Chapter 63 - Just Like Before
I came back on the last Monday before Christmas. It was going to be a short week at work, but I was sure it would be as difficult as always around this time of the year. Countless people wanted to take time off, leaving the work in less experienced hands. I entered the library at the main large room, with my shimmering green clothing already on. Fyntn appeared from a portal at the top of the stairs as if to urge me to come up. When I did not, he walked through and arrived next to me at another portal.
“Hey, Fyntn,” I said. “Think we have a chance today?”
“Even if not today, are you going to stop trying?”
“No, you’re right,” I said, nodding. “Doesn’t matter how long it takes. Even if I can’t get them back together until next year. I’ll try until I can bring them back.”
Fyntn said nothing more, only created a portal into a darkness that opened up to the three beds crowded in the conjoined room upstairs. We stepped through as the back of one claw smoothed the air to patch the portal smaller and smaller until it vanished. He created another portal into the space between the library and Kara’s mind, then a portal into her mind with a light green edge.
I walked through the opening into a dark space. Once the light green rim closed behind me, the space exploded with light. It was a meadow, green and lush under a blue sky. The hills were rolling into the distance, littered with colorful flowers scattered in patches. In the distance, I saw a pillar of blue light, nearly invisible against the bluest sky. I flew toward it out of curiosity. There was no other landmark in the sea of flowers.
When I got closer, it was clear the beam was not technology. Kara stood at the bottom, as the very center of it, hands out to the meadow and eyes closed. I feared it was a trap of some sort, so I circled around the pillar of light before setting down at the pseudo-surface of it. Within the confines, the ground was razed to bare soil. The difference between the lush ground and the barren earth was stark. The sound of the beam was static, as if the light was sending something out into the sky, a call of a sort.
“Kara?” I asked. She did not budge, almost looking like a statue of herself. I tried to reach into the blue, only to find it repel my hand. I pushed through the shell only to feel my hand shred into ash against the rushing light. It was more like water in that regard, but I could see through it clearly. I recreated my hand thanks to creationism and extended a field of creationism into the blue beam. With the path cleared, I reached Kara’s shoulder and shook it to wake her up. “KARA!”
“Oop,” she said, and dropped her hands together with the pillar of light. “Sorry about that. I was…” She trailed off.
“You were what?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. “Sorry you got caught up in it.”
“You’re… sorry?”
“What?”
“You’re usually more, let’s say... agitated,” I said.
“Angry you mean,” she said. “Angry that you’re keeping me a prisoner of my own mind until I give up a memory that disadvantages something you created in a place you’re not supposed to be in the first place?”
“That about covers it,” I said. “Did you have a change of heart maybe? Did you decide to give up that memory for the sake of happiness?”
“No,” Kara replied. I lowered my head in disappointment. There was still hope, but it was dwindling. I did not want her to forget James, or anything from her past. I just wanted her to give Tarne a shot at happiness, a meadow with no dark flowers. A meadow. Was there a connection between Kara and Tarne in dreams? “Lighten up, will you? I was just kidding. I thought it through.”
“And?” I asked, leaning forward in hope.
“Can’t do it,” Kara said, but smirked. I leaned back with a grimace of confusion. “Can’t you tell? Let it be a surprise, ok?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s… hard to explain,” she said with a smile. “Just… trust me. Can you?”
“I… I don’t know,” I said, having no idea what was happening. “What am I supposed to trust exactly?”
“Trust that I will make the right choice,” she said.
“I hope you will,” I said.
“But trust in me instead.”
“I trust in you to make the right choice.”
“See, now that sounds like a threat,” Kara said, slapping an open hand across my back. I winced, but there was no pain. “Say it like you actually mean it.”
“How is that exactly?”
“Here,” Kara said, holding out a hand. I grabbed hold as she pulled me closer for a hug. I closed my eyes and imagined actually holding her. “Do you trust me, Jack?” I felt my hands lock onto her back.
“I trust you, Kara,” I said.
“Good,” she said, as we fell through the meadow and soil into the darkness of her mind, still clutching together. There was no rush of air, and nothing to suggest we were falling. We were instead suspended in nothingness, a mind at rest.
“Kara?” I asked. The person I was holding turned to stone, a hard figure clutching around me in the dark. When I moved to free myself, she crumbled to rocks and sand until there was nothing left of her. “That was… dramatic.”
“Proving a point,” her voice said behind me.
“And the point was?”
