Chapter 44 - Forgetting

I came back the next day to check on Lila’s progress, hoping she did not rush through the whole thing. The sequel saw me in a bad light, then a bit of good, then a lot of bad. I was sure it ended on a bad note, but remembered that Rebecca left behind a laptop of recordings, something I asked her to do to keep track of the things I missed by being away from her. The laptop I disintegrated after Lila put her effort to record my expanded ideas into. I blipped into the library and panned over the whole space to see if Lila came back inside.

“Hey,” said a voice from above. I turned to find Kara leaning over the second floor railing, as she often did. I wondered if she had back pain like me. “Seen Lila around? It’s her turn teaching Tarne.”

“She’s probably reading in the garden,” I replied. “Teaching?”

“What did you do now?” She asked. “What is she reading?”

“Just a book, a story from the many I’ve written,” I lied.

“Uh-huh, like I’d believe that,” Kara said. “If I had to warrant a guess, you gave her Rebecca. She already told me that you gave her Finnelgamin. I don’t really understand why you WANT to keep recalling those past events.” I took a seat on the couch, and looked back to Kara in time as she jumped from above. My worried mind slowed her descent to arrive gracefully. Her face looked aggravated at the assist.

“There are some good memories, even if there are a lot of bad,” I said. “In the end, I’d say it’s a balance of positive and negative experiences, and I don’t want to forget them.” Kara leaned against the back of the couch at a different spot so that we were close, but distant. “So you said teaching?”

“Right,” Kara said. “Well— You don’t become a fully grown woman inside a flower with updated knowledge of growing up, you know? That’s why the sex thing was such a pain in the ass to handle. I’ve been teaching her about her human body, and Lila teaches her about other stuff like math and thermodynamics.”

“Are you going to teach her how the Keir operates?” I asked. Kara looked conflicted. “Ah, I see. I guess there is no point until we know more from the Rahin. Is it just me, or are they taking a while?”

“It’s a difficult matter,” she replied. “I mean, not your matter. You made another fully functional being, broke the terms set upon you at number two, and obviously aren’t going to be recorded for avoidance of others gaining that knowledge. Tarne, on the other hand, is—”

“Tarne is what?” Asked a voice above. I looked up with Kara to find Tarne at the top of the stairs. “What am I, mom?” Kara visibly shivered at the assigned name with a smile, but did not say anything.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s my fault. The Rahin shouldn’t punish her for my errors.”

“Punish?” Tarne asked, walking down the stairs. “For what?”

“Just existing, unfortunately,” Kara said. “You were the third fully functional being Jack made, even if he wanted to be reborn as you. The way it ended up, he broke an important rule, damning himself to be forgotten in the Infinity Void.” Tarne stopped her descent at the last few steps and sat down on the stairs.

“That’s not fair,” she said.

“That’s what I told them,” I said. “And now I’m guessing they are deliberating what to do with you. Ultimately, I was hoping you’d inherit the Keir from Kara, but it may be something else.” Tarne buried her face in her hands.

“Like what?”

“Well—“

“The Nth Infinity with the Nth Goni,” I interrupted Kara. I knew she was about to tell her the worst outcome, and that was not something you dropped on a person just like that. I hated that part of her, the darkest thought first to prepare for the worst. It made sense, but was not something you did to your daughter. Maybe the smile I saw was not actually happiness, but scorn at being called “mom” by someone she did not even see as a person. “Maybe you’ll get portal claws and go about fixing stories for people like they do.”

“But what about my moms?” Tarne asked.

“Well, Kara would probably go do Kara things,” I said, and looked over at her. “And Lila— I don’t really know. Kara?”

“She’s still got a lot of time to serve on her sentence,” she replied. “Once that’s done, I don’t know. Anyone who goes into the untethered space eventually loses themselves to the emptiness. They become a void leech, then leech onto something in here, and reincarnate into a story. That’s what they told me.

“You’re the one who fucked all that up. Lila was probably about to lose herself to the darkness when she found your box. Then, when you expanded, other void leeches came by to—- well, leech off the life you’ve put into the building-blocks space. That’s how the whole mess with the alters happened and I had to take care of it throughout my life. Once all this is gone, Lila will probably serve out her sentence and become just another story.”

“So— She’s like me,” I said. “Erased as the story of a human becoming a robotic force that killed her universe. You have to see how my story is less worth erasing, right?” Kara scoffed.

“If they don’t wipe you out, other people are going to do your crap,” Kara said. “Then imagine how much there would be to fix in the worlds beyond. Trust me when I say, they have their own issues. I’d know.”

“I have to go,” I said. “Tarne, don’t worry. When the Rahin come back, just hit that buzzer at the door and I’ll come rushing in to make sure you get to live out a story of your own. I promise you that.” She smiled sadly, and looked off to the garden doors, with a worried expression. I worried about Lila, too.

