Chapter 64 - Some Of That Life En Rose
I hesitated coming back after Christmas. Lila would no doubt tell Kara about my slip up. Knowing what happened could only expose the gunshot underneath the band-aid. I had worked too hard to change their minds, to have them forget. First of all, there was nothing to know. The person Tarne was had nothing to do with what the soul was before. Granted he regained his memories once before, but Fyntn fixed that with his sacrifice.
Having delayed going into the library until the last few minutes before work, I needed to face what became of Kara. I had to know that the memory of knowing was erased. I stepped into the library to find it empty, but rather than call out, I sent out a telepathic field to only connect to Kara. She was nowhere to be found, possibly no longer in the untethered space. She had the Keir after all, and I worried what that might mean, having revealed the plan to erase her memories to James AI.
The setting was wrong. I would have to stop by again another time. I was disappointed in myself, but having died the previous day, I was still shaken up. The dream of death lingered in my eyes, written into my bones. Lucid dreams were the worst when your mind only wanted to attack you.
break
I entered the library the next day without hesitation. The only delay was re-reading a part before where Fyntn and I stopped time to reset Akier. Now with only twenty minutes left, I knew I would not be able to find anything out. When I stepped through, my physical appearance knocked Tarne to the ground. She ran right into me and fell backward. I caught her with some creationism to let her float.
“Jack!” She exclaimed, then pushed off into the air of the library to float around.
“Hey,” Lila said from the stairs.
“Hey,” I said. “Any word from Kara?”
“None. Why?”
“She’s been gone a while, huh?”
“She always did this before,” Lila said. “It’s nothing new.”
“Oh,” I said. “So, she didn’t settle here?”
“I mean, she did,” she corrected. “She was here in every capacity, but sometimes she’d leave for a bit, and come back to stay for a bit longer. I figured it had something to do with her being part of that order thing. Maybe she was tutoring someone.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“What’s with the sudden interest in her?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I just wanted to explain to her why the Keir was not with her when she woke up.”
“And why wasn’t it?”
“It had a function that woke her up,” I said, realizing that it explained nothing.
“So how come we were asleep in the first place?” Lila asked. It was a simple question, and I devised a simple answer for her.
“I was trying to find a way to connect your minds,” I said. “You know, so you can get along well and maybe understand each other better.”
“You can just do that through talking, silly,” Lila said, hitting my arm playfully.
“But with a mental link, you can understand what everyone feels about various things and what memories it sparks in their mind. I don’t know. I felt that would get you all closer together, but it didn’t work out.”
“Good,” Lila said. “I’d rather keep my darkness to myself. Tarne doesn’t need that in her mind. Not to mention the horrible things Kara has seen in all the worlds. I’m sure there has been a lot she had to go through.” I thought back to the scene in her mind with James, and grimaced.
“Yeah,” I said. “If she stops by, tell her about the thing I tried to do, ok? I have to go.”
“Gotcha,” Lila said, with a smile. I worried as I exited.
break
I came back in the new year, of 2022, eager to put this to rest. What I needed was closure from Kara, assurance that she did not remember what she gave up freely inside her mind. I scoffed. She did not really give it up freely, and I felt terrible for forcing her into the decision. The worry was James AI and how much he knew about what I was erasing. Did she have him record her thoughts before?
I stepped into the empty library through the garden doors to find emptiness. There was a light pouring in from the windows, which was rare. Most often, the windows had a projection of some backyard out there, but no actual space. It was the illusion of the space that was enough, almost like ARC paintings from Tiarto’s story. I should have given that story a real name, something good and eye-catching. Garden Hero and Code Girl played off another idea, and I did not like that much.
I felt a shiver in the space around me, realizing it was viscous. I was moving slower through the space near the windows, and I realized why. The light was borrowed from another story I wrote, vestigial light of the dead Tisyros. I felt my body slow down and solidify in the green glow.
“Hold him!” A shout burst out above me. Three people descended from above to take ownership of my wrists and neck. I was surprised to find all three were in fact one person, Kara. A fourth dropped from the ceiling to a superhero landing.
“Hey, Kara…sss.” I said hesitantly. “Don’t mistake my pacifism for you having the upper hand.
“Shut up, Jack,” all four of them said in unison, then looked at each other, entertained by the quartet of jinx. The fourth stepped forward and I knew it was the original in a team of clones. Her face was older, like Kara who was here with Lila. “Now, you’re going to tell me exactly what you stole from me.”
“Stole?” I asked. “Do you mean the time you woke up with your Keir apart from your body? Didn’t Lila explain that?”
“It’s a bullshit explanation,” the Kara clone on the left said.
“Yeah, you freaky perv,” the center one added.
“We think you had her asleep because you have a thing for her,” said the one on the right.
