Chapter 62 - Suffering
I returned at lunch, a bit late by my own fault. Fyntn was right beside me this time as I entered the library on the second floor. The room was silent, except for the portal created in the air oscillating gently with the sound of continuous and slow tearing of paper. We walked through it together, the slightly red edge oscillating open to fit us as we passed through. It shrank as soon as we were through. Beyond was another portal that led to Kara’s mind, just like before, but this one’s edge was white-out green, and no sound was coming from it.
“Here goes something,” I said.
“Nothing,” Fyntn said.
“That’s the expression, but I’m going to try something.”
“Good.”
I stepped through into darkness that lasted a few seconds before a bright light impacted my body, tearing at my plot armor. The green shreds tore into the fading light, as I reached for them. I clung to the last of the green shimmering cloth while floating naked in the darkness. I pushed my creationism to force the cloth back together, mustering only a bathrobe instead of the original clothing.
“I’ll hurt you,” Kara’s voice whispered in the darkness behind me. When I turned to look, there was nothing there. “Leave me alone.” It tickled on the back of my neck, with a slight breath of warmth. I cringed, and careened my neck in response.
“I need to ask you something!” I shouted into the darkness, sound vanishing immediately with zero echo returning to my ears. “Is there something I can do that you would consider worth giving up the memory for?” I tried to find something in the darkness, but it shifted around randomly without any shape. In a few minutes, what looked like endless space gathered into a figure outlined as if under very dark cloth. The only reason it was visible was because of the varying densities of darkness in the slight green light coming off my shimmering green bathrobe.
“Nothing,” the figure said, opening lips illuminated by the light to a mouth still darker. The mouth opened wider and wider until I passed through the lips like through an arch. “Nothing could be worth forgetting.”
“Please! Just consider it!” I said. “It’s not only forgetting, it’s also remembering the love you shared for Tarne, and with Lila, a happy existence with the two of them, a family. It’s freedom, from this, from me, an escape. It’s not knowing you were ever imprisoned, just like before when I put you in the crystal. It’s levity, for levity’s sake.”
“It’s sickening to think you understand so little about people’s emotions,” Kara said, forming a body to meet my eyes with anger. “The bad emotions shape the good, and vice versa. The bad shapes your enjoyment of good, and makes you understand how others are doing.”
“But it’s not bad!” I argued. “She’s a child now! She’s just a child! I told you this so many times! She’s NOT AKIER ANYMORE!”
“SHE WAS!”
“THINGS CHANGE!”
“How can they, when dead don’t come back to life, when trauma isn’t entirely erased, just subdued?”
“We have to try, Kara,” I said. “Otherwise, history just repeats itself. Break the cycle, forget you know it, and love Tarne like you loved Johnny and Danielle. Please, consider what I could give you for that memory.” Silence. I sighed, then motioned for Fyntn to pull me back out.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, right as the portal to her mind closed. I smiled, grabbing Fyntn and jumping through the first portal.
“Did you hear?”
“Yes, there is hope.”
“Hope,” I said, and vanished into smoke to exit the library.
break
I came back at lunch the next day to check in on Kara, but Fyntn was not there. I tried calling for him for a few minutes, but he didn’t respond, so I left the room holding the three. The library was so silent and empty. It made me miss the crazy things going on when Rebecca was there. I played a ghost recording of a battle I stumbled in on once. James was there with Kara, back to back in the fight. I motioned my hand over the scene shifting it to the first memory of the library in my reality.
There was one main entrance with a counter for checking books out where the stairs were, and two sealed emergency exits on either sides of the large space. It was the first indoor space I knew that was large enough for my expansive mind. I started with reading poetry at random, quickly finding the fiction section to read books about different worlds and supernatural encounters. I spent most of my free time there, lunches when possible, and mornings before classes started.
Slowly the scene changed to the library house where Tiarto lived after his struggle in Ahedis Nuv. He met Sana, and battled Vines of Lym, and other things throughout his story I had written out only in summary. I knew who would die, and how. I knew the twists and turns, and the heartbreaking events that would transpire. It all lived in summary, and begged to be a series, but other stories tickled my mind with interest. When this ended, and fully ended, I would miss the sanctuary I created for myself to understand my anxiety of interacting with people.
For now, it remained quiet. I stepped backward one step, while skipping up to vanish into a puff of mist to exit the library.
break
I came back with half an hour left on my lunch break four days later. Now fearing the virus mutations all over again because of a co-worker who caught it, I led a stressed existence of work and rest. I entered the library in the main hall to emptiness I had come to expect having locked the three princesses in endless sleep. Fyntn appeared from their room with a quizzical look on his face.
