A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

“Just look up, and you’ll see me, free as a cloud,” she used to say. She knew about it back then, having knowledge beyond my understanding of internet systems. She said it in response to my worry when she holed herself up in her room for days with her brightly “Do Not Disturb” sign glowing orange neon on her door. She did tell me what she was doing, but I was never interested. My interests were in the ground, taking samples and studying the compositions of earth from all over. It all started from plants, and learning about the hydrologic cycle and how it cultivated the world at just the right temperature. Water evaporated into the atmosphere, condensated, and fell back down at another location, helping plants drink nutrients from the soil to produce oxygen, pollen, and fruit, all while eating carbon out of the air. It was beautiful to be a part of the cycle, especially with humans both adding to the plant cycle and benefiting from it. Cloudforme was the compound in question. Vivian exp...

The next day at coffee, I visited the spawn chamber again. Though some parts of the story remained untold, I was not interested in telling them. Her story ended, however vaguely. I wanted to know what they talked about at the meeting of all the beings in Rebecca’s universe. I wondered just how many of the video messages she left for me, but the laptop was an immortal object of the room, like the size of it and place in space. The best course of action was to call out phrases and words that might trigger those video messages. This made me wonder if Rebecca, or more possibly Crimmy, recorded any sexual videos for me. It had to have crossed her mind, though I chose to try something else first. “Did you leave because you were angry at me?” I asked, but nothing played. Maybe that was too complex. “You left.” With that, she appeared on the screen alone with a serious look. “I know you’ll try to blame yourself for my departure, but stop being so selfish,” she said. “It wasn’t Finn’s idea or...