A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

If there were foreboding signs on that morning, I missed them. I hardly paid attention to where I was going at the time, but I do not credit the mistake to the way my mind operates during the week. I had no coffee that morning, rushing into the office after a betrayal of my phone. It died during the night, reminding me to feed it as I danced in my REM cycles. It was too late in the morning to give it any juice, and it set the precedent for the rest of the morning. At the very least, the train was on time, filled with people rushing about in the same huff, but they were just going about their day. They had nary an inkling of what was about to happen, and where I’d end up. I got out of the subterranean system of machinery and considered grabbing a quick coffee at the corner cart. No. I’d get some of the machine-brewed corporate-provided darkness-in-a-cup instead, or so I thought. There, in the lobby was a guy right about my age, perhaps younger. Not a bad looking face and hair, just a li...

For fear of my words getting lost to the current status of my habitation, I employed my old way of writing, by means of storage USB with all my past stories, and those who would one day come to be. I had to delve into one of their minds tonight. Tarne could not be set aside any longer. I stepped into the library expecting another giant contraption of orange tracks, only to find Tarne playing by herself with JJ nowhere in sight. She was skipping on the wooden floor of many different hues, trying to only land on the lightest ones. “Hey,” I said, making her land on one foot, and tumble over to the couch. “Sorry. Where’s JJ?” “He didn’t want to play with me anymore,” Tarne said. “He’s very childish.” I smiled. “He is a child, Tea.” “I’m a child, TOO,” she continued. “But he’s a really petty little brat. We played his game for a bit, with a bunch of action elements. When he got tired, I made us some snacks and drinks, and asked if I can choose the next game. At first he was ok with it, but ...

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...

I came back a week later, during the day for the first time in months. I wanted to have time in case Lila decided to tell me more about herself. Though I arrived at the library countless times before, this time I appeared in the small room underneath it in the small room at the heart of the creationism infection. There was nothing extra added to the space, but all four doors were open onto the darkness with a ceiling of the library slightly lit from within. There was no reason for the open areas since the vines creeping out from the central invisible mass could go through solid objects. It only took a sweeping motion to close them all. I had to wonder what this space meant, and just how big it could be. I worried that my creationism may impact the Infinity Void sourcing, but the giant mess of vines could very well be a small blotch in a very big space. There was still a ladder up to the library, not the grand spiral staircase there once was. The idea was scuttled by none other than the...