Chapter 61 - Not Like A Movie
I came back at lunch time, getting lost in the written pages from before, this time centralizing upon the time Lila told me about who she really was. Thirty minutes passed without my notice of just reading back what I noted down before. It was shortly after I tried to erase my connection to the box left behind by Rebecca, becoming a baby that Lila had to care for. It was likely before Kara showed up again, before Fyntn, and before Tarne was exposed as Akier. While being much more annoying back then, it was much simpler than having to convince someone to erase a memory from their mind.
I stepped into the room where the three lay sleeping. Rather than ask for Fyntn to stop by again, I picked up the Keir from the floor and called forth the AI James Denizen. He appeared out of a gray shimmer, gaining color by the second until he looked solid. When I passed my hand through him, he phased out to the colors and a ghost-like figure underneath at the entrance point.
“Hey, James,” I said. “Kara is… in trouble.” The AI looked concerned.
“How can I help?” He asked.
“You can help me access her mind,” I said. “I must tell you, we cannot be seen. She cannot sense my presence. She can see you, but I have to remain hidden. Ok?” I hoped that what I did to the Keir before kept him compliant. Maybe it was a bad idea to trust him.
“Ok.”
“Ok?”
“Let’s go,” he said, and withdrew a strange looking device with four cubes arranged like the corners of a four-sided die. He put the device up to Kara’s head as it started humming. We waited in silence for a few minutes as the device buzzed, reminding me of a very uncomfortable vibrator. When Kara lurched awake, I knew exactly what happened. I pushed air at her from above to keep her down against the bed, while swiping at James, who lunged to grab the Keir I held onto. I levitated the device back over to James, and shoved it into his mouth, which just parted the light overlaps on the way down to the ground.
“Oh, you tricky bastard,” I said, then compressed him into a ball of light, stuffed him back into a compartment of the Keir’s many sections, then sealed the device back up. Kara was still awake, fighting a heavy downpour of air while her clothing was getting torn to shreds from the air friction. I increased the force of the air as all her clothes were torn off. She stood there naked, withstanding the downpour of air with an angry grimace on her face. I pushed a powerful sleeping spell, of a higher magnitude than before, and shivered when she let go back to sleep. That could have ended really badly.
Before I left, I clothed her in some sweatpants with hoodie and sighed myself right out of the library. It was stupid to think her AI husband would do anything else.
break
I returned the next day, with most of my time before work gone. I did not want this to dominate my free time, though I was still wasting it on entertainment rather than using it productively. If I could, I would go somewhere after work to try and solve this problem. A problem. This was a problem. I wanted to leave them sleeping, but it was my fault all of this happened. My fault Tarne was sad, my fault she was alive at all. All my real life hang ups only made them suffer.
I just wanted someone to have around, to always be there for me. Even in my own mind, those who I sought had other things to do. The thought brought tears to my eyes. If I ventured into this again, I would only do it for myself. There would be no Kara, no Lila, no Rebecca, or Finnelgamin. There would be no people with minds of their own, just bodies to listen to me, to be with me. They would also lack realism to reply, to respond, and challenge my thinking.
It started, after all, as therapy. I did not trust, so I retreated within, self-treating my anger, my addictions, and my hang-ups. Finn did not help me that much, but stopped me abusing alcohol to feel good. Rebecca helped me realize that having someone just like me next to me did not make things easier, only harder. And here, I delved the deepest I ever have, through the layers of masking. I felt uncomfortable in my body, in my skin, as myself. I wanted to not exist rather than face being who I wanted to be that would upset people, because it would be easier than explaining it.
I did not even want to face the three sleeping princesses now. The introspection ate up all my time. I wanted space from it. I wanted to fix what I broke for them, their happy lives. Just like my long process of growing up did to my family. No matter where I would go, the people around me suffered by proxy, but that was life. Growing up was a sustained flame, hurting those closest to keep warm. There was a learning curve to controlling the emotions within the blaze into a pilot light that kept warmth, passions, and love, without hurting anyone.
break
I came back the next day, with no intention to fix anything and half an hour before work. I appeared at the three sleeping upstairs with Fyntn already there.
“I need this to be over,” I said. He just nodded, and opened the portal. I stepped through with him into the middle ground. “I’m…”
“I know.” He opened a portal for Kara’s mind.
