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...

“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...

I returned to the small wooden room in the untethered space on Tuesday of the saddest St. Patrick’s Day under the heel of a pandemic of a virus in the reality I occupied. Had it been a normal day, I would have been at work the day before, and thus had a moment to speak to Lila at the tea shop I frequented. In light of this seclusion imposed on me, I had been away for another two days. Writing, and even using the writing device strained me at home. I had to explain that to her. I once stepped into the box to find the spiral staircase from before there, but ended up deleting that brief visit from record. I started writing it in the middle of the night at a hotel in Limerick for difficulty falling asleep. The clickety keyboard I used created too much sound for a quiet visit to that untethered space in the middle of the night. “Lila?” I asked, wondering if I would have to use the locator on her already. The bigger the space around me, the harder it would be to find her. Much like with Rebe...

I came back at the end of the day. After checking in on Rebecca, who was sleeping on the hammock outside, I created a form and entered the house to find the terrible trio, my mind of the past. For them, time stood still. In fact, time was still frozen around the house. The clock on the wall wasn’t ticking time anymore. It felt calming to be outside of time, even if only in my mind. This was a space where I could pretend I had no expiration date, there was nothing to keep me disciplined. I had no age, no rules to follow with regards to time. And yet, this escape was only created TO escape the predicament of Finnelgamin. I needed JJ to figure out how to get rid of him. Before that, a predicament of the outside world pulled me away once again. break At the start of a new day, I came back to an opportune spot of the real world, and yet the surroundings seemed to be screaming at me not to do this. I could only turn up my music and proceed into the place where time stood still, where the l...