“I’m not going inside her mind today,” I said. He nodded and disappeared within. I could always bring out robot, JJ, and beast to liven the place up, but the seasonal slump had me, even though I loved the cold and dark. When you could not enjoy the things you loved, the sadness really beat you down. Every small annoyance was a bout of silent anger. I did not want to see Kara in that state and wished I could explode at her that she was robbing me of my free writing time.
I had to see this through to the destruction of this place inside my mind where I escaped, where I felt safe. Without it, I would live a raw existence of having no home to go back to, having no friends nearby, and no family in vicinity. At the very least, Kara, Lila and Tarne would be happy. I wanted to sacrifice everything I could for that, to make up for the bad things that I had done.
The emptiness of the large space filled with books felt ancient, frozen in time, and though it technically was, I could only reach it still connected to my timeline, under my limits of free time. Very soon, I would see this to a satisfying end. I closed my eyes, blinking out of existence in the library, and back at the device recording my thoughts with little bits of light changing on the screen. I missed writing by hand, but my hand could not keep up. Neither could the keyboard, but there was something I had not tried yet that could keep up with my thoughts.
break
I came back another twenty minutes before work. My hours have been switched due to being short staffed. I knew there was no time to check in with Kara, but I wanted to try it anyway.
I appeared at the three beds. Fyntn was ready for me with a portal open. I walked through the red one with him, then met his molten gold eyes at the cut gem pupils with a silent nod. I stepped through into a vista from my dreams. I was on a tall cliff by the sea. The weather was rainy, but the ground was mostly green with plants. There was a lighthouse in the distance, casting a strange rainbow light onto the sea. The various parts of light reflected on the waves, making the water appear different colors where the light touched down.
I skipped into the air thanks to my plot armor. I liked being suspended in the air of a rainy day, purely because that would not be possible otherwise. No flying machines worked well the rain. They could handle it mostly, but were not built to withstand or use it for benefit. Before I knew it, I was at the lighthouse. I touched down where Kara stood, right underneath the beam of light circling the fog.
“I thought about what you said!” Kara shouted over the rain and wind in my ears. I put up a finger, then made a circle to create a bubble to shield us from rain and wind. “And I can’t do it.”
“You’re holding me in creative purgatory,” I said. “I can’t let you out of here if you can’t accept Tarne as your child. She has nowhere else to go. Lila needs your help with her. I need this to be over so I can bring other ideas from the torrent of ideas pummeling my brain daily. Why can’t you sacrifice this one part of yourself to live happier?” I knew the reason. She told me, showed me. The man Tarne was once, made James Denizen into an enemy. Kara had to kill him to save herself.
“Don’t you DARE ask me to sacrifice any MORE!” Kara shouted.
“You won’t even remember it,” I said.
“But I have to give it up willingly, knowing what I know?”
“I can’t rip memories out of you,” I said. “You have enough control to give me copies of the memory instead of the entirety of it. Only you can scoop the original out. It has to be your choice, but let me say this before you condemn yourself to endless sleep. I want this to end, this place. I want the library, and the seed of thought to cease to exist. I want to escape my ideas into the world, sell them, and give them to others. I want them to run with the ideas as if scissors, tearing the fabric of my reality to shreds. I want everyone to know that you CAN do that, no matter where you come from, and who you are. You’re the ribbon for it. If I can’t cut through this hang up of you remembering one bad thing from your past—”
“IT’S NOT ONE BAD THING!” Kara burst out. “IT’S MY WHOLE LIFE! AKIER RUINED MY WHOLE LIFE! HE THREW MY ONLY SAVIOR INTO THE VOID! I SPENT MY WHOLE LIFE IN THERE LOOKING FOR HIM! JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS DONE, AND I FOUND SOMEONE I COULD SPEND MY LIFE WITH, HE MADE ME KILL HIM! I CAN’T FORGIVE THAT! EVER!”
“But you only met James because of him,” I said. “And James isn’t dead. You have him as your AI. You have copies of yourself in the ivy meeting James over and over, being with James forever. Not to mention that you can always go to his gem and watch his story over, become him. I know it’s different, and I know once you lose someone, nothing is the same, but the only reason I’m here at all is because of the loss of my father. I NEEDED there to be a different system where he didn’t suffer even further than life. This is it. This is the ivy that I want for everyone. An afterlife that makes sense, making room for everyone’s thinking, all ideas of what happens after. And from this, countless ideas are born, and sourced, all to advance our thinking.”
Kara lowered her head.
“Think it over,” I said, but she grabbed onto my hand as I turned to leave. She pulled me into a hug as tears burst forth in my reality. We both suffered, but that was no reason to give up in anger. “Please think it over more, for both our sakes.” I looked to the sky as it vanished to the ceiling of the library. Fyntn’s hand missing claws held onto my pant leg. I looked at him, still unable to control my tears. His eyes swam gold more than normal. I stepped out of the red portal and vanished out of the library.
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