Just like before, I sank into the couch to exit.

break

I did not come back on Thursday of that week, nor the Friday. I omitted coming back over the weekend for lack of a space to write. I wanted the dining establishments and cafes to open already, so that I could write again without spending time at home, but there was still hesitation from people. So much time was wasted the way things were now. I came back to the darkness so welcoming on the Monday before work. It was the only time I could come write in the comfort of the break room.

I stepped in through the wooden box again, and ascended the spiral staircase to an argument already in progress.

“—not what I mean!” I heard Lila exclaim.

“It sure sounded like you want me gone!” Kara fired back. I paused on the stairs before I became visible on the staircase. “Where did you even get such an idea? I’m not going to abandon you and Tarne to the fate of the Rahin!” I grit my teeth and ascended the final steps to enter the library. When I looked up, both of their eyes were on me, angry and searching for support to their idea.

“Jack!” Lila burst out first, walking up. “I suggested that Kara take Tarne and go from the untethered space and leave me to the Rahin. Isn’t that a good idea?” I put my hands up, as Kara stepped up.

“The idea is insane!” Kara shouted. “Stop acting like a martyr and let's all face them together! We don’t even know what they decided yet! If they give HIS idea a chance, we’d never see Tarne again!” I tried to plug my ears for a moment to think, but they kept shouting. I sighed, rolled my eyes, then motioned both hands to take away their voices. Understandably, they both looked to me in a rage, but I just waved with the wooden carved name medallions in both hands, and exited the library.

Without voices, They would have to find a better way to communicate, or fight. I thought for a moment if they would really fight over this thing. I considered going back in, but then realized it was almost time for work. They would had to figure it out themselves. I would see them tomorrow to return their voices.

break

I came back with limited time. It was self-created urgency, as I decided to peruse the internet on my phone instead of launching the device this was written on. I entered into the library to find Lila and Kara sitting on the couch together. Kara was sitting, and Lila was laying with her head in Kara’s lap. Their hands pointed up, playing with lights without sound. Lila’s hand charted a path between red lights, creating a constellation in the air, then Kara’s hand shifted the links to fold the polygons created like paper with glowing points.

“Hey,” I said, walking up to them. Kara turned to me, then waved her hand to shoo me away. Lila looked at me with a smile, then brought a hand to her lips and blew on it to launch a glowing pink kiss-missile that burst with pink fire behind. I did not know whether to avoid it, or take it, but I trusted her. The lips impacted my cheek, bouncing off and changing trajectory to head for Kara’s face. She just flicked it away, but the homing kiss-missile rounded and impacted her, exploding in red and pink glitter confetti. Kara’s face was annoyed for a moment, then she burst out laughing without sound.

I decided to leave them soundless for a bit, and exited.

break

I returned a few days later, to find the library in a state of disarray. My first thought was that they started fighting again. Books that were usually on the shelves were strewn across the floor, on the couch, and along the stairs. There was a pile of them on the desk, mounting up like a wall around the outside edge. The curtains for the tall windows were torn and pulled from the above building rails. Right above, the golden painted ceiling was covered with graffiti of various colors. Some of the wooden arches had knives stuck in them, and not just any sort. These daggers looked sleek with red handles.

I put index fingers over my eyes to give myself sight through everything created within the creationism space growing from the seed of thought. After scanning around, I found Kara at odds with some creature in the kitchen that looked like a bundle of black tendrils, undulating tentacles. One of them had itself wrapped around her leg, and I had to punch beast back into his cage for thinking something sexual in a crisis. I teleported to Kara’s side, and used compressed air to peel the woven black tentacle off her leg.

“So, uh, what’s up?” I asked, forgetting that I still had their voices. With a flick, Kara’s voice came back. She stood up, anger on her face, that was also dripping with some sort of oily black sludge.

“As always, you’re late,” she said. The creature which now looked like a sea urchin on the floor, shifted between pointy tendrils and undulating them. I put up a forcefield around us that repelled the reaching tendrils. “Now help me get Lila back.”

“What happened here?” I asked, flipping the forcefield to a bubble around the mass of shifting black sludgy tentacles. The suggestion of resident beast was to try to fuck it, but I put a gag on him in response.

“That’s… hard to explain,” Kara said. “We should focus on Lila. She was taken up above the library, to the big guys.”

“Big guys?” Kara motioned to the little bundle of darkness and sludge trying to escape the condensed air bubble. I compacted it a bit more and turned the compressed air into a thick rubber. The end result was a ball with shifting oil and tentacles that felt like it was missing something. I threw in a bunch of glitter and watched as the glittery mess shifted around. JJ was delighted at how it looked.

I ascended the stairs with beast constantly remarking how hot Kara’s ass looked. She went first up the stairs to the attic, leading to a very uncomfortable moment when she looked back to me looking at her behind through no fault of my own. Well, that was my fault. Kara looked upset.

