Chapter 51 - How Things End

I came back the next day, following a read through of when Fyntn found out about my reality core binding to a seed of thought. It was a fun time, but now was no time at all. I sat at the controls again, in some sort of temporal bubble that Akier somehow had a way of manipulating. Last time, I heard him whispering in my ear, but only after I wound time back. The ten-cut still blazed white light on a frozen scene, as I hesitated over the orb to wind time back.

There had to be a way to rewind time to before Akier was realized in Tarne. If only Fyntn could assist me here. He had to be familiar with this setup. I tried winding time back again, this time not moving from the spot in the library that I hovered. Tarne wound back to before the lunge, and Fyntn got put back together, but Akier did not walk back upstairs backwards like before. Instead, he just sat on the couch again, this time grinning like mad.

I flew closer to see if he knew where I was again, but he just kept looking ahead, grinning, and laughing maniacally. There was something I was missing. Was there a switch I flipped, or that he flipped that allowed him to impede my command over time? I inspected all the buttons and switches, going one by one with a recollection of what they did. After the first ten that altered clothing, or lack thereof, there was the nudity smoothing button, followed by form changing buttons to not consider people actual beings, just objects.

Everything remotely similar to a person was changed into a desired shape, chosen from a dial that displayed the choices ad infinitum. Right after that dial the next few buttons dealt with mental readings, one making thoughts available to hear, and another broadcasting thoughts into the scene as they occurred. Next array of buttons dealt with the environment, and changing of color schemes, de-saturation, and over-saturation.

“Maybe if I knew what you were thinking, I’d understand what’s going on,” I said, hovering over the button to hear Akier’s thoughts. Was this exactly what he wanted me to do? I grit my teeth to assure myself that he had no sway over my decisions before pressing the button. As soon as I pressed it, a wailing scream made me jump back. It was like a screech of a wild animal in the dark of night, only far worse coming from a mentally deranged individual. I un-clicked the button to find Moredo standing, much closer to the bubble where I hovered. He was no longer grinning, not laughing.

“You think this changes something,” he said, with Tarne’s voice. “This is just a joke, told over and over, wearing on the mind. Time doesn’t EXIST HERE!” I reeled the bubble back at the increased volume. If time did not exist, how was he stopped, or frozen in this moment? Maybe because time was not entirely frozen, he was only partially impeded. Wouldn’t that mean Fyntn was also the same way? I hit the orb to reset to the time the ten-cut happened, then wound time back to before Fyntn was killed. This time I stopped the rewind after he exited from the portal and flew over to him. His gem eyes followed me, but Tarne’s eyes did the same.

“Hold on, Fyntn,” I said. “I need your help, so hold on.” I looked for anything in the console bubble that let me interact with the scene. None of the buttons bridged the gap between me inside, and the Goni in the scene, trying to sneak behind Tarne. I grit my teeth, and leaned over the console to reach my hand at the bubble from the inside. The second my hand pierced through the barrier, it popped it like a balloon. The console disappeared from beneath me, and I fell into the scene, a duplicate.

I was confused, looking at my female form from the outside. I inspected myself, looking like the male version I detested. Tarne looked confused for a moment, but lunged in my direction.

“The ten-cut! Now!” I shouted at Fyntn. He wasted no time, jumping into the air, spinning his ear claws in position with fingers, ears and tail to cut the space with a smaller ten-cut of ten perfectly-parallel lines glowing white. I reached into it at the same time with Fyntn, as Tarne flew towards us. Again too late.

When I opened my eyes, we sat at the console together, in a lazy Susan of seats before the single console.

“What the hell just happened?” Fyntn asked.

“You died,” I said. “Akier killed you.”

“Oh.”

“I did a ten-cut before,” I said, “But it was after. Apparently, time doesn’t work here the same. I tried rewinding, but at a certain point Akier just realizes it and prevents me from going back. I need your help. Kara is in the bathroom, dead. Lila is possibly in her bedroom, equally dead. This time, you’re not dead, so we have to make this work.”

“Shit,” Fyntn said. “And you need to leave.”

“Yeah, there is that,” I said. “Can you wait for me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“We’re both here, so it should be possible for you to try things while I’m away. Just don’t reach through the barrier or we’ll end up in the same thing we just did. What is going to happen to the second version of me anyway?”

“Beats me,” Fyntn said. “Time shifting in a space where time is different isn’t standard time mechanics. Maybe she’ll cease to exist in the wind, or maybe we’ll have to cease to exist after winding things back far enough.”

“Then, it’s ok that I’m male again,” I said. “I can cease to exist. Oh, but the past me is male, too. Existence is sometimes such a cruel piece of shit.”

“Yeah,” Fyntn said. “I just want to go back to the Nth infinity and bathe in diamond sand again. The feel of diamonds running over our skin is just euphoria.”

“I hope you can get back there and unwind soon,” I said. “This thing is at an end after all.” Fyntn looked at me, then nodded. I said nothing more, and exited the console bubble back to my reality.

break

I came back the next day to a seat of the spinning six-seater lazy Susan-esque carousel. Fyntn was nowhere in sight, but when I came up to the console, he jumped from the central position behind me into a seat next to mine.

“Took you some time,” he said. I opened my mouth to explain, but he put his three-fingered hand up. “Yes, yes, ok, I know.”

“Are you—“

“Oh, sorry,” Fyntn said, looking over to me. “Reading your mind.”