When I stepped inside, it was darkness. I created a torch in my hand, blazing in Valerie’s rainbow flame with intensity. It did nothing to illuminate the endless darkness, nor the floor I was supposedly standing on. I created a sofa chair and sat down, turning the torch to a lamp of a light green hue. I pulled a Keir shaped object out of thin air, finding Kara by my side to take it away. I created another sofa chair for her near the lamp, but she did not look interested in sitting down.
“Please, sit,” I said. She inspected the Keir object and then crumbled it to dust. When she started walking away, I held onto her wrist. “For James. Come on.” Her wrist flexed away, then relaxed. Kara sat on the sofa chair opposite me. I pushed a small fireplace into existence beside us.
“What do you want?” Kara asked, crossing her arms while glaring at me.
“I want things to go back to the way they were before you knew about Tarne,” I said. “I know that’s a silly thought, but you’re stressing me out in my reality. I want to write happy stories. I want to get as many connections from the Infinity Void into my world as I can. I want to live a life thanks to that connection. I want others to read those stories and enjoy them like I am.”
“What’s stopping you from all that?”
“I can’t do that when I know you will just keep suffering,” I said.
“I’ve been suffering from the very moment of my birth,” Kara said. “Sure, I had some fun along the way, but suffering is just something you keep doing until you die.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “You struggle until you die. Suffering is something you go through. It’s a doorway that you struggle through, no matter how long it takes.”
“So you’re saying that you’ve been trying to get your foot in the door this whole time you’ve been alive?”
“Everyone is,” I said. “I just want a calm place where I can feel safe, a home that is there whenever I need it.”
“Well, I don’t have that anymore,” Kara said. “Not without James. Not without my old man.”
“And Lila? What about her?” I asked, materializing Lila in the space next to us. Kara’s face contorted in sadness as tears appeared for a moment before anger took hold. “Don’t you love her?” I watched Kara battle anger and sadness on her face. She buried it in her hands to hide from me.
“I love her,” she said. “But I can’t love Tarne knowing she’s Akier Vil Moredo.”
“Exactly,” I said. “You shouldn’t know.”
“But then I see myself the way it was before, standing next to that monster and playing with him, and it makes me want to vomit. I can’t do it. I can’t forget what I know. I can’t do it! Please stop trying to make me!”
“I already told you that she’s not the person who caused you pain,” I said. “TARNE IS NOT AKIER!”
“YOU LITERALLY SAID SHE BECAME HIM ONCE BEFORE!”
“THAT WAS MY FAULT!”
“DOESN’T CHANGE THAT SHE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE AKIER AGAIN!”
“WHY ARE WE YELLING?!” I shouted. “The only way out of this is through forgetting. I’m sorry, Kara. I promised Tarne, and I don’t promise something if I intend to break it. Even if it takes my whole life of this, of the back and forth with you to convince you, I will.”
“No, you won’t,” Kara said. “And the Rahin will come, and they will erase all of this. It’s only a matter of time, something that doesn’t work in here.”
“If it doesn’t work in here, then it will never happen,” I said.
“It will, as a surprise.”
I shivered at the thought of going into the library only to find nothing there. It happened before. I motioned for Fyntn to pull me out and shook my head on the way out before sighing myself out of the library.
break
I came back the next morning with an idea for more bargaining. It was unlikely to work, but I could not give up. This was holding up my writing development, and the ideas in my head for certain stories were getting backed up. I wanted to rewrite Death Ballads, rework Tiarto, and continue advancing my archives, while also entertaining some new ideas into short stories. All of that was held back by this crux point in my mind. I could not have her knowing about Tarne. With it only remaining in my mind and Fyntn’s mind and record, the likelihood of it becoming known was low.
I entered the library with gusto, but Fyntn was not among the three sleeping princesses. I left the room after a few minutes of waiting and found the ladder to the attic open. He stood there, in the middle of the room. The disco ball spun above without lights on it, and he watched it.
“Fyntn?” I asked. He did not turn around at my words. “Are you ok?”
“I want to forget, too,” he finally said when I got closer to him. “If I could. Forgetting for my kind is like death.”
“It’s like death to my kind as well,” I said. “But it’s also a brand new life when there is nobody to remind you that you forgot. It’s freedom from the things you’ve experienced, and a new start.” Fyntn held out a hand, and I took it. His gentle grip felt sad, careful not to cut me with his sharp claws. It was strange to connect to such a different creature who was not able to even view time passing. I knew he knew my every thought, every secret, all that I kept from everyone I knew and all of you. Having a person that saw your everything without you releasing that information was disarming, but comforting. I understood why Nth Goni stayed away from the people they noted down.
