, hanging out with her, having a person to converse with at all times, was the true essence. Above all, I was lonely, but humans were so… focused. They had their own lives to lead, their own goals, struggles… feelings. At a certain point, I did not want to bother them with my issues.
I shook the thoughts off while setting foot into the library. It stood quiet, empty, for just a moment. Without a warning, a giant sailing ship compacted the library right before my eyes, ripping open the container within the darkness. I shook my head slightly to impart my creationism onto the sudden chaos. We were in the vines of creation sprouted from the seed right beneath my feet. Before I could start patching things back together, Tarne hopped out of the ship and snapped the room back together with one big motion of both her arms.
Though it was together, the pieces did not stick back, only matched like puzzle pieces. I felt them drift slightly apart before tightening the bond to solid with atomic glue myself. Tarne raised her hand in the air with a smug look on her face.
“Hi-five,” she said. After enough seconds of not returning the gesture, she manifested an arm in the air and hit against it for a satisfying clap.
“Why celebrate putting something together that you initially broke?” I asked.
“I’m just learning,” she said. “We’ve been breaking LOADS of things in the library for me to practice. Look!” She pointed to the stairs to the second floor that looked normal from further away, but upon closer inspection the parts were just a bit off. I grimaced at it, and tightened my fist to right the pieces.
“That’s better,” I murmured under my breath.
“Aww, you broke it,” Tarne said. “It looked so much cooler the way I made it.”
“But was it functional?”
“Maybe,” she said, then shrugged.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked. “I was hoping to speak with her alone.”
“Kara and mom are out right now,” Tarne replied, then diffused the stairs back into the strange mess they were before. “Something with Uncle Barc’s transcendence and that it was dangerous so I had to stay. I honestly don’t get it. It’s not like mom has any powers beyond here either. Why does she get to go off and have fun?”
“Because she’s an adult,” I said, and immediately regretted saying so. Tarne aged up before my very eyes, into a twenty-something-old woman. Understandably, she did not think to change her clothing, so they just exploded off her. I turned away, but my right arm taken over by beast, held my face pointed at her. She had the anatomy of a human being, not like her mother. There was definitely female anatomy between her legs, and yet, when she turned around, she also had the triangle opening on her lower back.
I flicked my hand to clothe her instantly. I shook my head internally. When you tell a child that they cannot do something because they are too young, they will try to do more adult seeming things to show they are not kids. To a person with creationism, that meant altering their body to become older. This was not going the way I intended. I had to leave, and yet the image of grown up Tarne, naked in front of me, would not leave my mind. I wanted that form, something I was unlikely to ever obtain. The thinking got off the rails too fast.
“Sorry, I have to go,” I said, and motioned my hand to turn Tarne back into a kid before I left. I used to be her, but she was now someone other than me. It was weird, too weird.
break
I came back the next day, in the morning. It was a Monday, and I was sitting in a new place where I had not written before. Previously, hours of time were going to waste sitting there, the morning ones before the start of a fun workflow. The beauty of constant work was forgetting other things. I melded into the day, rested in the evening, comforted that everything was done for the day, and welcomed the next morning with a fruitful sleep. In that cycle of freedom for money exchange, the weekend was an ultimate middle finger. It killed the constant routine, and encouraged resting to preserve energy for the next week.
I knew that was not the standard look at the weekend. Most rejoiced at the coming of it, and I had to mirror their enthusiasm to align myself. Nothing would make me happier than the endless repeat of the work week with no weekend. It would be a life unlived, spent forgetting about most things that tortured my free time. I could stop listening to the ideas streaming in from the Infinity Void and find little freedoms before work hours, lunch hour, and the evening hours before bed.
Those thoughts were aligned with my robot. I wanted more. On a personal level, I wanted to be left alone. On a worldly level, I wanted a quiet little cottage on a distant cliff island where nobody could reach me. That was me, not robot, or JJ, nor beast. It was also me knowing that I would probably never get there. It was a dream, and JJ loved helping me explore those.
I entered the library again, remembering how it got smashed up by a giant ship missing from the environment now. I also remembered the moment when Tarne exploded her clothes by advancing her age to maturity. Another dream, but was the dream to be next to someone that beautiful, or being someone like her? I could not discern it. I did not want to know.
