A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

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 to...

I came back to the library after a few days of stress about moving. I would have to move again soon enough, but the temporary respite was welcome. The first thing I saw inside was Tarne, sitting at the desk in the open space with a book in her hands. I scanned around before coming up to her, but Lila and Kara were not around. “Hey, Tea,” I said. She held up a finger for a moment of silence, then slipped a divider into the section of the book where she was, and closed it with a heavy slam. I wondered what she was reading, and questioned whether I put my stories back into the library, or if Lila did. She could probably recall them from memory after the library got shattered to pieces. I did still worry about those books and where they ended up. “Jack!” She said, and jumped across the desk with hands in a loop. The arms caught my neck like a ring tossed onto a hook. From there, her hands split apart for just a moment as she floated slowly down thanks to creationism into a hug. I smiled, a...

After a few weeks spent playing an old game into hours of morning, I came back to the box growing the ever-expanding creationism network within untethered space. Though I still had connections to the Infinity Void with ideas for stories I wanted to realize, I was less than enthusiastic in trying to bring any of them to life. “Hello,” I said to the empty room. How could Lila entertain herself in the time I spent away? The perception of time had to be skewed for her in some shape or form. If she would be there for ten of my human years, it was difficult to think I could always come around to entertain her. At least the edits of the calendars and passing of day was no longer in effect when the library upstairs was scuttled. “Lila?” A knock on the ceiling shifted my focus. Since the room and the general surroundings were now under my “control”, I floated out into the great darkness to find her sitting on the top of the wooden box. “Hey, you’ve been gone for a while,” she said. “Yeah,” I sa...

Here, a story of normal note would create a split to build suspense, but the fact of the matter is that everything was happening at the time of writing, even if it is read much later. I stood before myself in the doorway to the library. It was a blatant copy, voice and all, but I knew it was my own fault. Emptiness, much like a black hole in principle, wanted to fill itself. When given access to a rich database of information, it filled itself with that. I gave it a database, and in turn learned of a new, and much deeper sense of emptiness. “Please, don’t be alarmed,” it said. “That’s my voice,” I said. “You took my voice!” “I’m borrowing it,” it explained. “I didn’t have one before. I don’t know if I had anything before that illustrious moment of ‘let there be light’. I’m grateful to you, and wanted to say so.” “What in the fucking hell is happening right now?!” Lila exploded from behind me. “Who are you? What are you doing in untethered space? Are you like me? Are you like Jack? Why ...

“I wish I could see it snow just one more time,” she said. Her skin was pale white in the cloudy sky. Was she becoming a part of it already? I didn’t want her to go. We were on the roof of a building, standing on the ledge, two lost causes. My heart raced, but she just smiled at me. The white light coming from behind the clouds made everything tinted, highlighted with a milky notion. “Maybe we’re both portal walkers,” she suggested. “Wouldn’t that be great? We’d just wake up in new bodies at the moment of impact, live anew somewhere strange.” “Maybe,” I replied looking down toward the street. Nobody could see us yet. “But we’re dying anyway. I don’t know if even that would heal us.” “At least we’ll be together,” she said as a droplet formed at her left eye and begun a journey down to her pale lips. I didn’t believe her. The moment we hit the sidewalk, we would be alone in the dark, like I was before she showed up. It was about time that hesitation hit me. My feet were getting tired of ...

That wasn’t just one story,” Lila said the second I formed up in the untethered space. “It was like five separate stories that intertwined.” “Well,” I said. “That’s what most stories are. What do you think of secondary characters otherwise? Do they just serve the purpose of the main? Don’t they have their own paths that led them to interact with the lead?” Lila rubbed her temples in thought. It was a lot to understand that each tethered story she put together had dozens cast off from the central one. Those were often left untold. “That’s crazy,” she said. “You mean each of the other ones had other stories in it, but never tethered because the thread stitched together the main’s story?” “If you want to think of it that way, yes,” I said. “But it’s ok, Lila. Those stories are often omitted. Like the drunk man in the samurai story. Didn’t he seem like a small character for Dokuto? All he did was ask whether he had a family. They talked for a brief moment, but what if the old man had a ful...