“That you trust me,” she said, “And I trust you, with this memory.” She held up a small stone orb between her fingers. I caught it out of the darkness and gazed within a glass opening like a tiny TV playing the memories of Kara finding out that Tarne was once Akier. “You should probably also have these.” She fired off a few more stone orbs that I caught suspended in the air above my hand. They held any mention of Akier being Tarne, scrubbing her mind of the idea for good.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “I won't remember any of this, you know. The progress you made here means jack shit. So be prepared for mean Kara all over.”
“Anything to keep you happy,” I said. “Anything to keep Tarne from feeling hurt.” I crushed the memories into powder within my creationism until they vanished completely.
“Good,” she said. “Now, it’s time to wake up.”
I motioned for Fyntn, who pulled me through the portals back to the room. I met his eyes in happiness. He nodded. We both watched as the three of them stirred, but I only smiled and vanished from the library. I would come back again.
break
I came back the next day, unprepared for how they would act without those certain memories. I wanted to go back to before it all started, but knowing was part of the pain. I would hold that within me until the very end, though I was sure Kara could find my gem in the ivy and witness it again. There was no way the knowledge would stay secret forever, but maybe Tarne could live happily with Lila and Kara long enough for that to change things.
I arrived at the library’s main room and was instantly tackled to the ground by Tarne, now slightly older. She looked about eight, but I was confused as to how it happened.
“JACK!” She exclaimed. “I don’t know why, but it feels like I haven’t seen you in a while.” I smiled, and hugged her.
“That’s silly,” I said, holding back tears from her memories of sadness. “We were playing in the garden just last week. By the way, you look older. What happened?”
“Mom asked me if I’d like to grow up a little,” Tarne said, scrambling up to jump up from the floor. “So I did.”
“Don’t grow up too fast, Tea,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Things become a little complicated when you grow up,” I said, thinking back to the anger and other exploding feelings I felt brought on by puberty. Then I thought back to when Tarne was aged up because of Garroton Bloom. That was a really strange time. “Just trust me, it’s best to enjoy your childhood to the max.”
“TO THE MAX!” Tarne shouted, then ran off through the double doors to the garden. I watched them swing over the threshold with light pouring in from just beyond them.
“Hey,” a voice said from above. I looked up to find Lila leaning on the handrail of the second floor. “It does feel like it’s been a while. And we all woke up in the same room. And Kara’s thingy-ma-jig was on the floor. So, what really happened? Why were we asleep?”
“It’s best not to dwell on it,” I said. “There were some complications, but I’ve dealt with them. You never have to worry again.” Lila stood back up, and did a few stretches before vaulting the handrail and landing like a superhero in front of me. She looked me over, and extended a hand to hold onto my shirt.
“Why are your clothes shimmering green?” She asked.
“I— I like it that way,” I replied. “Don’t you like it like that?”
“It’s… new,” she said, still squinting her eyes as if trying to figure out what was wrong. “But, yes, it does suit you. However, you should try something more stylish like me.” She clapped her hands as the clothes she wore slipped off her to reveal the naked physique. I watched her back for a moment, forgetting that she had different anatomy than humans in my world. Strangely enough, her silhouette was very similar except for the muscle between her legs, and of course the triskele vagina on her lower back.
I watched as red, orange, and yellow shawls crept along the floor from the corners of the room to bind her into the air, suspended in zero gravity as she spun around to capture layer upon layer of them, shifting like the weave of a garden hose. The layers solidified into a circle around her neck, twisting down over her pose all the way down to her knees. It was a dress of mingling red, orange, and yellow, in a woven pattern, billowing in the arms and over her chest, but smooth all the way down from her hips. It looked stunning.
“Amazing,” I said, struggling to type as my keyboard battery died. It was just taps on a screen per letter now, and I was getting tired of it. “ I have to go. My keyboard died.” Without even a second glance, I turned on the spot to vanish from the library. Writing like this was slower, but reminded me of this one device that allowed faster typing. I had to get one of them to try it out.
break
I came back the next day, after worrying for half a day about what Kara might have been doing with the beam of light right before she gave up the memories. She would know something happened seeing as her Keir was not embedded in her skin. Then I worried what James AI would remember. It bothered me all the way through the work day, destroying any semblance of efficiency. I had to find out for myself.
I stepped into the library to find Lila reclined on the couch. The second thing I noticed was a pillow under her lower back, with the corner pointed directly into the triangle gap in her skin. I stepped up silently, but her eyes remained closed. She undulated her hips to glide the back over the corner of the pillow a few times. When her eyes opened, she only smiled without stopping the motion.
“Hey, Jack,” she said. “Tarne is taking a bath, so I’m making use of my alone time. Want to help me out?” I said nothing, only kept watching as she masturbated to a climax, arching her back up against the corner of the pillow she was using.