“Girls,” lead Kara said. “Please let me talk to him.” The other three looked embarrassed. Their youth was entertaining. In the beginning, she was an angry girl looking for her dad, with far too much power in her hands. I had to wonder at which point did she allow herself to clone for the order of the Keir. I wished to write more about her than what came up in James’ journal and her original message to a wide variety of listeners.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, still trying to defuse the situation under a lie. “I didn’t steal anything.” That much was true. I only jailed her until she gave up the memories willingly, too willingly. So willingly that I worried that she had a backup somehow stored in her AI soulmate. Luckily, I was wrong, but I should have known she would be suspicious of my intentions. I closed my eyes for a moment as beast pictured me void of clothing with all four Karas in bed, enjoying ourselves. I shook the thought away.
“I was asleep, and James was on the ground,” main Kara said. “You removed the Keir from me. I distinctly remember waking up one time. What were you doing to me?” Her eyes furrowed in anger of imagining the worst things. Because of that, beast ran with the idea of adult Tarne, Kara, and Lila all together in bed with me, and I grimaced at the vision angrily, clenching my teeth to dunk him in the tar pit of my mind.
“Kara,” I said, then let out a breath of creationism that let me loose from the vestigial light. “I didn’t do anything sexual to any of you. My intention was to link your minds so that there were less misunderstandings. That’s it.” She looked into my eyes, deeply focusing in anger.
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “Ever since I woke up, I feel like something is missing. I’m angry for no reason, but I want to be mad. What did you take?” I sighed, and grimaced at the failed attempt of convincing her. I met her eyes again, manifesting how the memories she gave up looked like by her own design. I held three cement marbles polished to a shiny stone surface in my hand.
“Pain,” I said. “That I created. I took away my mistakes. I pleaded until you gave them up willingly, at threat of endless sleep, but still. You gave them up.” Kara stepped forward to the orbs of cement. Her expression was still anger, but melted to sadness. When she reached for the marbles, they vanished.
“Pain is what makes me… me,” Kara argued.
“It wasn’t making you any more you than normal,” I said. “But it was hurting Lila, and Tarne. They were worried about you. I was worried about you, too. It was my fault, and I couldn’t be the person who took away your happiness anymore. Instead, I took away some of your pain, and their knowledge of that pain. Everyone deserves to live even if a small part of their life en rose, free from worry. I needed you to have that after causing you so much aggravation.”
“You can go,” Kara said toward the other three Karas. “Thank you for coming to back me up.”
“You sure you’re alright?” Said the center Kara from the trio.
“Yeah,” boss Kara replied. “Please, go back to saving worlds in trouble.” The three Karas nodded, each opening a vestibule to another world through the void. They were lightly green corridors into nothingness, but I knew it was more of a tunnel to another world.
“And I can’t know what you took or I’d be in pain again, right?” She asked. “That about it?”
“Yes,” I replied. “It was my fault, truly. I was only erasing my own mistakes, and it’s better to have no knowledge of them.”
“You’re making yourself out to be a god in that way,” she said.
“Everyone is a god in their mind.”
“Well, apparently not,” she said. “I gave up the memories to you.”
“I had Fyntn on my side,” I said. “It wasn’t a fair fight. And if you want to know, you did fight me like a beast. Killed me many times in your mind, caused a lot of pain, before you gave in. I worried you’d somehow transfer the memories out before the removal, but I’m glad you didn’t.”
“You should stop mentioning missing memories,” Kara said, then slapped me really hard on my back leaving an indent of her whole arm. “Or I’ll get curious again.”
“Right.”
“So, a life en rose, huh?”
“Yup,” I said. “Everyone deserves even a small part lived en rose. I’m glad yours is Lila and Tarne. Maybe once I’m done here, you three could go adventuring to worlds that you saved, ones you liked.”
“Maybe,” Kara said. “But what do you mean by ‘when I’m done here’?”
“Well,” I said. “Finn was a loss of mind, Rebecca was my patching of it up, and with this I was trying to let go of my connection to the link Rebecca left. I destroyed the laptop she left for me, but also found Lila here who was still a wild thing. Giving her purpose let her change a bit, thanks to you and Tarne. Any way you look at it, it feels like the end of something large. I finally know that I can’t have someone trapped in an existential crawl space so that I feel better.”
“Look at you, finally maturing,” Kara said, then punched my shoulder. “You deserve a bit of that life en rose, too.”
“We all do,” I said. “You do, too.” I looked up to the ceiling of the library, but really looked at you from the page or screen.
“Well, I’m going to take a bath with my lover,” Kara said. “No peeking.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.
“Maybe you will,” she said, winking. It was nice to see her happy again, though I felt a stone weigh down on my heart for some reason. Though my mind was lighter now, something still weighed heavy on my chest. I nodded, and fell backward to exit the library.
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