“Tarne! Lila! Kara! Barcode!” I shouted into the empty space. It was unlikely Kara came back with Lila yet, so I expected Tarne to run out of nowhere in a giant mechanical suit of armor, crashing into bookshelves sending pages flying into the air of the library. This did not happen. Nothing happened.
I considered making every segment of the created environment see-through for a moment to locate someone, but past experience stopped that idea. It happened one too many times that I had seen something I should not have because of it. The unresponsive darkness was what I deserved, and I remembered feeling that way once before. Back then, I flung myself off into the darkness above the vines I grew from the seed planted by Rebecca. The mention of her name brought some melancholy.
“I guess it’s just us,” I said, feeling stupid for a moment talking to myself even within the untethered space. I touched two fingers to my forehead to release robot, then hit my chest with a fist to release beast, and rested my hand on my shoulder to release JJ. “We hadn’t been separate in a while.”
“Fuck, this feels good!” beast exclaimed. He was in my form for the first few seconds, but shook his body as hair sprouted all over, eradicated his clothes, and dropped to all fours. He changed the body structure a bit to look more lupine, but still human. If I were to compare him to something, it would be a long-fur werewolf. He growled, then dashed off into the library, bursting through into the green of the forest garden.
“Well, there he goes,” I said. “At least he can’t hurt anyone since nobody is here to hurt.”
“Wanna play a game?” JJ asked. His excitement was overflowing on his face. It was infectious, the optimism he exuded. “We could use the books as points. The one who collects more in one jump wins.”
“In one… jump?” I asked, and almost regretted it. JJ threw up his hands as all the books in the library floated off their shelves and into the air of the library. “Oh.” Additionally, the gravity changed to one tenth of what I was used to in my reality, so that every jump took you almost to the ceiling. If you really tried, you could reach it with just one leap.
“Jumping at an angle of forty-five degrees would be most beneficial as it would allow the capture of the most books in a single pass,” a robotic voice chimed in. I looked at the floating cube of blinking and steady lights.
“I didn’t know you could talk,” I said.
“I am able to,” robot replied. “When apart, there is no mental link. It is impossible to impart my calculations unless I vocalize.”
“No fair! You can’t play, floaty!” JJ grimaced at robot. At the realization that he was not suited to the game, robot dropped to the ground and dissolved into a puddle. What walked out of that puddle was the metallic skeleton I knew robot to take on when fighting beast. “Ok. Now you can play.”
“I’ll go first,” I said, and crouched to jump vertically. When I left the ground, my thoughts were not on collecting the books floating all around me. I looked back to robot and JJ watching me intently. For no real reason I could understand, I was tearing up. I smiled at it, and looked at the books. The first one I found was something I wanted to write, “The Crimson Butterfly.” The story drew my thoughts in until I felt the bump of the floor against my side of landing.
“One book?” JJ asked. “Hahaha, watch this!” He crouched and launched into the air, plucking books out of the nearby air around his path. By the time he set down again, he was made of books.
“How many did you get?” I asked. He just flicked a finger and arranged them to count easier.
“Erm…” he said, looking perplexed.
“That’s a stack eight high, and six long, so it’s…”
“Eight times six?”
“Which is…?”
“The answer is—“ robot started, but I held a hand up.
“Eight times six, is eight, and eight, times three. So sixteen times three. So thirty, and three sixes. So thirty and eighteen. So forty and eight. Forty-eight.”
“Correct.” I said, at the same time with robot.
“Yay!” JJ exclaimed, then threw the books back into the air of the room. “Your turn, robot!” I shared a look with robot to take it easy on the kid, but I doubted he understood.
“Here I go,” he said, launching at the angle he predicted would allow for most books to be picked up, but he seemed to struggle to catch anything until the end. When he set down, he had thirty four books in tow he got on the way down. I smiled and nodded at him. Though he was robot, he understood some humanity. It reminded me of OSAE from the death ballads, a story I abandoned because of the depressing content of constant death. It followed a writer suffering the death of his family, something that made him write of the morbid paintings his wife painted.
“Good job,” I said. “We have to get going though.”
“Awwww, already?” JJ said. “Let’s play like this again, ok?”