“I sometimes forget your anatomy is different,” I said, coming up to inspect the muscle between her legs. I held back my hand from touching the smooth muscle that beast decided to try. “And I wonder how it would feel to have this sort of setup instead of what women have in my reality. On a different matter entirely, where did Kara run off to?” Lila took hold of my hand, and guided it to her lower back where the moisture soaked into her sweatshirt.
I ran a few fingers over the overly moist triskele opening under the cloth, and withdrew to smell it. The liquid had no heavy odor, just a light semblance of sweat, something her kind did not do. Maybe that was the only way they produced water, seeing as stress came out of them solid enough to leave phantoms of dust that fell apart at first touch.
“She ran off somewhere saying she needed to check on someone,” Lila said. “Why?”
“No reason,” I said. “I just had something to ask her. It had to do with the ivy, or rather the Rahin.”
“Rahin?” Lila asked.
“You remember how they stopped by to correct this place once?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“The Rahin,” Lila said confused. “What’s a Rahin?”
“The fish people in the ivy?” I asked. “The Rahin. We’ve talked about them before, I’m sure of it. Even if not, they stopped by, threatened to destroy this place and digest your chaos. I asked them if they could talk to the Nth Goni about letting Tarne stay in the Nth Infinity, the little scrap of existence out of existence, but within a bubble in the ivy. You remember all that, right?” Lila grimaced, and shut her eyes in pain.
“Vaguely,” she said. “It’s like… there is this fog over my mind, like something’s missing. But I’m alright. The Rahin never came back, did they?”
“That’s what I worry about,” I said. “Kara used to warn me about them before, but when the two of you started dating, she was concerned more about what would happen to you.”
“Yes!” She exclaimed. “I remember! She said we’d have sorts of adventures in a slew of different worlds. And then I think I suggested something about having sex in a lot of different new worlds. Right?”
“I don’t want to look for it in the record,” I said. The amount of words since was already over 160k. Editing this whole giant batch of arbitration would take a considerable amount of time. “But knowing your explicit personality, I’d say that’s very likely.”
“Oh, hush, you know you love it,” she said, shaking beast out of his cage. He took over my right hand again, as it reached into my pants to grab hold of an erection he brought into existence. He smacked the tip against her chest for a moment before I could take control back.
“Sorry,” I said, putting it away.
“I mean, I could help you out with that,” she said. I felt beast roar again in my head, and throw his weight at the cage wall. When Lila’s hand glided up my arm, I swayed out of control to bury my face in her chest, but when she slipped that hand down my pants, I stepped away from the couch while simultaneously dumping beast into a batch of tar and cooling it solid.
“Let’s not,” I said. “It’s better if I search for something like this in my reality instead of in my mind, in the untethered space.”
“I understand, Jack,” Lila said. “But since this is in your mind, you should be able to do whatever you like without any consequences. Your beast could ravage me and satisfy me, while you satisfy yourself from simply spectating. There is no better turn-on than imagination. I imagine you can see me naked any time you like, just in your mind’s eye. You can see Kara naked, just as well. That’s fine.”
“I hate it,” I said. “I just want to be away from people to not have those thoughts.”
“Those thoughts are normal,” Lila said.
“And what about thoughts that go further?”
“Sex?” Lila asked. “It’s only natural. It’s the most natural thing for humans to procreate, even if the world forces you to stifle those urges. I’ve never been good at stifling anything, but you can blame the people who abused me when I was a child for that. I grew up exposed to those things far more than others, and in the end the only reason I killed my universe was because someone told me that was not the way people behaved, or should behave.”
“It’s not,” I said. “Not how they should, but the darkness of humanity is based in preying on the weak, lording over the fragile. Even when a part of the darkness is exposed, the remaining overwhelming fraction is unaffected. That’s why I think you’re amazing, because you did something about it. Granted, the way you went about it was chaos incarnate, because you erased the bad with the good.”
“The bad often lives right next to the good,” Lila said. “There is a lot of pain to be found when pointing out the bad within the good. The concepts are tricky to tiptoe around, and stomping into them leaves you stomping out the good parts. I don’t know the solution to all that, only mass destruction, the returning to ashes of both sides, in balance.” I sighed at the dystopian vibes we somehow arrived at.
“I wish you many orgasms with Kara when she comes back,” I said. “And I hope she can enjoy herself like before… never mind.”
“Before?” Lila asked, but I fell backward with a wave and vanished a few inches before impact to exit the library.
Stupid. Why did you say that? You idiot.
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