“Sorry,” Fyntn said. “We should get back to Kara.”
“We can stay here a bit longer,” I said, and turned on the lights pointed at the disco ball so that the lights were cast in all directions. The flurry of light in the room felt weird without music, but strangely calming. I motioned to create two recliners underneath us while still holding hands. “How does the Nth infinity look like?”
“It’s just a big city,” Fyntn said. “Overcrowded. Each Goni has a little pod they can go to, where they are created. It’s a tiny bubble of personal space, but it’s enough. All this space feels insanely lonely, but we get used to it. That’s why all kinds of beings crowd in cities, to feel part of a whole rather than alone in the wilderness. That comes with some outliers of course.”
“Would it be weird if I wrote a story about the Nth Goni?” I asked.
“For what reason?”
“Just to explain to people in my reality that there are such things in the beyond, or to provide that idea,” I said. “Or would that be against the Rahin ways.”
“Oh, we don’t give a damn about the Rahin,” Fyntn said. “As for writing about the Goni, You’d have to shroud the idea in some flavoring. Others have done this before. Some even gave us different names, like imps, or familiars.”
“Ah, demons,” I said.
“That, too,” Fyntn said. “It’s not always possible to avoid notice, and erasing memories is never one hundred percent.”
“You mean… with Kara?” Fyntn nodded.
“You can take the memory, but she will always be cautious around Tarne even if she can’t remember why. The memories record themselves in the physical just as much as the ceronial, or mental.”
“Ceronial?”
“It’s what Goni have,” Fyntn said, peeling back a piece of mustard yellow skin to reveal a glowing salt crystal suspended in a lattice of green threads. “A Ceron. Something like a dimension crystal. It gives us access to see things inside, without seeing things. It’s hard to explain. Humans have a brain, cerebral hard record of memories and experiences. Yours is squishy, ours is solid. Both are fragile. Think of it as a solid state to your floppy disc, with added features.”
“It looks cool,” I said. “Do you get the claws from the Nth Goni authorities, or is that with you from creation?”
“We’re ‘born’ with them,” he said. “But they are only removable after we get assigned a person to lead through their story, the full range of their life, all timelines that run alongside. Some beings live a long while, but to creatures of no time, no space, and no love, time is not a thing to measure.” I squeezed Fyntn’s hand a little tighter.
“I love you,” I said. “Even if you don’t have such feelings. I’m glad you were here for this part of my life, interactive.”
“I’m glad, too,” he said. “In far too many timelines, you took your own life, and I never intervened. I’m glad you were able to save yourself in this one, even if it caused some changes in your mind that distanced you from others.”
“Seeing all the timelines must be heartbreaking sometimes,” I said, realizing they probably did not have hearts. Were they the inspiration for Heartless, too?
“It’s difficult, but that’s the job,” Fyntn said. “It’s not something that a human mind could comprehend. At any given moment, there are a great number of other timelines having moments of their life that don’t ever interact with me, and I’m just happily watching and recording. I hope you get those moments in the future. I’ll be there to note them down.”
“For the record?” I asked. “Even though I might be regurgitated and end up some other being after the virgin existence?”
“Oh, I guess you don’t know that bit,” he said. “Maybe it’s better to leave some to the imagination, but you’re hinting at it anyways. The gem is your story witnessed by other specters, but Nth Goni keep a hard copy in a dimensional pocket library, a recording of all timelines that can only be read by Goni. Rahin keep the movie in first person, you get freedom to watch other movies, but only the Goni have the hard copies on record.”
“So even if I don’t become a movie, I will always be a book?”
“Always.”
“That’s something I wish I’d know from the very start.”
“But then you wouldn’t be here.”
“True,” I said. “I’d probably be living my life without Finn, and Rebecca, and Lila, and Tarne, and Kara. It would be simpler, and I’m sure some timelines already lived those.”
“You’d be correct there,” Fyntn said. “Now, should we give Kara another try?”
“Time runs short,” I said. “I will come back at lunch.”
“Ok.”
“Thank you, Fyntn,” I said. He said nothing, only nodded. I let go of his hand, and sank through the recliner in liquid form which sank into the floor and out of the library.
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