A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

I had not been back to the library in close to a month. Even before, I saw happiness and left them to it. I did not want to interrupt Kara’s happiness, nor that of Lila and Tarne. Yet I sat at the little device again, continuously broken by stresses of everyday life, living in a temporary location that I could not call a home, and working in a toxic environment. I needed a change, or a chance for something else. The strings that held my life together in the metal metropolis were tearing apart. I had to escape before I fell apart. I appeared within the library in silence, only looking up toward the golden arched ceiling. I did not look around or move for a while. The golden paintings of godlike figures shifted around to depict a miniature story. There was a woman clothed in a billowy golden dress running through a barren wood. On her heel, two lions pulled a cart with a mustached man holding a whip. She took refuge in a golden hut by a blue lake, in the small patch of forest green, whit...

Days following the appearance of Barc with Kara, I returned to the writing device, but not into the untethered space. I hesitated here, outside the place of beginnings, the raw material for everything, where those of such heavy inner turmoil went to become something else entirely. I said that my creationism network could help those void leeches incorporate back into the end result of everything, the pools of information that I knew the Infinity Void to be, but now I hesitated. It sounded like the mystery of Mr. Barcode’s task, a great undertaking. Even if I would somehow be able to become my own, dissociated from Tarne, could I commit to something like that? There could not be many of these leeches. They were rare beings of indigestible chaos, the cruxes of unnerved time. I had to wonder if Akier Vil Moredo was one such being, and if Kara ever silenced his meddling. Perhaps I had to ask. Whether she told me the truth was another matter. I was at their mercy, weakened even though within...

Miero, 23rd of the Second Sevis, Rebirth, Year 1651 of the Ahedis Calendar Tiarto awoke one night from a nightmare and noticed a light beyond the darkness of his room. He almost brushed it off as D.A.P.S. They always worked in the dark, wearing lenses that allowed them to see where human eyes failed, named "verete" for whatever reason. If the light was on, this wasn’t them. D.A.P.S. Industries delivered food to houses every sid. Tiarto learned about them when he tried to catch the regular thieves in the act. With a broom in hand, he waited and attacked the presumed burglars only to meet Mack, the lead of the operation. The industry had long been known for their honorable conduct and vetting of employees to limit the incidents of theft. "Oh, right," Mr. Averco said when Tiarto explained his encounter. It had been a few sids since it happened, but the old man was rarely at his own home. "Those guys. It must have slipped my mind. Yes, they update the food. Makes i...

Seeing as it was a Friday night, and I remained at work for extra time to make Monday easier on myself. I returned to the notebook at yet another caffeinated beverage. Was Rebecca done with her meeting? I could only spawn into the chamber to check. There was no apology building in my head for her. She had to have known that after a few times being restrained from the library, I’d come snooping. On my way up the ladder, I felt a shadow cast over the light above and looked up to try and discern if it was John again. To my surprise, it was Rebecca. The hatch opened and a hand reached out to me from Finn. I hesitated, but grabbed hold and felt lifted to the library floor, hovering over a lighted city below. “Hi, Rebecca, Finn,” I said and scanned the surroundings to find nobody else around, not even her clones. “Did Kara and James leave? I met their son John through the door of the spawn chamber. Speaking of, you put a lock on it?” “Yes, we did,” Rebecca said. “It was for his safety. Kar...