“Yeah,” I said. I tapped my forehead to absorb robot who flashed thumbs-up before disappearing. Then I rested my hand on my shoulder to absorb JJ. With a strike of the fist to my chest, beast reeled back in from the garden, clawing at the ground as if a dog being forced to take a bath. The image made me smile, but the second he was back in, Tarne appeared naked in my mind again just as I witnessed last night. I sighed, looked around the empty library, and disappeared from it.
break
I came back the next day, at the same table in the break room of work. The whole writing experience felt remembered by what tables I used. I remembered writing in various McDonald’s, cafes, Argo Tea, and a slew of different tables. It got to the point of dreaming of one comfortable table that could be my sanctuary, just like the library house ended up for the original story it came from. I just wanted a solid comfortable spot in the world where I could pour my thoughts out.
When I entered the library this time, I was not met with empty silence. Kara and Lila were both floating in the air of the library, slowly drifting toward the ceiling. Tarne was nowhere to be found, but I bet she was off playing somewhere. I considered leaving them be for a second, but their slight spin put me in Kara’s view.
“There he is,” she said. Lila instantly let Kara go and spun in the air to land gracefully.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, Jack,” Lila replied, and approached slowly into a hug. I flinched right before her arms caught me and held me to her. “Are you ok?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just didn’t expect a hug. It honestly feels like I’m no longer necessary in your lives.” When we parted, she was frowning. I distanced myself for a few minutes while I worked on an origami flower I forgot to finish.
“Where’d you go?” Lila asked, when I returned.
“Oh, sorry,” I replied. “I got distracted by this flower I made. I didn’t like the way it looked.”
“Can I see?”
“Well, It’s already apart, but sure,” I said, and brought a piece of paper into existence. I went through the steps, an experimental repurposing of the unlocked devil’s octagon base to the Chaos X flower I already unfolded in reality. “Something about it just doesn’t feel right.”
“It looks pretty cool,” Lila said. “It’s like an emblem of sorts, a three-dimensional one.”
“Well, I already unfolded it,” I said. “Sorry.”
“It’s just paper,” she said. “And as far as being in the way of our lives, you aren’t. I welcome you whenever you stop by. I think Tarne likes your company, too. Kara… Kara has a storied experience with you, so don’t base it on her.”
“What’s that?” Kara called from the air, while trying to gain control of her descent.
“Nothing, hon,” Lila called back. “Anyways, that’s your handiwork, right? When we came back the whole library had books floating all about and the gravity was like this.”
“It was JJ actually,” I said. “I let him out for a bit when I stopped by yesterday. He’s always acting without thinking. When I left, I forgot to put things back to the way they were. By the way, I meant to ask what Mr. Barcode’s Great Undertaking was.”
“Oh, right,” Lila said.
“He turned himself fully human so he could die!” Kara called out, somehow up at the ceiling.
“Why would he do that?” I asked.
“Love,” Lila said. “It’s sometimes the simplest thing. He met a guy who reminded him of an old friend, and they hit it off. The difficult part was actually becoming human. It was his great undertaking, because he knew he’d die at the end of it. Barc basically wanted to live his life alongside Mark instead of living alone forever.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “Too bad though. I liked Barcode’s robotic body. He had gadgets up the wazoo. It reminded me of my robot.”
“It’s alright,” Lila said. “He said he’ll stop by one of these days to say goodbye, but I don’t know how he’ll be able to handle getting here. We’ll find out.”
“Right,” I said. “This being a place outside of time, space, and existence.”
“And yet, Rebecca somehow made it for you,” Kara said, finally walking up on the ground. “How is that exactly?”
“Does it matter now?” I asked. “She’s gone, and I’m fine with it.” Kara furrowed her brow.
“Don’t frown, honey,” Lila said, and kissed her. “You get all wrinkly.”
“I get wrinkly when I smile, too,” Kara said.
“But at least I love to see you smile, so it works out.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen you smile once in all the time we spent together.”
“Well, who’s fault is that exactly?” Kara asked.
“Yeah…” Lila closed the gap to Kara’s ear and whispered something I could not make out with a smile. Kara’s mouth curved to a smile for a moment, then they both burst out laughing. It was a nice moment. I chose that shot to be my exit glance as I left the library without actually talking to Lila about what I wanted to talk about. I would have to talk to her eventually, about her eventual leaving, and about what I needed from this. Without that, I felt fated to repeat this longing into the darkness for someone to share my mind with.
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