“So, lets give this another try,” I said, spinning leaning forward to the controls. “See, there he is, in the scene. When I wound it back last time, he went upstairs to the bathroom where Kara was. I undid that brutality, but he didn’t go to Lila’s bedroom where he was supposed to be next. Something’s wrong. Look.” I took hold of the controls and flew up to him in the air. As I spun the orb backward to before the lunge, I saw myself standing with Fyntn, then get inhaled by a mercury-looking orb in the air that vanished from sight as the Goni walked back into the portal he snuck in through.

“There I go,” Fyntn said. “It’s weird seeing yourself when you AREN’T yourself, isn’t it?”

“Look!” I said, pointing into the scene where Akier remained frozen in a moment, but the second I moved the orb even a tiny bit, his gaze always shifted to our orb, though I was certain the other one still existed where the portal opened. “How is he doing that?” Fyntn put a wrist to his tiny chin and looked down.

“I have an inkling, but you don’t like it,” he said.

“I don’t?”

“You have the same inkling,” he said. “You have had it since yesterday. In your mind you already arranged a dramatic moment where I push you out of the bubble after explaining that he’s doing this because you were once him. It may very well be that he’s tied to your reality core, and when you alter something, that sends something over to him, even if he’s frozen in time.” I hesitated turning to Fyntn, expecting him to act the way I imagined he would.

“And?” I asked.

“And?”

“And did you come to the decision to follow through the way I imagined you would?”

“No,” he said. I sighed in relief. “But it’s worth trying, if you’d be ok with it.”

I froze. What would this mean? I would fall out of the bubble, powerless, at the mercy of creationism versus creationism with impending doom of being wound back and erased. How would that feel? The thought of it alone was fracturing my mind, and Fyntn was privy to everything I was thinking anyway.

“I—“

“It was stupid of me to suggest,” Fyntn said. “I’m sorry. It’s scary to risk resetting outside of control.” I put my hand on Fyntn’s shoulder and looked into his molten gold eyes with gems for irises, trying to imagine standard eyes there.

“Hey,” I said. “So, no matter what happens, you’re pretty cool. Ok?”

“O…k?” Fyntn said, confused as I kept my thoughts blank right before I jumped over the console and into the scene before me.

I fell out of nowhere to the floor of the library. Tarne was there, already reaching into creationism to bring out a longer than normal sword I had seen only one character use before. The handle appeared first, hovering as dust particles of ash, compacting into it before my very eyes. In the fashion of this idea, I slammed my right foot against the floor to kick up a giant buster sword from mental creation. Was this going to be a sword fight?

I brought the sword up just as the long blade struck down, grinding down the length of the thick piece of metal I was holding. I parried the strike, and jumped up landing on the back of the giant blade to shove it down into a cleave. Tarne dodged the strike, whipping the long sword against my cheek to leave a deep gash. I landed and healed the cut, but had no time to do anything else as Akier ran the blade all the way through me with a quick step.

“A sword fight?” I asked. “How barbaric and plebeian.”

“Whatever works, Jack,” Akier said. “Been playing with time, have you?” I chuckled a bit before blood flowed from my mouth.

“This doesn’t matter,” I said. “This is the end piece. It no longer exists. My buddy is already in the past, probably before you knew all about who you were.” I grit my teeth, tightened my stomach around the sword like a tummy-fist, and snapped the blade at the hilt. I looked up where I left the buster blade, and delighted in watching the weight of it come down point-first into Akier’s shoulder, slicing his right arm clean off. The sword set down vertically in the wood, triumphant.

“You’re lying!” Tarne exploded. Fire burst forth from her mouth, flaring out at every breath from the nostrils and lips. “Why would you leave yourself here? You wouldn’t do this! They aren’t going to bring you back there! You’re like me! You can’t trust people because they will always only change your mind!”

“I find that trusting in someone is believing in them,” I said. “And everyone needs someone to believe in them, even if that someone is family, a stranger, or a friend. You only get so far by always doing things by yourself. Didn’t you already learn that lesson? Didn’t you have a family? Wasn’t she one such person?” Tarne looked away from me, as a blonde-haired woman walked up. He set down the hilt, and kissed her, shifting into a different body, his supposed original.

“I know you’re an illusion,” he told her, “But I’ve missed you, Jorana.” I did a double-take, even out in my reality. I sat there for a good minute, frozen at the keyboard by the idea that he and Jorana, the woman who saved him as a baby, were the couple that gave him a daughter. Was it the same one who saved him from the Rahin, the teacher of the keir, the woman he and Kara’s old man learned from? Why was he… sexual with her? Was he? Or was this a different Jorana, that just reminded him of the teacher he had lost? The name had to be out somewhere else.

A sudden lock popped open in my head. Was he… Barnaby?

“Barnaby?” I asked, doubting it to be true. It could not be. He was nothing like Barnaby from the Dust Plains, but that story had far too many similar themes, and that name. No-longer-Tarne turned away from the lasting passionate kiss, only to look at me in confusion. I sighed in relief. “Another story. I’m not making this show up for you. You have creationism in here, Akier. Anything you can think of is brought to REALITY.” I met his eyes, as he looked over to Jorana. Next, he held out his hand to have it caught by a little girl, his daughter. Together with the two of them, he blew a chunk of the library off into the darkness and flew off together without a second thought. I watched them disappear in the darkness of untethered space, and smiled.

I did not know what followed this, but I was sure the erasure of this moment meant his happy ending was not an ending. As for me, I would exit this space, and if I was lucky, I would come back to the library where the most troubling thing about Tarne was that she kept masturbating everywhere loudly. I chuckled at that. Or… I would try to come back in, only to have nothing left here. I looked over the library one last time, feeling tears well in my eyes, then exited. 

 

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