“Focus,” she said. “Lila’s probably in trouble.”

“Where’s Tarne?”

“Who?”

I froze.

“Tarne,” I repeated. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kara said. “I don’t know any ‘Tarne’. Oh, look, I guess Lila doesn’t need our help after all.” I studied Kara’s face to assure myself she was not joking, then followed her gaze above into the darkness where a suspended Lila held a giant sword between her legs. It had a glow to it, an orange hue of fire, shifting between black and orange as it travelled exposing a tiger pattern in motion. The sword struck, cutting a bright orange path in the darkness, almost a crack in the solid darkness. Explosions followed the cut, ripping apart the giant version of the creature downstairs, illuminating the tentacles undulating as they petrified and ashed away. It was awe-inspiring, but my mind was stuck on Tarne.

“Tarne is your child,” I said. “You and Lila were taking care of her, then she turned into a woman, and you couldn’t get her to stop masturbating and being loud about her sexuality. You don’t remember any of that? Please tell me that’s a joke!”

“That person you’re painting sounds like a lucid dream of your beast,” Kara said. “That part of your mind always over-sexualizes things, doesn’t it?” I felt sick to my stomach. It was not a joke. The existence of me in female form, unmade in the darkness and brought back into the world by Lila only to be separated from me, was non-existent. This had the Nth Goni written all over it. Did they already take her? Was she already safe in the Nth Infinity? I had to check with Fyntn the Third.

“How about Fyntn?” I asked. “You know Fyntn the Third, right?”

“Little bastard Goni,” Kara said, as Lila descended from the orange fading to darkness, giant sword still between her legs. “I wish I could forget the little shit. He’s around somewhere. Maybe in the garden. Now give my girl her voice back.” I flicked a finger to return Lila’s voice, and flew up next to her. The giant sword folded like paper into a silver crane that Lila tucked away into a pocket of her jeans. I hugged her, feeling her back soaking wet. I wondered why she was sweating, before I forgot that her triangle-like vagina on her back. My hands rubbed it, under beast control for a moment, but I threw him into a vat of tar to stop it.

“Please tell me you know who Tarne is,” I said. “I feel like I’m going insane.”

“Yeah, I know who Tarne is,” Lila said, putting me at ease until I saw her face. She was just appeasing my request with a confused look. “If I’d ever have a kid, I’d name her Tarne. But— How do you know that? I've never talked about that. Is— Are you reading my mind?” I felt a knot in my chest. I wanted to scream at them that Tarne was their child, that she was here just a few days ago. Anger built up in my head, and I called for Fyntn to teleport to me. When I put up my hand, he was already in my grip, struggling to use his claws to escape.

“If you tell me you don’t know who Tarne is, I will become really upset,” I said. Fyntn managed to flick a finger toward me, releasing a cut traveling toward me, like a blade of colorful light in the darkness around me. I escaped before the blade impacted, exiting the library. When I tried to go back in, There was something preventing my entrance. I had to try again, but was out of time. The issue would be on my mind all day.

break

I came back during lunch, having been unable to stop thinking about what just occurred. I read it back over, and could not comprehend the outcome. When I tried to enter the library, or even the very heart-most part of the box underneath left to me by Rebecca, I felt an invisible wall in the darkness of my mind. The connection felt blocked. Did Fyntn do this? Did that glowing blade of something dissociate the connection to the untethered space?

When I was in darkness of my mind, the way forward was obstructed, but I could trace the invisible wall with my hands. It felt soft, not solid, bouncy to a degree. If I tried hard enough, I could be able to get past it, but was it a good idea to push through? I had to try something.

I closed my eyes at the device, and clasped my hands together in a memory of hope. When I cleared the incredibly thick and sticky barrier, it still clung to me. It felt like it was invading my pores with superglue, only to pull the roots back out, something akin to pulling hair and teeth at the same time, and very slowly. I felt tears well at the pressure, and wanted to quit to stop the pain.

When I cleared the barrier, I found myself in the box underneath the library. The spiral staircase was gone, but a ladder remained to a hatch on top. The hatch was closed, but orange light was pouring in from above. Was it still Lila battling the strange invaders? I ascended the ladder, but my weight made the steps creak until a step broke under my weight. I sat up on the floor of the wooden box, trying to fix the ladder with my creationism. Nothing happened.

“This is a nightmare,” I said. “It has to be. I have to wake up,”

I dragged the table over to the hatch, but it did not get me high enough. I flipped the couch and used every ounce of strength I had against this real heaviness to shift the couch to the top of the table. The hatch was right up against the top of the couch, but when I climbed onto the table, I heard the familiar creak. It scared me to rush up to the top and burst the hatch open without looking around. I climbed past the couch and into the open space of the library to find… 

 

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